Badshah Khan:  Islamic/Non-Violent

                 A Biographical Sermon

                                 by
                      A. J. (Jack) Good
                     Roanoke, Virginia

The Pathans
The year 1842 was especially violent in the Indian sub-continent. Local fighters, composed primarily of a tribe known as Pathans, attacked Kabul, determined to remove the puppet government the British had established to rule Afghanistan. The British, overwhelmed, withdrew. In January, fourteen thousand British troops, along with another twelve thousand staff, wives and children, attempted to flee through the Khyber Pass to the safety of British India.

Alas for the British, the same Pathan tribes who had attacked them in Kabul lived alongside the Khyber Pass, and considered themselves keepers of this pathway from Europe to India. Daily and viciously the retreating English were attacked. By design, the Pathans left one survivor, a medical officer named William Brydon, who stumbled into Peshawar to tell the story of the massacre.

Fast forward to the current year. The descendents of the Pathans now make up the heart of the Taliban. Their fighters engaged, wore down, and finally expelled the Soviet Union. They are attempting to do the same with American and United Nation’s armies. Humanity has produced few, if any, more fiercely violent communities.

Their tendency to violence is expressed within their group as well as toward the outsider. Honor codes are an important part of Pathan life. Revenge for any insult to self or family is usually swift and fatal. The pursuit of honor and revenge takes a terrible toll on community life, making it difficult for Pathans to sustain institutions such as schools or clinics.

Amazingly, the Pathans, this notoriously violent people produced, during the struggle for Indian independence from England, one of the twentieth century’s leading proponents of non-violence. His story is fascinating and far too important to be forgotten.

Khan’s Early Decades
Not all Pathan life is overshadowed by blood and gore. In some of the verdant valleys of Afghanistan a pleasant daily life has been the norm. The story I want to relate begins in 1888 in one such village in the Peshawar valley in what is now the Northwest Frontier of Pakistan.

If we had visited that village, known as Utmanzai, near the beginning of the twentieth century, we would likely have found an impressive looking tribesman known as Behran Khan walking with his ten year old son Abdan Ghaffer Khan. Khan was both the family name and a title given to the person who owned most of the village.

Each village had its own Khan. The behavior of khans varied widely. Many were oppressive. Behran Khan was known for his gentleness, for his sensitivity to the poor in his village, and for his hospitality to strangers. Behran was not pleased when he heard rumors of some new rebellion planned by his fellow Pathans, for he knew that eventually the British would prevail, his beloved kinsmen would be humiliated, and a new cycle of killing would be set in motion.

His villagers trusted their unique Khan and surrounded his two sons with love.

Ghaffer Khan thus grew up in almost idyllic conditions. His older brother had already gone east to a school in central India where he was studying to become a medical doctor.

Ghaffer Khan absorbed some of his father’s gentleness. Yet he was a Pathan. He could be hot-blooded. His father felt compelled to discipline him severely on a few occasions, and Ghaffer, late in his life, admitted that when his own sons were born he, too, practiced corporal punishment.

Ghaffer was an outstanding student. Thus, when he finished his local schooling, his mother reluctantly allowed him to go east into India to a British Episcopal mission school. The instructors gave him a solid education, and made modest efforts to interest him in Christianity. He found Christian teachings appealing, but refused to convert.

His conversion almost went in another direction. Native people in the Indian subcontinent had ambiguous feelings about the British. Much as they wished their rulers would quit Indian, they admired the efficiency of these light-skinned people, and the power they wielded across an empire that circled the globe. When Ghaffer was offered an opportunity to enlist in a native unit of the British army, he seized the chance.

One day, after signing some papers, he was sitting in an outdoor restaurant discussing his plans with friends when British members of the military walked by. One British officer stopped and sneered: “So, you plan to join the military! We’ll be glad to have you, but we will teach you your place. You will always be obedient to the real power, which is British!”

Ghaffer was devastated. He had hoped that by putting on a British uniform he could improve his status. In reality, serving in the military would only underline his status as an inferior being. He immediately resigned his commission. He returned to his village, and to an arranged marriage.

