Other Articles

GANDHI AND ISLAM by Pascal Alan Nazareth (SYNOPSIS AND CRITICAL APPRECIATIONS OF THE BOOK)

Gandhi was a deeply religious Hindu yet had great respect for Islam and all other religions which for him were different paths to the same goal of achieving union with the Divine. His religion was that which " transcends Hinduism, which changes one's very nature, binds one indissolubly to the truth within and ever purifies. It is the permanent element in human nature which leaves the soul restless until it has found itself". He affirmed "For me different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden or branches of the same majestic tree". He often said he was as much a Moslem, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Parsee as he was Hindu. For him "The hands that serve are holier than the lips that pray". At his prayer meetings there were readings from all the holy books. His favorite hymn began with the line "He alone is a true devotee of God who understands the pains and sufferings of others". His religion is therefore best described as "spiritualized humanism". His God was Truth and the way to reach Him was Love and Non Violence.

Gandhi's fundamental contribution in the field of religion was to give primacy to Truth rather than conformity with traditional religious practices. In fact he made Truth the basis of all morality by declaring : "I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality…..God did not create men with the badge of superiority or inferiority; no scripture which labels a human being an inferior or untouchable because of his or her birth can command our allegiance. It is denial of God and Truth which is God". He affirmed "Independent India as conceived by me will have all Indians belonging to different religions, living in perfect friendship."

In 1931 he wrote in his journal Young India "It has been said that Swaraj will be the rule of the majority community i.e. the Hindus….If this were to be true, I for one would refuse to call it Swaraj and would fight it with all the strength at my command, For to me Hind Swaraj is the rule of all the people and the rule of justice."

On January 23, 1948, just a week before his assassination he declared "It would spell the ruin of both the Hindu religion and the majority community if the latter, in the intoxication of power, entertains the belief that it can crush the minority community and establish a purely Hindu Rashtra".

Deeply influenced by and dedicated to the ancient Indian maxims of 'Udara charita nam tu vasudaiva Kudumbakam' (for the broad minded and enlightened all mankind is one family) and 'sarvadharma samabhav' (equal respect for all religions) his nationalism embodied "the love of all nations of the earth irrespective of creed ….It is not nationalism that is evil; it is the narrowness, selfishness, exclusiveness which is the bane of modern nations which is evil. Indian nationalism has, I hope, struck a different path to find full self expression for the benefit and service of humanity at large". His patriotism was "not exclusive" and was "calculated to benefit all in the true sense of the word."

Lauding Gandhi's enlightened approach to all religions his American biographer Louis Fischer wrote "Mahatma Gandhi, a supremely devout Hindu, was incapable of discriminating against anyone on account of religion, race, caste, colour or anything. His contribution to the equality of untouchables and to the education of a new generation which was Indian instead of Hindu or Moslem or Parsee or Christian has world significance."

Gandhi's great respect for Jesus Christ and the Holy Koran are revealed in his following statements:

"What does Jesus mean to me? To me, he was one of the greatestteachers humanity has ever had."

"Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was non-violence par excellence"

"I have read the Koran more than once. My religion enables me, obliges me, to imbibe all that is good in all the great religions of the earth. I have come to the conclusion that the teaching of the Koran is essentially in favour of non-violence. It holds that non-violence is better than violence. Non-violence is enjoined as a duty, violence is permitted only where necessary."

" The very word Islam means peace, which is non violence"

"A perfect Muslim is he from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe".

"Islam stands for the unity and brotherhood of mankind and not for disrupting the oneness of the human family."

"I rebel against the idea that millions of Indians who earlier were Hindus changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion."

"My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines."

