Rajmohan Gandhi at Liverpool Hope University

London, July 16: A British university has conferred an honorary degree on Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma, for his efforts in seeking to promote greater understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.

“The future of humanity depends on whether or not the Muslim or non-Muslim divide, which directly affects the people of this country (UK), too, can be bridged,” said Rajmohan, 75, on receiving an honorary Doctor of Letters from Liverpool Hope University on Wednesday.

The university has taken some radical steps itself to achieve the same ends by offering “the UK’s first MA in Contemporary Muslim Studies”.

According to the university, “the new MA will consist of six modules” — Islam in the West, Islamic finance and banking, Islamic economics, Islamic management and organisation structures, women in Islam and Muslim discourse and the media with some optional modules, including Arabic.

It is not known whether similar MAs will be offered in Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism but Britain is having to confront the growing menace of home-grown terrorism that appears to be attracting some of the younger British-born Muslims.

While an academic course in “Muslim studies” does not touch directly on the roots of terrorism, British society as a whole is trying to understand the growing incidence of disaffected and dangerous Muslim youths in its midst. Three young British Muslims were given life last week for a plot to blow up trans-Atlantic aircraft — they had proudly recorded “martyrdom videos”.

Rajmohan, a research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, tackled the issue head on when he spoke inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool on Wednesday.

He declared that the bridge between Muslims and non-Muslims “will have to be built from both sides, and by people of all kinds, including citizens, scholars, people in government, religious leaders, journalists and artists”.

Rajmohan, who is the son of Devdas Gandhi, said: “An essential tool for this bridge will be the ability that Gandhi remarkably had — of speaking the truth to your own side. Allow me to point out that courageous sounds have lately been heard in Pakistan, where politicians, editorial writers and grassroots activists are demanding that religious minorities be protected and assured equal rights. I salute their voice.”

He went on: “All know that Britain has been involved in the stories of several nations, including in the Middle East, and including India and Pakistan. Equally, Pakistanis and Indians are involved in the stories of today’s Britain. Through this response I would like to express my conviction that people living in Britain, including those present in the cathedral, including those of Pakistani and Indian origin, have a role in bringing healing and justice to the Middle East and in the India-Pakistan relationship.”

He included a warning: “On my nuclearised subcontinent, a water crisis looms in the near horizon even as hundreds of millions of the hitherto impoverished look forward to a better life. Will armies insist on continuing to face one another at great heights in Siachen in Kashmir, where — while guns for the moment are silent — the freeze kills soldiers of both stripes every day? Will the armies continue to do this until the ice and the glaciers melt? Whether on the subcontinent or here or elsewhere, the call for reconciliation is actually a call for sanity.”

Listening to him was Liverpool Hope’s vice-chancellor, Professor Gerald Pillay, a scholar in religious studies who has New Zealand citizenship but was born in the Indian community in the country where Gandhi first tested his political philosophy — South Africa.

Pillay explained that Rajmohan was being honoured because of his efforts to achieve India-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim reconciliation. Since 9/11, “he had tried to address the divide between the West and the Islamic world”. “We honour Professor Gandhi for his role as a public advocate for peace and reconciliation,” said Pillay. “In a period of over 50 years he has sought to bring divided groups together. His work has focused on trust-building, reconciliation and democracy and in battles against corruption and inequalities.”

It remains to be seen whether Rajmohan’s brother, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, 65, former governor of Bengal, will be similarly honoured by a British university for trying to achieve an even more difficult task — find a solution in Singur between the pro- and anti- Mamata Banerjee brigades.

Gopal Krishna is visiting Britain in November. He is a former director of the Nehru Centre in London and was once due to come to Britain as High Commissioner.