AMONG MAHSUDS: MUST HATRED OF SIKHS LAST ?

Press, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 25608, 24 September 1948, Page 6

AMONG MAHSUDS: MUST HATRED OF SIKHS LAST ?

RECONCILING INDIA

(This article. reprinted of the " contribute to

“Among the Sikhs” were entitled articles of mine last spring which shocked Pakistanis with whom I have since holidayed. After 1947’s mutual savageries the notion that anyone could genuinely like Sikhs, live contentedly with them, sympathise warmly with their present distress, enjoy their food and company, admire their religion and culture was almost beyond credence. Similarly, “Among Mahsuds may surprise readers in the Indian Union. Of all the fierce Pathan tribes, these folk have the most dreadful reoutation. Particularly is that so, in India, since the Baramula raid last October, Ogres, sadistic brutes, fiends straight from Hell was plainly what they were considered by a congenial group of Hindu and Sikh students with whom 1 debated at Amritsar in April. Kindlier Feelings

Even then, when I knew little of Mahsuds except what I had pleasantly seen during February in Dr. Iliff’s Mission Hospital and School at Banmu I felt impelled .to plead, in fairness, that they were human beings, could show very attractive individual traits, and that less than two years previously Pandit Nehru himself had been bitterly denouncing as cruel the comparatively mild bombing of Pathan hostiles by British aircraft. I advocated less generalisation, more generosity. That some Mahsuds’ conduct is abominable, that they have almost unique outrages to their discredit is attested, indisputable. Yet of these I have no personal knowledge. I can but report facts as I happened to find them. All along the N.W. Frontier during recent wandering weeks, from the Chitral border to Shelabagh above Chaman in Baluchistan, several hundreds of miles, my various meetings with Mahsuds have been wholly happy, leaving none but friendly memories. Mrs Duncan No folk can be altogether evil who have such power to draw the affections and devoted service of others from far lands. At Peshawar in June—not at my request, for the press disagrees itself by intruding on private sorrow —I met Mrs Duncan, young widow of the Political Agent shot by >a Mahsud a fortnight before. She authorised me to say. to any Mahsud I might meet, and in print to "Statesman” readers, that her sentiments towards Mahsuds remained entirely unchanged by the tragedy, that, to- blame the tribe for one fanatic’s Work had never occurred to her, and that she would like some day to return, and minister to their medical needs, as she had been doing at Wana on the day her husband died. That was noble—and a hardly sustainable emotion without some real reciprocal goodness in the Mahsud character to buttress it. Other well-known British friends of the Mahsuds whom I saw—besides that big-hearted girl, and previously the enthusiastic Dr. and Mrs Iliff — were Colonel North, now Commandant of the Pishin Scouts, bespectacled and scholarly, elongated, benign, much tougher and shrewder than he looks; his junior. Captain Hamill; and the three famous missionary ladies of Tank, Dr. Sherburn, Miss Studd, and Miss Haddow. It is Miss Studd who, alone now since Mrs Duncan left, runs the improvised offshoot opened this year in Wana of the Tank Hospital. The place delighted me; I have never yet visited an establishment for the sick with so happy an atmosphere. Self-Invited Guest My first meeting with Mahsuds on this journey, because the biggest and unexpected, was perhaps the best. Without introduction, a solitary unexplained Englishman, footsore and weakened by a diarrhoea, I impulsively broke in upon 200 of them encamped at Kolandai in Dir State, seeking a night’s rest. That afternoon news had come up the valley of the Duncan murder. I was en route from Chitral. The long trudge over the Lowarai Pass had proved wearisome; and the remaining seven miles to the Dir Levy Post seemed more, that day, than could well be done. , . No casual wayfarer ever found more delightful hospitality. I was given a bed in the best tent, an admirable meal, amusing conversation, and—even more acceptable—some well staged Mahsud dancing. Delight for Eye and Ear Pathan dances cause me intense pleasure, even more perhaps than their aesthetic value merits, and I had not before seen the Mahsud variety. It may somewhat lack the polished grace of the Turi or Saghri Khattak but I would rank it high—above the other Khattak varieties, or the Bangesh. Wazir. Bhittani or Brahui—mainly because of its abounding vitality. The head-sways are magnificent. Mahsuds dance to drum alone, spurnihg the shrill Pathan pipes or other orchestration; and w the drummer, vigorously tosses his* black bobbed locks in rhythm with his circling companions. The pipelessness makes audible a supplementary exhilarating sound: the shuffle and stamp of strong naked young feet on the bare earth.

