Big man thrown to the wolves
Farida Shaikh is moved by the life of a Pakhtoon
It's a beautiful book--- in shape and size with a cover picture of the Pukhtun Badshah Ghaffar Khan, a map of 17 agencies--- Chitral, Dir, Kohistan, Swat, Manshere, Abbotabad, Mohmand, Malakand, Mardan, Peshawar, Khyber, Khurram, Kohat, North Wazirstan, South Wazirstan, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and states or agencies of the North West Frontier. This biographical work originated in 1980 in the writer's quest for Understanding the Muslim Mind. Then Ghaffar Khan was in his mid-nineties, and Rajmohan's work concentrated on past Muslims of the subcontinent. This work on Ghaffar Khan is the writer's compliance with the wish of Asfandyar Khan for a biography of his grandfather for the new generation. The background discussion of the book is when the Taliban still controlled Afghanistan, Indo-Pak relations, Musharraf, religious extremism combined with terrorism and the situation in Kashmir. When Rajmohan returned to Delhi from his visit to Charsaddha on 11 September 2001 he saw on television the Twin Towers crumbling in New York. On 7 December 2001 the New York Times recalled Badshah Khan as the 'Peacemaker of the Pashtun Past' and an antithesis of the fanatical Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Rajmohan elaborated the contrast for Badshah Khan's followers, who were non-violent. His passion was to find an answer to the Pathan's code of revenge to be at par with a passion for independence from foreign rule. He protected Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in NWFP. He was influenced by his Christian teacher and Mohandas Gandhi.Badshah Khan was a devout Muslim and wanted to save Buddhism in NWFP. He was extremely serious about education for Pushtun women, and sent his own teenage daughter Mehr Taj to study in England. Why was Ghaffar Khan was also known as the Frontier Gandhi? Rajmohon's subtitle is Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns. Nonviolence is what Gandhi is known to have preached during the partition period of the subcontinent. Ghaffar Khan's ideology was purely humanistic. It was a movement to awaken consciousness in the Pakhtuns about their own identity, their history, their geography, and their distinct language and culture, their religion. Yes, the Pathans are Sunni Muslims but much influenced by Sufism and universal brotherhood of man . Rajmohon Gandhi's book is 'nicely printed and readable'; it is best described as 'personal.' The contents of the book are labeled as 'controversial and difficult.' The magnitude of the work on Ghaffar Khan is mostly drawn from writings by other scholars, but Rajmohan makes a glaring omission. He does not refer to Mukulika Banerjee's The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier. As an anthropologist, Banerjee argues that Bacha Khan's nonviolent movement was different in its philosophical provenance from that of Gandhi. "The civil disobedience campaign carried out by these Khudai Khidmatgar recruits between 1930 and 1934 was arguably the most heroic and extraordinary of all such episodes in the Indian nationalist movement" (p. 71). It was successful in achieving what Max Weber had considered impossible, that is, a successful application of ethics to politics. The Khudai Khidmatgar, or the "servants of God," were a movement, an ideology enshrined in a combination of Islam and Pukhtunwali, the code of the Pathans. Ghaffar Khan appealed to the Pathans' sense of religious tradition and honor for their own traditions, which contained solutions to their problems. He was against 'me first' and double standards. The movement started in 1920 and remained aloof from the communal violence that intensified during the 1930s. The work is a portrait of the man, a towering prominent Muslim figure in the modern history of the subcontinent. He was 'immensely tall… with… an absolute straight back, great nose kindly eyes and a permanent aura of non-violent defiance--- an undeniable right.' His was a quadrangular clash; a nonviolent struggle for Muslim nationalism, for Hindu nationalism, against British imperialism, Pathan separatism and Pakhtun dignity. Gaffar Khan lived for peace and tolerance. As a five year old boy, Ghaffar was hit by the mullah when he asked for an explanation of the Quranic verse. Behram Khan, his father, sent him to British Municipal School Peshawar run by Reverend Wigram.There were only 71 matriculates in 1902. Ghaffar Khan was barely 20 years old when in May 1919 a border dispute led to the Third Anglo Afghan War. In the midst of martial law in Peshawar, Ghaffar Khan led the Pathans to support King Amanullah in Afghanistan. He was implicated on charges of sedition by the British, who alleged that Ghaffar Khan had been denouncing the Rowlatt Act. He had earlier decided to protest against this bill, which enabled the police to detain a person without trial for carrying seditious pamphlets in person. Badshah Khan was arrested, taken to Mardan jail and then to Peshawar cantonment. He was asked if he was stirring agitation against the government and if he was the 'Badshah of the Pathans.' His reply was, 'I don't know the answer to that, but I know that I am a servant of the community. We cannot take the Rowlatt Bill lying down.' Old Behram Khan was also imprisoned, though both were released shortly afterward. However, this was the start of a bitter career of altogether 27 years in imprisonment. Bacha Khan was a political prisoner for 12 years under the British and 15 years under Pakistan. In 1947, his wisdom and moral courage stood firm. He refused to be part of the referendum in the NWFP, arguing that agitation would lead to violence and bloodshed. On the creation of Pakistan he took the formal oath of allegiance, but the NWFP government was dismissed and Bacha Khan and his followers were branded as "friends of Gandhi" and "traitors to Pakistan." Bacha Khan and his followers felt a sense of betrayal by both Pakistan and India. Bacha Khan's last words to Gandhi were: "You have thrown us to the wolves" (Banerjee, p. 189). In honour of Ghaffar Khan, the Indian government offered him a future resting place next to Gandhi's mausoleum. Vilified in Pakistan, Bacha Khan understandably wished to be buried in the garden of his house in Jalalabad in Afghanistan, where he had spent most of his later life. Born in 1890 in village Utmanzai, Charsadda, he died in 1988 in Peshawar. An estimated 20,000 attended his funeral, including Rajiv Gandhi and some other world leaders.
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