Khān Abdul Ghaffār Khān (1890 – 20 January
1988) (Pashto: خان عبدالغفار خان, Urdu: خان عبدالغفار خان), also known
as Fakhr-e Afghān (Urdu: فخر افغان, lit. "pride
of Afghans"), and Bāchā Khān (Pashto: باچا خان, lit.
"king of chiefs"), Pāchā Khān or Bādshāh Khān, was a Pashtun
political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition to the
British Raj in British India, and a lifelong pacifist and devout Muslim. A
close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Bacha Khan has been called the "Frontier
Gandhi" by the Indians. In 1910, Bacha Khan opened a mosque school at his
hometownUtmanzai, and in 1911 joined the freedom movement of Haji Sahib of
Turangzai, however in 1915, the British authorities banned his mosque
school.Having witnessed the repeated failure of revolts against the British
Raj, Bacha Khan decided that social activism and reform would be more
beneficial for the Pashtuns. This led to the formation of Anjuman-e Islāh
al-Afghān ("Afghan Reform Society") in 1921, and the youth movement
Pax̌tūn
Jirga("Pashtun Assembly") in 1927. After Bacha Khan's return from the
Hajj in May 1928, he founded the Pashto language monthly political journal Pax̌tūn. Finally, in November 1929, Bacha
Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God") movement,
whose success triggered a harsh crackdown by the British Empire against him and
his supporters and they suffered some of the most severe repression of the Indian
independence movement.In 1962, Bacha Khan was named the Amnesty International
Prisoner of Conscience of the Year. In 1987, he became the first non-Indian to
be awardedBharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. Bacha Khan was an
important freedom fighter, and is a Pashtun national hero and a key figure of
Pashtun nationalism.
Bacha
Khan strongly opposed the All-India Muslim League's demand for the partition of
India. When the Indian National Congress declared its acceptance of the
partition plan without consulting the Khudai Khidmatgar leaders, he felt very
sad and told the Congress "you have thrown us to the wolves." After
partition, Bacha Khan pledged allegiance to Pakistan and demanded an autonomous
"Pashtunistan" administrative unit within the country, but he was
frequently arrested by Pakistani government between 1948 and 1954, and in 1956
for his opposition to the One Unit scheme under which the government announced
to merge the former provinces of West Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier
Province and Baluchistan into one administrative unit of West Pakistan. Bacha
Khan also spent much of the 1960s and 1970s either in jail or in exile. Upon
his death in 1988 inPeshawar under house arrest, following his will, he was
buried in his house at Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of mourners
attended his funeral, marching through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar to
Jalalabad, although it was marred by two bomb explosions killing 15 people.
Despite the heavy fighting at the time, both sides of the Soviet war in Afghanistan,
the communist army and the mujahideen, 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, Bahram
Khan, was a land owner in the area commonly referred to as Hashtnaggar. Ghaffar
was the second son of Bahram 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
Ghaffar Khan with Gandhi at Peshawar
Ghaffar Khan leads a march from Peshawar to Kabul during the
Khilafat Movement. Peshawar Street 1920 (Mela Ram & Sons)
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, Pakistan) 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
and the Indian National Congress
Main article:
Indian National Congress
Ghaffar Khan with Mahatma Gandhi.
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.
Two platoons of the The Narwhal Rifles regiment refused to fire on the non-violent
crowd. They were later court-martialled with heavy punishment, including life
imprisonment.
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
Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan with a leader of the
Khaksar Tehrik (founded by Allama Mashriqi). Photo was taken in Peshawar on May
06, 1938.
The Partition
Main article: Partition of India
See also: Babrra massacre
Ghaffar Khan with Mahatma Gandhi
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, Ghaffar Khan and his followers felt
a sense of betrayal by both Pakistan and India. Ghaffar 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, Ghaffar
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 majority. 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
Main
article: Pakistan Movement
See also: National Awami Party and One Unit
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.
Ghaffar Khan walking with Jawaharlal Nehru after the Cabinet
Mission, 1946.
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.
Sheikh Abdullah with Jawaharlal Nehru and Ghaffar Khan at Nishat
Garden, Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir in 1945
"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
United Kingdom for treatment. During winter his doctor advised him to go to
United States. 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 Bhutto's government
at Multan in November 1973 and described Bhuttos government as "the worst
kind of dictatorship".
In 1984, increasingly withdrawing from politics he was nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize. 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.
His final major political challenge was against the Kalabagh dam
project, fearing that the project would damage the Peshawar valley, his
hostility to it would eventually lead to the project being shelved after his
death.
Ghaffar Khan died in Peshawar under house arrest in 1988 and was
buried in his house at Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and over 200,000 mourners
attended the funeral, including the Afghan president Mohammad Najibullah. This
was a symbolic move by Ghaffar Khan, as this would allow his dream of Pashtun
unification to live even after his death. The then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi had gone to Peshawar, to pay his tributes to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan in
spite of the fact that General Zia-ul-Haq had tried to stall his attendance
citing security reasons, also 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,[18] 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.
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.
Mohammed Yahya Education Minister of N W F Province, was the only
son in law of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
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.
Salma Ataullahjan is the great grand niece of Khan Abdul Gaffar
Khan and a member of the Senate of Canada.
Abdul Ghaffar Khan's political legacy is mixed he is renowned
amongst Pashtuns, Indians 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. However, this view is opposed
by the fact that he is an ethnic Pashtun, with there being officially no
boundary between ancient northwest India and Afghanistan, hence being buried in
the 'land of Pashtuns' (literal translation from Old Farsi) is a significant
sign of his patriotism towards his ethnic roots as a Pashtun. 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.
Film, literature and society
In
2008, a documentary, titled The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, a Torch for
Peace, by filmmaker and writer T.C. McLuhan, premiered in New York. The film
received the 2009 award for Best Documentary Film at the Middle East
International Film Festival.
In Richard Attenborough's 1982 epic Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar
Khan was portrayed by Dilsher Singh.
Ghaffar Khan was listed as one of 26 men who changed the world in
a recent children's book published in the United States. He also wrote an
autobiography (1969), and has been the subject of biographies by Eknath Easwaran
(see article) and Rajmohan Gandhi (see "References" section, below).
His philosophy of Islamic pacificism was recognised by US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, in a speech to American Muslims.
In the Indian city of Delhi, the popular Khan Market is named in
honour of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and another market in the Karol Bagh of New
Delhi is named after him called Ghaffar Market
Vibhu Puri is reportedly making a Bollywood Biopic on the life of
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan titled Chenab Gandhi.