The years of his absence had not been good to the Pathans. A self-appointed religious leader had insisted that the Prophet Mohammed had spoken to him directly, promising that if he raised an army and attacked the British outposts, the British would be defeated and the region would be free. Over ten thousand soldiers enlisted in this cause. One moonlit night they attacked two British forts. Wave after wave of men and boys, using only ancient rifles and knives and swords, swept toward the garrisons. The English soldiers, surprised and outnumbered, fought back with their superior weapons. They also did something the Afghans did not understand. Using wires the Afghans had seen but not comprehended, they telegraphed for assistance. By noon the next day thousands of Pathans were dead, but the remainder thought they were winning. Then they heard noise at their back. They looked and saw a relief force of British cavalry. The natives were routed.

The British took revenge. (Anyone who feels that the non-violence of the quit India campaign was successful because the British were so tender should re-read this history.) British armies went to village after village, places that had been peaceful and relatively prosperous. The people were expelled with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. Furniture and other useful objects were put on carts and taken to British garrisons. What was of no use to the British was piled in the village center and burned. Walls of houses and places of worship were taken down by dynamite. Most of the British army then withdrew. They had made their point. They had also earned the hatred of the Pathan tribes, a hatred that would endure until Ghaffer Khan taught them another approach to conflict.

Steps Toward Reform
Ghaffer Khan, back from school, tried to settle into a normal Afghan life. He learned to love his wife and they produced two sons. But tragedy struck. His wife died. The two sons were placed with an uncle. Later, Khan would enter another arranged marriage, and, again, learn to love his wife. This time, on a Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca, his wife was caught in a frightened mob crossing a bridge. She was pushed off and killed. He determined to live the remainder of his life in celibacy.

In his early adult years Ghaffer often meditated on the plight of his people. The Pathans were, he knew full of potential. Yet they spent too much of their energy engaged with the past, seeking revenge for insults and hurts best forgotten.

Khan knew how much education had improved his life. He wanted the same for all in his village. His first effort at reform was to start a school. It was a great success. But its success was its undoing. The mullahs, the local religious leaders, felt threatened. An educated population would be difficult to control. The British rulers were equally threatened, for precisely the same reason. The British closed his school, with a stern warning to Khan to mind his own business.

He had seen, however, the possibilities in education and other means of reform. So he traveled to neighboring villages, starting schools. His concerns broadened. He gave instruction in simple forms of hygiene. Social services were developed. He taught the villagers how to make their own clothing and thus to be less dependent on the British for the necessities of life.

The British recognized the threat. Khan was sent to prison. It was a living arrangement to which he would become accustomed. About a third of his adult life was spent in jail, first in British prisons, later in Pakistani prisons, much of this time in solitary confinement or in chains. He lost most of his teeth and much of his weight. But he learned to survive.

Once, during a long prison stay, he was walking across a prison yard when he heard a familiar voice call his name. It was his father, who had been jailed for his own acts of resistance. The father embraced the son. “I thought they had hanged you long ago,” he said through tears.

Islam and Non-Violence
During his time in prison, he designed ways he could improve the lives of his people. He also read his Qur’an. He recognized that the Prophet Mohammed, during his days in Mecca, had practiced non-violence. The Prophet refused to engage in warfare in those years, even with those who opposed him. He settled all disputes through negotiation. An overall strategy for dealing with the British was forming.

Khan returned home, now a hero because of his imprisonment. He continued his work with schools and social outreach, often traveling from village to village in the dark.

This unusually tall man was, however, difficult to hide. He also was uncomfortable with his furtive role. He was accustomed to confronting life more forcefully. How to proceed? How to be effective? One day, in a small village, Khan announced that he would withdraw. He entered the village mosque, asking that only water be brought to him. For days he fasted. He meditated and prayed. He asked Allah for clear guidance. Finally he emerged. His request for guidance had not been answered. What he had gained was a sense of self-confidence. He was sure that the road ahead would be difficult and would include suffering. Yet he knew he would survive and make a positive difference.

After the fast, a new dimension was added to his social outreach: non-violent non-cooperation. Appealing to the pride of the Pathan, he taught them a new way of approaching the British. They had learned they could not win militarily. So, whenever the British passed a rule that was especially oppressive, Khan taught them to say to the Englishmen: “You are my equal, but not my ruler. I will therefore ignore your unjust law.”

