Gandhi - an anti-hindu

[maadhav 0]

The article below is long, but shows that gandhi did not care not hindus for hinduism.

 

I have entered papa breaks lost after the paste.

if i broke down a paragraph by mistake,

then pardon me.

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Was Satyagraha a Hindu Movement?

 

Agneya Panja

 

Source: http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305975

 

Published on Friday, December 10, 2004

 

M.K. Gandhi became an internationally recognized figure due to the media coverage of his satyagraha (meaning Truth-Force or Soul-Force) movement against the British. Gandhi based this completely nonviolent struggle on his idea of ahimsa. According to Gandhi, ideally violence was never to be used in life by anyone. This was a distortion of an ancient Hindu idea. Ahimsa was an ideal meant mainly for those practicing a spiritual life, and had a definition closer to non-maliciousness, rather than non-violence. It was okay for the spiritual seeker to kill a mosquito!

While Gandhi is viewed as a spiritual leader, in reality he was more a politician who used religious ideas. Being a politician, Gandhi should have practiced the dharma of a Kshatriya (ruler, politician, warrior). Of all the Hindu varnas, it is the Kshatriya varna where violence is used frequently. For Gandhi to suggest otherwise, as he often did, clearly violates the tenets of Hinduism. One only need view the Bhagavad Gita to see that violence was viewed as being -- depending on the circumstances -- necessary for the Kshatriya.

 

It was on the battlefield of Kurukshreta that Lord Krishna, considered to be one of the many Avatars of Vishnu -- urged Arjuna to go to war against his relatives. Krishna's message -- based on the knowledge of the divine and eternal soul -- is in chapter 2 of the Gita:

The embodied soul is eternal in existence, indestructible and infinite, only the material body is factually perishable; therefore fight O Arjuna.[1]

 

Arjuna did not fight with a charkha. Instead he picked up a bow and arrow, and yes, he killed people! Gandhi had to have known this, because he stated on numerous occasions that he had read the Gita. He chose to ignore the obvious, and interpret Krishna's message in another manner. An interpretation with a heavy tinge of New Testament philosophy:

 

But the New Testament produced a different impression, especially the Sermon on the Mount which went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. The verses, "But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away thy coat let him have thy cloak too," delighted me beyond measure and put me in mind of Shamal Bhatt's 'For a bowl of water, give a goodly meal' etc. My young mind tried to unify the teachings of the Gita, the Light of Asia, and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.[2]

 

Reading this extract from his autobiography, one wonders how exactly Christ's injunction to "turn the other cheek" can be unified with Lord Krishna's message for the Kshatriya to fight a righteous war? The simple truth is that they cannot be unified. The simple truth is that Lord Krishna did not tell Arjuna to adopt such a passive stance in the face of an unrighteous enemy. To 'turn the other cheek' is to not fight, it is to allow oneself to be slaughtered. So contrary to Gandhi's claims in India, he had not unified the teachings -- it was impossible. Instead, he had chosen one (New Testament), and tried to portray it as representative of the other (Bhagavad Gita).

During the Indian satyagraha campaign, Gandhi claimed his movement was based on Hindu ideas. It is not surprising he would make such a claim, given that India was majority Hindu; thus for Gandhi to get the masses to follow his ideas, he would have had to give a Hindu veneer to the Christian tenets he preached. It would not be in his best interests to admit the truth, as he did in a letter to the British High Commissioner in South Africa. Before showing what he said, it is important to realize that Gandhi used the same methods in India that he used in South Africa, that of complete nonviolence. The following is a direct admission that the methods he used were based upon Christian ideas:

 

I need hardly preface what I am about to say with the statement that, in the position I have felt called upon to take up in this matter, my desire has been to serve the government equally with my countrymen. It is because I consider myself to be a lover of the Empire for what I have learned to be its beauties that, seeing, rightly or wrongly, in the Asiatic Law Amendment seeds of danger to it, I have advised my countrymen at all costs to resist the Act in the most peaceful and, shall I add, Christian manner.[3]

 

In South Africa, Gandhi was also honest enough to admit which historical figures represented Satyagraha in action -- or perhaps more appropriately -- inaction! The following is a summary from Gandhi's South African newspaper, the Indian Opinion, of a speech that he made in Germiston, South Africa, in the middle of 1909, during the satyagraha campaign:

 

During the last three months [while in jail], he [Gandhi] had found much consolation in reading the book of the prophet Daniel in the Bible. Daniel was one of the greatest passive resisters that ever lived, and they must follow his example.[4]

 

Later Gandhi included Jesus along with the Biblical Daniel as those who best represented satyagraha. Krishna is a name that would never be spoken of in the speeches he made in South Africa, such as in this report of a 1909 speech of his:

 

Mr. Gandhi, who was well received, on rising, said that, although he had chosen passive resistance as the subject that evening, he did not wish to deal with the Indian question...Passive resistance, the speaker proceeded, was a misnomer...The idea was more completely and better expressed by the term 'soul force'. As such, it was as old as the human race. Active resistance was better expressed by the term 'body force'. Jesus Christ, Daniel and Socrates represented the purest form of passive resistance or soul force.... The exercise of this doctrine involved physical suffering on the part of those who practiced it. But it was a known fact that the sum of such suffering was greater rather than less in the world. That being so, all that was necessary for those who recognized the immeasurable power of soul force was to consciously and deliberately accept physical suffering as their lot, and, when this was done, the very suffering became a source of joy to the sufferer.[5]

 

It was this idea of physical suffering that was central to Gandhi's satyagraha. The idea was that suffering was something to be enjoyed, not because of a reward at the end of the suffering, but because suffering should be joyful regardless of any goals involved! Sri Aurobindo noted this masochistic tendency of Gandhi's, writing in a 1940 letter, “Something in him takes delight in suffering for its own sake. Even the prospect of suffering seems to please him. ...It is the Christian idea that has taken hold of him.”7

 

The idea of deliberate suffering enshrined in the Sermon on the Mount was so pivotal to Gandhi's thinking that, as evident from the following November 1927 speech at a YMCA, it was the most important piece of religious scripture he read in his life:

 

There are some who will not even take my flat denial when I tell them I am not a Christian.

