Author’s Note:
This article is a companion piece to Beyond Survival: Violence, Religion, and the Need for Inner Regeneration. Both essays arise from my personal reflections on a series of messages and dialogues Mahatma Gandhi published in Young India (Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 32) after receiving the news of the assassination of Swami Shraddhananda.
In particular, I have drawn from selected passages on pages 452–454, 460–462, and 586–588 (notably “267. A Candid Critic”). Although both articles engage the broader question of communal conflict, their immediate context remains Gandhi’s responses — his reflections, correspondence, and moral reasoning in the aftermath of Swami Shraddhananda’s assassination.
These writings are therefore not abstract discussions of communal violence, but attempts to situate contemporary reflection within the moral and historical moment Gandhi himself was addressing.
Introduction
The assassination of a religious leader by a man claiming to act in defense of faith is not merely a political event. It is a mirror. It forces us to confront an uncomfortable question: why does religion — which speaks the language of compassion, surrender, and transcendence — so easily become a battlefield of identity?
To answer this, we must look deeper than theology. We must look into the anthropology of the human being.
The Primitive Inheritance
Long before the emergence of organized religion, early humans survived through competition. They hunted in groups, defended territory, protected kin, and repelled outsiders. In such an environment, aggression was not immorality — it was necessity. Violence was not ideology — it was survival.
The human nervous system evolved in this atmosphere. Suspicion of the outsider, rapid mobilization against threat, loyalty to one’s group — these were adaptive traits. Without them, survival would have been uncertain.
Civilization advanced. Language refined thought. Ethical systems emerged. Religions articulated visions of compassion, non-violence, and universal brotherhood. Yet evolution does not erase instinct. It layers over it.
The ancient survival impulse did not disappear; it waited for new forms.
Religion as Identity
When religion emerged, it did more than offer spiritual meaning. It created belonging. It defined community. It separated “us” from “them.” Over time, religious identity became intertwined with culture, politics, geography, and power.
Thus, what once was tribal survival instinct now attached itself to symbolic identity. To criticize my faith became equivalent to threatening my tribe. To attack my leader became an assault on my collective self.
Violence, once used to defend territory, was now mobilized to defend doctrine, honor, and sacred memory.
Every faith proclaims peace. Every civilization carries episodes of religiously justified conflict. The contradiction is not unique to one religion or one people. It is structural to human identity formation.
As one wise metaphor suggests: the pot cannot call the kettle black.
The Illusion of Theological Purity
It is tempting, in moments of communal trauma, to isolate blame in the theology of the other. But history resists such simplification. Traditions that preach compassion have sanctioned war under certain conditions. Scriptures contain passages shaped by the historical realities in which they were composed.
The question is not whether violent interpretations exist. They do — in multiple traditions. The deeper question is why such interpretations gain force in certain moments.
The answer lies less in sacred texts and more in threatened identity.
When communities feel insecure — economically, politically, or culturally — the dormant survival instinct awakens. Religion then becomes the language through which fear expresses itself.
Violence is rarely born from faith alone. It is born from fear clothed in faith.
Reform Is Not Enough
Societies attempt reform. They organize interfaith dialogues, issue condemnations, draft laws, preach tolerance. These are necessary. But they often treat symptoms rather than roots.
If the underlying psychology of group insecurity remains untouched, the next crisis will reactivate the same patterns. The surface language may change, but the instinct remains.
Reform operates at the level of policy and speech. The problem lies at the level of consciousness.
The Need for Regeneration
What is required, therefore, is not mere adjustment but regeneration — a transformation of the human mind that goes beyond survival-based identity.
This does not mean erasing religion. It means outgrowing defensive religiosity. It means shifting from “my faith must survive” to “truth is not threatened by diversity.” It means recognizing that identity need not be maintained through opposition.
Such regeneration demands discipline of the heart. It demands the courage to examine one’s own tradition before condemning another. It demands the humility to admit that violence is not an imported defect but a shared human inheritance.
Until this inner evolution takes place, history will repeat its patterns under new slogans.
The challenge before humanity is not merely interfaith harmony. It is the transcendence of fear-based identity itself.
Only then can religion cease to be a battlefield and become what it originally sought to be — a path beyond the primitive reflex of survival toward the maturity of spiritual freedom.
Ashram, February 10, 2026
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