Showing posts with label Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Show all posts

Thursday 18 June 2020

CHRISTIANS IN GANDHI'S FOLD

Prof S K George Lost his Job for Supporting Gandhi

Gandhi was one of those Hindus who had studied the scriptures of all the important religions with open mind and without prejudice. During his prayer meetings, parts of the Bible were read out and at times Psalms were sung along with 'bhajans'. The Sermon on the Mount "went straight to his heart", he used to say. During his life-time Gandhi had developed friendship with several Christians. Some of them had become his followers like C.F. Andrews, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur; Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn),  J.C. Kumarappa,Verrier Elwin,E Stanley Jones and Prof S K George.S K George's  serious involvement in the national struggles for Indian Independence dated from his publication in 1932 of his manifesto entitled India in Travail. George was compelled to resign his teaching position in theBishop's College,Calcutta.The French writer and philosopher Romain Rolland who wrote Gandhi's biography,used to call Gandhi a 'second Christ'. In fact Gandhi had shocked the Christian world by living like Jesus without being a Christian.

One day in 1929, a man went to meet Gandhi at the Sabarmati Ashram. Could he show Gandhi his Ph. D thesis! It contained a different idea of economics. Gandhi read the thesis and was amazed. Here was a man who thought exactly like him. Humans are not merely wealth-producing animals. They were members of society with political, social, moral and spiritual responsibilities. Gandhi immediately asked this man to join him in his efforts to develop a new way of thinking and doing economics.

So Joseph Cornellius Kumarappa, who once was an accountant running his own firm in Mumbai and had just returned from the US, changed his suit for Khadi.

J. C. Kumarappa (born Joseph Chelladurai Cornelius; 1892 - 1960) was an Indian economist and a close associate of  Gandhi. A pioneer of rural economic development theories, Kumarappa is credited for developing economic theories based on Gandhism – a school of economic thought he coined "Gandhian economics".
A Gandhian economist ahead of his time
Kumarappa
Kumarappa was born in Tanjore,  Tamil Nadu, into a Christian family. He was the sixth child of Solomon Doraisamy Cornelius, a Public Works officer, and Esther Rajanayagam. S.D. Cornelius, being one of the great old boys of William Miller, the famous Principal of Madras Christian College, sent his  sons JC Cornelius and Benjamin Cornelius to Doveton School and later on to Madras Christian College. After becoming the followers of Gandhi, both the brothers adopted their grand father's name,Kumarappa,and were hailed as Kumarappa brothers. ( The Gandhian Crusader: A Biography of Dr. J.C.Kumarappa, Gandhigram Trust, 1956).Kumarappa later on did economics and chartered accountancy in Britain in 1919. In 1928 he travelled to the United States to obtain degrees in economics and business administration at Syracuse University and Columbia University, studying under Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman.

His older sister, E. S. Appasamy, became a notable educator and social worker in Madras.

On his return to India, Kumarappa published an article on the British tax policy and its exploitation of the Indian economy. He met Gandhi in 1929. At Gandhi's request he prepared an economic survey of rural Gujarat, which he published as A Survey of Matar Taluka in the Kheda District (1931). He strongly supported Gandhi's notion of village industries and promoted Village Industries Associations.

Kumarappa worked to combine Christian and Gandhian values of "trusteeship", non-violence and a focus on human dignity and development in place of materialism as the basis of his economic theories. While rejecting socialism's emphasis on class war and force in implementation, he also rejected the emphasis on material development, competition and efficiency in free-market economics. Gandhi and Kumarappa envisioned an economy focused on satisfying human needs and challenges while rooting out socio-economic conflict, unemployment, poverty and deprivation.

He was described one of the "Christians of the inner Gandhi circle" – which included non-Indians such as C F Andrews, Verrier Elwin and R. R. Keithahn, and Indians such as Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, S. K. George, Aryanayagam and B. Kumarappa, all of whom espoused the philosophy of non-violence. J. C. Kumarappa responded positively to the Indian national renaissance, and he and George rejected the idea that British rule in India was ordained by divine providence.

Kumarappa worked as a professor of economics at the Gujarat Vidyapith in Ahmedabad, while serving as the editor of Young India during the Salt Satyagraha, between May 1930 and February 1931. He helped found and organise the All India Village Industries Association in 1935; and was imprisoned for more than a year during the Quit India movement. He wrote during his imprisonment, Economy of Permanence, The Practice and Precepts of Jesus (1945) and Christianity: Its Economy and Way of Life (1945).

Several of Gandhi's followers developed a theory of environmentalism. Kumarappa took the lead in a number of relevant books in the 1930s and 1940s. He and Mirabehn argued against large-scale dam-and-irrigation projects, saying that small projects were more efficacious, that organic manure was better and less dangerous than man-made chemicals, and that forests should be managed with the goal of water conservation rather than revenue maximisation. The British and the Nehru governments paid them little attention. Historian Ramachandra Guha calls Kumarappa, "The Green Gandhian," portraying him as the founder of modern environmentalism in India.

After India's independence in 1947, Kumarappa worked for the Planning Commission of India and the Indian National Congress to develop national policies for agriculture and rural development. He also travelled to China, eastern Europe and Japan on diplomatic assignments and to study their rural economic systems. He spent some time in Sri Lanka, where he received Ayurvedic treatment. He settled near Madurai at the Gandhi Niketan Ashram, T.Kallupatti (a school based on Gandhian education system) constructed by freedom fighter and Gandhian follower K. Venkatachalapathi, where he continued his work in economics and writing.

He died on 30 January 1960. The Kumarappa Institute of Gram Swaraj was founded in his honour. His younger brother Bharatan Kumarappa was also associated with Gandhi and the Sarvodaya movement.

Charles Freer Andrews ( 1871 – 1940) was a priest of the Church of England. A Christian missionary, educator and social reformer in India, he became a close friend of Rabindranath Tagore and  Gandhi and identified with the cause of India's independence. He was instrumental in convincing Gandhi to return to India from South Africa.

C. F. Andrews was affectionately dubbed Christ's Faithful Apostle by Gandhi, based on his initials, C.F.A. For his contributions to the Indian Independence Movement Gandhi and his students at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, named him Deenabandhu, or "Friend of the Poor".

Andrews was born on 12 February 1871 at 14 Brunel Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, United Kingdom; his father was the "Angel" (bishop) of the Catholic Apostolic Church in Birmingham. The family had suffered financial misfortune because of the duplicity of a friend, and had to work hard to make ends meet. Andrews was a pupil at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and afterwards read Classics at Pembroke College, Cambridge. During this period he moved away from his family's church and was accepted for ordination in the Church of England.

In 1896 Andrews became a deacon, and took over the Pembroke College Mission in south London. A year later he was made priest, and became Vice-Principal of Westcott House Theological College in Cambridge.

He was involved in the Christian Social Union since university, and was interested in exploring the relationship between a commitment to the Gospel and a commitment to justice, through which he was attracted to struggles for justice throughout the British Empire, especially in India.

In 1904 he joined the Cambridge Mission to Delhi and arrived there to teach philosophy at St. Stephen's College, where he grew close to many of his Indian colleagues and students. Increasingly dismayed by the racist behaviour and treatment of Indians by some British officials and civilians, he supported Indian political aspirations, and wrote a letter in the Civil and Military Gazette in 1906 voicing these sentiments. Andrews soon became involved in the activities of the Indian National Congress, and he helped to resolve the 1913 cotton workers' strike in Madras.

Known for his persuasiveness, intellect and moral rectitude, he was asked by senior Indian political leader Gopal Krishna Gokhale to visit South Africa and help the Indian community there to resolve their political disputes with the Government. Arriving in January 1914, he met the 44-year-old Gujarati lawyer, Mohandas Gandhi, who was leading the Indian community's efforts against the racial discrimination and police legislation that infringed their civil liberties. Andrews was deeply impressed with Gandhi's knowledge of Christian values and his espousal of the concept of ahimsa (nonviolence).

Andrews served as Gandhi's aide in his negotiations with General Jan Smuts and was responsible for finalizing some of the finer details of their interactions.

Following the advice of several Indian Congress leaders and of Principal Susil Kumar Rudra, of St. Stephen's College, Andrews was instrumental in persuading Gandhi to return to India with him in 1915.

In 1918 Andrews disagreed with Gandhi's attempts to recruit combatants for World War I, believing that this was inconsistent with their views on nonviolence. In Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas, Andrews wrote about Gandhi's recruitment campaign: "Personally I have never been able to reconcile this with his own conduct in other respects, and it is one of the points where I have found myself in painful disagreement."

Andrews was elected President of the All India Trade Union in 1925 and 1927.

Andrews developed a dialogue between Christians and Hindus. He spent a lot of time at Santiniketan in conversation with Tagore. He also supported the movement to ban the ‘untouchability of outcasts’. He joined the famous Vaikom Satyagraha, and in 1933 assisted B.R. Ambedkar in formulating the demands of the Dalits.

