India, Feb. 21 -- This is the remarkable story of the last Ottoman Caliph, exiled by Ataturk, who tried to recreate the Caliphate in the Indian princely state of Hyderabad. Abdulmejid II was expelled from Istanbul in March 1924 when Turkey abolished the 1,300-year-old Caliphate. From his villa on the French Riviera, he launched a plan to resurrect the institution. Indian politician Shaukat Ali brokered a marital alliance between the Ottomans and the Nizam of Hyderabad, the world's richest prince. It cemented Hyderabad's status as a global Muslim capital, and left Abdulmejid's grandson, the Ottoman prince and the designated Nizam-in-waiting, perfectly placed to claim the Caliphate. But Partition in 1947 and the annexation of Hyderabad spelled the end of this prospect. The Indian Caliphate shows how the downfall of two Muslim dynasties reveals that India was the epicentre of the Islamic world in the early twentieth century....