Ghaffer Khan also appealed to the people’s religious fervor. Strongly Islamic, the Pathans had relied on the passages from the Koran that called for jihad, usually interpreted as violent struggle. Khan found other passages, those from the Prophet’s non-violent, period, and stressed those words. Here are some of the verses from the Qur’an that are seldom heard in the west, but which Ghaffer quoted to his people:

Whenever they kindle the fire of war, God extinguishes it. They strive to create disorder on earth and God loves not those who create disorder. (Sura 5:64)

And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. (Sura 5:32)

Repel evil with that which is best (not with evil). (Sura 23:96)

And obey Allah and his Messenger; and fall into no disputes, lest ye lose heart and your power depart, and be patient and persevering for Allah is with those who patiently persevere. (Sura 8:46)

Kudai Khidmatgar
His efforts to establish schools and clinics were welcome. But when he talked of non-violence toward the British, he received only a tepid response. A few hundred, perhaps as many as a thousand, said they would try this radical approach. Khan was disappointed, but he pressed on.

He knew this small group would function best if they could be identified and if they supported one another as an army of non-violence. But what to wear? Those volunteering were among the poorest in the world. They could afford no new uniforms. Someone, perhaps partly in jest, offered an old worn white shirt. White shirts were, however, ubiquitous. This would not set them apart. One other thing that was common in those villages was red dye. A bystander picked up the white shirt, dipped it in a nearby pot of red dye, and, behold, a uniform!

So, scattered through the villages, a few young men and boys began to appear in their distinctive red shirts. Ghaffer gave this rag-tag group a name: the Kudai Khidmatgar, roughly translated, The Army of God.

The British knew a threat when they saw one. At first they used the red color to brand the movement communist, but this effort at demonizing never achieved traction. Soon British soldiers were visiting villages, insisting that anyone with a red shirt turn it in and renounce their membership in the Army of God.

Khan was delighted. British opposition was just the tonic his weak following needed. Instead of diminishing the Kudai Khidmatgar, the British effort helped it grow. At its peak it is estimated that one hundred and thirty thousand Pathans signed on, proudly wore their red shirts, and submitted to training in this new way of relating to their oppressors.

Training was essential. Khan enlisted members of each village to play the role of British soldiers. In the training exercises, the red-shirted Pathans were, by their fellow villagers, mocked and threatened. Khan taught his followers the dignity of refusing to be drawn into combat. “You are my equal but not my master” was repeated time and time again.

Of course, some faltered. The British, who learned to fear a non-violent Pathan more than a violent Pathan, did their best to incite the villagers to retaliation. A few took the bait and returned to violence. Yet, the vast majority was faithful to their vows of non-violence.

The Pathans followed Ghaffer Khan for many reasons. One was his obvious concern for all those he encountered. Another was his enormous integrity. They knew he could be trusted. They knew he shared their religion, and they embraced his dream that the Pathans could rise above their past.

Because of this deep trust, they gave Ghaffer a new title. He would be known as Badshah Khan. “Badshah” means, roughly, “Khan of Khans,” similar to, but somewhat less lofty than the English phrase “King of kings.” He was uncomfortable with such a title, but recognized that it came from the affection of his people and that the title might enhance his effectiveness.

Khan and Ghandhi
Many who are familiar with this period of history will recognize the similarity between Khan’s story and events taking place further east. Mahatma Gandhi had begun, in the early decades of the twentieth century, to lead his campaign of non-violent non-cooperation. Gandhi, like Khan, stressed education, sanitation, and cottage industries—in short, self-reliance. At the beginning of the First World War, Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian leaders had been promised that, if they would provide Indian soldiers to help fight the Germans, the British would begin the process of withdrawing from India. India provided the soldiers. When the war ended, however, England reneged on their part of the bargain. Anger increased across India. Gandhi used all his skill and energy to harness that anger into non-violent channels.

