> according to Eqbal Ahmad it was kind of inbetween. Gandhi hindued
> up
> the movement used alot of hindu concepts, the rule of Ram,
> symbols,
> devotional music etc. for mass mobilization. there's the famous
> phrase
> "mr gandhi is spiritualizing the hindu nationalist movement". he
> wasn't
> sectarian but alot of things he did inadvertantly contributed to
> it.
> before that muslim nationalism was whipped up in an attempt to
> save the
> caliphate in turkey. i would say that the leaders of the anti
> colonial
> movement were secular.
You may take a look at the appended article on the Gandhi's attitude towards religion and politics. Bipan Chandra is a well known Marxist historian.
Ulhas
Hindustantimes.com
Monday, April 15, 2002
Truth is god
Bipan Chandra
Nobody has ever questioned that Gandhiji was totally opposed to communalism in all its forms. However, his understanding of secularism, the obverse of communalism in India is sometimes grossly misunderstood and misinterpreted as is obvious from a spate of recent articles on Gandhiji and secularism in the print media.
Secularism has come to be defined in four ways:
Separation of religion from politics, economy, education, large areas of social relations, culture, and treatment of religion as a private or personal affair.
Neutrality of the State towards all faiths or, as many religious persons would put it, equal regard for all faiths, including atheism.
Treatment of all citizens as equal and absence of discrimination in favour of or against citizens on grounds of their religion.
A clear-cut opposition to communalism.
All would agree that Gandhiji fully accepted the last three of these terms. However, many assert that the definition of secularism as separation of religion from the State and politics and treatment of religion as a personal affair was not acceptable to him and on the basis of this assertion they also differentiate between Gandhiji and Nehru on the question of secularism. They rely for their view on Gandhiji's oft-repeated formulation that politics could not be divorced from religion. But a gross misunderstanding of Gandhiji's earlier views as well as ignorance of the later development of his views on the question is involved here.
Undoubtedly, for decades Gandhiji emphasised the close connection between religion and politics. In his case, his patriotism, his deep social commitment and strong sense of the moral were based on deeply held religious beliefs. There was, he said, no politics without religion as religion is the basis on which all life structure has to be erected if life is to be real.
During 1920-21, he repeatedly referred to the Non-Cooperation Movement as a religious, purifying movement and as a religious effort.
But, for Gandhiji, this close connection between religion and politics was because politics had to be moral, it had to be based on morality. And religion to him was the source of morality, it was, in fact, morality in the Indian sense of dharma.
He most often used the word religion in two different senses: one, in its denominational sense, that is, in terms of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc. And the other in the traditional sense of dharma or the divine moral order or ethics or the moral code which guided a person's life and the social order.
In asserting that politics would be based on religion, he clearly meant that it should have a moral foundation in dharma and not in religion in the denominational form, or the sectional form, in terms of sectional or sectarian beliefs.
It meant, to quote him, a belief in ordered moral governance of the universe and universal religion of toleration which transcends Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, etc. To assert that politics should be based on religion, he said, was to assert the practicality of spiritual life in the practical world.
Also, to Gandhiji, religious distinctions in terms of denominations did not matter, for he also believed that, to quote him, the fundamental ethics are common to all religions. And it is this ethics, this morality or religion in its moral form, which had to be an intrinsic part of politics. Seeing religion and morality as interchangeable terms, he wrote: Politics without morality is a thing to be avoided.
This is also the sense in which he wrote: There are many religions, but religion is one. You should follow that one religion. Or: Religion is one tree with many branches. As branches you may say religions are many, but as a true religion is only one. It was in part to emphasise this commonness of all faiths, including altruism, that he changed his earlier formulation God is Truth to Truth is God.
Indeed, no secular person would disagree with the view that politics should be moral and that this sense of the moral can be imbibed in various ways and forms and from diverse sources, religious as well as non-religious.
What is far more important, during the Forties, Gandhiji began to change his linguistic formulation regarding the relationship between religion and politics when he saw that the communalists were using religion in its organised, denominational or doctrinal form, or religion not as dharma or a code of morality, but in the form of Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism, to promote communal divide, to demand religion-based States and to raise the cry of religion in danger.
He now began to assert that religion and politics should be kept separate and that religion should be treated as a private concern of the individual. This he did umpteen number of times in the Forties. I will give here only a few quotations from his speeches and writings.
In 1942: Religion is a personal matter which should have no place in politics.
In September 1946, he told a missionary: If I were a dictator, religion and State would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The State has nothing to do with it.
In 1947: Religion is a personal affair of each individual, it must not be mixed up with politics or national affairs.
Also, in 1947, asserting that the State is bound to be wholly secular, Gandhi said that no denominational educational institutions in it should enjoy State patronage.
He opposed religious instruction as a part of school curriculum as approved by the State. He would oppose this, he said in 1947, even if the whole community had one religion?.
Gandhiji also made the distinction between his two usages of the term religion clear. While saying in 1947 that the fundamental ethics is common to all religions, he urged: Do not mix up religion and ethics; and then he clarified: By religion, I do not have in mind fundamental ethics but what goes in the name of denominationalism.
There was another important reason. Why to Gandhiji religion was essentially a personal matter. There were, he said, as many religions as minds. Each mind has a different conception of God from that of the other. Or again,
You should absorb the best that is in each (denominational religion), without fettering your choice, and form your own religion.
In the context of the happenings in Gujarat, I may slightly digress and point out that Gandhiji regularly argued that communalists were not only anti-national but also opposed to the interests of those they claimed to represent and were also against their own religion. For example, referring in 1947 to the destruction and desecration of mosques in India and temples in Pakistan, he said that any such act constituted an act of destroying Hinduism and Sikhism or Islam as the case maybe.
Similarly, referring to the instalment of idols in mosques in India and Sardar Patel's announcement that the government would restore them to Muslims and repair the damage, Gandhiji said: Forcible possession of a mosque disgraced Hinduism and Sikhism. It is the duty of the Hindus to remove the idols from the mosque and repair the damage.
The writer is an eminent historian
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