Dawn's Early Light

The barriers of inequality faced by women and religious minorities have often been especially high in Afghanistan- but some parts of the last century were refreshing exceptions. The first such atypical phase owed itself to Amir Amanullah Khan in the early 1900s. It was a short-lived but golden era that would manage to defy many notions commonly held about Afghanistan today. 

That was when a prominent wazir (minister) in the government at Kabul happened to be an Afghan Hindu, and also when his daughter Radha - a single young woman not even 20 years of age at the time - courageously chose to take on roles previously exclusive to men in her society. 

Given Radha's circumstances, the support and encouragement of a doting father was understandably a key factor that helped propel her initial steps into the uncharted realms of gender equality. Notably, that occurred before the arrival of the reformist queen Soraya Tarzi, whose patronage would subsequently help Radha blossom even further. 

Rawalpindi,  April 12, 1920- Afghan Delegation to British India. Diwan Niranjan Das seated on the right. In the center is Mahmud Tarzi, 
Foreign Minister of the then Emirate, a celebrated progressive reformist and also the father of Queen Soraya.

 "Dukhtare Diwan" Radha, circa 1920

Radha Jan, as she was endearingly called, had made her mark in Afghan society with some élan. Her immense popularity triggered songs to be written in her honor and in praise of her beauty and grace. Remarkably, a couple of those compositions have not only survived to this day but are also occasionally sung by the most famous of Afghanistan's vocalists (sample below). In a typical example of how fast the footprints of history can fade, Afghans' comments under those singers' YouTube channels can be found wondering if Radha Jan was just a mythical character created from someone's imagination. In a sense, those queries reflect how the Afghanistan of those verses has almost completely faded away today. 

Spectrum of Faiths

Indeed, appreciating the true extent of Radha Jan's grit requires knowing her environment and circumstances. In 1901, religious diversity in Afghanistan was quite a rich spectrum of colors that would make its almost totally Muslim society of today seem monochromatic in comparison. At the time, Hindus and Sikhs numbered a few hundred thousand, making up a small but visible minority of about 7% of the total population of about 5 million. The numbers, however, hid a long term trend - much like the falsely static appearance of a slow moving glacier. When Islamic rule had first arrived to Afghanistan 10 centuries earlier, Hindus and people of other Indic faiths had constituted the overwhelming majority of Afghan society. However, their percentage had been on a long and continuous decline ever since then, intermittently slowed only by rare exceptions like the Durrani rulers' eager recruitment of Shikarpuri Sindhis in the 1700s. After 10 centuries of a shrinking presence, the adherents of Dharmic faiths had gradually come closer to the end of a rope but were seemingly unaware of it. 

The Hindu minority included many from my ethnic group, called the Mohyāl, into which the remarkable woman was born circa 1898. In the court offices and folklore of Afghanistan, the influence of Pashto/Dari accents rendered her name as Rādo Jān. Among the rest of the tribe residing beyond her eastern horizons in the Punjab province of British India and in the kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, she was referred to as the Pathāni Rādhā Jān. 

The Mohyal Clan

Radha Jan's forefathers had a distinguished record of service under the Barakzai rulers of Afghanistan that went back many generations. As fleetingly mentioned in The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, her father Brigadier-General Diwan Niranjan Das was not just among the Amir's most trusted advisors but also quite a popular figure among Afghans. The latter was an unusual accomplishment of sorts, given that his responsibility as Treasury Minister extended to all tax collection in the Afghan Emirate, including from unruly tribes. Diwan Niranjan Das was affable, articulate and a refined progressive whose titles of Sardaftar-e-Wajohāt and Wazir-e-Māliyah had been earned through decades of service to different Amirs. He was also a key member of the Afghan delegation that finalized Afghanistan's independence from the British after the Third Anglo-Afghan war.  

Anglo-Afghan conference, Mussoorie, July 25, 1920- Diwan Niranjan Das sitting first from the left

The negotiations that finalized Afghanistan's independence from Britain. 