Andrews, along with Tagore, visited Sree Narayana Guru,  spiritual leader from Kerala, South India. Then he wrote to Romain Rolland:" I have seen our Christ walking on the shore of Arabian sea in the attire of a hindu sanyasin".

Andrews ( far left) with Gandhi

He and Agatha Harrison arranged for Gandhi's visit to the UK. He accompanied Gandhi to the second Round Table Conference in London, helping him to negotiate with the British government on matters of Indian autonomy and devolution.

When the news reached India, of the mistreatment of Indian indentured labourers in Fiji, the Indian Government in September 1915 sent Andrews and William W. Pearson to make inquiries. The two visited numerous plantations and interviewed indentured labourers, overseers and Government officials and on their return to India also interviewed returned labourers. In their "Report on Indentured Labour in Fiji" Andrews and Pearson highlighted the ills of the indenture system; which led to the end of further transportation of Indian labour to the British colonies. In 1917 Andrews made a second visit to Fiji, and although he reported some improvements, was still appalled at the moral degradation of indentured labourers. He called for an immediate end to indenture; and the system of Indian indentured labour was formally abolished in 1920.

In 1936, while on a visit to Australia and New Zealand, Andrews was invited to and visited Fiji again. The ex-indentured labourers and their descendants wanted him to help them overcome a new type of slavery, by which they were bound to the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, which controlled all aspects of their lives. Andrews, however, was delighted with the improvements in conditions since his last visit, and asked Fiji Indians to "remember that Fiji belonged to the Fijians and they were there as guests.

About this time Gandhi reasoned with Andrews that it was probably best for sympathetic Britons like himself to leave the freedom struggle to Indians. So from 1935 onwards Andrews began to spend more time in Britain, teaching young people all over the country about Christ's call to radical discipleship. He was widely known as Gandhi's closest friend and was perhaps the only major figure to address Gandhi by his first name, Mohan.

He died on 5 April 1940, during a visit to Calcutta, and is buried in the 'Christian Burial ground' of Lower Circular Road cemetery, Calcutta.
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Mirabehn
Mirabehn, byname of Madeleine Slade, (1892- 1982) , was a British-born follower of Gandhi who participated in the movement for India’s independence.

Madeleine Slade was the daughter of an English aristocratic family. Because her father, Sir Edmond Slade, was a rear admiral in the British Royal Navy and was often away, Madeleine and her siblings spent much of their childhood at their grandfather’s country home in Surrey. She developed a strong admiration for the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and eventually became a concert manager.

Her aristocratic existence took a life-changing turn after she read French novelist and essayist Romain Rolland’s 1924 biography of Gandhi. In the book the author had described Gandhi as the greatest personality of the 20th century. Slade became fascinated by the principles of nonviolence and contacted Gandhi himself, asking if she could become his disciple and live in his ashram in the western Indian region of Gujarat. Gandhi, while replying in the affirmative, forewarned her of the difficulties of such a life. Undeterred, Slade reached India in November 1925 and made India her home for the next 34 years. She chose not to return to England for personal visits, even when her father died in 1926.

Upon her arrival at the ashram, Gandhi gave her the nickname Mirabehn (“Sister Mira”), named for Mira (or Meera) Bai, the Hindu mystic and great devotee to the god Krishna. She started wearing a white sari, cut her hair short, and took a vow of celibacy. During the first two years in India, she learned Hindi and spent much time spinning and carding cotton. Subsequently, she started travelling to various parts of the country to work in villages.

Mirabehn often accompanied Gandhi on his tours and looked after his personal needs. She became one of Gandhi’s confidants and an ardent champion internationally for India’s freedom from British rule and was with Gandhi at the London Round Table Conference in 1931. In 1934 she made a brief visit to the United States for lectures and radio talks and met first lady Eleanor Roosevelt for an interview at the White House. Before returning to India, she conducted interviews with a number of British politicians in the United Kingdom—Sir Samuel Hoare, Lord Halifax, Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, and Clement Attlee—as well as the South African leader Jan Smuts.
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Mirabehn with Secretary Brahmachari Dutt

Mirabehn was active in spreading the spirit of nonviolence, and she was considered by the British to be important to India’s independence movement. She was arrested multiple times, including during a period of civil disobedience in 1932–33, when she was detained on the charge of supplying information to Europe and America regarding conditions prevailing in India; and in 1942, when she was imprisoned in the Aga Khan Palace in Pune along with Gandhi and his wife, Kasturba.

In 1946 Mirabehn was appointed as honorary special adviser to the Uttar Pradesh government to assist in a campaign to expand agricultural production. In 1947 she set up an ashram near Rishikesh. Following Gandhi’s assassination in 1948, Mirabehn decided to stay in India. For the next 11 years, she travelled to various Indian states, took on community projects including one that came to be known as the Gopal Ashram in the Bhilangana valley  and worked on environmental issues such as those preventing deforestation and implementing flood-control measures. She even experimented with the introduction of Dexter cattle from England for crossbreeding with the yak in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mirabehn returned to England in 1959 and a year later moved to a house near Vienna, where she spent the remaining years of her life. A year before her death, the Indian government conferred on her the Padma Vibhushan medal, the country’s second highest civilian honour.

Among her writings are New and Old Gleanings, published in 1960 (an updated edition of Gleanings Gathered at Bapu’s Feet, originally published in 1949), and her autobiography, The Spirit’s Pilgrimage,( 1960).Sudhir Kakar's novel,Mira and Mahatma,portrays the special relationship between nthe two,hinting at a jealousy on the part of Kasthurba.
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Former prime minister Indira Gandhi and freedom fighter Rajkumari Amrit Kaur were mentioned in TIME magazine’s list of the 100 most powerful women who defined the last century in a new project that aims to feature those women who were “often overshadowed”.

Born on 2 February, 1889, to the royal family of Kapurthala, Amrit Kaur grew up in a Christian household as her father converted to Christianity before she was born, and her mother was a Bengali Christian.Kaur spent her early years in Kapurthala, Punjab, and then moved to Sherborne School in Dorset, UK. She excelled at the school, was the “head girl” and the captain of the cricket, hockey and lacrosse team. She spent her undergraduate years at Oxford.She returned to India in 1918, and began to be drawn towards the work and teachings of Gandhi.

At 20, Kaur returned to India. She was fascinated by the teachings of the Mahatma, and although she would only meet him in 1919, she wrote to him regularly. This would go on to become one of the most enduring epistolary relationships that is documented in Letters to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Her parents’ objection to her joining the freedom struggle is what kept Kaur away till 1930, when her father passed away.

Amrit Kaur was the first woman in independent India who joined the Cabinet as the Health Minister and remained in that position for 10 years. Before taking up the position of a Health Minister, Kaur was Mahatma Gandhi’s secretary. During these 10 years, she founded the Indian Council for Child Welfare. She also laid the foundation of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Lady Irwin College in Delhi in the following years. 

In 1936, hoping that more women would join the freedom struggle, Gandhi wrote to her: “I am now in search of a woman who would realise her mission. Are you that woman, will you be one?”.

In the following years, as Kaur started interacting with other freedom fighters such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Gandhi, she gave up her princely comforts and began to discipline herself by responding to the Gandhian call. “The flames of my passionate desire to see India free from foreign domination were fanned by him,” she said. Apart from joining the nationalist freedom struggle, Kaur also began work on a number of other social and political issues such as the purdah system, child marriage and the Devadasi system. When the civil disobedience movement took off in the 1930s, Kaur dedicated her life to it. The independence activist Aruna Asaf Ali wrote about her, “Rajkumari Amrit Kaur belonged to a generation of pioneers. They belonged to well to do homes but gave up on their affluent and sheltered lives and flocked to Gandhiji’s banner when he called women to join the national liberation struggle,”. Kaur was jailed after the Quit India movement and carried to the jail a spinning wheel, the Bhagwat Gita and the Bible.

Gandhi would affectionately use the epithet ‘idiot’ or ‘rebel’ for Kaur, and would sign his letters as ‘robber’ and ‘tyrant’, respectively. They developed such a lasting friendship that they continued to write to each even during their jail terms after the Quit India Movement.

Further, while Kaur advocated for equality, she was not in favour of reservations for women and believed that universal adult franchise would open the doors for women to enter into the legislative and administrative institutions of the country. In light of this, she believed that there was no place left for reservation of seats.

She passed away in 1964, at the age of 75. While she was a practicing Roman Catholic, she was cremated as per Sikh rituals in the Yamuna.

