A Comparative Essay on Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan & Martin Luther King Jr.’s Non-violence Philosophy By: M. Dawood Mohammadi In the 20 th century, Philosophy of Nonviolence played an essential role in freedom, civil rights, and anti-apartheid movements. This philosophy aims to evade from the use of weapons and to react to violence with peaceful and nonviolent means during resistance, and social change. The purpose of this mechanism is not to defeat an enemy by swords but to conquer their minds and heart and convince them that our struggle is right. According to liberal theory of international relations, it is a win-win game for both parties, not a zero-sum game. In this essay, I will compare the central theme of the nonviolence philosophy of the two prominent leaders of the 20 th century, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and Martin Luther King Jr. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan: Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan aka Bacha Khan was born on 6 February 1890 in a wealthy and landowner family of Charssada (Near Peshawar) located today in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Bacha Khan was a social reformer, Pashtun nationalist, freedom activist, pacifist and nonviolent leader against British Raj. He attended the Edward’s Mission school, and he was also an alumnus of Aligarh Muslim University. He founded two reform movements called Anjuman Islah e Afaghana 1 and Kudai Khidmatgar 2 , an unarmed and nonviolent army. In 1930, he joined India National Congress party, and he was against the partition of Sub-continent, although, after partition, he showed his allegiance to the new state of Pakistan. He is considered the most controversial leader in the history of that country. Bacha Khan spent one-third of his life in prison. At the age of 98, he died under house-arrest in 1988 and was buried in Jalalabad, an eastern city in Afghanistan. Martin Luther King Jr: Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929, in a moderately religious family in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up in a state of miserable racial segregation, got a secular and religious education, and in 1955 he got his doctorate in theology from the University of Boston. King was the leader of the Equality and Racial Discrimination Movement in America. He is today the patron of many black youths around the world. The civil campaign in Montgomery placed King at the center of the civil rights movement. While his primary goal was racial equality, he initially chose smaller targets and organized local campaigning for the equality of African-Americans. In 1955, he actively participated in the first grand civil rights campaign in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1963, King marched 250,000 demonstrators on Washington streets, where he delivered his historic "I 1 The Society for the Reformation of Afghans. 2 The Servant of God movement