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| Khan Abdul Ghafar Khan |
He
was initially encouraged by his family to join the British Indian Army; however
the treatment of a British Raj officer towards a native offended him, and a
family decision for him to study in England was put off after his mother's
intervention.
Having
witnessed the repeated failure of revolts against the British Raj, he decided
social activism and reform would be more beneficial for Pashtuns. This
ultimately led to the formation of the Khudai
Khidmatgar movement (Servants of God). The movement's success
triggered a harsh crackdown against him and his supporters and he was sent into
exile. It was at this stage in the late 1920s that he formed an alliance with
Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. This alliance was to last till the
1947 partition of India.
Ghaffar
Khan strongly opposed the Muslim League's demand for the partition
of India. When the Indian National Congress accepted
the partition plan, he told them "You have thrown us to the wolves."
After
partition, Ghaffar Khan was frequently arrested by the Pakistani government in
part because of his association with India and his opposition to authoritarian
moves by the government. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s either in jail or
in exile.
In
1985 he was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. In 1987 he became the first
person not holding the citizenship of India to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. Upon his death in 1988, he was
buried in Jalalabad, despite the heavy fighting at the time, both sides in the
Afghan war declared a ceasefire to allow his burial.
Early years
Ghaffar
Khan was born into a generally peaceful and prosperous family from Utmanzai,
in the Peshawar Valley of British India. His father, Behram
Khan was a land owner in the area commonly referred to as Hashtnaggar. Ghaffar
was the second son of Behram to attend the British run Edward's mission school
since this was the only fully functioning school because it was run by
missionaries. At school the young Ghaffar did well in his studies and was
inspired by his mentor Reverend Wigram to see the importance of education in
service to the community. In his 10th and final year of high school he was
offered a highly prestigious commission in The Guides, an elite corp of Pashtun
soldiers of the British Raj.
Young Ghaffar refused the commission after realising even Guide officers were
still second-class citizens in their own country. He resumed his intention of
University study and Reverend Wigram offered him the opportunity to follow his
brother, Dr. Khan Sahib, to study in London. An alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University,he
eventually received the permission of his father, Ghaffar's mother wasn't
willing to lose another son to London—and their own culture and religion. So
Ghaffar began working on his father's lands while attempting to discern what
more he might do with his life.
Ghaffar "Badshah" Khan
In
response to his inability to continue his own education, Ghaffar Khan turned to
helping others start theirs. Like many such regions of the world, the strategic
importance of the newly formed North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa) as a buffer for the British Raj from Russian
influence was of little benefit to its residents. The oppression of the
British, the repression of the mullahs, and an ancient culture of violence and
vendetta prompted Ghaffar to want to serve and uplift his fellow men and women
by means of education. At 20 years of age, Ghaffar opened his first school
in Utmanzai. It
was an instant success and he was soon invited into a larger circle of
progressively minded reformers.
While
he faced much opposition and personal difficulties, Ghaffar Khan worked
tirelessly to organize and raise the consciousness of his fellow Pushtuns.
Between 1915 and 1918 he visited 500 villages in all part of the settled
districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It was in this frenzied activity that he had
come to be known as Badshah (Bacha) Khan (King of Chiefs).
He
married his first wife Meharqanda in 1912; she was a daughter of Yar Mohammad
Khan of the Kinankhel clan of the Mohammadzai tribe of Razzar, a village
adjacent to Utmanzai. They had a son in 1913, Abdul Ghani Khan, who would
become a noted artist and poet. Subsequently, they had another son, Abdul Wali
Khan (17 January 1917–), and daughter, Sardaro. Meharqanda died during the 1918
influenza epidemic. In 1920, Abdul Ghaffar Khan remarried; his new wife,
Nambata, was a cousin of his first wife and the daughter of Sultan Mohammad
Khan of Razzar. She bore him a daughter, Mehar Taj (25 May 1921–), and a son,
Abdul Ali Khan (20 August 1922-19 February 1997). Tragically, in 1926 Nambata
died early as well from a fall down the stairs of the apartment they were
staying at in Jerusalem.
Khudai Khidmatgar
In
time, Ghaffar Khan's goal came to be the formulation of a united, independent,
secular India. To achieve this end, he founded the Khudai
Khidmatgar ("Servants of God"), commonly known as
the "Red Shirts" (Surkh Posh), during the 1920s.
