@pakhtoon.archive: Waziristan, North-West Frontier, 1946 (c). Mahsud Maliks walking out of the jirga as a body after declaring to Pandit Nehru and the Khan brothers (in the foreground) that they wanted neither British nor Indian domination, but would remain as they were independent. On 16 October 1946, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who had claimed that the British approach to the North-West tribesmen’s problems was entirely wrong, arrived at Peshawar for a goodwill tour of the tribal areas of the North-West Frontier Province. His companions were Dr Khan Sahib, Premier of the NWFP, and his brother Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, leader of the local Congress Party Muslims. Their first engagements were at Razmak and Miranshah, where they met jirgas of the maliks on 17 October. At the first (Miranshah), the maliks walked out before hearing Nehru, saying that they were independent and meant to remain so, and that the Muslims were being ill-treated in India and would take revenge. Later, at Razmak, the story was almost the same, and when Nehru defended Dr Khan Sahib (described by the tribesmen as an infidel), the maliks again got up and left. On 20 October, the party’s convoy was ambushed and stoned by tribesmen in the Khyber Pass, and there was some firing by both tribesmen and troops in the convoy. Note: This was part of Jawaharlal Nehru’s tour of the tribal areas (16–21 October 1946) shortly after he became Vice-President of the Interim Government and took charge of External Affairs. The visit was intended as a goodwill mission to the Pathan tribes of Waziristan and the frontier agencies, but it proved highly contentious and is widely remembered as a diplomatic and political failure. Picture Courtesy: Tarikh-i-Pakhtunkhwa #waziristan #archive #1947 #growthchallenge #unfreezemyaccount

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Thursday 29 October 2026 21:11:15 GMT