The Frontier Gandhi: My Life & Struggle – Translated from the original Pukhto by Imtiaz Ahmad Sahibzada
Roli Books 
Rs.695, Pages 576

TCA Raghavan (The Book Review)

This is an autobiography of Khan Abdul Ghaffar (Bacha) Khan based on a 1983 text written by him in Pukhto. An earlier 1969 account, also translated and published in English, was deemed incomplete by Bacha Khan and he therefore wrote a more complete account which is now available to a non-Pukhto knowing readership.

Bacha Khan is remembered by different names. For Gandhians, he was the iconic ‘Frontier Gandhi’. In his native region and in Pakistan, generally he is Bacha Khan. After release from his first stint in jail, he was called Fakhr-e-Afghan, and that name too has stuck in Pakistan and Afghanistan. For Indians, he is Badshah Khan. This autobiography, much like Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth, has the endearing quality of simplicity and honesty that comes through and speaks directly to the reader.

Among Pathans, Bacha Khan is and will remain, a legend and his political legacy remains very much alive to this day. Thus the book has an endorsement by Malala Yousafzai that his message remains an inspiration for her activism for girls education and women’s empowerment.

My Life and Struggle takes us through the details of Bacha Khan’s early life, beginning with his rising frustration about Pashtun social and educational backwardness, and lack of unity. This was central to his activism and the autobiography brings out the frictions it generated with local maulvis and other status quoists such as maliks or headmen, who saw superstition and custom as integral to preserving the existing order and pride in their identity and privileges. Inevitably, this meant Bacha Khan incurred the displeasure of the authorities in what was the most securitised region of colonial India, concerned about anything new disturbing their enforced calm among tribes of the frontier.

Khan’s social activism led inevitably to protest which led to politics, and finally to nationalist politics. His cadre of social workers — the Khudai Khidmatgar — thus became a political force winning elections under the 1935 GOI Act, and thereafter again in 1946 and forming the government in the North West Frontier Province.

Bacha Khan himself was personally indifferent to the spoils of office and much like Gandhi, deeply ambivalent about State power bringing about real change. A close personal relationship with Mahatma Gandhi became very visible in 1930-40, and in 1947 amidst Partition and massacre, the two occupied a narrow crumbling ledge and remained steadfast to their ideals. What was striking about Bacha Khan was his grafting the virtue of non-violence among the Pashtun — raising in the process their self-esteem as also eroding the stereotype, which nevertheless endures up to the present day, of their predisposition to violence.

In this memoir, Bacha Khan’s faith shines through and its enlightened common sense cannot fail to strike a chord: “If progress and prosperity could be attained merely through prayers and giving alms, why would our dear Prophet (PBUH) have struggled so much and undergone so much hardship for what he believed in… the fact is that prayer without action is unacceptable to God,” he writes.

Religion, as in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, was intrinsic to Bacha Khan’s political life and activism and although it was a deep and uncompromising faith, it was never parochial. To him, a life according to the sharia is one without superstition, prejudice, retrograde social customs and significantly, one in which women have rights otherwise denied to them. In Bacha Khan’s case, as in Mahatma Gandhi’s, one’s faith is not exclusionary and there was no contradiction between one faith and another. Through the narrative, we get a sense of how deeply imbibed these views were.

‘Struggle’ is in the title of the autobiography and in fact politics as struggle is its recurrent theme. Before and after independence, Rajmohan Gandhi reminds us in his foreword, Bacha Khan spent a total of 27 years in prison.

In 1947, Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgars saw themselves as victims of a larger political transaction. In 1947, the North-West Frontier Province had a Congress government but its backbone was the Khudai Khidmatgars, Bacha Khan and his brother Dr Khan Sahib (Abdul Jabbar Khan) who was the chief minister.

Alone of all the provinces of British India, NWFP was singled out for a referendum. In Bacha Khan’s considered assessment, this was the result of a deal “made between Lord Louis Mountbatten and the Congress leaders to the effect that he would arrange to have Bengal and Punjab divided and that the Congress should agree to hold a referendum in the Frontier Province”.

Along with the Partition of India was the announcement that the people of NWFP would have the option to choose between India and Pakistan in a referendum. The Khudai Khidmatgars boycotted the referendum on the ground that the third option of an independent Pakhtunistan was denied to them. With the Khudai Khidmatgars’ boycott, the result was a foregone conclusion. The rest, as they say, is history but in Bacha Khan’s evocative words, he and his followers “were thrown to the wolves”.

For this turn of events Bacha Khan blames Mountbatten, Olaf Caroe the British Governor of NWFP, Patel and finally Nehru. In his view in the larger scheme of things what happened in 1947 was “not so much as the portioning of Hindustan, as that of the Muslims”.

The autobiography stops in 1947. An epilogue by the translator ably if briefly, summarizes his biography thereafter — the years in jail in Pakistan, long periods of self-imposed exile in Afghanistan and finally occasional visits to India. In 1987, he was awarded India’s Bharat Ratna — the first time a foreign national was so honoured.

In Afghanistan, and especially amongst the Pashtun, he remains a revered figure even as armed conflict defines both the terms and the vocabulary of the country’s politics. As intensified conflicts and civil war loom ahead in Afghanistan, which will inevitably have blowback on the Pashtuns in Pakistan and on the rest of the region, this is as good a time as any to read about Bacha Khan and his cherished ideals.