KHAN ABDUL WALI KHAN(A.N.P)

Early life

Khan was born on 11 January 1917, to a family of local landlords in the town of Utmanzai in Charsadda district of the North-West Frontier Province(NWFP). His father, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was a prominent Pashtun Nationalist and confidante of Gandhi. He was a non-violent freedom fighter who founded the pacifist Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) movement. His mother, Mehar Qanda, belonged to the nearby Razar village, married Bacha Khan in 1912; she died during the flu pandemic after World War I.

Khan, the second of three sons, received his early education from the Azad Islamia school in Utmanzai. In 1922, this school became part of a chain of schools his father had formed during his social reform activities. It was from this network of schools that the Khudai Khidmatgar movement developed, eventually challenging British authority in the North-West Frontier Province through non-violent protest and posing one of the most serious challenges to British rule in the region.[3]

In May 1930, Khan narrowly escaped being killed at the hands of a British soldier during a military crackdown in his home village.[4] In 1933, he attended the Irish government's Deradun Public School and completed his Senior Cambridge. He did not pursue further education because of recurring problems with his eyesight, which led to him wearing glasses for the rest of his life.

Despite his pacifist upbringing, as a young freedom fighter, Khan seemed exasperated with the pacificism advocated by his father and Gandhi. He was to later explain his frustration to Gandhi, in a story he told Muklaika Bannerjee, "If the cook comes to slaughter this chicken’s baby, is non-violence on the part of the chicken likely to save the younger life?” The story ended with a twinkle in his eye when he remembered Gandhiji’s reply, “Wali, you seem to have done more research on violence than I have on non-violence.”[5] His first wife died in 1949 while Khan was in prison. In 1954, he married Nasim Wali Khan, the daughter of an old Khudai Khidmatgar .

FRONTIER GHANDI

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan .stands 6 ft. 3 in., and once weighed 220 Ibs. He has a martial beak of a nose and a clipped white beard. Though at 63 he is ailing, he used to look capable of tearing a bullock apart with his hands. For the past 30 years, Ghaffar Khan has practiced and preached nonviolence. He was Gandhi's chief convert among the Moslems, and in the rugged Khyber Pass region he is still known as "the Frontier Gandhi."

KHAN ABDUL GHAFFAR KHAN (BACHA KHAN)

