Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai

Abdul Samad Khan Achakzai (7 July 1907 – 2 December 1973), known by the title Khan Shaheed, was a Pashtun nationalist and political leader from Balochistan. He founded the Anjuman-i-Watan Baluchistan in 1938, allied with the Indian National Congress but never merged into it, and opposed the partition of India. Across the British and Pakistani periods he spent some thirty-five years in prison. A member of the Balochistan Provincial Assembly, he was assassinated in a grenade attack on his home in 1973; his assassins were never identified. He was also a man of letters: he reformed the Pashto script, founded the province's first newspaper, and translated major works into Pashto. ^{1 2}

He was born on 7 July 1907 in the village of Inayatullah Karez, near Gulistan in Balochistan, and lost his father early; he and his brother Abdul Salam Khan were raised by the family matriarch Dilbara. Educated first at home, where he became well versed in the classical Pashto, Arabic and Persian texts and studied fiqh, hadith and tafsir, he then joined the local middle school, proved an outstanding student and earned a scholarship. ^{1 2}

He was first imprisoned in May 1930, having already been warned by the rulers for his lectures to villagers at the mosque. On 30 May 1938 he founded the Anjuman-i-Watan, which opposed the partition of India. After the creation of Pakistan he founded the Wror Pashtun movement, later merged into the National Awami Party; he parted from the NAP after the Pashtun lands were merged into Balochistan province contrary to the party's manifesto on national units. He spent his last four years (1969–1973), his longest spell out of prison, campaigning for universal franchise — one man, one vote — in Balochistan and the tribal areas, and he championed women's voter registration for the 1970 general election. The Urdu article totals his imprisonment across his life at some thirty-five years, in jails including Peshawar, Machh, Haripur, Lahore Fort, Montgomery, Malta and the Andaman Islands. ^{1 2}

Achakzai commanded Arabic, Persian, English, Urdu, Balochi and Sindhi, but held his mother tongue Pashto central to the national struggle. He reformed the Bayazid Roshan Pashto script by removing Arabic letters his fellow Pashtuns could not pronounce, advocating a script written as the language is spoken. He translated into Pashto, among other works, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad's Tarjuman-ul-Quran, Saadi's Gulistan and Shibli Nomani's Seerat-ul-Nabi, and after seven years of effort he published Istiqlal from Quetta in 1938, the first newspaper in the province's history. He had begun writing his memoirs. ¹

On the night of 2 December 1973, during the governor's rule imposed by the Bhutto government in Balochistan, Achakzai was assassinated in a grenade attack on his home; the identity of his assassins has never been discovered. He was a member of the Balochistan Provincial Assembly at the time. After his death his son, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, was elected chairman of his party. ^{1 3}

No source read for this record names a school or denomination for him, and the museum records none: his religious education and his mosque lectures are education and practice, not an attestation of a school, and Wikidata carries no religion value for him. ^{2 3}

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