Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan Utmanzai is a well-known Pashtun political leader who preached the philosophy of non-violence in the British era. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan was a lifelong supporter of non-violence and was one of the biggest admirers of Mahatma Gandhi. His admirers call him Bacha Khan and Sarhadi Gandhi.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan is one of the Pashtuns of Muhammadzai tribe. He was born in 1890 in the village of Utmanzai. After his primary education, he studied at Edward Mission High School, Peshawar. His father Bahram Khan belonged to a landed family. He was respected and influential among English officials. Unable to study locally, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan was sent to Wilayat by his father but his mother love did not let him go out. He entered politics in 1919 by participating in the movement against the Roulette Act and spent 6 months in prison. He joined the migration movement in 1920 and went to Afghanistan but returned due to the failure of the movement.
In 1921, he established a religious seminary in his village Utmanzai and started running it from the point of view of nationalism. Sir John Maze, the British chief commissioner, called his father and asked him to close the school. Because there was education against the British. Despite this, his madrassa continued to function, which angered the British, who asked him to post bail. In 1921, he joined the Khilafah movement and was sentenced to three years. He was released from prison in 1924 and set up the "Afghan Reform Association" to eradicate wrongdoing among Muslims. In 1926 all the workers joined the Congress meeting in Calcutta. Participated in the meeting of All India Congress held in Lahore in 1929. In 1930, he started the "God's Servant Movement", also known as the "Red Coat" movement.
When Gandhi Ji started the Satyagraha movement in 1930, Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan along with thousands of others participated in the Congress program "Breaking the Salt Law" at Shahe Bagh Peshawar under the Provincial Congress Committee. It was decided to hold a procession on April 22. When the procession left on April 23 and reached Qissa Khawani Bazaar, it was fired upon which lasted for four hours in which hundreds of Hindus and Muslims were killed. 57 names were revealed. 38 bodies were declared unknown by the hospital staff and buried, 550 injured were admitted to the hospital. On April 30, 1930, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was arrested and sent to prison. The Civil Disobedience Movement began on May 11, 1930. In which Ghulam Muhammad of Lund Khur Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan’s follower was arrested and sent to jail for three years.
People got angry over this. The government opened fire, killing 70 people and injuring 150 others. On May 26, 1930, Sardar Ganga Singh (a government employee) was walking from the big bazaar to Tanga with his wife and children when a British officer killed him and his two children. Thousands of people marched in his procession carrying his body, then the British came and blocked the way. People said they only wanted to carry the body. They have no bad intentions, but the British opened fire in which 11 people were killed and 20 injured. On February 28, 1931, a large procession took place in Utmanzai. Despite the police baton charge, the people did not disperse, so they were shot and several people were killed and injured. On March 10, 1931, the Gandhi Arun Agreement was signed. Other political prisoners were released but Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan was not released. Gandhi met Lord Arun and said that if Bacha Khan was not released, he would terminate the agreement and go to jail.
After this Gandhiji met Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan in jail and said that the British were saying that the red-clad party should be merged with the Congress. Abdul Ghaffar khan Badshah Khan was not ready for this but Sir Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum Khan who was a British man and was second only to the British in NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) when he found out that the British were trying to break the power of Pashtuns. If he wanted, he sent Kahlua to Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan and asked him to join the All India Party in some way by referring to "Pakhtun Wali", so that Pashtuns would not suffer much. On this Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Badshah Khan became full of supporters and joined the regular Congress. When he reached Peshawar in a procession from Gujarat Jail, millions of people joined the procession. He was later nicknamed "Sarhadi Gandhi". After his release, he worked for the Congress on the border under the Congress program, for which he was sent back to prison. There was a movement in the whole province for his release and as a result 15,000 volunteers went to jail. From 1932 to 1934 Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan was in Hazara Jail.
After his release, he was banned from entering NWFP and Punjab, so he stayed with Gandhi Ji in Wardha for some time. In 1935, India gained provincial autonomy. The ban on Dr. Khan Sahib and Bacha Khan was lifted. Dr. Khan went to the border but Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan spoke at the inauguration of the All India Swadeshi Exhibition in Bombay on which he was tried for treason and sent to prison for three years. When he returned home at the end of 1937, he received a warm welcome and marched from Attock to Peshawar. In September 1939, World War II broke out in which the Congress conditionally declared its support for the government. Angered by this, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan split from the Congress and resumed work for the "Khudai Khidmatgar Movement", but when the British accepted the terms of the Congress, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan rejoined the Congress.
On August 8, 1946, when the All India Congress Committee passed the "Leave India" resolution, arrests were made at the border and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan was sent to jail. From where he was released in 1945. In the same year there was a great famine in Bihar and Bengal, so King Khan reached Bihar and visited the whole province. The partition took place on August 14, 1947. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan, despite being against partition, accepted the decision of the Congress. After that, when sectarian riots broke out, the Muslim League removed the ministry of Dr. Khan and handed over the ministry to Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, who fired on the red carpets in "Babrha" in which hundreds of Pashtuns were martyred. He voluntarily resided in Afghanistan until the reigns of General Ayyub Khan, Agha Yahya Khan and Bhutto and later marched on his motherland in 1972 in the form of a procession of Pashtuns.
He first joined the British Army under pressure from his family, but quit his job because of the ill-treatment and racism of a British officer towards the Pashtuns. He later postponed his plans to study in England at the request of his mother. When the movement against the British rule failed many times, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan made running the Imrani movement and reforming the Pashtun tribes his goal. This thinking compelled him to start the “Khudai Khidmatgar movement”, a very significant movement in South Asia. Due to the success of this movement, he and his associates were repeatedly tortured and bound. In the worst-case scenario of late 1920, they allied themselves with Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, then considered the largest non-violent party. This annexation lasted until independence in 1947. After the independence of South Asia, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan spent the period between 1960 and 1970 in prisons and exile.
In 1987, he was the first person to be awarded the Bharat Ratna Award, the largest Indian civil award, despite not being an Indian citizen. During his visit to India on July 4, 1987, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan suffered a sudden stroke in Delhi and was brought back to Pakistan after suffering from Socrates for 50 days. At Lady Reading Hospital, Peshawar, on January 20, 1988, at the age of 97, this great nationalist leader called for his death and was buried in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, according to his will. The Ghamsan war was raging in Afghanistan at the time, but the decision to call a ceasefire on both sides at your funeral reflects the regional influence of your personality.
Bacha Khan was against partition of United Hindustan not Pakistan:
Leading non-violent Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan, thanks to his exemplary personality and leadership abilities, mobilized the Pashtuns living in United India politically and socially and inspired millions to join his Khudai Khidmatgar movement.
"Bacha Khan's non-violent God-serving movement and the present." The dialogue was organized by Bloomsbury Pakistan, a social research organization.
After the partition of India, some unscrupulous circles distorted his personality in Pakistan due to their personal political interests.
Dr. Mokulika Banerjee, author of a book on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Bacha Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar movement in NWFP and present-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said it was a great movement that mobilized people on such a large scale and was driven by Bacha Khan's personality and intellectual energy.
