Tagore and Gandhi: On Diversity and Religious ‘Others’

Gandhi and Tagore were both sensitive to the complex ways in which religious and cultural beliefs were interwoven in diverse ways in the lives of individuals and communities. They had given much thought to the relationship between moral-religious culturally diverse people. Gandhi was no stranger to the conflicts caused by cultural and religious pluralism having dealt with three serious self and other conflicts—with the religious racial and colonial other. Tagore also was no stranger to conflicts caused by pluralism and his arguments against (what he called) “Western” Nationalism had emerged from a deep appreciation of the diversity that characterized India. This essay will suggest that Gandhi’s affirmation of kinship between religions and Tagore’s conception of the religion of man were far more exacting than liberal positions that recommended (at best) tolerance between religions. Gandhi and Tagore both seemed to suggest that rather than tolerate diverse others one needed to be in harmony with difference being able to honour the world view of religious others as one would one’s own.