in a courtyard in the leafy love lane in byculla a group of burqaclad girls crowds the lone drinking water tap as the afternoon sun blazes overhead the place is quiet its serenity broken only by the girls giggles and the twitter of birds in the treesin the courtyard stands a historic building the crucible of the mahatma gandhisupported preindependence khilafat movement today a shadow of its former self khilafat house struggles to retain its relevance in an age when nobody raises slogans of islam khatre mein hai islam is in danger and gora murdabad down with the whites the only flags that aflutter here now are the crescentembossed green flags during the annual eidemilad procession marking the prophets birthdaywhat was once ground zero for a massive antibritish procaliphate movement now silently trains dozens of young muslims mostly girls to become teachers and computer operators nobody aspires to be a leader todayall follow a herd towards the goal of being able to earn their bread by teaching but before the boredom settled here decades ago khilafat house had incubated an inquilab a revolutionthose days were truly stormy as the sepiatoned photographs adorning khilafat houses walls show on march 20 1919 a group of muslim leaders launched the central khilafat committee and made khilafat house its headquarters khilafat was a movement against the possible abolition of the islamic caliphate khilafat in urdu in turkey and an imminent british takeover of the sacred islamic places of mecca and medina the leading lights of the movement were the ali brothers shaukat and muhammad originally from rampur in up they distinguished themselves as nationalist leaders and firebrand speakers and writersmahatma gandhi seeing the raw emotions that the ali brothers had stoked in the muslim community over the khilafat issue married his noncooperation movement with their cause forming a formidable hindumuslim alliance for swaraj however gandhi was criticised for associating with khilafat which many saw as a fundamentalist panislamic movementmohammad ali jinnah called his support an endorsement of religious zealotry jinnah could not fathom how a nationalist movement could reconcile with a movement that aimed at preserving the caliphate a religious institution but the movement eventually failed as kemal ata turk abolished the caliphate in 1924apart from being the ground zero for a movement khilafat house even ran under its aegis a nationalist urdu daily called khilafat postpartition the daily came under the supervision of maulana zahid shaukat ali son of shaukat ali zahid apart from editing the paper would also hold mushairas and mehfils at khilafat house till zahids death in 1970 it remained a magnet for mumbais muslim intelligentsia progressive poets and writerssenior scriptwriter javed siddiqui a nephew of the ali brothers in his forthcoming urdu memoir has penned a fascinating chapter on zahid shaukat ali and khilafat house siddiqui who joined khilafat in 1959 recalls zahids weakness for ghazals and his famed hospitalityfood would come free from the nearby haji hotel which zahid would share with his friends bringing out an urdu