Islamic Connections: Muslim Societies in South and Southeast Asia

6. RELIGION AND THE UNDERMINING OF BRITISH RULE IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA DURING THE GREAT WAR

109 6 RELIGION AND THE UNDERMINING OF BRITISH RULE IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA DURING THE GREAT WAR Kees van Dijk On 29 October 1914, a few months after the outbreak of World War I, Turkey joined in on the side of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. On 11 November, Sultan Mehmed V proclaimed a holy war. His action left no shadow of doubt that religion obliged all Muslims in the world to side with Turkey and its two allies. To renege was a sin.1 Islam had become a factor in the war. The jihad proclamation, Pan-Islamic sentiments presenting the Ottoman Sultan as Caliph,2 and feelings of Muslim solidarity combined to form a potentially powerful mix. It was no novelty for the Ottoman Empire to be viewed as a possible ally by Muslims threatened by Western colonial expansion; in Southeast Asia especially, the Dutch colonial authorities considered this a likely source of unrest. Now the bare fact that Turkey had entered the war had added a new dimension. It meant that Muslims worldwide could develop an aversion to the Allied Powers and become pro-German. Their pro-Turkish sentiments had already been strengthened by the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12 in Libya, and by the wars Turkey had fought in the Balkans in 1912–13. In British India, for instance, Muslims, vowing of their loyalty to the British Crown, had protested the position taken by London in the Balkan Wars, 110 Kees van Dijk which they construed as amounting to a war against the Balkan Muslims.3 In Singapore, soldiers of the 5th Light Infantry Battalion, composed of Indian soldiers and stationed in the city, had raised money for Turkish charities during the Italo-Turkish War.4 Elsewhere in Southeast Asia similar actions were taken by other local Muslim communities. In the Netherlands Indies, the domestic display of portraits of the Kaiser and his wife, and of the Sultan of Turkey, raised doubts about the loyalty of local Muslims as Dutch subjects. At the end of 1915, colonial officials inspecting village houses in Central Java discovered to their dismay that this was a very popular taste, and it was viewed by the government as indicative of anti-Allied attitudes. Muslims in the Archipelago also reportedly rejoiced in Gallipoli and other Allied setbacks. Malay-language nationalist papers published in the Indies testified to the same sympathies and antipathies; Dutchlanguage newspapers, on the other hand, were most hated by the Indonesians because of the way in which the population and the nationalist movement were depicted and vilified in their articles, and because of their fiercely antiGerman tone.5 In a September 1915 speech to the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements (British Malaya), Governor Sir A.H. Young admitted that the feelings of the local Muslim community “were stirred deeply”. A “vast majority” had remained loyal, but “there were also a few fanatics who preached extreme doctrines of religious hate”.6 Dissent and dreams about contributing to the downfall of the British Empire could ripen in a situation in which British prestige was damaged. Rumours circulating among Indian soldiers in Singapore intimated “that there would soon be a German Raj instead of a British Raj”.7 All kinds of other stories were invented to depict Germany as a perfect ally. One was that many Germans had converted to Islam; another told of “the German Emperor’s daughter being married to the heir apparent of Turkey”.8 Conviction that the German Emperor had converted to Islam, and had taken the name “Haji Mohammed William Kaiser German” also grew among the soldiers.9 In India, the situation was no different. In the first years of the war, a feeling that Germany was certain to defeat Russia first, and thereon, perhaps Great Britain and France, spread among the population. The Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, had to confess that this was “the sort of theory widespread in the bazaars and amongst the uneducated native classes, and it does a lot of harm for it creates a feeling of uncertainty and unrest”.10 Germany had prepared well for this battle for hearts and minds. Within the framework of the Weltpolitik on which Germany had embarked in 1897, one of the regions in the world that civilian and military policy-makers in Berlin had turned their attention to was the Middle East. Aspiring to play a leading role on the international scene and entering into competition with Great Britain for world maritime and economic...