Anyone who has seen Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi will remember the vivid depiction of the Amritsar massacre in April 1919 when British and Gurkha troops under the command of General Reginald Dyer opened fire on unarmed protestors and killed well over 350 people. It was one of the worst atrocities by the British in India, but far from the only one.
Far less well-known is the massacre at the Qissa Khwani bazaar in Peshawar in April 1930 when British troops opened fire with machine-guns on people protesting the arrest of Badshah Khan, the remarkable Pashtun leader and close associate of Gandhi who gave much of his life to the cause of non-violence.
It is no reflection on Gandhi that Badshah Khan (whose full name was Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, "Badshah" meaning "King") is so little known in Britain. But the story of his life needs to be told, not least as his abiding belief, rooted in the Qu'ran, was that Islam is essentially a religion of peace and non-violence. His personification of this belief is a powerful antidote to the Islamophobia currently so prevalent across Europe and north America.
