Militarily Troubled Pakistan and Terribly Administered Tribals

Mantolives

The issue at hand is your insistence upon making a connection between modern day taliban and the khudai khidmatgars. There is none! for one violence is a way of life while the others were complete believers in non violence.

The proof is the aftermath of the Barbara Massacre, which happened under the rule of Jinnah. How many jawans of the Pakistan army die in its backlash? Did the Afridi or Mohmand tribes rise against the army? I assure you another front could have been opened from Pakhtun settled areas as well as Northern tribal areas, in support of Faqir Ipis movement. But meray bhai there was no violence from Ghaffar Khan's side, or you could have been mentioning massacres, ambushes, bombs and counting the number of Pak army jawans that died in Bajur or Charsadda.

Now to the issue of "Khaars", well first of all the term is "Khariyaan" which means city dwellers, the term that you are looking for is "Hinkiyaan" or hindko speakers. There is no hatred or malice between Pashto and Hindko speaking people in the NWFP, intermarriages are common, and there is NO history of communal violence between the two communities.

Furthermore, seeing this division in black and white would be naïve. There are communities of Pushto Speaking Awans, Parachas, and Khwajas around Peshawar, Charsadda and Bannu. Similarly the Jadoons and Swatis of Hazara (Pakhtoon by lineage) speak Hindko as their primary language. Infact in the “Khalisa” belt of villages around Peshawar, the language spoken is a complete mixture of Hindko and Pashto, very unique and treat to listen to. So meray bhai there is nothing “lowly” about being a Hindko Speaker in the NWFP, get your facts straight.

You in one of your earlier posts mentioned that Ghaffar Khan took up the cause of “Pathan racial purity”, which was yet again, bull crap! Then you conveniently brush aside the presence of high ranking hinkiyaan in present day ANP. If Ghaffar Khan’s message was that of “racial purity” then his followers wouldn’t have hindko speakers as their main leaders, doesn’t take much to figure that out now does it?

Ghaffar Khan’s alliance with the conservatives is no different from Benazir’s alliance with Fazl ur Rehman, Imran Khan’s alliance with the MMA, Bhutto’s campaign against the Ahmedis. All of these were at a political level, not an ideological level. When it came to ideology, Ghaffar Khan opposed the Afghan War, while Wali Khan supported the drive against the Taliban.

The Clergy and the Nationalists are arch enemies in every society, as they want to lead the same people in two completely opposite directions; finding a common ground between the two would surely be a futile cause. Wake up and smell the chai meray bhai..

Quoted from adeel khans article on pakhtun integration:

At the same time, the Muslim League was launched in the non-Pukhtun district of Hazara by a Maulana Shakirullah, President of Jamiat-ul-Ulama, who became the first president of the Muslim League, assisted by the secretary of Jamiat-ul-Ulama, as the secretary of the Muslim League.33

The British Governor, Cunningham, instructed the big khans to meet each mullah on individual basis and tell him to serve the ‘cause of Islam’ for which he would be duly paid. The Mullahs were told that in case of good progress they would also be considered for government pension. A Cunningham policy note of 23 September 1942 reads: ‘Continuously preach the danger to Muslims of connivance with the revolutionary Hindu body. Most tribesmen seem to respond to this’,34 while in another paper he says about the period 1939–43: ‘Our propaganda since the beginning of the war had been most successful.

#129 Posted by adamkhan

An excellent post but I do have some disagreements. I spent at 3-4 summers (besides some other short trips) in Peshawar, Warsak, Badabaer, Mardan, Nowshera and Abbotabad during the 70s. I have traveled extensively in the tribal areas and other parts of NWFP. Basically, I love that area and I have some profound memories including a flame that lived behind Islamia College in the university campus. My last visit was in 1987, when I spent most of the time in Kohat, Hangu and Parachinar.

It is true that my knowledge of the area is not current so I may be wrong but I know that there were differences between the Hindko and Pathan and politically their differences were pronounced. Before the 70s, Hindko population in Peshawar always supported Qayoom Khan and during the 70s their political support shifted to PPP and I believe that the PPP always won one or more National assembly seats from Peshawar city.
I understand that demographics of the Peshawar city have changed since then and there are more Pukhtoon in the city now but at that time Peshawar was a Hindko majority city.

I also know for sure that a majority of Hindko speaking were deadly anti KK and Ghaffar Khan. I was told that hindko first called them Congressi. In many Hindko homes that I visited, I heard many jokes about the Khan family, stories about the Ghaffar Khan, Wali khan families and none of those stories were charitable.

