MUMBAI: Perhaps no other Muslim freedom fighter championed the cause of unity like the “Frontier Gandhi”
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan
(1890-1988) did. It is thus apt that a group of peaceniks led by Sarhadi Gandhi Memorial Society in the city will celebrate Ghaffar Khan’s 131st
birth
anniversary on February 6 at Y B Chavan Centre to uphold peace and unity.
The city also recalls its bond with the tallest leader of the Pakhtuns or Pashtun tribesmen of the North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) in Pakistan.
“Ghaffar Khan not only symbolises Hindu-Muslim unity but also friendship between India and Pakistan. He can be a binding force for the entire South Asia from Khorasan (Afghanistan) to Arakan (Myanmar),” said writer and peace activist Sudheendra Kulkarni.
Kulkarni, as a journalist, had covered the centenary celebrations of the Indian National Congress in 1985 in the city where Ghaffar Khan had been invited. “He spent more time in jail and exile than Nelson Mandela. And the Haryana government has changed the name of a hospital named after him. We must remember this great patriot,” said Sarhadi Gandhi Memorial Society’s chairman Advocate Jalaluddin.
One of the most trusted colleagues of
Mahatma Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan won the moniker “Frontier Gandhi” for his non-violent resistance through the voluntary organisation Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God).
He loved his fellow Pashtuns of Mumbai.“We took pride in his sacrifice for Indian freedom,” said Yaqoob Khan, general secretary of Anjuman-I-Pakhtun Trust, the organisation which works for the welfare of Pakhtuns here.
Yaqoob Khan was a young boy when he first saw Ghaffar Khan in Mumbai in 1969 as the latter had come to India to attend the birth centenary of Gandhi.
Activist M A Khalid had accompanied underworld don and Pakhtun leader Karim Lala to see Ghaffar Khan at a south Mumbai hospital in the late 1980s. “He was pleased to meet fellow Pakhtuns and gave us the dry fruits he had brought from Peshawar. His admirers gave him nankhatai, a Mumbai sweet,” recalled Khalid.
Recorded messages of Ghaffar Khan’s grandson Asfandyar Wali Khan and Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson Rajmohan Gandhi will be played at the venue as part of the tribute to the great patriot on his birth anniversary, said activist Jatin Desai.
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