A Man To Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan Nonviolent Soldier of Islam by Easwaran, Eknath - 1984

Petaluma, CA: Nilgiri Press, 1984. Book. Near Fine. Soft cover. Afterword by Timothy Flinders. First Printing. 240pp, 3 maps, many photo illustrations, Preface, Prologue, Epilogue, Afterword, Sources and Historical Notes, Glossary, Chronology, Bibliography, Index. Tall 8vo/23.5cm. Pictorial wrappers. Near Fine. Biography of a controversial but outstanding figure in the Asian subcontinent's struggle for independence, as well as after the 1947 Partition in the new country of Pakistan. Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1088), also known as Badshah Khan or the 'Frontier Gandhi', founder of the Khudai Khidmatgars (Servants of God)', the non-violent Islamic political movement among the traditionally militant Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province. He joined the Congress Party and became allied to it's anti-Partition platform frequently touring with Gandhi as friend and close political colleague. After Partition he was harassed and repeatedly jailed by the Pakistan government. At the same time he was being courted by Afghanistan and chose to be buried there, his funeral ceremony marred by a bomb which killed a number of the reported 100,000 participants who had marched from Pakistan through the Khyber Pass to attend. The author of this work, Eknath Easwaran (c.1910-1999) was an early admirer of Gandhi and Ghaffar Khan in India and came to the US in 1959 as a Fulbright professor at Berkeley where he taught the first credit course on meditation. After a profound life experience, he came to dedicate the last half of his life to the teaching of Gandhi's message through his technique of 'passage meditation'. He founded the Blue Mountain Meditation Center which has published this and many other books on his message. .