How an Indian journalist ended up playing a role in the history of three countries

Catching his audience’s attention must not have been hard for Karim Ghani. He was “a tall, thin, slender man, with unmanageable jet black hair and large dark eyes that stared with a hint of fanaticism at people he spoke to,” writes researcher-journalist Haja Maideen. “He was highly articulate in English, Tamil, Urdu and Arabic and spoke with purpose as if possessed with a sense of mission.”

Ghani’s “knowledge...and his eloquence naturally attracted many people” to him, including some of the most prominent leaders of South and South East Asia in the early 20th century. He was a parliamentary secretary under Ba Maw, the first premier of Burma. He was a minister of state in charge of propaganda in Subhas Chandra Bose’s Azad Hind government. And he advocated for an independent Malayan-Muslim nation based on anti-colonialism and Pan-Islamism.

History sees him as a complex character. It was Ghani who allegedly instigated the violence in 1950 in Singapore after a court ordered that a young girl be removed from her Muslim foster family’s custody and handed to her Catholic biological parents. As many as 18 people died in that violence – what some refer to as the Maria Hertogh riots – and more than 170 were injured.

Ghani insisted that...

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