Gandhi - the Hindu

 In my village people I hear dharma and devudu in every third sentence. 

Gandhi, unlike us modern Indians, publically and privately, overtly and inwardly owned up this dharmam and religion. And ordinary people saw in him one of themselves.

" ... Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is one of the few voices in the long stream of Indian thinkers who sought to articulate the idea of India. This he did in terms of idioms and images of Indian tradition. For example, the cow worship and a movement for cow protection were intended to recapture the sense and atmosphere of auspiciousness in public life (Banwari). His adherence to and conviction in truth (satya) was not a matter of personal opinion and faith. He used the idea and idiom of satya to fight the British through a programme of Satyagraha. Once he remarked that his mission was to practice spirituality in politics. Around 1921 he comes out with a statement of his personal conviction: Why I consider myself a Hindu? He says,

“I call myself a sanatani Hindu, because,

1. I believe in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas and all that goes by the name of Hindu scriptures, and therefore in Avatars and rebirth,
2. I believe in the varnashrama dharma in a sense in my opinion strictly Vedic but not in its present popular and crude sense,

 
3. I believe in the protection of the cow in its much larger sense than the popular,

 
4. I do not disbelieve in idol-worship.”