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Virchand Raghavaji Gandhi : Assessment of a Jaina ... : 97 of the senses, its ideas of marriage and of social relations.24 He noted that Christians being non-vegetarians and wine-takers seem to the Hindus to represent a religion bereft of humanitarian or spiritual ideals. 25
He wondered how the 'dogmatic aggressiveness’26 of Christian preachers elevate the spiritual state of a nation. He argued that the missionaries were so trained as to detest other religions. They preached an insular creed, and spread 'a false theology', 'not only false but positively injurious to the best interests of mankind.'27 They were ignorant about Indian history, culture and philosophy, and saw nothing positive in non-Christian traditions.28 They were systematically spreading false information about other faiths to erode their credibility Like Swami Vivekananda, he goaded the Christian missionaries to put their theology into action - to live a virtuous life like that of Jesus Christ, and not indulge in calumny, hypocrisy, drinking and other vices. He felt that dogmatic Christianity cannot take root in India.
Defender of Hinduism and Indian Culture
VR Gandhi saw historical and cultural affinity between Hinduism and Jainism since both have emerged from the same soil. At the Chicago Parliament he had the honour to read Manilal N Dwivedi's detailed essay on Hinduism, in his absence. He defended the Hindu tradition against missionary attacks as can be seen from his response to George T. Pentecost’s vitriolic observations (September 24). 29 Pentecost had spoken derisively about the Hindu deities by observing that to compare the peerless Christ' 'to any of the gods worshipped by the Hindus ‘is to mock both them and him.”30 He had lampooned the traditional Hindu History by saying that orientals were destitute of the historical sense and could easily manage millions of years as decades. He had dubbed the claim about the eternity of the Vedas and the antiquity of Puranic heroes antedating ‘all other faiths' as
