| January 22, 2002 | Tuesday | Ziqa’ad 7, 1422 |
The ‘Great Fire’ of Islamabad
Better late than never
Sherpao — what is he up to?
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Sarhadi Gandhi among his political opponents and Bacha Khan (Badshah) to his followers, fought a long battle against the troika of British Raj, landlords and clerics, from the platforms of All India National Congress and Khudai Khidmatgar (servants of God) before the Independence.
A man of great strength, strong will and relentless struggle, Bacha Khan goes in the annals opf history as a leader of principle who struggled for the deprived people throughout his life.
In his words, he got the first feelings of human miseries and deprivation during the days of his schooling. The observation, personal feelings and experiences, broadened his vision of the world and purified his soul — a source that inculcated the feeling of serving the suffering people, reforming the society and liberating it from the man-made miseries.
In his political voyage, he confronted the British government and its lackeys known as Khanbahadurs, a title conferred upon Muslim landlords loyal to the British Raj and ignorant clerics, opposed to the secular education in Pakhtoon society.
Born in 1890 in Utmanzai, Charsadda to a conservative family of a landlords, his father, Behram Khan, was an apolitical figure, who was opposed to any political and social unrest in the area.
When Bacha Khan was eight years, his father admitted him to a Peshawar primary school. The Frontier got a provincial status in 1906, coupled with a set of draconian laws known as Frontier Crimes of Regulations Act in 1903. He was admitted to Islamic School at Aligarh in 1908, where he felt the urge of seeking freedom from alien rule.
Amid harsh opposition by the British administration and clerics, he established first school at Utmanzai to spread education among his tribesmen. In 1912, he joined the reformist movement of Haji Abdul Wahab, known as Haji Sahib Turangzai and braved opposition by clergy and British rulers.
Making his first political contact with Muslim leaders at the All India Muslim League’s conference held at Agra in 1913, Bacha Khan sought their support against government atrocities in his area. From this time Khan stayed among his people till 1914 when the 1st World War broke out. A year later, Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa.
The year of 1919 was the turning point when the British troops killed hundreds of people in Jalianwala Bagh, Amritsar, and the Khilafat Movement took roots among Indians. Khan was taken into custody and sentenced to six months in jail.
He made his first contact with Gandhi and other leaders s first at the Khilafat conference in Delhi and then at the Congress session at Nagpur in December, 1920. The next year, he established a high school, but was arrested the same year and sentenced to three years imprisonment. In 1924 when Czarist monarchy was crumbling down in Russia, Khan was released from prison.
In 1928, he launched his magazine, Pakhtoon with the objective of educating the people of his community. Next year, he founded Khudai Khidmatgar, a socio- political organization based on the philosophy of non-violence. In 1930, his arrest triggered unrest and British troops shot dead a number of people in Qissakhwani Bazaar. After his release in 1931, he was nominated member of the Congress working committee at the party’s Karachi meeting, but was soon arrested with the members of the party’s high command. In 1934 he was freed, but the government put a ban on his entry into Frontier. Again he was detained for two years. In 1937, when the Congress won elections in Frontier, he was released. When Congress extended its conditional support to the UK in the IInd World War, Khan resigned from the party in June 1940 for his commitment to non-violence.
The British government suppressed the Quit India Movement in 1942 and arrested the entire Congress leadership and suspended Dr Khan Sahib’s (Abdul Jabbar Khan) ministry in the Frontier. Bach Khan was again imprisoned in 1944 and released at the end of the war and the British Labour government reinstated Dr Khan’s ministry.
After Partition Plan, communal riots broke out throughout India to which Bacha Khan reacted and visited the riot-hit Bihar in 1946 to pacify the situation. His Khudai Khidmatgar movement, who were opposed to the partition, boycotted the referendum (6-18 July, 1947) held to seek the opinion of Frontier people about accession to join Pakistan.
The first Pakistan government dissolved Khan Sahib’s ministry in Frontier in August 1947 and banned the publication of Khan’s magazine Pakhtoon. In the following month, Khan got held his party meeting and announced allegiance to Pakistan.
