India’s national unity evolved over more than a century, through political and social movements and legal and constitutional designs. This involved intense battles and wise compromises among constituent groups. The national identity thus constituted developed along three dimensions. The first dimension is the search for harmony and justice among castes, the second is harmony of religious communities, and the third is a common ground among various regional identities. These three dimensions can be alternatively labelled as Hindu unity, Hindu-Muslim unity, and heartland-periphery unity. A milestone in this journey was the making of the Constitution, but there is a long prelude and an ongoing postlude to it.
M.K. Gandhi was the primary spokesperson of the first two axes — Hindu unity and Hindu-Muslim unity. He declared himself a Hindu when that category was still contested. “I find peace in the Hindu religion… I studied other religions also, and I decided that whatever its defects and drawbacks, Hinduism alone could be the religion for me. That is what I feel and that is why I call myself a Sanatani Hindu,” he told the Gauhati session of the Indian National Congress in 1926, and held on to that belief until death. Gandhi attempted to interpret Hinduism in an increasingly inclusive manner. He insisted on its legitimacy as a historical category independent of the subcontinent’s encounter with colonialism and other religious traditions. “Gandhi assumed that loyalty to religion was the dominant loyalty in India,” writes historian Ravinder Kumar, who also notes a “conspicuous absence of the language of class” during the Rowlatt Satyagraha.