The message of Jesus, as I understand it, is contained in his Sermon on the Mount unadulterated and taken as a whole, and even in connection with the Sermon on the Mount, my own humble interpretation of the message is in many respects different from the orthodox. The message, to my mind, has suffered distortion in the West. It may be presumptuous for me to say so, but as a devotee of truth, I should not hesitate to say what I feel. I know that the world is not waiting to know my opinion on Christianity. ...

...But if I feel impelled to share my thoughts with you this evening, it is because I want to enlist your sympathy in my search for truth and because so many Christian friends are interested in my thoughts on the teachings of Jesus. If then I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, 'Oh yes, I am a Christian.'. .... By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount, but then you will have to take sackcloth and ashes. The teachings of the Sermon was meant for each and every one of us.[6]

 

The YMCA speech clearly show that Gandhi did not reconcile the Gita's teachings with the New Testament as he claimed in his biography, instead showing beyond a doubt that the Sermon on the Mount was more important than any chapter of the Gita; and one gathers from the speech that many people in Gandhi's time viewed him as a Christian. This was a common opinion throughout Gandhi's political life. As Sri Aurobindo noted in a talk with his disciples:

 

Disciple: Some prominent national workers in India seem to me to be incarnations of some European force here.

They may not be incarnations, but they may be strongly influenced by European thought. For instance, Gandhi is a European -- truly, a Russian Christian in an Indian body. And there are some Indians in European bodies?

Gandhi a European?

 

Yes. When the Europeans say that he is more Christian than many Christians (some even say that he is “Christ of the modern times”) they are perfectly right. All his preaching is derived from Christianity, and though the garb is Indian the essential spirit is Christian. He may not be Christ, but at any rate he comes in continuation of the same impulsion. He is largely influenced by Tolstoy, the Bible, and has a strong Jain tinge in his teachings; at any rate more than by the Indian scriptures -- the Upanishads or the Gita which he interprets in the light of his own ideas.

Many educated Indians consider him a spiritual man.

Yes, because the Europeans call him spiritual. But what he preaches is not Indian spirituality but something derived from Russian Christianity, non-violence, suffering, etc...[7]

~*~

 

Gandhi is well known for his opinion of Western civilization. When once asked about it, he replied, “I think it would be a very good idea.” But what was his main problem with Western civilization? Was it the fact that it was not in concordance with Hindu spirituality? What led Gandhi to say such a thing about the West's civilization, keeping in mind the fact that he had been loyal to the British Empire until just past his 50th birthday?

The answer was that Western civilization was simply not Christian enough. As Gandhi wrote in a 1917 letter to a Danish missionary Esther Faering, who was working in India:

My theory is that modern civilization is decidedly anti-Christian. And what Europeans have brought to India is that civilization, not the life of Jesus. You and a handful of others are striving to represent that life. It is bound to leave its mark upon the soil. But it must take time.[8]

Judging from this letter, it is clear that Gandhi – having approved of the role of his missionary friend – was also trying to bring to India the life of Jesus. This letter and articles he wrote in the years after the World War I, touch on a deeper reason for his loss of loyalty to the British Empire, which manifested publicly during the Khilafaat agitation:

 

The nations of Europe are called Christian but they have forgotten the teachings of Christ. They may read the Bible or study the Hebrew language, but they do not act according to the teachings of the former. This wind blowing in the west is opposed to the teachings of Jesus. They have forgotten Jesus himself.[9]

 

Gandhi believed that the East would prove to be more Christian than the West (no doubt he fancied himself to play a large role in this):

 

…But I do not apologise, in closing this part of my subject, for saying that the frightful outrage that is just going on in Europe, perhaps, shows that the message of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Peace, has been little understood in Europe, and that light upon it may have to be thrown from the East.[10]

 

What Gandhi wanted was a Christian civilization for the East, based on the 'Sermon on the Mount' ideals. By 1920, he had become disillusioned with the West, and lowered his expectations of their potential to live up to Christ's message. Of course, that did not change his opinion of Christ:

 

…But by rejection of Western Civilization I never meant, nor do I mean even today, shunning everything English or hating the British. I revere the Bible. Christ's Sermon on the Mount fills me with bliss even today. Its sweet verses have even today the power to quench my agony of soul.[11]

His disillusionment – or 'agony' of the soul he never realized – did not mean he had given up on the West. Even in 1938, he was still trying to convince the West to abandon violent means and instead 'turn the other cheek'. In an interview with an English professor conducted right before the start of World War II, when everyone in Europe had an inclination that war would occur, Gandhi discussed his plan for an English defense – if you can call it a defense:

 

[PROFESSOR:] How is it that many of the English Pacifists are talking of defense and elaborate plans for defense?

