MAHATMA GANDHI ON CHRISTIANITY: ACCEPT THE TEACHING, BUT NEVER ACCEPT THE TEACHER!
Introduction
This paper will briefly search on the
accounts of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi about Christianity in India and beyond. Many
believe the conspiracy that Gandhi was a follower of Christ, others believe
that he preferably gave higher regards unto the Bible as the very words of God,
and still some others believe that he was a Christian. Even in Nepal, there are
many Christian leaders who tend to make Gandhi a model for their leadership
role in the church ministries. What was the reason to take him as Christian,
and why this conspiracy was propagated? We will try to briefly analyze the facts
that Gandhi was a kind of man who accepted some teachings of the Bible, the New
Testament in particuar, but never accepted Jesus as his Lord and savior. The
source for this argument, we are primarily based on MK Kuriakose's book,
History of Christianity in India: Source Materials[1]
Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi (1869-1948) was
known as MK Gandhi in his youth, and also in the later part his life into the politics
in India. He was credited as Mahatma (person with a great soul). During the
later succeeding days of independent movement, his party-men also called him Bappu, meaning father. And, particularly
because of his non-violent approach of political agitation called Satyagrah, he attracted a high regard
from the Christian expatriate missionaries and Indian national Christian
leaders as well. Among them, according to the collected sources of information
by Kuriakose, C. F. Andrew openly wrote a sympathetic article supporting the
freedom movement led by Gandhi.[2] In
addition to that most of the Christian leaders in India had shown consensual
support, they formally passed a statement congratulating Gandhi for a
successful termination of his fasting.[3] But,
was Mahatma Gandhi sympathetic towards the Christians? After careful studying
the historical source materials collected in the book, one can say that in what
extend Gandhi was intolerant towards Christianity. Following paragraphs will
concisely highlight on what he believed indeed.
a.
One God and several paths to Him
It is well accepted that Gandhi
was a political leader. Because of his nonviolent approach to political
agitation called Styagrah, he was considered as a political leader with
religious characters. But he was not a leading religious figure. Thus like all
other political leaders in the country of vast diversity, he also made a
general perception that 'all paths lead
to one destination.' Most of the
socio-political leaders would put on masks, seem to be inclusive to every one
but at the end stand with the majority. Thus, to answer the question about ultimate
deity they simply sum up all gods as to one, and tell you that there is only
one God. According to them, those names of the gods and goddesses just exist as
different paths, which ultimately lead to the same destination. They take this
side, so no one would be offended by their speech and involvement with
religious communities. It is clear that Gandhi was the leading voice of this
ideology. He openly admired the teaching of Jesus Christ, yet plainly denied
that He was the only way, truth and the life, rather, and added Him among so
many other gods and goddesses. In one of his interviews, he argued, "If a man reaches the heart of his own
religion, he has reached the heart of the others too. There is only one God,
but there are many paths to Him."[4] This
clearly shows that Gandhi never put his trust in Jesus as his personal Lord and
Savior.
b.
What conversion meant to Gandhi?
Mahatma Gandhi disbelieved in
conversion. For him, conversion means to undermine and reject someone's faith.
His understanding is that one can certainly become a better follower of his or
her own faith. He fervently pursued teaching others to remain in the same faith
and continually attempt to attain the truth within the faith or religion.[5] He
never encouraged in propagation of Christian faith in particular.[6] Rather,
he would obviously opposed evangelism and missionary efforts of the Christians.
For him, Christian faith is just like any other religion, and to
proselytization would ultimately drive away the peace from the world. His
position was that all the great religions were fundamentally equal.[7]
c.
Superiority of the Bible and Christ's Deity
denied
It is true that Mahatma Gandhi
was a witty student of the New Testament Bible, he learnt a lot from Bible. And
even his non-violent approach of political agitation, as believed by many was
Jesus' model of victory-through-toleration as He said and did, turning another
cheek to be slapped. Gandhi adapted most of the teachings of New Testament,
especially from Jesus' sermon on mountain (Matthew 5-7 chapters), but he
arrogantly rejected the teachers. He also deliberately denied Christ's deity.
He credited Jesus as one of the great prophets. His account goes, "I
cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus."[8]
d.
Western Christianity and Indian Nationalism
Why Mahatma Gandhi could not put
his sincere faith in Christ? There could be speculated many answers to this
question. It is possibly be an answer to this that he was skeptic towards the
Western missionaries that they were not in favor to Indian Nationalism. He
opposed those Indian nationals who partook "beef
and brandy in the name of Jesus Christ."[9]
He considered the Indian Christianity did nothing to help the Nation India get
better. He saw Christianity had contributed negative towards the nationalism,
and it appeared to him synonymous with
materialistic civilization and imperialistic exploitation, which came along
with the Christianity.[10]
Conclusion
The account here, gathered and enlisted by
Kuriakose sets forth the facts that Mahatma Gandhi was not a Christian as some
of the Nepali Christian leaders still believe. The author has heard the leaders
openly acknowledging that Gandhi was the man of true understanding and
practices of the New Testament. But now, after reading Kuriakose's source
materials on Gandhi, every reader would truly recognize who he was in reality. He
accepted the New Testament teachings and used them to influence the modern
Hindus, atheists, and political freedom fighters. He also cleverly attracted
most influential western Christian missionaries and also the national Indian
Christian leaders by the disguised Biblical characters. He earned favor of everybody by his life of
simplicity, but he lost his own life by denying Jesus Christ as his Lord and
Savior.
Why Gandhi heartily accepted the New
Testament teachings and rejected the Teacher? One clue is to be noticed that he
would always longing to embrace the Nationalism as Indian national. Perhaps, he
misguided himself by mistakenly setting an equal standard to all religious
scriptures with the Bible and all great men of the founding a religion with
Jesus Christ. But what he personally experienced in the British Western empire,
which also was supposedly a Christendom, and what he noticed the Indian
church's position towards the emerging Nationalistic movement were the ones
that driven away him from truly following the Christian faith. He witnessed the
war, hatred, poverty, crime and discriminations even within the church, which
might have distracted him from receiving Christian faith for his life.[11]
[1]MK Kuriakose, History of Christianity in India: Source
Materials. New Delhi, The ISPCK, 1982 (4th reprint 2011), pp
321-323, 330-332, 343-344, 362-363, 368-369, 374.
[5]Gandhi on Conversion and Indigenous Identity of Indian Christians (1925), p332; and Gandhi's Dialogue with J.R. Mott (1929),
p344; also with C.F. Andrew (1936), p362-363
[9]Ibid, p332.
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