Gandhi ji’s life and Christianity (2)

These are excerpts taken from Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography “My Experiments with Truth”, abridged version as published by Navjivan Trust.

This portion comes when he describes his life in South Africa.

Mr. Baker (whom Mohandas met in South Africa), besides being an attorney, was a staunch lay preacher. He is still alive and now engaged purely in missionary work, having given up the legal profession. He is quite well-to-do. He still corresponds with me. In his letters he always dwells on the same theme. He upholds the excellence of Christianity from various points of view, and contends that it is impossible to find eternal peace, unless on eaccepts Jesus as the only son of God and the Saviour of mankind.

During the very first interview Mr. Baker ascertained my religious views. I said to him: “I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well.”

Mr. Baker was glad to hear all this….

(Mr. Baker then invited Mohandas to his Church and offered to introduce him to many other friends and colleagues. The next day, Mohandas went to the Church for prayer meeting. He came to know many other Christians there. One of them was Mr. Coates. He gave him many books on Christianity to study).

He (Mr. Coates) had great affection for me. He saw, round my neck, the Vaishnava necklace of Tulsi beads. He thought it to be superstition and was pained by it. “This superstition doesn’t become you. Come, let me break the necklace.”

“No, you will not. It is a sacred gift from my mother.”

“But do you believe in it?”

“I do not know its mysterious significance. I do not think I should come to harm if I did not wear it. But I cannot, without sufficient reasons, give up a necklace that she put round my neck out of love and in the conviction that it would be conductive to my welfare. When, with the passage of time, it wears away and breaks of its own accord, I shall have no desire to get a new one. But this necklace cannot be broken.”

Mr. Coates could not appreciate my argument, as he had no regard for my religion. He was looking forward to delivering me from the abyss of ignorance. He wanted to convince me that, no matter whether there was some truth in other religions, salvation was impossible for me unless I accepted Christianity which represented the truth, and that my sins would not be washed away except by the intercession of Jesus, and that all good works are useless.

Mr. Baker was getting anxious about my future. He took me to the Wellington Convention. The Convention lasted for three days. I could understand and appreciate the devoutness of those who attended it. But I saw no reason for changing my belief – my religion. It was impossible for me to believe that I could go to heaven or attain salvation only by becoming a Christian. When I frankly said so to some of the good Christian friends they were shocked. But there was no help for it.

My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, and embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born.

The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically, there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians.

As Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, even so were Musalman friends. Abdulla Sheth had kept on inducing me to study Islam.

Though I took a path my Christian friends had not intended for me, I have remained for ever indebted to them for the religious quest that they awakened in me. I shall always cherish the memory of their contact.

Ref: “My Experiments with Truth”, abridged version, by Mahatma Gandhi.