Chapter 12
Men of the Book
As a young boy, I had had violent tendencies; the hot blood of the
Pathans was in my veins. But in jail I had nothing to do except read
the Koran. I read about the Prophet Muhammad (Sallallahu-Alehe-Wasallam)
in Mecca, about this patience, his suffering, his dedication. I had
read it all before, as a child, but now I read it in the light of
what I was hearing all around me about Gandhiji’s struggle against
the British Raj… When I finally met Gandhiji, I learned all about
his ideas of nonviolence and his Constructive Program. They changed
my life forever.
British officials on the Frontier were caught in a dilemma. They did
not want Khan back in the Province, but they did not know how to
keep him in prison any longer. During the summer of 1934, they found
a solution and informed the government in Delhi:
The political atmosphere is charged with rumors that Mahatma Gandhi
will visit Peshawar after concluding his self-imposed fast in
August. It is believed that he will refuse to obey any prohibitory
order and thus focus attention on Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s release…
In order to ease the situation as far as possible and in order to
deprive him of an excuse for hunger-strike which might commend
itself to public opinion, both in India and other countries, the
government of India may think it advisable to release Abdul Ghaffar
Khan and Khan Saheb, Kashmir or the North West Frontier Province…
Abdul Ghaffar Khan has established such a strong and superstitious
hold over the masses and can so easily by his speeches work them up
into a state of ferment that he could not be allowed under anything
like the present conditions to return to the Frontier.
Ghaffar Khan and his brother were released from the Hazaribagh
Central Jail on August 27, 1934, and banned from the Frontier. The
banishment turned out to be an opportunity. Since they could not
return to their home, the brothers accepted an invitation from
Gandhi to live at his new ashram in Central India. Thought Khan had
met Gandhi a number of times, he had never had the chance to spend
time with him. Work, jail, and the demands of the movement had so
far kept India’s two leading advocates of nonviolence from coming to
know each other.
Khan was a popular figure now, and crowds besieged him everywhere.
Khan did not like the attention now any more than before. “Please do
not call me the Frontier Gandhi,” he pleaded with his audiences.
“There should be only one Gandhi. Mahatma Gandhi is our general and
there should be one general only.”
Since the Salt Satyagraha, Gandhi had become a world-famous figure.
He had moved to the remote, scorching plain of Central India to
escape the firestorm of politics, settling down near one of the
poorest villages in the area. He wanted to concentrate on his
constructive Program: the uplift of India’s ravaged villages. Gandhi
had taught Indians how to fight and die nonviolently; now he faced
the more challenging task of showing them how to live nonviolently.
That was the purpose of the ashram that came to be called Sevagram
The two brothers reached the ashram in September and quickly settled
in with the menagerie of devotees, children, and goats, mingling
with the pilgrims who came in an unbroken stream from all over the
world to see the Mahatma in person.
Life there was simple and hard. The brothers loved it. They shared
the plain food and work and visited surrounding villages with Gandhi
to teach basic hygiene. Dr. Khan opened a small clinic and regularly
walked out into the village to give medical care. Khan taught
himself how to spin.
Their childlike candor charmed the whole ashram, especially
Gandhiji. He asked his secretary, Mahadev Desai, to talk with them
and prepare a biography called Two Servants of God. “The more I
knew” of the Khan brothers, Gandhi wrote in the foreword,
The more attracted I felt towards them. I was struck by their
transparent sincerity, frankness and utmost simplicity. I observed
too that they had come to believe in truth and nonviolence not as a
policy but as a creed. The younger brother, I found, was consumed
with deep religious fervor. His was not a narrow creed. I found him
to be a Universalist. His politics, if he had any, were derived from
his religion.
Desai describes Khan’s spiritual temperament:
The greatest thing in him is, to my mind, his spirituality-or better
still, the true spirit of Islam-submission to God. He has measured
Gandhiji’s life all through with this yardstick and his clinging to
Gandhiji’s can be explained on no other ground. It is not Gandhiji’s
name and fame that have attracted him to Gandhiji, nor his political
work, nor his spirit of rebellion and revolution. It is his pure and
ascetic life and his insistence on self-purification that have had
the greatest appeal for him, and his whole life since 1919 onwards
has been one sustained effort for self-purification.
In the afternoons the conversation would often turn to the valleys
and fields the Khan Brothers had not seen for three years. They
wanted Gandhi to visit the Frontier, to stay on their farms and walk
along the river where they had built a small retreat. “You can have
your ashram there, Mahatmaji,” Khan pleaded. “There is no more
lovely spot on the pace of the earth. The whole Peshawar valley
abounds in fruit and grain. You will put on pounds of weight there,
with the rest and good food we could give you.”
