Mohammad Barkatullah, freedom fighter
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
A brief biography
Tohid.Qureshi, June 15, 2026: The Times of India
_An_illustration_of_Mohammad_Barkatullah_from_M_Irfan%E2%80%99s_Urdu_biography,_%E2%80%98Barkatullah_Bhopali%E2%80%99.jpg)
From: Tohid.Qureshi, June 15, 2026: The Times of India
Barkatullah, born on 7th July, 1859, in a small mud house in Itwara, became one of the loudest voices against British imperialism. For nearly 40 years, he circled the globe building alliances for the idea of India. In the freezing Dec of 1915, amidst the peaks of Kabul in Afghanistan, Barkatullah, alongside revolutionaries Raja Mahendra Pratap and Maulana Ubaidullah, breathed life into India’s first govt-in-exile. Raja Mahendra Pratap was declared President; Barkatullah was appointed PM.
Four years later, they walked into Moscow to meet Vladimir Lenin. Barkatullah, asked if he was a communist, replied: “My only ideology was the expulsion of the British.” He saw European colonialism as the enemy, and in the Soviets a natural ally. He wrote and spoke of Hindus and Muslims dying together of starvation under colonial plunder. His politics was built on one unshakable belief: India could only be free if its people fought together. Divide-and-rule, he said, was Britain’s deadliest weapon.
“Today, remembering Maulana Barkatullah is more than an act of historical recall; it is a reminder that freedom was achieved through the courage of those who organised beyond easy sight, who built networks across continents, and who kept faith when return seemed uncertain,” says author and historian Rana Safvi, who visited Barkatullah’s grave in 2019.
Fading Memory
Barkatullah moved from Bhopal to Bombay for higher studies, then to London. In Liverpool, he began teaching. His speeches and writings drew the British glare, and in 1899 he was forced to leave for the US. There, he corresponded with Maulana Hasrat Mohani — the man who coined “Inquilab Zindabad”.
Historian Syed Khalid Ghanisays, “Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose established Provisional Govt of Free India (Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind) on Oct 21, 1943. Barkatullah did that even before him. He was struggling for India’s freedom before Gandhi came into the picture. He travelled to Japan, England, US, Germany, Russia, Afghanistan, Brussels, Switzerland and France in days there were only ships and trains.”
“In 2021, the PM laid the foundation stone of Raja Mahendra Pratap Singh University in Aligarh, named after the man who was President of govt in exile of which Barkatullah was the PM. The Centre is making efforts to create a legacy for one and the name of the other is being erased in his own hometown,” he adds.
The Last Thing He Wanted
Barkatullah didn’t return to India while it remained under British rule. Yet Bhopal never left his heart. “I have seen many important personalities of the world but the people of Bhopal, its houses and its lanes are still dear to my heart,” he once wrote. He vowed to return to an independent India. That day never came. On Sept 27, 1927, he died after a heart attack at a Ghadar Party event in Sacramento, California.
In M Irfan’s Urdu biography ‘Barkatullah Bhopali’, Raja Mahendra Pratap recalls his last hours: “I performed his funeral. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others were present.” His dying wish: “Bring back my mortal remains to rest in a free India.” A century later, the wish remains unfulfilled. He still rests in Marysville —an exile even in death.
In 1988, Bhopal University was named after the forgotten hero. Historians and residents argue that to remove his name from the only institution that bears it is to risk erasing him from the collective consciousness of the city.
