Diverse Perspectives on Religious Politics in India

Religion has never sat quietly on the sidelines of Indian public life. It shapes how people vote, how communities relate to one another, and how leaders build their political appeal. But the relationship between faith and power is not understood in a single way. Thinkers, activists, and scholars have disagreed sharply over what role religion should play in politics. Nowhere is this disagreement clearer than in the contrasting visions of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, two figures who both placed Hinduism at the centre of their thought yet arrived at almost opposite conclusions. Understanding these divergent views helps us make sense of debates that still dominate headlines today.

What religious politics actually means 🔗

At its core, religious politics is the use of religious identity to organise political life. It defines how individuals see their role within a religious community and how one community relates to another. The historian Bipan Chandra offered a widely used framing of the closely related idea of communalism: the belief that people who follow a particular religion share common social, political, and economic interests. Once that belief takes hold, religion stops being a private matter of worship and becomes a marker of political loyalty.

Religious politics is often majoritarian in character. It tends to appeal to the largest religious group in a society, presenting that group’s interests as identical to the interests of the nation itself. Sociologists describe this as the prioritisation of one religion over others, which can marginalise minority communities and strain the bonds that hold a diverse society together. This is why the topic matters far beyond the classroom: the way leaders define religious belonging directly affects whether different communities live as equal citizens or as rivals.

Why the same religion produces different politics 🔗

One of the most striking features of religious politics is that the same faith can be interpreted in radically different ways. Hinduism, in particular, has been read both as an open, assimilative tradition and as the basis for an exclusive national identity. The split between Gandhi and Savarkar shows exactly how this happens. Both men were deeply influenced by Hinduism, yet one used it to argue for inclusion while the other used it to draw firm boundaries around the nation.

Gandhi: spirituality as the foundation of inclusive politics 🔗

For Gandhi, religion and politics could not be separated. He famously described politics as “applied religion”, meaning that moral and spiritual principles should guide public action rather than being locked away in temples and private homes. But this did not mean he wanted a Hindu state. His goal was to inject ethical values such as truth, non-violence, and compassion into politics, not to impose any single faith on the country.

Gandhi’s Hinduism was rooted in tolerance and assimilation. He saw the tradition as capable of absorbing what was valuable in other faiths rather than competing with them. In 1938 he made this explicit, stating that his Hinduism was not sectarian and included what he regarded as the best of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism. For him, the test of a religion was its mercy and its respect for other ways of life.

Faith as a personal matter, not a state project 🔗

It is important not to confuse Gandhi’s spiritualised politics with theocracy. While he insisted that morality should shape public life, he was equally clear that the state should not enforce any particular religion. In conversation with a Christian missionary, Gandhi argued that if he were a ruler, religion and the state would be kept separate because faith was a personal affair. He wanted the state to handle worldly matters such as health, currency, and foreign relations, leaving religious belief to the individual conscience.

This combination produced an inclusive vision. Gandhi welcomed contact with other religions and believed Hinduism could assimilate and synthesise new elements it encountered without losing its essential character. His inclusivity sometimes drew criticism from both directions. Traditional Hindus felt he was not Hindu enough, while some non-Hindus felt his framing was still too rooted in Hinduism to represent everyone equally. That tension reveals just how difficult it is to build a politics that is both faith-inspired and genuinely open to all.

Conversion and the limits of Gandhi’s openness 🔗

Gandhi’s inclusivity had its own boundaries. He was uncomfortable with proselytising and believed that faith should be self-propagating through example rather than through active efforts to convert others. He argued that faith must spread by being lived, not by seeking conversions, which he felt only bred resentment. Scholars have linked this to a deeper difference in how Hindu and Christian traditions understand religious freedom, with the Hindu view treating diverse religions as valid paths suited to different groups of people. So while Gandhi respected all faiths, his framework still carried distinctly Hindu assumptions about what religion was.