Verrier Elwin
Verrier Elwin (1902- 1964 ) was a British-born anthropologist, ethnologist and tribal activist, who began his career in India as a Christian missionary. He first abandoned the clergy, to work with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, then converted to Hinduism in 1935 after staying in a Gandhian ashram and split with the nationalists over what he felt was an overhasty process of transformation and assimilation for the tribals. Verrier Elwin is best known for his early work with the Baigas and Gonds of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh in central India, and he married a member of one of the communities he studied. He later also worked on the tribals of several North East Indian states especially North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA) and settled in Shillong, the hill capital of Meghalaya.

In time he became an authority on Indian tribal lifestyle and culture, particularly on the Gondi people. He served as the Deputy Director of the Anthropological Survey of India upon its formation in 1945. Post-independence,he took up Indian citizenship.
. In January 1954,Elwin became the first foreigner to be accepted as an Indian citizen. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appointed him as an adviser on tribal affairs for north-eastern India, and later he was Anthropological Adviser to the Government of NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan in 1961. His autobiography, The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin won him the 1965 Sahitya Akademi Award in English Language.

Harry Verrier Holman Elwin was born in Dover.He is the son of Edmund Henry Elwin, Bishop of Sierra Leone. He was educated at Dean Close School and Merton College, Oxford,where he received his degrees of BA First Class in English Language and Literature, MA, and DSc. He also remained the President of Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (OICCU) in 1925.He had a brilliant career at Oxford, where he took a Double First in English and in Theology, before being ordained a priest in the Church of England. He came to India in 1927, to join a small sect, the Christa Seva Sangh of Poona, which hoped to 'indigenise' Christianity.

Elwin married a 13 year old Raj Gond tribal girl called Kosi who was a student at his school at Raythwar (Raithwar) in Dindori district in Madhya Pradesh on 4 April 1940. They had one son, Jawaharlal (Kumar), born in 1941. Elwin had an ex-parte divorce in 1949, at the Calcutta High Court, writing in his autobiography, "I cannot even now look back on this period of my life without a deep sense of pain and failure". In 2006 Kosi was still living in a hut in Raythwar, their son Kumar having died. The couple's second son, Vijay, also died young. Elwin remarried a woman called Lila, belonging to the Pardhan Gond tribe in nearby Patangarh, moving with her to Shillong in the early 1950s. They had three sons, Wasant, Nakul and Ashok. Elwin died in Delhi on 22 February 1964 after a heart attack. His widow Lila died in Mumbai in 2013, aged about 80, shortly after the demise of their eldest son, Wasant. His marriage to Lila connected Verrier to Jangarh Singh Shyam, the Gond artist.

The Church has argued that the tribal people are not Hindus, and the missionaries have every right to convert them. However, the research of Verrier Elwin becomes very important, who, after years of meticulous study among the tribal population, concluded: “When I first arrived in aboriginal company thirteen years ago, I was under the impression that the Hillmen were not Hindus. Eight years of hard study and research have convinced me that I was wrong.”

E. Stanley Jones, the world renowned American evangelist, had been a great sympathiser of the Gandhian movement. His admiration for Gandhi arose from the intimate similarity that he saw between his master Jesus and the man Gandhi. He wrote: “…he (Gandhi) marched into the soul of humanity in the most triumphal march that any man ever made since the death and resurrection of the Son of God”83. Jones admitted that Gandhi taught him more about the spirit of Christ than perhaps any other man in East, or West, and on the occasion of Gandhi’s martyrdom Jones said: “Never did a death more fittingly crown a life, save only onethat of the Son of God”.

The first meeting between Stanley Jones and Gandhi took place in 1919 when Jones was at St. Stephen's College, Delhi to address the students. Susil Rudra, the Principal, introduced him to Gandhi. It was followed by a conversation about how Christianity could be naturalised in India86. Jones was impressed by Gandhi’s faithfulness to the moral ideal of Christ and remarked: Gandhi went by manifesting a Christian spirit far beyond most of the Christians. 

Jones’s next meeting with Gandhi was in Poona in 1924. That was when Gandhi was temporarily released from the jail for an operation. Jones asked for a message he could take back with him to the west as to how we should live this Christian life? Gandhi replied: “Such a message cannot be given by word of mouth; it can only be lived”88. Though this reply impressed Jones, the evangelist in Jones persuaded Gandhi that he ought to make Christ the centre of his nonviolent movement for it could then readily appreciated by the west. “If you will give a clear-cut witness to Jesus, then a world kingdom is awaiting you”89. Also Jones wanted Gandhi to declare a personal allegiance to Christ, though he added that he did not mean coming out and being a baptised Christian. He left that for Gandhi to decide. But to the disappointment of Jones, Gandhi did neither.

Rev. E. Stanley Jones giving one of his sermons at Sat Tal Ashram, India.
Stanley Jones
Jones admiration of Gandhi was not uncritical. He viewed every word and every deed of Gandhi from a strictly Christianevangelical point of view and critiqued them. Jones was provoked by Gandhi’s speech in the missionaries’ meet in Calcutta YWCA where he said: “Hinduism, as I know, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being, and I find solace in the Bhagavadgita and the Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount”90. In the above words Jones sensed a serious weakness in Gandhi’s understanding of Christ and was disappointed about it He wrote:

“I think you have grasped certain principles of the Christian faith which have moulded you and have helped make you greatyou have grasped the principles, but you have missed the person. You said in Calcutta to the missionaries that you did not turn to the Sermon on the Mount for consolation, but to the Bhagavadgita. Nor do I turn to the Sermon on the Mount for consolation, but to this person who embodies and illustrates the Sermon on the Mount, but he is much more. Here is where I think you are weakest in your grasp. May I suggest that you penetrate through the principles to the person and then come back and tell us what you have found. I don’t say this as a mere Christian propagandist. I say this because we need you and need the illustration you could give us if you really grasp the centre the person”. 

The point raised by Jones regarding the precedence to be accorded to the person of Jesus was not new to Gandhi. But he stuck to his position that Jesus was one among the great teachers of the world and his life inspired him as an embodiment of sacrifice. 

C. F. Andrews, S. K. George and Stanley Jones who were Gandhi’s close Christian friends were in full agreement that Gandhi had manifested in his life a true Christliness. They said that they themselves and the Christian world as a whole were enriched by Gandhi’s practical application of the Christian principles. They emphasised that living like Christ-in other words imitation of Christwas more important than preaching or teaching of any Christian dogmas or traditions. Coming under Gandhi’s influence they modified their traditional views and challenged Christians to give more importance to practical aspects of religion rather than mere dogmas or creed. They firmly believed that Gandhi posed an un-mistakable challenge before the Christian world as he was more Christianised than many who claimed to be Christians and his precepts were really valid for Christianity for its healthy conduct in a pluralistic context. 
 
S K George,a Keralite from Thrissur in Gandhi's fold,wrote,Gandhi's Challenge to Christianity,which made the anti Gandhi Church,furious.

S K George,who lived in Sabarmathi and Santiniketan after resigning as lecturer in Bishop's College,Calcutta in 1932,published the book in London in 1939 with a foreword by S Radhakrishnan;its second edition was published in 1947 by Navjivan Trust with an added preface by Horace Alexander.

When the young theologian stepped out of the portals of the Bishop’s College Calcutta in 1932, little did he realize that the teachings of Christ would be religiously followed by an ‘unbeliever’. Much to the shock of his relatives and friends w ho expected him to be conventional parson of the Anglican Church,Srampickal Kuruvilla George by the message and teachings of Gandhi.
For George,the practice of redemptive suffering love manifested in the cross of Christ was the central principle of Christianity.Gandhi's satyagraha movement was for him the cross in action and he joined it wholeheartedly in 1932,resigning his job.Even prior to this,as a Bachelor of Divinity student of Bishop's College ( 1924-27),he had his doubts about the exclusive divinity of Christ.As early as George helped in organizing the All Kerala Inter-Religious Students Fellowship,which tried to bring together students of various of various religions for mutual understanding and co-operation.The first conference of the Fellowship was held at Alwaye in May 1937.

George saw in Gandhi, a person who dared to live the Christian life and even called others to do so.Never had he seen anyone who treated the Gita and the Sermon on the Mount as Gospels. His conviction to follow the Gandhian way also gave him enough audacity to express theological doubts pertaining to the exclusive Divinity of Christ. Theologians, who were taken by surprise at George’s affirmations,postponed his ordination as a priest of the Church, hoping that he would come back to the real faith of the Church.

Since the irrevocable had happened, George became a social leper in theological circles. Unmindful of the hostility, George went a step further. In the 1930s, when the Church in India did not show any sympathy towards the national movement, George urged the Christians to join the Civil Disobedience Movement for he firmly believed that the ‘satyagraha’ ‘was the Cross in action’. He published an appeal to all Indian Christians and the Church to join in and act as custodians of non-violence as a community which claimed to believe in the supreme instance of the triumphant satyagraha the world has seen, viz, the Cross of Jesus of Nazareth. The Bengal Government took objection to this statement and two Calcutta papers were penalized. George himself escaped Government prosecution. But this sympathy with Indian nationalism was regarded as disloyalty to the Church and the Government.

