Nonviolent Soldier of Islam: Badshah Khan: A Man to Match His Mountains

Abdul Ghaffar Khan didn't have to struggle. Having been born into wealth and privilege, he could have cooperated with the British colonialists and lived the good life. But the violence endemic to his Pathan society, in which honor demanded that no wrong go unavenged, drove him to seek an alternative that could express the true spirit of Islam. Ghaffar Khan found this path in Gandhi's movement of nonviolence, and in one of the most remarkable social transformations in history, he turned a people known for their fierceness into the largest army of nonviolent soldiers the world has every seen. The Khudai Khitmatgar (servants of God, or Red Shirts, as the British called them) united in the cause of nonviolent revolution, fighting the British with passive resistance and noncooperation. Although the price they paid under savage British suppression was enormous, they never buckled. They won the honor of all India, and Ghaffar Khan became known as the Frontier Gandhi. Ghaffar Khan also paid an enormous personal price, ultimately spending over half of his life in prison, first under the British and then under the Pakistanis, who squelched his call for a free Pathan homeland. Nonviolent Soldier of Islam a biography by the great spiritual teacher Eknath Easwaran, keeps Ghaffar Khan's spirit alive, a beacon for all who believe in freedom, dignity, and peace. --Brian Bruya