On November 27, Gateway House, in collaboration with the Y. B. Chavan Centre, screened The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan: A torch for peace. Produced, directed and written by Teri C. McLuhan, and set in the turbulent regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan, The Frontier Gandhi is a movie on the life and times of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan – and an outcome of 22-years of research.
The screening was followed by a discussion between Teri C. McLuhan, Director, The Frontier Gandhi; Kumar Ketkar, Chief Editor, Dainik Divya Marathi; and Rajni Bakshi, Senior Gandhi Peace Fellow, Gateway House.
Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, popularly known as Badshah Khan and Frontier Gandhi, led an unprecedented non-violent resistance movement against the British colonial rule in the first half of the 20th century. Since violent polarisation of identities still keeps this region in turmoil, the story of Frontier Gandhi is poignantly relevant.
Filmed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, the U.S. and Canada, the documentary also includes rare historical footage, candid interviews with world leaders, and moving testimonies from 68 of Badshah Khan’s non-violent warriors – many of them over 100 years of age.
The story is based in the strategic North-West Frontier Province of the erstwhile British India, and now Pakistan’s frontier region, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Badshah Khan (1890-1988) raised a 100,000 strong non-violent army of men, women and youth who were known as the Khudai Khidmatgar (servants of God) and came from multi-ethnic traditions of Afghanistan and the Indian sub-continent.
Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Parsis, Sikhs and Buddhists came together for the cause of peace, social justice, religious tolerance, human dignity and women’s rights. The charismatic Badshah Khan inspired the whole region and challenged his own highly volatile culture to change its vengeful ways; and instead nurture the spiritual and moral strength of non-violence.
Nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, Badshah Khan passed away in 1988 at the age of 98, having spent nearly 35 years from his long life in solitary confinement for his efforts in humanizing humanity.