Gandhiji on Communal Harmony
Here are two quotations on communal harmony from Gandhiji’s
journal Harijan. The first is dated March
16, 1947 when the partition of India was only five months away. It reads as
follows:-
“My experience of India tells me
that the Hindus and Muslims know how to live at peace among themselves. I
decline to believe that people have said good-bye to their senses, so as to
make it impossible to live at peace with each other as they have done for
generations. For, I believe with the late poet Iqbal that the Hindus and
Muslims, who have lived together long under the shadows of the mighty Himalayas
and have drunk the waters of the Ganges and the Jamuna, have a unique message
for the world.”
The second quotation is dated
January 18, 1948 when the partition of India had taken place and Pakistan had been formed
from August 15, 1947. In this quotation Gandhiji says:-
“Before I knew anything of politics in my early youth, I
dreamt the dream of communal unity of the heart. I shall jump in the evening of
my life like a child to feel that the dream has been realized in this life. The
wish for living the full span of life, portrayed by the seers of old, and which
they permit us to set down at 125 years, will
then revive . Who would not risk
sacrificing his life for the realization of such a
dream? Then, we shall have real Swaraj.
Then, though legally and geographically we may still be two States in daily
life no one will think we are separate States. The vista before me seems to me
to be glorious to be true. Yet, like a child in a famous picture drawn by a
famous painter, I shall not be happy till I have got it. I live and want to
live for no lesser goal.”
Gandhiji was shot dead on 30th January 1948. He was born
on 2nd October 1869.
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G. R. Kanwal
1st October 2023
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