Khudai Khidmatgar Movement

Conditions prior to the movement

At the turn of the last century Pashtun society was colonized, stagnant,
violent, worn
down by feuds, inequalities, factionalism, poor social cooperation, and
plain ignorance.
Education opportunities were strictly limited. Pashtuns are Muslims;
and religious leaders
and Mullahs were known to have told parents that if their children went
to school, they
would go to hell. Khan stated that “the real purpose of this
propaganda” was to keep
Pashtuns “illiterate and uneducated”, and hence his people “were the
most backward in
India” with regard to education. He also stated that by the time Islam
reached his people
centuries earlier, it had lost much of its original spiritual message.
Origins of the Khudai Khidmatgar
Formed out of the society for reformation of Pashtuns (Anjuman-e-
Islah-e-Afghan), it
initially targeted social reformation and launched campaigns against
prostitution. Bacha
Khan as its founder seemed to be influenced by the realisation that
whenever British
troops were faced with an armed uprising they eventually always
overcame the rebellion.
The same could not be said when using non violence against the
troops.
The movement started prior to the Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre,
when a demonstration
of hundreds of non violent supporters were fired upon by British
soldiers in Peshawar. Its
low point and eventual disappaition was after Pakistan's independence
in 1947 when the
Muslim League Chief Minister Abdul Qayyum Khan banned the
movement and launched
a brutal crackdown on its members which culminated in the massacre
at Babra Sharif
massacre. At its peak the KK movement consisted of almost 100,000
members.
"The Khidmatgar movement was one of self-reform and introspection,"
says Mukulika
Banerjee, author of The Pathan Unarmed: Opposition and Memory in
the North West
Frontier (School of American Research Press, 2000). "It involved two
crucial elements:
Islam and Pashtunwali (the Pashtun tribal code). Here nonviolence
becomes an
ideological system very compatible with Islam and Pakhtunwali, since
these are
reinterpreted."
Genesis of the Khudai Khidmatgar
Initially the movement focussed on social reform as a means of
imrpoving the status of
pashtuns against the British. Ghaffar Khan founded several reform
movements prior to
the formation of the Khudai Khidmatgar, the Anjumen-e Islah ul-Afghan
in 1921, the
farmers' organisation Anjuman-e Zamidaran in 1927 and the youth
movement Pashtun
Jirga in 1927. Trying to further spread awareness on Pashtun issues
Abdul Ghaffar Khan
founded the magazine Pakhtun in May 1928. Finally in November 1929,
almost on the
eve of the Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre the Khudai Khidmatgar were
formed.