Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: The Frontier Gandhi and His Peaceful Struggle

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
● Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born on February 6, 1890 in Peshawar, then British India (present day Pakistan).
● He was known as 'Frontier Gandhi'.
● During the 1919 agitation against the Rowlatt Act, which allowed political dissidents to be detained without trial, Ghaffar Khan met Gandhi and entered politics.
● He became involved in the Khilafat Movement, which strove for a spiritual relationship of Indian Muslims with the Sultan of Turkey, and in 1921 he was elected district president of the Khilafat Committee in his home province of North West Frontier Province.
● Ghaffar Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) after attending a meeting of the Congress Party in 1929 and called for the Red Shirt Movement among the Pashtuns.
● Where the Muslim League did not give any help to the Pashtuns for this movement, the Congress gave them their full support. So he became a staunch Congressman and from here on he became famous as a follower of Gandhiji.
● Khan taught the lesson of Gandhiji's 'non-violence' to the Pathans.
● In Peshawar, when the British imposed 'martial law' in the year 1919, Abdul Ghaffar Khan proposed peace to the British, yet he was arrested.
● In the year 1930, he was again sent to jail for satyagraha and he was sent to Gujarat (then part of Punjab) jail. There he was introduced to other prisoners of Punjab. He read the scriptures of the Sikh Gurus and studied the Gita in jail.
● Considering the importance of Hindu-Muslim unity, he set up Gita and Quran classes in Gujarat jail, where qualified Sanskritists and Maulvis used to run the respective classes. Everyone was impressed by his association and studied all the scriptures like Geeta, Quran and Guru Granth Sahib etc.
● Ghaffar Khan became one of Mahatma Gandhi's closest advisors by the late 1930s and Khudai Khidmatgar actively supported the Congress party until the partition of India in 1947.
● After the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1930, Abdul Ghaffar Khan was released and engaged in social work.
● In the provincial elections of 1937, the Congress won a majority in the provincial assembly of the North-West Frontier Province. Khan Sahib was elected the leader of the party and became the Chief Minister.
● He was arrested in the August movement of 1942 and released in the year 1947.
● He openly opposed the partition and said to Gandhiji that "Why are you letting us go among the wolves?"
● Gandhi had no answer on this. When he met Bapu for the last time, Bapu said to Khan, "Now give up the attachment to India, Serve your country."
● He remained mostly in jail in Pakistan.
● Ghaffar Khan, an opponent of the country's partition, decided to stay in Pakistan, where he continued to fight for the rights of the Pashtun minority and for an autonomous Pashtunistan (or Pathanistan) within Pakistan.
● After the partition of India, his relation with India was broken, but he did not agree with the partition of India at all. His ideology was completely different from that of Pakistan. He continued to run the 'Independent Pashtunistan Movement' against Pakistan for life.
● Frontier Gandhi came to India in the year 1969 for treatment on the special request of the Prime Minister of India Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Mrs. Gandhi and J.P. Narayan went to receive him at the airport. When Khan came out of the aeroplane, he had a bundle in his hand which contained his kurta-pyjama. As soon as she met Mrs. Gandhi, she extended her hand towards his bundle – “Give it to us, we will carry it” Khan sahib stopped, said coldly – “This is what is left, will you take it also?”
• His memoir book 'My Life and Struggle' was published in the year 1969.
• Khan was the main attraction of the 'Congress Centenary Celebrations' of the year 1985.
● Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was awarded 'Bharat Ratna' by the Government of India in the year 1987.
● In the year 1988, he was put under house arrest in Peshawar by the Government of Pakistan.
● He died on January 20, 1988 and was buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan as per his last wish.