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Jainism : The Cosmic Vision Bonny, the President of the Conference of world religions, was impressed by him. At the time of the famine of 1896-97 in India, Mr. Bonny was the president of the Famine Relief Committee founded in America by Virchand Gandhi. This committee immediately sent to India forty thousand Rupees and a steamer full of corn. During this travel Virchand Gandhi delivered as many as 535 lectures. He had the command of fourteen languages including Gujarati, Hindi, Bengali, English, Sanskrit and French
Thus, a young man of twenty-nine, preached religion in foreign countries in the face of opposition from his own community who objected to travel abroad. He toured abroad trice to spread the message of Jain Philosophy and he was equally a spokesman of Indian Philosophy.
The short life span of Virchand Raghavji Gandhi is full of multifarious achievements. He was the first graduate of the Jain society to get his BA with Hons. in 1884. When his father died in 1890, he did not allow the primitive practices of wailing and breast-beating during mourning. At the age of twenty-one, as the secretary of 'Shri Jain Association of India', he worked for the abolition of poll-tax levied on pilgrims at Palitana.
Annoyed by poll-tax and other forms of harassment, the Anandji Kalyanji firm had filed a suit against the rule of Palitana. But Sursinghji, the ruler (Thakor) of Palitana, was a right-hand man of the Political Agent. The Political Agent did not give fair justice. Virchand Gandhi took up the problem. In those days to protest against the dictates of the ruler was to invite severe punishment and even death. He often went up from Mahuva to Palitana and prepared the ground for
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