Chapter 9
The Servants of God
There is noting surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me
subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It
was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet (Sallallahu-Alehe-Wasallam)
all the time he was in Mecca, and it has since been followed by all
those wanted to throw off an oppressor’s yoke. But we had so far
forgotten it that when Gandhiji placed it before us, we thought he
was sponsoring a novel creed.
IN 1926 BEHRAM KHAN died. No one knew exactly how old he was,
But his clear recollection of the 1857 “Mutiny” placed him over
eighty.
Pathan custom decrees that alms be distributed at the funeral of a
great Khan, so a crowd of mullahs flocked to Behram Khan’s funeral
with open palms. This was no halfpenny khan who had died.
Ghaffar Khan declared that he would give a way two thousand rupees
in memory of his father. He would let the gathering of sorrowing
villagers decide whether he should give it to the mullahs or bestow
it on the school.
“Give it to the school!” they cried.
After his father’s death, Badshah Khan, his sister, and his wife
decided to go to Mecca on hajj, pilgrimage-the most sacred act an
orthodox Muslim can perform. Always as practical as he was devout,
khan timed his visit to coincide with a conference of Islamic
nations in Mecca. He enjoyed encountering men representing so many
different facets of Islam, but the constant bickering over fine
theological points disillusioned him.
Once again tragedy struck: Khan’s wife fell from a high flight of
stairs in Jerusalem and was killed. This time he vowed not to
remarry. “Henceforth,” he said, “there would be no room for another
marriage in my life of dedication to the service of my country.” In
the moral world of the Pathan, this was tantamount to a vow of
celibacy.
Khan kept the vow. Like Gandhi, he learned to harness his deep
passions to the task of liberating his people and raising them to
their rightful place in history.
On his back to India, Khan visited Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and
Iran. He felt a surge of energy in the Islamic countries that were
undergoing modernizing reform. Islam was in the midst of a
renaissance, and Khan became aware for the first time how much
nationalist moments in Muslim countries looked to India for
inspiration. India was the cornerstone of the British Empire; if
that stone were removed,
British power in the Middle East might topple-and that of the French
could follow.
On his return from the Middle East, fresh with new ideas, Khan
formed the Pushtun jirga, the Pathan Youth league, which drew its
members from the growing number of graduates of his Azad Schools.
With the Youth league he launched a new program of educational,
social, and political reforms.
One of his first concerns was the role of women. Badshah Khan had a
long lamented the traditional system of pardah, which restricts
Muslim women form participating fully in society. He encouraged them
to come out from behind the veil, as the women in his own family had
done. His sisters became increasingly active in his movement, until
by 1930 they were touring the districts of the Frontier and giving
speeches-activities which would have required courage evening in the
cosmopolitan capitals of Islam, but which in the conservative
Frontier showed truly extraordinary daring.
Gandhi too believed that an active women’s movement was essential to
gaining freedom through nonviolence. In December 1925 he had handed
over the presidency of the Congress party to Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, a
poet with a remarkable gift for leadership. Her example galvanized
Indian women and demonstrated their capacities for political
activity.
To help spread these ideas, Khan had been thinking for some time
about starting a journal written in Pushto. He knew that Pathans who
immigrated to other parts of the world were quick to adopt the local
language and drop their mother tongue, and even in the Frontier,
educated Pathans had abandoned Pushto in favor of English and Urdu.
This saddened Khan. He loved the rolling rhythms of his language and
its rich body of folklore, epics, and lyrics, which included some of
the finest mystical poetry on the subcontinent. A journal in Pashto
could restore the Pathan’s pride in their own language, and at the
same time carry the message of reform to all Pathans.
Pushtun, “The Pathan,” was an instant success, not only in the
Frontier but elsewhere-even as far away as the United States, where
many Pathans still live. Educated Pathans were delighted to find
Pushtunwali, the way of the Pathan, celebrated: they were a noble,
daring, effervescent race. And they enjoyed, almost as much, the
study barrage of criticism from the editor’s pen. The title page
carried a poem by-who else?-fifteen-year-old Ghani Khan, already an
aspiring and impassioned writer:
If I salve lie buried in a grave
Under a dazzling tombstone,
Respect it not; spit on it!
O mother, with what face will you wail for me
If I am not torn to pieces by British guns?
Either I turn this wretched land of mine?
Into a Garden of Eden
Or I wipe out the lanes and homes of Pathans!
