Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's kin to visit India

Wednesday April 20, 2011 08:50:07 PM, IANS

New Delhi: Afsandyar Wali Khan, a top leader of Pakistan's ruling coalition and grandson of legendary Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, will be on a week-long visit to India from Thursday.

The president of Pakistan's Awami National Party (ANP) will deliver a lecture in Jamia Millia Islamia here Thursday evening, a statement from the varsity said.

Inaugurating the university's Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan Memorial Lecture series, the visiting political leader will be speaking on "A Vision for Pakistan in the 21st Century".

Khan is a member of Pakistan's National Assembly and his party is a key ally of the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP). The ANP rules Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, previously known as the North-West Frontier Province, and is also a key partner in the PPP-led central government.

He will address a press conference in the university later.

His grandfather, also known as Frontier Gandhi, was one of Mahatma Gandhi's closest friends.

The senior Khan was given India's highest civilian award Bharat Ratna in 1987, becoming the first non-Indian to be honoured with the award.

Also called as Badshah Khan, the Pashtun political and spiritual leader was known for his non-violent opposition to British rule in India.

A devout Muslim and pacifist, he had strongly opposed the Muslim League's demand for the partition of India in 1947. In fact, history books say that when the Congress conceded the partition plan, he told the party leaders: "You have thrown us (Pashtuns) to the wolves."

The veteran Gandhian, respected in India and Afghanistan, spent most of the 1960s and '70s in jail because of his association with India and also because he was opposed to authoritarian action and repression by Pakistan in the restive Pashtun region.

He died in Peshawar under house arrest in 1988 and was laid to rest in Afghanistan's Jalalabad. The Indian government declared a five-day period of mourning in his honour.
 

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Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and his wife Mrs Gursharan Kaur in a procession for laying wreath ceremony at Monument of the Defenders of Motherland, at Astana, in Kazakhstan on April 16, 2011.

(Photo: Shivraj)