42 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE
nature. It is good in our interests to take training in
non-violence. Moreover, is not the Pathan amenable to love
and reason ? He will go with you to hell if you can win his
heart, but you cannot force him even to go to heaven! Such
is the power of love over the Pathan. I want the Pathan to
do unto others as he would like to be done by. It may be, I may
fail and a wave of violence may sweep over my province. I shall
then be content to take the verdict of fate against me. But it
will not shake my ultimate faith in non-violence which my peo-
ple need more than anybody else,"
For over a decade and a half Bad shah Khan had
fought against the British but at the end of it he harbour-
ed no ill-will or bitterness in his heart. " The British have
put me in prison, but I do not hate them/' he told Robert
Bernays who interviewed him during the Truce in 1931.
" My movement is social as well as political. I teach
the * Red Shirts' to love their neighbours and speak the
truth. Muslims are a warlike race; they do not take
easily to the gospel of non-violence. I am doing my best
to teach it to them." *
That night the author of The Naked Fakir recorded
his impression of Abdul Ghaffar Khan in his diary as fol-
lows :
" Looking the embodiment of the traditional painting of
Christ Abdul Ghaffar Khan is a kindly, gentle and rather lovable
man. As well think that old George Lansbury is a dangerous
revolutionary........"
In the following year (1938), Badshah Khan invited
Gandhiji to make a tour of his province to study and guide
the Khudai Khidmatgar movement. The inauguration of
the Congress Ministry had created an anomalous situation
in the Frontier Province. The British authorities, espe-
cially the Political Department in the N. W. F. Province,
had not taken kindly to the coming of the Congress into
power. They now used the tribesmen as an invisible lever
against the Congress Ministry. In this they were aided
"by the dual system of administration which obtained in
the Frontier Province. For instance, whilst the Governor
in his capacity as the head of the Provincial^ Government
was, under the constitution, required to act on the advice
* Robert Bernays : The Naked Fakir.