Originally posted by Smarty
View Post
Yes Bacha khan was a leader of limited influence because he was the leader of a small ethnic group in Hindustan and that too divided into factions. The faction and piece of Land for which he was struggling was already sold to the British by their brothers whose support with the People of Pakhtunkhwa at that time was nothing more than few emotional slogans. The Province was kept a loop from rest of Hindustan and unlike other province no constitutional reforms were introduced here.The rest of Hindustan was unaware about the atrocities and cruelties of the British which they inflicted upon the people of Pakhtunkhwa in general and on Khudai Khidmatgars in particular. Describing the then political scenario, the british attitude towards pakhtunkhwa and the affiliation of KKs with Congress Bacha khan in his autobiography writes:
" On 16 August, Martial Law was declared
and for the time being the Province was cut off from the rest
of the subcontinent. Visits to and from the province were
not allowed and all sorts of communication were strictly
censored.30 Frequent firing and lathi charge foray into the
unarmed, non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar became a
routine. The Khudai Khidmatgars were stripped and
flogged and forced to walk naked through the cordons of
soldiers who prodded them with rifles and bayonets as they
passed. They were physically humiliated publicly and all
kind of inhumane treatment was inflicted upon them. On
previous occasions, when the Khudai Khidmatgars had not
yet pledged themselves to non-violence, all such acts of
provocation were avenged by the Pashtoons, whenever,
they got an opportunity. However, now they were told to
bear all these atrocities and insults with forbearance and
courage, and not to retaliate. The Khudai Khidmatgars
faithfully followed the non violence doctrine and offered no resistance
to the government. Ironically, appalled at the attitude of the
government oppression and as a reaction to the government
atrocities over the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgars, a large
number of Frontier inhabitants enrolled themselves in the
Khudai Khidmatgar cadres, thus providing a boost to the
movement. Before 23 April 1930, the Khudai Khidmatgars
were about twelve hundred, but, after the government repression, their number exceeded twenty-five thousands within a couple of months.
Mian Jaffar Shah and Abdullah Shah, two of the
prominent Khudai Khidmatgars, who had escaped sentence,
secretly came to Gujarat jail and met me and other
Khudai Khidmatgar leaders and informed us of the
government’s oppression in the N-WFP. They further told
us that the government was trying to prove their connection with the Bolsheviks. To avoid further repression by the government, it was decided to affiliate their organisation with an all-India political body. As Mian Jaffar
Shah had contacts in the Punjab, especially with Malik Lal Khan, the Khilafatist, he used that channel to meet Sir Fazli Hussain, the ‘strong man of Unionism’ in the Punjab, and a prominent member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council. But to the utter despair he refused to help KKS against the British government. Their next choice was the Indian National Congress. As the Congress was on the war path against the British Indian government, they
readily agreed to make a common cause with the Khudai Khidmatgars against British imperialism. But meanwhile the political scenario had been changed."
so Basically Bacha Khan was a reformist and KK organisation was a movement for the reformation of Pakhtun society but with the passage of time they were compelled to shape it in a political movement because they knew that the british was the main hurdle in their way.

Comment