Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - t… - Sita Ram Goel

The image of the whole of Bharatavarsha being a chakravartikshetra is as old as the oldest Vedic literature. The Itihasa-Purana provide glorious accounts of many chakravartins-Ikshvaku, Puru, Prithu Vainya, Sivi Ausinara, Mandhata, Raghu and so on-who accompanied the ašvamedha horse demanding submission from all kingdoms and republics, big and small, spread all over the country. The rãjasûya yajña which was performed at the end of this campaign was more in the nature of a meeting of equals than a durbar held by a despot in order to humble or humiliate subordinate princes and patriarchs. Sri Krishna had demanded death for Jarasandha because the latter had violated this dharmic tradition of empire-building, and kept a hundred kings captive in his castle. The Nandas had won notoriety as an ignoble dynasty because they had also violated the standard code of conduct laid down by the rãjadharma for righteous emperors, destroyed many local dynasties, and reduced other princes to provincial satraps.

Sarva-dharma-samabhava was unknown to mainstream Hinduism before Mahatma Gandhi presented it as one of the sixteen mahavratas (great vows). in his booklet, Mangala-PrabhAta. It is true that mainstream Hinduism had always stood for tolerance towards all metaphysical points of view and ways of worship except that which led to Atatayi-Achara (gangsterism). But that tolerance had never become samabhAva, equal respect for all points of view. The acharyas of the different schools of Sanatana Dharma were all along engaged in debates over differences in various approaches to Sreyas (the Great Good). No Buddhist acharya is known to have equated the way of the Buddha to that of the Gita and vice versa, for instance. It is also true that overawed by the armed might of Islam, and deceived by the tall talk of the sufis, some Hindu saints in medieval India had equated Rama with Rahim, Krishna with Karim, Kashi with Kaba, the Brahmana with the Mullah, puja with namaz, and so on. But, the sects founded by these saints had continued to function on the fringes of Hindu society while the mainstream followed the saints and acharyas who never recognized Islam as a dharma. In modern times also, movements like the Brahmo Samaj which recognised Islam and Christianity as dharmas had failed to influence mainstream Hinduism, while Maharshi Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda who upheld the Veda and despised the Bible and the Quran, had had a great impact. This being the hoary Hindu tradition, Mahatma Gandhi’s recognition of Christianity and Islam not only as dharmas but also as equal to Sanatana Dharma was fraught with great mischief. For, unlike the earlier Hindu advocates of Islam and Christianity as dharmas, Mahatma Gandhi made himself known and became known as belonging to mainstream Hinduism.

Nehru ... simply picked up a prestigious word from the Western political parlance and made it mean the opposite of what it meant in the West. The outcome of this perversion proved disastrous.... In pre-Independence India, the "Muslim minority" had exercised a veto on who was to be hailed as "nationalist" and who was to be denounced as "Hindu communalist". Now the same "minority" reacquired the same veto on who was to be applauded as "secularist" and who was to be hounded out as "communalist". (Foreword)...After having studied Islamic scriptures and Islamic history as unfolded in my own country and abroad, I have reached the definite conclusion that Hindu society has committed a fundamental and suicidal blunder. ... The blunder is to recognize Islam as a dharma.(32)...It cannot be said that Islam had left anything undone in making itself well known. Slaughter of the defeated armies after they had surrendered, public auction abroad of thousands of men and women and children who had been captured and sent there, mass rape of helpless women, destruction of temples, burning of the sacred books of dharma, breaking of idols of the gods, plunder of all kinds of property - all these doings of the Islamized Arabs have been applauded by the Muslim theologians and historians and proclaimed as the great triumph of Islam. (33)...Nor is there any indication that anyone censured the swindlers known as sufis on account of their questionable character. ... In the khanqahs (monasteries) of these sufis, there were caged those helpless Hindu women who had been captured by Ghaznavi and presented to them as their reward. (35)...Most of the historical masjids and khanqahs found in India today, have been built by destroying Hindu temples... many other atrocities - rape of helpless women, dishonouring and killing of sadhus and saints, cold-blooded slaughter of people defeated in war including the young and the aged, capture and sale of Hindu men and women and children as slaves, ...... (38)...But no Hindu took the trouble to know the fact that practising deception with the Kafirs was sanctioned by the scriptures of Islam... But Gandhi's slogan of sarva dharma samabhava, had sent the country into a deep slumber. (47) ... Some of them joined the Communist Party, and began to advance the designs of Islam behind the smoke-screen of progressivism. (47)