Remembering King Khan

If you thought from the title that I am going to write about Shah Rukh Khan, you are wrong. I prefer not to talk of megalomaniacs. The subject of my essay is Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, affectionately known as Badshah (King) Khan. Historians and politicians, mostly on the Indian side, call him, somewhat patronizingly, the "Frontier Gandhi", and for the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani administration he was the enemy number one. I am writing about him because he is a unique figure in the history of the Indian subcontinent. He spent thirty years of his life in prison: 15 years in British Indian jails and, after 1947, another 15 years in Pakistani jails. This is more than the duration of Nelson Mandela's imprisonment for anti-apartheid activities. A scholar has calculated that he spent nearly 52 years of his life imprisoned or in exile. It is a real shame that Badshah Khan has been practically forgotten not just in India and Pakistan but also among his own people, the Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province and Afghanistan. The region which he wanted to build into the free and peace-loving nation of Pakhtunistan is now ravaged by war and hatred. The very forces he wanted to defeat in his lifetime have now become deeply entrenched in those beautiful mountains and valleys. From Peshawar to Jalalabad it is a story of violence, destruction and shattered dreams. The religious bigotry of the Taliban, Pakistani excesses and American 'intervention' have left no stone unturned to wipe out the legacy of Badshah Khan. "It fills my heart with sadness to think that our country which, at different periods in history, was the cradle of learning and culture could, under unfavourable circumstances, and because of the ignorance of the mullahs, sink into a state where there was no room left for such good work as education and learning," said Badshah Khan in his autobiography.

Indeed, the 'difficult' (I use the term both in a geographical as well as in a present-day political sense) terrain of NWFP and its surrounding areas were once a seat of high learning, a melting pot of cultures and India's gateway to Central Asia and Europe. The Aryans had made the place their first home in India. The teachings of Buddha found roots in the culture of the region with the establishment of two great Buddhist universities at Ada and Taxila. The Gandhara School of Art flourished there for centuries. Pannini, the great Sanskrit grammarian, and even Prophet Zoroaster are said to have been born there. By the time Islam reached, the spiritual fervour of its flag-bearers had diminished considerably. Nevertheless, the inhabitants adapted themselves to the situation and achieved new heights of "scholarship in Islamic philosophy, learning, and mysticism."

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a true inheritor of the tolerant spirit and the composite culture of the land of his birth. He was born in 1890 in Utmanzai in the Peshawar Valley. His father was Khan Bahram Khan, a local chieftain. At a very young age Ghaffar Khan learnt the Holy Quran by heart. Despite opposition from the mullahs, he and his elder brother were sent to school. While in school he realized that it was only through education that the fate of the Pathans could be improved. After his schooling he was chosen to join the British Indian Army but declined the offer on seeing the humiliation of "native" soldiers at the hands of their White officers. His chance of going to England for education was vetoed by his mother. So he dedicated himself enthusiastically to the task of opening schools.

The separation of NWFP from Punjab in 1901 and the Rowlatt Act of 1919 kindled patriotic sentiments in Ghaffar Khan. He threw his lot with many of his compatriots and joined the nationalist struggle. The on-going Khilafat Movement also added to the excitement. During one of his prison terms he learnt about Gandhi and his non-violent stuggle. He was convinced that this was the right way to fight the British. In 1928 he met Gandhi in Lucknow during one of the Congress meetings. This was the beginning of their friendship which lasted till Gandhi's death in 1948. It is obvious that the two men had a similar outlook towards life and politics. Ghaffar Khan eventually founded the pacifist movement Khudai Khidmatgar. Its basic objective was social reformation among the Pathans, and to promote religious harmony and achieve political independence by non-violent means. He told the Pathans, "There are two ways to national progress: one is the path of religion, and the other is the road to patriotism.... If we are on the road to ruin, it is because we have neither the true spirit of religion, nor the true spirit of patriotism, of love for our nation, nor have we developed any social consciousness." It was a daunting task to tame the hot blood of the Pathans but his reasoning that Islam is a religion of love, service and forgiveness struck a chord with them and they energetically recruited themselves as Khudai Khidmatgar volunteers. It vindicated Badshah Khan's belief that the British deliberately kept the Pathans illiterate, sowed seeds of disunity between them, let them kill each other and then maligned them as a lawless and warring tribe. Moreover, NWFP was a buffer zone between two imperial powers: the British in India and the advancing Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The British favoured a volatile and unstable NWFP to safeguard their own interests in India. An example of the typical way in which the British perceived the inhabitants of NWFP can be found in the much-anthologized poem "The Ballad of East and West" by Rudyard Kipling.

