Chapter 9
NWFP & the ‘Military Crescent’
THE Khudai Khidmatgar movement in the NWFP proved a major hurdle in
the British efforts to fan religious sentiments and to drive a wedge
of distrust and hostility between the Muslims and non-Muslims. This
movement fitted neither in Britain’s internal policies in Indian nor
its external objectives.
The big problem for the British was that Muslims in NWFP constituted
some 92 per cent of the population, which was by far a greater
proportion than anywhere else in the country. Compounding the
problem was the fact that this concentration was located in a place
which the British called the Frontier. Although the British Empire
at the time was vast and the sun was said never to set on it, at
this point it stood face to face with its real enemy; this place
marked the limit of the British Crown, the representative of
imperialism and colonialism. On the other side was the Russian
border, where formerly Czarist rule had prevailed and which had
extended its borders right up to the banks of River Amu in
Afghanistan.
After the communist revolution of 1917, the dangers to their empire
seemed to the British to have suddenly increased. A geographical
border until now, River Amu became an ideological one too. To shield
themselves from possible ideological inroads they wished to create a
comparable ideological force in opposition to it.
During the First World War the British had concentrated on
destroying the strength and unity of the Muslims. Earlier in India
they had wrested control from the Muslims. They had come here by sea
and had seen that from the Balkans in Europe to the frontiers of
Africa to the Middle East, above all, Turk’s Ottoman Empire was a
stronghold of Muslim power. Britain calculated that until it could
uproot this last mentioned citadel of Islam it could not reign in
peace in India nor plunder its enormous wealth unchallenged. It set
to work, and by the end of World War I it had carved up the Ottoman
Empire into small pieces and planted its own people there.
Having accomplished the demolition of this focus of extraordinary
Islamic unity, The British should have felt secure. But about this
time there occurred a historic popular revolution in Russia. At
first the British and other imperialist powers tried their best to
defeat the revolution at the very start. But their conspiracy with
the counter revolutionary forces didn’t bear fruit. Then they tried
to block the passage of Russia'’ trade with the external world so as
to get an economic stranglehold on the new order but this strategy
also failed. Their final stratagem was the shrewdest of all – to
pitch the might of Islam against this new ideological challenge.
Hence by an irony of real politick the force Britain had earlier set
out to crush by decimating the Ottoman Empire it now felt completed
to prime up to serve as its own line of ultimate defence against a
new power if felt more imminently threatened by.
But Britain also knew that Islam would be a challenge to it for both
its being kafir and for its recent open hostility against the Muslim
caliphate. Thus what suited the British instead was a kind of
neo-Islamism that saw no harm in joining hands with imperialism and
colonialism and serving as an ideological instrument in confronting
revolutionary Russia. They wanted what they called the “military
crescent” extending from the borders of China to the outer fringes
of the Soviet Union to become a kind of halter that could be thrown
round the Soviet neck.
This was the basis for the creation of communal distrust and
disharmony within India. Britain found that as the first step in its
grand strategy it was necessary that the north-western part of India
close to the Russian borders should somehow be separated in the name
of Islam. That would help defend the British Empire in India against
the Soviets.
The empire-builders were clever people. They were looking out for
elements which could aid them fulfil this design. A person like
Bacha Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgar fitted nowhere into the scheme.
They were not prepared on any condition to become an instrument
against the Russians. They were firmly opposed to creation of
communal hatred, and they could not brook the use of Islam in
defence of imperialist and colonial objectives. On the contrary,
their very struggle was to get the British to announce independence
of India and transfer all power to the Indians so that the country’s
wealth could be used for the good of the country’s own poor and
needy. To this end had joined forces with people who were also
striving towards the same objective.
The latter included the Indian National Congress which was a
nationalist organisation comprising Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs,
Christians, Parsis and others. It had a preponderance of Hindus, it
is true, but that was basically because there were that many more
Hindus in the country’s population. As Allama Iqbal had said in a
famous couplet: Religion is no preacher of discord. We’re Indian and
India is our common land. The Congress’ basic goal was national
independence, the driving out of British rule.
The British thought hard and decided that their principal enemy
within the country was Congress, which wanted them out, and which
was working on the basis of single nationhood.
They calculated that they could use Islam not against their external
foe – the Russians – but also internally against the Congress. On
the one hand, it would act as an ideological shield, on the other it
would help divide up the country’s population on communal basis and
thus dissipate the national challenge to them. The biggest hurdle in
this course, as we have noted, were the Khudai Khidmatgars in the
Frontier who were not prepared for the use of the good name of Islam
for either end.
The Frontier was a Muslim majority area and along with it also lay
the tribal area. Next to it was Afghanistan and in between the
British had drawn the Durand Line to divide up the Pushtoons.
Although they had fought several wars, the British did not feel
fully reassured in relation to this sensitive region. In such
circumstances the rise of a nationalist movement there was a
disconcerting factor for them. They set about trying to isolate it
from the central Congress movement and to crush it. They resorted to
every kind of repression, incarceration, torture, seizing of
properties, burning down of houses.
Local quislings were also used to serve their ends. The titled
gentry, the Khan sahibs, Khan Bahadurs and Sirs, the jagirdars and
honorary magistrates. They young ones from the latter families were
employed as the goon force to harass and plunder the Khudai
Khidmatgars and fill the jails with the latter’s youth. The Haripur
jail became the graveyard of these pious people.
But the Khudai Khidmatgars proved so resolute that they went through
all this and still stood firm. They could neither be defeated nor
put out of the way. Eventually the British were compelled to accord
the Frontier the status of a province. And when under the 1935 India
Act the first election was held there, even though not on the basis
of adult franchise, the voters routed the serried ranks of the
British loyalists. In that first contest the Khudai Khidmatgars
could not obtain an absolute majority, it was nevertheless an
achievement to secure 19 out of 50 seats.
