Peshawar Pakistan and the surrounding valleys are historically renowned for their rugged terrain and independent and religious people with a reputation as tenacious fighters. At the present time the Taliban have been engaged in intense fighting in northwestern Pakistan and many across the globe mistakenly think it is inevitable for tribal fighting to define this section of the world. As violence currently rages in this region, it is hard to imagine that 80 years ago one man, armed with the principles of nonviolence, stood with his fellow countrymen against an occupying army to gain his country's independence. Nestled between the Swat Valley in the north and Waziristan in the south is the city of Utmanzai, the birthplace of Abdul Ghaffar Kahn. Ghaffar Kahn was a devout Muslim who used the wisdom of Islam to convince other Muslims to put aside their cultural tradition of badal, the use of killing for blood revenge to maintain their honor and formed an army of nonviolent Muslim soldiers. Yes, NONVIOLENT SOLDIERS! How did this Pashtun man organize a nonviolent army, what did they accomplish, and what might we learn from his actions? Ghaffar Kahn, a contemporary of Mohandas Gandhi, was born and lived much of his life in British-ruled India. After many efforts (many of which were violent) to empower the people in his region were thwarted, Kahn created the Khudai Khidmatgars in 1929. It may well have been the first professional nonviolent army in the history of the world. Many of the members had bravely fought against the British soldiers and displayed their courage on the battlefield. However, their new commander required they now take an oath in which they promised to serve humanity in the name of Allah, to live a virtuous life with good behavior, and to refrain from violence and their traditional methods of revenge taking. By 1930 hundreds of Pashtuns had taken the oath and donned the uniform of the distinctive brick-red tunic. These men underwent rigorous training similar in most ways to that of military men to develop the discipline and restraint needed to maintain nonviolent behavior when provoked. The Khudai Khidmatgars, initially, worked as a social movement to improve education in the region, but when British tyranny reoccurred, the red-shirted “servants of God” began marching and demonstrating to end the oppression. On several occasions the British soldiers fired their rifles into the unarmed nonviolent demonstrators, riddling bodies with many bullets, only to see another in red-tunic stand to fill his fallen comrade's place. One newspaper of the day referred to one such demonstration where a six-hour response by the British resulted in piles of bodies so large that enough ambulances could not be found to remove them. Yet, just like Gandhi's nonviolent actions in other parts of India, Ghaffar Kahn's “servants of God” changed public opinion and won important concessions from the British. Their cause was filled with violent retaliation from the British and took a decade and a half to achieve independence for the region. It served to provide a serious alternative to violence that had been a Pashtun tradition for centuries. Abdul Ghaffar Kahn's followers called him Badshah Kahn or “King of the Kahns.” While the efforts of Badshah Kahn and his nonviolent soldiers were important in attaining the independence of Pakistan in 1947, once realized, he worked for more autonomy for the northwest frontier and for more rights for women. As was the case previously, he based his work on deep and compassionate beliefs in Islam and its strong traditions consistent with equality and justice. Unfortunately, for his continued efforts he was viewed as a threat to the new government in Islamabad and spent over two thirds of the first thirty years of his country's independence in prison or exile. Badshah Kahn taught us that it is not inevitable that violence be the only method used to solve problems in some parts of the world that are currently embroiled in turmoil. He showed that people who have a cultural tradition of revenge and violence are very capable of using nonviolent means to achieve their goals against outside occupiers using Islamic beliefs as an important means for change. However, Kahn was not able to use these same nonviolent means to work within the Islamic state of Pakistan to effect change in the way that Martin Luther King Jr. did in the United States. The real challenge today is to use the nonviolent rationale and processes of Kahn within countries with a primarily Muslim citizenry to champion social justice and women rights while reducing the negative effects of extremism. It is now time for another Muslim to mobilize his/her fellow citizens to reduce the culture of violence using the teachings and wisdom of the Koran that are consistent with nonviolence. Badshah Kahn showed the way is possible and a new Badshah for the 21st century needs to emerge. **Daniel M. Mayton II is Professor of Psychology at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, U.S.A. where he has taught for more than three decades. He has taught courses on nuclear war, peace, and nonviolence plus he has conducted and published research on nuclear war attitudes, nonviolent predispositions, and the value underpinnings of activism and nonviolence. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and has served as president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility and the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, & Violence (Division 48 of the American Psychological Association). He recently published Nonviolence and Peace Psychology: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Societal, & World Peace within Springer's peace psychology book series. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/q7RTl Tags: featured, Ghaffar Khan, Islam, Nonviolence, Protest Section: Editor's choice, Op-ed, Religion