Pushtun contained articles on hygiene, social issues, and Islamic
law. It openly and repeatedly questioned purdah. “In the Pathanland,
whose beautiful daughters gather fuel in the hills and carry it on
their heads, reap the harvest and walk through the battlefield,” one
author wrote, “there is no place for purdah. The purdah did not
exist in the past, it does not exist today [except by custom] and it
will never be there in the future.” One Pathan “sister,” Nagiria,
exclaimed, “Excepts for the Pathan, the women have no enemy. He is
clever but is ardent in suppressing women….O Pathan, when you demand
your freedom, why do you deny it to women?”
All this time, in the rest of subcontinent, tension between Indians
and British was swelling. The new viceroy, Lord Irwin, had answered
Indian demands for self-Government by declining to meet with Gandhi
or any other representative of the people. Instead, with what
English biographer has called “a deplorable lack of tact,” Irwin
invited a special commission to advise him on the fate of India- a
commission composed entirely of British lords and members of
Parliament.
Without significant exception, the Simon Commission met with a
complete boycott when its members arrived in February 1928, and
throughout that year there were huge demonstrations that were some
times violently broken up by the police. The Punjab, neighbor state
of the Frontier, was particularly restive. Its sixty-four-year-old
leader Lajput Rai was struck by a policeman in Lahore and died soon
after; within weeks, in December 1928, the assistant police chief of
Lahore was assassinated. In Bengal, another perpetual hotbed of
resistance, Subhas Chandra Bose was agitating for violent
revolution.
In this turbulent setting, that some December, Muslim leaders
convened a conference in Calcutta, the capital of Bengal. Khan
attended and was disturbed by the tenor of gathering. In an opening
address the president of the conference attacked and ridiculed the
Hindus. Later, when the man was hotly criticized by a speaker from
the Punjab, he lost his temper and began hurling abuse back. Another
Punjabi on the speaker’s platform stood up and drew a knife, and the
meeting broke into chaos.
None of this embodied Islam to Khan-nor, it must be added, to some
of the other Muslim leaders. Finding that the Indian National
Congress was meeting in Calcutta at the same time, Khan decided to
attend and, if possible, see Gandhi.
He found him addressing a committee meeting, where a young man in
the audience kept heckling him. Gandhi did not get angry; he just
laughed and went on talking. His patient good humor made a deep
impression on Khan. When he went back to his own conference, he told
its president privately that he thought the movement would be
stronger if its leadership embodied a little more tolerance and
self-restraint. The man lost his temper again “So” he said, “the
wild Pathans have come to teach about tolerance!” The words stung.
Khan left the conference and went home, but the example of Gandhi
remained with him. It was becoming more and more clear that violence
and quarreling only kept his people divided.
A few months later, at another Congress meeting in Lucknow, khan met
Gandhi. He also met Jawaharlal Nehru; the brilliant young leader of
the Indian nationalist movement, who had been a friend of his
brother’s when they were students together in England. Khan was able
to discuss the Pathan affairs with the man who would become India’s
first Prime Minister-the beginning of a deep bond between two men of
kindred spirit, never to be broken even when their lives diverged.
From Lucknow, Khan went straight on to Delhi and met with other
nationalist leaders. Everywhere he encountered a fierce sense of
urgency. Since their near-victory over the Raj in 1922, Indians had
been warning the British that unless they were granted some form of
self-government, another clash was inevitable. The British remained
aloof. Indians were becoming restless. They wanted freedom, and they
were willing to fight for it.
Young leaders like Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose were arguing that
the time had come for an all-out battle with the Raj. Gandhi, always
cautious, asked them to wait and give the British time to
demonstrate their intentions. Besides, he urged, India was not ready
for battle. Give the British a year. If they did not grant
concessions by then, the impatient young Indians could have their
fight-and it would be to the finish.
Khan imbibed this new urgency and returned to the Frontier
determined to sweep Pathans into the mainstream of Indian affairs.
He spent the summer on a grueling tour through hot, dust-chocked
villages, trying to stir provincial people to see beyond their own
fields and families. By the end of summer he was drained and
impatient. Something more was needed.
The world, once week with summer’s heat,
Grows strong again.
For the poet Khushal Khan Khattak, as for all Pathans, autumn rather
than spring brings renewal. Then the sun dips south toward the
Arabian Sea, the air from the passes cools, wedges of geese float
over from the Central Asia plateau, the poplars and willows turn
amber-and Pathan blood stirs.