 

[GANDHIJI:] Now about the English Pacifists. I know there are some great and sincere men among them, but they are thinking in terms of pacifism as distinguished from unadulterated non-violence. I am essentially a non-violent man, and I believe in war bereft of every trace of violence. An essentially non-violent man does not calculate the consequences. The English Pacifists you are talking of calculate, and when they speak of pacifism they do so with the mental reservation that when pacifism fails, arms might be used… No, someone has to arise in England with the living faith to say that England, whatever happens, shall not use arms. They are a nation fully armed, and if they having the power deliberately refuse to use arms, theirs will be the first example of Christianity in active practice on a mass scale. That will be a real miracle.[12]

The above is very illuminating, because the methods – that of complete nonviolence – Gandhi advises the British to use are the same methods that he used in his Indian movement. This is the same man, after all, who suspended his satyagraha movement in 1921 due to the killings of police officers in Chaura Chauri. It will be of little surprise to note that Gandhi was not an advocate of arms use for the sake of Indian independence. Thus one can conclude from the interview above that Gandhi was practicing mass scale Christianity in India, not Hinduism.

~*~

 

As a young man, Gandhi went to London for schooling in law. It was here that he became interested in Christianity. But it would not be accurate to say that everything he believed in stemmed from Christianity. Gandhi always had a strong element of Jainism in him, and he had a Jain guru – mentioned here – who Gandhi would seek advice from occasionally:

 

Three moderns have left a deep impress on my life, and captivated me: Raychandbhai by his living contact; Tolstoy by his book, The Kingdom of God is Within You; and Ruskin by his Unto this Last.[13]

 

With two Christian writers and a Jain guru guiding the youthful Gandhi, the principles he began to stand for are best viewed as belonging to a liberal Christian who wanted to follow some of the teachings of Christ, yet at the same time remain tolerant of other religions. This would have been perfectly fine, except that Gandhi was a Hindu, and Jesus himself was not as tolerant as Gandhi believed him to be:

 

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God[14]

Gandhi characteristically chose to ignore – 'The Man' – Christ's words when he chastised the British for their treatment of Indians in South Africa:

 

…That the treatment of Indians is contrary to the teaching of Christianity needs hardly any argument. The Man, who taught us to love our enemies and to give our cloak to the one who wanted the coat, and to hold out the right cheek when the left was smitten, and who swept away the distinction between the Jew and the Gentile, would never brook a disposition that causes a man to be so proud of himself as to consider himself polluted even by the touch of a fellow-being.[15]

 

Indeed, Jesus did remove the distinction between the Jew and Gentile. He condemned them both, labeling the Jews as children of the Devil.[16]

 

Gandhi surely noticed intolerant utterances of Christ in his many readings of the New Testament. He chose to ignore them, and zealously focus in on the Sermon on the Mount. It's remarkable to think how a few verses from that Sermon took control of his mind. Such was the case that, during his London and South African years, he identified himself openly with liberal Christian groups.

As an 'Agent' for the Christian Esoteric Union and a member of the London Vegetarian Society, Gandhi followed a quite unorthodox brand of Christianity. In an article he wrote entitled 'Vegetarianism', Gandhi explained some of his views:

 

…The Christian vegetarians claim that Jesus was also a vegetarian, and there does not seem to be anything to oppose that view, except with reference to His having eaten broiled fish after the Resurrection. The most successful missionaries in South Africa (the Trappists) are vegetarians. …I submit the following for consideration of those who believe in the Bible. Before the 'Fall' we were vegetarians:

 

And God said: behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat; and it was so.

There may be some excuse for the unconverted partaking of meat, but for those who say they are 'born again,' vegetarian Christians claim, there can be none; because their state surely should be equal, if not superior, to that of the people before the 'Fall'.[17]

 

In a further, and more important, description of the Esoteric Christian Union written by Gandhi, the origin of the Gandhian principle of all religions teaching the same message is shown. Note how the other religions are being reconciled with Christianity – in other words the other religions are to be interpreted in a Christian framework:

…In that system, there is no reviling Mahomed or Buddha in order to prove the superiority of Jesus. On the other hand, it reconciles the other religions with Christianity, which, in the opinion of the authors, is nothing but one mode (among many) of presentation of the same eternal truth. The many puzzles of the Old Testament find herein a solution at once complete and satisfactory. [18]

 

To Gandhi, Jesus Christ was someone that belonged to all humanity, and that his love was equivalent to ahimsa:

He [Gandhi] believed in equal regard for all religions. Mere tolerance was not of much value. No religion worth the name stood in need of patronage. It should command respect. He added that Jesus Christ might be looked upon as belonging to the Christians only but he really did not belong to any community in as much as the lesson that Jesus Christ gave belonged to the whole world. So saying he asked Nirmal Bose to translate the following (I Corinthians XII 1 to 7) from the New Testament on love, which he preferred to render as ahimsa.[19]

 

Again, Hindu ahimsa is not referring strictly to love, or suffering, or complete non-violence. It refers to non-maliciousness, which encompasses love (of the divine kind) and non-violence, but not a fanatical nonviolence. For in Hinduism, the soul is immortal, and the death of the body is not to be viewed with sadness, because the soul will take up a new one:

 

Just as a man giving up old worn out garments accepts other new apparel, in the same way the embodied soul giving up old and worn out bodies verily accepts new bodies.[20]

This knowledge of the immortality of the soul is the reason why Lord Krishna told Arjuna to go and fight. And this is why the Hindu idea of ahimsa also took into account certain situations where violence would be necessary; because in reality, nobody is ever truly killed in battle.

