Lotus Collection © This translation, Imtiaz Ahmad Sahibzada, 2021 Foreword © Rajmohan Gandhi All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published in 2021 The Lotus Collection An imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash II Market, New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 40682000 E-mail: info@rolibooks.com Website: www.rolibooks.com Also at Bengaluru, Chennai, & Mumbai Cover design: Sneha Pamneja Layout: Bhagirath Kumar Production: Lavinia Rao ISBN: 978-81-949691-4-3 Typeset in ITC Galliard Std by Roli Books Pvt. Ltd. Printed at Saurabh Printers Pvt. Ltd., Greater Noida, India
Dedication
The normal practice is that when one authors a book, it is dedicated to someone. The verses of this poem of Makhfi Sahib, have proved to be my life long companion in my thoughts, actions and the struggle of my political life. That is why I want to dedicate this book to them and wish to bring it before the public with them: ‘Khawenda wudana klray Zamoong de yawalai Hujra; Yaw zai pe kshay de zanaklray, De Pukhto dalla khwara; Yaw zlre, yaw saa yawshanay klray, Day beyal aw beyal Pukhtun sara.’ ‘Oh God for us Pukhtuns create, Of brotherhood a structure, Where we Pukhtuns may congregate Our numerous dispersed groups; One heart, one breath create for them, These individual beings.’ ‘Kashmir na ter Herat horay, Baluchistan na ter dooray; Da tol Pukhtun dae har cheray, Tse rangay prot zaray zaray; De yaw wajud pa shanay klray, Ya khudaya da zara zara.’ ‘From Kashmir to Herat all spread out, Baluchistan, beyond, They’re all Pukhtuns, no matter where, Disorganised, dismayed; And of them make a whole that’s strong, Oh God of strength, compassion.’
Dedicated to my niece, Shandana Humayun Khan, at whose special request this translation was undertaken. – Imtiaz Ahmad Sahibzada
Contents Foreword ix Note on this Translation
xv
Preface xvii 1. Introduction
1
2. Enrolment in School and Conditions of the Time
15
3. A New Field and Fresh Thoughts
43
4. With the Sheikh-al-Hind Sahib
62
5. The Rowlatt Act and Us
86
6. The Khilafat Movement and Hijrat 111 7. Intellectual Revolution
119
8. Jail and the Tale of the Jail
124
9. Political Developments and the Monthly Pukhtun Magazine
196
10. Organized Political Activity
229
11. The Gujarat Jail and Alliance with the All-India Congress Party
242
12. The Gandhi–Irwin Pact
272
13. The Round Table Conference
310
14. Working in my Own Province
321
15. In Hazaribagh Jail: Mass Arrests Outside
364
16. Proscribed from Visiting the Frontier and Punjab
374
17. The First Government of the Khudai Khidmatgar 407 18. The Nuts and Bolts of the Khudai Khidmatgar (End of 1942)
432
19. The Elections – Cabinet Mission – Interim Government 463 20. Dear Readers
501
Epilogue: Bacha Khan’s Life after Partition (1947) till his Death, 20 January 1988
503
Notes 513 Glossary 523 People who Made this Book Possible 539 Index 543
Foreword In earlier generations, Indians called him ‘Khan Sahib’ or ‘Badshah Khan’. Many spoke or wrote of him as ‘the Frontier Gandhi’. Hindispeakers called him ‘Seemaant Gandhi’. However, ‘Bacha Khan’ is how Pakistanis referred to him and still do. If many could not remember Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s full name, no one who saw him, whether directly or in a photograph, could forget his towering appearance. In my biography of him, first published in 2004,1 I recalled Badshah Khan’s ‘immensely tall figure, absolutely straight back, great nose, kindly eyes, and permanent air of nonviolent defiance’. He died in 1988. It would have been an amazing privilege to present my biography to him. Instead of that, I am being asked to write a foreword to his autobiography! The honour humbles me. It makes me want to hide. I hope nonetheless that many Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis – and others too – will pore over this indispensable piece of our subcontinent’s history. Collaboration across the India-Pakistan-Afghanistan border has produced this book, with a leading Indian publisher bringing out a text created in Pakistan about our joint recent history. How wonderful. Here is my understanding of how the Pashto original of this text was born. Badshah Khan seems to have dictated his story, from birth to the 1947 creation of Pakistan, in 1965, when he was living in exile in Kabul. He was 75 then. Since he lived until 1988 (reaching the age of 98), missing from this autobiography are forty-one years (from 1947 onwards) of Badshah Khan’s life. That was a substantial chunk of time, during which interesting things continued to happen to, through and around Badshah Khan. Readers should be aware of this absence.
