The Dream of a Gandhian Islam

Last update: 2025-01-21 15:23:56

 

The image of the fanatical and violent Muslim has become a dominant stereotype since 11 September 2001 and the macabre successes of the Islamic State, and this weighs on the relationship between Islam and the public sphere. As such, in the contemporary world Muslim experiences of peace-making and non-violence lose out to the stronger media-made images of Islam as a religion of conflict and war. In this case the challenge is to generate an account of the possibility of a Gandhian Islam where ethical values such as tolerance and non-violence are used to discuss political issues. In promoting the paradigm of non-violence in Islam, Muslims can look back to the contemporary examples of leaders like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad who through their readiness to collaborate with Gandhi not only added up to a valuable legacy of non-violent Islam but also help us to have a better understanding of the tolerant vision of Islam that Gandhi shared with many of his Muslim contemporaries.

Gandhi’s encounters with Islam started at a very early age in his life. Gandhi was born in Porbandar in Gujarat where the geography situates Hindus next to Muslims. Gandhi’s family had, therefore, great experience in dealing with Muslims as part of the local community in Porbandar.

The next significant phase of Gandhi’s encounter with Muslims was during his years in South Africa where he started to work in 1893 as a lawyer for a Muslim merchant from Porbandar, Abdullah Sheth, who had built up a business in Durban. During his long stay in South Africa and his first political experiences, Gandhi was able to establish close ties with Indian Muslims. He felt familiar with the cultural identity of the Indian Muslims and shared a common life with them. It was Abdullah Sheth who suggested to Gandhi for the first time to read Sale’s translation of the Qur’an. Gandhi’s first approach to the Qur’an developed his basic understanding of Islam which was strengthened by a second reading during his time in prison in January 1908 in the Transvaal. But previous to this adventure, Gandhi had forged a broad resistance movement largely based on the participation of Indian Muslims and in alliance with the Hindus against racial discrimination in South Africa. The bringing together of Hindus and Muslims in the Gandhian experience of satyagraha[1] in South Africa was Gandhi’s first important step toward the idea of communal harmony.

Gandhi knew that independence could not come about by the efforts of the Hindus alone. He therefore involved Indian Muslims in the struggle. Discontented with the ‘us-and-them’ divisions and mutual disregard between the Muslims and the Hindus, Gandhi engaged in an open dialogue with Islam and the Muslims. He never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate elements in Indian society. His willingness to go out of his way to win over Muslims to the Congress won him many friends and admirers among the Muslims. On his return to India, Gandhis’s increasing involvement with the Khilafat movement[2] helped him secure political authority in the Indian Congress and strong legitimacy in the eyes of the British Raj.

However, the main line of division between Gandhi and the Khilafat leaders was that of violence. Many Muslim leaders like Shaukat Ali or Jinnah refused to accept non-violence as a moral absolute though they accepted it as a temporary strategic device to overcome the British. Jinnah, whose opposition to Gandhi’s non-cooperation was well-known to the British and to other members of the Congress Party, was especially perplexed by the fact that by 1920 the Congress, like most of Muslim India, had accepted Gandhi as their charismatic leader.

For Gandhi, the questions of Indian home rule and Hindu-Muslim unity were not separate issues. In his long political career, Muhammad Ali Jinnah clearly perceived Indian self-determination within the framework of the Muslim community. As for Gandhi, it was quite the opposite.

 

 

Spirituality and Political Pragmatism

 

 

Ever since his first writings in South Africa, Gandhi replaced the divisive view of religion by a pluralist and tolerant one by equating religion with ethics. For Gandhi, the difference between the Hindus and the Muslims was not confined to religion. It was due, according to him, to the lack of truthfulness and transparency in the political realm. Therefore, as a social reformer, Gandhi believed strongly in the affinity between spirituality and politics. It is not surprising that he chose to work with individuals whose primary interests were best defined in spiritual and ethical terms. It was probably in this spirit that Gandhi developed a friendship with, and great esteem for, both Maulana Azad and Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. In 1939, during his visit to Ghaffar Khan, Gandhi proclaimed: ‘If you dissect my heart, you will find that the prayer and spiritual striving for the attainment of Hindu-Muslim unity goes on there unceasingly all the twenty-four hours without even a moment’s interruption whether I am awake or asleep…The dream [of Hindu-Muslim unity] has filled my being since earliest childhood’.[3]

