Khudai Khidmatgars

1. Khudai Khidmatgars Abdul Ghaffar Khan ‘The Prophet Unarmed’

2. Key Questions • What do the activities of the Khudai Khidmatgars tell us about the possibilities of peaceful Islamic-based resistance movements? • What was the extent of the influence of Satyagraha over the Khudai Khidmatgars’ ideology of non-violence? • Why has Abdul Ghaffar Khan lapsed into obscurity, compared to Gandhi?

3. Abdul Ghaffar Khan • Born in 1890 into an aristocratic Muslim family. • Also known as ‘Badshah (King) Khan’ and ‘The Frontier Gandhi’. • Founded various schools in an effort to improve educational standards amongst poor Pashtuns. • First became involved in anti-colonial movement in 1919, in reponse to the Rowlett Acts. • Involvement in the Khilafat Committee led to his arrest and imprisonment in 1921; released in 1924. • Founded Khudai Khidmatgars in 1929. • Began political organising in 1926, as part of a campaign for social reform. • Gandhi’s ‘Declaration of Independence’ in 1930, prompted Khan to unleash a wave of non-violent resistance against British rule.

5. The North-West Frontier Province • Region traditionally sat on what was referred to as the ‘Highway of Conquest’. • British had annexed the region in 1849. • Remained part of the Punjab until 1901. • Division (Durand Line) between Afghanistan and (then) imperial India, never recognised by successive Afghan governments. • Subsequently re-ordered into its current incarnation, due to perceived security risks arising out of the ‘Great Game’. • For political and geographic reasons, the province was impoverished and underdeveloped. • Population outside of the few urban areas organised by fractious and frequently mutually hostile tribes. • Traditionally considered themselves neither Afghan, nor belonging to any of the ‘Indian’ territories.

6. Ideology • ‘Khudai Khidmatgar’ means ‘Servant(s) of God’ • Khan attempted to replace violence and the code of revenge with a ‘non-violent army’ of Pashtuns. • Felt that Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ was as much Islamic as it was Hindu. • Banerjee: "It involved two crucial elements: Islam and Pukhtunwali (the Pashtun tribal code). Here nonviolence becomes an ideological system very compatible with Islam and Pukhtunwali, since these are reinterpreted." • Religious element of prime importance, relative to the socio-economic. • Ecunemical in character; Khan was willing to ally with non-Islamic groups, like Congress, in order to further the Khidmatgars’ aims. • Therefore Islamic, but not sectarian. • No discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, class or sex.

7. Organisation • At its peak, the organisation numbered 80,000 – 100,000 members • ‘Surkh Posh’ – ‘Red Shirts’ • Consciously organised in a military fashion, with regiments and military ranks. • Forbidden to resort to violence or carry weapons. • Agreed to ally with Congress after the Gandhi-Irwin pact of early 1931. • Cooperation with Congress motivated both by ideological consonance and the lack of alternative forms of organisational backing. • Khan frequently compared the unity of the British to Pashtun disunity. • Mobilisation aimed at fostering: • A sense of Pashtun unity, as a people. • The instillation of the ideal of the Khudai Khidmatgars as a ‘brotherhood’. • To create an alternative social order constituted outside of the imperial bureaucracy.

8. The British Response • ‘The Pathan Unarmed’ was for the British a nonsense. • Eknath Easwaran:"A nonviolent Pathan was unthinkable, a fraud that masked something cunning and darkly treacherous" . • Torture, public humiliation and reprisals against communities common. • Reports of additional atrocities (e.g. castration) unconfirmed, but possible. • Deliberate attempts to goad the Pathans into violent action. • Culminated in Qissa Khwani Bazaar Massacre of April 23 1930. • Noisy, but non-violent, demonstration against arrest of Abdul Ghaffar Khan met with machine-gun fire. • 250-400 killed. • Triggered series of minor mutinies in the Indian army, alarming the colonial authorities. • British eventually granted concessions in the form of locally-elected regional governors.

9. The Independence Movement – ‘Quit India’ • Khan’s brother, Khan Saheb, elected premier of the NWFP in 1932. • Khan himself apprehensive about involvement in elections, largely apolitical. • “It is astounding the amount of corruption I saw about me when we came to possess a little power.” • Accused of selling out through alliance with Congress. • Remained aloof from parliamentary politics. • Refused to support Congress Poona Offer (September 1939); campaigned in NWFP against support for the war effort and Indian participation before constitutional settlement. • Despised the Muslim League, whom he saw as furthering an exclusive form of Islamic separatism harmful to the culture of the Pashtuns. • Ahmad: “Badshah Khan had two passions in his life: the making of an independent, sovereign, secular, democratic, plural and undivided India and the freedom, autonomy and progress for his own Pakhtun people”.

10. Partition and Post-Partition • The close links between the Khidmatgars and Congress meant they opposed Partition. • Congress acceptance of Partition horrified Khan, who had been assured by Congress party leaders that they would refuse to do so. • Boycotted 1947 plebiscite on the status of Pashtun majority regions. • Khan favoured a decentralised Indian state over a centralised Pakistani one. • Boycott moderately successful in short term, but ultimately futile. • Resolution of September 1947 recognised de facto existence of Pakistan. • Declared unlawful in September 1948 by Pakistani government. • Babra Sharif massacre, coupled with mass arrests, effectively destroyed the movement. • Khan gaoled between 1948 and 1954, then again between 1956 and 1964. • Devoted much of the remainder of his life to social work among the Pashtuns of the NWFP, before dying in 1988.

11. Sources • http://www.mkgandhi.org/associates/Badshah.htm • http://www.baachakhantrust.org/AbdulGhaffarKhan.pdf • http://www.harappa.com/sounds/ghani0.html, Interview with Ghani Khan • http://progressive.org/?q=node/1654,‘A Pacifist Uncovered’; Amitabh Pal • http://www.calpeacepower.org/0101/PDF/BadshahKhan.pdf, ‘A Muslim Gandhi?’; Tim Flinders • ‘Radical Islam and Nonviolence: A Case Study of Religious Empowerment and Constraint among Pashtuns’; Robert C. Johansen • ‘Pakhtunistan: The Frontier Dispute Between Afghanistan and Pakistan’; S.M.M. Qureshi • ‘Civil Disobedience, 1930-31’; Irfan Habib • ‘Frontier Gandhi: Reflections on Muslim Nationalism in India’; Aijaz Ahmad • ‘Justice and Non-Violent Jihad…’; Mukulika Banerjee • The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in the North West Frontier; Mukulika Banerjee