GANDHI’S MORALITY AND RELIGION – AN OVERVIEW

According to Gandhi, morality and religion are closely associated with each other. Both are interconnected with each other. We cannot conceive one without the other. According to Gandhi mere emphasis on morality without the religion or religion without morality are both one sided views. Both groups of people who claim in the possibility of religion without morality or morality without religion possess wrong approaches. According to Gandhi human society “is not divided into water tight compartments, called social, political and religious.” (Young India 2.3.1922, p.131). Thus, morality and religion are united and should be so united. So long as the seed of morality is not watered by religion it cannot sprout. Thus, it can be said without religion. Thus, conversely morality should be observed as a religion. Gandhi thus combined intelligence/ logic with faith i.e. mind with heart. Morality is the foundation of religion and morality attains its completeness through religion. Therefore, Gandhi’s religion is regarded as an ethical religion. Thus, Gandhi stresses on the humanistic approaches or ethical aspects of the great religious of the world. Thus, Gandhi talks about a universal religion i.e. the common ethical basis of all the living religions. Gandhi explains this universal and ethical nature of all the living religious of the world as follows.... “It is not the Hindu religion which I certainly prize above all other religions, but the religion which transcends Hinduism, which changes ones very nature, which binds one indissolubly to the truth within and which ever purifies. It is the permanent element in human nature which counts no cost too great in order to find full expression and which leaves the soul utterly restless until it has found itself, known its Marker and appreciated its true correspondence between the Marker and itself”.