Imagining the Indian Nation Through Provincial Development and Freedom Movement: A Close Reading of Ghaffar Khan's <i>My Life and Struggle</i>

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the processes of nation‐building that emerged during colonial India through a close textual analysis of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan's autobiography My Life and Struggle (1969). It asks: how does Gaffar Khan's life narrative articulate an alternative model of Indian nationhood from the peripheries of empire? Using life‐writing theory and postcolonial frameworks of subaltern politics, the study examines how Khan's ethical and educational reform initiatives within the North‐West Frontier Province (NWFP) contributed to both provincial development and the broader anticolonial movement. The paper argues that Khan's text constructs a counternarrative to mainstream Indian nationalist autobiographies—particularly those of Gandhi and Nehru—by foregrounding a Muslim, Pakhtun and provincial perspective that redefines nationhood in inclusive and pluralistic terms. Through non‐violent activism, interfaith harmony and educational empowerment, Ghaffar Khan envisioned a civic nationalism grounded in moral reform rather than religious exclusivism. This study contributes new insight to Ghaffar Khan scholarship by demonstrating how his autobiography functions not merely as personal testimony but as a politically charged discourse of decolonial selfhood that expands the understanding of nation‐building in South Asian history.