Origin of a story: The Afridis and the leader Inquilab

The call for Purna Swaraj  in 1929 led to enthusiastic participation in the subsequent Non-Cooperation movement.  One story in modern histories that emerges from the North-West Frontier Province from that time is as follows (I learned of it on twitter from @LotusTile):

Though Ghaffar Khan's own movement was confined to the settled districts of Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Hazara, there were also a series of tribal incursions in the latter part of 1930 against which aerial bombardment was freely used.  The tribal raiders this time significantly refrained from looting villages, and with moving simplicity raised demands for the release of Badshah Khan, 'Malang Baba' (the 'naked fakir', Gandhi) and 'Inquilab' (they had heard the slogan Inquilab Zindabad, and had assumed 'Inquilab' to be another great leader in prison).

This above is from "Modern India 1885-1947" by Sumit Sarkar,  1989.  The source of this charming story is not given.

A search for an earlier source, leads one to "Pilgrimage for Peace - Gandhi & Frontier Gandhi among N.W.F. Pathans", by Pyarelal (1950).

There he writes, quoting a few phrases from Collin Davies, The Problem of the North-West Frontier, 1890-1908:

Round the Khyber and to the south live the much maligned Afridis whom circumstances have forced to become "distrustful of all mankind".  Once, however, this distrust is removed, the Afridi is said to be capable of the greatest devotion, and "may turn out to be your staunchest friend".  In appearance lean and wiry, "his eagle eye, proud bearing and light step" bespeak a freedom born of his wind-swept mountain glens.  The Afridis played a very important part during the two Afghan Wars and during the Civil Disobedience days of 1930, when the brutalities perpetrated on the Khudai Khidmatgars in Peshawar and the other parts of the Settled Districts caused a deep stir among them.

Pyarelal ends the paragraph with a footnote:

There was a delectable story told about them at the time of the Gandhi-Irwin Truce, illustrating their simple faith.  In the conference with the Political authorities their 'terms of peace' were stated to be release of:

            (i) Badshah Khan (Abdul Ghaffar Khan)
            (ii) Malang Baba (Naked Fakir, i.e., Gandhiji), and
            (iii) Inquilab (Revolution)....(Inquilab Zindabad — Long Live the Revolution —being a universal, popular slogan those days, they equated it with some patriotic individual whom the British Government had imprisoned! )

Pyarelal was much closer to these events, but still, this is written in 1950.  Is there anything closer to contemporary?  Further search leads one to "The White Sahibs in India", by Reginald Reynolds (1937).  Reynolds writes:

Mr. Brailsford has written of the "virtual unanimity" of the Indian people in the Civil Disobedience campaign of 1930-31..........

Mr. Brailsford also refers to the omnipresence of Gandhi's photograph (though frequently made illegal).  He found it even "in the wattled hut of an aboriginal tribesman, so poor that he owned nothing else, save his tools and his earthen pots".  Mr. Verrier Elwin, who had long sought for a man who had never heard of Gandhi, found one eventually who proved to have been stone deaf for twenty years.[43]   The present author's experiences in 1930 were similar, and Mr. Horace Alexander, returning to India after two and a half years, was startled at the change.  "Nationalism," he said, "is manifest everywhere."

The endnote [43] reads:

Lessons from the Jungle, p. 132.  Mr. Elwin did, however, eventually find some aboriginals who thought that Gandhi was something to eat.  In an unpublished letter he has recorded an encounter with an Afridi on the frontier.   This man knew of Gandhi, whom he called the Malang (Saint) but thought there was also another great leader in India called Inquilab (Revolution!).

Verrier Elwin was certainly in a position to narrate this story to Gandhi and his entourage.  Had he found the Inquilab misapprehension to be common among Afridis, he would have certainly noted it.  My current guess is that Verrier Elwin lies at the root of the story, which has been embroidered with the telling.  Of course, one could perhaps find official British reports which talk of the Afridis' demands, but those are, at present, beyond my reach.

Gandhi on Christianity

Nowadays, Mahatma Gandhi's views on religion are considered to be responsible for Partition, responsible for many of India's ills, and so on.  In particular, Gandhi is considered by the modern mind as impossibly naive about Christianity and Islam.

