“By Ram Rajya I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Rama Rajya Divine Raj, Khudaki Basti or the Kingdom of God on Earth” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi [1].

At the heart of the visceral animosity that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) and all the affiliates have against Gandhi is his deep, reasoned and passionate commitment to a composite Indian nationhood. His writings in Young India and Harijan are well-documented as also is his subsequent clarity on the issue which is unequivocal.

Faced with the growing appeal of communalists across the religious spectrum, in the early-mid 1900s, Gandhi remained firm in his commitment to equal citizenship based on human rights and dignity. His equally deep commitment to reform in a caste-ridden Hindu Order also led him to launch campaigns for the dignity and place of those deemed by a discriminatory caste hierarchy as “untouchables’ and in his way of assimilation name them ‘Harijan’ (‘Creation of God.’ While his approach to the caste system and its attendant discriminations, not least his compromises and strategy around the Vykom Satyagraha [3] has rightly irked those committed to a more radical approach to the caste question, the fact that Gandhi, among others made central to the issue of mass mobilization dignity for those hitherto treated by caste Hindu society as invisible and worse, was an equally weighty factor behind this animosity of the Sangh….

Later, on January 27, 1935, Gandhi addressed some members of the Central Legislature. He told them that “(e)ven if the whole body of Hindu opinion were to be against the removal of untouchability, still he would advise a secular legislature like the Assembly not to tolerate that attitude.” [8] On January 20, 1942 Gandhi remarked while discussing the Pakistan scheme: “What conflict of interest can there be between Hindus and Muslims in the matter of revenue, sanitation, police, justice, or the use of public conveniences? The difference can only be in religious usage and observance with which a secular state has no concern.”

From then until he was shot dead in cold blood on January 30, 1948, his responses and articulation on the disassociation of religion from politics became even clearer and sharper. This meant in effect he was a great threat to past and present day proponents of a Hindu Rashtra In September 1946, Gandhi told a Christian 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. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern!” Gandhi’ s talk with Rev. Kellas of the Scottish Church College, Calcutta on August 16, 1947, the day after Independence, was reported in Harijan on August 24.

“Gandhiji expressed the opinion that the state should undoubtedly be secular. It could never promote denominational education out of public funds. Everyone living in it should be entitled to profess his religion without let or hindrance, so long as the citizen obeyed the common law of the land. There should be no interference with missionary effort, but no mission could enjoy the patronage of the state as it did during the foreign regime.” This understanding came subsequently to be reflected in Articles 25, 26 and 27 of the Constitution.

On the next day, August 17, Gandhi elaborated publicly on the same point in his speech at Narkeldanga, which Harijan reported thus: “In the India for whose fashioning he had worked all his life every man enjoyed equality of status, whatever his religion was. The state was bound to be wholly secular. He went so far as to say that no denominational institution in it should enjoy state patronage.

All subjects would thus be equal in the eye of the law.” Five days later, Gandhi observed in a speech at Deshbandhu Park in Calcutta on August 22, 1947: “Religion was a personal matter and if we succeeded in confining it to the personal plane, all would be well in our political life… If officers of Government as well as members of the public undertook the responsibility and worked wholeheartedly for the creation of a secular state, we could build a new India that would be the glory of the world.” Speaking on Guru Nanak’s birthday on November 28, 1947, Gandhi opposed any possibility of state funds being spent for the renovation of the Somnath temple. His reasoning was: “After all, we have formed the Government for all. It is a ‘secular’ government, that is, it is not a theocratic government, rather, it does not belong to any particular religion. Hence it cannot spend money on the basis of communities.”

Teesta Setalvad