From Gandhi’s point of view, Nehru’s critical remarks on religion in his Autobiography and elsewhere were indeed largely beside the point. It is true that religions have myths and cosmologies, but it is not true that their principal function is to explain natural phenomena for people who desire explanations but lack science. Sir James Frazer in The Golden Bough proposed such a theory of religion, but hardly anybody supports Frazer’s theory today. Our forbears who invented the great traditional belief-systems had more important issues to deal with than explaining natural phenomena. Like survival. Survival depended on community, and, in Thomas Berry’s words, “There is no community without a community story.” (16) While Nehru’s attacks on religious belief were not relevant to what Gandhi believed, Nehru’s excuses for Gandhi’s religion, which cleared him of charges of bigotry, missed the positive core of Gandhi’s faith. Nehru had, of course, good reasons for his opinions: he witnessed religious intolerance at its worst in communal violence and he saw in action any number of foolish and irrational religious beliefs that served wicked purposes or none. It is understandable that he, like many members of the middle class throughout Asia, saw secularism as the hope of the future. (17)

To say that Gandhi and Nehru also talked past each other regarding economics would not be quite right, since there was no common object of discourse called “economics” about which they disagreed. Gandhi talked in terms of a “constructive programme,” which he once summarized as follows: “The constructive programme is a big undertaking including a number of items: (1) Hindu-Muslim or communal unity, (2) Removal of untouchability, (3) Prohibition, (4) Khadi, (5) Other village industries, (6) Village sanitation, (7) New or basic education, (8) Adult education, (9) Uplift of women, (10) Education in hygiene and health, (11) Propagation of Rashtra-bhasha, (12) Cultivating love of one’s own language, (13) Working for economic equality. This list can be supplemented, if necessary, but it is so comprehensive that I think it can be proved to include items appearing to have been omitted.” (18)

Gandhi’s constructive program is not economic in any reasonably narrow sense of the term “economic.” It is not oriented toward establishing favorable conditions (what some scholars call a “regime of accumulation”) so that money can profitably be invested. It does not mention savings and investment at all. It does not offer scientific explanation of economic phenomena, as David Ricardo offered explanations of the levels of prices and of rents. Its interest is entirely in righting wrongs and pursuing goals. It does not suppose that welfare is maximized when people get as much as possible of what they prefer. On the contrary, it supposes that people should do their duty, not what they prefer to do. It does not suppose that investment is needed to create jobs. On the contrary, it urges every idle hand in the village to set to work immediately.