INDIAN MISSIONS

Evening Star, Issue 19062, 3 October 1925, Page 13

INDIAN MISSIONS

MR GANDHI AND CHRISTIANITY. A special meeting of the Calcutta Missionary Conference was held in Calcutta recently to meet Mahatma Gandhi, to hear from him an explanation of why he is not himself a Christian, and to listen to gome friendly criticism of missionaries. Mr Gandhi said that it was not generally known that his association with Christians—“not Christians so-called, but real Christians ’’—dated from 1888 or 1889, when as a lad he found himself in London. “ That association,” he continued, “ has grown riper as years have rolled on. There was a time in my life when very sincere and intimate friends of mine had designs upon me, one of them a- great and good Quaker, thinking that 1 was too good not to become a Christian. I was sorry to have disappointed him, but I know that ho never left, off praying for mo. One missionary in South Africa writes almost every six months to me and asks ‘How is it with you?” I have always told those friends that, so far as I felt, it was all well with me.” In 1905, Mr Gandhi said he had sought out one of the greatest Indian Christians, the late Kali Churn Banerjea. I told him “I have come to you as a seeker . . . but I came away not sorry, not dejected, not disappointed. But in one way I was sorry. It was my last chance. He did not convince me. I do not profess Christianity to-day—and I am here to tell you in all humility that for me Hinduism, as I find it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and _ I find a solace in the Bhagavad-Gita, in the tlpanishads, that I miss even in the Sermon on tho Mount. When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone I see not one ray of light, I go hack to tho Bhagavad-Gita. I find a verso here and a verse there, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies—and my life has been full of external tragedies—and if they have left no visible or no indelible soar upon me, I owe it all to the teachings of the Bhagavad-Gita.” Turning from the story of his < own spiritual pilgrimage, Mr Gandhi directly addressed the missionaries present. “You, tho missionaries,” he said, “ come to India thinking that yon come to a land of heathens, of idolaters, of men who do not know the true moaning of religion. _ One of tho greatest of Christian divines. Bishop Heber, allowed himself to write those two lines, which have always left a sting upon me: ‘ Every prospect pleases; man alone is vile.’ I wish he had not written those lilies. Frorn my experience of the masses of India he is not vile, ha is just as much a seeker after God as you and I are, possibly more so. . - “If you have prepossessed notions, v if you refuse to understand what the Indian is thinking, you will deny yourselves the real privilege of service. Lord Salisbury was once waited upon by a deputation of missionaries in connection with China,_ and this deputation wanted protection. I cannot recall his exact words, but I know their purport was: ‘ Gentlemen, if you want to go to China and take the Message of Christ, then do not ask for the assistance of temporal power. Go with your lives in your hands, and if the people of China want to kill you imagine that you have been killed in the service of God.’ “ I think Lord Salisbury was literally true. Tho relevance of whatl have just told you is that the Christians, the missionaries, who come to-day to India roino also under the shadow, or, if you like, tho protection of a _ temporal power; and it creates an impossible bar. If yon give me statistics to show that so' many orphans have been brought to Christianity, so many grown-irp people, 1 will accept them, but I do not fed convinced thereby that that is your mission. In my humble opinion vour mission is infinitely superior. \ T ou want to find the man in India, and if yon want to do that yon will have to go, even as those members of the expedition, to the lowly cottages, not to give them something, but probably to take something. I miss that receptivity, I miss that humility, that ability, that willingness, on your part to identify yourselves with the masses of India.” Mr Gandhi also said that if Christ “ was a convertible term with that which he felt to bo the power within him, then he realised His presence.”