I came across this in V.B. Kher's compilation of Gandhiana:

11. IS RELIGIOUS UNITY POSSIBLE?
(From "Weekly Letter" — by M. D.)

Sir Chandrashekharan Venkata Raman came up the hill one afternoon with Professor Rahm from Switzerland, a reputed biologist.

"He has discovered," said Chandrashekharan introducing him, "an insect that can live without food and water for 12 years, and has come to India for further researches in Biology."

"When you discover the secret at the back of it," said Gandhiji, "please pass it on to me."
 
"But," said the biologist, "I am a scientist and a monk also, and when I decided to come to pay my respect to you, I thought of asking you a question or two. May I do so?"

"With pleasure," said Gandhiji.

Dr. Rahm was perplexed by the many warring creeds in the world and wondered if there was no way of ending the conflict.

"It depends on Christians," said Gandhiji, "if only they would make up their minds to unite with the others! But they will not do so. Their solution is universal acceptance of Christianity as they believe it. An English friend has been at me for the past thirty years trying to persuade me that there is nothing but damnation in Hinduism and that I must accept Christianity. When I was in jail I got, from separate sources, no less than three copies of the Life of Sister Therese, in the hope that I should follow her example and accept Jesus as the only begotten son of God and my Saviour. I read the book prayerfully but I could not accept even St. Therese's testimony for myself. I must say I have an open mind, if indeed at this stage and age of my life I can be said to have an open mind on this question. Anyway I claim to have an open mind in this sense that if things were to happen to me as they did to Saul before he became Paul, I should not hesitate to be converted"

"But today I rebel against orthodox Christianity, as I am convinced that it has distorted the message of Jesus. He was an Asiatic whose message was delivered through many media and when it had the backing of a Roman Emperor it became an imperialist faith as it remains to this day. Of course there are noble but rare exceptions like Andrews and Elwin. But the general trend is as I have indicated."

"There was held the other day in Bombay a parliament of religions. Now a positive bar to a real parliament of religions is the refusal to accept an equal basis and a mutual regard for one another's faith. We must not forget that it is a parliament of religions, and not of a few religious- minded men. Did Christianity enter the parliament on a par with the others? When they do not do so openly, they secretly criticize us for our having many gods, forgetting that they have also many gods'."

Dr. Rahm was not perhaps prepared for this reply. He made no answer. He put another question in reply. "If we cannot unite, can't we fight atheism which seems to be so much on the increase?"

Sir C. V. Raman who was sitting all this while as a passive listener now put in: "I shall answer your question. If there is a God we must look for Him in the universe. If He is not there, He is not worth looking for. I am being looked upon in various quarters as an atheist, but I am not. The growing discoveries in the science of astronomy and physics seem to me to be further and further revelations of God. Mahatmaji, religions cannot unite. Science offers the best opportunity for a complete fellowship. All men of science are brothers."

"What about the converse?" said Gandhiji. "All who are not men of science are not brothers?"

The distinguished physicist saw the joke and said: 'But all can become men of science."

Then said Gandhiji, "You will have to present a Kalma of science as Islam presents one."

"Science," said Sir C. V. Raman, "is nothing but a search for truth—truth not only in the physical world, but in the world of logic, psychology, behaviour and so on. The virtue of a truly scientific frame of mind is the readiness to reject what is false and untrue. It proclaims from the house-tops that there is no virtue in sticking to untruth. I think the latest biological discovery is that there is no fundamental cleavage between the life of man and the life of the lower creation and that salvation lies in the perfection of the biological instinct for the perpetuation of race—the instinct to sacrifice the individual for the sake of the species."

Several years ago a great religious-minded scientist, Dr. Henry Drummond, an F.R.S. like Sir C. V. Raman, had said the same thing in his book, The Natural Law in the Spiritual World. And does not the Gita teach the same thing? Does it not proclaim that with sacrifice God created man, and enjoined upon him sacrifice as the only means whereby to seek to grow?

Harijan,30-5-'36, p. 121 at p. 122

---
My comment: in the very end, 'sacrifice' is mangled, conjoining two very different senses of the word, that too, translating 'yajna' as sacrifice.