Dave Andrews

Probably the greatest Muslim proponent and practitioner of nonviolent jihad was Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in Utmanzai in 1890. His father, Behram Khan, was a wealthy Pathan who ran a large guest house on the main road to Peshawar. Behram Khan had many servants, but he always took great pride in serving his honoured guests himself. His mother – whose name I do not know – lived her life, like most Pathan women, in purdah, hidden from prying eyes behind a veil of secrecy. She was reputedly quite devout, and set her son an unforgettable example of genuine piety.

In 1901 Ghaffar Khan attended Edwards Memorial School in Peshawar. The head-master, Rev. Wigram, a stern but generous teacher, was committed to providing the best education he could for the boys on the North-West Frontier. And the young Ghaffar Khan grew to appreciate him almost as much as his own parents.  Not surprisingly, in 1910, after spending a couple of years in the Islamic School in Aligarh, Ghaffar Khan started a school in Utmanzai, his own home town.

In 1913 Ghaffar Khan participated in a conference of progressive Muslims that was held in Agra. He met famous Islamic leaders, like Maulana Azad, and he seized the chance to discuss his understanding of Islam with them. ‘It is my inmost conviction,’ he was to say later, ‘that Islam is amal (work), yakeen (faith), and muhabat (love), and without these the name Muslim is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.’ ^[i]

Upon returning to the North-West Frontier after the conference, Ghaffar Khan decided to perform a chilla, or fast, in order to seek divine guidance on how he could put the amal, yakeen, and muhabat that he preached into practice. What actually occurred during the chilla no one knows. But we do know that Ghaffar Khan emerged from the fast with a resolute determination to serve God as fully as he could for the rest of his life.

In 1915, his wife, whom he married in 1912, having died of influenza, Ghaffar Khan set out on a pilgrimage to visit every village in the North-West Frontier. Three years – and five hundred villages – later, Ghaffar Khan returned, saying;  ‘I have one great desire. I want to rescue these gentle people from the tyranny of the foreigners who have disgraced them. I want to kiss the ground where their ruined homes once stood. I want to wash the stains of blood from their garments. (And) I want to create for them a world of freedom, where they can live in peace, and be happy.’[ii]

In 19i9 Ghaffar Khan was arrested by the British authorities, who saw him as a threat to their power in the region. And, over the next five years, Ghaffar Khan was in and out of prison all the time for protesting against British imperialism.  On one occasion, he found himself grinding corn in solitary confinement. His fellow prisoners offered to pay a bribe to get him out of prison. But he refused. His prison guard told him he could stop grinding corn if he wanted to. But he replied, ‘Robbers grind corn. And their cause is impure. Why should I mind grinding for my cause which is pure?’[iii]

In 1924, after a three-year stretch, Ghaffar Khan was released from prison. And he took the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He was fascin-ated with the life of the Prophet. Especially the early years. When Mohammed spent his time in Mecca. And he came back from his haj refreshed, ready to re-engage in the struggle for freedom, armed with the ‘weapon of the Prophet’

‘The weapon of the Prophet’, he says, ‘is sabr’, not ‘a sabre’. It literally means patience. ‘The weapon of the Prophet ‘he says, is patience. If you exercise patience, endure all hardships, victory will be yours. No power on earth can stand against it.’ He quotes the Koran as saying, ‘there is no compulsion in religion’; ‘forgive and be indulgent’; ‘render not vain your almsgiving by injury;’ ‘whosoever killeth one – for other than manslaughter – it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.’ [iv]

In 1928 Ghaffar Khan started a newspaper called the Pakhtun. It was to become the vehicle that he was to use to rally his people for the long ongoing struggle. Then, the following year, Ghaffar Khan launched one of the most exciting, and creative, and effective, nonviolent campaigns for independence ever conducted. It began innocuously enough with the Khan calling Pathans to join him in forming a movement called the Khudai Khidmatgar.  Any Pathan could join the movement, provided they swore an oath to become ‘A Servant Of God’:

‘I am a Khudai Khidmatgar, and as God needs no service…

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 with cruelty.

I promise to refrain from taking part in feuds and quarrels.

I promise to treat every Pathan as my neighbour and friend.

I promise to live a simple life, to practice virtue, and refrain from evil.

I promise to devote at least two hours a day to social work.’[v]

Now for a Pathan, an oath such as this, is a very serious matter. Once made, it can not be broken. Even upon pain of death. So in asking a Pathan to swear an oath such as this, Khan was hoping to appeal to the old warrior code to help forge a whole new warrior ethic. An ethic that would pride itself on forgiveness, rather than revenge, and service, rather than slaughter; and that would have the power to break the cycle of violence on the North-West Frontier once and for all.

It was a brilliant idea – culturally appropriate and politically astute. And Pathans responded to the Khan’s call by rallying behind the banner of the Khidmatgar in their thousands. In fact, the recruiting drive was so successful, that at one point up to one hundred thousand Pathans – men and women both – donned their famous red shirts, and went to work in the villages, singing:

‘We serve and we love; our people and our cause.

Freedom is our longing; our lives the price we pay.’ [vi]

The courage of these Khudai Khidmatgar was legendary. A British officer commanded a Khidmatgar by the name of Faiz Mohammed to take off his red shirt. He refused. The officer then commanded his soldiers to forcibly strip the recalcitrant. Faiz Mohammed did not fight back, but he refused to cooperate. It took up to nine soldiers to strip him of his proud red shirt. And even then they only were able to do it when they had beaten the Khidmatgar unconscious. The soldiers then came for a Khidmatgar by the name of Mohammed Naquib. He was beaten mercilessly. And his shirt was stripped off his back. But when he was ordered to take his trousers off he went berserk. He turned to run to get a gun. But he was pulled up short by the voice of his commander. ‘Mohammed Naquib!’ he cried. ‘Is your patience is exhausted so soon? You swore to remain nonviolent until death!’ With those words ringing in his ears, eyewitnesses say the chastened Khidmatgar turned back to face his tormentors, armed only with the ‘weapon of the Prophet’, fortitude and forbearance.

A large crowd gathered in Kissa Khani Bazaar in Peshawar to protest the brutality of the British. Troops from a nearby army base were deployed. The troops asked the people to disperse; and they had begun to do so, when, without warning, three armoured cars drove at speed into the crowd. Several people were run over and were killed on the spot. The troops asked the people to disperse; but they said they would do so only if the armoured cars withdrew, and they were allowed to carry away their fallen comrades. The troops did not remove their armoured cars, and refused to allow the people remove their fallen comrades. So the crowd did not disperse. The troops then opened fire, shooting point blank range into the front row of the gathered throng. When those in the front row fell wounded, the next row came forward and took their place. Over and over again, from 11am in the morning till 5pm in the evening, row upon row of Khidmatgars, took the place of their fallen comrades, bared their breasts, and were shot to death by the troops. Two to three hundred were killed – many more were wounded – and the bazaar was littered with piles of bodies of the dead and dying. The elite Garhwal Rifles were brought into deal with the crowd. But faced with unarmed men and women, who would not fight, they refused to fire. ‘We will not shoot our unarmed brethren!’ they said.

It was the beginning of the end for the empire on which – it was said –  that the sun would never set. [vii]

---

[i] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains Nilgiri Press Petaluma 1984 p63

[ii] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains foreword

[iii] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains p88-89

[iv] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains p117,209

[v] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains p110-112

[vi] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains p113

[vii] Eknath Easwaran A Man To Match His Mountains p122-124