The go-between: Arvind Ghosh

At the turn of this millennium, I was an international graduate student living in the US on a student visa. The internet had made it possible for many little-known sources of information to compete with the official narratives that are promoted by government agencies. For an Indian this meant that, at long last, the official “Nehruvian” history of India could be challenged by ideas grounded in fact, reason and common sense.

Several of the wonderful Voice of India books had become available online, but I was able to get most of them, at very reasonable rates, from the intrepid publisher and distributor of books, Shri Arvind Ghosh, who lived in Houston. I had become fond of the curmudgeon-like old man, who was actually a great gentleman with a rough exterior. He purchased the VOI books with the help of his own retirement income, and mailed them all over the US, without worrying about profit or financial gain. This made it possible for me to read books written by the Voice of India Quadrumvirate – Sita Ram Goel, Ram Swarup, Koenraad Elst and Shrikant Talageri – even while I eked out a living as a Teaching Assistant.

Mr. Ghosh had published the book Understanding Islam Through Hadis (by Shri Ram Swarup) in Houston, when it was banned in India, and all copies and proofs of the book had been seized, just on the eve of its publication. He had also found copies of the book Woman, Church and State (by Mathilda Joslyn Gage), which VOI has reprinted.

Our only-ever conversation

Naturally, Sita Ram Goel had a high opinion of Ghosh. And when I got Sita Ram ji’s phone number, and called him on impulse, mentioning the name of Mr. Ghosh, the great man gave me an audience. He spoke to me politely, but with a touch of impatience. He explained that he was absolutely fed up with those whom he called “Hindus with blueprints”. By this he meant Hindus who had acquired a smattering of knowledge of Islam and world affairs and had hare-brained recommendations for dealing with a problem that has plagued mankind for the 1400 years of its existence. My own blueprint was that VOI should clarify the difference between liberal Muslim thinkers such as Taslima Nasrin, Hamid Dalwai and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who wrote in Bengali, Marathi and Pashto respectively, as opposed to fundamentalist Muslim thinkers who wrote in Urdu.

From the writings of Hamid Dalwai and from my own experience in Maharashtra and Karnataka, I knew that Muslims speaking regional languages are slowly being encouraged (or forced) to take up Urdu instead of their mother tongue. Sita Ramji himself had spoken in praise of Hamid Dalwai [Chapter 9 of the book Defence of Hindu Society, Voice of India.], a genuinely progressive Muslim thinker, and reading his work was an important stage in my intellectual progress. I learned that Urdu-speaking Muslims in Calcutta (at least in the sixties) remained distinct from Bengali Muslims, and their outlook remained as  communal (to use the word in the peculiar Indian English way) after Partition as it had been before 1947.

I had also come across a rare copy of the book Facts are sacred written by Khan Abdul Wali Khan, which seemed critical of the Muslim League. [Facts are sacred, Wali Khan, Khan Abdul, Peshawar, 1986.This book has been reprinted – with many changes – under the title Facts are Facts: the Untold Story of India’s Partition, Wali Khan, Khan Abdul, New Delhi, 1987. The author is the son of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.] And Taslima Nasrin’s writings had been favourably reviewed by none other than Ram Swarup, Sita Ram ji’s mentor. When I now read that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (the well-known Pakhtun leader) had recommended the use of Pashto in the NWFP, I formed a thesis that non-Urdu speaking Muslim thinkers are inherently more liberal than Urdu-speaking Muslims.

Sita Ram ji listened to my naïve suggestions, but he took exception to a part of my “blueprint”. He said to me that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was a very fanatical Muslim. I could only protest that the Frontier Gandhi [Abdul Ghaffar Khan had been nicknamed “Frontier Gandhi” by the English press. His own followers called him by the more endearing nicknames “Badshah Khan” or “Bacha Khan”.] had opposed the Partition of India, and that he had been “thrown to the wolves” [This was the title of a book I had not read: Pyarelal, Thrown to the Wolves, Calcutta, Royal Art Press, 1966.]

Sita Ram ji must have been as weary of my “blueprint” as he was of the ill-health that caused him to keep our conversation brief. He said that he had studied Islam in India very deeply, and he could only say that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was not the liberal that Hindus think he was – he was a fanatic.