The Khudai
Khidmatgar was founded on a belief in the power of Gandhi's notion
of Satyagraha, a form of active non-violence as captured in an oath. He told its members:
"I am going to give you such a weapon that
the police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon
of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and
righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it."
The
organization recruited over 100,000 members and became legendary in opposing
(and dying at the hands of) the British-controlled police and army. Through
strikes, political organisation and non-violent opposition, the Khudai
Khidmatgar were able to achieve some success and came to dominate the
politics of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. His brother, Dr. Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan(known as Dr. Khan
Sahib), led the political wing of the movement, and was the Chief
Minister of the province (from the late 1920s until
1947 when his government was dismissed by Mohammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League).
Ghaffar Khan & the Indian National Congress
Ghaffar
Khan forged a close, spiritual, and uninhibited friendship with Mahatma Gandhi, the pioneer of
non-violent mass civil disobedience in India. The two had a deep admiration
towards each other and worked together closely till 1947.
The Khudai
Khidmatgar (servants of god) agitated and worked cohesively with
the Indian National Congress,
the leading national organization fighting for freedom, of which Ghaffar Khan
was a senior and respected member. On several occasions when the Congress
seemed to disagree with Gandhi on policy, Ghaffar Khan remained his staunchest
ally. In 1931 the Congress offered him the presidency of the party, but he
refused saying, "I am a simple soldier and Khudai Khidmatgar, and I only
want to serve." He remained a member of the Congress Working
Committee for many years, resigning only in 1939 because of his differences
with the Party's War Policy. He rejoined the Congress Party when the War Policy
was revised.
On
April 23, 1930, Ghaffar Khan was arrested during protests arising out of
the Salt Satyagraha. A crowd of Khudai
Khidmatgar gathered in Peshawar's Kissa Khwani
(Storytellers) Bazaar. The British ordered troops to open fire with
machine guns on the unarmed crowd, killing an estimated 200-250. The
Khudai Khidmatgar members acted in accord with their training in non-violence
under Ghaffar Khan, facing bullets as the troops fired on them.
Ghaffar
Khan was a champion of women's rights and nonviolence. He became a hero in a
society dominated by violence; notwithstanding his liberal views, his
unswerving faith and obvious bravery led to immense respect. Throughout his
life, he never lost faith in his non-violent methods or in the compatibility
of Islam and nonviolence.
He viewed his struggle as a jihad with only the enemy holding swords. He was closely
identified with Gandhi because of his non-violence principles and he is known
in India as the 'Frontier Gandhi'. One of his Congress associates
was Pandit Amir Chand Bombwal of Peshawar.
"O Pathans! Your house has fallen into
ruin. Arise and rebuild it, and remember to what race you belong." --
Ghaffar Khan.
The Partition
Ghaffar
Khan strongly opposed the partition
of India. While many Pashtuns (particularly the Red Shirts)
were willing to work with Indian politicians, many other Pashtuns were
sympathetic to the idea of a separate homeland for India's Muslims following the
departure of the British. Targeted with being Anti-Muslim, Ghaffar Khan was
attacked in 1946, leading to his hospitalization in Peshawar.
The
Congress party refused last ditch compromises to prevent the partition, like
the Cabinet Mission plan and Gandhi's suggestion to offer the Prime Ministership
to Jinnah. As a result Badshah Khan and his followers felt a sense of betrayal
by both Pakistan and India. Badshah Khan's last words to Gandhi and his
erstwhile allies in the Congress party were: "You have thrown us to the
wolves."
When
the referendum over accession to Pakistan was held, Badshah Khan and the Indian National
Congress Party boycotted the
referendum. As a result, in 1947 the accession of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to Pakistan was made possible by a slight majority of the
50.1% votes cast. A loya jirga in the Tribal Areas also
garnered a similar result as most preferred to become part of Pakistan. Ghaffar
Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgars, however, chose to boycott the polls along with
other nationalistic Pakhtuns. Some have argued that a segment of the population
voted was barred from voting.
Arrest and exile
Ghaffar
Khan took the oath of allegiance to the new nation of Pakistan on 23 February
1948 at the first session of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly.
