Sultan Ahmed Khan Tarin

Comrade Sultan Ahmed Khan Tarin or simply Comrade Sultan Ahmed (a.k.a. name sometimes also given as 'Sultan Muhammad Khan'[1]) (1901-1970) was an early Communist leader from the North-West Frontier Province of British India.[2][3]

Early life

Comrade Tarin was born in 1901 to a rural family of the Tarin/Tareen tribe[2] settled in Rehana village, Haripur District, Hazara, NWFP.[3] His father was Abdul Jabbar Khan, a village Lambardar and government revenue collector[2] and he tried to give Tarin as good an education as he could afford. On finishing his college studies, Tarin was not interested like most young men of the time in either seeking a government job or enrolling in the British Indian Army.[4] Instead, he was inspired by the Khilafat Movement[5] and sought to go to Kabul, Afghanistan, and try from there to reach Turkey, and strive in the cause of the Islamic Ottoman Caliphate.

Communist connections and activities

In 1920, Tarin and some of his young companions managed to make it to Kabul[5] and there, they found that the Khilafat Movement was quite moribund and that most so-called 'Muhajireen' (immigrants from India, in the cause of Islamic Jihad) were merely languishing in the Afghan capital.

At this time, Tarin met and was considerably impressed by some young Hindus from India, who were planning to go to join MN Roy in Moscow, USSR[5] and he was converted to the dynamic Communist perspectives for change in the British Indian colony. He also joined these young men and went with them and eventually ended up joining MN Roy and his senior associates in Tashkent in the then Soviet Turkestan[5] and was present at the founding of the Communist Party of India there, in October 1920.[5]

Tarin and some 12 or 13 other young men were indoctrinated and trained in Communist sabotage techniques and sent back to India, in early 1922, and crossed into the NWFP via the Pamirs.[5] On reaching Peshawar, however, they were soon betrayed and arrested as the Punjab CID had received advance notice of their arrival and alerted the local police.[5]

Tarin and most of his companions were tried and sentenced to hard labour under the article 121-A of the Indian Penal Code, for trying to 'instigate' sedition and revolt against the King-Emperor's rule in India.[6] However, they were mostly released after two years, in 1924, and Tarin returned home to his native village at this time[5] although surveillance on him continued until 1925.[5]

Later life

Comrade Tarin remained a preponent of Marxist Communism in India, well into the 1930s and 1940s, and was viewed with considerable suspicion in his conservative native region, by relatives like Risaldar Mir Dad Khan[7] and others, who had served the British Empire; yet he still strove to do his best to bring the Communist message to the masses[2] but without much success. By that time, the All India Muslim League and the Pakistan Movement was making big public inroads in the Hazara and surrounding regions[8] and in 1947, finally, the independent state of Pakistan emerged on the world map.

After the creation of Pakistan, Comrade Sultan Ahmed Khan Tarin remained for some time under suspicion of the police and intelligence authorities of the fledgling state but by the 1950s, he was not well and was no longer deemed a 'risk'. There is no record of his being in contact with the newly founded Communist Party of Pakistan (CPP, March 1948) and he had no connection with the so-called Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case of 1951. He kept on promoting a communist or socialist political and economic model, at this own level. He died quietly, a neglected figure, in 1970.

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ According to old land revenue department records in Haripur, his name was probably originally Sultan Muhammad Khan but he adopted his commonly-known alias of Sultan Ahmed Khan in the 1920s
  2. 1 2 3 4 'Who's Who in the Hazara District, NWFP', 1942 ed, pub Govt of NWFP, Peshawar, Entry No 288
  3. 1 2 Ishtiaq Ahmed 'Paak o Hind mein Kaamonist Jadd o Judh' (Urdu book:Early Communist Struggle in India and Pakistan) Lahore: Progressive Publishers, 1975
  4. ↑ As World War 1 had just ended and the Third Anglo-Afghan War was just starting
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 'Intelligence Reports of the Govt of the NWFP and Punjab CID', 1921-1931, Vols 2 and 3, Pub/compiled circa 1932-33, at the IOR, British Library, London, UK
  6. ↑ Civil & Military Gazette court news reports, May–June 1922
  7. ↑ Interestingly, he was the father of the military dictator General Ayub Khan (President of Pakistan)
  8. ↑ Especially under the guidance of local leaders like Khan Abdul Majid Khan Tarin, Sardar Bahadur Khan etc
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