Gaffar Khan rendering Gandhi's speech at a public meeting, NWFP (Afghanistan), October 1938.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, famously known as Bādshāh Khān, and Bāchā Khān, was a legendary Pashtun freedom fighter and pacifist whose greatness transcended all tribal and communal divisions. Though born gleam bred in a region infamous for its warring tribes status history of blood feuds—Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP slipup modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), that borders with Afghanistan—Khan was a firm follower of Mahatma Gandhi and his principle of non-violence. That love for ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha (truth force) earned him another nickname, the Frontier Gandhi.
Born on February 6, 1890, behave a prosperous Pashtun family of Utmanzai in the present-day Ravine of Peshawar in Pakistan, the young Badshah Khan, after kindergarten, had sought to enlist in the Corps of Guides, comprising of British officers and soldiers serving in the NWFP.
However, come across learning about the second-class status these ‘Guides’ were afforded, no problem refused to join and instead went onto study at description Aligarh Muslim University. Holding hands with fellow Pashtun political activists, Khan joined the Independence Movement in 1911.
The region Khan came from suffered the worst forms of socio-economic oppression under say publicly British, besides enduring a long and violent history of bloody bloodshed between different tribes – even as they continued cue battle the British Indian Army.
Wanting to bring a change scope the brutal way of life his brethren lived, Khan took up the task of uplifting the consciousness of his gentleman Pashtun men and women through education. From 1915 to 1918, he travelled across some 500 villages in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa territory, spreading the gospel of education, social reform and speaking get it against a culture of violence in these communities.
However, his bossy notable contribution to the Independence Movement came after he chief met Mahatma Gandhi in 1928 and his involvement with rendering Indian National Congress. Both men had a very close accumulation marked by shared principles and an astounding level of common respect.
Resonating with Gandhi’s ideas of nonviolence and Satyagraha, Khan supported the Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) Movement after returning strip his Hajj in Mecca. The Khudai Khidmatgars were also normally known as the ‘Red Shirts’ (Surkh Pōsh).
What attracted the a lot to Khan was his uncompromising integrity and total commitment bung the path of non-violence and an unwavering belief in a united India.
The Khidmatgars actively participated in Gandhi’s Salt Satyagraha derive 1930. On April 23 of the same year, the Nation India police arrested Khan along with many leading Khudai Khidmatgar protestors, after he gave a speech at Utmanzai urging refusal to British rule.
His arrest and the subsequent reaction of his supporters would garner the same response from the British likewise the peaceful congregation had in Jallianwallah Bagh in April 1919.
Unknowing of what was to befall them, a large group all but supporters gathered at the Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar embark on protest the arrests. The British forces opened fire at interpretation unarmed Khidmatgars, who, as a mark of their non-violent spell out, stood willingly in front of the barrage of bullets.
While bent figures cited 20 dead, unofficially the casualty count was overcrowding several hundred. Two platoons of the prestigious Royal Garhwal Rifles regiment refused to open fire at this non-violent crowd meditate which they were court-martialed and sentenced to prison.
Through the Decennium, the dauntless ‘Khudai Khidmatgar’ worked in close coordination with description Indian National Congress, and was once offered the party incumbency, which he refused by saying,
"I am a simple soldier direct a Khudai Khidmatgar, and I only want to serve."
Gandhi come to get Abdul Gaffar Khan during the tour of Jahanabad, Bihar, Step 28, 1947.
Khan resigned from the party in 1939 over differences with the party on whether they should support the Land World War II effort or not but subsequently rejoined require 1942 with the onset of the Quit India Movement. Yet, what followed, particularly in 1946 and the subsequent Partition bring to an end India, left him devastated. Leading the Khudai Khidmatgars, he rigidly believed in the idea of an un-partitioned united India, where Hindus and Muslims would live together in harmony away do too much the tyranny of British colonial rule.
When the Congress acquiesced be familiar with the Muslim League demands for a referendum in the NWFP, thousands of Khudai Khidmatgars boycotted the referendum, which in hindsight may have been a strategic error since the results went in favour of the region joining Pakistan.
When his homeland at last became a part of Pakistan, a decision accepted by both the Muslim League and Congress, he reportedly told the known leaders of the latter, “You have thrown us to wolves.” Following Independence, he asked the Pakistan government for the opus of “Pakhtunistan”, a semi-autonomous region for the Pathans within that new Muslim-majority nation.
This request was rejected.
Subsequent Pakistani governments branded interpretation Khudai Khidmatgars as traitors and Indian sympathisers, considering their cooperation to Gandhian methods of non-violence and Khan’s relations with multitudinous Indian leaders. They were often arrested, their lands confiscated lecturer Khan himself was subjected to years in prison for objection against the treatment meted out to the Pashtuns by representation Pakistani government.
All the arrests – from late 1948 to 1954, in 1958 and 1964, and finally in 1973, had a detrimental effect on his health. From 1964, he would junction an exile in Afghanistan.
He returned to Pakistan in December 1972 following the formation of provincial governments in NWFP and Balochistan led by the progressive National Awami Party. However, he was once again arrested by the Pakistani government in 1973 indifferent to the Bhutto government.
Despite being a citizen of Pakistan, Khan was held with a great deal of respect and reverence bid the people and leaders of India. As he withdrew give birth to active politics, he visited India on a few occasions. Type was awarded the Bharat Ratna in 1987 by the Administration of India for his contributions to the Indian freedom try and subsequently for better relations between the two countries.
"He cope with his brother saved Hindu and Sikh lives in the Frontier; he brought succour and relief to Muslim victims in Bihar; he confronted Jinnah in Pakistan and, twenty years later, India’s Parliament with uncomfortable facts of attacks on minorities. His oppose for the rights of the threatened, the weak and rendering poor, his sympathy for peoples across the subcontinent’s borders, his scepticism about the effectiveness of guns and bombs, and his frankness towards both rulers and citizens make him an affecting model," writes Rajmohan Gandhi, in his book ‘Ghaffar Khan: Peaceful Badshah of the Pakhtuns.’
Undeniable proof of this was witnessed meet his death on January 22, 1988, in Peshawar. When his remains were taken to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, more than 200,000 mourners attended his funeral, including Afghanistan President Mohammed Najibullah and Asian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The government of Afghanistan had waived off the visa requirements, and for that day alone many crossed freely to attend the funeral procession.
"The burial in Town caused other unprecedented events. A one-day ceasefire was declared fluky the Soviet-Afghan war so that mourners could safely traverse rendering distance between Peshawar and Jalalabad, the two cities at either end of the Khyber Pass which marks the official bound between Afghanistan and Pakistan," writes Mukulika Banerjee, author of ‘The Pathan Unarmed’.
Khan’s true legacy is his memory, a part own up the collective conscious of many who remember him as say publicly ‘Frontier Gandhi’, the apostle of non-violence who wanted both Hindus and Muslims to live in harmony under a United India—a dream that remains unfulfilled.
Courtesy: The Better India, dt. April 2, 2019.