As recorded in the Gulshan-e-Mohyali, the family of Diwan Niranjan Das had featured notables across many generations in Afghanistan. The names here include two brothers who died fighting for the royal Afghan Army. Decades earlier, Dewan Narain Das had been conferred the rank of Field Marshal by Amir Sher Ali Khan after helping quell a difficult rebellion. His religiously-inclined son Dewan Hiranand was however excommunicated for becoming a caretaker of a Hindu shrine in Peshawar, as earnings from priesthood were forbidden in the community code. The patriarchy of its time reflects in the missing names of Radha and all the other women of the clan.

In many ways, Radha Jan's folks were like the handful of elite yet vulnerable Armenian Christians of the Ottoman Empire. They had worked hard and exercised extreme care to achieve influence that defied their numerical insignificance in society. Most Hindus and Sikhs' forte in Afghanistan at the time had been skills involving money and math. The Mohyals additionally benefited from a few other long-held traditions as well- including an itch for military service, and utter disregard of restrictive caste traditions common elsewhere, both arguably atypical for their Brahmin identity in conventional perception. It helped some of them play a dual role, managing the state's finances along with occasional forays into the theaters of conflict. The one community trait that helped above any other, however, was an emphasis on wafādāri or steadfastness of loyalty- a trait much in demand in environs of court intrigue. Many in her extended family had held the relatively higher ranking titles of Subedār (chief administrator of an area) or Sardaftar (head of department), often with a large number of junior officers of the rank of Mirzā reporting to them.   

Crossing a Minefield

Radha Jan's situation was an odd mix of such privilege and the extreme vulnerability of being a religious minority in an overwhelmingly conservative and often volatile society. She was born towards the end of the Amir Abdul Rahman Khan era. The reign (1880-1901) of this "Iron Amir" as he was called, was also a curious mix- of urges to make Afghanistan appear modern and periodic relapses into utter barbarism. In 1895, just a few years before her birth, the Amir had been consumed by Islamist zeal to not just overrun the last remaining Hindu pocket of tribal Afghanistan but also forcibly convert its inhabitants to Islam. The region, unkindly labeled Kafiristan by their long-converted neighbors, was subsequently renamed Nuristan to drive home the point that the light of Islam had finally reached there. The Amir, with the addition of a new title ( Zia-ul-Millat-Wa-ud Din, meaning "Light of the nation and religion") briefly went on to author a couple of works on jihad too.

The most that families like Radha's could do during such horrors was to remain in denial and not recognize similarities with their own eventual fate in store. That denial, helped by the fact that Kafiristan's Hinduism was a different variant from their own, seemingly overlooked another deed of the same Amir. In 1880, he had also ordered the shifting of Afghanistan's most popular Hindu shrine of the time, down from the Panjsher mountains to Kabul. For his part Niranjan Das had still managed to extract one favor from the Amir-  that urban Hindus were to be governed by the gentler laws of Dharma Shāstra for most disputes, instead of the more harsh Islamic Sharia. It was readily accepted by the Sikhs too, who in the Afghan court parlance of the time, were referred to as "the Hindus who follow the Granth". 

The fact that the defeated Kafiristani tribes were not sold to brothels or slavery, probably reflected the microscopic limits of influence the urban Hindu elites had in such matters. A few other groups, including minority Muslim sects, lacked even that much. A genocide in 1890 of the Shia Hazara in response to a rebellion killed 60% of their total population, and ten thousand captive Hazaras were sold as slaves in Kabul on one day alone. Afghanistan was incidentally a British protectorate at the time, supplied generously with arms and money. 

When Radha Jan was still a very small child, Amir Habibullah Khan ascended the throne. His relatively more progressive reign (1901-1919) was still marred by the execution by stoning in 1903 of Sayyid Abdul Latif, a capable advisor, as punishment for embracing the Ahmediyya sect of Islam. The fact that he had helped demarcate the Durand Line, knew many languages, and was a frail elderly man had not helped earn any reprieve.

