Bacha Khan, The King Without a Throne

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Written by Abdul Hai Aryan

Tragically, Pakistan is a country whose curriculum has no space for progressive and true heroes.  It admires Muhammad Bin Qasim, the Arab nationalist who conquered the Sindh in 712 and later on, was killed by his own Caliph. Mahmud Ghaznavi, the destructor of ‘Somnaat temple’ in India is an icon of pride in the country’s textbooks. Pakistan history has great reverence for the Mughal emperors who instead of building schools and universities just built luxurious monuments like Taj Mahal built by king Shahjahan’s in memory of his third wife Mumtaz Mahal with an amount of Rs.22 million accumulated through taxes. It has space for Syed Ahmad Barelvi, the fanatic fundamentalist who tried to implement Wahhabism, Taliban’s school thought in the then India through the swords but the country’s textbooks unfortunately has no room for the son of the soils of the country and has the deficiency to honor and value its true heroes like Bacha Khan, G. M Syed and other protagonists whose endeavors would holistically be productive for the generations to come.

Abdul Ghafar Khan known as Bacha Khan in Pakistan, Frontier Gandhi in India and Fakhr-i-Afghan in Afghanistan is internationally known as monger of non-violence but disastrously  is known to very few in his own country. In 1890 he was born to Behran Khan House, a tribal but moderate chief of Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Bacha Khan after completing his education joined the British army however shortly realized the atrocities the Indians suffered in hands of British officers; then as a protest left the army and started to change his people lives through education. In 1921 he started his social reform movement in NWFP now Khyber- Pkhtinkhawa province. and later he organized youths under the platform of Afghan Youth League and in 1930 founded Khudai-Khidmatgar movement (the servants of God), a nonviolent and social reforms movement for awareness. The movement had millions of members who always adhered to their oath of reforming the society through non-violence and peaceful revolution of education. During 1915 to 1918 in a short period of three years he visited more than five thousands villages of K-Pakhtunkhaw and setup more than 70 schools in the province. He was a great advocate girls’ education. Henceforth, In 1932, he was the first person of the province who sent his daughter Mehr Raj abroad for getting higher education.

He always believed in serving humanity and correspondingly was a staunch believer of non-violence, Peace, love, freedom, service to men and equality were the core values of his teachings and politics. Denouncing violence by the religious extremists at that time, he said, “killing of people on the name of religion, plundering and burning their houses is not the religion of Allah,” the religion of God is ‘love’ and the purpose of religion is to serve humanity.” Being a progressive grandee and becoming the symbol of harmony regardless of any religious discriminating he urged his supporters to know your true enemy and true friends. The over sixth-feet-tall Khan Baba tortuously ruled the hearts of millions of people instead of sitting on a throne. He was so simple; his dress was that of an ordinary man. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai while talking abou Khan’s Personality which he had seen during his childhood when Bacha Khan was invited to his home in Kandahar by his father, During his speech on the death anniversary of Bacha Khan, Karzai added that Bacha Khan Baba was very tall and strong man but he wore pretty simple dresses. In spite of surrounded by many dishes and meal, he just dinned on ‘Shorwa’, an ordinary Afghan meal saying his life was going to be tough.

Bacha Khan was the close ally and the most trusted friend of Mahatma Gandhi. In an interview Mehr Taj, the daughter of Bacha Khan explains Baba’s relations says, “ They were more or less alike in ideas and the way they lived, the clothes and the simple food were the same.” The personal secretary of Gandhi, in an interview says, “Bacha Khan used to read the holy Kuran. Sometimes he forgot his glasses and borrowed Gandhi glasses to read the Kuran.”  Gandhi had a great respect for Khan and called him ‘Man of God’.

 In the 1920s, he formed an alliance with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, an alliance that lasted until 1947--the partition of India. The 27 years long alliance with the Indian Congress remain futile as his supporters and Bacha Khan felt betrayed by both India and Pakistan after the partition, and his last words to Gandhi were, "You have thrown us to the wolves," because the Pashtuns of British India were not offered the choice of being an independent state or re-joining with Afghanistan after the formation of the Durand Line, the boundary between modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan; instead, they were compelled to choose between joining Pakistan or India, and voting results showed that the majority wanted to join Pakistan--the Muslim state, considering Pashtuns are also Muslims.

 In 1967, he was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding while after his withdrawal from politics; he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. Eventually, during his visit to India he partook in the centennial celebrations of the Indian National Congress in 1985; his untiring struggle also earned in 1987 the India’s highest civil award the ‘Bahrat Ratna’.Unfortunately after the emergence of Pakistan, despite his speech in the first constituent assembly in which he expressed his commitments to work for prosperous Pakistan, was portrayed as ‘persona non grata’ due to his alliance with the Indian Congress party.

Bacha Khan had spent as many as 27 years in imprisonment, 12 years under British rule and 15 in Pakistan, There were times he went in fettered for six months, the marks of which remained on his feet till he died at the age of 98. In the words of Bacha Khan "I had to go to prison many a time in the days of the Britishers. Although we were at loggerheads with them, yet their treatment was to some extent tolerant and polite. But the treatment which was meted out to me in this Islamic state of ours was such that I would not even like to mention it to you."

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan in the united India campaigned for the release of Bacha Khan from prison in 1929-1930 which has been duly noted by Stanley Wolpert in his biography of Jinnah. it was Jinnah who had put forth Bacha Khan’s name for inclusion in the first round table conference 1930, an all Indian parties conference called by the then British government. But after the creation of Pakistan Bacha Khan and Jinnah were always kept at distance. In 1948, a meeting due in Peshwar between the two leaders was canceled as Abdul Qayum Khan then Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkaw cunningly deluded Muhammad Ali Jinnah terrifying him of his assassination plan plotted by Bacha Khan.

