Love All Religions Was Mahatma Gandhi’s Mission

Love All Religions Was Mahatma Gandhi’s Mission

Jawhar Sircar

Tashkent, 27^th June 2019

     India, as you know, is a multi ethnic, multi lingual, multi religious country which is vast and populous. Of the 1 billion 300 million people in India today, some 170 million are Muslims, which is the second largest Muslim population in any country of the world. Though Muslims are in a minority, they have lived in peace with Hindus and other religions for centuries. In the 20^th century, India was under the control of the British for almost the whole of the first half. During this period, Indians rose in revolt against the British and intra-ethnic and intra-religious unity among Indians was essential if the Indian freedom struggle was to succeed. This is when the British began to “divide and rule” by playing upon the differences between Hindus and Muslims, so that a united opposition was made difficult. It succeeded partly as religion is a highly sensitive subject but, by and large, it failed because the leader of the Indian freedom struggle, Mahatma Gandhi was not only secular or equidistant from all religions, his religion was one of peace and brotherhood among all religions. We shall go over this subject briefly. 

        In his autobiography Gandhiji clarifies that without religion the idea of polity is quite unimaginable. “In fact religion should remain method and medium of our work but one should be very careful about the word ‘religion’. It doesn’t refer to the extremist ideologies; it means faith in a particular moral system. It is abstract but by that its importance can not be overlooked. It is miles away from the Hindu, Islam or Sikh religions. It is not to out root these religions but to find common minimum co relations between them, and make it a real religion.” He reiterates that this unique religion is different from the violent ones. He believed, however, that polity and religion can coexist if religion is a moral doctrine. His religion is sovereign and tolerative, away from superstitious’ and traitors. He doesn’t call it a religion which spreads hate, but one that fights on morality.

    By the 1920s, however, the British strategy to divide Hindus and Muslims had started working and bitterness spread among the two major communities. Gandhi made it the mission of his life to preach the essential oneness of both religions that believed in one Supreme Being. Gandhi’s faith was essentially in peace and co-existence and thus the need of the hour was to ensure that the imperial power should not split up a nation and a people who had lived together for a millennium and more. In 1948, NK Bose quoted Gandhi in his Selections From Gandhi when he explained “the aim of my mission of Fellowship should be to help a Hindu to become a better Hindu, a Mussalman to become a better Mussalman, and a Christian a better Christian.”

         Gandhi showed his commitment to upholding the cause of Indian Muslims when he strongly supported the Khilafat movement in 1919 to fight the designs of western imperial powers to destroy the Ottoman Caliphate after the First World War. Many Hindus and Muslims were surprised at this bonding that the movement brought about between the two communities and both jumped together on Gandhi’s call. The Sunnis were convinced that Mahatma Gandhi was not just a political leader but that he was first a secular national leader and also a genuine lover of all humanity. They actually requested Gandhi to lead their historic movement and thus began his long journey of agitating against the imperial powers with moral strength but by completely non-violent means. 

     Later, when Gandhi began his “Constructive Programme” for the Indian National Congress, he insisted that “equal respect for all religions the first step towards national reconstruction. He exhorted every member of the Congress party to cultivate "personal friendship with persons representing faiths other than his own”. (Collected Works, volume 75, p. 109). Gandhi began holding his dialogue between different religious groups as a significant dimension of the practice of religious pluralism in South Africa, where he had begun his struggle against colonial excesses, even before he came to India in 1915. Other than his essential policy of inter-faith dialogue, the other crucial element of his philosophy was the renunciation of violence in any form as a legitimate means of religious or political expression. (Collected Works, volume 16, p 312).

         Gandhi used the language and idiom of religion in explaining his political vision as the masses understood this approach — when he couched his moral mission in terms of religion. This endeared him to the people more than other leaders like Pandit Nehru who kept a safe distance from anything to do with religion. His moral courage was so strong that he faced the brutality of the British police, sticks and guns without ever retaliating with violence or hatred. Let us see the most extreme example of his courage and conviction. In 1947, when Punjab and Bengal, the two provinces that were artificially partitioned into India and Pakistan, riots broke out between the two major communities, as they were provocateurs on both sides. This is when Gandhi’s moral force proved to be stronger. While several battalions failed to stop violence in Punjab, Bengal remained largely peaceful because Mahatma Gandhi walked for miles among riotous mobs, pacifying them — as a single man non-violent army. 

           In fact, he paid the ultimate price of his love for Hindus and Muslims when he was killed by a misled fanatic who complained that he loved the Muslims more.