Gandhiji’s life and Christianity (1)

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

My father had Musalman and Parsi friends, who would talk to him about their own faiths, and he would listen to them always with respect, and often with interest. Being his nurse (Young Mohandas nursed his father who was ill), I often had a chance to be present at these talks. These many things combined to inculcate in me toleration for all faiths.

Only Christianity was at the time an exception. I developed a sort of dislike for it. And for a reason. In those days Christian missionaries used to stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods. I could not endure this. I must have stood there to hear repeating them once only, but that was enough to dissuade me from repeating the experiment. About the same time, I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptised, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one’s own clothes did not deserve the name.

I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity.

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