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Article: Khudai Khidmatgars and the Frontier Muslim League
- Article from:
- India Abroad
- Article date:
- November 1, 1996
- Author:
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Phillips Talbot
India Abroad
11-01-1996
Khudai Khidmatgars and the Frontier Muslim League.
The tribal Pathan whom we met does not live in an age of science, mechanics and interdependence, but rather in a rigid, semi-theocratic, fear-governed feudal society. Individually he is tall, strongly built except when tuberculosis has attacked, clannish, extremely hospitable, and equally quick on the trigger. Alien rulers have always regarded him as hard to control and harder to assimilate.
We observed how his fundamentalist Islamic doctrine is overland and in places almost obliterated by a sort of Old Testament tribal law. The blood feud is characteristic of his society, and it is a rare male who ...