The then head of the Anglican Church in India, Metropolitan Foss Westcott, had condemned the Disobedience Movement as unchristian and even justified the British law comparing it to the law of Nature. However, George confronted his stand by drawing a parallel between the revolt of Israelites mentioned in the Bible to the Disobedience Movement what followed was a theological battle.

George said: " One striking biblical parallel suggests itself to me whenever I think of Gandhiji, namelythat of Moses leading the revolt of the Israelites, creating disaffection among them against constituted authority and leading them to independence. Moses would stand condemned by your Lordship’s argument from the analogy of the laws of Nature."

In his reply the Metropolitan stated: I always understood that Moses went with the full permission of Pharaoh… but his pursuit was arrested not by the violence of Moses but by what is recorded as an act of God". And in his reply to this, George said: "You say our Lord kept out of politics, but we are not to bring Him into our politics if He is to be the Lord of all life?… And I challenge anyone to say that in principle the war of non-violent disobedience to an unjust law is against the teaching of Christ."

Gandhi's Challenge to Christianity It is a pleasure to write a brief not introducing Mr. S.K. George's book on Christianity in India. He represents the increasing number of Indian Christians who are alive to the currents of modern Indian life and aspiration and are anxious to bring their faith into an understanding with India's spiritual heritage.


In the preface to his book on Gandhi,,George wrote:

 "I do not claim to be great anything; but I do claim to be a Gandhiite and a Christian. That combination is to me vital and significant for the world today and especially so for India. The conviction came to me as a young man in the beginnings of the Gandhian era in Indian politics, a conviction that has only been deepened by the passage of years and a greater understanding of the message both of Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi, that a true Christian in India today must necessarily be a Gandhian. The corollary to that, that a Gandhiite must also be a Christian, need not necessarily follow, unless the term Christian is understood in its widest, perhaps its truest sense, in the sense in which Gandhi, with his life-long devotion to Hinduism, is himself a Christian. 

"The Christian Church in spite of all its adoration of Jesus, its exaltation of him to the very throne of Deity, has all along relegated his teachings as impracticable idealism. His great enunciation of the law of love, as the only rule of life for man as a child of God, though repeated ad nauseam by professing Christians, has continually been given the go-by in Christian practice, corporate and even individual...The sceptic Bernard Shaw has shown greater spiritual insight than all the ecclesiastics of the West when he says that Jesus' teachings are "a force like electricity needing only the discovery of a suitable machinery, to be applied to the affairs of mankind with revolutionary effect." It is the main contention of this book that Gandhi in his satyagraha has discovered that machinery, that technique, by which the law of love has been applied with revolutionary effect in Indian politics. Not to recognize that application in Gandhi's mighty experiments with truth, not to see in him the stirrings of the spirit of God, is to be lacking in spiritual discernment, is to come under the condemnation of Jesus himself for not discerning the signs of the times and the ways of God. I still cherish the hope that my fellow-believers, in India at least, will face up to the challenge of Gandhi's witness to essential Christianity. 

" A true Gandhiite is essentially a Christian. If what is vital in Christianity is the message of the Master and its application to life then Gandhi is a true follower of Jesus. The story is told how the disciples of Jesus once came across a person doing good works in his name, who yet would not follow them; and they "forbade him because he followed not us". When the incident was reported to Jesus, the Master said: "Forbid him not; for he that is not against you is for you." Gandhi certainly is not only not against Jesus, but is definitely for him.

"For redemptive, suffering love is the central principle in Christianity and the manifestation of it in practice, and not the preaching of any dogma, is what is needed, is what will convince India of the truth and the power of Christianity. It ought to be a matter of supreme thankfulness to the Indian Christian that this principle is not unwelcome or alien to India; that it is the guiding light of India's leading statesman and has received at his hands a practical application on a scale unprecedented in world history. For it is one of the main theses of this book that Gandhi's satyagraha is Christianity in action and that the Christian Church lost one of its greatest opportunities in recent years in failing to fall behind Gandhi in his great movement for national emancipation on non-violent lines. This failure was largely due to the foreign leadership to which it is still so subservient."

George’s radical stand not only ostracized him further in the Christian circles, but he also lost his job.

His personal life was also in turmoil as his wife had to stay with her parents with their two small children while George went to Gandhi’s Ashram at Sabarmathi. That was the time when Gandhi was in prison. In one of his letters to George, Gandhi wrote… "Only do not give me up in despair…" 

This appeal not to give him up in despair touched George and humiliated him. He wrote later: "Not only have I not givenhim (Gandhi) up, but I continue to draw inspiration from that fountainhead of light to humanity, groping and floundering along the path of violence in this age of atomic powers…"

George had to return to Kerala shortly afterwards following the death of his daughter to look after his wife who suffered from a sudden shock following the tragedy. It was the time when Gandhi had come to Trivandrum to preside over the celebrations of the Travancore Temple Entry. He made it a point to visit the ailing Mary George after the function inspiring her with his mere presence.

For George the going was not easy. He spent much of his time struggling to maintain his intellectual integrity and his right to exist even as an independent and unattached Christian. Many of the 
church-controlled institutions refused to provide him a job because of his freethinking religious ideas.

In 1942 George produced a small book Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ. Reviewing this book Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar wrote: "It is impossible to improve on Mr. George’s account that the modern mind sees the evidence of Jesus Christ’s divinity not in his miracles in the fragrance of his sacrificial living…I have learnt more about the real character of Jesus from this book than from any other." Sir C P was the then Dewan of Travancore.

Gandhi appointed Mrs. George as his representative in the Kasturba Trust for Kerala, which started functioning in 1946, with a training centre at Trichur in the house and land belonging to the George family. Mrs. George worked as a representative for about 8 years.

From 1947-1950, George was in Viswa Bharati, Shantiniketan, as editor of Sino-Indian Journal and professor of English in their college and then as President, C F Andrews Memorial Hall for Christian and Western Studies.

In 1950,George accepted an invitation from Sriman Narayan to take up the job as Professor of English,G S College, Wardha, the centre of Gandhian activities. In 1951 he wrote the book The Story of the Bible, with a foreword by Rajkumari Amrit Kaur.

The Fellowship of the Friends of Truth,which started in 1951 and whose Secretary for the first seven years was George,functioned as an inter religious movement.According to George,the place of Jesus in the Hindu heritage of India is as one of the Ishta Devathas or chosen or favourite deities.Hinduism readily grants such a place to Jesus.

In 1954, the then Madhya Pradesh Government appointed the Christian Missionaries Activities Enquiry Committee with Justice N B Niyogi as its chairman with five members. Prof S K George was one of them, the only Christian on the committee. A storm of protest was raised by a certain section of people against the very appointment of the enquiry committee, and specially directed against George.

The force of opposition to George’s appointment can be well gauged by the necessity felt by the
Government of issuing a press note to justify the appointment of the Committee. With reference to George, the press note stated: " As regards Shri S K George, he is a devout Christian and a nationalist, belonging to the oldest Church in India- the Syrian Christian Church-and has been an educationist and a public worker of more than twenty five years’ standing. He has pursued Theological studies both in India and Oxford, and was also working in Shantiniketan. He has published several books on Christianity."

He launched Gandhi Marg , a magazine  in 1957.The work of the Enquiry Committee proved too much for George. The nervous strain of serving on such a commission could be imagined. " A very tired man", as he said to himself. He was suffering from Parkinson’s disease. There was no definite treatment for this progressive disease in those days. His health deteriorated. Meanwhile his wife died on 19th December 1959.George followed his wife a few months later on 4th May, 1960. He was sixty years old then.

To those who knew the man personally, it was a great loss. As Rev. R. R. Keithahn said: "George was ahead of most of us. He had rid himself of that which binds the spirit. He could look at another man, another religion, another thought as few men ever do. As a result, he could at once make the truth his own fettered by no dogma or ritual or prejudice…surely he was a man of God."

S K George was gentle as a saint but firm as a rock on all matters of principle, that was what had made his life’s pilgrimage such a difficult one. With his scholarship and flawless English he could so easily have led a peaceful and happy life in the pleasant backwaters of Christian colleges, had he been prepared to turn a deaf ear to what he called, in the title of his first book, Gandhi’s Challenge to Christianity and to hold aloof from national struggle.

Another Christian,Barrister George Joseph ( 1887 - 1938)  from Kerala was just opposite to S K George-George Joseph,who was with Gandhi, distanced himself from him when he was asked to stay away from the Vaikam Sathyagraha by Gandhi. He was the editor of Motilal Nehru's The Independent and Gandhi's Young India.Instead of becoming a gandhian,he turned a Christian.

