| Sumario: | This article examines Muslim anti-colonial populism, mass mobilizations, and individual initiatives in Calcutta between the Balkan Wars (1911–1912) and the early years of the First World War (1914–1916). Focusing on urban Urdu-speaking activists, multilingual spheres of print and jihadi pamphlets, it explores the international, national, and local developments that marked Muslim populism. The article argues that anti-colonial Islamic currents unfolded during 1910s when the city was undergoing major spatial reorganization, slum demolitions and wartime price rise intensified material hardship of the Muslim urban poor. Populist and pan-Islamist preacher leaders advocated militant opposition to colonial authority and resistance against demolitions and privations. Closer to the ground realities than other blocks within the anti-colonial forces, their appeal was democratic and touched the daily concerns of the people in the bazars and the slums. The article delves into the content of their campaigns and the extent to which they reflected and influenced popular concerns. In the process, it examines pre-war and wartime Islamist opposition in the city, the local invocations of a ‘jihad’ with the outbreak of Turko-British hostilities in November 1914 and the transformation of quotidian surveillance into mounting suppression of the current.
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