Gandhi Before Gandhi

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

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GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
Cheat one and all alike; this is its motto
thousands of dollars to proclaim its grandeur to the downtrodden and suppliant race, showcasing the power of the Christian government, five and half million of men, women and children died of actual starvation. Did the missionaries ever raise a voice for this? No. There never has been a commission to inquire into these horrible things, to find out a remedy. But these missionaries and their coadjurors started a commission to inquire into the evil of opium-eating in India, as if men who had; no money enough to buy bread would indulge in the luxury of opium eating. Indeed there is no height of absurdity which hypocrisy does not dare to climb. The whole secret of that opiumcommission and all such non-descript agitations is that these missionaries want more money and by some such method they begin the agitation and the money flows in; honour comes to the wealthy donors but their dollars all roll into the missionary pockets.
Citizens of New York, your agitations against a corrupt city government, your determined attempt to destroy all bossism has elicited the praise of the whole world, but do you know that an organization ten thousand times more powerful than Tammany, could ever be a hundred thousand times more vile and baneful in its influence than Tammany can ever hope to be like, that clique is known in America as the Foreign Mission Board. The Tammany-tiger aims at the pocket of men, but this terrible monster of missionary is sucking the blood of your people to spend it in good living in foreign countries and all this is done in the name of religion. The claws of Tammany clutches only a few, but this tremendous wheel of cheating, black-mailing and damning reaches the rich and the poor alike; it crushes under its weight old and young alike; it has no mercy for the poor or the miserable, the schoolboy or the servant girl, the millionaire or the workman. Cheat one and all alike; this is its motto. These saints, talk of the caste in India; here is a caste of missionaries springing right amongst you; have found that there are hereditary missionaries for three or four generations and they are missionary bosses who control the appointment, the pay and the promotion for which the hungry hundreds of missionaries wait at their door. These holy men talk of the Hindu superstitions. They would better examine their own religion. A religion whose beginning is in blood, whose salvation is in blood, whose purity is in innocent blood, whose hope of saint hood is in a dream of a sea of blood, whose revivals are brought about by the preaching and the vision of the sea of blood; afresh, they would do better by talking less of the superstitions of other nations.
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