An anecdote from S K George:

In 1936, Gandhi went to Trivandrum to preside over a meeting to welcome the epoch-making proclamation accepting the right of so-called 'untouchables' to worship at Hindu temples. I (S. K. George)  went to call on Gandhi at his residence, but could not see him. I met Mahadev Desai and told him about his wife who was ill at the time. I spoke about it also to  G. Ramachandran, another colleague of Gandhi's hailing from Trivandrum, regretting our inability to meet Bapu. Ramachandran, knowing the mind of the master, said that then it would be a case of the Mountain going to Muhammad. I quoted scripture against that, and said that it was unworthy that he should enter under our roof. 

But what the disciple had predicted happened. After the great meeting that evening Gandhiji returned to his residence, not joining in the procession that followed. During his evening meal he asked about my wife and enquired where we were staying. It so happened that the State Guest House where he (Gandhi) was staying was close to our house, and one of the sisters in attendance on him was a teacher in our school. She offered to guide him to our place; and so immediately after food, staff in hand, the old man set out to visit his humble sister who, he had heard, was lying ill. It was past nine, and we had retired early. Only a single kerosene oil lamp was burning in the house. We had not slept, and I could distinguish the voice of Mahadevbhai who was one of the company visiting us. I told my wife about this and heard Mahadevbhai remarking: "He thinks it is only Mahadev." Looking out I saw Gandhiji and party at our gate. I immediately rushed to open the gate which was locked. Gandhiji observed with a chuckle: "So you are afraid of thieves." I mentioned to Gandhiji what Ramachandran had said, and referred to the Biblical parallel of the Roman centurion telling Jesus that he was not worthy that the Master should enter under his roof. "Aha!" retorted Gandhiji. 

Coming into the house, I sought to detain him in the drawing room. But he had come to give a courtesy call and put me immediately in my place saying. "I have come to see not you but your wife." And he walked straight to her room. Sitting beside her cot he enquired about her illness and the treatment she was having. I woke up our little son and brought him to Bapu for his blessing. It was a very patient and unhurried few minutes that he spent with us, but we were a little too flurried to use it to the fullest advantage in seeking his paternal advice on our problems.

 (Source: "A Sick Visitation" by S.K. George)

Two other Christians associated with Gandhi were,K T Paul and S K Datta.After a long period as National Secretary of YMCA,Paul resigned that position so that he could be more active in politics.Paul alongwith Datta,represented the Indian community at the London Round Table conferences ( 1930-32) and there tried to bring reconciliation among the opposing leaders who took part.Paul knew Gandhi intimately and was associated with the prominent leaders between 1920 and till his death in 1931.

In 1937,the American Christian Rev Dr R R Keithahn asked  Gandhi to explain the differences between religions. Gandhi answered:"The differences of race and skin and of mind and body ... are transitory.In the same way essentially all religions are equal."


© Ramachandran 

Monday 15 June 2020

CHRISTIANITY,KERALA AND GANDHI


Jesus is Not the Only Son of God

Gandhi was dead against conversion.But umpteen number of Christian missionaries were after him,to convert him.He never gave them a chance.They were after Ambedkar too,who had a wavering mind.Ambedkar in a speech in Nasik had declared that he is leaving the Hindu fold.Gandhi instead of the Christian Kingdom,propounded the Rama Rajya.Though he studied in London,unlike many others.he was never a Eurocentric;he had his moorings in Hinduism.

Gandhi was one of those Hindus who had studied the scriptures of all the important religions with open mind and without prejudice. During his prayer meetings, parts of the Bible were read out and at times Psalms were sung along with 'bhajans'. The Sermon on the Mount "went straight to his heart", he used to say. During his life-time Gandhi had developed friendship with several Christians. Some of them had become his followers like C.F. Andrews, Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur; Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn), and J.C. Kumarappa. The French writer and philosopher Romain Rolland who  wrote Gandhi's biography,used to call Gandhi a 'second Christ'. In fact Gandhi had shocked the Christian world by living like Jesus without being a Christian.Rolland had written Sri Ramakrishna Paramahmsa's biography too.
Is the Hindu Right's Appropriation of Gandhi Possible?

Christian missionaries were greatly tempted to convert  Gandhi. They thought that if Gandhi was converted millions of his followers will automatically follow suit. Christian missionaries came from all parts of the world, to discuss with him matters religious but often with the sole aim of converting him to Christianity.  He listened to them patiently, argued with them and sometimes even rebuked them for mixing up social work with proselytising. What they had brought to sell did not appeal to Gandhi. He used to tell the missionaries that he refused to believe that Jesus was the only son of God and that the salvation of a person lay in accepting Jesus Christ as the Saviour.

Gandhi has described this incident in his Autobiography (1929):

"In those days Christian missionaries used to stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pouring abuse on Hindus and their gods. I could not endure this. I must have stood there to hear them once only, but that was enough to dissuade me from repeating the experiment. About the same time, I heard of a well-known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity."

His real confrontation with Christian missionaries started in 1893 while Gandhi was in South Africa. Gandhi has described these first attempts in detail in his Autobiography thus:

"The first to come in contact was one Mr. A.W. Baker. He, besides being an attorney, was a staunch lay preacher.

"He upholds the excellence of Christianity from various points of view, and contends that it is impossible to find eternal peace, unless one accepts Jesus as the only son of God and the Saviour of mankind.

"During the very first interview Mr. Baker ascertained my religious views. I said to him: "I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well."

He also gave some religious books to Gandhi to read, including the Holy Bible. Mr. Baker had invited Gandhi to a prayer meeting next day which Gandhi attended. Apart from the general prayer, Gandhi records:

"A prayer was now added for my welfare: Lord, show the path to the new brother who has come amongst us. Give him, Lord, the peace that thou has given us. May the Lord Jesus who has saved us save him too. We ask all this in the name of Jesus."

One of the group was a young man Mr. Coates, a Quaker. He had given Gandhi quite a few books on Christianity and had hoped that he would come round and embrace Christianity.

Gandhi continues in the Autobiography:

"He (Mr. Coates) was looking forward to delivering me from the abyss of ignorance. He wanted to convince me that, no matter whether there was some truth in other religions, salvation was impossible for me unless I accepted Christianity which represented the truth, and that my sins would not be washed away except by the intercession of Jesus, and that all good works were useless."

Gandhi was introduced to several other practicing Christians, including a family belonging to Plymouth Brethren, a Christian sect..One of the Plymouth Brethren confronted Gandhi with an argument for which he was not prepared. He said:

"How can this ceaseless cycle of action bring you redemption? You can never have peace. You admit that we are all sinners. Now look at the perfection of our belief. Our attempts at improvement and atonement are futile. And yet redemption we must have. How can we bear the burden of sin? We can but throw it on Jesus. He is the only sinless son of God. It is His word that those who believe in Him shall have everlasting life. Therein lies God's infinite mercy. And as we believe in the atonement of Jesus, our own sins do not bind us. Sin we must. It is impossible to five in this world sinless. And therefore Jesus suffered and atoned for all the sins of mankind. Only he who accepts His great redemption can have eternal peace. Think what a life of restless is yours, and what a promise of peace we have."

Gandhi's reaction to this offer is typical of him and is oft quoted by his western biographers like Erik Erikson and Geoffrey Ash:

"The argument utterly failed to convince me. I humbly replied: If this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself or rather from the very thought of sin. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless."

Gandhi was troubled with what was written in the Bible itself after he started reading it. Gandhi narrates another experience:

"Mr. Baker was getting anxious about my future. He took me to the Wellington Convention. The Protestant Christian organize such gatherings every few years for religious enlightenment or, in other words, self-purification. --- Mr. Baker had hoped that the atmosphere of religious exaltation at the Convention, and the enthusiasm and earnestness of the people attending it, would inevitably lead me to embrace Christianity. --- The Convention lasted for three days. I could understand and appreciate the devoutness of those who attended it. But I saw no reason for changing my belief - my religion. It was impossible for me to believe that I could go to heaven or attain salvation only by becoming a Christian. When I frankly said so to some of the good Christian friends, they were shocked. But there was no help for it."

Gandhi continues:

"My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God or God himself, then all men were like God and could be God himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.I shared this mental churning with my Christian friends whenever there was an opportunity, but their answers could not satisfy me."

Gandhi was only twenty-four when these skirmishes with Christian missionaries occurred. 

Mahatma Gandhi holding a prayer meeting at Juhu Beach, Mumbai, May 1944.
Gandhi's prayer meeting at Juhu,Mumbai,1944

Gandhi wrote the following article on Jesus in Ramanand Chatterji's Modern Review in October 1941:

What Jesus Means to me

Although I have devoted a large part of my life to the study of religion and to discussion with religious leaders of all faiths, I know very well that I cannot but seem presumptuous in writing about Jesus Christ and trying to explain what He means to me. I do so only because my Christian friends have told me on more than a few occasions that for the very reason that I am not a Christian and that (I shall quote their words exactly) "I do not accept Christ in the bottom of my heart as the only Son of God", it is impossible for me to understand the profound significance of His teachings, or to know and interpret the greatest source of spiritual strength that man has ever known.

