Abdul Ghaffar Khan

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was born in the North-West Frontier Province on 6 February 1890. In 1929, he founded the Khudai Khidmatgar, a nonviolent resistance movement that drew such fierce colonial crackdown it became one of the most repressed forces in the entire independence struggle. A devout Muslim who championed Hindu-Muslim unity and shared Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy so closely he earned the nickname "the Frontier Gandhi," Khan fought against partition - demanding an independent Pashtunistan when the British refused, then boycotting the 1947 referendum that folded his province into Pakistan. After partition he pledged allegiance to Pakistan but remained a thorn: jailed repeatedly between 1948 and 1954, again in 1956 for opposing the One Unit program, then intermittently through the '60s and '70s. India awarded him the Bharat Ratna in 1987. He died in Peshawar on 20 January 1988 and was buried in Jalalabad; both sides of the Soviet-Afghan War declared a ceasefire so tens of thousands could carry him through the Khyber Pass, though two bombs killed fifteen mourners along the route.