176 A PILGRIMAGE FOR PEACE
left alone to carry on his great and perilous non-violent
experiment among the Pathans, which the two Gandhis
had jointly planned and conducted. Never did he show
himself to greater advantage or rise to greater heights
than in the months following upon Gandhiji's martyrdom.
In February, 1948, he decided to go to Karachi to at-
tend the Dominion Parliament with the express object of
removing the misunderstanding that had been created in
regard to him among the Muslims of Pakistan by a sys-
tematic propaganda of misrepresentation. In a series of
trenchant statements to the Press he clarified his stand
as regards Pathanistan :
" Pathanistan or Pukhtoonistan," he explained
" would be an autonomous unit in Pakistan. It would
stand for the Pathans just as Sindh stood for the Sindhis,
•or the Punjab for the Punjabis and Bengal for the Ben-
galis. The name North-West Frontier Province was a
British innovation and as such it ought not to continue."
He categorically denied as baseless the charge thai
he wanted to truncate Pakistan by forging an independent
sovereign State of Pathanistan. The very fact that he
would be taking the oath of allegiance to the constitution
•of Pakistan ought to give a lie to that allegation. Explain-
ing further the rationale of their demand, he said that the
Frontier people were politically backward and belonged
mostly-to the poor and the middle classes. There was no
-capitalist class among them whereas Pakistan was domi-
nated by very rich zamindars, capitalists and the upper
classes. The policy now followed by Pakistan towards the
Pathans was -worse than the " Divide and Rule " policy
of the British. The English rulers had not demoralized
the Pathans as the Pakistan authorities had done now.
He replied in the negative to a question whether there
was any connection whatsoever between the Fakir of Ipi
and his organization. He emphasized that all reports of
this nature were absolutely false and spread by their ene-
mies.
He denied that there was a link between their orga-
nization and Afghanistan over the question of Pathanistan.