A Pashtun freedom fighter who propagated non-violent methods and collaborated with Mahatma Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was better known as Bacha Khan (Bacha means king in Pashto) and died in 1988. He was born on February 6, 1890.
Khan was a disciple of Indian independence leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and collaborated with him as closely as leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel did.
Khan met Gandhi and entered politics in 1919 during agitation over the Rowlatt Acts, which allowed the internment of political dissidents without trial. In 1920, he joined the Khilafat movement, which sought to strengthen the spiritual ties of Indian Muslims to the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
As a part of movement against British colonial rule, Khan mobilised thousands of people in the north-west fringes of the Indian sub-continent, then known as the North West Frontier Province, to fight a nonviolent struggle, which earned him the title “Frontier Gandhi”.
His movement was known as “Khudai Khidmatgar,” which means “Servants of God” in Pashto.
Khan was against the idea of partition of Indian subcontinent into two nations along religious lines.
He lived in newly created Pakistan after partition following independence from the British but faced house arrest for many years and was even imprisoned by the Pakistani government.
He formed Pakistan’s first national opposition party in 1948, the Pakistan Azad Party.
In 1969, Khan addressed a joint session of the Indian parliament, on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 100th birthday. Later in 1987, he was awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest Indian honour given to civilians. He was the first non-Indian to receive this honour.
Along with his son Khan Abdul Wali Khan, co-founder of National Awami Party, Bacha Khan called on the military dictatorship to hand over power to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League after its landslide victory in 1969 general election. Later both condemned the military occupation in the then East Pakistan.
Bangladesh government awarded the duo with Friends of Liberation War Honour in 2013.