REFLECTI•NS Rajmohan Gandhi, a former member of the Rajya Sabha (the Indian parliament’s upper house), is a visiting professor in the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His latest book is Ghaffar Khan: Nonviolent Badshah of the Pakhtuns (Penguin India). He is also the author of The Good Boatman, a biography of his grandfather, Mohandas Gandhi. Mohandas Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and the Middle East Today Rajmohan Gandhi The clouds have parted, at least for the trader caste who led India’s battle for inde- moment, in the Arab-Israeli conflict. A pendence. Yet his thinking is as relevant as newly elected Palestinian president, Mah- Gandhi’s. moud Abbas, has reached out to a hawkish Before we look at the arguments of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, now two, it is important to recall that the sub- reborn as a cautious peacemaker. Jails have continent’s independence was won chiefly emptied, Israel has ceased destroying but not solely through passive resistance. homes of alleged terrorists, and Islamic Indians believing in violence also con- radicals have heeded calls for an armed tributed to it, as did British fatigue after truce. One may reasonably hope that an- the Second World War. Moreover, it is also tagonists on both sides will seize the mo- true—the efforts of Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan, ment to think afresh about the cycle of vi- and their allies notwithstanding—that bit- olence and reprisal that has deepened and ter Hindu-Muslim violence marked the prolonged their conflict. In that spirit, I subcontinent’s independence-cum-division. have tried to answer the pertinent ques- The efficacy, nonetheless, of the nonvi- tion: How might India’s great apostles of olent movement of Badshah Khan (“bad- nonviolence—Mohandas Gandhi, a Hindu, shah,” or “king of kings” being the hon- and Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Muslim— orific the Pashtuns, or Pathans, attached to expound the benefits of a farewell to arms his name) is captured in a recollection by a to today’s tired and bloodied belligerents? British officer called Bacon of the 1930 The provisional truce and fresh interest struggle in the Northwest Frontier Prov- in passive resistance for addressing the ince when thousands of Pashtuns nonvio- Palestinian-Israeli question justify a re- lently stood up to the British. Eight years minder of the arguments advanced by later, when Badshah Khan’s followers, two South Asian leaders who not so known as the Red Shirts, had won power long ago practiced effective nonviolent in provincial elections Bacon talked about strategies. the 1930 events with Ghani Khan, Ghaffar Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890–1988), the Khan’s son, who relates: Sunni Muslim from the subcontinent’s Northwest Frontier Province who won [Bacon] told me, “Ghani, I was the more than one battle against British power Assistant Commissioner in Char- in his region and then, after Pakistan’s in- sadda. The Red Shirts would be dependence, fought against difficult odds brought to me. I had orders to give for autonomy for the Pashtun people, is them each two years rigorous im- less well-known than Mohandas Gandhi prisonment. I would say, ‘Are you a (1869–1948), the Gujarati Hindu from the Red Shirt?’ They would say yes. ‘Do Mohandas Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and the Middle East Today 89 you want freedom?’ ‘Yes, I want Gandhi put it in the summer of 1940, when freedom.’ ‘If I release you, will you he and Ghaffar Khan were defending a non- do it again?’ ‘Yes.’” [Bacon] said, “I violent strategy (“Satyagraha,” in Gandhi’s would want to get up and hug him. phrase) before colleagues tempted by the But instead I would write, ‘Two route of violence: years.’”1 [Ghaffar Khan] is a Pathan and a In that same year, 1930, soldiers of the Pathan may be said to be born British Raj belonging to the Garhwal Reg- with a rifle or a sword in his hand. iment, famously disobeyed orders to open But [Ghaffar Khan] deliberately fire on nonviolent rebels in Peshawar’s asked his Khudai Khidmatgars to bazaar. Even more striking were the psy- shed all weapons when he asked chological victories that Ghaffar Khan them to join the Satyagraha.... and Gandhi won over the British. These He saw that his deliberate giving were arguments that inspired nonviolent up of the weapons of violence had a resistance: magical effect. Triumph over fear. That passive resis- tance could overcome fear was the first ar- It was the only remedy for the gument. Around the time that Bacon was blood feuds which were handed talking with Ghani Khan, his father, Ghaf- down from sire to son and which far Khan, said to Gandhi: had become part of the normal life of a Pathan. They had decimated We used to be so timid and indo- numerous families and nonviolence