Word: fakirism
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...Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, wants to talk over troublesome Indian problems with Mohandas K. Gandhi, the revered Mahatma will usually arrange to call on His Excellency at New Delhi. Not so obliging is another Indian leader named Mirza Ali Khan, better known as the Fakir...
Years ago this turbaned giant of a man, wearing baggy pants and a flowing robe, consented to a parley with a British Resident General of Waziristan, the craggy, wild tribal area of Northwestern India. It did not turn out well. The Fakir was friendly enough. But he declined to accept British bakshish ("small change"), and after he had gone it was discovered that the Fakir's entourage had looted the Resident General's headquarters while the conference was taking place...
...Islam" and "Holy Man of the Sulaiman Mountains," has lived by two premises: 1) never meet the British at a conference table (they are too good at it); 2) do your arguing with a gun in the mountains (he is good at it). Result is that whereas the humble Fakir used to be No. 40 on the British list of Waziristan's chieftains, he has now become Troublemaker...
Money and women are scarce in the mountains, but the Fakir and his tribesmen are experts at both stealing and kidnapping. His favorite tricks are planting bombs on British parade grounds, poisoning wells, connecting telephone lines with power circuits and luring unsuspecting Indian Army contingents into death traps. Biggest feather in his turban came when he caused the British Raj to send out an expensive expedition of 30,000 men to hunt down the Fakir and his few thousand followers. The British scoured the crags and peered into caves for months without ever catching him, and at the same time...
...contrast to Rilke, Frederic Prokosch relies on nothing but Prokosch. But on close examination, most readers will find Prokosch to be unreliable. An Austrian-American, instructor at Yale, Frederic Prokosch has written two novels (The Asiatics, The Seven Who Fled) which tickled occidental yogi-men. An able verbal fakir, Prokosch, by playing solemn tricks with the sounds of words, makes his poems bloom like a fakir's mango tree...