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98 : Śramaņa, Vol 65, No. 3 & 4, July-December 2014 irrational.32 Above all, he had cast aspersions on the chastity of women who served in the temples of India. 33
VR Gandhi explained why Christian missionaries painted a negative image of India: 'They go to India to convert the heathen in a mass but when they find their dreams melting away, as dreams always do, they return back to pass a whole life in abusing the Hindu. 34 He argued that the present abuses' in Hinduism, were not from religion, but in spite of it, as in every other country, Hindu society had been so virtuous in the past that a Greek historian remarked : 'No Hindu: was ever known to tell an untruth, no Hindu women ever known to be unchaste.' He gave the example of emperor Akbar (1542-1605) who showed utmost respect to the Bible when a ship of Christian traders was captured with the copies of their holy book, unlike the Portugese Christians who had defiled the Koran in a similar situation.35 In another lecture, VR Gandhi referred to ancient and medieval travelers and scholars like Hieun Tsang ( 602-664 CE): Marco Polo ( 1254-1324 CE) and Mohammad al-Idrisi (1099-1161), who showered rich encomiums on the Hindus for their high character, truthfulness and honesty. 36 As regards the superstitious nature of Hindus, he had this to say in a lampooning way : “These holy men talk of the Hindu superstitions. They had better examined their own religion. A religion whose beginning is in blood, whose salvation is in blood, whose purity is in innocent blood, whose hope of saintship is in a dream of a sea of blood, whose revivals are brought about by preaching and a vision of the sea of blood afresh, would do better by talking less of the superstitions of other nations. 37
It appears that the caustic observations of Rev. T. E. Slater of the London Missionary Society, Bangalore, made in his Paper, read at the Chicago Parliament by Frank M Bristol, were lurking in the mind of VR Gandhi when he uttered these words. The Paper stated inter alia that ‘no literature, not even the Jewish, contains so many words relating to sacrifice as Sanskrit. The land has been saturated with blood. '38
| SR No. | 525089 |
| Book Title | Sramana 2014 07 10 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Ashokkumar Singh, Rahulkumar Singh, Omprakash Singh |
| Publisher | Parshvanath Vidhyashram Varanasi |
| Publication Year | 2014 |
| Total Pages | 122 |
| Language | Hindi |
| Classification | Magazine, India_Sramana, & India |
| File Size | 9 MB |