This election proved two things. First, that apart from Khudai
Khidmatgars, there was no force in the province that could context
the election as an organised body. Secondly, Khudai Khidmatgar
candidates were able to defeat some of the pillars of the colonial
rule. The most abject example for the British was the trouncing of
Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum by Abdul Aziz Khan, a Khudai Khidmatgar
from Zaida village. Similarly, Nawab Sir Mohammad Akbar Khan lost to
a family member, Amir Mohammad Khan, also a Khudai Khidmatgar,
popularly known as Khan Lala. In Thekal Nawab Sheer Ali Khan was
defeated by a young relative, Arbab Abdul Ghafoor. In kohat
district, another pillar of British rule, Khan Bahadur Quli Khan,
was brought down by Khudai Khidmatgar Mohammad Afzal Khan.
The people who won against Khudai Khidmatgar candidates included
three Nawab, two sons of Nawabs, two Khan Bahadurs and two Rai
Sahibs.
Among the six winning Hindus, four were Rai Bahadurs and two Rais
Sahibs.
Following the election, the British took stock of their strategy in
the province. They realised that no matter how strong these titled
elite may individually be, unless there was a strong political
organisation at the back of them, they could not win against the
Khudai Khidmatgars. But hard as the British tried to rally their
loyalists, they couldn’t make much advance. Until then, Muslim
League had not remotely existed in NWFP; hence it did not have any
representation at all in the Assembly. All the non-Khudai
Khidmatgars were independents, owing allegiance to no political
organisation.
The British knew that Pushtoons had two categories of
leaders-spiritual and temporal. So far they had been banking on the
latter group. They concluded that the Pushtoons, although very proud
and courageous as a people, lacked the concept of collective action
because of their tribal and Sardari system. They tended to be
individualists.
They had their Khawanin and Malaks but their decision were not taken
by any chieftains on the pattern of the Sardari system. They had the
national jirga instead and since the elders of the jirga held
themselves bound by the wishes of the community the British could
not dare to try and entice them. They were advised to do something
else -–to create their own Khawanin first and try and supplant the
traditional leadership with them. In other words, infiltrate their
own henchmen in the tribal hierarchy. They could rest only under the
shade of the trees they had planted themselves. The logic was
simple: the newly created Khawanin would be wholly dependent on
their British masters for their status, influence, powers and
wealth. They would thus never be promoted to say or do anything that
went against their parton’s interests.
The British thus set about creating an army of Sirs without
entitlement, Nawabs without a state, Khan Bahadurs bereft of
courage, Khan Sahibs, jagirdars, and so on, whose families prospered
on their generosity, and whose children had already joined the army
and the civil services. This British – created anointed class became
entrenched in official position. It made recommendations; it decided
legal cases as honorary magistrate, even murder cases. The life and
death and liberty of individuals came to rest in the hands of these
people. The British began to look on them as the nation’s elite and
intelligentsia. The prominent figures of the past, the elders who
had traditionally enjoyed status and respect in the community, were
no longer of any account.
The plan was that just as the Pushtoon society had been split apart,
parts of Afghanistan, tribal areas and agencies and small states had
been brought under the heels and large portions of them integrated
with Baluchistan, so also the Pushtoon concept of collective life
should be completely destroyed. The British were so determined on
this objective that they were not prepared to admit any unity or
collective action even on the part of the Khawanins and Nawabs they
had themselves created. In fact their calculation was that the more
the leading families, tribes and their heads were divided against
one another the more each would vie with the other to prove his
loyalty and subservience to them.
This scheme worked well for some time. But when the Khudai
Khidmatgar movements started it began to attract the poor and
deprived people into its ranks. At first the government tried to
crush the movement through its appointed Khawanin. But after the
election it became apparent that whatever influence and prestige
these men enjoyed in their area individually, unless they were also
able to act in concert, in a body, they would not be able to compete
with a national movement.
The defeat of establishment figures like Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum Khan
and Sir Mohammad Akbar Khan Hoti at the hands of commoners caused
the British to realise that the mutual differences of these official
Nawabs were doing great harm to the British interests.
On the other side, the British, as we noted, had learnt that their
objectives could be best served through a clever use of Islam. It is
significant that the Muslim League was founded in the Frontier in
Abbottabad in September 1937, at the hands of mullahs. The President
of Jaimat-ul-Ulema, Maulana Shakirullah of Nowshera, was the leading
figure in the ceremony who also became the League’s first president,
and the Jamiat’s Secretary, Maulana Mohammad Shuaib of Mardan,
became its first secretary. It is also notweorthy that the ministry
of Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum formed in April 1937, broke up in
September 1937 on a vote of no-confidence.
Later when Dr. Khan Saheb’s ministry had been in existence in the
province for a year and had despite its limited powers implemented
some radical reforms it created concern in the British hierarchy and
the Khawanin enjoying official patronage became worried about their
future. These reforms included seizure of jagirs, honorary
magistracy and abolition of local conscription. These measures had
an impact on British proteges who had become the channels through
which the rulers held the people enthralled. The British had been
forging them into a solid united force so that they could face up to
the Khudai Khidmatgars. The latter had been attracting the poor into
their ranks and since they were in massive majority, the electoral
system was bound to invest only their representatives into power,
and hence the Britisher’s exhortations to their jagirdars, Khawanins
etc., to join hands to face that threat.
The decision was taken to confront the national movement on two
fronts. In September 1938 Maulana Shakirullah of Nowshera was
replaced by Khan Bahadur Saadullah Khan as Muslim League president
and thus provincial organisation passed into the hands of Nawabs,
Sirs, Khan Bahadurs, jagirdars and honorary magistrates. It became
the Britisher’s instrument against Pushtoons. |
