Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Economic and Political
Weekly.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
SPECIALARTICLES
Colonial
Encounter
Frontier
on
the
North
West
Province
2092
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
like Aitchison or Chiefs College, Forman Regiments, the Frontier Scouts and Pass in 1672 (10,000 killed, 20,000
Christian College, St Anthony's College Frontier Constabulary.
captured) and in the Mohmand areas in
were beginning to produce a new kind
The North-West 'FrontierProvince re- 1673 and 1674. In 1920 an entire
of elite. Fehnale education got off to 'mains one of the most fascinating British brigade was destroyed at Ahnai
a start in the last century in the Jesus areas and memories of the British Em- Thngi in WazIristan: 366 including 43
and Mary Convents located in most big pire. Myth, legend and reality over- officers were killed and 1,683 were
towns of the Purriaband their main lap here and one is not sure where one wounded. During the same campaign
boarding school and centre at Murree. stops and the other begins. The Fron- near Makin a British regiment was
Agricul.tural development and adminis- tier was where carees, including those mauled with 60 killed and 90 wounded;
trative security made life in that Pro- of Indian Viceroys and British Prie
in contrast only 22 Mabsud were killed
vince secure and sta;ble for all ethnic Ministers, could be made and unmade; and 48 were wounded. In other parts
and religious groups during what has where a simple incident could escalate of the Empire the balance of soldiers
been called the 'Pluniabi Century.
rapidly into an international crisis and was always againstNthe British: in the
The synthesis was in stark contrast where in 1897 in the general uprisings Tribal Areas for once it was the British
to life across the Indus in the Frontier in the Tribal Areas (Ahmed 1976) the who far outnumbered native enemies:
and in the Tribal Areas. Here the en- British faced their greatest crisis in for instance Clive fought and won at
counter was real and the bullets never India after 1857. "The North-West Plassey in 1757 with only 2,100 soldiers
stopped. Military forts, columns, bugles Frontier of India must surely be one against an army of 50,000. Mughals
and sudden death preoccupied the of the most legendary of places on the too were accustomed to victory over
British. Here it was the Britisher who earth's surface.. . Both Alexander the superior numbers. Babar, the first
learned the language of his subject and Great and Field Marshal Alexander of Mughal Emperor, faced Lodhi's 100,000
it was a rare Pathan from the Tribal Tunis served here; and between them men at Panipat in 1526 with only
Areas -who spoke, dressed or ate like a great scroll of names - Tamerlane, 12,000 troops. But on the Frontier, by
the British. The only encounter of any Babar, Akbar, and with the coming of 1915 all eight British battalions in
sort took place in dark ravines or on the British, Pollock, Napier, Lumsden, India were on duty. By 1936, 80,000
rough mountain crags or perhaps in the Nicholson, Roberts, Robertson, Blook, British troops were deployed in Waziexchange of wit with political officers. Churchill, Wavell, Slim, Auchinleck, ristan alone more than all the rest in
The Tribal Areas remained closed and even Lawrence of Arabia. Apart the sub-continent. In the last major
systems in the most profound sense of from soldiers, the iFlontier has i-nvolved campaign against the Mohmand in 1935
the term. It was not only a different generations of administrators,politicians, General Auchinleck led 30,000 British
world, it was almost a different century. and statesmen: Palmerston, Disraeli, troops into their country. The fighting
Let me hasten to add that I speak Gladstone,.Dalhousie, Lawrence, Lytton, strength of Mohmand as assessed by
of larger cultural encounters and im- Curzon, Gandhi, Nehru, Attlee, Jinnab, General Staff may be gauged by the
perial systems that leave little room for and Mountbatten have come to power 'fighting men' of their two major clans:
the role and charadter of individuals. or fallen, through their Frontier policies. Gandab Halimzai, 3,500 and Tarakzai,
On the latter level the Frontfer has' The Frontier has not only been the 3,100 (General Staff 1926: 38).
