Stepping into Farangi Mahal in Lucknow after skirting rows of low-priced chikankari salwar kameez shops and their steady din is somewhat like stepping into the stillness of a forest after having left a busy city. Only, Farangi Mahal is anything but a forest. It is a cluster of buildings that hold within them a bit of history that has been almost forgotten, as the past often is in India, obscured by new settlements or construction, or billboards, if not demolished altogether.

In Farangi Mahal the past is difficult to see also because of the turn Indian politics has taken.

I am part of a group from Calcutta visiting Lucknow last October. Inside Farangi Mahal, located in the old neighbourhood of Chowk, we enter its elegant and serene courtyard. The lime-and-mortar white exterior is tinged with a blue, peeling off in places. The afternoon sun slants down on the pillared arches and the exposed bricks but does not take away from the fragile beauty of the structure.

Adnan Abdul Wali, a member of the family that owns the house, the Farangi Mahalis, ushers us into the courtyard. His Urdu and Hindi are as impeccable as his courtesy. He is a direct descendant of Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahali, who was a leader of the Khilafat Movement.

Farangi Mahal’s story, however, goes back beyond the nawabs and the British. It was occupied by French merchants during the rule of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb and that is how it got its name. The merchants, owing to some offence, lost the property and Aurangzeb gave it to Abdul Bari’s ancestors, who needed a safe haven.

The farman issued by Mughal emperor Aurangzeb decreeing that Bari’s ancestors could live here. Photo courtesy: Adnan Abdul Wali

“The Khilafat movement started from here,” says Wali. Farangi Mahal is where the idea of joining the Khilafat Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement was born and Abdul Bari was the architect of the plan. It was a glorious moment of Hindu-Muslim unity in Indian history and Lucknow played its part in it.

Abdul Bari, an eminent religious scholar who belonged to the tradition of highly respected scholars from his family, was also an astute politician. He had tra-velled across many Muslim countries and was acutely aware of the impact of British imperialism on the Islamic world.

In March 1919 came the Rowlatt Act, which was to be followed by the horrors of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in April 1919, one of the events that would lead Mahatma Gandhi to launch the Non-Cooperation Movement. Before that happened, a large number of Muslims in India were already disturbed by the threat of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey following World War I and the jeopardised future of the Caliph, the Ottoman head of state, who is nominally the supreme religious and political leader of Sunni Muslims across the world. Turkey had been defeated by the Allied Forces, which included the British.

Adnan Abdul Wali, a direct descendant of Abdul Bari and the family that owns the house. Photo courtesy: Adnan Abdul Wali

Abdul Bari was convinced that in India, Muslims needed to be made aware that the fate of the Ottoman Empire was their religious concern — and the articulation of the Khilafat (Caliphate) cause needed a larger, national platform.

From around 1919, Abdul Bari was raising support in the countryside, says Francis Robinson, a historian who specialises in Islam in South Asia. Abdul Bari had founded a newspaper for the purpose. But more importantly, he wanted to woo Gandhi to the Khilafat struggle.

Gandhi came to stay in Farangi Mahal for the first time in March 1919 and within six months, Abdul Bari had won him over, says Robinson. This also led to a period of a very special friendship between the two men, which was rooted not only in a common political cause but also shared spiritual beliefs and a love for mysticism, as embodied in Sufi philosophy.

Politically, the campaign for Khilafat and Gandhi’s stamp on it saw Abdul Bari reaching the height of his influence during 1919 and 1920.

Abdul Bari and his Farangi Mahal relatives, with the help of the lawyer Chaudhri Khaliquzzaman, drew up the constitution of the All-India Central Khilafat Committee, says Robinson. “He devoted enormous effort first to persuade the Khilafat Committee to adopt non-cooperation as a policy and second, at the Allahabad meetings in June (1920), in persuading the committee to accept Gandhi as chair of the group that was to put non-cooperation into action,” adds Robinson.

From then on till September 1920, Abdul Bari successfully campaigned to organise a significant Muslim presence at the Calcutta Special Congress, which was held from September 4 to 9, 1920. The session passed the resolution of the Non-Cooperation Movement with a demand for Swaraj. The Khilafat Committee and the Congress came together with non-cooperation as the common goal.

After March 1919, Gandhi stayed at Farangi Mahal three times, recounts Wali proudly. Other leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Sarojini Naidu stayed here as well. During Gandhi’s second visit, in September 1919, Muslims in the area abstained from cow slaughter during Bakrid as a mark of respect to Gandhi and appreciation for his support to the Khilafat cause. “Abdul Bari had requested Muslim families to make the gesture,” says Wali.

This was somewhat different from the recent celebration of November 25 as No Non-Veg Day by the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh. The announcement was made to honour the birth anniversary of Sadhu T.L. Vaswani and slaughterhouses and meat shops were required to remain closed that day. There is a world of difference between giving up meat voluntarily and being forced to do so, as there is between non-violence and violence. But such distinctions perhaps do not make much sense anymore in Lucknow, once the capital of nawab-ruled Oudh, now ruled by the BJP with Yogi Adityanath at its helm. Like the No Non-Veg Day, the city has several streets and institutions named after lesser-known Hindu saints.

Abdul Bari is said to have introduced Gandhi to the sufi saint Bakhtiyar Kaki, disciple and successor to Moinuddin Chishti. Three days before his death, Gandhi delivered his last public address at the shrine of Bakhtiyar Kaki in Mehrauli.

Abdul Bari had earlier invited Gandhi to Ajmer, where Chishti is enshrined. At Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Gandhi is said to have experienced his first qawwali on Chishti. It was there that he asked Abdul Bari about Bakhtiyar Kaki. He had first visited Ajmer Sharif in 1921 and would visit it again.

In 1922, after the Chauri Chaura incident, Gandhi withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement. Abdul Bari did not relent; he was not sparing of Gandhi either, says Robinson, but one has to remember his politics was primarily religious in inspiration. His influence declined steadily from this time and he died in 1926, a disappointed man, according to Robinson.

His name is often seen missing now from the roll call of prominent Khilafat leaders.

And yet Abdul Bari was not only a politician but also an eminent educator, Wali reminds. His ancestors had established a madrasah that became well-known all over the Islamic world and had introduced a syllabus, Dars-e-Nazami, which became a much-respected system of learning.

As a revered teacher in his family tradition, Abdul Bari introduced major changes to the curriculum by stressing the learning of Western sciences and discouraging rote learning.

Wali breaks down. It is very difficult to reconcile the present with the past, he says. Lucknow was never a utopia; communal riots had broken out here around the time of Gandhi’s visits to Farangi Mahal. But now the very fabric of society has changed, he feels. He reads from an Urdu book, and though the meaning of the words remains elusive, the music lingers. Farangi Mahal, with Wali bent over his book, look almost unreal.

But Farangi Mahal still stands, held up by its ancient, sturdy, flat bricks, and memory. Some things stay.