Gandhi's ahimsa took none of this into account; instead the Mahatma chose to rely on New Testament scripture, and chose to practice Christ's 'love' – no matter the circumstance.

~*~

 

Gandhi's was interested in Christianity from a very early age. Prior to arriving in South Africa, he wrote a letter asking his Jain Guru the following:

 

Do you know anything about Christianity? If so, what do you think about it? The Christians hold that the Bible is divinely inspired and that Christ was an incarnation of God, being His Son, Was He? Were all the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Christ? If a snake is about to bite me, should I allow myself to be bitten or should I kill it, supposing that that is the only way in which I can save myself?[21]

 

So strong was the pull of Christianity that he even thought about converting:

 

There was a time when I was wavering between Hinduism and Christianity. When I recovered my balance of mind, I felt that to me salvation was possible only through the Hindu religion and my faith in Hinduism grew deeper and more enlightened.[22]

 

It's doubtful that the latter part was something Gandhi said truthfully. After all, this is the same Gandhi who continuously stressed reconciliation of the religions; a man who preached that all religions taught the same message. The fact that he made such a strong – even intolerant – statement in support of Hinduism versus other religions was because he needed to counter the statement of his wavering. Anything less would have been an admission to the crowd that he still held onto beliefs that were Christian in origin, an admission that would have been disastrous to his plan to indoctrinate nonviolence into every single Hindu. It would not have been wise of Gandhi to admit to a Hindu audience that he had simply reconciled the other religions with Christianity; for he needed to convince Hindus that complete nonviolence and self-inflicted suffering came from Hinduism.

In South Africa, Gandhi not only admitted that Jesus was the main historical figure to follow satyagraha, but more importantly, wrote that the New Testament was the inspiration for the struggle of the South African Indian settlers against racist laws:

 

…Indians who migrated to this country in search of an honest livelihood, and who find themselves faced with civic and social extinction, are fighting under the inspiration of the New Testament. Gentle Jesus, the greatest passive resister the world has seen, is their pattern. What matter it to them if the rulers of the Transvaal reject their advances, if their overlord King Edward declares himself, like Mahomed of Ghazni, to be unable to protect them. Was not Jesus rejected and yet did he not resist blasphemy that His persecutors would have Him utter on pain of suffering what was, in their estimation, and inglorious death, side by side with thieves and robbers? But the crown of thorns today sits better on that bleeding head than a crown bedecked with diamonds of the purest water of any sovereign. He died indeed, yet He lives in the memory of all true sons of God, and with Him live also the thieves who accepted the humble Nazarene and His teaching.[23]

Gandhi urged the Indian settlers to follow the 'Prophet of Nazareth' in their struggle, which was not a revolt of any kind, merely a battle for superior rights to the 'kaffirs' and an opportunity to inflict physical suffering on themselves:

 

Happenings in India have received the colour of an insurrection, and they have been interpreted to mean a revolt against the British raj. The crusade of the Indians in the Transvaal has not the slightest resemblance to an insurrectionary movement. It simply means an offer on the part of the community to suffer much physical hardship rather than allow its moral sense to be atrophied. It is, on the part of Indians in the Transvaal, an endeavor to follow the precept of the Prophet of Nazareth, 'Resist not Evil'.[24]

 

Gandhi's main gripe with the British government was that they were not acting in the spirit of Christianity and the British Constitution:

 

…Even from a most selfish point of view, I submit, no good can result from an attitude of unfriendliness and hatred towards the Indians, unless there is any pleasure in creating in one's mind an unfriendly feeling towards one's neighbour. Such a policy is repugnant to the British Constitution and the British sense of justice and fair play, and above all hateful to the spirit of Christianity which is professed by the objectors to the Indian Franchise…

…Will they see a race degraded and insulted because of the 'unreasoning' prejudice against it and sit still? Is such indifference sanctioned by Christ's Christianity? [25]

Gandhi urged South African whites to accept his movement because it was based on Christian law:

 

So that the South African Colonists should, in my opinion, rather welcome passive resistance in place of physical violence; and, after all, is it not merely the supersession of the Mosaic law of tooth for a tooth by Christian law of non-resistance of evil by evil?[26]

 

It is this 'supersession' of Mosaic Law that defines what Gandhi was really trying to do in his lifelong satyagraha campaigns. It was Christian Law – as opposed to Mosaic Law – that Gandhi was trying to get Indians and others to practice on a mass scale. He famously said while in India, “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” – an abrogation of the Old Testament doctrine with the New Testament.

