Gandhi Before Gandhi

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

Page 81

GANDHI BEFORE GANDHI
goddesses on each side. On top of the figure is Shiva. This is to be explained from the spiritual and material standpoint mixed together. She has 10 arms, all are representing creative energies, five positive and five negative, Those on the right represent the positive aspect, those on the left the negative aspect of the energies. On the right is the figure of the god with a human form and head of an elephant. The goddess on the tiger is the goddess of wealth. A man with an animal head must be considered a man with animal propensities; therefore he has by his side the goddess of wealth. On the left the negative side is represented and the human form is perfect. The goddess, on this side is the goddess of wisdom. She has no necessity for wealth. Even this picture is connected with material ideas; in certain ways it is a beautiful picture. Later on when people forgot the real truth and got engrossed in the external world and they thought the energy of the world was not an abstract idea but it was a person they wanted to propitiate those energies, and so they sacrificed animals to the goddess that represented destructive energy. It is continued there. It is a great blot on the peaceful and humane character of the Hindu. The truth has been forgotten by them. Even the sacred writings have been mutilated by them and many passages are altogether new.
Let me confess also some shortcomings in our tradition which we do not approve Animal Sacrifice-a great blot on the peaceful and humane character of the Hindu.
One more such example is Sattee tradition
We have in the temples of the Hindus many figures of gods and goddesses. In Calcutta, you have heard of one where many animals are sacrificed. That practice has not yet been exterminated from that city. The figure to the ordinary observer is very terrible. The goddess is horrible with a red tongue protruding from her mouth with little coils and other
Sattee, burning of widows on the funeral pile of their husbands came to be sanctioned by a passage that has been changed, by substituting one letter for another. In this way the sacred writings are interpreted as sanctioning those rites. There are people who interpret the Vedas in the most exoteric sense.