Savarkar: Hindutva and the politics of belonging 🔗

Savarkar approached the relationship between Hinduism and politics from an entirely different angle. In his 1923 pamphlet Essentials of Hindutva, later republished as Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu?, he coined the term Hindutva, or “Hinduness”, to describe the quality of being Hindu in ethnic, cultural, and political terms. Crucially, he distinguished Hindutva from Hinduism the religion. Hindutva was about national identity and collective belonging, not personal spiritual practice.

Savarkar built his definition on three pillars. A Hindu, he argued, was someone who regarded India as their motherland, the land of their ancestors, and their holy land. The terms he used were pitribhu (fatherland) and punyabhu (holy land). For Savarkar, true belonging required that the Indian subcontinent be both the cradle of one’s ancestry and the sacred geography of one’s faith.

Race, ancestry, and the search for unity 🔗

A central feature of Hindutva was its emphasis on common blood and shared ancestry. Drawing on the racial theories common in his era, Savarkar conceived of Hindutva as a quality inherent in the Hindu “race”, evolved over thousands of years on the subcontinent. He pointed to shared festivals, customs, sacred texts, and cultural practices as evidence of an underlying unity that bound Hindus together despite regional differences. Traditions born in India, such as Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism, qualified as part of this fold because they too treated India as both ancestral and holy land.

Drawing the line: who is left out 🔗

The most consequential part of Savarkar’s framework was its exclusionary logic. Because Islam and Christianity originated outside India, their followers’ holy lands lay elsewhere, in Arabia or Palestine. Savarkar argued that communities such as Indian Muslims and Christians possessed nearly all the qualifications of Hindutva except one: they could not regard India as their holy land, since their religious allegiance pointed beyond the subcontinent. This single criterion became the ground for excluding them from full membership in the nation as Savarkar imagined it.

Scholars note that Savarkar’s Hindutva actually treated religion in a secularised, worldly way, using it as an instrument for political consolidation rather than spiritual elevation. The philosopher Ashis Nandy made the provocative observation that, in this sense, Savarkar’s approach instrumentalised religion without room for the spiritual or transcendental, in sharp contrast to Gandhi’s faith-centred vision. Hindutva was thus the antithesis of Gandhi’s inclusive Hinduism.

Two visions, one faith: comparing the divergence 🔗

Placing the two thinkers side by side reveals how the same religious tradition can fuel opposite political projects. The differences fall along several clear lines:

Purpose of religion in politics: Gandhi wanted spiritual and ethical values to humanise politics for everyone, while Savarkar wanted Hindu identity to define and consolidate the nation politically.

Inclusion versus exclusion: Gandhi’s Hinduism was assimilative and welcomed other faiths as fellow travellers, whereas Savarkar’s Hindutva drew firm boundaries that excluded religions of non-Indian origin.

The role of the state: Gandhi insisted faith was a personal affair that the state should not enforce, while Savarkar envisioned a nation whose very identity was rooted in Hindu civilisation.

Spiritual versus territorial: Gandhi grounded his politics in conscience and morality, whereas Savarkar grounded his in territory, ancestry, and the idea of a holy land.

Why the debate still matters 🔗

These divergent views are not merely historical curiosities. They map directly onto present-day debates over secularism, minority rights, and national identity in India. The rise of majoritarian narratives continues to raise concerns about the marginalisation of minority communities, while the constitutional commitment to treating all faiths equally reflects something closer to the inclusive impulse Gandhi championed. The tension between these two inheritances runs through electoral campaigns, policy disputes, and cultural debates to this day.

The deeper lesson is that religious politics is rarely about religion alone. It is about power, belonging, and the question of who counts as a full member of the national community. Whether faith becomes a bridge between communities or a wall between them depends heavily on which interpretation prevails. Gandhi and Savarkar represent the two ends of that spectrum, and Indian democracy has been negotiating the space between them ever since.

What do you think? Can a country as religiously diverse as India draw on spiritual values in public life without sliding into majoritarianism? And when the same religion can justify both inclusion and exclusion, what should determine which interpretation guides a nation’s politics?

References

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