Gandhi and Islam

The Daily Star, 9 August 2010

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the spiritual and political leader of India, worked tirelessly to make India independent of British rule. His teaching was based on the power of love.

He organised campaigns to defy the government by peaceful means because he did not believe in the use of force. Gandhi lived a simple life, did not hold a position of power in the government, and had no worldly possessions. He felt in himself the woeful poverty of his people and literally put on the beggar’s robe to demonstrate his unity with them. He also used to clean streets and collect refuse in order to punish himself for the injustice of the caste system as practised by most people in India. Only untouchables did this kind of work.

Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian maestro, called Gandhi Mahatma, which literally means “great soul.” His ideals and teachings have influenced and inspired billions at home and abroad, including the likes of Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King.

The impression of Islam and the Muslims on Gandhi started at a very early age. “He was born,” says Sheila Mcdonough, a renowned authority on comparative religion, “into that part of India (the coast of Malabar) where the geography situates Hindus to reach out and experience contact with others. To be a child beside the sea is already to know that a mysterious beyond beckons. The Muslims had been in Gujarat for centuries as traders. In his childhood, Gandhi knew them as representatives of those who came and went to other places beyond the seas. Muslims seem from the beginning to have represented challenge and adventure to him … Muslims were received as guests in the Gandhi home: the political traditions of diplomatic courtesy seem to have been imbibed by the child as a self-evident way for civilised life to be conducted … In his father’s world, the Muslims had long been part of the community. The British were the perceived danger to the well-being of the social and political order.”

Gandhi not only spent his childhood among Muslim neighbours who were frequent visitors to his house, six generations of Gandhis had also served as ministers of the ruler of one of the principalities of Kathiwara where Gandhi was born.

Gandhi was well aware that his fundamental values with respect to Hindu-Muslim mutual respect and cooperation were rooted in his childhood experiences. While addressing a meeting of the Congress Working Committee in 1942, he reiterated the importance of these fundamental values as a basis for designing a free, renascent, independent India:

“Hindu-Muslim unity is not a new thing. Millions of Hindus and Mussalmans have sought after it. I consciously strove for its achievements from my boyhood. I believed even at that tender age that the Hindus in India, if they wished to live in peace and amity with other communities, should assiduously cultivate the virtue of neighbourliness.”

In the world of the men of his family, friendships with Muslims, Jains, and Parsis were indeed part of the natural order of life. Once when Gandhi’s paternal grandfather had been involved in a conflict with a local ruler, Muslim soldiers had guarded his house during an attack, and one of them was killed. A memorial to that Muslim soldier still exists in the Vaishnava temple adjoining the family house.

When Gandhi returned to his native land after qualifying as a barrister in England, he went to South Africa as a lawyer for a Muslim firm that had family connections with some of his neighbours at home. Through this significant phase Gandhi’s sense of common brotherhood with Muslims was reaffirmed and strengthened.

Many of the Muslim businessmen he worked with in South Africa had roots in his hometown of Porbandar, as well as in Bombay (now Mumbai). He sometimes lived in their homes there. The feeling of participation with Muslims in common life with shared goals became much stronger.

In his own words: “When I was in South Africa, I came in close touch with Muslim brethren there … I was able to learn their habits, thoughts and aspirations …I had lived in the midst of Muslim friends for 20 years. They had treated me as a member of their family.”

In his political activity in South Africa, both Hindus and Muslims living there were his followers. The South African experience invigorated his belief that there should be mutual understanding and cooperation among Indians irrespective of religion.

“Gandhi knew that Prophet Muhammad had said ‘no’ to many elements of his own situation. He understood from his Muslim friends that sometimes courage requires casting the whole self into struggle … Gandhi responded with the movement of his own soul when he heard an old Muslim say that, with God as his witness, he would never submit to that law.

“This attitude is characteristic of a certain Muslim understanding of jihad, struggle, namely that sometimes witnessing to God requires that the whole self must make conscious choices and decide to act. Gandhi believed that the essential struggle of Muhammad’s lifetime, the struggle to create a new form of civilisation, could be equated with the mythical struggle of Rama against Ravana as portrayed in the epic, the Ramayana. The Qur’an and the Ramayana, as he understood them, conveyed images and symbols that could illuminate the spiritual meaning of everyday life.”

