Bāchā Khān (born Khān Abdul Ghaffār Khān) was a political leader, a spiritual leader, and an independence activist against British colonial rule over India.  He was known as a lifelong pacifist, a secular Muslim who staunchly opposed any and all religious divisions, and a devout advocate of nonviolent opposition to social injustice.

 

While he faced much opposition and personal difficulties, Bacha Khan worked tirelessly to organize and raise the consciousness of his fellow Pushtuns.  As a case in point, between 1915 and 1918 Khan visited over 500 villages in all part of the settled districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.  Indeed, it was in this frenzied activity in the name of peace that he came to be known as Bacha Khan (King of Chiefs).

 

A close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Khan founded the nonviolent resistant group Khudai Khidmatgar movement in 1929, whose success triggered a harsh crackdown by the British Raj against him and his supporters, and they suffered some of the most severe repression of the entire Indian independence movement.

 

On the 23^rd of April in 1930, Bacha Khan was arrested during protests arising out of the Salt Satyagraha. An unarmed crowd of Khudai Khidmatgar had gathered in Peshawar’s Kissa Khwani (Storytellers) Bazaar, and the British ordered troops to open fire on them, killing an estimated 200–250.  Despite the ruthless carnage, the Khudai Khidmatgar members acted in accord with their training in non-violence under Bacha Khan, boldly and peacefully the facing bullets as the troops fired on them.  As a consequence, two entire platoons of The Garhwal Rifles regiment refused to fire on the non-violent crowd, though they knew the punishment for such disobedience would be sever (indeed, they were all later court-martialed and received  heavy punishments, some served with life imprisonment).

 

Khan strongly opposed the All-India Muslim League’s demand for the partition of India.  After the partition passed, Khan pledged allegiance to Pakistan, and yet he remained politically active and was frequently arrested by the Pakistani government between 1948 and 1956.   Khan also spent much of the 1960’s and 1970’s either in jail or in exile due to his social justice activism, and died still under house arrest in 1988.

 

Bacha Khan was also a champion of women’s rights, and became a hero of most in a society dominated by violence and injustice.   Even many of his enemies, notwithstanding his liberal views, were moved by his unswerving faith, obvious bravery, and moral fortitude. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in his non-violent methods or in the compatibility of Islam, nonviolence, and peace.

 

“Today’s world is traveling in some strange direction. You see that the world is going toward destruction and violence. And the specialty of violence is to create hatred among people and to create fear. I am a believer in nonviolence and I say that no peace or tranquility will descend upon the people of the world until nonviolence is practiced, because nonviolence is love and it stirs courage in people.” ~ Bacha Khan

Filed under: In LOVE with Humanity by Scaughdt