Although this may or may not be true in my case, I have reasons to believe that it is an erroneous point of view. I believe that such an estimate is incompatible with the message that Jesus Christ gave to the world. For He was, certainly, the highest example of one who wished to give everything asking nothing in return, and not caring what creed might happen to be professed by the recipient. I am sure that if He were living here now among men, He would bless the lives of many who perhaps have never even heard His name, if only their lives embodied the virtues of which He was a living example on earth; the virtues of loving one's neighbour as oneself and of doing good and charitable works among one's fellow-men.

What, then, does Jesus mean to me? To me He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had. To His believers He was God's only begotten Son. Could the fact that I do or do not accept this belief make Jesus have any more or less influence in my life? Is all the grandeur of His teaching and of His doctrine to be forbidden to me? I cannot believe so.

Collected Works,Vol. 75 p. 69-70

During his life several Christian missionaries met him and tried relentlessly to convince him about the uniqueness of Christianity and the infallibility of the Bible. Gandhi was frank enough to tell them about their folly and the absurdity of their beliefs. Given below is confrontation of Gandhi with Christians in Kerala.

From John R Mott's discussion with Gandhi,13/14 November 1936,Vol.64 p.35-41 (Harijan, 19-12-1936 and 26-12-1936):

J.M.: But there is a deplorable confusion of thought and divided counsel even amongst friends. The Devil would like nothing better. My life has been mostly spent for the intellectual classes, and I feel very much conscience-moved to help in this movement.

Gandhiji cited the example of good Christians helping by working under the Hindu banner. There was Mr. Keithahn who was trying hard to smooth the path of the untouchables. There were Miss Barr and Miss Madden who had thrown themselves into the rural reconstruction movement. He then adverted to the problem in Travancore where an indecent competition was going on for enticing away the Ezhavas from the Hindu fold.

The Ezhavas in Travancore want temple-entry. But it is no use your asking me whether they want temple-entry. Even if they do not want it, I must see that they enjoy the same rights as I enjoy, and so the reformers there are straining every nerve to open the temple doors.

J.M. But must we not serve them?

G. Of course you will, but not make conversion the price of your service.

J.M. I agree that we ought to serve them whether they become Christians or not. Christ offered no inducements. He offered service and sacrifice.

G. If Christians want to associate themselves with this reform movement they should do so without any idea of conversion.

J.M. Apart from this unseemly competition, should they not preach the Gospel with reference to its acceptance?

G. Would you, Dr. Mott, preach the Gospel to a cow? Well, some of the untouchables are worse than cows in understanding. I mean they can no more distinguish between the relative merits of Islam and Hinduism and Christianity than a cow. You can only preach through your life. The rose does not say: 'Come and smell me.'

John Mott was an American evangelist, a prominent Y.M.C.A. leader and Chairman, International Missionary Council.

Extravagant Statements By Missionaries
Interview to Bishop Moore, Bishop Abraham and Others on 19 January 1937 at Kottayam

Bishop Edward Alfterd Livingstone Moore,fourth Anglican Bishop of Travancore-Kochi received Gandhi cordially and welcomed the Temple-entry Proclamation (in Travancore) as an important event. He inquired if the savarnas and Brahmins also welcomed it, or if there was any opposition on their part.

Gandhi said he had seen no signs of opposition. He had met several thousands of people, visited several temples, and had found savarnas and avarnas entering the temples in perfect friendliness.

Bishop Abraham asked if the Ezhavas were ready to treat the Depressed Classes of lower castes on terms of equality.

Gandhi said he could not reply with confidence but he was striving to emphasize that point everywhere, and he hoped that the Proclamation would be carried out in that spirit.

Bishop Moore said that he had heard that Mr Gandhi was disturbed over reports of Christian missionary work in Travancore, and that he was ready to remove any misunderstanding that it was possible for him to remove.

Gandhi said that he was indeed surprised at the report of conversions of thousands of people in the Telugu country and in Travancore made in Bishop Pickett's speech in England and in a statement of the Church Missionary Society appealing for funds over the signature of Prebendary Cash. He could not understand how responsible Christians could make extravagant statements to the effect that thousands had experienced a spiritual awakening and accepted the Gospel. The Bishop of Dornakal had even stated that those thousands included not only the Depressed Classes but a large number of so-called high-caste Hindus. Gandhiji said he had challenged the truth of these statements in the columns of Harijan and had invited them to prove that he was wrong. He had also met leaders working in Andhra and asked them to make inquiries into the truth of these extravagant statements.

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Bishop Moore

Bishop Moore confessed that he had trot read either the appeal for funds or Bishop Pickett's speech and could not, therefore, express any opinion thereon. He was quite sure, however, that no responsible missionary journal should ever publish statements that were not based on actual facts, and he wanted to assure Mr. Gandhi that no wrong information had ever been supplied from his diocese for which alone he could speak. During the last year they could record 530 persons as having been baptized into the Anglican faith.

Bishop Abraham said he had been to the Andhra country and had seen with his won eyes that there was a tremendous awakening there even among the middle-class savarnas he had addressed meetings which were attended by many of the high-caste people.

Gandhi: But that means nothing. Hundreds of students attend meetings addressed by Dr. Stanley Jones, but they cannot be said to seek conversion to Christianity. To say that hundreds attended meetings addressed by Christian preachers is very different from saying that hundreds have accepted the message of Jesus and from making an appeal for money in anticipation of people becoming Christian in large numbers.

Mr. Kuruvilla here put in whether Mr. Gandhi had any objection to their stimulating and responding to the spiritual hunger of people.

Gandhi said it was wholly irrelevant to the issue.

Bishop Abraham said they were responding to the spiritual hunger of the people. Mr. Gandhi could have no objection to that?

Gandhi said he could have no objection to responding to spiritual hunger, provided it was genuinely felt and expressed. But the matter was quite irrelevant to the discussion which was entirely about extravagant statements made by responsible people. He said to Bishop Moore that he would furnish him with a copy of the C. M. S. statement and he would like to know what Bishop Moore would have to say regarding it.
 
Vol.64 p.285-86. (Harijan, 13-3-1937)
Note: The interview took place at Bishop Moore's house at Kottayam. The object was to clear up misunderstandings.
Segaon, Wardha
January 30, 1937
Amrit Kaur's Views ( after Travancore)

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was with me during the Travancore pilgrimage. Though she could not enter the temples, she followed the pilgrimage in all other respects. She has felt moved by what she observed during the pilgrimage, and has placed in my hands the following letter which I dare not withhold from the reader:

I am of opinion that the missionary with the best intention in the world - for we must credit him with honesty of purpose - has wronged Indian Christian in more ways than one. Many converts here have been denationalized, e.g., even their names have been changed in many instances to those of Europeans; they have been told that there is no true light to be found in the religion of their forefathers. The ancient scriptures of their ancestors are a closed book to them. At the same time, while there has been no conscious effort to purge the Indian Church of the taint of untouchability that exists within its own doors, the untouchability that exists in Hinduism has been exploited to the extent of so-called Christianity of the Depressed Classes. I say' so-called Christianity' advisedly, because I know that not one of these poor people to whom I have spoken and I have spoken to many - has been able to tell me anything of the spiritual implications of his change of faith. That he is equally ignorant of the faith of his forefathers and has been sadly neglected by his own community does not seem to me to be ample or any reason for transplanting him to an alien soil where he can find no root.

Your utterances during your pilgrimage of penitence in Travancore have been a great joy. In particular do I rejoice in your special message to the Christian community at Kottayam. In admitting once again the equality of all religions you have given Christians much food for thought, and I hope and pray that this will be the beginning of an era of self-purification for them no less than for the members of the Hindu fold. Are we not all Hindus inasmuch as we are the children of Hind? Is there not room for Jesus in Hinduism? There must be. I cannot believe that any who seek to worship God in spirit and in truth are outside the pale of any of the great religions which draw their inspiration from Him who is the fountain-head of all Truth. I am sure I am not the only Indian born in the Christian faith who holds these views, but I feel that if the teaching and example of Jesus are to enrich the life of our country, Indian Christians must turn the search-light inwards and seek to serve in that spirit of humility and tolerance which is the essence of all true religions and without which there can be no unity and no peace and goodwill on earth.Will you not help the Indian Christian to realize his mission? You can, because you have drawn inspiration from Jesus' undying teachings as embodied in the Sermon on the Mount. We assuredly stand in need of guidance.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur has simple image in political career ...
Amrit Kaur

Owing to her close contact with me there was hesitation on my part over the publication. But the knowledge that she has very imperfectly voiced what other Christian friends have told me has overcome my hesitation. But I do not feel competent to guide Indian Christians. I can, however, appeal to them as I did at Kottayam and as I have done before then through these columns. I am on safer ground in responding to the Rajkumari's belief that there is in Hinduism room enough for Jesus, as there is for Mahomed, Zoroaster and Moses. For me the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect. It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress towards peace. 'Warring creeds' is a blasphemous expression. And it fitly describes the state of things in India, the mother, as I believe her to be, of religion or religions. If she is truly the mother, the motherhood is on trial. Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity and vice versa? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man? If the morals of a man are a matter of no concern, the form of worship in a particular manner in a church, a mosque or a temple is an empty formula, it may even be a hindrance to individual or social growth, and insistence on a particular form or repetition of a credo may be a potent cause of violent quarrels leading to bloodshed and ending in utter disbelief in religion, i.e., God Himself.

