Maritime space and its connecting ports and hinterlands can be looked upon as a cultural geography wherein ideas are exchanged and evolved. My paper will explore the politicization of the hajj surrounding the Arab Revolt of 1916. Looking at hajj records of the post-Ottoman period, I will focus on British imperial interests in the Red Sea region, while exploring how Indian Ocean travel made possible the connection of politics in the Hijaz to the political situation in India. More specifically, this paper will consider British propaganda efforts directed towards Indian pilgrims in order to distill anti-British agitation in India, in particular the Khilafat movement of 1919-1924. This study also suggests that British imperial interests across Indian Ocean space can be studied as a function of the Government of India’s increased interests in matters concerning the hajj in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While this paper will narrowly focus on the hajj as it is primarily related to Indian pilgrims and politics, such a study can also be extended to various other Indian Ocean ports from which Muslims embarked upon their journey to Mecca, and which also played an important role in British commercial and strategic interests. While the Hijaz has often been considered a political backwater in the history of the Middle East, I will demonstrate the political significance the region played in larger networks which were made possible by the advent of new technologies and travel. With Sugata Bose’s statement that “religious universalism in the form of the pilgrimage by sea had certainly not weakened as a bond across the ocean in the age of global empire,” in mind, I will demonstrate the failure of British attempts to persuade Indian pilgrims that Sherif Hussein could uphold Islamic universalism through his takeover of the hajj following the Arab Revolt of 1916.[1]