page_title: Qissa Khwani massacre
section_title: Clashes at the Qissa Khwani bazaar
hierarchical_section_title: Qissa Khwani massacre / Clashes at the Qissa Khwani bazaar
caption_attribution_description: English: Unarmed protesteors in Peshawar fired on during the Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre.
context_page_description: The massacre at the Qissa Khwani Bazaar in Peshawar, British India on 23 April 1930 was one of the defining moments of the independence movement in British India. It was the first major confrontation between British troops and demonstrators in the city, belonging to Abdul Ghaffar Khan's non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar movement against the British Indian government. Estimates at the time put the death toll from the shooting at between the official count at 20, and the figure of 400 dead put forth by Pakistani and Indian sources. The gunning down of unarmed people triggered protests across British India and catapulted the newly formed Khudai Khidmatgar movement into prominence.
context_section_description: After other Khudai Khidmatgar leaders were arrested, a large crowd of the group gathered at the Qissa Khwani bazaar. As British Indian troops moved into the bazaar, the crowd was loud and stones were thrown. A British Army dispatch rider was killed and his body burned. Two British armored cars drove into the square at high speed, killing several people. It is claimed that the crowd continued their commitment to non-violence, offering to disperse if they could gather their dead and injured, and if British troops left the square. The British troops refused to leave, so the protesters remained with the dead and injured. At that point, the British ordered troops to open fire with machine guns on the unarmed crowd. The Khudai Khidmatgar members willingly faced bullets, responding without violence. Instead, many members repeated 'God is Great'(اللہُ اکبر) and clutched the Qur'an as they went to their death.
  The exact number of deaths remains controversial— official figures give 20 dead while nationalist sources claimed several hundred were killed, with many more wounded. Two platoons of a respected British Indian Army regiment, the Royal Garhwal Rifles, refused to board buses that were to take them into Peshawar for anti-riot duty. A British civil servant wrote later that "hardly any regiment of the Indian Army won greater glory in the Great War (World War I) than the Garhwal Rifles, and the defection of part of the regiment sent shock waves through India, of apprehension to some, of exultation to others." The NCOs of the two platoons, including one led by Hawaldar Major Chander Singh Garhwal, involved were sentenced to terms of up to eight years imprisonment.
  The violence continued for six hours. Gene Sharp, who has written a study of nonviolent resistance, describes the scene on that day:
  When those in front fell down wounded by the shots, those behind came forward with their chests bared and exposed themselves to the fire, so much so that some people got as many as twenty-one bullet wounds in their bodies, and all the people stood their ground without getting into a panic. . . . The Anglo-Indian paper of Lahore, which represents the official view, itself wrote to the effect that the people came forward one after another to face the firing and when they fell wounded they were dragged back and others came forward to be shot at. This state of things continued from 11 till 5 o'clock in the evening. When the number of corpses became too many, the ambulance cars of the government took them away.
caption: British soldiers in Peshawar during the demonstrations
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