Red Shirt movement | Indian Nationalism, Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience | Britannica (original) (raw)

Quick Facts

Byname of:

Khudai Khitmatgar (Persian: “Servants of God”)

Red Shirt movement, in support of the Indian National Congress, an action started by Abdul Ghaffar Khan of the North-West Frontier Province of India in 1930. Ghaffar Khan was a Pashtun who greatly admired Mahatma Gandhi and his nonviolent principles and saw support for the Congress as a way of pressing his grievances against the British frontier regime. He was called the Frontier Gandhi. His followers were pledged to nonviolence, and they derived their popular title from the red colour of their shirts.

In the 1937 election under the new Government of India Act, the Congress Party, supported by the Red Shirts, won a majority and formed a ministry under Ghaffar Khan’s brother, Khan Sahib, which, with interludes, remained in office until the 1947 partition. In that year the Frontier Province, faced with the choice between India and Pakistan, opted for Pakistan in a plebiscite. Ghaffar Khan then advocated Pakhtunistan—the concept of an independent Pashtun state, drawn from both the Pakistan and Afghan frontier districts. The Pakistan government suppressed both this movement and the Red Shirts.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Maren Goldberg.