Sita Ramji then bid me goodbye. I never had the opportunity to talk to him again. A year or so later, he passed away. Ram Swarup had passed away already in 1998. Mr. Arvind Ghosh also departed this world around this time.

The Frontier Congress

I was preoccupied with the personal affairs of my own life for many years. But Sita Ramji’s words remained at the back of my mind. To honour his memory, I have attempted to place the results of my incipient enquiries before a Hindu readership. A statement made by Hamid Dalwai has always nagged me: The fact is that Muslim society has not yet thrown up in a significant number individuals who are genuinely committed to liberalism and humanism. It continues to be a tribal society held together by a collectivist loyalty. Even educated Muslims whose religious faith is often skin-deep rarely rise to a broad, humanist outlook. Their sensitivity to human suffering as human suffering is as yet feeble. This is perhaps the reason why even a person like Badshah Khan, who was a close associate of Gandhi, while commenting on current happenings in Pakistan expressed his sorrow over the massacre of Muslims by Muslims. The cruelty to which innocent and helpless Hindus were being subjected was apparently a matter beneath his notice. [Muslim Politics in India, Hamid Dalwai, Indian Secular Society, Mumbai, 2002 (1968), p. 98.]

However, books like Rittenberg’s Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns emphasize that Khan was the target of anti-Congress propaganda by the Muslim League or its local branch, the Frontier League: “To compensate for its lack of a positive program, the party [i.e., the Muslim League] placed a heavy reliance upon religious appeals. The Provincial Chief Secretary, Ambrose Dundas, noted in March 1938: “The speeches reported have contained no policy and no argument and have in about every case had no other theme but that Congress is a Hindu organisation and that no true Muslim ought to ally with it. [FR3/38(1) (FR Fortnightly Administration Reports of the NFWP. Government of India Archives.), quoted on page 158, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns, S. A. Rittenberg, Carolina Academic Press, Durham, 1988.]

League newspapers assumed a similar approach with articles purporting to show that “the Congress… has plans for Ram Raj in their hearts” and that the members of the Frontier Congress were traitors to Islam who were furthering the Hindus’ anti-Muslim designs in return for power and personal gain. [Shura, 8/1-2/38. Also see Sarhad, 12/30/38; quoted on page 158, Ethnicity, Nationalism, and the Pakhtuns, S. A. Rittenberg.]

Rittenberg shows how the League exploited any activity or indiscretion by the Frontier Congress which could be used for propaganda. Visits by the Congress leadership were portrayed as examples of Hindu control of the Frontier Congress. The use of the spinning wheel as an emblem by the Congress was attacked as an affront to Pakhtun values. The title “Frontier Gandhi” which became an epithet for Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was also ridiculed with the insinuation that Bacha Khan was an imitation of Mahatma Gandhi.

The controversies regarding the marriages of the younger members of the Khan family

The Muslim League also found another excuse to criticize the two politically active members of the Khan family, Ghaffar Khan, and his elder brother, Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (more commonly known as Dr. Khan Sahib). This criticism was that there were inter-religious marriages in the family. Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s son was married to a Parsi. This marriage was disapproved of, but did not lead to a public outcry, because it was assumed that wives adopted their husband’s religion upon marriage. [Rittenberg, op. cit., p. 173.]

However, Dr. Khan Sahib’s daughter Miriam married an Indian Christian in May 1942, and this was severely castigated by newspapers such as the Khyber Mail. Dr. Khan Sahib temporarily resigned from the Congress party, and Abdul Ghaffar Khan dissociated himself from the marriage. [Ibid.]

