Nationalism and Secularism in India’s Freedom Struggle

India’s freedom struggle was fought on many fronts – against colonial exploitation, economic drain, and political subjugation. But there was another, equally critical battle being waged: the fight to keep a religiously diverse nation united against a colonial power that deliberately stoked divisions. Secularism was not an abstract ideal in this context. It was a practical necessity – the ideological glue that held the independence movement together across lines of faith, caste, and community.

Indian secularism: a different kind of idea 🔗

To understand secularism’s role in the freedom struggle, it helps to recognize that Indian secularism was fundamentally different from its Western counterpart. In Western liberal thought, secularism typically means the strict separation of religion from the state. In India, it took on a distinctive meaning: equal respect for all religions, rather than their exclusion from public life.

This distinction matters. India was – and remains – one of the most religiously pluralistic societies on earth, home to Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, and numerous folk traditions. A movement that sought to sideline religion entirely would have alienated the very masses it needed to mobilize. Instead, Indian nationalism developed a vision of sarva dharma sambhava – a concept that acknowledged religion’s deep roots in Indian life while insisting that all faiths deserved the same standing and respect.

What is sarva dharma sambhava? 🔗

Sarva dharma sambhava is a concept coined by Mahatma Gandhi, first articulated in September 1930 in communications to his followers at the Sabarmati Ashram, specifically to address growing divisions between Hindus and Muslims. Translated roughly as “all religions lead to the same destination,” the phrase captured the idea that different faiths, however distinct in practice, share a common spiritual purpose.

Gandhi was a deeply religious person whose religiosity was cosmopolitan and humanist. He called all religions “fundamentally equal” and drew on texts from Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity alike. For him, religion was a force that should unite – not divide – people. The concept of sarva dharma sambhava was both a moral conviction and a political strategy: if Indians across religious communities could see their faiths as equally valid paths to truth, the British policy of setting them against each other would lose its grip.

The Indian philosophy of secularism rooted in sarva dharma sambhava therefore differs from the European model: rather than demanding the absence of religion from the public sphere, it calls on the state to embrace all religions equally, without privileging any. This became the cornerstone of how nationalist leaders thought about the relationship between faith and nationhood.

Colonial divide-and-rule: the threat secularism countered 🔗

British colonial policy relied heavily on religious division to maintain control. Separate electorates for Muslims were introduced through the Indian Councils Act of 1909, a provision later extended to Sikhs, Indian Christians, and Europeans under the Government of India Act of 1919. The Ramsay MacDonald Communal Award of 1932 took this further by reserving seats for minorities and even for the depressed classes. Each of these measures deepened the idea that Indians were defined primarily by their religion – not by a shared national identity.

The partition of Bengal in 1905 was another deliberate attempt to fracture the nationalist movement along religious and regional lines. A key dichotomy that took center stage during India’s freedom struggle was the tension between secularism and communalism, with the Congress broadly embodying the former vision of an inclusive nation, while communal organizations pushed competing sectarian agendas.

Indian nationalist leaders recognized that as long as Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians saw each other primarily as members of rival religious groups, the colonial project was safe. Leaders like Tagore, Gandhi, Maulana Azad, and Nehru directly challenged the colonial argument that India’s diversity made it ungovernable as a unified nation. For Nehru in particular, India’s multinational character was a strength – not a vulnerability.

Gandhi’s secular nationalism in action 🔗

Gandhi’s approach to secularism was inseparable from his method of mass mobilization. Rather than asking people to set aside their religion, he asked them to find in their religion a reason to stand together. He tirelessly called for Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christian unity based on a pluralistic understanding of truth as ultimate and one.

The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920-1922 was a striking example of this in practice. Gandhi worked closely with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and the Ali Brothers, building an alliance across religious communities that gave the movement both breadth and moral force. The Khilafat Movement (1919-1924), though primarily a Muslim concern about the Ottoman Caliphate, became a platform where Gandhi and Congress demonstrated that Hindu and Muslim political interests could align against a common colonial adversary.

Gandhi also responded to communal violence directly and personally – undertaking fasts to protest religious riots and visiting affected communities to urge reconciliation. His commitment to sarva dharma sambhava was not just rhetorical. Gandhi’s secular perspective tried to retain religious commitment at the level of personal faith while suspending it as a basis for political division in the public domain – a difficult balance in a deeply religious society.