 

One can infer that Gandhi considered himself to be practicing a truer Christianity with his supersession. It can also be inferred that he believed himself to be truer to Christ's teachings with regards to proselytization, views he shared at a missionary conference in 1916:

…If there is any substance in what I have said, will not the great missionary bodies of India, to whom she owes a deep debt of gratitude for what they have done and are doing, do still better and serve the spirit of Christianity better, by dropping the goal of proselytizing but continuing their philanthropic work? I hope you will not consider this to be an impertinence on my part. I make the suggestion in all sincerity and with due humility. Moreover, I have some claim upon your attention. I have endeavoured to study the Bible. I consider it as part of my scriptures. The spirit of the Sermon on the Mount competes almost on equal terms with the Bhagavad Gita for the domination of my heart. I yield to no Christian in the strength of devotion with which I sing, “Lead, kindly light” and several other inspired hymns of a similar nature. I have come under the influence of noted Christian missionaries belonging to different denominations. And I enjoy to this day the privilege of friendship with some of them. You will perhaps therefore allow that I have offered the above suggestion not as a biased Hindu but as a humble and impartial student of religion with great leanings towards Christianity. May it not be that the “Go Ye unto All the World” message has been somewhat narrowly interpreted and the spirit of it missed? [27]

 

But are Christian missionaries being bad Christians when going out and trying to convert the world? Take a look at what Jesus himself says in the New Testament, including the part that Gandhi left out:

 

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost; Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.[28]

 

As for those who are not converted, Jesus has the following kind words:

 

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.[29]

 

Christian missionaries have not misinterpreted Christ's message from the New Testament. It was Gandhi who wanted to create a new type of non-proselytizing Christianity, one that revolved around suffering and turning the other cheek, which Gandhi claimed to have been a tactic of strength, as he said in a late 1947 letter to Yvonene Privat:

I was so glad to receive your argued letter of 27th August. I see that you have grasped the fundamental difference between passive resistance and non-violent resistance. Resistance both forms are, but you have to pay a very heavy price when your resistance is passive, in the sense of the weakness of the resister. Europe mistook the bold and brave resistance full of wisdom by Jesus of Nazareth for passive resistance, as if it was of the weak. As I read the New Testament for the first time I detected no passivity, no weakness about Jesus as depicted in the four gospels and the meaning became clearer to me when I read Tolstoy's Harmony of Gospels and his other kindred writings. Has not the West paid heavily regarding Jesus as a passive resister? Christendom has been responsible for the wars which put to shame even those described in the Old Testament and other records, historical or semi-historical.[30]

 

It was Gandhi who was going to bring Christians back to Christ's teachings; it was he who was going to bring to the world the real meaning of the Sermon on the Mount. The fact that he was not officially a Christian? That did not matter. In a Harijan article in late 1947, Gandhi chose to extract a written letter he had received from a friend, regarding Albert Schweitzer:

 

From a letter received by Rajkumari from Dr. Maude Royden and which she has given to me for reading, I have extracted the following relevant passages.

I marvel that the best Christian in the world should not be a Christian! I have been reading these last two or three weeks a new biography of Albert Schweitzer and there again I have this paradox. I don't know if the name of Schweitzer is known in India but to my mind he is perhaps alone in the world in his greatness… And as you may perhaps know, Schweitzer is regarded with suspicion by the 'orthodox' because it is held that he has not a sufficiently exalted view of our Saviour. And yet there is not a Christian in the entire world who has followed Christ with the same heroic faith and utterly selfless devotion. And when I read of his philosophy, his 'reverence for life', and how he constantly refers himself to Jesus of Nazareth, I know that no one had ever exalted Jesus to such a height in the minds of those who read Schweitzer.[31]

 

It can be inferred that Gandhi viewed himself as similar to Schweitzer – as an officially non-Christian who was more of a Christian than any of the baptized masses – and thus chose to extract the above portion of the letter. Gandhi wanted to remove the 'tyranny' that followers of Christ had brought to the world, and replace it with his idea of ahimsa, which he constantly referred to as the 'gospel of love' found in the New Testament; a gospel that he, like Christ before him (if Christ existed), was trying to spread:

 

Christ came into this world to preach and spread the gospel of love and peace, but what his followers have brought about is tyranny and misery. Christians who were taught the maxim of 'love thy neighbour as thyself' are divided among themselves.[32]

 

He spent his whole life trying to get Christ's message practiced on a mass scale, most outrageously by telling Hindus during partition to let the Muslims slaughter them. He had achieved minimal success on the ground level, even though Western media reports hailed him (not surprising, because he – more than any Hindu guru with real spiritual experiences and power – reminded them of someone they could identify with, Christ) as a great religious leader.

Having failed to introduce Christianity on a mass scale in India, Gandhi had one last desire to fulfill. He wished to – like Christ before him – forgive his assassin (by the time of this prayer speech in late October 1947, threats were being made on his life):

 

Ahimsa is always tested in the midst of himsa, kindness in the midst of cruelty, truth in the midst of falsehood, love in the midst of hate. This is the eternal law. If on this auspicious day, we all made a sacred resolve not to spill blood for blood but offer ours to be shed instead, we would make history. Jesus Christ prayed to God from the Cross to forgive those who had crucified him. It is my constant prayer to God that He may give me the strength to intercede even for my assassin. And it should be your prayer too that your faithful servant may be given that strength to forgive.[33]

 

Although he did not get the chance to forgive his assassin, his death has almost given him the status of a martyr – just like Jesus and other Christians. Time will tell how long that lasts.

~*~

 

Even though he claimed his extreme nonviolent methods to be apart of Hinduism, the reality was clear to many. Besides the Indian criticism of Sri Aurobindo and others (as evident by Gandhi's YMCA speech), Europeans saw the obvious. Esther Faering was just one of the many Christian missionaries and preachers to befriend Gandhi throughout his life. Some Christian leaders, such as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., were drawn to his ideas without the need of meeting him. Most were drawn to Gandhi because of his liberal Christian philosophy, with his practice of 'turn the other cheek' along with his belief that 'all religions were equal'.

