The Babrra Massacre (or Babara Massacre; ps, د بابړې خونړۍ پېښه) was a mass shooting on 12 August 1948 in the

North-West Frontier Province The North-West Frontier Province (NWFP; ps, شمال لویدیځ سرحدي ولایت, ) was a Chief Commissioner's Province of British India, established on 9 November 1901 from the north-western districts of the Punjab Province. Followi ...

(NWFP) of Pakistan (now called as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) . According to official figures, around 15 protestors were killed while around 40 were injured. However,

Khudai Khidmatgar Khudai Khidmatgar ( ps, خداۍ خدمتګار; literally "servants of God") was a predominantly Pashtun nonviolent resistance movement known for its activism against the British Raj in colonial India; it was based in the country's North-Wes ...

sources maintained that around 150 were killed and 400 were injured. It happened on Babrra ground in Charsadda District on the order of the chief minister of the NWFP,

Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan Kashmiri ( ur, عبدالقیوم خان کشمیری) (16 July 1901 – 23 October 1981) was a major figure in British Indian and later Pakistan politics, in particular in the North-West Frontier Province, where served a ...

(not to be confused with

Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum Khan Nawab Khan Bahadur Sahibzada Sir Abdul Qayyum Khan KCIE (12 December 1863 – 4 December 1937), hailing from Topi, Swabi District, British India (modern day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pakistan) was an educationist and politician. Qayyum Khan helped Mortim ...

, NWFP's first chief minister during the British Raj).M. Rafique Afzal (April 1, 2002). Pakistan: History and Politics, 1947–1971. p. 38 OUP Pakistan. .

Background

The

was a non-violent peaceful

Pashtun Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically r ...

movement which was led by

Abdul Ghaffar Khan Abdul Ghaffār Khān (; 6 February 1890 – 20 January 1988), also known as Bacha Khan () or Badshah Khan (), and honourably addressed as Fakhr-e-Afghan (), was a Pakistani Pashtun, independence activist, and founder of the Khudai Khidmatgar ...

(Bacha Khan), a leader in the

Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged from Bengal. ...

. The movement was initially focused on reform to the status of the Pashtuns under the

British Raj The British Raj (; from Hindi ''rāj'': kingdom, realm, state, or empire) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; * * it is also called Crown rule in India, * * * * or Direct rule in India, * Quote: "Mill, who was himsel ...

and later focused on the independence of colonial India from British rule. The movement's leader, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was a supporter of a

United India Akhand Bharat (), also known as Akhand Hindustan, is a term for the concept of a unified Greater India. The idea of Akhand Bharat in it's most widely accepted form is that Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Myanmar, ...

and wanted

(present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) to join United India. Until 1930, the Pashtuns were not very involved in politics. In the

1937 Indian provincial elections Provincial elections were held in British India in the winter of 1936-37 as mandated by the Government of India Act 1935. Elections were held in eleven provinces - Madras, Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, United Provinces, Bombay Presidency, A ...

, the movement won the elections for the North-West Frontier Province in alliance with the

Congress Party The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Em ...

, as Bacha Khan's brother,

Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan Dr. Khan Sahib ( ps, ډاکټر خان صیب ) (born 1883, Utmanzai, Charsadda – 9 May 1958, Lahore), mistakenly named as Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan (), was a pioneer in the Indian Independence Movement and a Pakistani politician. He was the eld ...

(Dr. Khan Sahib), became the provincial chief minister. The movement also won an absolute majority in the

1946 Indian provincial elections Provincial elections were held in British India in January 1946 to elect members of the legislative councils of British Indian provinces. The consummation of British rule in India were the 1945/1946 elections. As minor political parties were el ...