Gandhi and Khan were pleased to learn of each other’s programs. Khan became a member of the governing board of the National Congress, the group overseeing the efforts to free India from British rule. In the rare times when the two were both out of jail, Badshah Khan and Mahatma Gandhi arranged extended periods to be together. Khan went to Gandhi’s Ashram for retreats, and, in turn, Gandhi visited the Northwest Frontier to see the Army of God. He marveled at the Red Shirts, and their dedication. He gave Badshah pointers in making non-violence more than a method, but a philosophy of life.

When Congress gathered, crowds surrounded trains to catch a glimpse of the remarkable persons who, unarmed, had taken on one of history’s greatest empires. Gandhi was the diminutive one, small of stature, shrunken even more by years of work and fasting. Badshah, by contrast, was over six feet tall, a giant by the standards of the Indian sub-continent. One was a committed Hindu, the other a dedicated Muslim. Their differences became part of the bonds between them.

The Salt March and Its Aftermath
An electrifying episode in the non-violent movement to free India came in April of 1930. Gandhi, after having informed the British of his intent, led his followers from his home to a village by the sea. He went into the water, let some seawater seep through his fingers, then held up the residue. Salt! Salt was the second highest source of income England enjoyed from their Indian colony. Salt was heavily taxed. Natives of India were forbidden to make salt. Gandhi had just broken that law. He then encouraged people all over India to do the same.

Indians, offered a concrete way to protest their subservience, responded enthusiastically. Salt was brought from the sea, passed from house to house, all, or course, without tax. The British made mass arrests. Soon the jails overflowed.

For those in the Northwest Frontier, where Badshah Khan had trained his Kudai Khidmatgar, the salt march created their moment of greatest testing. On April 29, 1930, Khan addressed his followers and reminded them of their pledge of non-violence. He set out to make the same address in the city of Peshawar, but was arrested along the way. All the people of the village in which the arrest took place pledged themselves to be members of the non-violent Army of God. The British were not making headway.

Word of Khan’s arrest reached Peshawar, and a crowd gathered to protest. A British army arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse. After a time they began to do so. Suddenly a group of British armored cars arrived and drove directly into the crowd. Several people were killed. The crowd, many in red shirts, increased in size. The army officers told the people to go home. They refused. The troops were ordered to fire. I quote from the official report of the incident from the Congress Party:

Several people were killed or wounded, and the crowd was pushed back some distance. At about half past eleven, endeavors were made by one or two outsiders to persuade the crowd to disperse and the authorities to remove the troops and armored cars. The crowds were willing to disperse if they were allowed to remove the dead and injured and if the armored cars and the troops were removed. The authorities, on the other hand, expressed their determination not to remove the armored cars and the troops. The result was that the people did not disperse and were prepared to receive the bullets and lay down their lives. The second firing then began, and off and on, lasted for more than three hours.

The Congress report estimated that two to three hundred were killed and many more wounded. Badshah Khan had trained his people well. Not one of his followers—a people once known for their vengeance—responded to this killing with more killing.

Independence and Partition
After the salt march, and after the British response had failed to break the Indian’s will, the final result was inevitable. India was moving toward independence. Still, a second world war, nearly two decades of negotiations, and a change of British government were needed before the British finally quit India. Because the movement for independence was non-violent, India (and Pakistan) determined to remain in the British Commonwealth. It was an amazing, almost unprecedented, story.

But we move too quickly, and omit an important sub-plot. The vision shared by Badshah Khan, and Gandhi and all the Congress Party was of a unified Indian subcontinent, an inclusive area where Hindu, Moslem, Sheik, Buddhist, Christian and others could live together as a harmonious demonstration to the entire world.

Some Islamic leaders, however, did not trust the Hindu majority to give their people a fair deal in an independent India. In 1940 an organization called the Muslim League, under the leadership of Ali Jinnah, passed a resolution calling for a separate state for Muslims. The proposed state would be called Pakistan. The Muslim League would, from this time on, work at cross-purposes with Gandhi, Khan, and the National Congress.

Jinnah, who did not have the backing of all Muslims, had enough strength to create mischief. He threatened mass violence if his demands were not met. He met separately with the British, making secret deals and undermining the efforts of the National Congress.

