A non-violent Pathan warrior--lessons for Occupy Everywhere

[eridani]

Badshah Khan's followers truly were an army, with everything that characterizes military forces except weapons.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=979

On 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.

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.

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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.

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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.


http://www.monitor.upeace.org/innerpg.cfm?id_article=93

Badshah Khan was progressively drawn to involvement in the struggle for independence and sought inspiration from the nonviolent tradition of Islam, which he claimed had been present in that creed but had been forgotten. “There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or 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 all the time he was in Mecca, and it has since been followed by all those who wanted to throw off the oppressor’s yoke. But we had so far forgotten it that when Ghandhiji placed it before us, we thought he was sponsoring a novel creed.”

Badsha Khan set about setting up his own nonviolent army, Khudai Khidmatgars or “Servants of God” in 1929-30. As with Gandhi, the ”simple life” went hand in hand with nonviolence and anti-imperialism, and non-violence as a method was directed against Pathan violence as much as British violence. When the Pathans wanted weapons he would say “I am going to give you a weapon…It is the weapon of the Prophet…that weapon is patience and righteousness…If you exercise patience, victory will be yours.”

For two years after the formation of the Khudia Khidmtagars, Pathans died without fighting back violently, and Badshah Khan’s movement swelled to eighty thousand, many showing astonishing bravery in the face of British atrocities. He was arrested and then banished. He chose to spend his exile at Gandhi’s ashram and the two men became close. In the end British India did not stay together as we know, and Gandhi died of violence. Badshah Khan lived well into his nineties, dying in 1988, having spent thirty years on and off in prison. He never faltered either in his opposition to foreign rule nor in his resolve of the power of nonviolence

[ixion]

1. non-violence is the only path to success

in my opinion.