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GANDHI'S APPROACH TO COMMUNALISM
Devarat N. Pathak
Religion has been with us for a long time and so is Politics. Today, as never before, we are the witness to a controversy regarding their relationship. Should religion influence politics? If so, in what way? or, alternatively, should they be completely separated? Much depends upon how we define religion and how we relate it to politics.
Gandhi deliberately placed religion and politics together. He could not conceive of them to be separate or opposed to each other. His example and experiment deserve to be closely studied and understood. Gandhi's primary aim and ultimate desire was to attain spiritual bliss. His life was a voyage of self-discovery and a continuing quest for self-realization. All else was subservient to this overall goal. Life for him was a progressive unfolding of spirituality. "The mainspring of Gandhi's life lay not in politics but in religion".1 Recapitulating his life upto the year 1929 when his Autobiography was first published, he said, "What I want to achieve, what I have been pining and striving to achieve these thirty years-is self-realization, to see God face to face, to attain Moksha. I live and move and have my being in the pursuit of this goal. All that I do by way of speaking and writing, and all of ventures in the political field are directed to this end."
Though deeply religious, Gandhi was no recluse running away into a self-declared seclusion. For him the human life in society was one, single, indivisible whole. Any attempt at compartmentalizing different spheres of life had little meaning for him. He wanted to live a full life, a life of partnership and participation. If spiritualism and religious fervour imparted strength and potency to him, they were to be fruitfully employed in the service of society. Till the advent of Gandhi, the sadhus and mendicants who had sought spiritual salvation kept themselves away from society and its activities. Wearing saffron attire they lived isolated life away from society.
Gandhi's mission was to live an active life of involvement, risk and suffering. His life was no bed of roses. Indeed, he lived danger
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