what were the efforts made by gandhiji to unite hindus and muslims of indial...??
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Answer:
Explanation:
Why did Gandhi virtually pay no attention to the empirically evident Muslim socio-religious plurality?
Gandhi continued to use Hindu-Muslims as legitimate political categories throughout his political career. Even during the Partition riots, he spoke of Muslims as a homogeneous entity. In his prayer meeting of 12 September 1947, Gandhi said:
Let us know our own dharma. In the light of our dharma I would tell the people that our greatest duty is to see that the Hindus do not act in frenzy, nor the Sikhs indulge in acts of madness. . . . I appeal to the Muslims that they should open-heartedly declare that they belong to India and are loyal to the Union. If they are true to God and wish to live in the Indian Union, they just cannot be enemies of the Hindus. And I want the Muslims here to tell the Muslims in Pakistan who have become the enemies of the Hindus, not to go mad: ‘If you are going to indulge in such madness, we cannot co-operate with you. We will remain faithful to the Union, and salute the tricolour. We have to follow the order of the Government’.
(CWMG, Vol. 89, 01 August 1947–10 November 1947, p. 176)
This statement clearly identifies Muslims as one group of people that could now be divided into two categories: the Muslims who stay back in India and the Muslims who have migrated to Pakistan.
Was Gandhi not a victim of the colonial knowledge systems that conceptualized Indian communities as homogeneous entities?
Let us begin with Hind Swaraj – the small pamphlet that Gandhi wrote in 1909 and the only complied version of his ideas that he did not wish to change or disown. There is an interesting conversation between the reader and the editor about the inborn enmity between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi, the editor in this episode, argues with the reader that expression such as ‘inborn enmity’ emerged only after the advent of British Raj. Describing Muslims as an inseparable constituent of Indian nation, Gandhi says:
Should we not remember that many Hindus and Mahomedans own the same ancestors and the same blood runs through their veins? Do people become enemies because they change their religion? Is the God of the Mahomedan different from the God of the Hindu? Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?
(Hind Swaraj, 1938, p. 46)