He
pledged full support to the government and attempted to reconcile with the
founder of the new state Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Initial overtures led to a
successful meeting in Karachi, however a follow-up meeting in the Khudai
Khidmatgar headquarters never materialised, allegedly due to the role of
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister, Abdul
Qayyum Khan who warned Jinnah that Ghaffar Khan was
plotting his assassination.
Following
this, Ghaffar Khan formed Pakistan's first National opposition party, on 8 May
1948, the Pakistan Azad Party. The party pledged to play the role of
constructive opposition and would be non-communal in its philosophy.
However,
suspicions of his allegiance persisted and under the new Pakistani government,
Ghaffar Khan was placed under house arrest without charge from 1948 till 1954.
Released from prison, he gave a speech again on the floor of the constituent
assembly, this time condemning the massacre of his supporters at Babrra.
"I had to go to prison many a time in the
days of the Britishers. Although we were at loggerheads with them, yet their
treatment was to some extent tolerant and polite. But the treatment which was
meted out to me in this Islamic state of ours was such that I would not even
like to mention it to you."
He
was arrested several times between late 1948 and in 1956 for his opposition to
the One Unit scheme. The
government attempted in 1958 to reconcile with him and offered him a Ministry
in the government, after the assassination of his brother, he however
refused. He remained in prison till 1957 only to be re-arrested in 1958
until an illness in 1964 allowed for his release.
In
1962, Abdul Ghaffar Khan was named an "Amnesty International Prisoner of the
Year". Amnesty's statement about him said, "His example symbolizes
the suffering of upward of a million people all over the world who are
prisoners of conscience."
In
September 1964, the Pakistani authorities allowed him to go to Britain for
treatment. During winter his doctor advised him to go to America. He then went
into exile to Afghanistan, he returned from exile in December 1972 to a popular
response, following the establishment of National Awami Party provincial government
in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
He
was arrested by Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhuttos government at Multan in
November 1973 and described Bhuttos government as "the worst kind of
dictatorship".
He
visited India and participated in the centennial celebrations of the Indian
National Congress in 1985; he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding in 1967 and later Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1987.
Ghaffar
Khan died in Peshawar under house arrest in 1988 and was buried in Jalalabad,
Afghanistan according to his wishes. This was a symbolic move
by Ghafar Khan, this would allow his dream of Pakhtun unification to live even
after his death. The Indian government declared a five-day period of mourning
in his honour.
Although
he had been repeatedly imprisoned and persecuted, tens of thousands of mourners
attended his funeral, described by one commentator as a caravan of
peace, carrying a message of love from Pashtuns east of the Khyber to
those on the west, marching through the historic Khyber Pass from Peshawar to Jalalabad. A cease-fire was announced in
the Afghan Civil War to allow the funeral to take place, even though it was
marred by bomb explosions killing 15.
Political legacy
His
eldest son Ghani Khan was a
poet, his other son Khan Abdul Wali Khan is the founder and
leader of the Awami National Party and was the Leader of
the Opposition in the Pakistan National
Assembly. Ghaffar Khans family was the frequent target
of government arrests due to their involvement in politics and being accused of
being anti-Pakistani.
His
third son Khan Abdul Ali Khan was non-political
and a distinguished educator, and served as Vice-Chancellor of University of Peshawar. Ali Khan was also the
head of Aitchison College, Lahore and Fazle Haq college, Mardan. Asfandyar Wali Khan is the grandson of Khan Abdul
Gaffar Khan, and leader of the Awami National Party, the party in power in
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Abdul Ghaffar Khan's political legacy is mixed he is
renowned amongst Pakhtuns and internationally as a leader of a non-violent
movement. He is credited with his tireless advocacy of peace in the region he
belonged to. However, within Pakistan, there is a large section of society
which still has not come to grips with his siding with the All India Congress
over the Muslim League as well as his opposition to Mr. M. A. Jinnah who is
revered in Pakistan as the father of the nation. In particular people have
questioned Ghaffar Khan's patriotism following his insistence that he be buried
in Afghanistan after his death and not Pakistan. Others ask how one's choice of
burial place is an indication of one's Patriotism since a better indicator is
one's actions while living and even though Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan spent half
of his 98 year life in jail most of it in Pakistani jails doing hard labor he
continued to reside in Pakistan.
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