A month ago on November 2, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested Faisal Khan from Delhi and detained him in a Mathura jail. They then went in s...
A month ago on November 2, the Uttar Pradesh police arrested Faisal Khan from Delhi and detained him in a Mathura jail. They then went in search of Khan’s colleague Chand Mohammed to his village in Bihar. Failing to find him, they beat Mohammed’s parents and damaged their property.
I have known Faisal Khan as a human rights activist working alongside Sandeep Pandey (who in 2002 won a Magsaysay Award for his social work but declined the award money). Both Pandey and Khan are staunch Gandhians but in today’s India, there is one huge difference between them. One of them is Muslim.
In 2011, Khan founded a post-Independence version of the Khudai Khidmatgars, the amazingly brave and dedicated band of non-violent freedom fighters from the North-West Frontier Province. They were led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, affectionately known as Badshah Khan, or the Frontier Gandhi. He was easily the tallest (both literally and ethically) of leaders inspired by the non-violent freedom movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi.
One of the bravest chapters of India’s freedom struggle was written in 1930 at the Quissa Khwani bazaar in Peshawar, where the Khudai Khidmatgars had gathered following the arrest of their leaders. British armoured vehicles ploughed into the crowd, killing...