In March 1948, Bacha Khan founded Pakistan People’s Party and became its first president. In 1956, in consultation with other nationalist figures he founded National Awami Party, but Gen Ayub banned it 1958. In 1962, Amnesty International declared him prisoner of the year. In 1964, he left the country for London and returned to Afghanistan and lived there till 1971. In 1975, the NAP was outlawed and Khan along with the NAP leadership arrested. He was last arrested in 1983 during the MRD movement, but released on health grounds.
During his 70 years of political life, Bacha Khan spent 30 years in jail. He died on Jan 20, 1988. His body was taken to Jalalabad where he was laid to eternal rest.
As a politician he never compromised on his principles throughout his life. He was opposed to a sort of political expediency, embraced by his political heirs on one or the other pretext. He was a real leader who did not only preached his political ideas but acted according to them. A man of great ideals he wanted to see people free of hegemony, personal bondage, and law of natural justice to prevail.
The death anniversary of Bacha Khan was observed on Sunday
READING about the fire last week which gutted the 16-storey Shaheed-i-Millat Secretariat in the capital, one cannot help but be reminded of the early fire-fighters who did not have the tools or the techniques to handle big fires and often had to watch helplessly as entire city blocks were destroyed. The Shaheed-i- Millat fire is more than a lesson for the capital’s fire department; it is an incident that has rightly shaken confidence in the country’s entire fire-fighting and fire prevention capability. Particularly demoralizing was the fact that the fire was fought in vain by the combined fire-fighting force of the twin cities, which included the civil fire departments, as well as the army and navy fire-fighting units.
Modern fire-fighting has come a long way since the first corps of fire-fighters was instituted by the Roman emperor Augustus in 24 B.C. Up until the 17th century, the principal piece of fire-fighting equipment had been the bucket, passed from hand to hand to deliver water to the fire, and fire-engines were simply tubs carried on wheels which functioned as a reservoir and sometimes housed a hand-operated pump.
Today in the industrial countries, fire-fighting has grown to become a very professional operation with very professional personnel and equipment. That this far from the case in Pakistan is basically the root of the problem. The Shaheed-i-Millat debacle is more than a problem of height and the lack of proper equipment. It is the overall attitude, inertia and lack of attention at every level to the whole issue of fire-fighting, fire prevention and fire protection.
An overhaul of the country’s fire departments would require first and foremost that fire-fighters be trained as a fully professional force just as fire-fighters in many other countries are. This would include training at a fire-fighters’ school and continuing throughout a fire-fighter’s career.
Feasibility should be seriously considered of installing, specially in major cities with highrise buildings, the kind of modern fire-fighting infrastructure in cities abroad that include the system of hydrants. An obvious and immediate need is more and better fire-engines than the obsolete fleet the country currently has. The characteristics of the modern fire-engine include a powerful pump that has a minimum capacity of 750 gallons per minute at a pump pressure of 150 psi, several thousand feet of fire-hose, a water-tank capacity of at least 500 gallons and, most important of all, an engine that is in perfect running condition. Residents of the capital vividly remember the sight of a stalled fire engine on the road being pushed by fire fighters.
The fire-fighting fleet should also include the necessary auxiliary vehicles equipped with specialized equipment like aerial ladders that extend to 100 feet, elevating platform trucks that can raise the fire-fighters and their equipment, including the water delivery system, as high as 100 feet, and rescue trucks carrying a wide assortment of specialized emergency equipment. Each fire department should be organized into basic operating units known as companies, according to the types of apparatus, like engine companies, ladder companies and rescue companies.
More important than fire-fighting itself in many countries is fire prevention, the concept of which is still very much lacking here. Each state or province usually has its own fire laws and regulations and its own fire prevention code. The fire departments are charged with the enforcement of these regulations. There is usually a fire prevention bureau in the fire department which inspects all commercial buildings or multiple-dwelling buildings at regular intervals, and issue orders for the correction of violations of fire laws. If necessary, court action is taken to compel compliance.
These fire regulations include: proper fire exits in the designing of buildings; doors and walls made of fireproof materials; intern