. Despite the

Bannu Resolution The Bannu Resolution ( ps, د بنو فیصله), or the Pashtunistan Resolution ( ps, د پښتونستان قرارداد), was a formal political statement adopted by Pashtun tribesmen who had wanted an independent Pashtun state on 21 June 1947 ...

in which the Khudai Khidmatgars demanded that the province should become

Pashtunistan Pashtunistan ( ps, پښتونستان, lit=land of the Pashtuns) is a historical region in Central Asia and South Asia, inhabited by the indigenous Pashtun people of Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Wherein Pashtun culture, the Pashto langu ...

or join Afghanistan, the British refused and had only offered two choices, to join an independent India or to join the new nation of Pakistan. The NWFP joined the Dominion of Pakistan as a result of the 1947 NWFP referendum which had been boycotted by the Khudai Khidmatgar.

Massacre

Before the Babrra Massacre, the elected

provincial government A state government is the government that controls a subdivision of a country in a federal form of government, which shares political power with the federal or national government. A state government may have some level of political autonomy, o ...

of Dr. Khan Sahib in the North-West Frontier Province was terminated by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Governor-General of Pakistan. A

Muslim League Muslim League may refer to: Political parties Subcontinent ; British India *All-India Muslim League, Mohammed Ali Jinah, led the demand for the partition of India resulting in the creation of Pakistan. ** Punjab Muslim League, a branch of the orga ...

leader,

, was appointed as the new chief minister of the NWFP on 23 August 1947. The new provincial government imprisoned the Khudai Khidmatgar’s anti-Pakistan movement's leader Bacha Khan, as well as the deposed chief minister Dr. Khan Sahib, and some other notable figures of the region. In July 1948, the governor of the NWFP,

Ambrose Flux Dundas Sir Ambrose Dundas Flux Dundas (14 April 1899 – 29 April 1973) was a British civil servant and colonial administrator in British India in what later became Pakistan. He was also Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man from 1952 to 1959. Caree ...

promulgated an ordinance, authorizing the provincial government to detain anyone and confiscate their property without giving a reason. On 12 August 1948, supporters of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement protested against the arrest of their leaders and the new ordinance enforced by the government. The protesters marched from

Charsadda Chārsadda ( ps, چارسده; ; ur, ; ) is a town and headquarters of Charsadda District, in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.

to Babrra ground. However, when they reached Babrra ground, Abdul Qayyum Khan ordered the police to open fire on protesters. According to official figures, around 15 protestors were killed while around 40 were injured. However, Khudai Khidmatgar sources maintained that around 150 were killed and 400 were injured.

Aftermath

In mid-September 1948, the central government of Pakistan banned the Khudai Khidmatgar movement and many of its supporters were arrested. The provincial government destroyed the centre of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement at Sardaryab, Charsadda District.August 12, 1948: Remembering Pakistan's forgotten massacre at Babrra
''The Nation''. In July 1950,

Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy ( bn, হোসেন শহীদ সোহ্‌রাওয়ার্দী; ur, ; 8 September 18925 December 1963) was a Bengali barrister and politician. He served as the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1956 ...

, president of the

All Pakistan Awami Muslim League Awami League ( ur, ; bn, আওয়ামী লীগ) was a Pakistani political party founded by Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy in February 1950. Pir of Manki Sharif and Khan Ghulam Mohammad Khan from the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) join ...

(which later evolved into the

Awami League In Urdu language, Awami is the adjectival form for '' Awam'', the Urdu language word for common people. The adjective appears in the following proper names: * Awami Colony, a neighbourhood of Landhi Town in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan * Awami Front, ...

and later Prime Minister of Pakistan, said at a large gathering in Dhaka,

East Bengal ur, , common_name = East Bengal , status = Province of the Dominion of Pakistan , p1 = Bengal Presidency , flag_p1 = Flag of British Bengal.svg , s1 = East ...

(present-day

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

): “The barbarous massacre of the Red Shirts (Khudai Khidmatgars) committed at Charsadda in 1948 surpassed the Jallianwala Bagh massacre committed by the British in 1919.”

Background

Massacre

Aftermath

See also

References

Further reading