ANYONE who has seen Richard Attenborough�s film Gandhi will remember the vivid depiction of the Amritsar massacre in April 1919 when British and Gurkha troops under the command of General Reginald Dyer opened fire on unarmed protestors and killed well over 350 people. It was one of the worst atrocities by the British in India, but far from the only one.
Far less well-known is the massacre at the Qissa Khwani bazaar in Peshawar in April 1930 when British troops opened fire with machine-guns on people protesting the arrest of Badshah Khan, the remarkable Pashtun leader and close associate of Gandhi who gave much of his life to the cause of non-violence.
It is no reflection on Gandhi that Badshah Khan (whose full name was Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, "Badshah" meaning "King") is so little known in Britain. But the story of his life needs to be told, not least as his abiding belief, rooted in the Qu'ran, was that Islam is essentially a religion of peace and non-violence. His personification of this belief is a powerful antidote to the Islamophobia currently so prevalent across Europe and north America.
This, in turn, is why it is so good to be able to welcome Heathcote Williams�s new �investigative poem�: Badshah Khan: Islamic Peace Warrior (Thin Man Press, 2015). This is a short but powerful book thatSURVEYS
Khan�s life but also tracks his approach through to the modern era.
Khan�s life but also tracks his approach through to the modern era.Khan himself is still best known for founding the Khudai Khidmatgarmovement, also known as the �Red Shirts�. This drew many supporters from the Pashtun of what was then the north-west frontier region of India, who came to form a hugely important part of the movement for independence. At its peak, the Red Shirt movement had over 100,000committed to peaceful change and an end to British rule.
Inevitably, Khan incurred the enmity of the British and spent many years in prison, often in appalling conditions. But he and his movement survived it all. He became known as the �Frontier Gandhi� and, as a devout Muslim, said he drew his commitment to non-violence directly from Islam.
He wrote: �There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pashtun like me subscribing to the creed of non-violence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca, but we had so far forgotten it that when Gandhi placed it before us, we thought he was sponsoring a novel creed�.
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