Anyway, at the peak of its popularity the Khudai Khidmatgar movement had upwards of one hundred thousand volunteers. They wore a red uniform to hide the dust whirling constantly in the air of the mountainous region from showing. This earned them the name "surkh posh" or "red shirts". Their adherence to the principle of non-violence and their championing of Hindu-Sikh-Muslim unity have no parallel in history. Some scholars would say that the positive changes the "red shirts" introduced in NWFP are a practical triumph of Gandhism. It must be pointed out that although Gandhi and Khan worked together closely enough and, at times, drew inspiration from each other, the Gandhian and the Khudai Khidmatgar movements were not exactly the same. Khan was an ally of the Congress Party and not a Congressman. He was asked to preside over the important session of the Indian National Congress in Karachi in 1931 which ratified the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. He politely refused. So the post went to the indomitable Sardar Vallabhbai Patel. The influence of Khan's movement so gripped the province that his elder brother was elected Chief Minister and remained in office until Mohammad Ali Jinnah dismissed his government after the formation of Pakistan. Khan Saheb, as Badshah Khan used to call him, was later eliminated by the Government of Pakistan.

Gandhi, sometimes, did not enjoy the unanimous support of the colleagues in his party. But Badshah Khan always stood by him. When the slogan for Pakistan swept across the country like a violent storm and drenched it in a pool of human blood, the Congress Working Committee met in Delhi to discuss the issue of Partition. Gandhi and Badshah Khan vehemently opposed the idea of carving out a separate Muslim state. "I cannot say what the other members felt about it, because I had not talked to them yet. But Sardar Patel and Rajagopalachari were in favour of partition and they were putting pressure on others," recalled Badshah Khan. Ultimately, the members voted with Patel and Rajagopalachari. The Committee also agreed that a referendum be taken to ascertain whether NWFP wanted to join India or Pakistan. Badshah Khan was devastated and felt an acute sense of betrayal. After all, it was he alone who had checked the tide of Muslim League's influence from spreading into NWFP and supported the Congress unreservedly throughout the phase of the nationalist struggle. As if that was not insulting enough, Maulana Azad, the Imam-ul-Hind, who was sitting next to him, uttered a scathing remark: "You ought to join the Muslim League now." Badshah Khan and his men kept away from the referendum and, naturally, the Muslim League had a free run of the field. It soon became clear that NWFP had decided to join Pakistan. He said bitterly, "Pakistan was created by the grace of the British in order that the Hindus and the Muslims might forever be at war and forget that they were brothers." He had been momentarily defeated but another phase of his struggle was to begin shortly.

Pakistan came into being on 14 August 1947 and Badshah Khan took his oath of allegience to Pakistan in the Constituent Assembly. But the rulers of Pakistan could never get over their suspicion of him. On his part Khan saw that the same sort of oppression of his people continued under the new regime. Even General Ayub Khan, a Pathan himself, did nothing to better the plight of the people of NWFP. Rude and arrogant Punjabis had a monopoly over the Government, Bureaucracy, Judiciary and Army. They threw Badshah Khan in jail and harassed thousands of his followers. "If the British were cruel to us it was because they were our enemies. But I cannot understand why and for what crime the Islamic Pakistani Government kept me and thousands of Khudai Khidmatgars in prison for so many years," he wondered. His disillusionment was complete. He was given sub-standard food in jail and his health deteriorated to such an extent that in 1964 he had to be sent to London for treatment. Resilient as always he came round and sought asylum in Afghanistan which was promptly granted. He lived in Jalalabad and dreamt of Pakhtunistan, a separate homeland for the Pathans.

In Mahatma Gandhi and His Apostles Ved Mehta, the noted New Yorker reporter, describes his meeting with the "patriarch of the Pathan". He writes: "I seek out Badshah Khan in Jalalabad, a town near the Khyber Pass, in Afghanistan, where he now lives in a low, nondescript house. He is sitting in a wicker chair in a bare room buzzing with flies, its windows looking out onto a wildly overgrown garden. Beyond the garden is the main road connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan --- cutting through the mountains and valleys where the Pathans have always lived. He is over six feet tall and, despite his age (he is in his eighties), has the rugged, powerful military bearing of a proud Pathan.... Badshah Khan's mouth is set in a determined expression, and his forehead is furrowed, but his eyes are gentle and sad. He has short white hair and a short white beard, and he wears a long, loose shirt and pajamas, both dyed dark brown-red --- a color that gave the Khudai Khidmatgars the popular name Red Shirts.... He seems indifferent to the flies that settle on him, never bothering to flick them away --- perhaps because he has always had to live with them."

In 1987 Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan became the first "non-Indian citizen" to be decorated with the Bharat Ratna. The next year he passed away in Peshawar. When he died was under house arrest. His dreams may have remained unfulfilled but his life and his struggle have special relevance to our times. We have recently witnessed poinless controversies surrounding Jinnah, Nehru and Patel, but it is dismaying that no serious work of research has come out on Ghaffar Khan. (Rajmohan Gandhi's book is perhaps an exception.)We will do well not to forget his memory.

Those who are interested in knowing more about this extraordinary personality may refer his autobiography My Life and Struggle (as narrated to K.B. Narang and translated by Helen H. Bouman; Delhi: Orient Paperbacks, 1969). Certain sections of the book may not please the modern-day politically correct reader. For instance, his belief that homosexuality, as he saw it happening in jails, is a "vice". Again, he tells us very little about his wives or his married life. One will also come across his biographies written by Pyare Lal and D.G. Tendulkar. Those who want to read a scholarly analysis of his life Rajmohan Gandhi's Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns (New Delhi: Penguin, 2008) is a useful text.