THE GREAT LEADER

Few leaders are fortunate enough to be revered long after they have ceased to occupy positions of power and authority; even fewer are able to impact the lives of their people as to change their entire outlook, the effects of which can be felt several generations later. One such man, lost to the world, but held in the highest esteem by his people to this day, lived on the North West Frontier of India (later to become part of Pakistan). Named Abdul Ghaffar, meaning ‘man of God’ (Ghaffar is one of the 99 names for God in Islam, meaning the Compassionate or Merciful),he became known as Bacha Khan or the King of Khans (Khan is a title reserved for a large landowner or chieftain in Pukhtun society). Standing at 6 foot 3 inches, he literally did tower over all the other Khans in the region. Bacha Khan was one of the foremost leaders of the Indian struggle for independence and one of the most highly respected all over India, North West Pakistan and Afghanistan. His formal initiation into Indian politics came in 1929 with the formation of the Khudai Khidmatgar (meaning servants of God),
which was a secular reformist party closely allied with the Indian National Congress. His party, later known as the red shirts for the red uniforms worn by the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar ‘army’ would grow to a total of 100,000 generals, commanders and other office bearers, while he won a much larger following. Bacha Khan, who came from the most violent and politically volatile part of British India, chose the politics of a non-violence and became a close associate of Gandhi. However his entry into mainstream politics was forced by British brutality and persecution. He preferred to remain a social reformer, which he remained till the day of his death. Bacha Khan saw the violence, poverty and ignorance of his society as the greatest retarding forces and decided to wage his struggle against them. His first brush with the authorities came when he opened a school in Utmanzai, his hometown on the Frontier, in 1910, for which he was imprisoned by the authorities. He continued to open schools and tour villages, talking to the villagers to resist British rule, the cause for which he would remain behind bars for 15 years under British rule. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Pukhtun society came from his choice of non-violence as the means of achieving independence. Non-violence is seen by many as the creed of the weak. Bacha Khan however, was a Pukhtun, belonging to a so called warrior race. His grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan remembers two basic lessons learnt from Bacha Khan. "He said that violence needs less courage than nonviolence," quotes Asfandiyar, who is himself an active politician in Pakistan. This might seem counter intuitive but it rings true in Pukhtun society where disputes were traditionally settled through self help and therefore taking up arms was the most natural instinct; the threat of violence, if not violence itself, was always present. "Second,” recalls Asfandyar “violence will always breed hatred. Nonviolence breeds love." It was this conviction of belief in non-violence and the integrity and perseverance with which he observed it that inculcated a devout following amongst Pukhtuns. The British resorted to the worst forms of killings and brutality to oppress the movement, for what they feared was a sinister and treacherous plot, unable to believe that the Pukhtuns could take to non-violence. At least 200 Khudai Khidmatgar members in Peshawar were murdered on April 23, 1930. The protesters lined up and faced the bullets with their chests bared, with the carnage stopping only because a regiment of Indian soldiers finally refused to continue firing on the unarmed protesters, an impertinence for which they were severely punished. Bacha Khan’s adherence to non-violence was absolute; it was more than a political slogan or even an aspiration or belief. It was a way of life. He himself was a Khan and with the following he had built, it was not hard for him to turn his non-violent protest into violent resistance. Indeed it would be a justifiable resistance against foreign occupation. However he chose non-violence in every political decision he took. He was the only Congress leader to walk out when it decided to support the British in their war against Germany; he refused to resort to violence even when his demand for a separate state for the Pukhtuns was rejected by the British and he was later persecuted, jailed and forced into exile by successive Pakistani governments for his opposition to the creation of Pakistan. His Pakistani opponents dubbed him a ‘traitor’ to Islam and to the Muslims of India. He had throughout his political career used his political party to bolster Hindu-Muslim unity, and his opposition to the creation of Pakistan was based on his opposition to the politics of sectarianism, a political and personal stand he had taken long before there was any mention of Pakistan in Indian politics. He toured all over India with Gandhi to stop the riots that had swept across the country at the time of partition and deployed 10,000 Khudai Khidmatgars in Peshawar alone to protect the Hindus and Sikhs in the Frontier regions during the ensuing riots. Later during the 1964 Gujrat riots he toured India with Nehru to stop the violence that had erupted between Hindus and Muslims, and observed a fast for 3 days. Eknath Easwaran writes, “Khan’s action electrified India and the bloodshed stopped.” Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan, A Man to Match His Mountains (Nilgiri Press, 1999). It is easy to attribute his creed of non-violence to his association with Gandhi, and therefore the title ‘Frontier Gandhi’. However, Bacha Khan arrived at this ideology through personal introspection and by observing the effect that violence had on his people, and most importantly from his firm faith in Islam and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. "There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pukhtun like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence," Ghaffar Khan is quoted by Eknath Easwaran "It is not a new creed. It was followed 1,400 years ago by the Prophet all the time when he was in Mecca." For Bacha Khan, Islam meant muhabbat (love), amal (service), and yakeen (faith). Paying tribute to Bacha Khan, J.S. Bright MA writes in his booklet, Frontier and its Gandhi, “Ghaffar Khan is in complete accord with the principle of non-violence. But he has not borrowed his outlook from Mahatma Gandhi. He has reached it. And reached it independently. Independently like a struggler after truth. No doubt, his deep study of Quran has influenced his doctrine of love..." He added, "At any rate, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan is not a Brahmin. Neither is he a mullah commissioned by his Majesty the King of Afghanistan. He is a plain khan and tribesmen do not doubt his sincerity. Hence, if Ghaffar Khan has arrived at the philosophy of non-violence, it is absolutely no wonder. Of the two, Ghaffar Khan and Mahatma Gandhi, my personal view is that the former has achieved a higher level of spirituality. The Khan has reached heaven, while the Pandit [Jawaharlal Nehru] is firmly on the earth but ironically enough the Mahatma is struggling in the air! Ghaffar Khan like Shelley has come from heaven to the earth, while Mahatma Gandhi like Keats is going from the earth to heaven.” (Quoted from http://www.geocities.com/khyber007/bachakhan.html). Bacha Khan was not merely an idealist who spoke of ideals that he did not expect to realize. A firm believer in equality and respect for all classes, he organized his ‘servants of God’ into ranks with titles, with positive discrimination in favor of the poor. Bacha Khan tried to practically inculcate an ethos of equality in a society that was experiencing increasing tensions due to income and status disparities as a consequence of British patronage of certain loyal khans and opportunists. He raised the Qasabgaran (the working class) to the status of generals and commanders of the Khudai-Khidmatgars over the khans and chiefs who supported his movement. He opened a shop to encourage Pukhtuns to take up trade and commerce and to remove the stigma associated with belonging to one of the professional classes. He did not preach austerity today making vainglorious promises of wealth and power to be realized for the benefit of the coming generations. He believed in living a simple life guided by universal human values of tolerance, discipline, integrity, patience and respect for human dignity, guided by a firm faith. He prided himself in his austerity, in an age and society that was gradually becoming materially wealthy and wealth was increasingly becoming the measure of individual worth. His Khudai Khidmatgar army underwent training in camps that lasted for about one week. Continuing the themes of discipline and service, activities included drills, physical fitness training, village cleaning, political education, spinning, grinding wheat, political-cultural performances, and speeches from senior members including Bacha Khan (Banerjee 2001: 75-76) The camps were often large; some camps had 800 participants. Sadly, his movement died following the suppression and complete censure that the Pakistani state imposed on Bacha Khan and his party. The Khudai Khidmatgars were banned as a political party and their top leadership including Bacha Khan were jailed, some of whom died in prison. Several of his followers were killed while he was locked up in prison. Bacha Khan spent a total of 15 years languishing in Pakistani jails under charges of treason and disloyalty to the state. He exiled himself to Afghanistan in 1964, where he spent 8 years, and upon his return in 1972, at age 82, he was welcomed by ‘the largest crowd to have gathered together in living memory’. He lived the rest of his years in and out of Pakistani prisons, during the regime of Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq, for protesting against authoritarian and military governments, right up till the age of 95. He passed away in 1988 at the age of 98, of which he had spent three decades behind bars. The contentious Durand Line border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was opened to allow tens of thousands of his followers from Pakistan to travel to Afghanistan to attend the funeral, while the mujahideen and Soviet backed government agreed to a ceasefire for three days. Even in death Bacha Khan brought peace and unity to the people he loved so dearly. He is buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