The years spent by Gandhi in Great Britain to qualify for the Bar also played a significant role in educating him on Islam. On May 8, 1840, Thomas Carlyle delivered a public lecture in Edinburgh on Muhammad (peace be upon him) and Islam. Carlyle had no special qualifications as Arabist or Islamist for lecturing on this subject, and yet the lecture has an important place in the development of Islamic studies in Europe, since here for the first time in a prominent way was it asserted that Muhammad (pbuh) was sincere and the religion of Islam basically true.

It was through Carlyle’s sensational essay that Gandhi got the perception that Islam affirmed self-denial. Carlyle said: “Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self … This is yet the highest Wisdom that heaven has revealed to our Earth.”

The fact that Gandhi read Carlyle’s essay at a formative period in his own development makes it very probable that Carlyle’s perspective strengthened the young Hindu’s conviction that Muhammad (pbuh) represented an example of a significant religious leader whose battle against the forces of darkness in his own time could and should be a model of honest people everywhere.

Gandhi himself informs us: “A friend recommended Carlyle’s Hero and Hero Worship. I read the chapter on the Hero as a prophet, learnt of the Prophet’s greatness and bravery and austere living … These books raised Muhammad in my estimation.”

Later, Gandhi read Shibli Numani’s biographies of Muslim heroes, books of Hadith, and Syed Amir Ali’s books on Islamic history which strengthened his respect for the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) all the more. We find references to the works of Carlyle, Shibli and Amir Ali scattered throughout Gandhi’s writings in every period of his life.

All this whetted Gandhi’s interest in Islam and he made a deeper study of the tenets laid out in the Holy Qur’an to understand better. In his later years, he learnt to carry on “sympathetic debates” with eminent Islamic scholars like Maulana Muhammad Ali Jauhar and later Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Hakim Ajmal Khan, Zakir Hussain, M. Mujeeb and S. Abid Hussain.

Gandhi’s keen interest in Islam took a political turn when he launched India’s freedom struggle after his permanent return to the country. He was able to enlist the full support of Muslims, intellectuals and masses alike, when he himself lent full support to the Khilafat movement and tacked on the 1921 Civil Disobedience movement to it.

The message of the Khilafat movement, ably led by Maulana Muhammad Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali, and supported whole-heartedly by Mahatma Gandhi and Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das, reached every nook and corner of India.

For the first time in the political history of India, thirty thousand men and women went to jail in thirty days. For the first time in the political history of India two million of human beings left their country at the bidding of their leaders.

The entire Muslim Ummah had looked upon the caliph as the spiritual head of Islam. The caliph was needed to protect the freedom of Makkah. Pilgrimage to Makkah is one of the basic religious duties of all Muslims, and Makkah has been free from foreign domination since the days of the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh).

The independence of Makkah was therefore a potent symbol for all Muslims. Gandhi argued that one must help a brother whenever he says he has a religious need. Hence the Hindu should help his Muslim brother defend the sacred shrines of the Islamic faith. According to him, Hindus needed “heart-unity” with their Muslim brothers; they could win this unity if they helped the Muslims protect the independence of the Turkish caliph.

But the entire bottom fell out of the historic movement when the resurgent Turks under the leadership of Kemal Ataturk decided to abolish the caliphate and declared themselves a republic.

During the period of the Khilafat and the first Civil Disobedience movements, Gandhi moved very closely with Muslim leaders and intellectuals like Maulana Muhammad Ali, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Allama Mohammed Iqbal, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and later Congress stalwarts like Zakir Hussain. Through intimate acquaintance and long discussions with these learned exponents of Islam, his profound respect for the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) became deeper and stronger.

Gandhi was so eager to know about Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) that he became sad when he did not have more to read about him.

In his own words: “I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind … I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his selflessness, his absolute trust in God and his own mission — these and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet’s biography) I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life.”

Gandhi’s eulogy further testified: “Muhammad was a great Prophet. He was brave and feared no man but God alone. He was never found to say one thing and do another. He acted as he felt. The Prophet was a Faqir, he could have commanded wealth if he had so desired. I shed tears when I read of the privations, he, his family and companions suffered voluntarily. How can a truth-seeker like me help respect one whose mind was constantly fixed on God, who ever walked in God’s fear and who had boundless compassion for mankind.”