produced some of ithe most celebrated concern of Britain, India and AfghanisPathans in the Tribal Areas who have
officers in the Empire. The legendary tan _(and in recent years of Pakistan); humbled the arrnies of two of the greaheroes of Victorian India grew to the mysterious pressures it generates test empires knotvn in India, the Mughal
stature here: Edwards of Bannu, have involved Russia, China, Persia, and the British, have never been conAbbott of Hazara and Nicholson, one Tuirkey and even France; on two occa- quered, Pathan tribes in Afghanistan
of the heroes, of Delhi. These officers sions these pressures have brought the before their 'assimilation'by Amir Abdur
provided the Victorian era with a proto- world to the brink of war" (Swinson. Rabman provided British military history
type: dashing, bold and often killed on 1967: 11).
with one of its most dramatic and
duty in the prime of their lives like
world's greatest conquerors, chilling moments with the appearance
The
Burnes, Nicholson, Mackeson, Cavag- Alexander, Taimur, and Babar have not of the half-dead and half-crazed Doctor
nan. Initially "the officials with the succeeded in su-biugatingthe pathan and Brydon on the cold January morning in
British force who could claim any ac- have had to come to terms with him to 1842 at the Jalalabad garrison - a
quaintance with the Afghan language use his passes to the sub-continent. He moment immortalised in Lady Butler's
were to be counted on the digits" has made and unmade kings in Kabul. famous painting in the Tate Gallery,
(Bellew 1867: vii) but the position He is aware of being an empire-builder London. The doctor was the sole
changed drastically after the creation and destroyer, of helping found the survivor of the grand Army of the
of the North-West Frontier Province in great Mughal Empire. In the words of Indus. Th,e impossible had happened
1901, largely from the trans-Indus areas Kbushal Khan Khattak, the Patban poet, in the Victorian era and at the highof the Punjab Province, when officials "After him was' Babar King of Delhi, noon of British military might: an enon the Frontier not only had to pass who owed his place to the Pathans".
tire British army had been wiped out.
tests in Pushto but also, became immersWith ym'all populations and severely It may be recalled that in 1672 a simied in the ways of the Frontier. Later limited resources the Pathan has shatter- lar fate had overtaken an entire Mughal
years produced Frontier officers like ed the armniesof the world's mighviest Army in the Khyber Pass and the
Howell, Cunningham and Caroe Empires. Akbar the Great's army was Emperor Aurangzeb's Governor, Amin
to
Pathans
often more Pathan than the
annihilated while returning from Swat Khan survived with just four others
Peshawar.
to
way
themselves. Along with' the men, in 1586 (8,000 killed including Akbar's make his lonely
In 1897 the Frontier erupted; in what
Frontier institutions acquired world favounrte minister Birbal). Aurangzeb's
fame: the Guides, the Frontier Force army was shattered in the Khyber can abe seenl as local response to pro-
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ing the enemy in battle. "A blockade Pathan and India the history of conof the Mohmands had been proclaimed quest, took a final turn against Muslim
.by the Chief Commissioner in. August, dynasties in Delhi.
afid its effect,was beginning to be most
Structurally, the British bolstered and
seriously felt. Cloth was soon practi- enoouraged the growth of a 'chiefly'
cally unobtainable in Lower Mohmnand Malik class in the Tribal Areas. Their
country, the. Upper' Mobmands only efforts met with little success. But
obtained it at great cost through Kana the foundation of conflict, contradiction
and' Kunar; salt was being sold in and, dysfunction in Pathan society betPandiali and Kamadi at two seers per ween the elders (mashar, political
rupee, antl' the cost of soap, tea, sugar haves) and youngers (kashar, political
and other commodities had risen in have-nots) was created. The very core
proportion.
Above all, the annual of tribal democracy was touched. But
winter migration to be Peshawar valley the Maliks with all their secret allowfor labour and trade, u-pon which the ances' and political privileges remained
Khwaezai, Baezai and other up-country little more than glorified 'tourist' chiefs.
clans depend in great measure for their In the interior, of' the Agencies tfie
subsistence during the rest of the year, weight of their word depended to a
was stopped. Numerous arrests of great deal on tbeir personal influence.
