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THE SYSTEMS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY
Karma", subscribed to by the Vedicists, Buddhists, Jainas and numerous other religious sects of India, holds a crucial importance in the development of the characteristic ethical notions of the ancient Indians, and the Jaina version of it is illuminating in more ways than one. It is really a pity that even so lucid an exposition of the Jaina doctrine of Karma as was undertaken by Gandhi remains unread even by those who otherwise evince sincere and serious interest in the problems of Indian ethics.
Of course, in order to derive best advantage out of Gandhi's writings things will have to be looked from Gandhi's standpoint. There are times when Gandhi speaks as a Jaina, times when he speaks as a Hindu, times when he speaks as an Indian, and times when he speaks as a plain man. While speaking as a Jaina, a Hindu, or an Indian, Gandhi is in most cases positive in his assertions, that is, he mostly brings to the fore the merits of the case he is advocating; but occasionally he is forced to come out sometimes sharply enough against what he considers to be a gross misunderstanding of his case on somebody's part. He is bitterest in his condemnation of the Christian missionaries, come to India from abroad to propagate their cult. But his motives in doing so are extremely mixed. Gandhi is against the Christian missionaries because the latter consider the Hindu to be ethically degraded. Now Gandhi would not answer this slander by talking ill of Christians en masse, not only because he had nothing but praise for what he considered to be Christ's true teaching but also because he had come to cultivate warm friendship with a vast number of noble-minded Christians both in England and in America. Gandhi therefore took care to distinguish between the ordinary Christian residing in England or America and the Christian missionaries come to India from abroad; in his lectures like "India's Message to America" and "Impressions of America" he paid handsome tributes to the former, in those like "Have
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