"One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's"
About this Quote
Gandhi’s line lands with the quiet force of a door closing: not on faith, but on the public’s presumed right to police it. By framing religion as a private contract “between oneself and one’s Maker,” he strips clergy, state, and community of their favorite leverage - the ability to turn belief into a badge of belonging and a tool of discipline. The phrase “after all” does extra work: it sounds like common sense, but it’s also a rebuke to anyone treating religion as a group project.
The intent isn’t secular dismissiveness. Gandhi was intensely religious; he’s carving out a moral interiority that can’t be commandeered by majoritarian pressure. In colonial India, where the British often managed communities through religious categories, and where Hindu-Muslim tensions could flare into violence, declaring faith “no one else’s” is political hygiene. It refuses the logic that your neighbor’s piety is your jurisdiction - the same logic that makes communal identity easy to mobilize and hard to de-escalate.
Subtext: if religion is truly sacred, it can’t be reduced to performative compliance. The Maker isn’t impressed by pageantry; the crowd is. Gandhi’s minimalism is strategic: he doesn’t argue theology, he redraws boundaries. It’s a line meant to protect pluralism without demanding anyone dilute conviction, insisting that conscience is not a public utility, and that the state’s job is not to referee salvation.
The intent isn’t secular dismissiveness. Gandhi was intensely religious; he’s carving out a moral interiority that can’t be commandeered by majoritarian pressure. In colonial India, where the British often managed communities through religious categories, and where Hindu-Muslim tensions could flare into violence, declaring faith “no one else’s” is political hygiene. It refuses the logic that your neighbor’s piety is your jurisdiction - the same logic that makes communal identity easy to mobilize and hard to de-escalate.
Subtext: if religion is truly sacred, it can’t be reduced to performative compliance. The Maker isn’t impressed by pageantry; the crowd is. Gandhi’s minimalism is strategic: he doesn’t argue theology, he redraws boundaries. It’s a line meant to protect pluralism without demanding anyone dilute conviction, insisting that conscience is not a public utility, and that the state’s job is not to referee salvation.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|
More Quotes by Mahatma
Add to List
