Author; Rajmohan Gandhi
Pages 300
Published in India by Penguin-Viking
Price (Indian) Rs 325 

Asfandyar Wali Khan wanted a biography of his illustrious grandfather for the benefit of the younger generation. He has got one nicely printed and readable volume courtesy Rajmohan Gandhi.

Given the long-standing family relationship between the author and the subject, personal is the word that would perhaps best describe Rajmohan's adventure into the often controversial and always difficult world of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. The book was made even more difficult because of a lack of material on the subject, especially Ghaffar Khan's early years. Rajmohan has relied heavily on interviews conducted in the 1960s and 70s and does manage to create an awe-inspiring whole belonging to a man who had a knack of being on the wrong side of the government. In the process, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's link with religion that taught the virtues of tolerance, the Pakhtoon tradition that called for upholding the honour and his penchant for always freely expressing his political views, all come under discussion.

The book is about Ghaffar Khan's non-violent movement, and inevitably, about the all inspiring Mahatma Gandhi. About them, not so much about their parties. Rajmohan talks about the Pakhtoon tradition that does not approve of publicly mentioning the names of their women -- likewise the Gandhi family. He draws a parallel between the opposition Ghaffar Khan faced from his mother when he asked for her permission to study abroad and a similar dilemma that Gandhi experienced as he packed bag for England. While it may qualify as coincidence, it can be said the situation was common to all sons looking for enlightenment and liberty in that era and even later. Example, a certain Gujarati-speaking gentleman by the name of Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

 

 

The author works painstakingly to bring out the non-violent principal of Bacha Khan, that was invigorated under the larger than life influence of Mahatma Gandhi. Bacha Khan is projected in the book as a stickler to non-violent means of struggle, but no matter how carefully the writer builds his case, the readers do get a glimpse of the second line of defence -- the armed men who stood behind the Khudai Khidmatgars or the KKs in the 1940s. It is this rare or obscured sight in the book that makes one wonder: Was non-violence a principle that was never to be broken, or merely a tactic that was thought to be the best available to the people of the subcontinent at the time in their fight against the British?

Non-violence had to be the thesis of a book that from the outset thrives in a comparison between the Mahatma and his disciple from the Frontier. Looking for contemporary relevance nonetheless, Rajmohan has gone beyond this ready brief to view Ghaffar Khan's contribution, his presence, in the foreground of the Islamist leadership that has been thrown up by the Pakhtoon area in recent times. Mulla Omer, a man who could do no better than spill blood, gets a mention in the book alongside the great Bacha Khan. Yet, the comparison looks a bit forced, even superficial, since no effort is made to explore the causes behind this change, if it can be so termed at all. For, at more than one place Rajmohan mentions how Bacha Khan was frustrated in his endeavour to effectively penetrate the tribal area that stretches from Pakistan to Afghanistan, and which has come to be known in recent times as a nursery for Islamist terrorism.

Rajmohan Gandhi plunges into the often controversial and always difficult world of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

Apart from quoting Asfandyar's wish to see a biography of Ghaffar Khan, Rajmohan Gandhi chooses not to talk about the great Pathan leader's political heirs. A study of what course the Frontier politics took post-partition, after the Indian National Congress had let down its long-standing ally Bacha Khan, could have provided the book with contemporaneity. Alternately, the prophetic statements of Ghaffar Khan in the constituent assembly of the newly-born Pakistan could have been used to discuss the issue of provincial autonomy at some length. But maybe all this was outside the scope of the biography Rajmohan had in mind. He critcises the Congress leadership; he talks about what fears Bacha Khan had of Punjabi domination after the NWFP was clubbed with the Punjab in the partition scheme. He sees the British administration's hand in the rise of the All India Muslim League in the Frontier, and duly questions the horse-trading the League undertook in the NWFP assembly in the run-up to the partition in 1947; he reminds readers that Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, the League leader in the province, was first an admirer of Bacha Khan and his brother Dr Khan Saheb; he talks about the urban-area women (westernised we later called them in Pakistan) employed by the League to spread out its message in the NWFP. Is that all that could be said about the rather sudden popularity of the League in the Frontier and elsewhere? No other factors at work? Indeed the book is successful in creating a craving to know more, for instance, about

the factors behind the different political paths taken by Ghaffar Khan and Dr Khan Saheb.

As Dr Khan Saheb manages to avoid controversy in Rajmohan's book, the writer strives to keep the Gandhi name clear of any betrayal to Bacha Khan. The Mahatma and Ghaffar Khan are shown to have never disagreed, (probably because of Gandhi Ji's forced withdrawal from the negotiating table that brought together the League, the Congress and the viceroy at a crucial juncture?). Consequently, Nehru and Patel, come out as two leaders whose pragmatism led them to accept the partition plan at the cost of a friend. And even Nehru's daughter gets a one-sentence snub: she respected Ghaffar Khan since he was the last of the leaders who created an India which Indira could then rule. Even Jinnah emerges as a lesser disruptor of old ties than Nehru and Patel together.