"Islam's distinctive contribution to India's national culture is unadulterated belief in the oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those within its fold. In Hinduism the spirit of brotherhood has become too much philosophized. Similarly, though philosophical Hinduism has no other God but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising on this as Islam"

During Gandhi's struggle against racial oppression in South Africa many of his staunch supporters were Muslims. On his return to India in 1915 he found few of them in the Congress Party. He therefore decided to attempt remedying this and attended the 1917 Muslim League session in Calcutta. At it there was much concern about the fate of Ottoman Turkey, particularly its Caliph's continued control of Islam's Holy places. There was ominous talk of "Direct action". Gandhi counselled patience and moderation. In 1919, the Indian Khilafat Committee approached Gandhi for his assistance. He agreed to support them and secured the approval, though reluctant, of the Congress Party. For 18 months,October 1920 to March 1922, Gandhi led the combined struggle for India's freedom and the revision of the harsh Treaty of Sevres imposed by Britain and France on Turkey. During this period there was close unity between Hindus and Moslems all over India. Gandhi exhorted "Let Hindus not be frightened by Pan Islamism. It is not anti-Indian or anti - Hindu….Hindus, if they are true friends of Muslims cannot but share the latter's feelings about saving the Turkish Empire in Europe from extinction". Gandhi also supported "Brother Shaukat Ali 's proposal" that there should be three national slogans - "Allaho Akbar" (God is great), Bande Mataram( Hail, Motherland) and Hindu - Mussalman ki Jai (victory to Hindus and Muslims). He encouraged Hindus to join in the first "in reverence and prayerfulness" since Hindus "may not fight shy of Arabic words, when their meaning is not only totally inoffensive but even ennobling" and also urged them to enthusiastically raise the third slogan since India could not be conceived without "the union of the Hindu and Mulsim Heart".

Gandhian scholar B.R.Nanda indicates Gandhi's principal aims in supporting the Khilafat movement was "to prevent it from turning violent and to draw the Muslim community into the orbit of the national movement". He adds that Gandhi achieved "a great measure of success in his first aim but not in the second. The 'grand alliance' between the Congress and the Khilafat Organizations did not mature into a permanent Hindu- Muslim accord." However, Gandhi's decision to support the Khilafat agitation is clear proof of his all inclusive approach and keen desire to secure Hindu-Muslim unity.

The impact which Gandhi had on the traditionally violence prone Pathan Muslim community on India's north west frontier was remarkable. Its outstanding, 6'6" foot leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who came to be called "Frontier Gandhi" and latterly has even been extolled as a "Moslem St. Francis", described Gandhi's transformational impact on him thus. "As a young boy, I had violent tendencies; the hot blood of the Pathans was in my veins. But in jail, I had nothing to do except read the Koran. I read about the Prophet Mohammed in Mecca, about his patience, his suffering, his dedication. I had read it all before as a child, but now I read it in the light of what I was hearing all around me about Gandhiji's struggle against the British Raj….When I finally met Gandhiji, I learned all about his ideas of non-violence and his Constructive Program. They changed my life forever."

Subsequently he organized a 100,000 strong Pathan army of non-violent warriors, whom he named 'Khudai Khidmatgars' to wage the freedom struggle in the North West Frontier Province. Inspired by him, Pathan women also participated in this struggle confronting British troops with Korans clasped to their chests. The anthem Ghaffar Khan composed for his Khudai Kidmatgars was as under :
We are the army of God by death or wealth unmoved
We march, our leader and we, ready to die.
We serve and we love, our people and our cause,
Freedom is our goal, our lives the price we pay.

A firm believer that all humans are children of the Heavenly Father and that religions are meant to enlighten and unite people rather than embitter and divide them, Gandhi did everything possible to prevent the partition of India. He tried his best to persuade Lord Mountbatten, Jinnah, Jawaharlal Nehru and Vallabhai Patel on this but failed. He held fourteen long talks with Jinnah in 1944 for this purpose ,each time himself going humbly to the latter's residence. He offered the prime ministership to Jinnah provided India was not divided and his government ruled in the interests of the Indian people as a whole, but Jinnah would not relent.

