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INTRODUCTION uninterruptedly for twenty-eight years the policy of Christianising the military and that it was a part of his military duty to save the souls of heathens from Satan! However, as a result of the events of 1857, the government itself and its policy pertaining to religious and social matters of the Indians and its association with the missionaries' activities underwent considerable modification amounting almost to State neutrality in religious affairs of the subjects.
When N was in his teens, the streets and ghāts of
Banaras had already been accustomed Reaction on the
the to resound with the missionaries' Author
harangues showering poisonous abuse on Hinduism and its deities Rāma, Kršņa, Śiva, etc., beside their very temples The harangues, of course, caused headache to the Hindus generally, but usually were not challenged or controverted on the spot by literate residents either out of indifference or fear lest they should offend the missionaries' patrons, viz., foreign rulers. The sensitive heart of N, however, refused to keep silent and he set forth to challenge the missionaries and refute their anti-Hindu preachings. In the course of these movements, he ultimately met Father Smith, the then chief of the missionaries at Banaras, and commenced critical discussions with him on some obviously weak points of Christian Metaphysics. The discussions continued for several days and months and always terminated with a wordly victory for N. Smith, finding himself unable logically to stand N's critical challenges in all those meetings, ultimately used to
remark that the Old and the New Testainent of the Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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