Systems of Indian Philosophy

Author(s): Virchand R Gandhi
Publisher: Mahavir Jain Vidyalay

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INTRODUCTION
Christian Missions to India been Successful ?" he cursed the latter. As an Indian Gandhi was painfully conscious of his country's dependent status as also of the economic exploitation this country was subjected to, but his observations on these matters are mostly in the form of obiter dicta. For example, in the course of his "India's Message to America" he makes bold to say: "You know, my brothers and sisters, that we are not an independent nation; we are subjects of Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, the 'defender of the faith', but if we were a nation in all that that name implies, with our own government and our own rulers, with our laws and institutions controlled by us free and independent, I affirm that we should seek to establish and for ever maintain peaceful relations with all the nations of the world" (The Jaina Philosophy, p. 264). A still more revealing passage-occurring in "Have Christian Missions to India been Successful ?"-runs as follows: "Ladies and gentlemen, you have heard all your lives from your missionaries who claim to be the messengers of God how ugly, wretched, immoral, and vile the heathen Indians are ; but did you ever hear from these missionaries-the messengers of love to all mankind-of the tyrannies that are perpetrated over the Hindus in India? Government have abolished duties on fine dry goods from Liverpool and Manchester for the purpose of finding a good market in India and have levied a 200 per cent tax on the manufacture of salt in India to maintain a costly government. Did they ever tell you about all such things? If they have not, whose messengers you will call these people who always side with tyranny, who throw their cloak of hypocritical religion over murderers and all sorts of criminals who happen to belong to their religion or to their country?" (The Jaina Philosophy, pp. 85-86). Thus Gandhi dreamt of an India politically and economically independent, but he was intelligent enough to see that there was no immediate prospect of his dream coming true. On the
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