Lately, Peshawar has been in the news for all the bad reasons. First it was the attack on the Army Public School on 16th December 2014, carried out by seven gunmen affiliated to an offshoot of the Taliban, killing 132 children. Then it’s the recent attack on the Bacha Khan University in nearby Charsadda, on 20th January, purportedly by the same group, killing 21 people.
Interestingly
Peshawar, the capital of the erstwhile North West Frontier Province, presently Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the Indian
subcontinent, with a very strong legacy in art, culture and religion that
transcends the boundaries of Pakistan and India. Peshawar, and that entire
region, also happens to be the karmabhoomi of Bacha (Badshah) Khan, the
legendary Pashto leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, an apostle of nonviolence and
a close aid of Mahatma Gandhi.
The
history of Peshawar, and especially that of Bacha Khan, who lends his name to
the University where the recent attack happened, don’t seem to go hand in hand
with the present state the entire region has got into. The glorious past and
the legacy left behind by Bacha Khan were all indigenous to the region. It was
not something that any external agency had created for them, unlike the
thousand legacies left behind by the British on India. The cultural heritage of
that region is very much rooted there, not anywhere else. So it shocks more
when we see what it has degenerated into now. The most striking thing of that
place is indeed Bacha Khan’s tryst with nonviolence, something the towering
personality had started preaching and practicing totally independent of Gandhi.
It could very well be a case study in itself, when seen in the context of
Islam, or rather the Islam he believed in. It’s intriguing why his
interpretations of Islam, which he used to justify his faith in nonviolence,
doesn’t find any resonance now.
It’s
paradoxical that, at a time when certain interpretations of Islam have been
fuelling a sort of violence and terrorism not seen before, no one wants to talk
about Bacha Khan’s nonviolence. It’s as though, the moment you talk about that,
you indirectly accept Islam can also be interpreted in a different way, and
thus, you would accept this too that the other interpretation is questionable,
or rather wrong. That’s where lies all the problem – no one is ready say that
the king is naked.
Let us go back and look into
the history a bit. Peshawar had a famous dagaba (dhatu-garbha in Sanskrit
meaning a receptacle for sacred ashes or relics) enshrining the begging pot of
the Buddha. It was constructed by the Kushana Emperor Kanishka in the 2nd
century AD. The sacred relic was taken to Vaishali, and then to Kandahar, where
it’s still believed to be preserved and revered by the Muslims.
When the Chinese monk and
traveler Fah Hien passed through the province in the 5th century he
describes the dagaba at Peshawar as “more than 470 ft. in height, and decorated
with every sort of precious substance, so that all who passed by, and saw the
exquisite beauty and graceful proportions of the tower and the temple attached
to it, exclaimed in delight that it was incomparable for beauty”. He adds, “Tradition
says this was the highest tower in Jambudwipa.”
When Hiuen Tsang passed that
way more than 200 years later, he reports the tower as having been 400 ft.
high, but it was then ruined. It doesn’t exist now.
Kanishka is represented as a
Buddhist, beyond all doubt. He held a convocation at which Nagarjuna was
apparently the presiding genius. From about that time the Tibetans, Burmese,
and Chinese date the first introduction of Buddhism into their countries. Nagarjuna
essentially spread Buddhism, from Peshawar, over the whole of central and
eastern Asia. It was precisely analogous to the revolution that took place in
the Christian Church, about the same time after the death of its founder. Six
hundred years after Christ, Gregory the Great established the hierarchical
Roman Catholic system.
So the Sanskrit Purushapura, which
Akbar Persianized to Peshawar, the Frontier Town, happens to be an epicenter
for Buddhism. At Jamalgarhi, 36 miles NE of Peshawar, and Takht-i-Bahai, 8
miles further westward, the ancient monasteries exist till date.
Charsadda, where the recent
attack happened, is identified with the ancient Pushkalavati, another important
Buddhist site.
Peshawar still has the Qissa
Khawani Bazar, the Story Teller’s Market. It’s not for nothing that the qafilas
have been bringing the Afghans, Persians, Turkomans, Uzbeks, Russians and many
others from round the world to this place, for two thousand years, since the
time of the great Kanishki Namworr, as was the Kushan Emperor Kanishka often referred
to in the old inscriptions.
Everyone
who came here had a story to share and that’s how this market came to be known
as the Qissa Khawani Bazar, the Story Tellers’ Market. For thousands of years
the people have listened to these stories of the world. The followers of Bacha
Khan created their own story on 23rd April, 1930. It was the story
of the honesty and truthfulness of the Pashtuns, the story of sacrificing their
wealth, life and comfort for the liberty of Hindustan, the story of their lives
in accordance with the principles of adam
tashaddud, nonviolence, preached by their leader, Bacha Khan.
