"Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion"
About this Quote
The intent isn’t abstract piety; it’s political psychology. Gandhi led movements where bodies were the bargaining chips - marches, prison, hunger strikes, economic boycotts. Colonial power excelled at making “inconvenience” unbearable: humiliation, deprivation, bureaucratic harassment, violence. Against that, Gandhi offers a counter-metric of strength. The body can be coerced; the conscience, ideally, cannot. The quote trains followers to treat suffering not as evidence of failure but as proof of seriousness.
The subtext also pushes back against conversion driven by material incentives. In British India, shifts in religious affiliation could be entangled with access to schooling, employment, legal protection, or social mobility. Gandhi’s phrasing avoids naming any rival faith, but the target is clear: abandoning religion for comfort is a kind of capitulation to power and to appetite.
Still, the moral clarity carries risk. When “inconvenience” shades into danger, the line can sound like a sanctification of needless hardship. Gandhi’s wager is that inner fidelity has public consequences - that a population trained to endure discomfort without surrender becomes, in the long run, ungovernable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Gandhi, Mahatma. (n.d.). Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/religion-is-a-matter-of-the-heart-no-physical-35486/
Chicago Style
Gandhi, Mahatma. "Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/religion-is-a-matter-of-the-heart-no-physical-35486/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/religion-is-a-matter-of-the-heart-no-physical-35486/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.