Strongly opposing Jinnah's "Two Nation" argument Gandhi passionately asked "Why is India not one nation? Was it not one during the Moghul period? Is India composed of two nations? If so why only two? Are not Christians a third, Parsis a fourth and so on? Are the Muslims of China a nation separate from the other Chinese? ….I make bold to say that Jinnah and those who think like him are rendering no service to Islam; they are misrepresenting the message inherent in the very word Islam." .

Subsequently, when Pakistan was becoming a reality, he wrote "The army is going to be divided….This division of the army certainly fills the heart of every patriot with fear and misgivings. Why are two armies being created? Are they to defend the country against foreign aggression or are they to fight each other ?"

The massacres that preceded and accompanied partition, the four India Pakistan wars and Pakistan's blood drenched break up within 25 years eatablishes, his grandson Rajmohan Gandhi avers, that "Gandhi was prophetic in the future he painted". He also points out that some years after India's independence Britain began to apply NIBMAR (no independence before majority rule) and adds "If NIBMAR had been applied to India partition would have been avoided, but for India HMG's principle was no majority rule before an all Indian consensus". This gave Jinnah a veto on all proposals unpalatable to him.

When Gandhi realized that the partition could not be prevented he focused his efforts on preventing the Hindu Moslem animosity and killings which he foresaw partition would engender. He constantly urged friendly relations between Hindus and Moslems and India and Pakistan. He affirmed he belonged to both the soon to be born countries. On July 2, 1947 he stated "Both India and Pakistan are my country. I am not going to take out a passport for going to Pakistan.". On August 15, 1947, India's Independence Day, when the whole country particularly New Delhi, was celebrating, Gandhi was at Hydari Manzil, an old abandoned Moslem House, at Beliaghata, in one of Calcutta's poorest localities, to stop the communal killings there with personal appeals and by undertaking a fast. His incredible success was commended by Lord Mountbatten thus : " In the Punjab we have 55,000 soldiers and large scale rioting on our hands. In Bengal our forces consist of one man and there is no rioting. May I be allowed to pay my tribute to the one man boundary force". The historian E.W.R. Lumby wrote "His triumph was complete and the peace that he brought was destined to endure….He had in fact worked a miracle, perhaps the greatest of modern times"

On 27th January 1947, Gandhi attended the annual fair at the revered Kwaja Qutbuddin tomb at Mehrauli and urged all those present there to take a vow "at this holy place" that they would never indulge in nor permit any communal strife.

Gandhi was to travel to Pakistan on February 8, 1947 for a stay there of some months to promote goodwill between India - Pakistan. Sadly, he was assassinated on January 30th by a Hindu fanatic, who detested him for being, according to him, more concerned about the welfare of Moslems and Pakistan rather than of Hindus and India.

Though fully engaged in India's freedom struggle Gandhi never lost sight of the world and its travails. His world view was all inclusive and broad spectrum. Having studied in England he was well acquainted with its politics, culture and people. He had many friends there particularly among vegetarians, Theosophists, Christian pastors and Liberals. In South Africa among his early supporters were two Jews and a British clergyman. It was through the former he first became aware of feudal oppression in Russia. After he read Tolstoy's 'The Kingdom of God is within you' he became more aware of the deplorable conditions of the Russian peasantry. After Gandhi's return to India his confrontation with the British Empire became far more challenging than it had been in South Africa. It required nearly all his time and energy. Yet he did not lose sight of the world.

The tragedy of Germany's Jews touched him deeply. In his paper 'Harijan', he wrote on November 11 & 26, 1938: "My sympathies are all with the Jews. I have known them intimately in South Africa. Through these friends I came to know of their age-long persecution. They have been the untouchables of Christianity. ….. The German persecution of the Jews seems to have no parallel in history. The tyrants of old never went so mad as Hitler seems to have done. If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, war against Germany to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war…….The Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of South Africa. The Jews are a compact, homogenous community in Germany. They are far more gifted than the Indians of South Africa and they have organized world opinion behind them. I am convinced that if someone with courage and vision can arise among them to lead them in non-violent action, the winter of their despair can be turned into the summer of hope….."