While it is possible to see Ghaffar Khan as the victim of bigotry in this situation, his own opinion on inter-religious marriage becomes clear in a conversation with Mahatma Gandhi reported in the hagiographic account of Ghaffar Khan’s life written by Eknath Easwaran:

“…he [Gandhi] was intrigued by Ghaffar Khan’s devout yet broad-minded Islam. Once he asked Khan about Dr. Khan Saheb’s English wife. Was she a convert to Islam? “You will be surprised that I cannot say whether she is a Muslim or a Christian,” Khan replied. Even Gandhi must have been impressed by such detachment on a point that would seem fundamental to more orthodox Muslims. “She was never converted – that much I know – and she is completely at liberty to follow her own faith. I have never asked her about it. Why should I? Why should not a husband and wife adhere each to their respective faiths? Why should marriage alter one’s faith? “I agree,” said Gandhi. “But would most Muslims?” “No, I know that they would not. But for that matter, not one in a hundred thousand knows the true spirit of Islam. I think at the back of our quarrels is the failure to recognize that all faiths contain enough inspiration for their adherents. The Holy Koran says in so many words that God sends messengers for all nations and peoples. All of them are Ahle Kitab – ‘Men of the Book’ – and the Hindus are no less Ahle Kitab than Jews or Christians.” [Eknath Easwaran: Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan, A Man to Match His Mountains, Nilgiri Press, Tomales, California, 1999, pp. 144-145.]

Here Badshah Khan pretended not to care about the private faith of non-Muslim spouses of Muslim individuals, though he would have known full well that Muslim women are not permitted to marry non-Muslims, and that Islamic law permits only Muslim men to take wives from among the People of the Book (Ahl-e Kitab). [A further complication is the fact that of the four schools of Muslim jurisprudence, only the Hanafi school allows Hindus to be counted among the People of the Book.]

Badshah Khan also did not reveal to Gandhi that he had dissociated himself from his niece’s marriage to a Christian.

Before being “thrown to the wolves”

The conventional view is that the violence that erupted on the “Direct Action Day” (16th August 1946) and its aftermath forced the Congress to agree to the idea of the Partition of India, though with the greatest reluctance. It is believed that Badshah Khan heroically resisted the thought of Partition, which had been accepted by a Congress Party that abandoned its own principles, “throwing Abdul Ghaffar Khan to the wolves”. The All-India National Congress Working Committee accepted the 3rd June (1947) Plan, and on 14th June, the All-India Congress Committee accepted the Partition plan. A referendum was planned for NWFP in which eligible  voters would determine whether the province would join India or Pakistan. The Frontier Congress decided not to participate in the referendum for choosing India or Pakistan, on grounds that the referendum should have also allowed for an independent Pakhtunistan.

However, the revenue minister Qazi Ataullah had raised the demand for Pakhtunistan in a public context as early as 13th May 1947, at a press conference: First of all we want to have an independent sovereign state of Pathans, and then we will visualise a joint ‘jirga’ … which will ultimately negotiate on equal footings either with Hindustan [i.e. India] or Pakistan whichever offers us better terms. [Tribune 15/5/47 (quoted in Rittenberg, p. 210).]

A press conference given by Ghaffar Khan’s brother Dr. Khan Sahib (the Premier of the Frontier Congress) further clarified that: “Pathans will never be dominated by anybody but in a sovereign state of NWFP we shall join hands with others having due regard to their interests as well as those of India as a whole [presumably Pakistan plus Hindustan]. The present day world conditions are such that even big powers cannot exist individually. Similarly a small state like NWFP cannot but associate itself with others for defence and other purposes.” [Tribune 17/5/47 (quoted in Rittenberg, p. 210).]

The education minister Yahya Jan was even more emphatic: the Frontier would be willing to join hands with other parts of India on a clear understanding that there would be no outside interference in its internal affairs and that no constitution would be forced on them by mere brute majority [i.e., presumably “by the other provinces”] against the free wishes of the people. [14 Tribune 26/5/47 (quoted in Rittenberg, p. 210).]

Qazi Ataullah and Yahya Jan were both related to Ghaffar Khan. The Qazi’s daughter was married to one of Ghaffar Khan’s younger sons, and Yahya Jan was married to one of Ghaffar Khan’s daughters. (Ghaffar Khan’s son, Ghani Khan had also been elected to represent the Province in the Central Assembly). While the various politically empowered members of his family were campaigning for Pakhtunistan, Ghaffar Khan himself made several attempts to negotiate with the Muslim League. At the end of the month of May, he met the principal of Islamia College, Sheikh Taimur, who set up a meeting between the Khan brothers and the Muslim League leaders Abdul Qaiyum and Samin Jan. Even when he was in Delhi, Ghaffar Khan himself laid his proposals before “a very responsible Muslim Leaguer”. There are differences in the later accounts of this meeting, as recounted by Ghaffar Khan himself and the Muslim League leaders. [Rittenberg, p. 210.