KHAN ABDUL GHANI KHAN

Khan Abdul Ghani Khan was one of the finest Pushto poets this century. He was also the eldest son of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1989), the Red Shirt leader known affectionately as Badshah Khan and the Frontier Gandhi. He led the Pathans in what is today Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in the struggle against British colonialism from the 1920's until 1947.

The Khudai Khitmatgars, or Servants of God as they were known, were one of the most surprising political movements under the Raj. They showed that the principles of non-violence could appear in one of the more violent societies of the time. Ghaffar Khan became close to Gandhi and spent forty years of his life in jail.


Ghani Khan wrote his first famous poem when he was 14. He spent a good deal of time in the Gandhi and Nehru entourages, and went to Tagore's Shantineketan school with a young Indira Gandhi. Although he remains a revered figure among Pathans, he spent much of his life after independence in jail and/or unpublished at home. Identified with the cause of Pathan nationalism, he eschewed party politics. The closing years of his life saw him successively rehabilitated by various governments in Pakistan.

The producer of this site, Omar Khan, interviewed Ghani Khan a number of times on tape and video in 1990, most of them at his residence in the village of Mohammad Naray, Charsadda District, NWFP. Naeem Inayatullah took a number of the color photographs shown here on December 23, 1990. Ghani Khan offered candid reminiscences about one of the least documented regional freedom struggles in the subcontinent.

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan began work in 1912, when he was 22 years old. He joined the Haji Sahib of Turangzai to bring simple religious education to people near his village of Utmanzai, outside Peshawar. This was an affront to British colonial rule. Gradually, he got into increasing trouble with the authorities despite being the son of the popular and wealthy landlord Behram Khan.

Like many of the learned religious and tribal leaders of the time, he realized that only through education could Pathans be liberated.

Political life in NWFP during the century of British rule was marked by a series of uprisings. Much of the province consisted of tribal territory where British Indian law only applied on either side of paved roads. It was here that the Haji Sahib of Turangzai and a young Ghaffar Khan finally had to escape. Tribal areas were often bombed, however. In the 1920's, Britain successfully blocked a universal ban on civilian bombing from the air by arguing that there was no other way to control Pathans.

Ghaffar Khan was finally arrested in 1919 and spent five years in jail. His fledgling movement grew enormously in stature during the period. In 1927 he launched a new educational, social and political program and a Pushto journal called Pukhtoon. Two years later, the Khudai Khitmatgars, or Servants of God were formed. Ghani Khan was about 15 years old. He watched how his father's followers soon came to be called Red Shirts.

