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You know what I mean--all those threads dissing our guy for the Department of Kumbaya. What are the chances of a nonviolent army? It happened at least once, and where you might least expect it. I hope that Badshah Khan's name will be linked more often with that of Mahatma Gandhi, as it deserves to be. http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=979On April 23rd, 1930, unarmed crowds gathered in Kissa Khani Bazaar, in what is now Pakistan, in nonviolent protest against the British Raj. When they refused to disperse, British troops began firing on them: “When those in front fell down ... those behind came forward with their breasts bared and exposed themselves to the fire, so much so that some people got as many as 21 bullet wounds in their bodies, and all the people stood their ground without getting into a panic.” This was the world’s first nonviolent army, called by Abdul Ghaffar (Badshah) Khan, who had joined Gandhi to lead his fellow Muslims in the struggle against British colonialism. His peaceful warriors were revenge- and honor-driven Pathans (or Pashtuns) of Afghanistan, the same tribe that would later dominate the Taliban. Khan won over almost 100,000 of these devout Muslims to a nonviolent movement that played a signal role in India’s freedom struggle. Who was Khan and how did he come to be Gandhi’s partner in nonviolence? Khan, as one old Khudai Khidmatgar, or Servant of God in his nonviolent army, reminds us, was foremost a spiritual figure: “It was Badshah Khan’s spiritual power that convinced us .”
How could people known for their quickness to avenge violence with violence, people who ‘only understand force’—take to nonviolence with such enduring passion?
This book shows that in the logic of nonviolence such a ‘conversion’ makes perfect sense. For nonviolence, as Gandhi insisted, was not the ‘weapon of the weak’; on the contrary, it is the strongest form of human power and it takes the bravest and strongest to wield it. It was precisely these warlike Pathans who were ideally suited to re-channel their bravery from a material to a spiritual force—if only someone could show them the way. And that someone was Badshah Khan, whose courage and idealism earned him the title “Frontier Gandhi.”
http://www.progressive.org/0901/pal0202.html
Khan believed in equality for women and was emphatic about female education, Asfandiyar says. "If we achieve success and liberate the motherland, we solemnly promise you that you will get your rights," he pledged to women. "In the Holy Koran, you have an equal share with men. You are today oppressed because we men have ignored the commands of God and the Prophet."
The movement encouraged equal participation of women from the start. "Pathan women participating in nonviolent action campaigns would frequently take their stand facing the police or would lie down in orderly lines holding copies of the Koran," Bondurant writes.
So why is Khan almost unknown? For one thing, he has gotten a raw deal in South Asia itself. Due to his differences with the Pakistani authorities, Khan's name does not appear in official Pakistani history. Hence, he is little known in Pakistan outside the frontier area. Indeed, some of my Pakistani friends are barely aware of him.
In India, Ghaffar Khan has also been handled unfairly. Most often, he is portrayed as an adjunct of Gandhi (hence the term "Frontier Gandhi").
But Ghaffar Khan started forming his project of nonviolence and social reform before he came into contact with Gandhi. And his nonviolence drew its inspiration from the Koran and the Prophet Muhammad, in contrast to Gandhi, whose ideals were largely based on the Hindu holy book the Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, and the writings of Thoreau and Tolstoy.
Nonviolence, religious tolerance, women's rights, and social justice--certainly Khan could have done a lot worse than to spread these ideals. And he did it while deriving his inspiration from a religion some vilify as intrinsically intolerant.
http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v04n6p19a.htm
The Pathan nonviolent resistance movement was created by Badshah Khan, who had previously collided with the British when they opposed his efforts to establish a school for the province. Badshah Khan was an early political ally of Gandhi, attracted by the similarity in their spiritual outlook, despite their often conflicting religious backgrounds.
Although his imprisonment by the British quickly turned him into a national hero, Badshah Khan faced a number of difficulties in creating a nonviolent movement. British policy encouraged infighting among the Pathans, creating a situation where they were "too busy cutting one another's throat to think of anything else." Building on the martial traditions of the Pathans, Badshah Khan developed a disciplined nonviolent way for peace. He worked with a nonviolent army, called the Khudai Khidmatgars -- the "Servants of God" -- that had drills, badges, a tricolor flag, officers, and even a bagpipe corps. Volunteer numbers of this army opened schools, helped on work projects, and prevented violence at public meetings. During the Pathan participation in the Great Congress party salt boycott, British troops killed an estimated 200 to 300 nonviolent protestors. At one point, troops fired on a crowd that had expressed a willingness to disperse if they could remove their dead. Despite the deaths, the Khudai Khidmatgars did not panic and a platoon of British-commanded Indian soldiers refused to fire. The courage of the Khudai Khidmatgars caused their ranks to swell to 80,000 volunteers during the salt boycott.
The British tried bizarre means to goad the Pathans into violence, so that their rebellion could be crushed with familiar military tactics. At one point, understanding the Pathan custom of not removing their trousers as long as they are alive, the British soldiers forcibly stripped Khudai Khidmatgars of their clothing. Cows were shot or bayonetted. Villagers were forced inside their homes. One British commander had Khudai Khidmatgars thrown into cesspools after they were stripped and physically humiliated in public. On other occasions they were thrown into icy streams. Fields were destroyed and oil thrown on them. Despite such provocation, the Pathans did not crack. They understood Badshah Khan's observation that "All the horrors the British perpetuated on the Pathans had only one purpose: to provoke them to violence." Badshah Khan's movement finally succeeded, when the British gave the Pathans an elected civil government having parity with the rest of India.
The new Pathan provincial government, elected in 1937, was headed by Badshah Khan's brother, Dr. Khan Saheb. One of the first acts of that government was to remove the six-year ban by which the British had kept Badshah Khan from entering the region. With Indian independence now widely seen as inevitable, Badshah Khan's difficulties now centered on the opportunism of the Muslim League and the Congress Party leaders, who were more concerned with personal power than principle. Alone among prominent Congress leaders, Badshah Khan in 1940 supported Gandhi's refusal to cooperate with the British in the war against Japan. He saw that a departure from the principle of nonviolence would encourage deadly conflicts between Muslims and Hindus. The Congress Party launched the "Quit India" campaign in 1942, after the British had rejected the majority their members' agreement to participate in the war in exchange for independence. During that campaign, only in the Pathan Northwest Frontier Province did the struggle remain nonviolent.
On August 16, 1946, motivated by a desire to control all Muslim cabinet representation in a future Indian government, the Muslim League launched the Day of Direct Action. Where in other parts of India Hindus were beaten or forced to convert to Islam, in the Pathan Northwest Frontier Province, 10,000 Khudai Khidmatgars successfully protected Hindu and Sikh minorities by unarmed patrols.
Where to get the book--
http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0933452691-0
The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition & Memory in the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement (World Anthropology)
by Mukulika. Banerjee
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