Nationalism as a Moral Crusade

As force dominates global politics again, Gandhi's ethical nationalism offers a conscience-driven alternative to violence, coercion and exclusion

- RAJDEEP PATHAK

Gandhi's nationalism rejected aggression and exclusion, rooting freedom in self-discipline, compassion and the courage to resist injustice peacefully

anuary 30 is a date etched into the global consciousness not merely as the anniversary of a political assassination, but as the momenta mortal man crossed into the realm ofan enduring moral conscience.

Seventy-eight years ago, the three bullets that silenced Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi paradoxically amplified his voice, allowing it to echo across decades and continents, into a 21" century marked by wars, polarisation, and profound technological estrangement. As we commemorate his 78" martyrdom, remembrance must move beyond hollow hagiography—beyond statues, slogans, and postage stamps. To truly remember Gandhi is to engage seriously with his most radical experiment: the belief that truth and love could be wielded as political forces, and that politics itself must ultimately be a branch of ethics.

Gandhi described Satyagraha as “soul-force pure and simple” —a weapon of the strong, not the weak. It was an appeal to the conscience that sought to confront injustice without replicating its violence. Rooted in what he called suffering love, Satyagraha was, in essence, a “surgery of the soul,” aimed at expanding human moral capacity rather than humiliating or destroying the opponent. The political theorist Bhikhu Parekh explains Gandhi's method by noting that heassumed the burden of common evil, sought to liberate both himself and his adversary from its tyrannical logic, and thereby reduced the prevailing level of inhumanity. Gandhi’ struggle, therefore, ‘was never simply against the British Empire, but against the moral corrosion that empire produced in both ruler and ruled.