“Ghaffar Khan took up the cause of “Pathan racial purity”, which was yet again, bull crap! Then you conveniently brush aside the presence of high ranking hinkiyaan in present day ANP.”

First, ANP is not exactly the old NAP or the KK and it is a broader alliance which conveniently ignores many of NAP and KK principles. However, there is no doubt that Ghaffar Khan was a Pakhtoon Nationalist and often nationalist tend to talk about racial purity. We have seen this in Sindh and we saw that in Bengal. The feudal tendencies do creep in the political platform. The KK movement was also influenced by feudalism. Now at this time I can not provide specific incidents as I don’t have access to the material, we do know that many of Wali Khan’s speeches during the 70s reeked of extreme nationalism. Some of it perhaps was in frustration but it was there for all to see.

“The Clergy and the Nationalists are arch enemies in every society”

That is not true! Clergy can be Nationalist as was the case with Mufti Mahmmod and the Nationalists can be strongly religious as was the case with Ghaffar Kahn himself. KK and NAP both were extremely careful about the religion in NWFP.
Before the partition almost all Muslim clergy was with the Congress which was a Nationalist party at All India level.

That is where Montolives objections start. He kind of takes a very broad brush and extends the Nationalist muslim clergy's alliance with congress at all India level(before partition) to NWFP.

There is a very fine line here. Ghaffar Khan was Pathan nationalist first before he was an Indian Nationalist. Being a Pathan Nationalist he wanted to have an independent Pukhtoonistan. His interest in Indian or Pakistan independence was more in terms of what he could get for his Nation i.e. for pakhtoons. His alliance with the Nationalist mullah like Mufti Mehmood was not based on Congress's alliance with the nationalist mullah in India, but was more geared towards the local political needs of the NWFP province.

In memory of the great Ghaffar Khan, here is quote from one Khudai Khidmatgar. God bless them. When we look at the current pathan breed from the tribal areas, we invariably think of the mujahids like this one:


"The British used to torture us, throw us into ponds in wintertime, shave our beards, but even then Badshah Khan told his followers not to lose patience. He said 'there is an answer to violence, which is more violence. But nothing can conquer nonviolence. You cannot kill it. It keeps standing up. The British sent their horses and cars to run over us, but I took my shawl in my mouth to keep from screaming. We were human beings, but we should not cry or express in any way that we were injured or weak." Musharraf Din (Baldauf).

#97 Posted by dawa-i-dil

[....but the Indians shown him boots on Kashmir issue..no dialogue at all...]


Ummm...so why did the Pakis not engage in "dialogue" before invading Kashmir in the first place?

Eh?

Re: # 131

HP,

That is an excellent post. Adam Khan and Zakkk should read it carefuly.

It is true that my knowledge of the area is not current so I may be wrong but I know that there were differences between the Hindko and Pathan and politically their differences were pronounced. Before the 70s, Hindko population in Peshawar always supported Qayoom Khan and during the 70s their political support shifted to PPP and I believe that the PPP always won one or more National assembly seats from Peshawar city.
I understand that demographics of the Peshawar city have changed since then and there are more Pukhtoon in the city now but at that time Peshawar was a Hindko majority city.

I also know for sure that a majority of Hindko speaking were deadly anti KK and Ghaffar Khan. I was told that hindko first called them Congressi. In many Hindko homes that I visited, I heard many jokes about the Khan family, stories about the Ghaffar Khan, Wali khan families and none of those stories were charitable.

Precisely. To claim that ANP has the Bilour Family today, hence all Hindko speaking people supported KK is a rather ironic argument because ANP is not KK ....and so far neither Zakkk nor Adam Khan have shown me what special role the Bilours played in 1947 and before.

Apparently ... Adam Khan missed the entire point of the dicussion. He is more interested in point scoring. For all his claims about some Barbara Massacre undertaken on the orders of Abdul Qayyum Khan ... he still hasn't written a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for not seeking the resignation of the Andhra Pradesh Government for opening indiscriminate fire on protesters (just using his logic).


For Zakkk and Adam Khan

My submissions have been few and they remain unchallenged

1. KK was essentially a Pushtun Nationalist Movement... and the Non-Pushtun city elements and the Khaars etc voted in main for the Muslim League.

2. KK's main support base came from tribal leaders, the sardars and the landed gentry.

3. The Deobandi Islamist forces were firmly in KK/Congress camp as they were all over India.

4. In June and July 1947, Ghaffar Khan raised the slogan of Pushtun nationalism and Islamic Sharia claiming that the Westernised leadership of the Muslim League would never make Pakistan an Islamic state based on Shariat. This was a remarkable sommersault, I believe, from his acceptance of a United India- which would have been no doubt without Shariat as well.

