User:Khadi Khan/sandbox/Nawab Khadi Khan

Nawab Khadi Khan was the Rais of Hund and one of the Chiefs of the Yousafzai tribe of his times. He invited Syed Ahmad Barelvi in 1824, to settle his Head Quarters at Hund, in Swabi (KP), & extended him full support in his plans to wage war against the Sikhs. Barelvi, with his Hindustani followers, arrived amongst the Yousafzais in 1824, got full support of the local Khans & the general population on religious basis & managed to recruit an army of several thousand warriors in order to fight against the Sikh regime.

Later, Nawab Khadi Khan and the local population developed differences on the issues of Barelvi’s declaration of Khilafat, his imposition of citation of his name in Friday sermon (Khutba), his manifest greed for political power, and particularly his interference with local customs, where his women squads would invade the sacred privacy of homes, to detect unmarried girls and force them to get married with the Hindustani companions of Ahmad Barelvi.

According to Nawab Khadi Khan, the jihadis should not interfere in local customs, & the task of government should stay with those who possess expertise/skills in this domain & not to the religious personalities, who must take care of their own domain.

Following these differences, on the instigation of Syed Ahmad Barelvi, Nawab Khadi Khan was assassinated by the Hindustani followers of Barelvi, on 14 August 1829, in front of his fort in Hund. The jihadis occupied his fort & property, imprisoned his family, and destroyed the whole social and cultural system of this region by imposing unreasonable rules and taxes on the population. Consequently, the Pashtun population of the Yousafzai area, their main supporters, turned hostile to the Barelvi and his Hindustani fanatics, and he was forced to quit this area and take refuge in the mountains of Hazara, where he was chased, and later killed by the Sikh forces at Balakot.