His great sympathy for the Jews notwithstanding, he did not approve of a separate state for them on Palestinian land. "My sympathy does not blind me to the requirements to Justice. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. The nobler course would be to insist on a just treatment of the Jews wherever they were born and bred. The Jews born and bred in France are French precisely in the same sense as the Christians born in France are French. Every country is their home, including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service…"

The three Arab Israeli wars, two 'Intifadas', and continued suicide bombings despite Israel's 350 kilometre long security wall are vindication of Gandhi's above mentioned 1938 assertion. Tom Segev, in his book 'One Palestine Complete' exposes the falsehood that Palestine was "A land without people for a people without land" and reveals the close British-Zionist collaboration in the 1920-40 period to create a sizable Jewish presence there through immigration. He quotes British General Walter Congreve, who wanted the Balfour Declaration revoked : "We might as well declare that England belongs to Italy because it was once occupied by the Romans". Amnon Rubinstein in his book 'From Herzl to Rabin: The Changing Face of Zionism' condemns the fundamentalist "Divine Right" claim to all of Palestine, which has resulted in Israeli settlements in Gaza and the West Bank with Palestinians confined to 16 disconnected enclaves comprising only 42% of their land. Gerald Kauffman, former British Labour Minister and a Jew, wrote in The Spectator: "In the Seder service for Passover which is recited in religious Jewish homes in Israel and the Diaspora there is a telling reminiscence :Avadim hayinu b'Mtzrayim (we were slaves in Egypt). What the Egyptian Pharaoh did to the Jews, the Jews have now done to the Palestinians - except that the Palestinians have no Moses to bring them salvation and no Red Sea will part for them".

Israel's security concerns have led it to make preemptive strikes against Egypt and Syria in 1967, destroy Iraq's Osirak Nuclear reactor in 1981, invade southern Lebanon in 1982, and arm itself with nuclear weapons (as revealed in 1986 by its long imprisoned nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu). Its acting Prime Minister Olmert has recently hinted, it might have no option but to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities in view of its hostile intentions towards it. This could set off a West Asian conflagration as Iran, a country of 80 million people, is militarily strong and its Shahab 3 missiles have a 2000 kilometre range.

57 years after its birth Israel is yet to find security and a peaceful 'modus vivendi' with Palestinians and most of its neighbours.

President Anwar Sadat may or may not have been inspired by Gandhi but in 1977 admitted the truth that Egypt's 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars with Israel (in the last mentioned of which Egypt had notable initial success) were disastrous for it. He abjured war and took the path of non-violent conflict resolution. He made his historic journey to Jerusalem in November 1977. This opened the door to negotiations with Prime Minister Menachem Begin and led, with President Carter's good offices, to the historic Camp David Accord of September 1978. In March 1979, Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty that formally ended the state of war that had existed between them for 30 years. Soon thereafter, mutual diplomatic relations were established. By June 1982 Egypt regained from Israel all territory it had lost since the 1967 war.

In 1994 Jordan's King Hussein took the same path as President Sadat and also secured a peace treaty and diplomatic relations with Israel.

The spate of corporate scandals in recent years resulting in bankruptcies of Enron, Worldcom, Marconi, Tyco, Arthur Andersen and other mega firms and impoverishment of thousands of their share/stake holders, are the calamitous consequences of their CEOs deviating from Truth for personal gain or for allaying share holder concerns. The same is true for political leaders who on the basis of blatant untruths invade and occupy other countries and exploit their natural resources. The terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, Nairobi, Dar e Salaam, Bali, Djakarta, Mumbai, New Delhi, Tel Aviv, Morocco, Sharm al Shaik, Amman Istanbul, Madrid and London in just six years of the new millenium are the tragic outcome of this. The video messages of Osama bin Laden. Ayman al Zawahiri and many suicide bombers testify to it.