The issue came down to a simple question: independence with partition, or no independence at all. In 1946 the Congress reluctantly agreed to two separate nations. The followers of Islam would have their homeland.

Areas with Muslim majorities became Pakistan. Those with other majorities, mostly Hindu, remained as India. The immediate result was chaos. A large area in the west, bordering Afghanistan, including much of the area where Badshah Khan had labored, became West Pakistan. In the east, the state of Bengal was cut in two, with half becoming East Pakistan. The two sides of this ungovernable entity were separated by a thousand miles. Within three decades this unnatural state would break apart. East Pakistan would become Bangladesh. At least three wars would be fought over the still-disputed state of Kashmir.

The Emergence of Pakistan
As partition took place, Muslims from India moved to Pakistan, while Hindus who had resided in what was becoming Pakistan moved to India. The two groups massacred one another as they passed. Khan pleaded for the bloodshed to end. Gandhi engaged in a “fast unto death” to try to stop the violence. Death came to Gandhi, but not by fasting. In January of 1948, one evening after prayers, a crazed Hindu, claiming that Gandhi leaned too much toward the Muslims, shot him to death. Badshah Khan and others were left to deal with the chaos.

Khan was devastated. His closest friend and colleague had been killed; his beloved India had been divided; and many of his ties to Hindu friends had been severed. Nonetheless, he took an oath of allegiance to Pakistan. He could be a loyal member of this new nation, but he could not support the succession of military dictators that forced their way to power after Ali Jinnah died.

Khan and his middle son formed the Awami Party, a political group committed to democratic reforms. The military dictators were not pleased. Khan was arrested again. The final decades of his life were marked by a succession of arrests, time spent in Pakistani prisons, release for health reasons, then arrests again.

Equally tragic, the rulers of Pakistan attempted to write Khan out of their history. Ali Jinnah, a man of enormous ego, wanted to be known as the sole father of the country. Following Jinnah’s death a year after Pakistan was formed, a series of military coups destroyed any semblance of democracy. The new leaders wanted the nation to be known for its military strength. Acknowledging the role of an advocate of non-violence in the birth of Pakistan was not in their playbook. References to Badshah Khan were removed from schoolbooks, and people were discouraged from mentioning him.

My own experience was indicative. In the late 1950’s I lived for a month in the city of Quetta, in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. One day I heard a whispered conversation about a non-violent leader of the independence movement whose influence had been strong in that area. I asked my host family for more information. They were polite but firm. Clearly, if I wanted to be a good guest I would not explore this subject. I filed the information away, hoping to research it when I returned to the US.

Khan was fifty-nine years old when Pakistan was formed. He still had several decades to agitate, non-violently, for a more democratic nation. Despite the traumas his body had endured, his life force was undiminished as he entered his tenth decade. Finally, in 1987, at age 97, a series of strokes left him incapacitated. The following year a lung infection set in, and he died near the city of Peshawar in Pakistan.

The government of Pakistan could erase his name from history books, but they could not erase his name from the memory of the people he had served. At his death a remarkable thing happened. He died while the Soviet Union was fighting to impose a puppet government in Afghanistan. The Soviety Union was opposed by—who else?—the Pathans, the very people Khan had once taught non-violence. When news of his death spread, the warring factions in Afghanistan proclaimed a truce. The Soviet Union, which had closed the borders, opened the Khyber Pass to allow his body to be brought back to the home he once enjoyed in Jahalabad, Afghanistan. An estimated twenty thousand people accompanied his body for that long funeral procession.

More than forty years after I lived in Quetta, I finally, with the help of my wife, discovered reliable material about Badshah Khan. In a time when “Islamic terrorist” and “radical Islamist” are used as if they were single words, I have determined that it is crucial that the story of this remarkable Islamic man of non-violence be remembered. One of my goals for my retirement years is to circulate this story as widely as possible.

Bibliography

Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed, World Anthropology Series, Wendy James and N. J. Allen, Editors. Oxford University Press, 2000.

Eknath Easwaran, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, Nilgiri Press, 1984, 1999.

Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Nonviolence and Peace Building in Islam, University Press of Florida, 2003.