The Mahsuds at Kolandai are engaged on road-building. It was strange, next morning, to find these reputediv murderous and jungly tribesmen wielding . pneumatic drills with practised skill and un-Britisn energy against a rocky cliff-face. So charming, soontaneously friendly and generous had been my reception that only afterwards—when it was pointed out to me—did I realise that in becoming the self-imposed guest of scores of Mahsuds. an unintroduced British wanderer, just after an assassination too, I had perhaps behaved rather oddly. Eut the assassination had caused real grief and shame. This was manifest. unquestionably. My hosts at Kolandai that night seemed to feel the tribe disgraced. An element of crude uersonal exasperation was added. This was thus pithily put: “If a Mahsud must kill one of you British, why in Heaven’s name should the fool choose our own friend, a man we had come to consider practically Mahsud?”

People of Character At many points southward from Dir—in Peshawar. Bannu, Tank, Tanai, Wana, Shelabagh. and at intermediate wayside tea-stalls for the bus-traveller—l met more Mahsuds, and always enjoyably. even when, as in Tank bazaar, discharges for some festivity of live rifle-ammunition near miy eardrum made me junlp. “Abounding vitality”; that is probably the clue to Mahsuds’ attraction. They are folk of extremes—vivid, vehement, effervescent. unstable, Among their young men there seemed to me proportionately more than in any other Pathan tribe* of a stunning beauty—but also others of utter hideousness. One such hideous face which I was amazcdly studying in profile, however, turned to me—and smiled. The transformation startled, not indeed by any hidden beauty now revealed, but by a sort of open schoolboy innocence which disarmed unkind thought Like Sikhs, Mahsuds show exceptional gifts as mechanics. Untrained youths enrolled in motor transport units during World War II surprised instructors by their aptitude. At a later date than Sikhs, but similarly, they have become (more than other Pathans yet) enthusiasts for modern , education. They farsightedly realise its practical uses. The abilities of Mahsud students at Dr. Iliff’s school atßannu impressed me last February. This tftne 1 found particularly remarkable the self-discipline and vigour of younger pupils in understaffed classrooms at Wana. Though they can be appallingly fanatical, Mahsuds (I suspect) are less swayed by genuine religious sentiment tnan their fellow Pathans. It is a curious fact that many of them, supposedly fervent Muslims, are uncircumcised. Hard-headed mundane realism seemed to me an outstanding Mahsud quality. Under different circumstances from those which geography has allotted I can imagine them as businessmen of great ruthlessness and acumen. In politics already they are surprisingly well and widely informed—much more so than the upper Afridis among whom my holiday* began. At The Lunch Part? Beneath sunlit poplar leaves by a dear stream in a Wana garden. I lunched with Mahsud maliks. My introduction by name had added merely that I was a British journalist. A turn in the talk, however, mentioned the “Statesman.” At once I came under hard scrutiny from a pair of handsome Mahsud eyes. “So you’re the man who’s been writing praise of those Sikhs,” this young malik accused, his swift knowledgeable identification astonishing me. Meeting Mahsuds rather resembles meeting Americans; it braces, puts one conversationally one one’s foes, necessitates brisk assertive rejoinders if friendship is to be won. “Yes,” I promptly countered; “and if all goes well there’ll be an article too. praising Mahsuds.” A disconcerted silence. Then, “No true friend of Sikhs can now be our friend.” „ “He certainly can, if he’s English, and I expounded my paper’s policy of impartiality, of goodwill for both Dominions, of bridging misunderstandings. and striving to allay hatred and strife, if only for the lowly practical reason that neither new country can yet sustain them without ruin. We had an exhilarating debate. I liked him greatly. Finally, half convinced, he amiably acknowledged: “This policy of yours is perhaps right—for you, a foreigner. I think you mean well, to us Mahsuds, as to those bad other friends of yours.” A pregnant pause. “But it won’t work, it’s not practical!” In Hope Therein, alas, unfolding events may justify him. At times in recent months, depressed, I have wondered. . . . Yet the effort to help it workin Pakistan as in India—remains, I am convinced, well worth making. Possibly this article may contribute.