A new book, Indian Caliphate: Exiled Ottomans and the Billionaire Princes floats the tantalising possibility that the Nizam of Hyderabad’s dynasty came close to becoming the Caliphs in the 20th century.

“With the wealth of the Asaf Jahi dynasty, Mukarram Jha, the son, the grandson of the last Ottoman caliph, and the grandson of the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad, when he became the Nizam, he could then have claimed the title”, according to the author Imran Mulla, a London-based journalist.

“it would have been more of a soft power role in the Muslim world. And it would have depended entirely on the recognition of Muslims elsewhere in the world,” Mulla said to Sidharth Bhatia in a podcast interview.

Mulla’s book explains how after the Ottoman Caliph Abdul Majid had been exiled to France by the Modernist ruler of Turkey Mustafa  ...