My life and struggle

This is the eventful story of a well-known man, lovingly called Badshah Khan, about whom everything was outsized: His body (2 meters); his life (half of it spent in prison); his style (pacifism); his loyalty (Pashtun affiliation); his friendship with Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru – both physically towered over by him; his leadership of the pacifist, red uniformed Khuda’i Khidmatgars; the age reached (98 years); and his reaction to the creation – abhorred by him – of Pakistan. When it was founded, the author took to exile in Afghanistan and well defined his overall creed: ‘When a flood carries me away, and no Muslim reaches out for me, shall I not take the hand of a Hindu?’ (p. 213). Accounts of the dramatic events leading to the partition of the Subcontinent are incomplete without an assessment of ‘Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s contrary vision and rôle – reflected as well by ten photographs showing the author with Mahatma Gandhi. The stirring speeches delivered by him each year on Pashtunistan-Day (31 August) show him, however, as a narrow tribal nationalist – so jingoist that after the creation of Pakistan he was imprisoned there as well – for no less than 15 years during the first 18 years of the new country – his Islam being overshadowed by pretty narrow ethnic pride. But then, the author was a child of his time.