A NEW PORTENT 39

\

with him that he could go back to prison by doing some
act in breach of security. He simply left a note behind
saying that the disgrace he had brought upon the family
could be expiated only fry his death.

Another prominent worker, Syed Abdul Wadud Bad-
shah, a great religious head and zamindar from the Mala-
kand Tribal Agency, had been in prison for three years.
His decrepit old father, being very near death's door, paid
the security so that he might see his son before he passed
away. The son, on coming out, shot himself dead, unable
to bear the shame of it.

Everybody knows how highly excitable * the Pathans
are. Yet, throughout this period, not a single case of ac-
tual violence was adduced against the Khudai Khidmat-
gars. Some of them committed suicide when their non-
violence was strained to the breaking point.

In 1934 the Khan brothers were again released, but
an order was passed banning their entry into the Frontier
Province and the Punjab. Badshah Khan came and stay-
ed with Gandhiji at Wardha. He sent for his daughter
who was in England for education and put her
in Mahila Ashram (a women's educational institution) at
Wardha under the care of Mirabehn (Miss Slade), Admiral
Blade's daughter, who had taken to Gandhiji's way of life
and become his close and devoted associate. This was in
the last week of November. On the 7th of December,
Badshah Khan was again arrested under a warrant from
the Bombay Government in connection with a speech
which he had delivered on the invitation of the Associa-
tion of Young Christians at Bombay and sentenced to
three years' rigorous imprisonment.

* Fielding King Hall narrates the following as an instance of
the proverbial inflammability of the Pathan in his Thirty Days of
India:
" One Pathan was sitting on the ground listening in intently
to a radio broadcasting programme whilst his neighbour conti-
nued to chatter. The first man told the talker to shut up> but
the latter observed that he had as much right to speak as " that
loud mouth over there ". The radio fan promptly switched oft
th* human " loud speaker " by sticking a knife Into his ribs."