Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetAbdul Ghaffar Khan
Indian independence activist
Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Hashtnagar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
About Abdul Ghaffar Khan
- Abdul Ghaffar Khan (6 February 1890 – 20 January 1988), nicknamed Fakhr-e-Afghan , lit.
- "pride of Pashtuns"), Badshah Khan, or Bacha Khan, "king of chiefs"), was a Pashtun independence activist who worked to end the rule of the British Raj in India.
- He was a political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition; he was a lifelong pacifist and devout Muslim.
- A close friend of Mohandas Gandhi, Bacha Khan was nicknamed the "Frontier Gandhi" in British India by his close associate Amir Chand Bombwal.
- Bacha Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God") movement in 1929.
- Its 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 Indian independence movement.Bacha Khan strongly opposed the proposal for the partition of India, siding with the Indian National Congress and All India Azad Muslim Conference.
- When the Indian National Congress declared its acceptance of the partition plan without consulting the Khudai Khidmatgar leaders, he felt deeply betrayed and hurt by this, telling the Congress, "you have thrown us to the wolves." In June 1947, Khan and other Khudai Khidmatgars declared the Bannu Resolution, demanding that the Pashtuns be given a choice to have an independent state of Pashtunistan, composing all Pashtun territories of British India, instead of being made to join Pakistan.
- However, the British Raj refused to comply with the demand of this resolution.
- In response, Bacha Khan and his elder brother Chief Minister Dr Khan Sahib boycotted the 1947 North-West Frontier Province referendum on joining Pakistan or India, citing that it did not have the options for the province to become independent or join Afghanistan.After the partition, Bacha Khan pledged allegiance to Pakistan, but was frequently arrested by the Pakistani government between 1948 and 1954.
- In 1956, he was again arrested for his opposition to the One Unit program, under which the government announced its plan to merge all provinces of West Pakistan into a single province.
- Khan was jailed or in exile during much of the 1960s and 1970s.
- Upon his death in 1988 in Peshawar under house arrest, following his will, he was buried at his house in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
- Tens of thousands of mourners attended his funeral, marching through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar to Jalalabad.
- It was marred by two bomb explosions that killed 15 people.
- Despite the heavy fighting at the time during the Soviet–Afghan War, both sides, namely the communist army and the mujahideen, declared a ceasefire to allow Khan's burial.
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