Gandhi must have smiled at the thought. For some time he had wanted
to visit the Frontier and told with the Khudai Khidmatgars and spend
long hours with these big-hearted brothers whose warmth had already
buoyed the Mahatma’s spirits. “The brothers’ friendship seems to me
to be a gift from God,” Gandhi wrote. “To be with them more, is to
love them more…They are so nice, so simple, and yet so penetrative.
They do not beat about the bush.”
In the evening, residents and visitors of the ashram used to gather
around a neem tree for a prayer meeting. Hymns were sung and prayers
from different scriptures read. Khan sat next to Gandhi and read
from the Koran, sometimes borrowing Gandhi’s glasses when he had
forgotten to bring his own. While the sun dropped behind the great
plain, Gandhi’s eyes would close as he became lost in the holy
words.
The brothers provided an interesting contrast. Dr. Khan was
outgoing; his years in Europe had made his temperament more elastic.
Where Khan viewed life as essentially religious, Dr. Khan saw it in
a more worldly light. Khan was austere and almost naturally
disciplined; Dr. Khan had indulged himself without regret. “Ghaffar
offers the namaz for both of us,” he liked to joke.
While Dr. Khan could meet patiently with even his bitterest enemies,
the more volatile Khan found it difficult to bear the hauteur of the
British. Thus, when the Frontier was asked to send its first
representative to the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi, it was
the older brother who agreed to run. They both were Khudai
Khidmatgars, and their differing natures simply meant that they
would serve differently. Desai writes:
It is these brothers that are bracketed today with India’s “public
enemies.” They have made unparalleled sacrifices. They have gone
throughout suffering which few have experienced…The secret of their
hold on their people lies certainly in their sacrifices and their
suffering, but more than in their daily life. While the younger
brother is a man of God, the elder is a knight sans peur et sans
reproche. All untruth, unreality, show and glamour produce in them
nothing but loathing. Born aristocrats, they have taken to a life
the simplicity of which it is difficult to surpass.
More often than not, the brother and their host did not talk
politics. Gandhi wanted to learn more about the Khudai Khidmatgars.
How deep was their nonviolence? And he was intrigued by Ghaffar
Khan’s devout yet broad-minded Islam. Once he asked Khan about Dr.
Khan saheb’s English wife. Was she a convert to Islam? “You will be
surprised that I cannot say whether she is a Muslim or Christian,”
Khan replied. Even Gandhi must have been impressed by such
detachment on a point that would seem fundamental to more orthodox
Muslims. “She was never converted that much I know-and she is
completely at liberty to follow her own faith. I have never asked
her about it. Why should I? Why should not a husband and wife adhere
each to their respective faiths? Why should marriage alter one’s
faith?”
“I agree,” said Gandhi. “But would most Muslims?”
“No, I know that they would not. But for that matter, not one in a
hundred thousand knows the true spirit of Islam. I think at the back
of our quarrels is the failure to recognize that all faiths contain
enough inspiration for their adherent. The Holy Koran says in so
many words that God sends messengers for all nations and peoples.
All of them are Ahle Kitab-‘Men of the Book’-and the Hindus are no
less Ahle Kitab than Jews and Christians.”
Ghaffar Khan sent for his daughter, Mehar Taj, who was fourteen, to
come to wardha from England to join the school at the ashram. She
arrived in November. Ghani arrived not long after, having had to
conclude his university studies in the United States because of lack
of funds. Khan’s other sons, Wali and twelve- year- old Ali, also
joined him. Wardha became the scene of a Khan family reunion, the
first time they had been together since the Christmas arrests three
years before.
Khan received word that the Muslims of Bengal wanted him to come to
talk with them. Gandhi was wary. The government would not want the
fiery Pathan let loose the quiescent Muslim populations of northern
India. It would find ways to interfere-perhaps by arresting him.
Khan left with detailed instructions from Gandhi about what to say
and what not to say. This was not a time to court imprisonment, he
instructed, but to show Indians the other face of the revolution,
the constructive side.
Khan spoke in Calcutta and urged Bengali youths to form their own
Khudai Khidmatgar movement. During his tour he saw the real
significance of Gandhi’s insistence on spinning. Where villagers
spun, they had enough to eat; where they did not, they starved. He
appealed to urban Bengalis in Calcutta to turn their attention to
the impoverished villages he had visited.
When he finished his tour, Khan promised the Bengalis that he would
return in early December and stay. If he could not be in the
Frontier-he was still banned from entering the province-then he felt
that his place was with the impoverished Muslims of northern India.
