Bacha Khan By Waseem Altaf The Pashtun freedom fighter and Congress leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan aka Bacha Khan was a close associate of Mahatma Gandhi who together suffered the most severe repression of Indian independence movement. Bacha Khan strongly opposed Muslim League’s demand for partition of India. However, when Congress leadership accepted the partition plan, he felt very disillusioned and told the Congress "you have thrown us to the wolves." The oppression of the British, the repression of the mullahs, and a primitive culture of violence and vendetta prompted Bacha Khan to serve and uplift his fellow men and women by means of education. At 20 years of age, Bacha Khan opened his first school in Utmanzai. It was an instant success and he was soon invited into a larger circle of progressively minded reformers. A champion of women rights, between 1915 and 1918 he visited 500 villages in all part of the settled districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. It wa...