ABSTRACT
Daud Sha, editor of a Tamil Muslim magazine called Dar-ul-Islam, was a prominent Muslim publicist active in the colonial public sphere of the erstwhile Madras presidency, the southernmost province of British India. Daud Sha's anti-clericalism, and his reformist attitude, particularly with respect to disseminating the Tamil Quran amongst his fellow believers, was somewhat singular. In the Tamil context, the nationalist press followed developments in the Ottoman Empire carefully, and at least one well-known figure from the Tamil context was excited by the Turkish question. The self-respect movement's eulogizing of Turkish reforms was not restricted to their English and Tamil weeklies; their publicists drew attention to Turkey in their public addresses as well. The Young Bengal group and Bhagat Singh's socialist Hindustan Republican Army (HRA) in the Punjab offered political alternatives that diminished the appeal – at least to the young – of habitual nationalist rhetoric that now appeared wan and discordant.