Richard Clarke, Counter Terrorism Director under Presidents Clinton and George Bush until he resigned in March 2003, in his book 'Against All Enemies' writes "Instead of addressing the Al Qaeda threat with all the attention it required after 9/11, we went off on a tangent, off after Iraq, off on a path that weakened us and strengthened the next generation of Al Qaedas. For even as we have been attriting the core of Al Qaeda, it has metastatized. Like a Hydra it has grown new heads. There have been far more major terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and its regional clones in the 30 months since 9/11 than there were in the same period prior to this momentous event."

Karen Armstrong in her book 'Islam - A Short History' echoes the same sentiment: "The world changed on September 11th. We now realize that we in the privileged Western countries can no longer assume that events in the rest of the world do not concern us. What happens in Gaza, Iraq or Afghanistan today, is likely to have repercussions in New York, Washington or London tomorrow and small groups will soon have the capacity to commit acts of mass destruction previously only possible for powerful nations".

The 7/7 London bombings have shown how easily people with anger and hate in their hearts can assemble and explode bombs in subways and elsewhere even when national security is at its highest level. on highest alert. 9/11 provides an even starker lesson for in this case the assailants were armed only with box cutters and succeeded in using US planes and airports to destroy its most valuable assets, in broad daylight. Since then expert hackers have managed to break into one or more top secret computers of the US Defence Department A "Cyber Pearl Harbour" is now a distinct possibility. Defence research analysts have written about the possibility of micro unmanned aerial vehicles, "the size of a humming bird" which could destroy shopping malls, railway stations and even planes by "acting as aerial mines". 'Grave New World: Security Challenges in the 21st Century', edited by Michael Brown, enumerates various such fearsome threats.

It is alleged that terrorist acts generally emanate from Moslem countries. The reputed American historian Samuel Huntington gives an honest clue to its cause , in his book 'The Clash of Civilizations'. He writes "The West's efforts to universalize its values and institutions, to maintain its military and economic superiority, and to intervene in conflicts in the Muslim world generate intense resentment among Muslims. During the fifteen years between 1980 and 1995,the US engaged in 17 military operations in the Middle East, all of them directed against Muslim states. No comparable pattern of US military operations occurred against the people of any other civilization."

In an era of asymmetric warfare and an illicit arms trade, including in components of weapons of mass destruction, Gandhi's truth, justice, and non-violent conflict resolution path is the safest for all political leaders, nations, corporations and individuals to follow. To avert the scourge of terrorism, much more imperative and effective than high tech security and preemptive strikes is to remove anger, hate and the thirst for revenge from peoples minds and hearts and replace these with hope based on Truth and Justice. The grave problem of terrorism is as much a symptom of hateful delirium gestated by iniquitous domestic, foreign & corporate policies, as it is of evil mind sets.

I would like to end with two quotations from the Holy Koran :
"God has given the sun a shining glory,
And the moon a wondrous light,
And through their measured beauty,
People have the count of time
And learn the number of years.
He has created these to advance righteousness and Truth,
And to explain His signs to people who understand"
Surah 10 : 5

"O believers, be seekers after Justice, witnesses for God, even though it be against yourselves or your parents and kinsmen."
Surah 4 : 133

The Holy Koran's emphasis on Truth, Justice and righteousness is crystal clear. Gandhi voiced the same message with his affirmation that "Peace is possible only where Truth is pursued, and Truth implies Justice". What the world greatly needs today is not a "war on terrorism" but a war on untruth, injustice, oppression and war itself.

(This article is the edited text of a talk delivered by Ambassador (retd) Pascal Alan Nazareth, Managing Trustee, Sarvodaya International Trust at Syarif Hidayatullah, State Islamic University, Djakarta, Indonesia on May 15, 2007)