Gandhi ji’s life and Christianity (3)

Gandhi ji’s autobiography “My Experiments with Truth”, presents many circumstances where he was lured by others to convert into other religions. And on each occasion, he came out unscathed. It was because he was such possessed humbleness and humility. This paragraph describes his idea:

They also took me on one occasion to the Blavatsky Lodge and introduced me to Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Besant. The latter had just then joined the Theosophical Society, and I was following with great interest the controversy about her conversion. The friends advised me to join the Society, but I politely declined saying, “With my meagre knowledge of my own religion I do not want to belong to any religious body.”

I recall having read, at the brothers’ instance, Madame Blavatsky’s ‘Key to Theosophy’. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition.

Whenever someone said that the religion of his forefathers was bad and he should leave it to join the new one, he first looked inwards and asked himself if he was in a learned position to make a decision? Did he know enough about the tradition of his family and did he know as much as his forefathers did about his native religion? If no, then wouldn’t it be unlearned decision to take a decision to desert it and break a chain which has carried itself through ages?

I believe if everyone thought it like Gandhi ji did, not a single person would have converted into the missionary religions of this world. Some convert for easy job, some for easy acceptance in a foreign society. Some convert after being offered money and some very few also convert to get rid of the drawbacks of their present religion, hardly realising that there are drawbacks in every religion. As we say, “Grass is greener on the other side”.

If there was one great quality in Gandhi ji which made him keep his faith intact then it was his intention to “look inside” when in doubt. This is why he never gave up vegetarianism too, no matter how harsh the environment. Let us learn from the way he showed to us.

- Rahul