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by: Eknath Easwaran
Publisher: Nilgiri Press, 1999
Reviewed by: Amit Pandya “Badshah Khan,” the great Pushtun leader, a proud and devout Muslim, led an active resistance based on Islamic principles of nonviolence, first against the British Empire and then against military dictatorship in Pakistan. Coming from the warrior culture of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, he found in Islamic thought and faith the sources of militant but nonviolent political action. He thereby transformed the warlike but politically ineffectual Pushtuns of British India into a highly disciplined and effective unarmed force, the “Khudai Khitmatgar.” His life and work demonstrate the deep consistency between core Islamic principles, modernization, national liberation and nonviolence. The religious core of his political program was summed up in Badshah Khan’s statement: "There is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan like me subscribing to the creed of nonviolence. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet all the time he was in Mecca." This exquisitely written biography by the late Eknath Easwaran, a teacher of inter-faith understanding, locates the key to Khan’s astonishing political success in his spiritual conviction. It teachs much about a hitherto unappreciated aspect of Islamic thought. |
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