Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was so close to India’s peace icon Mahatma Gandhi as both shared vision and struggle, but unlike his friend, the Pashtun champion of non-violent struggle against the British rule has been almost forgotten by his people.
“He was a 6’5 giant of the human spirit, that is what attracted me to him,” Canadian filmmaker Teri McLuhan told.
She recently tried to dust off the history of the man, nicknamed “Frontier Gandhi”, and his role in India’s independence.
She dedicated over 20 years to that task resulting in a prize-winning movie about the pacifist Muslim icon.
Born to relative privilege in the Pashtun tribal heartland that straddles the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Khan turned down a career in the British army.
He his own force of thousands of troops, called the Khudai Khidmatgars, or servants of God, who were sworn to non-violence.
They were dressed in red to show they were willing to shed their own blood but not that of others.
Khan’s supporters faced beatings, imprisonment and even castration from the British, but remained loyal to Khan and true to their oaths to serve God by serving humanity without violence.
In the late 1920’s he formed an alliance with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress that lasted till the 1947 partition when India and Pakistan became independent states.
Frontier Gandhi
The Canadian filmmaker hopes her movie would help break much of stereotypes about Islam and Muslims.
Khan came from a tribal tradition that prized honor and expected men to defend it at any cost, but he managed to redefine the meaning of bravery.
“For a man born into a warrior culture, to believe he could take on an Empire just by the strength of his beliefs…and to actually make his people believe the moment you become violent you become a stooge; boy, was that difficult,” says M.J. Akbar, editor-in-chief of Indian newspaper.
The split of India and Pakistan marked the beginning of the decline of Khan’s political influence, though not his popularity.
He opposed Pakistan independence, believing people of different faiths should live together.
His non-violent army fanned out to protect non-Muslims during chaos of communal violence over partition.
But Pakistan’s eventual leaders mistrusted him because of his stance which cost him a lot.
He spent around one out of every three days of his life in jail, and much of that time was done not under the British but the Pakistani government.
He was also kept out of the media in his new homeland and increasingly forgotten.
In 1987 he became the first person not holding the citizenship of India to be awarded the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award.
Khan spent much of his time in Afghanistan, pushing the importance of education and urging a country traumatized by decades of war to believe in non-violence.
He was buried in the Afghan city of Jalalabad when he died in 1988.
McLuhan hopes her movie, which won the Best Documentary award in the Middle East International Film Festival last year, would help break much of stereotypes about Islam and Muslims.
“The growing stereotype of Islam did not help my project,” McLuhan said.
“This story shatters that stereotype which makes some people very uncomfortable,” she added.
“Definitely 9/11 was a facilitator as it thrust this part of the world into many more people’s consciousness, and made the message of non-violence more urgent.”
-Agencies