5. Till June 1947, the Khan Brothers considered Durand Line the frontier between British India and NWFP. They were committed to this frontier. After June 1947, they suddenly became sore losers and started claiming they were Afghans. One should bear in mind that in the 1920s when AGK had gone to Afghanistan during the "Tehreek-e-Hijrat" ... he had refused to acknowledge NWFP as part of Afghanistan.

6. The de-stabilisation caused by them on the issue of Durand Line - in collusion with King Zahir Shah and Fakir of Ipi etc- has in no small way colored Pakistan's frontier and Afghan policy since then. The insurgency in Waziristan also has the stamp of this issue.

7. If as Adam Khan accepts - that Ghaffar Khan used the Mullahs for his political advantage (just like Bhutto's move against the Ahmedis - Adam Khan's example not mine)- then why doesn't he accept that Ghaffar Khan was a politician like all politicians.

8. The best thing would have been ...and still is ... more provincial autonomy for all provinces of Pakistan. If ANP today struggles for that, I will support it... but I cannot accept a whitewashing of history.

#125 Posted by GT
“You are patronizing.
You are being arrogant.”

I am sorry if you feel that way but that was not my intention. Chowk is a pretty tough forum and one has to be ready to hear some adverse comments.

“"But aren't they (the fundoos) keeping the moot issue alive - the issue that a small segment of the population have been ruling Pakistan without allowing for the political participation of the masses?"

This whole thesis is wrong and not based on the facts on the ground. It is a made up story.
In every country there is elite that rules the country and controls the state. Pakistan is no exception. At some places it is done by democracy and in Pakistan it is just a cruder form of the same system.

The mullah or the Islamist don’t challenge the establishment they want elite to establish Islam or Nafiz Islam from the top. They just create another platform for the elite. They are facing no oppression in Pakistan there is no religious oppression for the majority. I would believe in religious oppression, if the argument comes from Ahmedis or Christian but these guys are majority in the country and they control the debate.
They don’t want economic reforms, they don’t want social reforms. They press for stringent Islamic laws. So the theory that you espouse is totally made up and no historic, social or economic background to support it.

Islamic militancy was used to squash indigenous local nationalist and secularist parties for fear of luring separatist tendencies within the country’s Pashtun, Baluchi, and Sindi minorities.

Ideologically, Pakistani Islamic militancy is a hybrid mix of the ultra-conservative Doebandi version of Islam in the Indian sub-continent, the Saudi desert version of Wahabism, and the Middle-Eastern revolutionary Islamic Brotherhood. Pakistani Maulana Abdul Ala Maududi and Egyptian Sayid Qutub have been the founding fathers of ultra-conservative Islam in Pakistan. Both theoreticians insisted on gender segregation, veiling women from head to toe, and denouncing music and western modernization. They preached madrasa as an alternative to what they believed to be a “Westoxication of Muslim Societies,” to use Samuel Huntington’s phrase.

Jamiat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i-Pakistan are the Taliban and al-Qaida-linked derivatives of the Maududi and Doebandi schools.

There is a group of social scientists who somehow have the idea that these people have some economic or social agenda. Farid Esack is one of them! Maybe you will find support there. You can find his articles on the Net.
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty/visit/esack.html

post 133..ajeya..

thats because Nehru makkar...ayyar...chankiya student...j\his Dhoti became wet when he made a proise in UNO for refrendum in Kashmir...OK

#136 Posted by dawa-i-dil

[thats because Nehru makkar...ayyar...chankiya student...j\his Dhoti became wet when he made a proise in UNO for refrendum in Kashmir...OK ]

But that was AFTER Pakis invaded Kashmir.

Why did the Pakis not engage in "dialogue" BEFORE invading Kashmir?

#136 Posted by dawa-i-dil

his Dhoti became wet when he made a proise in UNO for refrendum in Kashmir...OK

But what happened to your Dhoti? If it wasn't wet, why didn't you take over Kashmir when India refused to hold a referendum?

Dawa,

Pakistan would have got J&K if only ur leaders had been consistent and honest. Had they accepted the principle that the princely states go to successor states based on majority principle JK wud have been urs. The GoI which was in 1947 more concerned about Hyderabad wud have readily traded off JK for Hyd. But ur leaders including MAJ (pbuh) wanted not only JK on religion basis but also Hyderabad, Bhopal, Junagadh and incidentally the Rajputana states (thanks to a conspiracy hatched by Zubeida Queen of Jodhpur a fact which pseudo-secularist Shyam Benegal has glossed over in his movie) on the prince decides principle.

