The Frontier Gandhi : Unleashing the great Badshah Khan

Little known are the warriors who stand as the pillars of history. In the making course of the history – they are lost. Lost in the tides that fight for the limelight. Irony, they say. Pride is what it is. It’s not a mere fad to raise a 100,000 strong nonviolent army of men, women, and young people — the Khudai Khidmatgars, or servants of God — drawn from the multi-ethnic traditions of Afghanistan and India across all religion. It was none other than Badshah Khan aka Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.

Gandhi called it “a miracle” to raise a cross-culture, cross-religious, cross-country peace warriors. Nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize award – the charismatic Khan always remained behind the limelight. Little known is him and his works. But, it moved one American filmmaker – Teri McLuhan.

A book on Khan gifted by a Classics professor changed her life. She explained it in the way, “When I first opened the book after several weeks and started reading – within 15-20 minutes something happened. It seemed all the electrons in the room had re-arranged themselves.” And, after few months when she visited India as a guest of Government representative – she surprised herself by declaring that she would be making a movie on Khan. It was back 22 years.

Extensive research she had done has been shown in the documentary she made. She faced huge hurdles. No financier was one of them. It took long to convince one.

And, not one. Hurdles are still very prominent and evident. “I still don’t have the proper distribution. I understand the reasons of roadblocks one of them being the powerful stereotypes we are dealing with.” She straight away pointed to the international politics playing dirty to block the documentary featuring a person who contradicts the stereotyped belief of Islam being unyielding and violent. “This story of this man turns these stereotype 180 degrees on its head and makes people uncomfortable.”

Her power-packed documentary “The Frontier Gandhi” has its first screening at Ladakh International Film Festival (LIFF). It has received standing ovation from the audiences there.

• About the Author

About Sankha Ghosh

Sankha Ghosh was never born in that 'City of Joy', never was a banker, never watched a Godard, never loved Kafka, never fell for that Solitary Reaper, never danced on a friend’s wedding, never fought for human rights, never had a crush at college and never ever aspired to work on a novel! Never was he as simple as this! #He wishes