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


From Library Journal
Realizing that Westerners tend to associate Islam with terrorism and nonviolence with Hinduism, Easwaran (Gandhi, the Man) set out to write a tribute to a Muslim who embodied the nonviolent tradition within Islam. Badshah Khan, a Pathan of the former Northwest Frontier Province of India (today, the Taliban of Afghanistan), raised an army of 100,000 unarmed "Servants of God" and later became one of Gandhi's closest companions. Khan and his followers endured a great deal of persecution and imprisonment under the oppressive British rule, thus challenging the myth that passive resistance always works for those who are already peaceful. Though Khan was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, far too few people are aware of the man who was known as the "Frontier Gandhi." The publication of this book coincides with the UN General Assembly's proclamation of the beginning of the millennium as the Year and Decade of Nonviolence. Recommended for all libraries.AMichael W. Ellis, Ellenville P.L., NY Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The Washington Post
"Eknath Easwaran's great achievement is telling an international audience about an Islamic practitioner of pacifism at a moment when few in the West understand its effectiveness and fewer still associate it with anything Islamic."


The Christian Science Monitor
"The essence of Khan's story. . . is that the true nature of Islam is nonviolent."


Mubarak E. Awad, Palestinian Center for the Study of Nonviolence, Jerusalem
"This book is a must for every Muslim. The life of Khan can change and will challenge many readers in the Middle East."


Helmut Schmidt, Former Chancellor of Germany
"This extraordinarily interesting book of Eknath Easwaran will be very helpful in making the phenomenon of Islam more understandable."


Book Description
The triumphant story of Badshah Khan, nonviolent Muslim freedom fighter inspired by the example of Mahatma Gandhi. Khan raised the world's first nonviolent army from the fierce Pathans of North India during India's struggle for independence from Britain. His extraordinary life proves that nonviolence can be followed by those who have a tradition of violence, that it can work effectively against ruthless repression, and that it has a natural place in Islam.


From the Publisher
Eknath Easwaran grew up in Matatma Gandhi's India when Badshah Khan's influence was at its zenith. Meetings with both men, together with a close observation of their lives, convinced his that Khan perfectly embodies the transformation behind what Gandhi called the nonviolence of the brave.


About the Author
Eknath Easwaran was Professor of English Literature at the University of Nagpur, India, as well as an established writer and speaker, when he came to the United States on the Fulbright exchange program in 1959 and taught at the University of California at Berkeley. He founded the Blue Mountain Center of Meditation in 1961 to move, as he put it, from education for degrees to education for living.


Excerpted from Nonviolent Soldier of Islam : Badshah Khan, a Man to Match His Mountains by Eknath Easwaran. Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Excerpt, pages 78-9 Gradually Khan had been enlarging his contacts with Muslim thinkers throughout the subcontinent. Now he began to hear about Gandhi and the nonviolent campaigns that were beginning to rouse the whole of India. He responded immediately to Gandhi's simple lifestyle and his insistence upon truth and nonviolence in all of life's affairs. And he recognized in Gandhi the Mahatma, the "great soul" a kindred spirit, a seeker who was attempting to serve God by serving the poorest of his creation. As Gandhi's work and ideas spread, Khan's attempts at reforming and educating the Pathans took on new meaning: this was not only uplift, it was also the path to freedom. Buoyed, Khan redoubled his efforts. Between 1915 and 1918 he visited every one of the five hundred villages in the settled districts of the Frontier. He sat with the men in the guest houses and spoke of sacrifice and work and forgiveness, and in the evenings he laughed with their children around the cooking fires. The villagers loved but did not quite understand this gentle giant of a man. He was not a mendicant he did not take alms. And he was not a renouncing fakir didn't he own a village? Well then, what was he? One afternoon in the mosque at Hastanagar a group of khans from Charsadda finished their meeting with Ghaffar Khan in a high pitch of excitement. He had roused them and they felt grateful. Someone in the back stood up on the low wall and shouted into the din: Badshah Khan! The others heard it and picked up the call. Badshah Khan the khan's khan! That's what this brave young reformer had become. The whole group of bearded faces took up the cry and let it thunder over the high walls of the mosque into the countryside. Badshah Khan! The king of khans. The name spread. If the khans called him their badshah, there would be no arguments from the villagers. Ghaffar had to swallow his fate and bear this new title as Gandhi bore being called Mahatma. From now on, when he entered villages from Mardan to Kohat, he would be met by the cry: "Badshah Khan is coming! The badshah is here!" The Pathans had their leader and they had found him just in time. For the Frontier was about to erupt in the greatest explosion since the Frontier War of 1897.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal