Gandhi’s ‘Ram Rajya’ phrase could have put off Muslims, says Ramachandra Guha

New Delhi: Historian Ramachandra Guha acknowledged that Mahatma Gandhi's use of the phrase "Ram Rajya" could have been "off-putting to Muslims", while firmly vouching for his "interfaith" practice and "pluralistic" credentials.

Speaking at the launch of "Arguments with Gandhi" on Thursday, his third book on the Mahatma, Guha said Gandhi would have described "Ram Rajya" metaphorically but admitted that the phrase could lend itself to a "Hindu interpretation".

"His practice was always interfaith... But the one phrase he used, which could lend itself to Hindu interpretation was 'Ram Rajya'. I mean, certainly some Muslim intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s saw it as that," Guha said.


"So, the phrase possibly could be seen as, shall we say, you know, off-putting to Muslims. Though his practice was completely pluralistic," said Guha, a noted Gandhi biographer who has written two volumes on the Father of the Nation.

To underline Gandhi's interfaith practice, Guha cited his open-air prayer meetings, which included readings from the Quran, as well as his efforts to incorporate references to different faiths in his prayers and songs.

He also noted that Gandhi rarely visited temples, with the Madurai Meenakshi temple being a notable exception in 1946, when Dalits were admitted for the first time.

Guha further pointed out that Gandhi visited Ayodhya several times but never went to the site associated with the belief that Lord Ram was born there.

"For Gandhi, what he learnt from Tolstoy was Ram was in his heart. He didn't need a sign, he didn't need a grand celebration," Guha said, drawing a distinction between Gandhi's personal faith and public religious symbolism.

Guha also highlighted Gandhi's efforts to protect minorities after Partition, saying he was "the sole person battling for the rights of Muslims remaining in India".

In "Arguments with Gandhi", the 68-year-old examines the Mahatma's disagreements with B R Ambedkar over caste, V D Savarkar over religion, Jawaharlal Nehru over economics and Bhagat Singh over non-violence, while also tracing his influence on figures such as Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela.

Discussing the Gandhi-Ambedkar debate, Guha said Gandhi's contribution to the campaign against untouchability was often overlooked in contemporary political discourse.

"Today, of course, it is Ambedkar rightly who is the champion of the oppressed and the Dalits. But in the 1930s, Gandhi was the only upper-caste Hindu within the Congress Party who talked about the abolition of untouchability," he said, adding that leaders such as Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel had not taken up the cause in the same way.

He also recalled how Gandhi's campaign provoked hostility among Hindu conservatives, citing an attempt on his life in Pune in 1934 by members of the Hindu Mahasabha.

Drawing on scholar D R Nagaraj's "The Flaming Feet", Guha described Gandhi's approach as "a politics of self-purification", which called on upper-caste Hindus to rid themselves of caste prejudice, while Ambedkar pursued "a politics of self-respect", centred on Dalit emancipation.

Nagaraj argued that the two leaders, despite their differences, could be understood as complementary rather than adversarial, Guha said.

"And we must learn to see them as complementary. It has taken 33 years after D R Nagaraj wrote that book for us to recognise this," he said while citing Cockroach Janata Party founder Abhijeet Dipke, an Ambedkarite Maharashtrian Mahar, as an example of someone who recognises that "Ambedkar and Gandhi have to be brought together".

While Guha said Gandhi did more than any other Congress leader to challenge the injustice of untouchability, he went a step further on the question of women's participation in politics, declaring that the Mahatma brought more women into his political movement than any other political leader of the 20th century.

"More than Lenin, more than Mao, more than Churchill, more than Roosevelt, more than de Gaulle, more than Ho Chi Minh," Guha said.

To buttress his point, Guha recalled Gandhi's campaign in 1925 to have Sarojini Naidu elected president of the Indian National Congress, at a time when women were not even local councillors in Britain and the United States.

Guha's previously authored two-volume biography of Gandhi comprises "Gandhi Before India" and "Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World".

"Arguments with Gandhi", priced at Rs 999 and published by HarperCollins India, is currently available for purchase across online and offline stores.