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Some Mistakes Corrected
most part, which you in your religious zeal, send to my country to enlighten our benighted minds. The spirit in which you have received my words emboldens me to take a further step in the line of removing obstacles in the way of a better understanding. In attempting this task I approach it in the spirit of fraternal love and will endeavor to present my cause in a manner to deserve at least your approval, if you do not fully agree with me.
I do not forget that in a sacred sense I am your guest, and it would pain me and my people also, if I should inadvertently utter a word to rankle in your thought. I have received so much from you, and am so deeply impressed with the fair mindedness and tolerance of the American people, that I will even venture to correct what I conceive to be grievous mistakes in the public estimate of my people from certain points of view.
In seeking to correct certain mistakes, as I conceive them to be, I may be pardoned if incidentally I can show what India can give in return for your tolerance and noble consideration on the subjects already discussed in your hearing. I deem it proper to say that I have learned very much thus far in my intercourse with you that will serve me well when I come to report to my own people the lessons of America to India. One of those lessons I cannot refrain from mentioning here. It is this: that good and only good must come from a freer and fuller communion, correspondence and reciprocity, not in philosophy only, but in the material factors of civilization, between you and us. I am impelled to predict that we are in the beginning of material, intellectual and spiritual unfoldings and relationships, in the spirit of brotherly recognition and love, which will do more for our mutual good in one decade than a cycle of sectarian missionary propogandism can accomplish.
The first mistake which I desire to notice is the very common one that the Hindus have no history worth considering prior to
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