With
his affable but stupefying personality, as towering as his tall height, and the
earnestness in his speech, Bacha Khan had hypnotized many young minds. Sometime
back, he had given a mesmerizing speech at Utmanzai, his birthplace, not very
far from Peshawar.
“I’m going to give you such a weapon that the
police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon of
the Prophet, but you’re not aware of it. That weapon is sabr, patience, renunciation
of all violent retaliation and righteousness. No power on earth can stand
against it. When you go back to villages, tell your brethren that there is an
army of God, and its weapon is sabr. Ask your brethren to join the army of God.
Endure all hardships. If you exercise sabr, victory will be yours…”
Bacha
Khan had formed the Khudai Khidmadgar, Servants of God, the previous year. Such
was the popularity of Abdul Gaffar Khan, anointed as Badshah Khan, the King of
Khans, that even his reference would augur a feeling of reverence among his
people. Such a level of acceptance among the Pashtuns was perhaps because he
had instilled new vigor and honor into Pashtunwali, the Pashtun way of life,
giving the violent people a new meaning to their lives which had been relegated
to bad blood and savage killings.
He
would say, “There is nothing surprising
in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is
not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all
the time he was in Mecca and it has since been followed by all those who wanted
to throw off an oppressor’s yoke. A Muslim never hurts anyone by word or deed.
Islam is amal, yakeen, muhabat, work and faith and love…”
Bacha
Khan was essentially interpreting the 250th verse of the 2nd
chapter of Quran. Rabbana, afrigh alayna
sabran, Lord, pour sabr on us. Wa-thabbit
aqdamana, and make firm our qadm, the steps we take. Wa-unsurna ala al-qawami al-kafirana, and help us against the
people who are kafir, infidels. What’s interesting here is his interpretation
of “kafir” which most commonly is taken as non-believers in Islam. But Bacha
Khan interpreted that as enemies, the Angrez in his case. He decided to support
the Peshawar Congress and participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement.
A
picketing was planned at the Qissa Khawani Bazar on 23rd April,
1930, which soon turned out to be another Jallianwala Bagh. The police from the
nearby Kabuli Thana fired indiscriminately at the nonviolent Pashtuns who ran
for their lives in the narrow streets of the market and died, not even one
turning violent.
What
exactly happened on 23rd April may be well understood from the following
two poems, one in Urdu and the other in Pashto.
Malakul maut ko khatir
mein na lene wale
Goliyan taney huye seeno
pe khane wale
Qabr tak sabr ko sehte
huye jane wale
Sabat ka mujiza dunya ko dikhane wale
Not paying any heed to the Angel of Death,
Taking the bullets valiantly on their chest,
Till they go to their graves enduring the patience,
Showing the world the wonder of perseverance…
Dasey toye karhi hecha
nadi da chargano winey
Laka toye karhi di angrez
da mazlumano winey
Zaka likaley de Santis
April harcha pa wino
Che pa de wradz bande
werhia we da khwarano winey
Qissa Khana qasab-khana
wah pa nazar da khalqo
Che ye bazar ke bahedalay da khwarano winey
No one has shed the blood of the chickens in the way
The Angrez shed the blood of the oppressed, that day.
“Santis April” all have written in letters bloody red –
The day saw easy blood as the poor died and bled.
Qissa Khana became a slaughter’s house before our eyes;
In the bazar the poor’s blood
was scattered under the sky.
It’s
very important now to talk about Bacha Khan and his interpretation of Islam.
It’s important to highlight his teachings, not only to inspire people, but also
to point out that there indeed is a big issue in the way Islam can be
interpreted otherwise.
Problems do creep into every religion. It crept into
Hinduism even 600 years before the birth of Christ. That was when Buddha
emerged and re-interpreted Hinduism. What the Tagore family et-al tried to do,
as late as 150 years ago, was to re-interpret Hinduism, perhaps for the last
time. In between, in the two thousand years that have elapsed, a lot of people
and movements have emerged to re-align Hinduism with the need of the time. A
similar thing is totally missing in Islam.
What’s
really curious is why no one wants to talk openly about the need to reorient
Islam. All religions have gone through phases of revival and reorientation from
time to time. There’s nothing wrong or
bad or sad about it. In turning a blind eye to it, the academia, media and
intellectuals are actually doing more harm than good. That’s why Bacha Khan is
important now because he did something that any religion needs from time to
time – reinterpretation and reorientation.
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