He needed to serve-and he needed to serve with his own hands.
In October 1934, Khan went with Gandhi to the annual Congress
session in Bombay. To his discomfort, he found himself a celebrated
hero. The main pavilion was named after him, and he was asked to
accept the presidency of the congress. He declined. “I appreciate
the friends who have started his move,” he explained, “but let me
declare, as I have done over and over again, that I am only a humble
soldier and it is my ambition to end my days not as a general but as
a soldier.”
Gandhi, meanwhile, resigned from the Congress to devote himself
entirely to his constructive program. He explained to the Assembly
that he wanted to the Frontier:
I would like to bury myself in an Indian village, preferably in a
Frontier village. If the Khudai Khidmatgars are truly nonviolent,
they will contribute the largest share to the promotion of the
nonviolent spirit…I am yearning to test the truth for myself of the
claim that they have imbibed the spirit of nonviolence and they are
believers, in the heart, of unity of Hindus [and] Muslims.
Asked about Gandhi’s unexpected retirement, Kan said it did not
surprise him:
I have never found it easy to question his decisions, for he refers
all his problems to God and always listens to His commands. Every
great reformer has been like that and there always come a stage in
every reformer’s life when he must take leave of his following and
soar on ample pinion, untrammeled by their limitations and
weaknesses. But he does not, by doing so, limit-but instead
increases- the reach and sweep of his services.
During his stay in Bombay, Khan spoke on several occasions. On
October 27, 1934, he told the Indian Christian Association the story
of the Khudai Khidmatgars. As the story of the savage repression
unfolded, Khan’s emotions surged and he unveiled his deepest
feelings. “What is our fault?” he asked rhetorically:
Our fault is that our province is the gateway of India. Because we
live there, the government calls us the gatekeepers and openly tells
us, “How can we give reforms to the gatekeepers? If we gave them
anything, India will go out our hands.” The Britishers regard it as
dangerous and think that they will not be able to rule India if the
gatekeepers join hands with the Indians. It was for this very reason
that our movement was crushed at the very outset…
We started our own schools, but the government, under some pretext
or the other, cleverly ruined the educational institutions of our
little children.
We were born in the Frontier Province and this is why we were
doomed. This is our great crime, that wanted to see the people of
the villages civilized in that very Frontier Province which is
called the gateway of India, while they wanted that these people
should go on fighting among themselves and remain in need of them
and remain in a ruined and destroyed condition so that they might
rule our country without feeling any anxiety.
On his last day in Bombay Khan spoke to the women’s Unity Club,
praising the sacrifices made by the thousands of women who had
joined the freedom struggle. If the women of India were awakened, he
said, it was not possible for any power on earth to keep India in
slavery.
Then he returned to Wardha. Joined by his family, he entered again
into the ashram routine. Long hours were spent with Gandhi, mapping
out a program of reform for the Muslims of Bengal. Khan could not
wait to get back; it had been too long since he had had a chance to
work with the poor. He would leave on December 8.
But he did not get the chance. Bengal, like the Punjab, had always
been a volatile province for the British to govern, and they could
not have looked with much favor on Khan’s plan to settle down with
the Bengali Muslims. They took their usual recourse. On December 7,
one hundred days after Khan had been released from prison, the
district superintendent of Police came for him at the ashram and
placed him under arrest again for “seditious” remarks he had made in
Bombay.
Gandhi read out the warrant and asked the superintendent to give
khan time to take leave of his family. “This time,” he added, “we
are going to offer a defense.”
Khan stopped. A defense? Satyagrahis never defended themselves in
court.
“This is different,” Gandhi countered. “We are not offering
Satygraha just now and we do not want to go to Jail if we can help
it”
“As you wish,” Khan replied.
The children were stricken. Once again they were going to lose their
father-for how long? There were tears, but Khan himself did not cry.
He had steeled himself too many times against these scenes. With the
more emotional Dr. Khan Saheb it was different. He had grown deeply
attached to his younger brother during these three years. How many
times would they go through this scene before freedom was won?
What saddened Ghaffar Khan most was that he could not fulfill his
promise to the Muslims of Bengal. “I had promised to live and work
among them,” he told Gandhi, “and I may not now do even that little
service.”
Khan looked around at the children holding his arms, Dr. Khan Saheb
looking at the floor, Gandhi talking to the superintendent. He
turned to Gandhi. “I am quite certain that it is all God’s doing. He
kept me out of prison just for the time he wanted to use me outside.
Now it is his will that I must serve from inside. What pleases him
pleases me.” |
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