There is no shadow of doubt that Gandhi was influenced by the tolerant Islam of Ghaffar Khan and Maulana Azad and their ‘soft reading’ of the Qur’an, but it is also true that the spiritual teachings of the Mahatma and his political pragmatism captivated the minds of these two men. Without doubt, the evolution of Azad’s outlook from Pan-Islamic to secular nationalist was determined by his friendship and collaboration with Mahatma Gandhi and by the rise of communal problems in the Indian liberation movement. Through Gandhi, Azad learned that communal harmony played an important role in the future of India and that in spite of religious, ethnic and linguistic differences, India was one nation. Azad believed that the ‘two-nation theory’ offered ‘no solution of the problem of one another’s minorities, but only led to retribution and reprisals by introducing a system of mutual hostages’.[4] The entire argument of Azad was to present Muslims with the fact that the fundamental teaching of the Qur’an is mercy and forgiveness (rahmat). Therefore, it followed for him that these attributes of God should also be gratuitously found in humans. It is interesting to see up to what point Azad’s tafsir (interpretation) of the Qur’an keeps its closeness to the text, while at the same time it is inspired by the Sufi perception of God through kashf (personal revelation). Azad’s faith in the essential unity of humanity and in the oneness of all religions stemmed essentially from the Sufi concept of ‘the unity of existence’ (wahdat-i-wujud). Truth, for Azad, was one and the same everywhere. The mistake was to equate particular forms of Truth with Truth itself. Read from this angle, Azad’s most important book, Tarjuman-ul-Qur’an, illustrates Azad’s firm beliefs in tolerance and dialogue. It is in this book that Azad’s idea of religious pluralism is expressed powerfully by the concept of the oneness of faiths (wahdat-i-Din). For Azad, God as the ‘cherisher’ and ‘nourisher’ (Rabb) transcends all fragmentations and divisions of humanity into race, color and religion. As a result, the path of universal God (Rabb-ul-Alameen) is ‘the right path’ (Sirat-al-Mustaqeem), which belongs to no particular religion.

 

 

Communalism Banned

 

In one of his celebrated works entitled Ghubar-i-Khatir, Azad drew a parallel between the Sufi concept of ‘unity of existence’ and the idea of pantheism as formulated in the Upanishads. If, at root, all religions reflected the same message, then, for Azad, there was no room for Hindu as well as Muslim communalism. As a champion of Indian nationalism and democracy, Azad sought a synthesis of modern secularism and spiritual traditionalism. For Azad, Hindu communalism, like Muslim communalism, was not at all happy with the concept of secular democracy and was a negation of pluralism. Non-violence was also one of the ingredients of Azad’s secular nationalism. According to him, non-violence provided an effective strategy in the struggle for independence. Unlike Gandhi, Azad did not believe in non-violence as an article of faith but only as a matter of policy. However, he was against the use of violence by religion. In light of his religious humanism, Azad stated that there was no justification whatsoever for imposing one religion on another because the fundamentals of religion (Din) were one. Therefore, according to him every individual had a right to follow his own religious path. As a defender of shared values, he believed that religions were the common heritage of all mankind. This is why for him the outward forms of religion were useless without moral actions. From his point of view, religion was not supposed to dictate specific political actions but to mould one’s general principles in life.

Gandhi’s fruitful experiences with Muslims in South Africa and later with the Khilafat movement provided him with a new vision of Islam and its civilizational meaning in India. In an address to the Congress Working Committee in 1942, he reiterated the importance of these issues: ‘Hindu-Muslim unity is not a new thing. Millions of Hindus and Muslims have sought after it. I consciously strove for its achievement from my boyhood. While at school, I made it a point to cultivate the friendship of Muslim and Parsi co-students. I believed even at that tender age that the Hindus in India, if they wished to live in peace and amity with the other communities, should assiduously cultivate the virtue of neighborliness’.[5]

 

Gandhi and the Appeal of Muhammad

 

It seems that Gandhi’s personal interest in Islam was partly due to his fascination with the character of the Prophet Muhammad. He read and translated Washington Irving’s Life of Muhammad, but was also introduced to the firm, vigorous and courageous character of the Prophet by reading Thomas Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero Worship. Gandhi’s admiration for the Prophet Muhammad and his understanding of a tolerant Islam were the result of his reading of Azad’s commentary on the Qur’an and his friendship and empathic partnership with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. While Azad initiated Gandhi in a Sufi understanding of Islam, Ghaffar Khan introduced him to the practical and pragmatic virtues of non-violent Islam. As such, both Azad and Ghaffar Khan were in harmony and in agreement with Gandhi’s teachings about the oneness of faith and his distrust of religious fanaticism. Following his two Muslim companions, Gandhi was convinced that Islam was essentially a tolerant religion and that the violent aspect of the Islamic tradition was added later by some Muslims.

