In archival photos of Badshah Khan standing next to his fellow peace advocate Mahatma Gandhi, it would easy to mistake Khan for a bodyguard.
Standing an imposing 6-foot-6 and with eyes that held every gaze, Khan towered over Gandhi and seemed fearsome in comparison. Yet both men were devoted to religious harmony and the non-violent quest for freedom from British rule in India early in the 20th century.
Khan was Muslim and Gandhi Hindu, but the two were so much in synch Khan was nicknamed the "Frontier Gandhi." They each received multiple nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet Khan is almost unknown outside of Afghanistan, India and Pakistan while Gandhi is revered the world over.
The reason for this is explored in Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch for Peace, the award-winning documentary by Teri McLuhan screening Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Innis Town Hall Theatre. It receives its Canadian premiere as the opening gala of the International Diaspora Film Festival, with a repeat screening at 1 p.m. Saturday.
A labour of love by McLuhan, the daughter of the late Toronto media visionary Marshall McLuhan, Frontier Gandhi makes a strong case that the world has unjustly neglected Khan, who died in 1988 at the age of 98. It also argues convincingly that Khan's messages are more timely now than ever.
Khan was from the Pashtun region (also known as Pashtunistan), a rugged area straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan that has long been one of the most violent hotspots on the globe. It's the home of the Khyber Pass, rendered in verse by Rudyard Kipling, where some of the most pitched battles of history have been fought – including the current American-led fight against the Taliban.
Yet Khan believed violence wasn't the answer to anything, and that included the British rule he and Gandhi joined forces to oppose. Khan created a non-violent army of more than 100,000 followers known as Khudai Khidmatgars ("Servants of God") whose red garb indicated their devotion to sacrifice.
From his youth in the 1920s up to his death in the late 1980s, Khan fought not only to free the Indian subcontinent from British control, but also to maintain unity and religious harmony amongst its fractious peoples. He succeeded in just one of these goals, sadly watching as India was violently partitioned in 1947 into two countries: a Muslim Pakistan split into fragments west and east (later a new nation called Bangladesh) and a Hindu India.
Khan's resistance to partition caused him to break with Gandhi (he accused his former ally of "throwing us to the wolves") and he was repeatedly thrown in jail, first by the British and later by the Pakistani government. Khan spent 35 years of his life in jail, much of that time in solitary confinement.
The world outside his homeland may have forgotten him, the film suggests, because he was overshadowed by the more charismatic Gandhi. "Even history becomes an exercise in brand building," says Indian journalist M.J. Akbar, one of many people McLuhan interviewed for her film.
But Khan never stopped believing that peace and non-violent resistance were the only paths to a happy life, and he warned of what could happen if extremism took hold – a point McLuhan underlines with images of the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
McLuhan devoted 21 years to making Frontier Gandhi. She travelled to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the U.S. to track down rare historical footage and to interview Khan's relatives and admirers, the latter including Afghan President Hamid Karzai. She'll attend both screenings at Innis and answer questions afterwards.
Tickets are $10 ($8 for students and seniors), available at 416-571-2150 or by emailing firstname.lastname@example.org.