It is time we remembered Gandhi’s views on namaz
He believed that stopping Muslims from praying was preventing them from performing their duty as citizens
In his February 29, 1920 article Hindu Muslim Unity, Mahatma Gandhi wrote, “My dream is that a Vaishnava , with a mark on his forehead and a bead necklace, or an ash-smeared Hindu with a rudraksha necklace, ever so punctilious in his sandhya and ablutions, and a pious Muslim saying his namaz regularly can live as brothers. God willing, the dream will be realised”.
The prevention of Muslims from offering namaz in public places by some groups in Gurugram recently goes against Gandhi’s vision. It imperils the ideal of Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava, the foundational pillar of secularism enshrined in our Constitution.
In My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi recollects how in the Tolstoy Farm he established in South Africa during his first satyagraha, the Muslims offered daily namaz without any hindrance.
Gandhi juxtaposed forms of prayer associated with all faiths and underlined their essential unity and linked them to the performance of one’s duty. On this he wrote, “There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that the recitation of the gayatri, the namaz or the Christian prayer are superstitions fit to be practised by the ignorant and the credulous”. He adds, “Fasting and prayer... are a most powerful process of purification and that which purifies necessarily enables us the better to do our duty and to attain our goal.” Therefore, in preventing Muslims from offering namaz attempts are being made to prevent them to purify themselves and perform their duties as citizens.
While participating in numerous open air prayer meetings across India and speaking on such occasions, Gandhi used to stop at the scheduled time meant for Muslim participants to offer namaz and resume his speech after that. On one occasion while addressing a prayer meeting on November 16, 1946, he stopped for the Muslim participants to offer namaz and when pin drop silence was not being observed, he chided those causing disturbance and observed, “Culture and good breeding required that they should observe silence when others said their prayer.”
In 1946 while addressing a prayer meeting in Delhi, he told that someone sent him a book describing how namaz should be offered and he found a sentence in it to the effect that prayer offered in congregation was 27 times as effective as prayer said by oneself. He observed that if they all joined in the prayer whole-heartedly and methodically it would transform the atmosphere and riots in Delhi would become an impossibility.
To uphold the cause of Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava, Gandhi’s thoughts on namaz are of abiding significance.