 

One Christian organization that admired Gandhi for the former, but did not share his latter belief, was the Vatican. A newspaper account contained in the Autobiography of a Yogi entitled 'Mahatma Gandhi – in Memoriam', reported the Vatican view:

 

…A dispatch from the Vatican in Rome said: “The assassination caused great sorrow here. Gandhi is mourned as an apostle of Christian virtues.” [34]

 

If you were to ask the Vatican what happened to Gandhi after his death, they would say he went to 'hell', since he was not officially a Christian, had not been baptized, and did not claim Christ to be the sole Son of God. So on the surface of things, it was quite unusual for them to mourn the death of an unbeliever.

 

But as they said, he did represent Christian values, and thus he was – and is – a very useful tool for the Vatican and other Christian proselytizers. Gandhi is a very useful person for incultration, which is the Catholic Church's technique of presenting the traditions of the native's culture as belonging to Christianity, thus facilitating the conversion process. Proselytizers can claim Gandhi to be a Hindu, and then show how similar his 'Hinduism' was to Christianity. This first softens the Hindu for conversion. The next step is actual conversion.

Invoking the name of Gandhi has become a method that the enemies of Hindus use to weaken them. A prime example was the riots in Gujarat that occurred after a 1500-strong Muslim mob torched a train full of Hindus, followed by Muslim attacks on Hindus in other locales. The Hindus responded, and over 800 Muslims were killed in certain parts of Gujarat. In response to this, the 'secular' Indian media had seismic convulsions. Of the many hysterical rantings against the Hindus that came from them, one theme relevant to this column was that Gujarat was a land of Gandhi, and hence the Hindus should have acted as Gandhi would have acted. Which means the Hindus should have either done nothing at all, or they should have urged the Muslims to kill more Hindus!

 

Only that response would have satisfied the 'secularists', many of whom – such as Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta – are practicing Christians. Invoking the name of Gandhi is a great way for miniature Asuras like those working in the Indian media to paralyze Hindus into inaction or tamas, since that is precisely what Gandhi preached.

Finally, it is important to reiterate the point Sri Aurobindo made in his talks with disciples: that of Indians admiring Gandhi because the Europeans admired him. The simple fact is many Westerners admire Gandhi because he reminds them of Christ. It is a small minority of Westerners who admire the real spiritual figures of India. Perhaps this explains why many modern Hindus also look up to Gandhi, based on an inferiority complex to the whites, a complex that Gandhi was very familiar with.

 

Sources:

[1] Bhagavad Gita 2:18

[2] MK Gandhi, The stories of My Experiments with Truth, Part I, Chapter 20

[3] CWOMG vol 7, pg 409

[4] Indian Opinion, 29-5-1909, CWOMG, vol 9, pg 220

[5] Indian Opinion, 12-6-1909, CWOMG vol 9, pg 243-44

[6] Speech at YMCA, Colombo, Young India 8-Dec-1927, The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, pg 145-149

[7] India's Rebirth (a compilation of Sri Aurobindo's writings and talks)

[8]My Dear Child pp 11-3, CWOMG vol XIII pg 440

[9] Navajivan 5-5-21, CWOMG vol XX pg 27

[10]Speech on Swadeshi at a missionary conference, the Hindu 28-2-1916, CWOMG vol XIII, pg 220-1

[11] Navajivan 29-12-1920, CWOMG vol XIX pg 178

[12]Interview with a Professor, Harijan 14-5-1938, CWOMG, vol LXVII, pg 75-76

[13] MK Gandhi, The story of my Experiments with Truth, Part II, Chapter 1

[14] John 3:18

[15] Open Letter, CWOMG, vol1, pg 161-62

[16] John 8:44

[17] The Natal Mercury, 4-2-1896, CWOMG, vol 1, pg 289-292

[18]The Esoteric Christian Union, CWOMG, vol 1, pg 139

[19] Harijan 26-1-47, CWOMG vol 86 pg 267

[20] Bhagavad Gita 2:22

[21] Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol 1, pg 91

[22] Speech at Suppressed Classes Conference, from Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume XIX, pg 571

[23] Indian Opinion, 27-7-1907, CWOMG vol 7 pg 119

[24] Indian Opinion, 20-7-1907, CWOMG vol 7, pg 108

[25] The Indian Franchise, CWOMG, vol 1, pg 281-285

[26] Interview to the Natal Mercury, Natal mercury, 6-1-1909, CWOMG vol 9, pg 127

[27] Speech on Swadeshi at a missionary conference, the Hindu 28-2-1916, CWOMG vol XIII, pg 220-1

[28] Matthew 28:19-20

[29] Mark 16:16

[30] CWOMG vol 90, pg 129-130

[31] Harijan 23-11-47, CWOMG vol 89 pg 497-8

[32] The Hindustan Times, 3-8-1947, CWOMG vol 88, pg 471-2

[33] Mahatma Gandhi--The Last Phase, Vol II p 511, CWOMG vol 89, pg 411

[34] Autobiography of a Yogi by Parahamsa Yogananda 13th edition pg 517

 

=============

[Guest guest]

bad article. more of the same mantra, shows lack of understanding of gandhiji. maadav, you're hopelessly jealous that people like you don;t get respect from no one. i'm sure you're some coward who is too afraid to speak or do what you say on these boards. pathetic, i pity you and so does sri krishna. now type your wity response...

[Guest guest]

Your target is misplaced man.

