British Legacy of Pashtuns

British legacy of Pashtuns. History Of Pashtun Watan During British Raaj In India. English Blog To Know

An English Blog about British Legacy of Pashtuns.

In the northwestern region of Pakistan, the Pashtuns have historically been influenced by their proximity to Kabul and, therefore, the Afghan king (in the west) and in turn, his relationship with British India (in the east). The spread of Pashtuns across the Durand Line established a transnational Pashtun community, with Pashtuns on either side of the Durand Line. This has allowed the Pashtun tribes to escape military pressure and move across the border from either side.

British Legacy of Pashtuns. English Blog

The British rightly feared that the Pashtun tribes, on their own or with help from across the border, would rebel against them and threaten the Indus heartland. They therefore maintained this region along the Afghanistan border as a buffer zone between Britain and Russia. Between 1849 and 1890, the British dispatched 42 military expeditions into the mountainous region, to subdue the rebelling Pashtun tribes. Unable to decisively defeat the Pashtun warriors, they adopted a policy that analysts would call “butcher and bolt”: they marched into an offending village, killed civilians, and fled before the tribal warriors could retaliate.

In 1901, the British integrated the region west of the Indus and east of the Durand line into the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). They adopted a policy of conciliation and control, backed by a massive military presence. The British built a number of forts and stationed troops in strategic points in the tribal areas. They allowed loyal tribes to trade in arms without restraint, and recruited them for military service. By 1915, the British had some 7,500 Pashtuns serving in the Indian Army.

The British strategy for dealing with the Pashtun’s local customs and power relations was based on three pillars: the tribal Maliks; political agents; and the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR). The Maliks served as local elite for the British: they ensured that British caravans could trade with Afghanistan through routes in the tribal areas, in return for benefits and subsidies. 

The political agent, meanwhile, was the senior bureaucrat who served as chief executive for different tribal agencies. He was the main contact for the tribal maliks, and was bestowed the power of suspending or cancelling the malik status when deemed necessary. 

The FCR was a set of criminal and civil laws that resolved intra-tribe conflicts according to tribal customs, or elements of Pashtun code (or Pashtunwali), such as the jirga.v Over time, maliks settled in the urban areas of Peshawar, Mardan, Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan, visiting their tribes occasionally and enjoying the benefits of their relationship with the British colonialists. This heightened the economic stratification of Pashtun society.

While the British vernacularised languages in other parts of India, they neglected the Pakhtun language and promoted Urdu instead, to force the Pashtuns to look to Punjab and India as part of a linguistic union. Pashtun leader Abdul Gaffar Khan, through his army of Khudai Khitmatgars, used the Pashto language as a symbol of Pakhtun identity. 

His political leanings brought him closer to Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, and his success earned the wrath of the Muslim League and the British elite in the region. As the idea of partition grew and the creation of Pakistan became an eventuality, Gaffar Khan made a call for an independent Pashtunistan, although the concept was never clearly defined. 

After Partition, his leadership recognised the creation of Pakistan as a settled fact and espoused the reorganisation of provincial boundaries under which all Pashtuns would be united in a single province called Pakhtunistan.

Meanwhile in the south, the region of Kalat (in present-day Balochistan) posed its own challenges for the British. Situated along the Iranian border with trade routes through Kandahar and southern Afghanistan, Balochistan’s strategic location has been of great importance to various nations, with Persian, Afghan, Sikh and British rulers making numerous attempts to gain control over it. While the different rulers of Kalat over the years attempted to bring the Baloch tribes under one political unit, weak institutions and political exploitation allowed the British to enter Balochistan.

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Posted By Samiullah Khatir, 

British legacy of Pashtuns. History Of Pashtun Watan During British Raaj In India. English Blog To Know

An English Blog about British Legacy of Pashtuns.