lent. The sight of an Englishman seemed to [Ghaffar Khan] to have would frighten us. [Our] movement come as longed for salvation. The has instilled fresh life into us and violent blood feuds would other- made us more industrious. We have wise have no end and would spell shed our fear and are no longer the end of the Pathans.4 afraid of an Englishman or for that matter of any man. Englishmen are Forestalling reprisals. Since a nonviolent afraid of our nonviolence. A nonvio- strategy did not invite unbearable retalia- lent Pathan, they say, is more dan- tion, it won enthusiastic support from a gerous than a violent Pathan.2 general populace spared the brutal reprisals that violent attacks provoked. Harold Gould The victory over fear is what Jawaharlal has contrasted the methods of Gandhi and Nehru, Gandhi’s political heir and India’s Ghaffar Khan that “brought down empires” prime minister from 1947 to 1964, singled in South Asia with the “walking bombs” out as the chief accomplishment of Gandhi’s in the Middle East and Kashmir “whose nonviolent strategy. “Fearlessness—yes, I self-detonations invite devastating retalia- would say fearlessness was his greatest gift. tory assaults on their innocent fellow And the fact that the weak, little bundle citizens.”5 of bones was so fearless in every way, physi- Remembering the violent upheavals cally, mentally, it was a tremendous thing that destroyed life in the Northwest Fron- which went to the other people too, and tier during his boyhood in the late 1890s, made them less afraid.”3 Ghaffar Khan spoke with justifiable pride Beating the revenge code. If nonviolence in his autobiography of the contrasting re- overcame fear, it was an antidote to the re- sults of the movements he led in the early venge code, the curse of Pashtun society. As 1930s: 90 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SPRING 2005 The British crushed the violent ment, Britons welcomed him enthusiasti- movement in no time, but the non- cally, even though a year earlier he had led violent movement, in spite of in- an India-wide nonviolent movement that, tense repression, flourished.... If a in Churchill’s words, “inflicted such humili- Britisher was killed, not only the ation and defiance as has not been known culprit was punished, but the whole since the British first trod the soil of village and entire region suffered for India.”8 it. The people held the violence and After the 1857 mutiny of the Bengal its doer responsible for the repres- Army, which witnessed cruelty from the sion. In the nonviolent movement Indian side and horrific reprisals from the we courted suffering, and the com- British, the sentiment in the United King- munity did not suffer but benefited. dom raged against Indians. In 1931, by Thus, it won love and sympathy of contrast, and despite even greater defiance the people.6 in India of British rule, the popular mood was friendly to Indians, thanks to Gandhi’s Stunning, and winning, the foe. While a nonviolent approach. He had spelled out the nonviolent movement could baffle and even secret of success in remarks uttered in 1919, “stun” the adversary (as Ghaffar Khan a year that saw the worst incident in the an- claimed7), adhesion to a nonviolent approach nals of British rule in India, the Amritsar attracted support in the adversary’s camp. massacre, in which civilians were slaugh- When, in February 1922, demonstrators tered by the Raj’s infantry, as well as vio- shouting “Victory to Mahatma Gandhi” lence by Indian mobs: “The Government went berserk in a remote corner of India and went mad, but our people also went mad. hacked to pieces 22 police constables fleeing I say, do not return madness with madness from their burning shelter, Gandhi called but return madness with sanity, and the sit- off an entire nationwide campaign that had uation will be yours.”9 aroused India and frightened the British. Protecting the future. The fifth benefit Days earlier Gandhi had issued an ulti- of a nonviolent strategy was that it made it matum to the Viceroy, which was to be fol- harder for the nation to slide into the sinis- lowed by an intensification of the campaign. ter habit of violence. After a bomb hurled at But he stopped the campaign, even though, a British official in Bihar by Indian revolu- as Gandhi would say, he was tempted not be tionaries claimed the lives of two English- seen as a “coward” who backed off after issu- women in 1908, Gandhi predicted: “The ing “pompous threats to the government bomb now thrown at Englishmen will be and promises to the people....” aimed at Indians after the English are there When Gandhi called off the campaign, no longer.”10 thousands of his fellow fighters already Gandhi saw that it was in the nature of in prison for their passive resistance were violence to beget more and more of itself, aghast at what they saw as a retreat.