Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.Last Wednesday’s massacre at the Badshah Khan University in Charsadda, near Peshawar in Pakistan, is the latest in a long list of attacks on the country’s educational institutions and poignantly underscores the ideological polarisation that lies at the heart of the Taliban’s ‘war on education’ and their threats this week of more attacks to come.
Like many westerners, I had never heard of the university’s namesake, Abdel Gaffar Badshah Khan (1890 – 1988), until last July when I published an ‘investigative poem’ about him by Heathcote Williams.
I was to discover that, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Khan is a legendary figure – a Muslim hero of non-violent resistance to British colonialism and, with his friend and comrade Mahatma Gandhi, a vigorous opponent of the sectarian hatred and violence which continues to this day. Khan was to establish a 100,000-strong “unarmed army” of male and female “peace warriors” – a unique event in human history.
