Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Who was Khan Ghufar Khan aka Bacha Khan?

He was a staunch supporter of Indian National Congress, he was termed as Frontiers Ghandi, Since his area of influence was Pushtun areas which were muslim dominant areas so he always knew that even in combined india his political stature wont get affected.Since he was a muslim and pushtun who would stand a chance infront of him even if he had nothing to offer, no hindu would stand a chance what so ever. The only alteration to his political stauture would occuer if there was a political force to emerge with whome ppl of the area can osiate with, Indian National Congress could not be that force since it was a hindu dominated party and pushtuns had nothing to osiate themselves with it, so which other force could win their osiation? obviously it was Muslim Leauge. So this made him natural alliant of Indian National Congress and a natural opponent of Muslim leauge.And he was very consious of this fact. He never bycotted refrendum initially, when refrendum was announced initially to counter the growing influence of Muslim Leauge in pushtun areas he invited Jwahar Lal Nehru the leader of indian national congress to the NWFP to motivate pushtuns to vote against muslim leauge and pakistan, but when nehru started to address pushtuns and as soon as he asked them to vote against pakistan the pushtuns started throwing stones at nehru and he got injured and he had to be rushed out of the area, at this point the intentions of pushtuns were became clear to every body including ghaffar khan, so at this stage when political defeat became obviously apparent to ghaffar khan he twisted and bycotted the refrendum. But the very important point to mention here is that when ghaffar khan bycotted the refrendum the stance that he took was that since its pre-precieved in other muslim dominate areas that they would be included in pakistan why is the same rule not applied here in pushtun areas ,and that they should be automatically included in pakistan instead ofconducting the refrendum. he never opposed the question of refrendum but boycate was necessary for him since had he participated and lost in refrendum it would bring out the changed political dynamic tilting from of him to muslim leauge out in open so to avoid it he bycotted the refrendum, other wise why would u bycotte a refrendum conducted by a neutral party in this case british if u had any hope to win it.On the other hand muslim leauge wanted the refrendum so that this issue could be solved once and for all and to stop any future blackmail by him. But when he understood that refrendum was an obvious occurance now he changed his stance again and raised the slogan of pushtunistan which afgans try to use for their malicious designs. the important point here is that Ghafar khan never raised the slogan of joining with afghanistan he raised the slogan of an independent pushtun state because he knew joining afghanistan would be a political sucide for him as political elite in afghanistan will overtake him and his slogan was over whelmingly rejected by pushtuns. In his own diares he writes the turn out was 53%, now in 2008 in american elections which has a strong demcratic base the turn out was 63% ,here we r talking about 53% in 1947 in an area with no democratic base, and in which participant were mostly male voters when ratio of popultion of male to female is about 50% each.

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