The result was that the Indians retaliated with similar double standards and since the Indians wielded the bigger danda at that time, India kept not only the Hindu majority states but also most of Muslim majority J&K.

Regards

HP

Thanks for sharing the quote, but your evidence about the political standing of hindko speakers is anecdotal. As your visits were in the late 80s a time when there was no medium of judging the overall political sentiment of hindko speakers. My proofs in this regard are the elections of the nineties when people like the Bilour brothers, Haji Adeel and other hindko speaking ANP leaders won seats in the city. Infact, if I remember correctly, Ghulam Bilour defeated Benazir Bhutto for NA 1 during the 90s.

What the excited manto fails to realize is that you are not trying to establish the KKs as the precursors for the Taliban movement.

Mantolives

You never learn do you? I told you the word is not “khaars” but “Khaariyan”, stop making an ass out of yourself.

You didn’t just declare the KK as a Pukhtun Nationalist Movement, your claim in your words was and Muslim League only won support amongst the "Khaaars" or the city dwellers... the lowly non-Pushtuns ... meanwhile it was the Pushtun of the pure blood in main who supported Ghaffar Khan. Now there is a difference between Pukhtun Nationalism and downright racism, your emphasis on the “lowly” non – pushtoons paints a completely different picture of the Khudai Khidmatgars and of Ghaffar Khan. They were not racists, make a note of that.

The beauty of Ghaffar Khan’s message was the introduction of non-violent resistance to the very violent Pukhtoons. One has to know the attitudes of Pathans in general to realize how big of an accomplishment that was, and how desperately a similar effort is needed right now.

Re: # 140

Dear AdamKhan,

What you don't realise is that HP has seconded all of my submissions...:

1. Ghaffar Khan's movement was Pushtun Nationalist bordering on pushtun racial superiority.

2. Ghaffar Khan's movement was allied with the Deobandi Islamists- the pre-cursors of the Taliban movement.

3. Muslim League's support in main came from city dwellers, i.e. the Khaars (I am going to stick to this word because this is a general Pustho word that describes city-dwellers- the "s" is English plrual).

4. Majority of the Non-Pushtuns- especially Hindko and Hazaras- voted for the Muslim League.

5. KK included feudal elements and sardars and the landed gentry voted for KK in the elections.


I am not trying to establish Ghaffar Khan as the pre-cursor to anything. I am merely mentioning the fact that Ghaffar Khan's latter sommersaults had a lot to do with de-stabilising NWFP... and his appeal to Pushtuns to rise up against Pakistan because it was not shariat based is roughly the same argument used by Waziristan's "mujahids" today... much like GK's ally Fakir of Ipi back in the day.

hindu is makkar..in simplest words....

baghal mai churri..moo mai Ram Ram....

makkari aur ayyari ..tau hainduo par khatam hai....
uus ko dang maerati hain jo in ko doodh pilata hai...


plz..dont mnd ubove words..this is reality..based of 1000 years of our experience living with you....

the Mota harami ....playboy...Hari Singh..wanted to be neutral..but when majority of muslims said that we want Pakistan ...he decided status quo with jinnah..then ..decieving him..invited wet dhoti wali sarkar..Nehru..who imediatelt send its trrops in air force at sri nagar air force....

arai maharaj...tum logo nai tau apnai Bapu ...Mahatama Gandhi ko Maran Bharat rakhanai par nahee chora...or Patel (first interior minister) who is main figure of all bloodshed of 1947.....nai ussai marwa diya....you people think..we dont know your posisonous mentality....

Ram Ram Ram.......

Mantolives


In post #11 you said Tribal Areas were riled up and politicised in the name of Islam by none other than Frontier Gandhi…. and you ended the post by … how about blaming the right people for the right mess for once in you life?

So your post #141 where you state I am not trying to establish Ghaffar Khan as the pre-cursor to anything…. comes as a big improvement.

As I mentioned earlier political islam does not need preachers of non-violence to bring out these fanatics. It has done so on its own many times in the past, all over the world.

Now for the terms “Khaar” now listen meray bhai, Khaar in Peshawari dialect of Pushto means city, while in the Waziristani dialect it means Gadha, or donkey. (in the Waziristani dialect khaar (city) would be pronounced shaar)

So if we take the Peshawari dialect, you are calling the Hindko speaking people “cities” instead of “city dwellers”. Its like some gora calling the people of inner city Lahore “Shehers” instead of ”Shehris”.

#141 Posted by MantoLives,

The actual word is 'Kharay' for singular and 'Khariyan' for plural. But you're absolutely right that both are used in a derogatory manner.