As the Chief Minister of the North-West Frontier Province, Dr Khan Sahib along with his brother Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgars boycotted the July 1947 NWFP referendum about the province joining India or Pakistan after the partition of India, citing that the referendum did not have the options of the NWFP becoming independent or joining Afghanistan.

He was born in the village of Utmanzai, Charsadda, in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of British India (now in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan) to a Muhammadzai Pashtun family.

[1] After matriculating from the Edwards Mission High School in Peshawar, Khan Sahib studied at Grant Medical College, Bombay.

He resigned his commission in 1921, after refusing to be posted in Waziristan, where the British Indian Army was launching operations against his fellow Pashtun tribes (1919–20).

[1] In 1935, Khan Sahib was elected alongside Peer Shahenshah of Jungle Khel Kohat as representatives of the North-West Frontier Province to the Central Legislative Assembly in New Delhi.

[3] With the grant of limited self-government and announcement of 1937 Indian provincial elections, Dr. Khan Sahib led his party to a comprehensive victory.

In the 1940s, a Sikh family was killed in the Hazara District of colonial India, with their daughter Basanti being married off to a Muslim man.

[1] However, after differences with the ruling Muslim League over the issue of Joint versus Separate Electorates, in the same month he created the Republican Party with the help of then Governor-General of Pakistan Iskander Mirza.

[12] He was waiting for Colonel Syed Abid Hussein of Jhang to accompany him to a meeting organised in connection with the scheduled February 1959 General Elections.