The British Feared Him, 40,000 Warriors Followed Him: Why Was This Freedom Fighter Erased From Our History Books?
In May 1930, the United Press reported:
“Mobile squadrons of British troops and bombing squadrons advanced today to attack the Afghan tribal leader Haji Turangzai who was encamped with his troops near Peshawar.”
In August of the same year, it was reported:
“The Indian frontier was menaced by the greatest invasion in years today as thousands of wild Afghan tribesmen gathered for an advance through Khyber Pass against Peshawar and other frontier cities. Led by the powerful rebel leader, the Haji of Turangzai, the wild warriors were gathering in great numbers in the hills above the plains of India.”
The United Press reported on 10 March 1932:
“Reports at Bombay today said 40,000 tribesmen commanded by the elderly chieftain, Turangzai, were marching on Peshawar to urge the government of India to release Mahatma Gandhi from jail, the Bombay correspondent of the Daily Herald reported. Reports said the tribesmen were firing on Royal Air Force planes from mountainous tracts near Peshawar.”
Who Was the Haji of Turangzai?
Who is this Haji of Turangzai? Why did the British fear him? Why do we not find his name in our textbooks?
Haji of Turangzai was born as Fazal Wahid in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in 1842. His early education was at a local madrasa with ideological leanings towards Shah Waliullah. He went to Deoband (U.P) for further studies at Darul Uloom. Here, he became friends with Sheikh-ul Hind Maulana Mahmud ul Hasan and went on a Haj pilgrimage with him, Maulana Qasim Nanotvi and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi.
It must be kept in mind that Deoband was a centre of the Indian freedom struggle. Both of its founders, Nanotvi and Gangohi, took up arms against the British in 1857 under the leadership of Haji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki. Maulana Mahmud was also a freedom fighter and was kept as a prisoner of war in Malta during the First World War.
Haji of Turangzai met Haji Imadadullah in Arab and promised his allegiance to his mission. Imdadullah was a leader of the Indian revolutionaries in 1857 and his mission was to free India from English rule.
Haji of Turangzai also took lessons from Mulla Najmuddin of Hadda (Mulla Hadda) and promised his allegiance to him. Mulla Hadda was a well known anti-British scholar as well as a leader. He led several armed campaigns against the foreign rulers in his lifetime.
So, Haji of Turangzai took inspiration from two distinct yet converging ideologies of Islamic piety, sufism and anti-colonialism. It must be noted that while Sana Haroon, in her book, writes that Haji of Turangzai met Mulla Hadda after his return from Deoband, according to Altaf Qadir, an authority on Haji of Turangzai, allegiance to Mulla Hadda predates visit to Deoband and Haj.
The Silk Letter Conspiracy and Global Revolutionary Networks
Haji Turangzai acted as a link between Deoband based Indian revolutionaries and sufi revolutionaries, like Mulla Hadda, from the 1870s. When the First World War broke out, Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi moved to Afghanistan as Haji Turangzai also moved there. The plan was to raise an army of tribals led by Haji Turangzai and other Islamic scholars like him who had a following among the tribes inhabiting these regions.
Raja Mahendra Pratap, an Arya Samaj revolutionary, and Maulvi Barkatullah, a Ghadar Party leader, also joined them in Afghanistan. A provisional government was formed with Mahendra as its President, Barkatullah as Prime Minister and Ubaidullah as Home Minister at Kabul in 1915.
The movement failed after the letters written by Ubaidullah were intercepted by the English intelligence agencies in 1916. Several people were arrested and the plan was called the Silk Letter Conspiracy.
A Shield for Minorities and Defender of National Unity
Haji of Turangzai would not stop his movement and kept organising tribals against the British. Understanding the need of national unity he wanted Hindu, Muslims and Sikhs to live together.
Altaf Qadir writes:
“In the very first jargah, convened in Ghaziabad, he denounced all raiders as enemies of Islam. The Kamali and Pandiali, two branches of the local Mohmandan, were asked to restrain their bad characters for the future. He asked them to release all Hindus abducted from the Peshawar district. Both the tribes protested but were compelled to settle the matter according to his directives. The Hindus comprised the wealthy class of the district of Peshawar and were an easy target for kidnapping, to be released on ransom. Not only Hindus, sometimes the wealthy Muslims were also the target of such kidnapping. As a true Muslim, Haji Sahib Turangzai was against such acts of the tribesmen. He did not want to harm the residents of the British territory, who were under British Imperialism.”
Altaf also points out:
“Evidences suggest that Haji Sahib was in touch with revolutionary movements, led by non-Muslims. They included Naujawan Bharat Sabha and Ghadar Party; the latter sent two of its members to Lakarai. To deceive the official informers, they pretended to be Sikhs who wanted to embrace Islam.”
Two Decades of Armed Guerilla Resistance and RAF Airstrikes
Haji of Turangzai organised an armed militia and attacked the British army at several posts from 1915 till his death in 1937. His impact was so much that the British Air Force dropped bombs on them to suppress them.
The Defence of India, an official journal of the British government, reported:
“In August (1915), Haji Sahib of Turangzai, a notorious anti-British Mullah, gathered several thousand men around him in the Ambela Pass, and prepared to invade British territory. The men he had assembled around him were not to be despised. The majority of them were Pathan hillmen, trained in fighting from boyhood. Scattered among them were a group of Hindu fanatics. Then there were fakirs of many kinds, reputed miracle workers, men of extraordinary austerity-fierce, lean, keen religionists.”
The movement led by Haji of Turangzai was a part of the movement led by Deoband based Ulema and linked to other revolutionary movements of Punjab, Bengal, NWFP etc.
Inspiring Frontier Gandhi and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose
Many people don’t realise that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was one of the followers of Haji of Turangzai. Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgars were part of the movement led by Haji of Turangzai.
Yusuf Meherally, a popular Indian leader from Mumbai, wrote in 1946:
“Way back in 1911, while Khan Saheb was studying medicine in England, the Haji Saheb of Turangzai had started a movement for national education, and established a chain of schools. Turangzai was only two miles from the village of the Khan brothers. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was then only twenty, enthusiastically identified himself with these beneficent efforts. The alien Government’s watchful eye noted the awakening that this new movement had brought. Their heavy hand fell right away on the Haji Saheb who, however, escaped in time to the tribal areas in order to avoid capture. Several of the other teachers were, however, arrested and the schools thereby suppressed. Surprising as it may seem, the Khan brothers were driven into politics only when they were convinced that it was impossible to do any nation-building work or conduct any activity, however beneficial and unobjectionable in itself, until the existing regime was basically altered.”
The armed movement which was initiated by Haji of Turangzai was also linked to Subhas Chandra Bose. Milan Hauner of the University of Wisconsin Madison writes:
“Bose indeed assigned the Tribal Territory an important role to play in his comprehensive ‘Plan for Cooperation Between the Axis Powers and India’, which he submitted immediately after his arrival in Berlin…. In his single-minded obsession with ousting the British from India, Bose was convinced that the mere appearance of a small force of 50,000 soldiers with modern equipment on the Frontier would have been sufficient to turn the British out of India.”