September of 1929 brought cooling winds to the Peshawar valley. Khan
felt ready to do battle again-not with the British yet, but with
this Pathans. He felt a great moment approaching and he was
determined that this people would be fit for it.
At a boisterous gathering in Utmanzai one afternoon, Khan stood up
and unveiled his feelings. He began by outlining the petty vices
that had crippled his people. These hardy Pathans, whom no one could
beat in an open, fair fight, were helpless before the clever
British, he declared. And they had no one to blame but themselves.
“There are two ways to national progress,” he told them:
One is the path of religion, and the other is the road pf
patriotism… you have all heard of America and Europe. The people in
those countries may not be very religious, but they have a sense of
patriotism, love for their nation, and social consciousness.
And look at the progress that has been made there. Then take a look
at ourselves! We have hardly learned to stand on our own feet yet,
look at their standard of living and then take a look at ours.
Thousands of proud Pathan eyes looked around-at the tattered rags,
the hide-bare burros and thin goats browsing the stubble, the gaunt
faces…
If we are on the road to ruin, it is because we have neither the
true spirit of religion, nor the true spirit of patriotism nor love
for our nation… A great revolution is coming and you haven’t even
heard about it!
During my recent visit to the subcontinent, I noticed that men and
women were fully prepared to serve the nation. And here? Leave alone
your women, even your men do not show any desire to serve. They
hardly to seem to understand the meaning of the word “nation”!
Khan looked around, his dark eyes blazing. The edge in his voice had
brought the milling mass to silence. Bearded, turbaned heads did not
move. Two goats shuffled behind the raised platform but no one
noticed. Khan continued to hammer:
A revolution is like a flood! A nation can prosper by it, and it can
perish by it as well. A nation that is wide awake, that cultivates
brotherhood and national spirit, is sure to benefit through
revolution. If the people are vigilant they will be ready for the
flood. When it comes the whole nation will move along with it.
But if the people are asleep! If they are indifferent to each other
and indifferent to the country, the whole nation will be swept away
by the flood when the revolution comes.
Khan paused again and took a deep breath. “O Pathans!” he thundered:
Take a look at the developed countries of the world. Do you think
their prosperity has just dropped from the sky? It has not, no more
than our prosperity will drop from heaven!
The secret of their prosperity is that they men and women who
sacrifice their luxuries, their pleasures, and their comfort for the
sake of the prosperity of the nation.
We do not have such men among us. We look only to our self interest
and let the country go to the devil! In other countries, people have
learnt that no man is an island. But in our country every one lives
in a dream world of his own-like the animals. Any animal can find a
place to live, find a mate, rear its young. Can we call ourselves
the crown of creation if we do just that and nothing more?
Rarely had a Pathan spoken to fellow Pathans with words so
plainspoken:
Please remember this. If the nation prospers, it will affect
everyone. Every man, woman, and child will benefit. Do not think
that by acquiring riches for yourselves your country will become
prosperous. It will not. If you want your country and your people to
prosper you must stop living for yourselves alone. You must start
living for the community. That is the only way to prosperity and
progress.
He had finished. Pathans vows filled the air, invoking the name of
Allah, and men spoke with steel in their voices. The Badshah’s words
had cut their Pathan pride like a razor-sharp tulwar, but they were
not bitter. They knew that the tulwar had been hurled from love-to
rescue the honor of their nation.
For one young Pathan, Khan’s words cut deep enough to keep him awake
the whole night. The Badshah had spoken nothing but the hard truth.
Much had been promised by the gathering; a thousand oaths had been
sworn. But was that enough? The flood was already near.
The next morning, before the muezzin had called out the time for
Morning Prayer, this young man was banging on the gate of khan’s
courtyard, rattling a dozen chickens out of their roosts. He poured
out his heart. Something had to be done. What about an organization,
he argued, one whose members would swear on Allah’s name to give
their lives for their country? Not the youth league-that was for
organizers and social workers. What the country needed was men ready
to die for it. It needed… soldiers!
Khan liked the fire in this Pathan’s voice. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
Tea was brought, salted and hot, with a platter of fresh bread. The
sun was still below the horizon.
Soldiers! Khan liked the idea. Plenty of Pathans were fighters, but
those actually went to join an army fought only for the Raj. Perhaps
they did need soldiers-but certainly not more violence.
An idea slipped out, as formless at first as the faint shadows of
the courtyard around them in the early rays of dawn. An army of
nonviolent soldiers, drilled and disciplined, with officers, cadres,
uniforms, a flag-perhaps even a drum and bagpipe corps like the
guides! And pledged to fight: not with guns but with their lives.