Rajkumari Amrit Kaur belonged to the royal family of Kapurthala (Punjab) and was daughter of Sir Harnam Singh who had embraced Christianity. Thus Amrit Kaur was a Christian though a devoted disciple of Gandhi like several other Christians.

Prof S K George from Thrissur was in the Inner circle of Gandhi.He lost his job in the Bishop's College,Calcutta in 1932 for supporting Gandhi.He wrote Gandhi's Challenge to Chrstianity ,in 1939.

To ALL CHRISTIANS IN INDIA

 Dear Fellow-Believers, 

The story of our Religion is nothing but the record of the appearances of Divinely inspired prophets, coming forward with compelling messages for their times, to lead their fellow men to fuller life and closer walk with God. But that story is also full of warnings to us, not to fail to discern the signs of the times, to know the day of our visitation; for it has been the lot of most of those prophets to be despised and rejected in their generation, though later ages have built their tombs and enshrined their memory. It is India's glory that in these latter days God has raised up a prophet, like unto these ancient men of God, from among her children. For it is my conviction that Mahatma Gandhi has been raised up by God in these days, as Moses of old, to lead his people out of the desolation of foreign domination and to set their feet on the path of selfrealization and world service. But the representatives of insolent might have, as of old, driven from before their faces the people's representative and God's. But what of the people? Will they too reject and disown him? We are persuaded better of the people of India as a whole.
For India has never stoned her prophets or rejected those that have been sent to her. But what of our Christian minority?

 India is on trial. We are confident that her people will come out vindicated and triumphant out of this trial. But Chistianity in India is also on its trial. We wish we could have been equally confident about that issue too. So far Indian Christians as a community have held aloof from the National struggle and allowed their inaction to be interpreted as acquiescence in reactionary measures and thus estranged themselves from their countrymen whom they seek to serve. But we trust they will not miss this last great opportunity to take their religion to the heart of the New Indi in the making. For this time the struggle will be swift and the issue decisive. We Christians ought to be devoutly thankful that that struggle is directed along strictly non-violent lines, enabling us to bear our part in it with a clear conscience. To us our Christian profession has already committed us to this struggle both as to its objective and its method. For as Christians we are bound to stand out against all injustice and oppression; and it needs no labouring the point at this time that British rule in India, in spite of all its seeming benefits, has in its totality done more harm than good to the country; and that in the interests both of India and Britain the present relation between the two countries must be radically altered. As to non-violence, it/is our Master's method, the Way of the Cross; and it is certainly up to us to be interpreters of its meaning and guardians of its integrity in the Holy War 4hat has already begun. If I appeal to Indian Christians, men and women, in all parts of the country to join in their thousands in the movement, it is because I believe that this movement under Mahatma Gandhi will lead to a partial realization at least of that great goal before mankind* the Kingdom of God, of which our prophets have seen visions and for which our Lord lived and died. It is our Christian duty, due both to God and country, to help in the realization of that ideal. May we not be found wanting in this hour of our trial! As to methods and programme, Mahatmaji in his last appeal to the community, issued through the Nationalist Christian Party of Bombay, has suggested two items in which Indian Christians can and ought to join. These are Khaddar and Prohibition. As he puts it, he has felt that the poor Indian Christian community needs Khaddar as much as any other community in the land for its economic salvation. So he expresses the hope, in his own inimitable language, that "every Indian Christian house will be adorned with the charkka and every Indian Christian body with Khaddar, spun and woven by the hands of their poor countrymen and countrywomen."

As for Prohibition, he could not understand, he says, how a Christian could take intoxicating drink. If we Christians have not been in the forefront of this work it is because we have been culpably indifferent to one of the curses that is ruining our country. The fullest co-operation with the country in these two items of constructive work seems to me the least the Indian Christian community as a whole can do at this juncture. But if individual Christians feel they ought to do more they ought to do so in the name of the Christ we serve; and I appeal to all Christian Churches and leaders to send them forth with their blessings and to uphold them with their prayers. 

YOURS IN THE SERVICE OF THE KINGDOM 
S. K. GEORGE, Lecturer (Resigned), Bishop's College, Calcutta.

A PERSONAL CONVICTION

 PERHAPS I owe it to my friends in different parts of the country to explain why it is that I felt it my duty to give up a place so congenial to me as Bishop's College, to wander into the wilderness, giving up for the time being even the care of my little family. To make my position fully clear I had better begin at the beginning of my 'spiritual pilgrimage'. It was during the great Non-cooperation days of 1921 that I began really to live. Up to that time I was merely the child of good parents, myself a good boy, which meant a harmless boy, though I had, all unsuspected by others, my own inner stormy life3 Mahatma Gandhi's life and message gripped me at that time and they have remained with me as an abiding influence, deepening and vitalizing as the years go by. Above all else they helped me to realize Christ and his message more than anything else. I realized with a distinctness, that has been blurred at times by considerations of safety and expediency, but which has never entirely faded out, that the central thing in Christianity is the hope of the Kingdom of God and that the Lord Jesus is inviting us to carry on the building up of that Kingdom with the devotion and in the spirit which characterized himself in his life on earth. Doctrinal affiliations have always seemed to me of less importance than devotion to the ideal of the Kingdom and it was in that belief that I came as a student and later as a member of the staff of Bishop's College. I shall ever be grateful to the Principal of Bishop's College for his understanding of my position and his uplifting faith in me, even though his own interpretation of Christianity differed in its emphasis from mine. 

But it was inevitable that my attitude should in the end clash with that of the authorities of the Church in India, especially at a time like this, when I believe that the Spirit of God is moving mightily to establish the foundations of the Kingdom of God in this land. For the Church with its commitments, its alliances with vested interests, its natural conservatism, and unfortunately in India its foreign leadership, was not to be expected to welcome such a radical thing as the Kingdom of God coming in power, particularly when God's chosen agent for it happens to be one outside its own fold. For it is my conviction that Mahatma Gandhi today is a worker for the Kingdom of God, perhaps the greatest force working for it here or anywhere else. I have for long felt it in my innermost being that he is a man of God and that the greatest duty of any Christian or any God-fearing man at this time is to stand with him for Truth and Justice, and true Brotherhood between men of all classes and creeds and races. This, ofcourse, is a personal conviction which no one can be argued into. But it made my own way clear. 

 My differences with the authorities of Bishop's College are of some years’ standing. During the last Civil Disobedience movement I had a little correspondence with the Metropolitan over his very unconvincing reply to Prof. Kumarappa. That time the Metropolitan had threatened to take action and the threat hung over me all through the next two years. When the struggle was renewed this year I could not remain indifferent to it. Believing as I do, that the Indian satyagraha is the Cross in action and that it gives Jesus Christ his greatest opportunity to enter the heart of a remade India, I held it to be my highest duty both towards the College and the Church in India to identify myself entirely with this non-violent movement, based absolutely on Truth and seeking solely to establish peace on earth and goodwill among men. But such an attitude on my part was regarded as disloyalty to the College and therefore I had no other alternative but to leave the College to follow my own conscience at this time of my country's need and my Lord's opportunity.

I fully trust that the Church in India will not long continue in its present apathy and will not finally miss this great opportunity to take her religion and her Lord right into the heart of the New India in the making and thus win for Him the devotion of this dear Mother of us all. May this consummation not long be delayed is the prayer of 

YOUR FRIEND AND COMRADE 
\S. K. GEORGE 
Calcutta, March 31, 1932
\

Gandi's letter to George

MY DEAR GEORGE, I was glad you were in the Ashram. I hope your fever has left you. For the time being only this note. Yes, Rama Raj is possible even with this mixture, if the workers are true. This does not exclude me. If I am true, there must be true coworkers, if false also. Do write whenever you feel like it.
 LOVE, Yeravda Mandir, 3-10-'32 BAPU

 S K George to Gandhi

The Ashram, Sabarmati, Oct. 5, 1932

 MY DEAR BAPU, 
I wonder whether my short note of September received your notice at all. As I said in that I have been striving to follow you for the last ten years, seeing in you God's chosen agent for bringing in His Kingdom on earth in this generation. Your life and your devotion to your ideal of Rama Raj made Christ and his Kingdom more real to me and I felt that in standing behind you I was helping to bring in Christ's Kingdom. It was this conviction of mine that brought me into conflict with the authorities of the Church in India and led to my resignation from Bishop's College, Calcutta, where I was a tutor. But having taken that step and having come to the Ashram for fuller identification with your cause, I find myself still perplexed as to my Christian duty. Before leaving the Ashram (I am going for a short stay at the Christa Seva Sangh, Poona) may I use my privilege as an ashrarmite of sharing my perplexities with you?

