Nonviolence

The Freedom Rides of 1961 saw some of the most iconic moments of the United States’ Civil Rights movement. Courageous, idealistic young people boarded buses to the segregated South to stand up for their ideals of freedom, equality and justice. Like our most fearless armed servicemen/women, they knew that they were risking their lives for their beliefs. What made them different, however, was that they were unarmed and trained in nonviolence. Referring to his participation in the rides, Georgia Congressperson John Lewis said, “I was like a soldier in a nonviolent army.”

The 1 percent would have us believe that violence must be the answer for meeting our defense and protection needs. That’s because in most places the 1 percent runs the state, which has the big guns. From that point of view it would be silly to fund major research and development programs that advance the frontier of what nonviolent action can do, since nonviolent civil resistance is not a form of power the 1 percent can control. For the 99 percent, then, it has been guesswork: What are the limits of nonviolent community defense? To find out, people have worked to develop new possibilities and try them in the real world. Some very far-fetched ideas get generated that way.

If you watched Malala Yousafzai’s much discussed and inspiring speech to the United Nations last week, you may have heard this courageous teenager — who was shot by the Taliban for promoting girls’ education — refer to Badshah Khan as a great inspiration for her determined commitment to nonviolence. You may have also wondered, “Who is this man?” After all, his name is not instantly recognizable like Gandhi or Mother Theresa — the other two luminaries Yousafzai cited. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, later known as Badshah, or King, was born in 1890 in the town of Utmanzai — not far from Peshawar, in what was then the Northwest Frontier Province of India.