If you watched Malala Yousafzai’s much discussed and inspiring speech to the United Nations last week, you may have heard this courageous teenager — who was shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education — refer to Badshah Khan as a great inspiration for her determined commitment to nonviolence. You may have also wondered, “Who is this man?” After all, his name is not instantly recognizable like Gandhi or Mother Theresa — the other two luminaries Yousafzai cited.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, later known as Badshah, or King, was born in 1890 in the town of Utmanzai — not far from Peshawar, in what was then the Northwest Frontier Province of India. His father was a khan, or village headman, widely respected for his honesty and more grudgingly, perhaps, for his somewhat independent approach to the Islam of the Mullahs of his day — as well as his coldness toward the code of badal, or revenge, that was a prominent cultural feature among the Pashtuns.
Ghaffar Khan’s early years ran a roughly parallel course to Gandhi’s: He was passionately devoted to the uplift of his people, had a deeply spiritual bent and, at first, accepted British rule as a matter of course, but saw the light when he was deeply offended by certain insults that are the inevitable concomitant of domination. Inevitably, too, his village work, which mostly took the form of establishing schools, put him on a collision course with both the mullahs and the British authorities for similar reasons: educated people are harder to oppress. He came to realize that his educational work, like Gandhi’s constructive program, was “not just service, but rebellion” — a point that must have gone home powerfully with Malala Yousafzai.
Shortly after meeting Gandhi in 1919 — to make a very long story short — Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgars or “Servants of God” to expand his revolutionary work. Their dedication to him and to nonviolence flummoxed the British, who responded in the only way they knew how at that time: with brutal repression. But Khan was not easily repressed. After perpetrating a terrible massacre in 1930 in Peshawar, the British saw the ranks of the Servants swell from several hundred to 80,000 — an improbable fact if you are not familiar with nonviolent dynamics.
The Servants and their adored leader — who had come to be known, over his objections, as the “Frontier Gandhi” — were shot, tortured, humiliated and (in his case) jailed; but not before they had played a signal role in liberating their country and helping Gandhi give “an ocular demonstration” to the world of the power of nonviolence.
Khan’s incredible life is one of the great untold stories of our time. His “ocular demonstration” went beyond Gandhi’s in evaporating five myths that are commonly held about nonviolence, even today:
Yet, outside of Eknath Easwaran’s great biography, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam and a few other resources (including a documentary) there is scant material widely available on Khan and he remains little known in the West. Young Malala Yousafzai may have done the world a greater service than she realizes by honoring his name at the august body of the UN General Assembly.
Excellent piece! Khan was a truly remarkable figure, and it’s great that the world will know him a little more due to Malala’s speech.
Ditto…ditto…& ditto!
Thank you, Scott. Go ahead and sign up on our website if you’d like to stay in touch that way. mettacenter[dot]org.
Michael
Unfortunately, one people that know little about Khan and his work, thus not using it today is Afghans.
It’s interesting you say that Malaiz, as one of this site’s contributors is an Afghan nonviolence trainer who spent a lot of time studying Badshah Khan and teaching others about him. Here is what he said in an article published last year:
This seems to bear out some of what you say, but it also seems hopeful that Khan’s legacy and teachings are slowly being rediscovered. Here’s a link to the rest of the article should you want to read further:
http://dev2.wagingnonviolence.org/feature/afghans-search-for-realistic-alternatives/
Thanks for the link. I will try to find time out of changing nappies to read it — have a six-month old baby boy who has all my attention now a days. I am taken aback that there actually is an Afghan studying Bacha Khan and spreading his message. My experience with Afghans when I talk about him is questions like: oh the guy with the long nose? oh the Pashtoon freedom fighter. I know you mean the one who wanted a separate country for Pashtoons, etc. No one mentions nonviolence. Military-political forces throughout our history have tried to use his name for their political consumption. The war economy and violent discourse has diminished his nonviolent struggle to almost zero. My sister just recently finished her master’s thesis on Bacha Khan’s relevance for our current educational system. To my utmost surprise, most of our “human rights activists” have pictures of King, Gandhi and Mandela as their Facebook profile pictures. They are more fashionable, I reckon. Please pay my respect to your Afghan colleague. I hope to get the time to write a piece on this great man one day.
Malaiz,
We would love to read that thesis on Khan and the educational system at the Metta Center. Can you email it to education@mettacenter.org?
Thank you!!
I will ask my sister for it, Stephanie. She submitted it last week so I am not sure if she could already circulate it. I will get back to you.
There are lots of good people….but watching TV we only hear about bad news
Pakistar or Afganistan ….are always linked with talibans….
Siendo uno de los ejemplos de la no violencia debiera darse a conocer su obra y su participacion en la historia, han habido muchos revolucionarios y muchos tipos de revolucion pero son pocos los que se condujeron hacia la etica o la no violencia, por ese motivo debiera darse a conocer su obra y su participacion en la lucha de la no violencia, debe fomentarse un pensamiento etico y no violento en las revoluciones sea cual sea para lograr un mayor beneficio de las personas.
Querido Wilmer,
Hace ya ocho meses desde nos escribiste ese mensaje, disculpa me si no contestamos. Buscamos de ves en quando traductores para nuestra sitio web. Pavor de mandarnos un email si sabes uno/a.
Saludos,
Michael
A truly amazing and inspiring person; a fascinating life. The book about him by Easwaran is excellent. The only book I’ve read three times – and may read again.
I’m very glad that Malala mentioned him (I hadn’t known that) and that more people will become familiar with his life and his thought.
Good & crisp piece. Gave information about the person less known to even lndians.
I did some research and saw that Mingora, where Malala is born, and Utmanzai, where Khan is born, are 120 km and a 25 hour walk away from each other. Both towns are part of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistan.
With this in mind, I think its beautiful to imagine that when Ghaffar Khan said “No true effort is in vain. Look at the fields over there. The grain sown therein has to remain in the earth for a certain time, then it sprouts, and in due time yields hundreds of its kind,” he somehow knew that Malala would be one of the flowers that would bloom and carry on his message. She proves that his belief was ever so true.
Malala has great knowledge of where she comes from, and is unabashedly proud of her roots. In other words, She is keepin’ it real!
Thankyou for writing this article Michael, it was a joy to read!