It is your ideal of Rama Raj that has won my allegiance. But my growing misgiving is whether it is possible to build up any Kingdom of God with people who have not seen the vision of it and do not accept its ideals as life-principles. The Congress does not share your ideal and is not working out your methods — for non-violence as a principle is poles apart from non-violence as a policy. I do not blame the Congress for it. It is a political organization, working for a political goal and for the realization of that it has adopted non-violence as the best policy — nonviolence in the sense of avoidance of violence — so as not to give a handle to its enemy, against whose organized violence it would otherwise have no chance. That, I believe, is all the non-violence that is in practice in the Congress campaign, though individuals may be found who carry it further. Undoubtedly even as a policy it is superior to violence and the only workable one in India; and I hope and pray that India will stick to it. But you will admit that non-violence as a policy cannot bring in the Kingdom of God. A worker for that Kingdom seeks no immediate and tangible success. He is content to wait till God's good time for its coming; indeed its coming means the perfecting of its methods and its workers. The goal of Indian Swaraj obviously cannot wait for such perfection. It is a political goal and it cannot long be delayed without disaster to the country, without making unrest habitual and driving impatient spirits among the youth to reckless acts of violence. The distinction therefore between the two ideals and the methods of their attainment ought, I think, to be made far more clear than at present. You, as a worker for the Kingdom of God, ought, in my humble opinion, to stand aside from the struggle for mere political power without hampering the swift acquisition of the latter by your insistence on methods which really pertain to the former and which you cannot get practised by a mass of workers who are in the main moved by the lesser ideal.

Take the case of your recent fast. I quite see that to you it was a religious issue and consequently far more important than the political question, and therefore you were prepared to lay down your life for it. But, as the leader of the Congress, you are fighting the political battle and thousands have followed you to prison expecting a speedy settlement of that. In turning aside from that main issue to fight untouchability, I humbly submit that, you were betraying the cause of the Congress. In taking up the untouchability question in the manner you did, you were really being true to yourself, but that as a worker for Rama Raj and not for Indian independence. India can get independence with separate electorates and with many imperfections which may not be tolerable in the Kingdom of God: only it would not be the independence of your conception; it would not be Rama Raj. But the issue has not been cleared as to whether the masses, and even the leaders, who stand behind you would prefer political independence in the immediate future or be content to wait and suffer for the Kingdom of God "which comes not with observation" and which cannot be forced upon men. I believe the majority of those who work under you, especially the leaders, would be willing to let go the distant and glorious ideal for the more tangible and immediate goal. Unless that issue is cleared in your favour you should stand aside and let the Congress fight its battle for its own legitimate, though lesser goal, while you should come out as a worker for God's Kingdom, challenging the allegiance of all who work and pray for it throughout the world. 

Having ventured to say so much, may I go on to make a further criticism? That relates to your fast. The time and circumstances at which you elected to fast on the issue were such, it seemed to me, as to throw part of the odium of it on the Government. This would be more clear if we think of the eventuality of your death. It would have irrevocably embittered the country against the Government, while you would really have died at the hands of the people. For however much the Government may be to blame for exploiting our unhappy differences this issue is peculiarly one of our own creation and maintenance, and one who felt, as you do, the enormity of our guilt in the matter would have exonerated the Government altogether and directed the fast solely against the people. What I mean is that this issue had better been fought with the Government left out. A deeper sense of your Hindu responsibility for the crime would have led you not to embarrass the Government even to the extent that the decision did and was meant to. I know I am treading on sacred ground when I question what you claim to be your divinely guided choice of time and say that the issue had better been tackled when the independence question was settled and you, from the height of your power, could have hurled your life as a challenge against this long-standing injustice. 

 Forgive me if in anything I have seemed to be irreverent. I was only being utterly frank with you. May I be favoured with a reply C/o the Acharya, Christa Seva Sangh, Poona? 
Your humble follower, S. K. GEORGE

Gandhi to George from jail

 My Dear George, I prize your letter for its gentle frankness. Only I cannot give you the full reply it deserves. My position as a prisoner would not warrant my giving you a detailed reply. One thing I may say. I do not isolate politics from religion as you appear to me to do. Religion to be true must pervade every activity of life. And that activity which cannot be pursued without sacrificing religion is an immoral activity to be shunned at all costs. Politics is not only not such an activity but it is an integral part of civic life. The rest of the discussion must be postponed to a more auspicious occasion. Only do not give me up in despair. I hope you had my previous letter. 14-10-, 32 Yours, Bapu.

( Gandhi-George Correspondence from George's book,Gandhi's Challenge to Christianity).

Segaon, Wardha
April 3, 1937
An Unfortunate Document
( A Reply to Barrister George Joseph and Others)

Fourteen highly educated Indian Christians occupying important social positions have issued a joint manifesto setting forth their views on the missionary work among Harijans. The document has been published in the Indian Press. I was disinclined to publish it in Harijan, as after having read it more than once I could not bring myself to say anything in its favour and I felt that a critical review of it might serve no useful purpose. But I understand that my criticism is expected and will be welcomed no matter how candid and strong it may be.

The reader will find the manifesto published in full in this issue. The heading(1) is also the authors'. They seem to have fallen between two stools in their attempt to sit on both. They have tried to reconcile the irreconcilable. If one section of Christians has been aggressively open and militant, the other represented by the authors of the manifesto is courteously patronizing. They would not be aggressive for the sake of expedience. The purpose of the manifesto is not to condemn uniquivocally the method of converting the illiterate and the ignorant but to assert the right of preaching the Gospel to the millions of Harijans. The key to the manifesto is contained in paragraphs 7 and 8. This is what one reads in paragraph 7:

"Men and women individually and in family or village groups will continue to seek the fellowship of the Christian Church. That is the real movement of the Spirit of God. And no power on earth can stem that tide. It will be the duty of the Christian Church in India to receive such seekers after the truth as it is in Jesus Christ and provide for them instruction and spiritual nurture. The Church will cling to its right to receive such people into itself from whatever religious group they may come. It will cling to the further right to go about in these days of irreligion and materialism to awaken spiritual hunger in all."

George Joseph

These few sentences are a striking instance of how the wish becomes father to the thought. It is an unconscious process but not on that account less open to criticism. Men and women do not seek the fellowship of the Christian Church. Poor Harijans are no better than the others. I wish they had real spiritual hunger. Such as it is, they satisfy by visits to the temples, however crude they may be. When the missionary of another religion goes to them, he goes like any vendor of goods. He has no special spiritual merit that will - distinguish him from those to whom he goes. He does, however, possess material goods which he promises to those who will come to his fold. Then mark, the duty of the Christian Church in India turns into a right. Now when duty becomes a right it ceases to be a duty. Performance of a duty requires one quality - that of suffering and introspection. Exercise of a right requires a quality that gives the power to impose one's will upon the resister through sanctions devised by the claimant or the law whose aid he invokes in the exercise of his right. I have the duty of paying my debt, but I have no right to thrust the owed coppers (say) into the pocket of an unwilling creditor. The duty of taking spiritual message is performed by the messenger becoming a fit vehicle by prayer and fasting. Conceived as a right, it may easily become an imposition on unwilling parties.

Thus the manifesto, undoubtedly designed to allay suspicion and soothe the ruffled feelings of Hindus, in my opinion, fails to accomplish its purpose. On the contrary, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. I venture to suggest to the authors that they need to reexamine their position in the light of my remarks. Let them recognize the fundamental difference between rights and duties. In the spiritual sphere, there is no such thing as a right.

1. The heading of the manifesto was. "Our Duty to the Depressed and Backward Classes".
Note: The signatories were: K.K. Chandy, S. Gnanaprakasam, S. Gurubatham, S. Jesudasen, M. P. Job, G. Joseph, K.I. Matthai, A. A. Paul, S.E. Ranganadham, A.N. Sudarsanam, O. F.E. Zacharia, D.M. Devasahayam, G.V. Martyn.( only 13 names are there-Ramachandran.)
 
Vol.65 P. 47-48 ,Harijan, 3-4-1937



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