Protest against H. G. Wells's A Short History of the World, 1938

Bank Underground Station, India House, Aldwych, London

In August 1938, the East London Muslim organization Jamiat-ul-Muslimin organized a petition to protest against the negative representation of the Prophet Muhammad in A Short History of the World (1922) by H. G. Wells.

The London-based protest was triggered by demonstrations in Calcutta, which were in turn sparked by articles in the Indian press about the offensive passages in Wells’ book, an abridged version of which had recently been published in Hindi. Indeed, as early as February 1938, an article criticizing Wells’s representation of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, originally published in the Calcutta-based Star of India, was reprinted in the Britain-based Islamic Review, the journal of the Woking Mosque.

In response to this, the Jamiat drafted a petition, which 136 people signed. The protesters marched from Bank Underground Station through Canon Street and Fleet Street to India House, Aldwych to hand over the petition. Here they were received by Firoz Khan Noon, the High Commissioner for India, for a fifteen-minute meeting.

The Jamiat’s protests were not successful in removing the offending passages from Wells’ book. They did, however, generate wider awareness of these passages. By September 1938, the protests had spread to Kenya and by 1939 to Sind province, leading to copies of the book being withheld by the Sind Provincial Government.