Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram is inseparable from the image of Gandhi walking. It was sung on the Salt March of 1930, when Gandhi and his companions walked from Sabarmati to the sea at Dandi to break the salt law, and the dhun kept the marchers' step for twenty four days, entering the world's newsreels along with the march itself. It belonged to the fixed repertoire of his ashram, whose prayer book, the Ashram Bhajanavali, gathered the hymns of his daily multi faith prayer meetings, and it was sung at those meetings until the end of his life.
For Gandhi the dhun with its Ishwar Allah couplet was a compact of his deepest commitments, devotion to Rama as he understood him, the unity of the religions of India, and the discipline of repeated prayer as training for nonviolence. The chant has carried that association ever since, sung at commemorations of Gandhi in India and abroad, at interfaith gatherings, and in renditions by generations of Indian musicians. Its history is not without argument, some modern voices have contested its inclusive couplet from both directions, which is itself evidence of how much weight a two line chant can bear. As a piece of living liturgy it remains what it was on the road to Dandi, a walking song addressed to God by many names.