The Muslim world as heterotopia: Global encounters in interwar Europe

This article examines a collection of colour portraits housed in the Archives de la Planète in Paris. The portraits depict a group of Indian pan-Islamists who spent several months in Europe in 1920 advocating for more lenient terms for the Ottoman Empire—the seat of the Caliphate—in the peace settlement that followed the First World War. Europe, and particularly Paris, provided these Indians with opportunities to encounter numerous other Muslims from across the so-called ‘Muslim world’, some of whom also sat for portraits that now form part of the Archives de la Planète. By drawing on recent scholarship on colonial photography, global embourgeoisement, and interwar world-making, this article contextualises these portraits within a broader historical framework. While surface similarities between the images might suggest this was a moment of growing convergence, the Indian pan-Islamists’ textual accounts of their European encounters reveal deep intellectual and political divisions. In this moment of heightened global mobility and connection, the Muslim world emerges as a heterotopic space, containing and reflecting a multitude of competing realities and intersecting subjectivities.