Gandhi on Religion and Social Harmony
By Malabika Pande
Abstract
Democracy and democratic norms such as civil rights, adult suffrage, political pluralism and secular politics, were the dominant themes in international politics till the middle of the twentieth century. Religion was not considered a political force potent enough to disturb democratic societies. But recent history has proved all that wrong. In India, the colonial period saw an aggregation of communal tension culminating in partition. The importance of religion and religious mobilization are now widely recognized as significant factors in national and international politics. Gandhi had anticipated this. After his return from South Africa in 1915 he committed himself to the pursuit of a kind of swaraj for India that went beyond mere political freedom and civil rights, and was marked by the inculcation of ideals of peace, brotherhood and social concord.
