Religion and Politics: A Brief Consideration of Gandhis Vision
This 4-page undergraduate position paper considers the presence of spiritual and political dimensions in the works of Gandhi. This paper argues that both Western nations and Gandhi’s vision combined spirituality or religion with political message, albeit in different ways and hence with differing results. Whereas Gandhi’s message combined politics and religion in a congruent way, whereby both were mobilized to express messages of passive resistance, Western spiritual messages created trauma and injustice in their incongruity. While many Western nations based their politics on religion, they seemed to do selectively or superficially, so that even as they spoke of Christian justice, they also defended the use of violence, especially against those they claimed were outside the Christian fold.
