Gandhi Before Gandhi

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

Page 31

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
fidelity to their engagements are well-known and they are so famous for these qualities that people flock to their country from every side." In the face of this statement-what has Christian civilization done for India? I might quote to you a passage after passage in admiration of Hindu virtues which impressed the foreigners who came into contact with them before Christian civilization reached us, but time will not permit me to do so. My main purpose, is to show to you that the presence and predominating influence of foreigners, Scythians, Mongolians, Mahomedans or Christians has been to deteriorate India. The literature and philosophy of Ancient India have excited the admiration of all scholars except Christian Missionaries.
learn. But when these barbarians overran Aryavarta and made it into Hindustan; when Mahomed of Ghuzni, the great iconoclast made it his business to trample everything that was dear and sacred to the Aryan mind; When Zenghis Khan and his successors with the exception of one or two spread their tyranny over the country and lastly when the European Commerce and Western Civilization began to suck the very blood of India, is it any wonder that India is not in the same condition today as it was in days gone by
Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe
If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I would point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we people in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make an inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life alone, but a transfigured and eternal Life -again I would point to India." "Before India became the hunting ground of foreign invaders, she had produced poets and philosophers at whose feet Homer or Plato, Shakespear or Bacon would have done well to sit and
The wonder is that not withstanding these foreign attacks, India and her people have survived; the wonder is that not withstanding the demoralizing influences of foreigners, India still leads in spirituality and morality, Sir T. Munro says:-"If a good system of agriculture, unrivaled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can be contributed to either convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic, the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst each other, and above all, a treatment of the female sex full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, are among the signs which denote a civilized people-then the Hindus are not inferior to the nations of Europe, and if civilization is to become an article of trade between England and India, I am convinced that England will, gain by, the import cargo." Professor Wilson, professor of Sanskrit at Oxford for many years says, "I have lived both from necessity and choice very much among the Hindus and had opportunities of becoming acquainted, with them in a greater variety of situations than those in which they usually come under the observation of Europeans. In Calcutta Mint for instance, I was in daily personal communication with a numerous body of artificers, mechanics