Nehru’s rationalist secularism 🔗

Where Gandhi grounded secularism in religious pluralism and moral philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru approached it from a rationalist and scientific standpoint. Nehru concluded that a functional government must encourage and sustain religious diversity, and that religion had no place in politics. He saw communalism not as a natural social tendency but as a manufactured threat – one that the British had actively encouraged and that Indian politicians needed to actively resist.

Nehru promoted parliamentary democracy, secularism, and scientific temper throughout his political career, treating these as inseparable pillars of a modern nation. He was equally critical of Hindu and Muslim communalism. In a letter to provincial chief ministers in November 1947, Nehru warned that the real danger to India came not from external threats but from communal and reactionary forces trying to disrupt the structure of free India.

For Nehru, secularism meant more than religious tolerance. It meant equality of all faiths, the separation of religion from governance, and the state not patronizing any particular religion – while actively protecting the rights and sense of belonging of minority communities.

Maulana Azad and the Muslim case for secular nationalism 🔗

Secularism in the independence movement was not only championed by Hindu leaders. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, one of the most prominent Muslim voices in Congress, was among its most principled advocates. Azad was a staunch nationalist who believed that India’s independence was a collective goal transcending religious boundaries. He envisioned an India where communities could coexist free from religious majoritarianism.

Azad’s position was significant because it challenged the Muslim League’s argument that Muslims needed a separate state to protect their interests. He insisted that India’s plural heritage was a shared inheritance – and that nationalism rooted in secularism was the only viable path forward for a country as diverse as India. The secularization process also received impetus from within Indian religious traditions themselves, through figures like Azad who drew on Islamic thought to argue for tolerance and coexistence.

Subhas Chandra Bose and secular unity in the INA 🔗

Secular nationalism also found striking expression in the Indian National Army (INA) led by Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose visualized an India completely neutral and impartial towards all religions, and he put this into practice within the INA by bringing together soldiers of all faiths under a single banner. Gandhi himself acknowledged the INA’s achievement in fostering unity across communal and regional identities, calling it an example the whole nation should emulate.

Bose’s view was direct: communalism would end only when the communal mentality ended. He encouraged members of different religious groups to learn each other’s traditions and history, arguing that cultural understanding was the foundation of lasting communal peace.

The challenge of communalism 🔗

The secular vision of the freedom movement was never unchallenged. The rise of organizations like the Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha represented a hardening of communal identities that the nationalist leadership struggled to contain. The central values of India’s struggle – non-violence, self-rule, secularism, and pluralism – were never fully accepted by all political actors during the independence era.

Partition in 1947 was the most devastating consequence of this failure. The very act of creating two separate nations along religious lines represented both the limits of the secular nationalist project and the price of communalism. Yet even after Partition, the secular ideal endured. For the first five decades after independence, Indians consistently voted to retain the multi-religious plurality of their state, with equal rights for all citizens and special protections for minorities.

Secularism enshrined in the constitution 🔗

The principles developed during the freedom movement were ultimately written into India’s founding document. The Constitution of India (1950) declared India a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic, committed to parliamentary democracy and fundamental rights for all citizens regardless of religion. Articles 25 to 28 guarantee religious freedom and prohibit state discrimination on religious grounds.

The term “secular” was formally added to the Preamble through the 42nd Constitutional Amendment in 1976, though the secular character of the state had been present since independence. The constitutional framework reflected the hard-won understanding of the freedom movement: that in a country as religiously diverse as India, national unity required not the erasure of religion from public life, but its equal recognition across all faiths.

A living legacy – and its tensions 🔗

The secular nationalism of the independence movement remains a reference point in Indian public life, though its interpretation continues to be contested. Critics from the left argue that secular nationalism was too elite-driven and did not always deliver substantive equality for religious minorities. Critics from the right characterize Indian secularism as uneven in its application. The dichotomy between secularism and communalism, and who truly embodies each, has been a recurring theme in Indian political thought since the freedom struggle itself.

What remains clear is that the idea of sarva dharma sambhava – of all faiths deserving equal respect and standing – was not merely a philosophical slogan during the independence movement. It was a political tool, a moral framework, and a social necessity. In a country where the British had systematically invested in religious division, building a mass movement required demonstrating that national identity could hold together people of every faith. The leaders of the freedom movement, flawed and contested as they were, understood this – and staked their vision of India’s future on it.

What do you think? Given that India was founded on the principle of equal respect for all religions, how should the state respond when secular ideals come into tension with the religious identities of its citizens? And can the concept of sarva dharma sambhava offer a meaningful guide for managing religious diversity in other pluralistic democracies today?

References

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