Mohmands had also been made, and The Tribal Areas remnaineda 'closed
property of considerable value seized system'.
by the Frontier Constabulary, who were
Two types of writers created the
constantly engaged in patrolling the myth of the Frontier: people who had
Mohamand border by night.in search of lived and served' in. the area and those
tribesmen attempting to evade the who howderlirised the subject for
blockade, was. sold by auction and the popular appeal. The Romance of the
proceeds credited to Government". Frontier was to reach its literary
(PBP July 1916, Nos 6-13 A: 7). ITe apogee with Kipling, troubador of Emstandard 'Military Report on Mobh- pire. Kipling reflects sympathy for the
mand Country' General Staff, India,. re- underdog and his ethnic references are
comnmendsthat "the only means by not wilfully malicious, though the Afriwhich the submission of the tribes can can native prototype is still 'Fuzzybe secured are the temporary occupa- Wuzzy' and a 'big black boudi,n begtion of the country and the destruction gar'; andl the Indian the low-caste
of crops and villages" and has sections 'Gunga Din' is "of all them blackfaced
entitled "Best Seasons for Operations" crew the finest man I knew". The Afriwhich recommend autumn so that "the can and the Asian are the White Man's
chief harvest of the year can then be Burden, "new-caught, sullen peoples,
taken for the use of the expedition, half devil and half child".
anv surplus destroyed and the sowing
Contrastin,g strongly in theme and
of the next crop disturbed or preven- tone of address' is the encounter betted" (General Staff 1926: 34).
ween the Pathan, in this case an Afridi
Bitterness for the twentieth-century outlaw, land the Britisher in perhaps
'civilisation' and 'modernisation' process the best known of his imperial poems,
in Pathan minds results from their asso- 'The Ballad' of East and West'. The
ciation of these processes with. the theme and literary tone are grand and
colonising British. An American scho- imperial, they manifestly transcend
lar conmnents: "As far as the Frontier colour and race. Here is a meeting of
is concerned, however, the story two races on equal footing reflecting a
throughout is one of a struggle for mutual admiration and acceptance of
control - a control wihich was never each other's ways:
completely established and a struggle
But there is neither East nor West,
which ended only when the British
Border,, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand
departed in 1947. In this context, the
f,aoe to face, though they come
political history of the Frontier under
from the ends of the earth.
British rule hangs more on 'milestones At the end of the poem "the two'strong
of suppression than on those of reform" men" have come to terms:
(Spear 1963: 145).
They have taken the Oath of the
Brother-in-Blood on fire and fresh
Local Pukhtun memory of imperial
cut sod,
conflict is reinforced by the memory
On the hilt and the haft of the
of three events on the larger stage: it
Khyber knife, and the wondrous
was a Pathar who replaced the M;ughal
names of God.
Emperor by force of arms, it was a There is in''Kipling a certain respect
Pathan who fought and won the last for the rough and wild tribesmen that
battle of Panipat shattering the finest contrasts' with his open and general
Maratha forces, and with the Sikh contempt for natives in the Empire. It
kQingdomforming a hedge between the is the, Pathan in the Khyber that forces
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
of the romance
of the
Frontier are maintained by the political and military administration. Parpetuation of tradition is itself part of the
romance. No such symbols of Frontier
romance or nostalgia are visible among
the tribes themselves. It is essential to
underline that this is a one-way nostalgia. Pathan tribes saw the encounter as
extra-ethnic, extra-religious and, as illustratied above in many cases, extrasavage. Because tribesmnenwere by and
large left to themselves in the Tribal
Areas and social contact and administrative control was at a minimum, they
remained tribal in the most profound
sense, unencapsulated by larger state
systems and civilisations. At the same
time, colonisation on the Frontier was
not the total uprooting and destruction
of a civilisation as in other parts of the
world.
What caused this great halo of
romance to float over British endeavour
on the Frontier and continue to grow
after it was all over? The answers are
many and I shall consider them on
British
various levels.
Racially the
found that across the Indus there was
a different world, the people were fairer
2095
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
2096
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
References
This content downloaded from 111.68.96.57 on Tue, 07 Apr 2015 04:59:22 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions