Bacha Khan - a reminder that decency can prevail

Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan (Bacha Khan) was born in 1890, in the former North West Frontier Province. Today, the image of Pakhtun society invokes all sorts of caricatured imagery regarding Pakhtun culture. Bacha Khan stands in contrast to the simplified cartoons in our head, as a man who believed that one cannot fight injustice without resisting injustice in one’s own country, and in one’s own soul first.

His movements were not obsessed with scapegoating the British for all South Asian or Pakhtun problems. Instead, he believed that it is we who must discipline ourselves through strict nonviolence, patience, respect for our opponent, and by raising the consciousness of our own society before pointing fingers at anyone else. Only then do we earn the moral high ground to refuse cooperation with an externally imposed injustice. He believed that practices that are backward in our own homes should be reformed first and foremost, as well as harmful customs in the larger society. The first organisation he spearheaded was called “Anjuman Islah-e-Afghania,” or “Committee for the Social Reforms of the Afghans”. Today, one can’t imagine a social movement anywhere would be named in that formula. Only from a place of moral self-correcting can we claim to know better, for it is we who harm ourselves more than any enemy.

This may seem like a morally purist pursuit, but it is also a practical need for succeeding as a society. If we look at most anti-colonial movements throughout history, we will find that movements that purely scapegoated the British or any other colonial entity (with negligible exceptions) didn’t produce a better society after achieving independence, and often degenerated into tyranny — take the example of Algeria, and much of Africa and the Middle East, and beyond. Societies that produced real democracy are ones where there was a movement focused on self-improvement and self-respect prior to, or at least alongside, an anti-colonial struggle. Bacha Khan sought to eliminate what he considered to be revenge-taking and violence within his own society. A “Khudai Khidmatgaar” had to take an oath before being part of the movement, swearing off violence and revenge, and embracing nonviolence, with a promise to serve God — and since God required no service, serving humanity instead. This seems alien to us today, when much of the country is in the grips of fundamentalism, intolerance, and violence.

Three countries lowered their flags the day Bacha Khan died, in 1988: Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, and India, and there was a ceasefire in the Soviet-Afghan war in honour of his funeral procession across the Durand Line. PHOTO: File

To succeed as a society, we must take responsibility for our own actions and refrain from scapegoating others, whether the “other” is a foreign power or even our own rulers. Today, we find that the tendency to scapegoat exists on both ends of the political spectrum. The far right may scapegoat immigrants, while the far left may scapegoat the rich. We have seen the consequences of both these logics being taken to their logical extreme in the 20th century, with Soviet and Nazi totalitarianism. In our country, we like to scapegoat America or the West more generally. If these critics were to be put in the seat of power tomorrow, one can be sure that all the fundamental problems would remain unresolved, since most of their time would be spent punishing the preordained scapegoat instead of addressing structural deficiencies.

One is reminded of Robespierre’s simplistic proclamation during the French Revolution, that “Louise must die so that France can live”. Of course, it didn’t end there, and thousands more died after the execution of the king. They believed that killing the king was going to allow France to prosper and thrive, but it did not, so they concluded that they would now have to kill more people to revive France — the result was mass slaughter in Paris.

The Khudai Khidmatgaar faced some of the most repressive violence in all of India at the hands of the British; the infamous Qissa Khwani massacre comes to mind. Although there were instances of machine-gun fire being opened on protesters, the movement maintained the strictest nonviolent discipline ever witnessed in history. This mentality is in stark contrast to many protest movements today, which consider it a virtue to physically fight back and yell slurs while hiding their faces — a practice that would make Bacha Khan roll over in his grave.

1940 image shows Bacha Khan with Gandhi. PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Contrary to intuition, it is nonviolence and decency that require courage and bravery, not violence and hatred. Violence is easy and requires no restraint or patience, and often minimal skill. How much skill does firing an AK-47 require? How much skill did Karachiites require when purchasing guns en masse in the last century? Nonviolence, however, is difficult to perfect as a skill — it is a higher form of existence. One should picture a local boy believing it is a sign of courage to kill a snake when sighted, as opposed to the conventional practice in some parts of the world, where many kids would be familiar with the exact species of the snake and, if it is safe to pick it up, would do so with their hands, smiling, and return the snake to the wild. One of these practices is clearly more courageous as well as more civilised than the other.

Reforming our beliefs and those of our society is all we have within our power. The way to do so is through popular culture, music, poetry, TV shows, politics, and day-to-day noncooperation with distasteful rhetoric, backward practices, and harmful customs in our society. The movements led by Bacha Khan are the best example of this.

Three countries lowered their flags the day Bacha Khan died, in 1988: Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, and India, and there was a ceasefire in the Soviet-Afghan war in honour of his funeral procession across the Durand Line. Unfortunately, here, a man as decent as Bacha Khan was demonised as a traitor and spent much of his post-partition life (in addition to his pre-partition life) in jail, even in old age. A lot can be said about a society based on how it treats dissenting voices.