After being “thrown to the wolves”

The Khan brothers seem to have fared quite well in Pakistan, even after supposedly having been “thrown to the wolves” as Indians are often given to understand. Did they just land on their feet, or was there more to it than met the eye of Indian hagiographers like Tendulkar, Pyarelal or Easwaran? It is certain that the Frontier Gandhi maintained some links with the Congress Party even after Partition.

In his book, Aṣl ḥaqā’iq yeh hãĩ (“The Facts are these”), Ghaffar’s son, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, writes how in 1975 he put to rest the controversy surrounding his father in Pakistan, with his speech in the Supreme Court of Pakistan: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan went to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and as its member, took the oath of allegiance as a member [sic] in March 1948 – in his maiden speech on the 5th March, 1948 – he said… “I told them clearly that indeed I was of the opinion that India should not be divided because today in India we have witnessed the game – thousands, many lacs of the young old and children [sic], men and women were massacred and ruined – I admit that it was my honest opinion that India should not be divided, India should not be partitioned – But now that it is done – this dispute is over”. [Aṣl ḥaqā’iq yeh hãĩ, Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Karachi, May 1988, Shabal Publishers, p. 160. (Translation by a friend who chooses to remain anonymous, private communication).]

The same book has the picture of a two-column boxed newspaper article from the Daily Gazette, Karachi, 17 April 1948, with the title “Unity Talks in NWFP. Quaid-e-Azam wins over Opponents. Khan Brothers Convinced.” The newspaper report gives us very few details of the conversation between the Khan brothers and Mohammed Ali Jinnah on April 16, 1948, but it does carry this paragraph:

“On his return from the Government House after a one-and-a-half hours long talk with the Quaid-e-Azam, Khan Abdul Ghaffar, in an interview, said that they had a very friendly talk and as both had the same feelings for Pakistan and its people, they usefully traversed a vast field of questions affecting the state and the people.” [Ibid., p. 162.]

These reports indicate that whatever the Frontier Gandhi’s differences with the Quaid-e-Azam may have been, he had buried the hatchet very early in the history of the young state of Pakistan. [These details from the book Aṣl ḥaqā’iq yeh hãĩ, by Khan Abdul Wali Khan, have been completely omitted in the later edition of the same book Ḥaqā’iq ḥaqā’iq hãĩ, (https://archive.org/details/haqaiq-haqaiq hain/mode/2up).]

Indeed, it is doubtful that there ever had been a serious difference of opinion between them, and any seeming differences might have only been play-acting for the benefit of the Indian National Congress. Sita Ram Goel’s opinion of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was spot on, whether or not he had seen the issue of the Dawn (August 14, 1947) in which there appeared an account of a meeting between Badshah Khan and Allama Muhammad Iqbal sometime in 1936. Badshah Khan inquired why “Iqbal’s choice of a Moses to deliver the Muslim peoples of India from the hands of the Hindu Pharaohs had fallen on Muhammad Ali Jinnah”.

The Allama explained that while British imperialism was an obstacle and Hindu domination was a challenge for Muslims, who were “sandwiched” between them. Iqbal went on to clarify that he had met Jinnah in London and exchanged their views in a heart-to-heart talk over dinner. Iqbal said that Jinnah had originally been committed to a united India, but he (Iqbal) had convinced Jinnah that “the ultimate destiny of the Muslims lay in separation”. To allay Badshah Khan’s doubts about Jinnah’s connection with the masses, Iqbal said: “Let me predict that a man of his character, morals, understanding and determination will soon become a mass hero, the like of which India has not produced. Mr. Jinnah’s knowledge and understanding of the British imperialism and bureaucracy is quite intimate and he has the advantage of knowing the Congress mind from within. It will be he who will fight both the forces on all fronts and Insha Allah, it will be he who will defeat them.” [Life of Iqbal: General Account of his Life (Book 1), Masud-ul-Hasan, Ferozsons Ltd., Lahore, 1978, pp. 416-417.]