They became known for social service and the extraordinary doctrine for Pathans of non-violence in the face of violence. Yet, as Ghani explains, this was the best tactic. The Red Shirts grew in stature with the local population as their followers were beaten and worse for protesting colonial restrictions.

On April 23rd, 1930, the British shot hundreds of Khudai Khitmatgar and other demonstrators packed in the streets of Peshawar's Kissa Khani [Storytellers] Bazaar. One British Indian Army regiment refused to fire at the crowds. This massacre set off a chain of demonstrations across India that culminated in the Civil Disobedience Movement and famous Dandi March and Salt Satyagraha of 1930. One of the key conditions of the Gandhi-Irwin pact that followed was Ghaffar Khan's release. Ghani Khan described in the text of the interview how this forged a lasting bond between the two men.

Ghani Khan got to know Gandhi well during the 1930's and 1940's, and often visited Sevagram and Wardah. He remained very fond of Gandhi.

The first limited election were held in NWFP in 1936. Ghaffar Khan was banned from the province. His brother, Dr. Khan Sahib, led the party to a narrow victory and became Chief Minister. Ghaffar Khan returned to Peshawar in triumph on August 29, 1937 on what the Peshawar daily Khyber Mail called the happiest day of his life.

Ghani Khan wrote a famous column for the Pukhtoon called Gade Wade, or literally The Confused Utterances of a Madman. He translated it as Nonsense. Instead of his real name, he signed it The Mad Philosopher.

The next few years saw the Khudai Khitmatgars increasingly identified with Congress and Gandhi, while the non-Pathan populations of the province gravitated towards the Muslim League. The former wanted a united India, the latter an independent homeland for Muslims called Pakistan. In the 1945 elections, following another spell in jail, Dr. Khan Sahib barely hung on to power in a split assembly.

In his official role, Ghani Khan was leader of the Zalme Pukhtun, or Red Shirts youth wing. He was also among the moderates who argued for finding an accommodation with Pakistan once the NWFP Referendum results were clear. When that didn't work out soon after 1947, he was arrested. No charge were ever filed. In keeping with colonial law, all his moveable property except books and paintings were confiscated. He spent the next six years in jail.

After his release Ghani Khan continued to write and paint.

His written work celebrated and poked fun at Pathan identity. His book The Pathans, first published in 1947, remains the best humorous introduction to the people of the Frontier.

Ghani Khan manage considerable properties after independence. He became friends with his former British opponents like Sir Olaf Caroe. His poetry and wit, often published in Pushto from Kabul in Afghanistan entertained Pathans of all political persuasions. He died in Mohammad Naray on March l5, l996. He is buried next to his mother and his wife Roshan.

DR KHAN SAHIB

Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (1882 - May 1958) popularly known as Dr Khan Sahib was a pioneer in the Indian Independence Movement and a Pakistani politician. He belongs to Charsadda.


Early life

He was born in the village of Utmanzai, near Charsadda in the North-West Frontier Province. His father, Bahram Khan was a well known Khan in the Hashtnagar area.

Khan Sahib was eight years older than his brother, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Badshah Khan).

After matriculating from the Edwardes Mission High School in Peshawar, Khan Sahib studied at Grant Medical College, Bombay (present day Mumbai).
Contribution to the Indian Independence Movement

In 1935, Dr. Khan Sahib was elected as the NWFP's sole representative to the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi.

With the grant of limited self-government and announcement of provincial elections in 1937, Dr. Khan Sahib led his party to a comprehensive victory. The Frontier National Congress, an affiliate of the Indian National Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Provincial Assembly.

Politics in Pakistan 1947 - 1954

He was jailed by Abdul Qayyum Khan's government. After Qayyum Khan's appointment to the Central government and the personal efforts of the Chief Minister of NWFP at the time Sardar Bahadur Khan he along with his brother and many other actvists were released.
Back in Government

He joined the Central Cabinet of Muhammad Ali Bogra as Minister for Communications in 1954.

In October 1955, he became the first Chief Minister of West Pakistan following the amalgamation of the provinces and princely states under the One Unit scheme. After differences with the ruling Muslim League over the issue of Joint versus Separate Electorates, he created the Republican Party.

He resigned in March 1957 after the provincial budget was rejected by the assembly.

In June, he was elected to the National Assembly representing the constituency of Quetta, the former capital of Balochistan.

He was assassinated by a former revenue official in Lahore on May 12, 1958.

After his death, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti was elected to fill the vacancy arising in the National Assembly