![]() ![]() If we develop the force of will, we shall find that we do not need the force of arms.”* If we have not the latter, we shall never get the former. ![]() “…We need, not force of arms, but force of will. The need of the hour rings true today as it did a century ago. “Compulsion in religion” has been given constitutional sanctity by the same government which turns a blind eye to lynching of Muslims in the name of “cow protection.” The “wave of violence” Gandhi felt a century ago has assumed its fullest, most sinister expression through the current regime of the BJP government backed by the RSS, the organization that orchestrated Gandhi’s assassination. Yet, it is eerily coincidental that today’s India is living the reality that Gandhi dreaded the most a hundred years since. Gandhi stubbornly resisted any allusions to him being considered a seer. What is it but compulsion, if Hindus will kill a Mussulman for saving a cow?”* “…Hindus and Mussulmans prate about no compulsion in religion. The Hindu-Muslim tension is an acute phase of this tiredness.”* “What I see around me today is, therefore, a reaction against the spread of non-violence. ![]() SAPTHAGIRI IYENGAR, HfHR COFOUNDER AND ADVOCACY INTERN33 Despite his views on race, caste, and gender - which I still struggle to reconcile with my own politics - it is Gandhi’s stubborn and fierce commitment to India’s religious pluralism which I believe needs to be celebrated today. I request Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs who have come here with cleansed hearts to take a vow that they will never allow strife to raise its head, but will live in amity, united as friends and brothers.” When I visited this dargah and others in 2019 as a journalist seeking to understand how Hindu nationalism was affecting India’s Sufi shrines, I got a brief glimpse of the pluralistic India that Gandhi hoped for: a place where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and others were praying together, side by side. At the dargah, Gandhi told those who were gathered there that “I have come on a pilgrimage. The dargah had been attacked by Hindu rioters in the aftermath of India’s Partition, and Muslim residents of the area had been forced to flee. Three days before he was assassinated, Gandhi visited the dargah (shrine) of the Sufi saint Khwaja Qutbduddin Bakhtiyar Kaki near Delhi. On Gandhi Jayanti, Hindus for Human Rights Members Message on Hindu-Muslim Unity ![]()
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