Ghaffar Khan’s profound belief in the truth and effectiveness of non-violence came from the depths of his personal experience of Islam. For him, Islam was selfless service, faith and love. And he underlined that ‘without these one calling himself a Muslim is like a sounding brass and tinkling cymbal’.[6] Just as Gandhi considered Hinduism to be based on non-violent ahimsa, so Abdul Ghaffar Khan reinterpreted his Islam to be based on non-violence. For both reformers, systematic non-violent social transformation was a matter of faith. Ghaffar Khan said ‘I believed in Gandhi's ahimsa long before. But the unparalleled success of the experiment in my province has made me a confirmed champion of non-violence…Surely there is nothing surprising in a Muslim or a Pathan[7] like me subscribing to this creed. It is not a new creed. It was followed fourteen hundred years ago by the Prophet, all the time he was in Mecca. And it has since been followed by all those who wanted to throw off the oppressor's yoke. But we had so far forgotten it that when Mahatma Gandhi placed it before us, we thought that he was sponsoring a new creed or a novel weapon’.[8]

 

 

Servants of God amongst the Pashtoons

 

Ghaffar Khan’s ideas gave birth to the Khudai Khidmatgars (literally the servants of God) a movement that aimed at reforming the Pashtoon society in the North-Western Frontier Province of British India.

Many factors contributed to the popularity of the Khudai Khidmatgars. Different sections of Pashtoon society interpreted its program in their own way. ‘To the Pashtoon intelligentsia, it was a movement for the revival of Pashtoon culture with its distinct identity. To the smaller Khans, it was a movement that demanded political reforms for the province that would enfranchise them and give them a greater role in the governance. Its anti-colonial stand suited the majority of the anti-establishment ulama, who always regarded British rule in the sub-continent as a ‘curse’. For the peasants and other poor classes it was against their economic oppressors, British imperialism and its agents the pro-British Nawabs, Khan Bahadurs and the big Khans’.[9] Ghaffar Khan’s truthful character and his faithful and principled method of practicing non-violence convinced the Pashtoons that the only panacea for their blood feuds and factionalism was adoption of non-violence and strict adherence to it.

Because of his proximity to Gandhi, Ghaffar Khan was accused by some of his close associates of uniting the Khudai Khidmatgars with the Hindu-dominated Congress. Ghaffar Khan’s response to his Pathan critics and to his future colleagues in the Indian Congress Party was the following: ‘I should like to make it clear that the non-violence I have believed in and preached to my brethren of the Khudai Khidmatgars is much wider. It affects all our life, and only this has permanent value. Unless we learn this lesson of non-violence fully we shall never do away with the deadly feuds which have been the curse of the people of the Frontier. Since we took to non-violence and the Khudai Khidmatgars pledged them to it, we have largely succeeded in ending these feuds. Non-violence has added greatly to the courage of the Pathans. Because they were previously addicted to violence far more than others, they have profited by non-violence much more. We shall never really and effectively defend ourselves except through non-violence. Khudai Khidmatgars must, therefore, be what our names imply pure servants of God and humanity by laying down our own lives and never taking any life’.[10] One can say that Ghaffar Khan succeeded as much as Mahatma Gandhi in his practice of non-violent action when he turned the hardy Pathans toward the non-violent creed instead of the customary rough methods they often used to settle their disputes with the government and among themselves. Of course neither Maulana Azad nor Abdul Ghaffar Khan was successful in convincing Muhammad Ali Jinnah to cease calling for the creation of Pakistan, which was an extremely violent process both for the Muslims and the Hindus.

But such a history illustrates how Islam has always been used for both non-violent and violent purposes. Gandhi understood this very well when he recognized that the violent version of Islam was not the true essence of this religion. A few years before the independence of India in 1947, he wrote in Harijan: ‘I have lived with and among Muslims not for one day but closely and almost uninterruptedly for twenty years. Not one Muslim taught me that Islam was an anti-Hindu religion’.[11]

The truth is that in Islam, as in other great religions, there are fundamentalists and extremists who manipulate what is written in their holy books to justify their acts of violence and terrorism. It is the right time for liberal and moderate Muslims to construct a new image of Islam as a religion that is compatible with the modern world and is able to interact with the West and coordinate itself with international norms. So it is in the interest of Islamic societies and Muslims in general to change the perception of the world of Islam as a violent religion by changing the way in which their societies often attempt to solve differences among themselves and with others. This is not to be hypocritical or to underestimate the civilizational potential of Islam but, rather, it is a critical attitude to improve social and political conditions within Islam. Very often Muslims protest against these kinds of arguments. However, by using violence as a social and political modus vivendi many Muslims put their moral judgments and philosophical arguments at the same level as what they allegedly criticize and reject as unjust and inhuman; and that puts them, by definition, at an equally low or even lower level of morality. And this is not a game to gamble with. In Muslim countries that have embraced violence against their citizens or others, the violations of individual liberties is a matter of daily practice. Returning to figures such as Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and Maulana Azad means accepting the Gandhian invitation to self-examination and self-criticism. The results of such a process are certainly unpredictable but given the Gandhian view that no one possesses the whole truth and that truth emerges in a dialogical encounter among subjects, the making of a Gandhian Islam in the twenty-first century remains a challenge.

 

 

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