Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan pledged the allegiance of the nonviolent Khudai Khidmatgar movement to Pakistan in March 1948, demanding provincial autonomy and parliamentary sovereignty. His appeal to dismantle British colonial security practices threatened Karachi's centralizing political leadership. He was imprisoned within fifteen weeks. Founded in 1929, the Khudai Khidmatgars had mobilized Pashtuns through nonviolent discipline and social reform alongside an extensive network of independent Azad schools.
State violence escalated rapidly. In August 1948, police forces opened fire on his supporters during the Babrra massacre, and the government outlawed the organization by September. Colonial-era security apparatuses were repurposed to suppress regional autonomy and frame political opposition as treason. The July 1947 referendum had recorded 289,244 votes for Pakistan out of 572,798 registered voters following a boycott over the missing autonomous Pashtun ballot option. This suppression entrenched central power at the expense of institutional pluralism.
The political pact between the Khudai Khidmatgars and the Indian National Congress in 1931 was fundamentally a transaction of convenience against British rule rather than an ideological convergence. While Congress gained Muslim legitimacy in the North-West Frontier Province, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan secured external legislative coverage and national visibility for a regional movement. This asymmetric alignment ultimately exposed the Pashtun leadership to accusations of disloyalty when Congress accepted the June 3rd Partition plan without safeguarding its provincial ally's autonomy.
The abandonment of the Bannu declaration by broader nationalist leaders forced regional actors into institutional isolation within post-independence Pakistan. Consequently, the new central administration in Karachi weaponised this historical alliance to justify the dissolution of Dr. Khan Sahib's ministry and the enforcement of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.
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