 

The real anti hindus and anti dharma are those who thrive on this site by abusing hindus who follow scriptures and their gurus. These guys are wolves in the clothes of sheep. They abuse gurus who have given their all to God, only because they have a different perspective.

 

These so called bhaktas are the real enemies.

[Guest guest]

And hindus are thier own enemies.

They care very less for their religion.

Even now, Churches are built in front of temples, and during the festivals of Hindus, they conduct their won masses.

And when a great guru of hinduism is arrested on a hindu festival, the foolish hindus say "Law will take its own course".

 

Who created this law? God?

NO.

THey were created by ignorant human beings based on the laws of other countries.

 

[subroto 0]

"And hindus are thier own enemies.

They care very less for their religion.

Even now, Churches are built in front of temples, and during the festivals of Hindus, they conduct their won masses.

And when a great guru of hinduism is arrested on a hindu festival, the foolish hindus say "Law will take its own course".

 

Who created this law? God?

NO.

THey were created by ignorant human beings based on the laws of other countries."

 

 

Very good piecee I agree with you all the way..I have always said hinduism's biggest enemies are hindus themselves...people say islam is the biggest enemy but hindus themselves are a bigger enemy than islam, you can always fight then enemy, but if your own people laugh at you and leave you what can you do? Thats the peoblem with hinduism: Our own people laugh at our religion and follow different paths some even willingly convert to other religions. They are the biggest enemy.

 

Most muslims really love their religion..there are a few that don't but most do and will defend it with all they have, christians also love their religion..some don't, but hindus are a different story..a lot of hindus really love hinduism, but there are also a huge number of hindus who are apathetic, dont care and even laugh at hinduism. We have more self haters than any other religion...what do we do about that..that is the key.

[maadhav 0]

so i say,

the real hindus need work within and without Hindus.

 

[Guest guest]

maadav, you call him gandhi-ji with a "ji" okay!

[Guest guest]

jai ramji ki!

[Guest guest]

Gandhiji could at the time of death bless his killer and remember Ram. He exemplifies what purity is.

 

 

Dispassionately and with love, identify and isolate those immature ones who spread hatred -- towards Gandhiji, towards other sages also.

 

Isolate the ones who create divisions and spread hatred.

 

 

Om Namah Sivayyaa

 

 

[maadhav 0]

from where did you learn this language? gandhi?

 

if not, you are not following gandhi,

and hence have no ground to preach gandhivada.

 

 

 

[maadhav 0]

<< Isolate the ones who create divisions and spread hatred. >>

 

yes, isolate teh ideology that has constantly done it ever since it was begun. That is Islam.

 

loving enemy is great if you can love him, but that does not mean you must not kill them or separete them from the asuric ideology.

 

arjun loved bhishma and drona, but he killed them as well.

now all are not able to love enemy.

 

hating a sura is surely bad.

hating an asura/adharmi is not that bad.

 

would you love one who forcibly occupies your home, throws you out, destroys your shiva tempole, and rapes your mother in frott of you in your temple?

 

do you know which ideology has constantly done things like this? why not we focus on that ideology that has invaded in bharat - how to keep it out of bharat?

 

if we dont do it, would not that be unfortunate?

 

om namah shivaya!

 

[Guest guest]

do not just spew such venom at every Muslim you come across. There are good Mulsims, and there are bad ones. You have to differentiate between the two. The same way, there are good Hindus and bad Hindus. You have to differentiate between the two as well.

 

No religion is immune to people of bad character who choose to commit violence in the name of their religion.

 

 

[maadhav 0]

<< do not just spew such venom at every Muslim you come across. There are good Mulsims, and there are bad ones. You have to differentiate between the two. The same way, there are good Hindus and bad Hindus. You have to differentiate between the two as well.

 

No religion is immune to people of bad character who choose to commit violence in the name of their religion. >>

 

 

 

 

[maadhav 0]

most of my effort is to target the barbaric ideology, because that is the root cause of terrorism.

 

<< do not just spew such venom at every Muslim you come across. >>

 

i hardly come across a muslim.

none of my limb has venom.

my tongue only tells the truth.

 

<< There are good Mulsims, and there are bad ones. >>

 

sure.

good in your and hindu's eyes are those who really do not follow koran and hadith. they actually are the bad muslims in muslim world and per koran and hadith.

 

<< You have to differentiate between the two. >>

 

sure.

my advice to good muslims is that they are not doing jihad and other things koran tells them to do. so they are really not muslims, but muslims by name only. therefore, they need to give up islam for ever.

 

differentiation is this:

with good muslims we have time to use shama, daama, and bheda to help them quit islam.

with the bad muslims, danda is the first and immediate choice.

 

the common message for both in india is:

quit islam or quite the vedic land.

islam is invaded there, and has no right to be there.

 

two more reasons to quit islam for them are:

1. their ancestors were hindus who were forcibly converted.

now they the decendents have no reason to stick with islam.

2. as jinnah has said and as is clear from THE BOOKs, islam is not compatible with hinduism, so they should not live as muslims in the Hindu land. else there is no meaning of partition of india in 1947.

 

<< The same way, there are good Hindus and bad Hindus. You have to differentiate between the two as well. >>

 

yes.

a hindu is good when he lives by gita. else not.

to good hindus, i tell to unite for dharma and rashtra.

to bad hindus, i tell them to be good hindus.

to both, i tell them to understand our global dharma and rashtra interests, amd unite to work to serve them.

