________________
cost of London, speaking on "The Present Outlook of Religions”, cast reflections upon the chastity of the women who serve in the temples of India. It is said that if he had followed his manuscript he would not have made the most pointed of these statements, but he digressed somewhat from what he had written. As a result, Mr. Gandhi considered it necessary to reply to this attack as follows:
"Before proceeding with my address, I wish to make a few observations. This platform is not a place for mutual recriminations, and I am heartily sorry that from time to time a most un-Christian spirit is allowed free scope here, but I know how to take these recriminations at their proper value, I am glad that no one has dared to attack the religion I represent. It is well that they should not. But every attack has been directed to the abuses existing in our society. And I repeat now what I repeat every day, that these abuses are not from religion, but in spite of religion, as in every other country.
"Some men in their ambition think that they are Pauls, and what they think they believe. These new Pauls go to vent their platitudes upon India.
They go to India to convert the heathens in a mass, but when they find their dreams melting away, as dreams always do, they return to pass a whole life in abusing the Hindu. Abuses are not arguments against any religion, nor self-adulation the proof of the truth of one's own. For such I have greatest pity. There are a few Hindu temples in Southern India where women-singers are employed to sing on
10
Jain Education International
For Private & Personal Use Only
www.jainelibrary.org
