Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Bacha Khan, also known as Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was a Pashtun freedom leader who sought to abolish the British Raj's control in India. He was given the nickname "Frontier Gandhi" because of his nonviolence and close friendship with Mahatma Gandhi.
In 1929, Khan established the Khudai Khidmatgar movement or the “Servants of God” movement. Because of the movement's success, he and his supporters were subjected to some of the most severe repression during the Indian Independence Movement.
FACTS ABOUT HIS LIFE
• Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in Utmanzai, Hashtnagar, on February 6, 1890 in the British India Punjab region.
• He was born into a rich Sunni Muslim Pashtun family who resided near the Jindee-a, a branch of the Swat River.
• Abdul Bahram Khan, his father, was a Hashtnagar landowner.
• Khan was Bahram's second kid to attend the British-operated Edward's Mission School, which was the region's only fully functional school and was run by Christian missionaries.
• Khan excelled in school and was encouraged by his mentor, Reverend Wigram, to see the importance of education in serving the local community.
• He was offered a highly coveted position in the British Indian Army's Corps of Guides unit during his tenth and final year of secondary school.
• Khan declined due to his observations that Indian officers in the Guides were still treated as second-class citizens in their own country.
• He then followed on his goal to attend university.
• Reverend Wigram (Khan's tutor) provided him the opportunity to study in London, England, alongside his brother, Abdul Jabbar Khan.
• Khan eventually gained permission from his father to move to London after graduating from Aligarh Muslim University.
• However, because his mother would not allow another son to move to London, he began working on his father's holdings.
• Khan was an outspokenopponent of India's proposed partition into the Hindu-majority Dominion of India and the Muslim-majority Dominion of Pakistan.
• He sided with the pro-union Indian National Congress and All-India Azad Muslim Conference against the pro-partition All-India Muslim League.
• He felt terribly violated when the Indian National Congress reluctantly accepted the partition plan without consulting the Khudai Khidmatgar leaders.
• Khan along with other Khudai Khidmatgar movement leaders in June 1947 formally issued the Bannu Resolution to British authorities.
• They demanding that the ethnic Pashtuns be given the option of creating an independent state of Pashtunistan, which would include all of the Pashtun territories of British India and not be included in the state of Pakistan.
• The British government, on the other hand, had publicly refused to comply with the resolution's demands.
• In reaction, Khan and his elder brother, Abdul Jabbar Khan, boycotted the 1947 referendum on whether the province should be amalgamated with India or Pakistan.
• They claiming that the Pashtun-majority region did not have the option of becoming independent or joining neighbouring Afghanistan.
• Khan declared allegiance to the newly constituted nation of Pakistan when the British government implemented Partition of India on 14 August 1947.
• He stayed in the now-Pakistani North-West Frontier Province.
• He was regularly arrested by the Pakistani government between 1948 and 1954.
• He was jailed in 1956 for his resistance to the One Unit programme, under which the government stated its intention to integrate all of West Pakistan's provinces into a single unit to resemble the political structure of the former East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh).
• During much of the 1960s and 1970s, Khan was imprisoned or exiled. When he died in Peshawar in 1988 while under house arrest, he was buried in his home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, according to his wishes.
KHUDAI KHIDMATGAR MOVEMENT
• In the North-West Frontier Province, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Pashtun independence warrior, led the Khudai Khidmatgar, a nonviolent movement against British domination of the Indian subcontinent.
• The movement became political over time, and the British became aware of its rising importance in the region.
• After Khan and other leaders were arrested in 1929, the movement formally joined the Indian National Congress after the All-India Muslim League refused to support them.
• Members of the Khudai Khidmatgar were well-organized, with the males wearing bright red shirts as uniforms and the women wearing black clothing.
• Many viewed the Khudai Khidtmatgar's opposition to Partition as a sign that the movement did not support the emergence of Pakistan as an independent nation.
QISSA KHWANI BAZAAR MASSACRE
After giving a speech in the town of Utmanzai in the North-West Frontier Province, British authorities detained Abdul Ghaffar Khan and other Khudai Khidmatgar leaders on April 23, 1930.
Protests erupted in nearby places, including Peshawar, following Khan's detention.
On the day of Khan's detention, protests erupted in Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar.
Crowds that refused to leave were dispersed by British soldiers who entered the market area. As a result, British army vehicles rammed into the throng, killing a number of demonstrators and onlookers.
Following the slaughter at Qissa Khwani Bazaar, the British intensified their campaign on Khudai Khidmatgar leaders and followers.
As a result, the organisation began engaging young women in its fight against the British, a choice that was consistent with the tactics used by revolutionaries throughout undivided India. Women were more adept at moving undetected than men.
According to Khudai Khidmatgar activists, the British harassed, abused, and coerced members of the movement, as they had done everywhere in the subcontinent. There was physical brutality as well as religious persecution. Following the recruitment of women into the movement, the British used violence, brutality, and abuse against the women who joined.
The Khudai Khidmatgar allied with the Congress party in August 1931, compelling the British to scale back their brutality against the movement.