Gandhi Before Gandhi

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

Page 40

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
Godless character of Education
My Christian brothers and sisters of America, your missionaries often,
glory in having taken upon themselves the task of educating the poor outcasts of India. In a lecture, which I have had the honor of delivering before thousands of people of this country I said:-"What I have learned of your great system of the education of the masses, which I admit is a great encouragement to me.
system is, in the estimation of the wisest people of all religions, is its chief glory. If you should undertake to teach in your common schools, the distinctive dogmatic doctrines of Christianity, would not you put in jeopardy the system itself by inaugurating a revolution? But now, in my country your missionaries insist upon doing that for us, as necessary to our civilization and education which you do not dare advocate at home. I must repeat that we Hindus hail with unfeigned satisfaction, any movement looking toward the real advancement and education of the masses, but we cannot but protest with all our soul against using the privilege and necessity of education as a means of propagating religious tenets, it would be time enough to take the shibolleth of your onslaught upon the "benighted Hindus under the white banner of education."
"Are missions failures?"
But since delivering that lecture I have observed much controversy among the people of this country in relation to the character - I may say--the religious character of the common school. A large class of citizens, believers in certain form of religion, oppose and even go so far as to
denounce the school system, because of its "Godless character", while the majority sustain this great System of education, because of its secular or neutral character. And this fact, namely the secular
character of the common school
Because I dispute the correctness of the Christian missionary method and deny its value, I must not be understood to dispute the right or to deny the importance of missionary labour along the right lines and inspired by the true spirit of universal brotherhood. The possession of truth implies responsibility for its distribution. Truth is not sectional -I mean essential truth. It belongs to the world, to all mankind. The spirit of truth is the right missionary spirit and carries with it credentials in that language which is understood by universal intellect and universal reason. The religious community to which I have the honor to belong has from its beginning been a believer of multifacetness of truth, respecting others faith and also protesting in brotherly manner against all forms of conceived errors. At the same time seeking to reconcile all men with the truth. The grievous