The sayings of the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) impressed Gandhi to such a great extent that he hailed those as “the treasures of mankind.” In his introduction to The Sayings of Muhammad (SM) by Allama Sir Abdullah Al-Mamun Al-Suhrawardy, he unhesitatingly declared:

“I have read Sir Abdullah Suhrawardy’s collection of the sayings of the Prophet with much interest and profit. They are among the treasures of mankind, not merely Muslims.”

In addition to his interest in the example of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as a man who changed the world by putting his faith into action, Gandhi also studied the Holy Qur’an regularly. He spent a considerable time studying the Holy Qur’an during his intermittent sojourns in Indian jails as the guest of His Imperial Majesty.

Another similarity he discerned was the teaching that one should respond to evil with good. This seems to have one of the earliest affirmations that he took very seriously to heart when he learned it from a Vaishnava hymn. There is a very similar moral teaching in the Qur’an.

In Gandhi’s opinion, dharma meant firmness in upholding truth. This would be similar to his understanding of Qur’anic imperative in Surah Fatiha to remain on the straight path, and not be led astray. No wonder, he continuously used Surah Fatiha from the Holy Qur’an as part of his daily prayer service:

Gandhi also believed the teachings about the attributes of God to be very similar in the scriptures of Hinduism and Islam. He did not hesitate to speak of Caliph Ali bin Abu Talib (RA) as a model of restraint, and thus a model for those who would take up the method of satyagraha. (Satyagraha means utter insistence upon truth. When a man insists on truth, it gives him power).

In his own words: “You must know how to restrain your anger, if you desire to maintain non-violence in action for any length of time. Hazrat Ali, the hero of Islam, was once spat upon by an adversary; and it is my conviction that if he had not restrained his anger at the time, Islam would not have maintained its unbroken career of progress up to the present time.”

Gandhi also paid eloquent tribute to the incomparable sacrifice made by Imams Hassan and Hussain (RA). The glorious example of Imam Hussain (RA), the grandson of the holy Prophet of Islam (pbuh), who suffered martyrdom at the hands of a cruel and hostile state, is equated by Gandhi with tapascharya, the Hindu belief in the power of suffering to transform consciousness:

“All religions in the world are thus strict in regard to pledges … Even if only a few among you take the pledge, we shall have reward through them. Muslim students have before them the example of Imams Hassan and Hussain. Islam has not been kept alive by the sword, but by the many fakirs with a high sense of honour whom it has produced … I have nothing to give you in the way of excitement … I want to give you quiet courage. I want you to have hearts pure enough for self-sacrifice, for tapascharya.”

Gandhi believed that what he called “the Sufi aspect of Islam” taught patience and self-discipline, which Indian Muslims should learn to practice and the bhakti forms of Hinduism preached egalitarianism, which Hindus should learn to understand in its true spirit.

He firmly believed that the Holy Qur’an stresses mercy and patience as essential human virtues. He refused to believe that irrational violence was a particular characteristic of the Muslims or the Hindus. He always interpreted irrational Muslim violence as corrupt understanding of Islam, as Hindu violence was equally a corrupt understanding of Hinduism.

No wonder Gandhi was cut to the quick when a terrible communal riot broke out in Calcutta on August 16, 1946. In the next few years, mutual killing and destruction continued among Hindus and Muslims in many parts of the country. Nothing became him so well as the end of his life. His cherished dream had come true — freedom had come. But with freedom came communal passions, and Hindus and Muslims massacred one another.

The frail old man, on the verge of his eightieth year, went from place to place, seeking to establish peace and goodwill while there were enmity and strife. He went to Noakhali to soothe the Hindus who had suffered from Muslim atrocities. He went to Patna to heal the sufferings of the Muslims at the hands of Hindus. He went to Delhi, and each day he preached love and communal amity.

An insensate fanatic named Nathuram Godse, unable to bear Gandhi’s message of goodwill and inter-faith harmony, shot him dead even when he was on his way to his prayers. That day, January 30, 1948, will remain a day of mourning forever, not only in India but in all places where people shun hostility and love peace and harmony between all faiths.

Syed Ashraf Ali is former Director General, Islamic Foundation Bangladesh.

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