As far as Khan knew, it had never been done. An army of trained
professional nonviolent soldiers was some thing new.
The young man looked at the Badshah. But Pathans? An army of unarmed
Pathans?
“Who else?” Khan shot back. Who else but a Pathan would be reckless
enough to try it? What could possibly take more bravado than facing
an enemy in a righteous cause without weapons, neither retreating
nor retaliating? It was the loftiest kind of honor.
Khan called for more tea. True, he admitted, Pathans would see it as
a disfigurement of badal-at first. The code of revenge seemed in
their blood from birth. But then, hadn’t Gandhi been talking for a
decade about “the nonviolence of the strong?” he had argued that it
was meant especially for the undaunted, for those who were not
afraid to fight whatever the cost. A nation that was unfit to fight,
he had said, could not prove the virtue of not fighting. Well,
Pathans were a head there! All they needed was the understanding. If
he could persuade half a dozen to try it….
They called themselves Khudai Khidmatgars, “Servants of God.”
Their motto was freedom, their aim, service. Since God himself
needed no service, they would serve his people.
The Khudai Khidmatgars, under the leader ship of AbdulGaffar Khan,
became history’s first professional nonviolent army-and its most
improbable. Any Pathan could join, provided he took the army’s oath:
I am a Khudai Khidmatgar; and as God needs no service, but serving
his creation is serving him, I promise to serve humanity in the name
of God.
I promise to refrain from violence and from taking revenge. I
promise to forgive those who oppress me or treat me with cruelty.
I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels and from
creating enmity.
I promise to treat every Pathan as my brother and friend.
I promise to refrain from antisocial customs and practice.
I promise to live a simple life, to practice virtue and to refrain
from evil.
I promise to practice good manners and good behavior and not to lead
a life of idleness. I promise to devote at least two hours a day to
social work.
For a Pathan, an oath is not a small matter. He does not enter into
a vow easily because once given, a Pathan’s word cannot be broken.
Even his enemy can count on him to keep his word at the risk of his
own life. Nonviolence was the heart of the oath and of the
organization. It was directed not only against the violence of
British rule but against the pervasive violence of Pathan life. With
it they could win their freedom and much more: prosperity, dignity,
self-respect.
Khan drew his first recruits from the young men who had graduated
from his schools. They flocked to him. Trained and uniformed, they
snapped in behind their officers and field out into the village to
seek recruits. They began by wearing a simple white overshirt, but
the whit soon dirtied. A couple of men had their shirts dyed at the
local tannery, and the brick red color proved a breakthrough. It did
not dirty easily, the dye was cheap, and-best of luck-it had style.
Villagers dropped their plows to see who these glowing figures were.
Recruits did not come easily, but Khan and his eager young
volunteers persisted. Within a few months they had five hundred
recruits-not enough for a Raj-shattering holy war, but a beginning.
Volunteers who took the oath formed platoons with commanding
officers and learned basic army discipline-everything that did not
require the use of arms. They had drills, badges, a tricolor flag,
the entire military hierarchy of rank-and a bagpipe corps.
Khan set up a network of committee called jirgahs, named and modeled
after the traditional tribal councils that had maintained Pathan law
for centuries. Villagers were grouped into larger groups,
responsible to district-wide committees. The Provincial jirgah was
the ultimate authority. Since all the committees were filled by
elected officers, the provincial jirgah became a kind of unofficial
parliament of Pathans.
Officers in the ranks were not elected, since Khan wanted to avoid
infighting. He appointed a salar-e-azam or commander in chief, who
in turn appointed officers to serve under him. The army was
completely voluntary; even the officers gave their services free.
Women recruited too, and played an important role in the struggles
to come.
Volunteers went to the villages and opened schools, helped on work
projects, and maintained order at public gatherings. From time to
time they drilled in work camps and took long military style marches
into the hills. As they marched, they sang:
We are the army of God,
By death or wealth unmoved.
We march, our leaders and we,
Ready to die.
We serve and we love
Our people and our cause.
Freedom is our goal,
Our lives the price we pay.
Watching the narrow columns threading a curving mountain pass, one
could easily imagine that some angry mullah was unleashing another
holy war against the foreigners. But these Pathans, who far years
had carried rifles and tucked small armories of revolvers and knives
inside their waistbands, now carried only a stick for walking. They
armed themselves only with their discipline, their faith, and their
native mettle. |
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