A Flower in the Courtyard

It was in such a minefield of times that Radha Jan was followed into this world by a younger sister. Going by the memories shared in The Kabul Times many decades later by a distant relative, the new arrival was named Jasso Jan, but Afghan folklore remembers her as Zaro Jan. (The formal name was in fact Yashoda, as confirmed by a direct descendant of hers.) With her arrival, it was said at the royal court that God had gifted Radha Jan a hambāshi- a companion to play with. At a time when a male heir meant much more, the words were perhaps intended as a consolation to the Diwan Saheb.

In a society with near-total absence of women's education, Radha went on to acquire eloquence in Dari, Pashto and Hindi, and began to take a deep interest in administrative matters as well from an early age. As a child, she would often accompany her father to work, and was described as a flower that had bloomed in the royal courtyard. Even more uncharacteristically for girls in her era, she learned horse-riding, and thanks to her deep love for it, became an adept rider in her teens.

Amir Habibullah's assassination in 1919 brought Amir Amanullah Khan, who took reforms a few notches further, ably aided by his wife Queen Soraya creating an unprecedented environment for women to step out of the shadows. As an opportunity it timed perfectly well with the Diwan Sahib's decision to groom Radha for more serious official responsibility.   

There was a basic challenge to begin with, however. Women were rarely seen in public without veils, let alone work in the royal court. There was no precedent of a uniform for women, and Radha Jan had no qualms wearing the tunics and pants worn by men, with high boots and a turban. An exposed head was still considered nudity for a woman. The outfit suited perfectly for horse riding, and she was often seen galloping all the way from Kabul to Paghman, a freshly-developed administrative town nestling in the hills to the north,  replete with a new castle. Fame and attention followed. Radha Jan's other mode of transport was a gaudi or horse-drawn carriage, and her seemingly acquiring a new one each year was perceived as a fashion statement. At the court, Radha Jan was decorated with the honorary rank of a Colonel. Around the same time, in 1923, Dewan Niranjan Das retired from service, at the age of 70.

The reforms made by Amanullah Khan and Queen Soraya were indeed remarkable for their time- The veil was made optional and strongly discouraged, a girls' schools was opened, child marriage banned, and restrictions were placed on polygamy too. Most courageously, the Amir personally campaigned for such reforms even in the more conservative parts of his kingdom. In one dramatic ceremony, Queen Soraya took off her veil at the end of a speech, and other ladies from her entourage did the same. Jizya, a discriminatory tax which had not exempted even the most elite non-Muslims earlier, was also discontinued.

The Bubble Ruptures 

Unfortunately, the royal couple misread the extent of conservative backlash brewing to the reforms. As Khaled Hosseini’s masterpieces (The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns) would later do a great job of showing, some aspects of tradition don't go away too easily from Afghan society, existing as fierce undercurrents even when there's an outward appearance of a new order on the surface. Amanullah Khan was ousted in 1929. He fled to Europe, after barely escaping slaughter at the hands of pursuing horsemen who gave up chasing his Rolls Royce rushing away on the road southwest to Kandahar which had not yet fallen to the rebels. 

The new Amir, Habibullah Kalakani (a former outlaw who was referred to as Bachā-e-Saqāo -"son of the water carrier") tried to entice Niranjan Das with a princely sum in exchange for coming back from retirement, and creditably chose to not punish him for the polite refusal. The Diwan had the excuse of old age but his family were Amanullah loyalists, after all. That loyalty was to extract a more steep price soon after, when Mohammad Nadir Khan, formerly a member of Amanullah's inner circle, grabbed power and executed many opponents. Niranjan Das was summoned and asked to deliver written promises of compliance from all prominent Hindus of Kabul, an act prompted by the fact that Amanullah was still alive in exile, and keen to regain his kingdom. 

The written assurances arranged by the elderly Niranjan Das were however rejected on flimsy grounds. Despite not participating in any conspiracies against the state, Niranjan Das and his relatives were kept under watch. Other humiliations soon followed, and they aligned well to propitiate the religious conservatives whose backlash had helped oust Amanullah. In 1931, a distant nephew of his by the name Ram Das, a military Colonel who had fought in the Third Anglo-Afghan war and continued to openly admire Amanullah Khan, was paraded on the streets of Kabul with a "town crier" trailing him, and then asked to surrender his uniform and his family's jewelry. Subsequently the house of "Karnail" -as  Kabul's Hindus referred to him- was burned down, forcing him to relocate to Kabul's Hindu Guzar locality where Niranjan Das, with some remnants of influence, managed to buy him a new house. 

