The Fight For Freedom & Khaksar Tehrik

The Khaksar Movement was the most disciplined, bizarre, and under‑studied force in British India – a paramilitary “army of spades” that terrified the Raj and challenged both the Muslim League and the Congress. This 507‑page work is the most detailed history of the movement ever written.

The Fight for Freedom & Khaksar Tehrik is a monumental, meticulously researched history of the Khaksar Movement, founded by the Cambridge‑educated polymath Allama Inayatullah Khan Al‑Mashriqi in 1931. Written by Sana Ullah Akhtar, a scholar who had personal access to surviving Khaksar sources, this 507‑page volume is structured as a chronological narrative covering the movement’s birth, its rapid expansion, its violent suppression, and its eventual winding up in 1947.

The book covers 39 chapters, including:

• The intellectual and political conditions before the launch of the Tehrik
• Mashriqi’s “Isharat” and the movement’s manifesto
• The Tragedy of March 19, 1940 – the police firing on Khaksars in Lahore
• The Shaheed Gunj Mosque controversy and communal politics
• Mashriqi’s three demands and his confrontations with the Punjab and NWFP governments
• The Murderous assault on Quaid‑e‑Azam in 1943
• Relief work during the Bengal Famine of 1943
• The movement’s stance on Partition and its disbandment after 1947

Richly illustrated with 12 pages of plates (photographs, documents), it also includes an appendix and a comprehensive index. The book presents the Khaksar Tehrik not as a footnote but as a major, if ultimately unsuccessful, force for a united, independent India.

About the Author
Sana Ullah Akhtar (b. 1939) is a Pakistani historian and researcher. He is the author of The Fight for Freedom & Khaksar Tehrik (2012), a comprehensive history of the Khaksar Movement based on extensive primary sources. His work focuses on the political and social movements of British India, particularly those that have been marginalised in mainstream nationalist narratives.

Format: Hardbound