Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan

 Khān Abdul Ghaffār Khān (6 February 1890 – 20 January 1988) (Pashto: خان عبدالغفار خان‎, Urdu: خان عبدالغفار خان‎, also known as Fakhr-e Afghān (Urdu: فخر افغان‎, lit. "pride of Afghans"), and Bāchā Khān (Pashto:باچا خان‎, lit. "king of chiefs"), Pāchā Khān or Bādshāh Khān, was an Indian independence activist of Pashtun ethnicity. He was a political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition to the British Rule in the Subcontinent, and a lifelong pacifist and devout Muslim. A close friend of Mahatma Gandhi, Bacha Khan has been nicknamed Frontier Gandhi. In 1910, Bacha Khan opened a mosque school at his hometown Utmanzai, and in 1911 joined the freedom movement of Haji Sahib of Turangzai. However in 1915, the British authorities banned his mosque school. Having witnessed the repeated failure of revolts against the British Raj, Bacha Khan decided that social activism and reform would be more beneficial for the Pashtuns. This led to the formation of Anjuman-e Islāh al-Afghān ("Afghan Reform Society") in 1921, and the youth movement Pax̌tūn Jirga ("Pashtun Assembly") in 1927. After Bacha Khan's return from the Hajj in May 1928, he founded the Pashto language monthly political journal Pax̌tūn. Finally, in November 1929, Bacha Khan founded the Khudai Khidmatgar ("Servants of God") movement, whose success triggered a harsh crackdown by the British Empire against him and his supporters and they suffered some of the most severe repression of the Indian independence movement. In 1962, Bacha Khan was named the Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience of the Year. In 1987, he became the first non-Indian to be awarded Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award. Bacha Khan is a Pashtun national hero and a key figure of Pashtun nationalism.

Bacha Khan strongly opposed the All-India Muslim League's demand for the partition of India. When the Indian National Congress declared its acceptance of the partition plan without consulting the Khudai Khidmatgar leaders, he felt very sad and told the Congress "you have thrown us to the wolves." After partition, Bacha Khan pledged allegiance to Pakistan and demanded an autonomous "Pashtunistan" administrative unit within the country, but he was frequently arrested by Pakistani government between 1948 and 1954, and in 1956 for his opposition to the One Unit scheme under which the government announced to merge the former provinces of West Punjab, Sindh, North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan into one administrative unit of West Pakistan. Bacha Khan also spent much of the 1960s and 1970s either in jail or in exile. Upon his death in 1988 in Peshawar under house arrest, following his will, he was buried in his house at Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of mourners attended his funeral, marching through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar to Jalalabad, although it was marred by two bomb explosions killing 15 people. Despite the heavy fighting at the time, both sides of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the communist army and the mujahideen, declared a ceasefire to allow his burial.