Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, or Frontier Gandhi, has always posed an equal challenge to both cynics and optimists. The cynics find it hard to dismiss a man who created an ‘army’ for non-violent resistance from among the Pashtun tribes of the North-West Frontier Province, in Pakistan. Optimists were hard put to explain why this should not be regarded as a stray miracle.Who was this man and why is his legacy so compelling today?