Gandhi Before Gandhi

Author(s): Bipin Doshi, Priti Shah
Publisher: Jain Academy Educational Research Center Promotion Trust Mumbai

Page 165

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
theme of the legend about people throwing themselves under the car of Juggernaut, that was an English calumny, Started by the missionaries.
H.S.Olcott, Old Diary Leaves, Volume V, TPH, Adyar Madras, 1957, p. 357 Coloney Henry Steel Olcott (August 2, 1832 - February 17, 1907) was an American military officer, journalist, lawyer and the co-founder & first President of the Theosophical Society.
interpreted and harmonized. They taught that the caste system was the product of the arrogance and pride and weakness of the mind of man and that it was inevitable among all peoples. The only difference was that while in India the castes were vertical and stood side by side with out crowding in this country the castes were horizontal and each higher pressed upon and crushed the one below. The Jainists taught also, he said, that the source of error was in the mind and that pure living was the only remedy. In that way with the aid of the Buddhists, They exterminated the old custom of animal sacrifice, which now prevailed only in the City of Calcutta.
Besides those who represented our Society especially, Messrs Vivekananda, V. R. Gandhi, Dharmapala, representatives of the Hindu Vedanta, Jainism and Buddhism respectively, captivated the public, who had only heard of Indian people through the malicious reports of interested missionaries, and were now astounded to see before them and hear men who represented the ideal of spirituality and human perfectibility as taught in their respective sacred writings.
Statue of God was put on a chariot, which was hauled to the temple on a great car drawn by thousands of people and attended by a vast concourse. It was possible that some accidents may have happened on occasions like this, but to say that the people of India, threw themselves under the car of Juggernautn was just as correct as it would be for him, after seeing an accident in the streets of New York, to go back to India and tell the people that Americans were in the habit of throwing themselves under cable cars of like nature. He pronounced the stories about mothers throwing babies into the Ganges, of which he declared he never heard until he came to this country.
Said one Chicago editor: "We have been fro years spending millions of dollars in sending missionaries to convert these men and have had very little success; they have sent over a few men and have converted everybody."
VRG's answer to some misreporting of newspapers:
"There are reports in your newspapers that thousands of people are killed by wild animals in India.
The Juggernaut Legend.
This is nothing but an attempt to add one more dark side of my country. More people die in your country due to drinking than the people killed by wild animals in India."
Mr. Gandhi, commenting on the errors prevalent in this country concerning the religious beliefs and practices of India, spoke of the
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