The British Colonial Encounter with the Pukhtuns: An Appraisal of Faqir Ippi’s Struggle against the British Raj (1936-1947)

The North-West Frontier region of the British Empire in India during the Great Game was part of the ‘Ring Fence Strategy’, framed by the Raj against its adversaries and rivals in Central and South Asia. To protect her ‘Jewel in the Crown’- India, the British Raj made several moves in the strategically placed Pukhtun1 land. The Pukhtun populace, adherent to their centuries old code of conduct, Puḳhtūnwali, consistently resisted the British encroachment of their territory. Mirza Ali Khan, popularly known as Faqir Ippi, was one of the many freedom fighters who challenged the imperialist power in this region. Taking notice of Islam Bibi’s case, a Hindu Convert, Faqir Ippi mobilized the Pukhtuns of Waziristan in defying and fighting the British. He was a serious contestant to the British authority with his well-known fighting skills, effective planning and guerilla tactics in one of the most difficult terrains. The entire Tribal Belt, especially Waziristan, proved to be a ‘turbulent frontier’ for nearly eleven years, i.e. 1936-1947. This insurgency started bringing bad name to the crown and encouraging others to rise against the British. To contain and end Faqir Ippi’s resistance, Governor George Cunningham hired the locals to instigate and bribe his followers to rise and fight against him. The aim of this paper is a critical evaluation of the British strategy in this region and an appraisal of Faqir Ippi’s response and assessment of how successful he was in invigorating Pukhtun resistance to defend their motherland, using both colonial and local sources.

Noether Symmetries, Corresponding Conservation Laws and Applications

This thesis is based on a geometrical/physical analysis of the conserved quantities/forms related to each Noether symmetry of the geodetic Lagrangian of plane symmetric and spherically symmetric spacetimes. We present a complete list of such metrics along with their Noether symmetries of the geodetic Lagrangian. The conserved quantities corresponding to each Noether symmetry are obtained. Thereafter, a detailed discussion of the geometrical and physical interpretation of these quantities is given. Additionally, the structure constants of the associated Lie algebras are obtained for each case. Furthermore, we find the Ricci tensors to see which metrics are gravitational wave solutions and the scalar curvatures are obtained in each case to analyze the essential singularities. The stress-energy tensors and their traces are obtained in each case as these are the sources of spacetime curvature. The last part of this thesis is to use the symmetries to obtain the invariant solutions whenever possible. The problem of constructing the optimal system has been be used to classify invariant solutions. We intend to find the one-dimensional optimal systems of the Lie subalgebras for the system of geodesic equations by using Noether symmetries. Further, we find the invariants corresponding to each element of the optimal system. These invariants enable one to reduce the system of geodesic equations (nonlinear system of 2nd order ordinary differential equations (ODEs)) to a system of first order ODEs. The resulting systems are solved via known methods (e.g., separation of variables, integrating factor etc). In some cases, we are able to get exact solutions of the system of geodesic equations.