“The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?”
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Source: Harijan (26 November 1938), 'The Jews'; Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol.74 (1938).
About this quote
The argument treats home as something earned by living and working somewhere, not inherited through scripture or distant origins. It surfaces a real tension: when ancestral longing and present-day belonging point to different lands, which claim should shape where a people builds its future?
When to use it
- An immigrant who has worked and raised children in a country for thirty years calls it home over her birthplace.
- A city debates whether long-term residents or far-flung descendants have the stronger claim to a historic quarter.
- A grandchild weighs moving to an ancestral village against staying where their whole life is already built.