Diwan Niranjan Das died soon after, in 1932, leaving Radha even more isolated in a hostile environment. Reasons of personal safety soon forced her to briefly relocate to India. The immense property that she had inherited had meanwhile caught the eye of Nadir Khan's brothers. Bagh-e-Hindu, a massive orchard belonging to Niranjan Das' family at Shakar Dara with a stream traversing it was confiscated by Nadir's brother Shah Mahmoud. The usurper tried to rename it after himself to cloak the acquisition but the old name persisted in popular circulation. Another estate called Zanabad in Bagrami was taken by Nadir's half-brother Mohammad Hashim Khan. Perhaps in an attempt to stem more losses, Radha courageously decided to return to Kabul- only to face the pressure to sell her remaining estates at Qalacha and another orchard at Bala Bagh in Surkh Rod for a pittance.

Radha Jan in old age

After salvaging only a small fraction of her family's wealth Radha Jan left for India a second time, where she kept a low profile. She never married, and died in exile in Delhi, in the month of Mizan of year 1352 in the Dari calendar, as an Afghan relative would later recollect in a newspaper article- which would translate to September, 1973.  She did return to Afghanistan once for a brief visit  before her death, and was feted by old timers known during the heady days of 50 years earlier. The visit required stoically enduring the sights of all that had once belonged to her family. 

(I was subsequently informed by the Chhibber family that the year of Radha Jan's passing was in fact 1972, as also evident in the date on the condolence letter shared on the "sources" page of this blog.)

Ashes of a Legacy

Radha Jan is almost forgotten by Afghans now, and the songs in her honor are fast getting relegated to fairy tales. Despite credible references still available across news articles, court records and old books,   and despite being an early luminary of Afghanistan's first real progressive sisterhood transcending social strata and faiths,  Radha Jan fails to find a mention in most stories on Afghan women's rights too- as though she was meant to occupy the tomb of the unknown soldier in the battle for gender equality. 

Whether it was courage or for lack of an option, the family of Ram Das the humiliated Colonel continued to stay in Hindu Guzar for decades afterwards. His son Surinder Kumar went on to become a Director General at Afghanistan National Bank in the 1970s. I have no idea what happened to them through the upheavals of the Soviet invasion, the Mujahideen bombardments of Kabul or the even worse Taliban era that ensued.

Since Radha Jan's heydays, Afghanistan's population has swelled despite wars to 34 million, but its Hindu minority has only continued to dwindle further. After shrinking to around 50,000 in 1990, they are now down to the last 1000. The last Hindu resident of Kandahar, known in ancient Indian epics as Gandhara, left for India in late 2019, ending a long continuous presence as old as recorded history. Sikhs -who in Afghanistan have remained tightly knit with Hindus- continue to share a similar fate. The two communities whose men were long affectionately addressed by friendly Afghans as Lāla (Pashto for brother), now do not dare to send their children to school on account of persecution and bullying for being "dālkhur" kafirs, or lentil-eating infidels.

The verses of a popular Dari ode to Radha meanwhile speak of preserving her beauty forever in a rather unusual way:

او دختر دیـوان بی بی رادو جـان

لاله را قسم دادم که رادو را نسوزان

O, Dukhtar-e-Dewān, Bibi Rādo Jān

Lālah ra qasam dādam, keh Rādo ra nasozān

O daughter of the Diwan, Lady Rado Jan!
I've made Lala (your father) promise that you will never be cremated 

It was as though the composer of the lines had somehow sensed the supreme irony that was to follow just 3 generations later. In 2012, the Hindus and Sikhs of Afghanistan were in the news, pleading to be allowed cremations for their dead- a long, indigenous tradition now condemned as "alien" and offensive in their own land. 

Indeed, as the holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel poignantly conveys in Night, the most complete decimation of a people is their being erased from not just the present, but from their past as well. 

(For sources, click this link)