Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan has been lavished with more names than can be kept track of. Badshah Khan. Bacha Khan. Baba. Khan Sahib. Frontier Gandhi. In each case, the name says as much about this remarkable man as about the vision of those bestowing it. In narratives of India8217;s freedom movement during the 1930s and 1940s, he is also seen as the embodiment of hopes of accommodation and unity 8212; as too the seeming naivete of those dreams. In Rajmohan Gandhi8217;s slim and elegant book, the biographical sketch is as much the story of a life as it is an interrogation of the subcontinent8217;s present and past.
The book, says Gandhi, has long been on his mind. While finalising the list of profiles for Understanding the Muslim Mind 20 years ago, a rule he set himself was that he would not take up any living person. Badshah Khan passed away in 1988. A nudge towards the task came on that fateful day in September 2001. Coincidentally, on the 11th he had just returned to Delhi after a visit to Badshah Khan8217;s family in his native Charsadda Valley in the North-West Frontier Province. 8220;In the new phase ushered in by that event,8221; writes Gandhi, 8220;Badshah Khan8217;s life, it was obvious, had taken on additional meaning.8221;
8220;To a knowledgeable Indian,8221; says Gandhi, 8220;guilt rather than a sense of relevance is what the name Badshah Khan first triggers, for when in 1947 power was finally sighted by the Indian National Congress, promises given to Badshah Khan were promptly forgotten. He who in hard times had stood for Indian unity was dropped. The sacrifice of a faithful friend was the price of power. Quietly, swiftly, matter-of-factly, leaders in India paid the price.8221;
And left Ghaffar Khan to negotiate his own adjustments with a divided subcontinent. This coming 8220;sacrifice8221; hangs over the Pakhtun8217;s first acquaintance with the Indian freedom movement, his enduring friendship with Mahatma Gandhi, his insistence that his Khudai Khidmatgars 8220;Red Shirts8221; remain nonviolent, his devotion to the cause of unity.
Rajmohan Gandhi also addresses the question of Badshah Khan8217;s Pakhtun nationalism. Was he a nationalist or a universalist? Did his devotion to the Pakhtuns imply alienation of other ethnic groupings, Punjabis, Tajiks, etc? In answering these questions, he asserts the salience of Ghaffar Khan8217;s vision today.