x | The Frontier Gandhi: My Life and Struggle
Badshah Khan dictated the story in his language Pashto (also spelt Pakhto or Pukhto). This translation into English is the painstaking work of a distinguished Pakistani civil servant, Imtiaz Ahmad Sahibzada, now in his eighties, who has also translated some of the brilliant poetry of Badshah Khan’s eldest son, Ghani Khan. In 2003, when I was working on my biography of Badshah Khan, I had the good fortune to find, in a library, a previous English version2 (published in 1969) of an autobiography by him. Therein it was stated that Badshah Khan had dictated the story of his life – in Pashto, in Kabul – to Kanwar Bhan Narang, a former Frontier Province legislator who was living in Kabul at the same time, and that a woman named Helen H. Bouman had translated the text into English. Though I do not know it for a fact, it seems likely that the Pashto text from which Imtiaz Ahmad Sahibzada has produced this English translation is connected to the text that led to the 1969 book. However, the story emerging in this translation, while remaining confined to the pre-1947 period, seems fuller than what the 1969 book presented, and I note that Badshah Khan appears to have given a 1981 date to this text. I do not know how many days Badshah Khan took to dictate his story. Whether, while dictating it, he had papers and books to consult is also not known, although towards the end he refers to Maulana Abul Kalam Azad’s account of the acceptance of Partition, which we know was offered in Azad’s India Wins Freedom, first published (a year after the Maulana’s death) in 1959. **** I was only ten when, in 1945 or 1946, I first met Badshah Khan. Visiting Delhi, he stayed for a few days in our family’s Connaught Circus flat above the offices of the Hindustan Times, which my father, Devadas Gandhi, the Mahatma’s youngest son, was editing. Ten years younger than Badshah Khan, my father had been a coprisoner with him in 1930–31 in Gujarat Jail, in western Punjab. Also in that jail at the time were Dr. M.A. Ansari of Delhi, Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew of Amritsar and Kashmir, and Maulana Zafar Ali Khan of Lahore, all of them significant figures in the subcontinent’s modern history.
556 | The Frontier Gandhi: My Life and Struggle
Takht-e-Bahi, 63, 64, 70, 235 Tarboorwali, 15, 41 Tarzai, Mahmud, 116 The Prophet (PBUH), 24, 26, 28, 29, 45, 59, 61, 63, 78, 109, 138, 166 The Statesman of Calcutta, 318 Tijarat Lala, 221 Tillaee, Sultan Muhammad Khan, 3 Tolstoy, 167 Ummat-ul-Islam, 145 Unionist Party, 468 United Provinces, 313, 367, 369, 382, 399–401 Urmar, 302, 349-351 Ustaz, Ahmad Shah, 91, 100, 101 Ustaz, Ismail, 15 Uthmanzai, 1, 2, 16, 17, 22, 43–45, 47, 64, 89, 91, 94, 98, 99, 119–121, 123, 165, 193, 195, 198–200, 206, 214, 215, 227, 229, 235, 240, 242, 248, 269, 274, 282, 298, 306–309, 323, 329, 347–349, 361, 366, 418, 435, 462, 498, 510 Valdegrew, 21 Viqar-ul-Mulk (Nawab), 40
Wadood, Abdul, 82 Wali, Abdul (son), 2,12, 87, 109, 165, 173, 174, 201, 248, 347, 376, 380, 385, 392, 407, 419, 450, 455, 456, 503 Walwar, 33, 52 Wavell (Lord), 468, 471, 475, 476, 485 Waziristan, 252, 326, 438, 444, 476–479 Wigram Brothers, 20, 44 Willingdon (Lord), 293, 295 Wylie (Mr.), 99, 316, 317 Yakatoot Camp, 458 Yazeed, 25 Younus, Muhammad, 490 Yousafzai, 1, 2, 201, 202, 237, 238, 300, 338, 339 Zain-ul-Abidin, Hafiz, 77 Zakat, 9, 60, 225 Zakhakhel, Afzal Khan, 444 Zalmai Pukhtun, 462 Zaman, Muhammad, 16, 309, 338 Zaman, Raja Sikandar, 395 Zamindar, 50 Zeerad Thanedar, 96 Ziarat Kaka, 272 Zia-Ul-Haq(General Muhammad), 507