There are many reasons to condemn and agonise over Pakistani Taliban’s wanton attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda on 20 January, causing twenty-one deaths and injuring more than thirty people, but two definitely stand out singularly. This private institution of higher learning was named after a great humanitarian and eminent freedom fighter, who avowedly believed in non-violence that he practised even before Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) made it into his unique creed. Khan, a towering and no less charismatic personality, began his long political career during the stormy day of the Khilafat Movement when Indian Muslims were deeply astir over events in the Ottoman caliphate. Exhortations for tolerance, non-violent resistance, modern education and an austere life endeared Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) across South Asia besides earning him a well deserved title, Bacha Khan—the King Khan. Charsadda was his birth place though the illustrious Khan willed to be buried in Jalalabad underlining his lifelong desire to solidify his ideas among fellow Pashtuns--often derisively called Pathans by the Raj and others. Not only this massacre of two teachers and nineteen students happened on Khan’s death anniversary, it callously took place in his very town as well and presumably the four perpetrators and their backers claiming responsibility for this heinous crime happened to be fellow Pashtuns for whom he had devoted his entire life.
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