 

<< No religion is immune to people of bad character who choose to commit violence in the name of their religion. >>

 

you mean religious group. sure.

but there is no reason why we should not expose the barbaric ideology. doing so helps the intelligent people who want to choose a religion by its goodness.

 

so you see, we are in agreement.

jai!

 

[Guest guest]

This is my view also, though it is His view that alone counts.

 

I suggest, first love the God who is within and all problems will be solved.

 

 

If one has to fight and kill, do it as God's work without motivation.

 

 

There is only one work that we are free to do and that is to seek "Param Padam".

[Guest guest]

why is everybody hacking on maadhavji. I think he´s absolutley right.

 

(I´am not saying to kill ALL muslims , but we´ve to kick out ALL ASURAS)

 

2.)gandhi was an anti hindu.why did india give pak 55 crores rupees. and he didn´t repect our great freedom fighters.

 

has anyone seen "the legend of bhagat singh"?

 

in a scene they show people protesting peacefully against the british, and what happend : they killed all

 

what happend in the jallianwala bagh , the british killed more than 300 people.first they all were unarmed and not doing any harm to the british.then they killed also children and women: in my point of view the british were asuras, killing innocent people. and not fighting asura is a crime.

 

when british could kill innocent people then they surley would kill those who protest against them.

 

he was only popular among the british because he was fool.

the british liked him because he couldn´t do any harm to them.

 

it was bhagat singh ( and his friends and all other freedom fighters ) idea of total independence.

 

first gandhi said that he won´t support their idea and then for his political benefit he adopted ( or the congress) the slogan of total independence.

--------

some people will not agree with my statement and probably say : "you don´t understand his philosophy"

 

reply: yes, I don´t understand it, please make it understandable for me.

 

hare krishna

 

 

[Guest guest]

It has become highly fashinable to worship people like Gandhi and mother teresa.Gandhi I agree played his role in our independence.But he made our country pay a huge price for it.He supported jinnah from the very beginning and thought naively that he can create a ramarajya.He ended up creating the ravanraj,pakistan.

 

He was qualified to be a social reformer.He must have become a good religious leader and must have run a mutt instead of running the freedom fighting.Or he could have atleast run the freedom fighting alone and could have given the responsibility of taking care of pakistan to people like vallabhai patel.

 

He agreed to give fertile lands in punjab to pakistan.He should have pushed them further west.He did not do it.Sind voted to join with India and 40% of the sindhis were in favour of being with India.If only patel was given a free hand he would have annexed sind with India.

 

even without gandhi we would have got our independence after second world war anyway.

[Guest guest]

Maadhavji,

God bless you in your pursuit of dharma.Dont lose heart because of people who dont understand what danger faces our country.we are with you.

[madhavdaitha 0]

Dear Friends,

 

Please understand the damage done by Gandhi, He is not the only person who got us independence, it is a collective effort of all the think tank, both furious and calm, people who contributed for the freedom. Gandhi, from the day we got independence, started ruining the Independent India, first by giving Special Priveleges to Jammu & Kashmir and now the Hindu Pandits are masacared there by the baustard muslims (I am using this word as my blood is boiling, sorry to use so). Gave regime to the Idiotic Family "Nehru" and the worst effect of that Nehru we are still facing. If we start listing the damage done by Gandhi, I think that this board will be filled with his damagae deeds only. These I am saying after reading the Autobiography of his life. From then I started hating him from the core of my heart. You can understand how he spoiled India.

 

Bye,

Madhav Daitha.

[maadhav 0]

<< There is only one work that we are free to do and that is to seek "Param Padam". >>

 

it takes time (almost a life time) to find it.

it needs a country with a vedic culture

where no one is trying to kill the culture or the vedic people. it needs peace - freedom from any form of threat or terrorism - to practice any yoga or sadhana to reach to parampadam.

 

and there is no time.

the asuras are ready with their ak-47s

to take away anything you have.

 

so, first fight the "fire",

secure peace, and then do your sadhana.

 

[maadhav 0]

you wetted my eyes.

 

you are p-v, pure vaishnav.

please inspire others to do/join our work.

 

[Guest guest]

Dear Friends,

 

I do not agree with Madhavji as it seems he is against the great Mahatma! Please try to understand the good deed done by him. It was Nehru who ruined the country and not Gandhiji. Mahatma Gandhi was a saint in real sense, but often people misunderstood him. Sometimes it is very hard to understand the saints. Gandhiji was only interested in India's independence. It is not fair to blame him for what happened in India.

 

You have every right to express what you feel.

[maadhav 0]

<< Gandhiji was only interested in India's independence. >>

 

so were all the freedom fighters and teh people.

 

if his interest was that only, he could have joined prabhupad when he invited gandhi for it.

 

so it proves he was not a mahatma. he did not sin in his personal life (but Indian has produced may who did not sin at all,) but he sinned by screwing up 1B hindus fate by dividing the nation and favoring the minority barbarians.

all his followers do now is bribery and anti-vedic activities.

 

 

[Guest guest]

Gandhi's main mistake was agreeing to give most of the fertile lands of punjab to pakistan.He also forced nehru by fasting for 22 days to give 52 crores to pakistan.Pakistan used that money to launch kashmir war against India in 1948.Some great mahathma he was.

 

Had gandhi kept quiet,Nehru and patel would have annexed most of pakistan's punjab with India.Gandhi spoilt it totally.