Bacha Khan always urged for ‘character integrity’ and candor.  At an occasion, he said, “A nation that is merely power monger and wealth oriented, will never enjoy national harmony, it will never go through democratic values, Socialism and even the true face of Islamization.”  Sadly, the aphorisms of Baba have never been followed by his own family and supporters. He commenced the endeavors of politics from his small village which gradually became the most powerful voice of India uniting millions of people in his movement oddly, his political heirs are proving clumsy. Many roads, hospitals and airports were retitled after him but forgot Baba’s true teachings.

After retirement from politics he remained in Jalalabad, Afghanistan and finally a heart attack followed by a coma on January 20, 1988 caused his demise. Many still question his burial in Jalalabad but many deem it as a symbol of Pashtun.

Source: http://www.pashtunwomenvp.com/index.php/2013-01-28-03-21-27/political/397-bacha-khan-the-king-without-a-throne

TIME’s Loathsome Cover Story

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Written by Bilal Nikyar

  

TIME magazine is famous for its featured stories along with an image on its cover. That has been their trademark for decades; it’s also a great marketing strategy to attract customers’ attention. It’s well-known around the world and has a distinct style. Frankly, it’s my favourite magazine too. However, on April 3^rd (two days before the Afghan elections) the magazine published a cynical and distorted cover story, which has stirred some criticisms amongst the media-savvy Afghans.

The story is about Women versus Taliban—two famous topics in the Western media about Afghanistan and the two topics that to some extent justifies everything the West does in Afghanistan. The story is about how Afghan women suffer and are badly treated by their male counterparts after all these years of international assistance and how their situation won’t change with the election, which was scheduled to take place on April 5^th.

Ironically, the most disturbing part of the story is that the Taliban are going to come back no matter what the Afghans think or want. Therefore, everything is going to go back to square one, including the rights of women.

Later, Bobby Ghosh, TIME magazine’s world editor, goes into Morning Joe program to boast about how much hard work his team put into this cover story and how TIME knows the return of the Taliban is inevitable, which is going to diminish the rights of Afghan women.

So let’s just look at how wrong the TIME magazine was in its assumptions in this piece.  First, it’s true that women’s condition in Afghanistan isn’t perfect and it needs a lot of attention. However, it’s definitely better than how it was 13 years ago. The important thing is that women have come a long way since the Taliban were ousted from power. It’s only going to get better from now on as the country is slowly but surely coming out of over three decades of war. 

 Afghanistan just had a successful election on April 5^th (praised by the International community) in which more than 7 million people voted, of which 35% were women. It’s defiantly not the case as the TIME magazine suggests that Afghan women are left out there to the wolves. Afghan women are more active than ever before. They go to schools & universities; they are active members of the Afghan parliament and civil society.  They are in a better position now than ever before to defend their rights. 

Obliviously, there are still some challenges facing Afghan women, but you cannot resolve everything in a matter of a few years. It takes time and Afghans are surely on the right track to finally be a more pluralistic society. For TIME magazine to say that Afghan women are waiting for the Taliban is incorrect. No, they are not waiting for the Taliban; they are waiting for a stable and prosperous Afghanistan.

Secondly, the most troubling part of Time’s piece is their misinformed and ludicrous claim that the Taliban are returning. What the magazine doesn’t recognize is that Afghans don’t want the Taliban to return at any cost, and the best way to realize that is to look at last Saturday’s turnout during the elections. If only the TIME magazine could wait for the election and then published its featured article, things would have been a lot different 

We had a successful election with old, young, men and women marching towards polling stations. They all have made it loud and clear that Afghans support democracy. Afghanistan has changed; the fact that the turnout was higher in this election than what experts predicated shows the political maturity of Afghans. It’s almost impossible to think that we will have the Taliban regime again in the near future.

I don’t understand how TIME magazine came to that conclusion. Afghans don’t want to go back to the times of medieval. If TIME thinks that the spike in pre-election violence is an indication of Taliban’s return, then they must know that they know almost nothing about Afghanistan. Couldn’t the recent spike in violence, as is the case in every destabilised nation when election arrives, be the job of regional intelligence agencies to disrupt and discourage people from voting? Couldn’t it be the job of other political mafias?

We Afghans don’t see every bomb blast and killing as a black & white scenario. There are numerous other actors that hide behind the name of the Taliban in order to cause insecurities. So to say that the Taliban are returning to Afghanistan is fable. Therefore, TIME magazine needs to double check its facts and come up with a more realistic view of the current situation in Afghanistan.

The problem with Afghanistan is that there are too many bad pundits and very few good pundits as well as there are too many foreign experts and too few Afghan experts.  The experts who know Afghanistan either speak/write too little on Afghanistan or can’t make it to the mainstream international media. On the other hand, people who have very little knowledge of Afghanistan get a lot of space to comment on Afghanistan based on what they read on the internet. This really has been the root cause of most of the problems and misunderstandings in the last 13 years. Anyone who has been to Afghanistan once or twice in their entire life presumes to know everything about the country. Most of them call themselves experts based on what they read and see on the internet. 

It simply doesn’t work that way. You have got to know the country’s culture, history and people in every place to understand Afghanistan and its issues. There is a lack of Afghan journalists and analysts to talk and report about Afghanistan in the international press. Hence, the void that’s there has been filled by distorted reporting such as the one in the cover of TIME

Afghans must take charge from now on to introduce their country better to the international audiences and to iron out most of the myths that have been circulating around the world such as the one that the Taliban will return. 

Bilal Nikyar is a freelance writer, he tweets: @BilalNikyar

source : http://www.pashtunwomenvp.com/index.php/2013-01-28-03-21-27/current-issue/443-time-s-loathsome-cover-story