Post Partition
Pakistan's Independence in August 1947 marked the beginning of the end of the Khudai
Khidmatgar movement. While the Congress government remained in power briefly it was
eventually dismissed by the Governor under the orders of Pakistan's founder Muhammad
Ali Jinnah. Dr. Khan Sahib was replaced by former Congressite Abdul Qayyum Khan. He
successfully stopped an attempted reapprochment between Ghaffar Khan and Muhammad
Ali Jinnah by stopping a planned meeting beteween the two citing security threats
(Korejo 1997). With that, Jinnah gave Qayyum Khan a free hand in dealing with the
Congress and the Khudai Khidmatgars. The crackdown that followed culminated with the
Babra Sharif massacre. As part of the crackdown the houses of Khudai Khidmatgar
activists were ransacked and plundered. In some cases men were stripped naked in
presence of their mothers and sisters and their beards shaven (all of which was seen as a
great insult by Pashtuns). Despite the provocation and its obvious ambivalence over
Pakistan's creation, the Khudai Khidmatgar leaders reconvened at Sardaryab on 3 and 4
September 1947 and passed a resolution that accepted Pakistan's creation and they would
leave in Pakistan as its bona fide citizens and would refrain from making any sort of
disturbance and difficulty for the new state.
However Qayyum Khan and the central government had already decided that there would
be no accord with the movement. The Khudai Khidmatgar organisation was declared
unlawful in mid-September 1948, mass arrests followeed and the centre at Sardaryab
(Markaz-e-Khudai Khidmatgaran), built in 1942, was destroyed by the Provincial
Government. This crackdown ultimately led to the Babra Sharif massacre.
The movement was also hit by defections as party members switched sides out of fear or
for benefit. Those members that wished to surivive politically rallied behind a former
ally, turned opponent of Qayyum Khan, the Pir of Manki Sharif. The Pir created a
breakaway Muslim League, however, it proved no match for Qayyum who engineered his
re-election in 1951.
The movement lingered on till 1955 when it was again banned by the central government
because of Ghaffar Khan's opposition to the One Unit. An aborted attempt was made to
bring Ghaffar Khan into the government as a Minister as well as turning the KK
movement into a national organization, however Ghaffar Khan turned down the offer.
Although the ban on the movement was lifted in 1972, the Khudai Khidmatgar movement
had been broken.
Criticisms
Modern day red shirts at the funeral of Wali Khan
The Khudai Khidmatgar movement was a success in the terms of its opposition to British
rule. However, the social effects of the movement have not survived. While the Ghaffar
Khan family maintains a hold over the political philosophy of the movement, its history
has largely been wiped out from official memory in Pakistan. The movement has also
been criticized for its opposition to partition, and by that virtue the creation of Pakistan.
As a result it has been seen as a sectionist movement in Pakistan, and in the 1950s and
1960s it was also perceived as pro communist. An argument that was used by
conservative elements to discredit it as anti-Islam. The movement's claim to total non-
violence seems flawed as well; some critics argue that while the movement proved a
success against the British, it like other non-violent movements would not have proved a
success against another Imperial power. This is supposedly proved by its failure to pose a
challenge to the Pakistani government amidst a crackdown that was perceived as far more
brutal than any done by the British. Others have also suggested that the Khudai
Khidmatgar movement was not in fact as non-violent as its supporters would argue.
Writers like Schofiled and Bannerjee have documented cases of attacks on British
personnel and soldiers.