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Siddharth Shankar Tripathi
Dr. Hari Nair
Gandhian Thoughts , HSS F345
29 March 2016
FINAL DRAFT OF THE SSA
Topic : Gandhi and religion. His relationship with christianity. His thoughts on conversion.
GANDHI’s RELIGION :
Gandhi was born to a family that belonged to the “Bania” caste . He was
deeply influenced religiously by his mother who belonged to the Vaishnava category of
hindu followers. His father wasn't a big influence on him religiously as was his mother ,
although he learnt to be patient and courteous enough to hear the views of men from
every religion from his father who would later in his days of illness be treated by muslim
and christian doctors. Gandhi as he claims in his autobiography devoted his life in the
search of truth and God . He was always interested in the purification of the soul rather
than the human body. Gandhi had a belief in ‘sarvadharma-samabhav'- equal respect to
all religions. He believed that all the religions originate from the same God and they
preach the same doctrines which ultimately lead to the same destination or goal. He ar-
gued that since all religions are fundamentally similar there should be no need to con-
vert people from one faith to another . He says “For me different religions are beauti-
ful flowers from the same garden or they are branches of the same majestic tree
” .
Gandhi’s understanding of religion was very different from the traditional
Hindu priests or Maulvis or the Jain monks . He openly praised the Hindu religion calling
it the most superlative faith. He said that Hinduism was the most tolerant among all reli-

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gions. Its freedom from any sorts of dogmas enabled the Hindus from not only respect-
ing other religions but also to absorb and praise whatever else may be good in other
faiths. He was a proud Hindu but he also rebuked several practices in it which did not
appeal to his reason which for others would be quintessential to practice it for e.g he not
only criticised untouchability and class differences but also fought against it throughout
his life , he was opposed to blood sacrifices and also condemned widespread social
evils as child marriages, inhuman treatment of widows which as such did not have any
remedy under traditional Hinduism. He also had different interpretation of the Hindu-Jain
concept of kindness. He once shot a cow ( committing one of the biggest sin in hinduism
) on an occasion to put an end to the misery of the animal.
Gandhi uttered Ramanama may a times during the day, or
whenever he was free, though he made it very clear that Rama whom he believed in
was not the husband of Sita or the son of Dasaratha but the one who abides in the
hearts of men, the Antaryami . He was the believer of a formless and attribute-less God.
He completely admitted to the fact that it was close to impossible for any being to meet
or see God and that his existence could not be proved by reason though he also said
that it wasn't completely against reason. Even if he was unable to prove the Almighty by
arguments , he said he felt it within himself . This was probably one of the biggest princi-
ples of his belief in God. He asserted that God was innately present in every single be-
ing and so one needn't look for him anywhere else in the world , rather one needed to
look within oneself , to experience his phenomenon.
"There is an indefinable mysterious power that pervades everything …… It tran-
scends the senses. But it is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limit-
ed extent." His practice of religion had another great factor attached to it , PRAYER. He
used to say as the food is essential for the body so is the prayer for the soul.

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For Gandhi God was the moral law , the dharma. Truth was
god and even a so called atheist would be a believer of God if he believed in the con-
cept of morality and ethics.For him true religion lay in the deepest of heart where a man
would strive to find his origins and true being. The search would be of fundamental
truth , for an undergirding reality which upon being genuine would convert into a river
brimming with love for others and a life of service to them. Sincere devotion to god was
synonymous with strict adherence to goodness and truth. According to the mahatma it
was not the redemption from the consequences of one’s sin that was true religion rather
it was to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very thought of sin . Extending
his idea of religion he said , the service to man was worship of God. He observed “The
immediate service of all human beings becomes a necessary part of the endeav-
our simply because the only way to find God is to see Him in His creation and be
one with it ” .When gandhi said that one must never separate politics and religion
someone remarked “politics is my religion” to which gandhi said “religion is my politics” .
It was this greatness of his thoughts that even today there are some written ground rules
which may or may not be followed but make the backbone of healthy politics in the coun-
try.
Gandhi was significantly influenced by Ruskin, Tolstoy
and Thoreau and the Bible and Gita. He took his freewheeling interpretations to religions
other than Hinduism as well. In 1937 he said to an American missionary “I do not take
Jesus as the only begotten son of God. God cannot be the exclusive father and i
cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. Similarly i do not regard every word of
Koran as inspired…… The Bible is as much a book of religion as is the Koran.”
This interpretation might be healthy to a rational Hindu or Buddhist but heretical to Chris-
tians and Muslims. His study of these religious scriptures of other religions led him to be-

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lieve that there was an underlying unity in all religions. Thus it might be concluded here
that Gandhi’s religion was free from the traditional religious beliefs full of dogmas , rituals
, superstition and bigotry instead it was simply a shear accretion of ethical framework for
the conduct of daily life. Despite all this , a shocking event that i have taken note of is
the stubbornness of Gandhi in not allowing his son Manilal a meal of chicken broth and
eggs and instead providing him diluted orange juice when he was seriously ill with ty-
phoid accompanied with several three minute hot tub baths , and even then when his
temperature would not come down , he walked on the streets praying and shouting
“God, God, God, God, Please God.” When his son recovered he credited it to God and
his prayers. This attitude makes Gandhi just another devotee and is quite different from
praying to the “Brahma” the is inside every “Atma”. This goes on to show that no matter
how much regard one might have have for Gandhi as a God ( comparison with Jesus )
he still was full of fears and dilemmas of a normal man.
RELATION WITH CHRISTIANITY :
Gandhi encountered christian teachings much later when in England he
read the “Sermon on the mount” and began closely relating hinduism and himself to
christianity. Until then he had found christians bad and did not have very kind thoughts of
them. He had bitter experiences , one of which as he states is “In the days Christian
missionaries used to stand in a corner near the high school and hold forth, pour-
ing 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 experiments”. The teachings of non-violence as mentioned in the sermon really im-
pressed gandhi and that would become one thing that would govern his life , politics and

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practically everything he did . He followed it so closely and obstinately that later on he
would be compared to jesus himself.
The message of Jesus in the sermon of the mount
appealed straight to gandhi’s heart . He started regarding Jesus as the teacher of hu-
manity. “But I say to you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever smite thee on thy right
cheek, turn to him the other also.” these kind of teachings overjoyed him beyond reason.
But again here also we see that Gandhi places a higher regard for the holy book of the
Hindus , Gita . He concludes that Gita already summarises in a more scientific manner
whatever the Sermon says in a graphic manner. He was so much afflicted by his teach-
ings that he went on to say that “Today supposing I was deprived of the Gita and
forgot all its contents but had a copy of the Sermon, I should derive the same joy
from it as I do from the Gita.” This point needs to be noticed. No matter how much
Gandhi praises Christianity and Jesus , he in the back of his mind has the greatest re-
gard for Hinduism and nothing can change the fact for him , stubborn as he is that Hin-
duism is the greatest religion of all times.
One of the teachings which Gandhi practically em-
bedded and vouched for the rest of his political career and what guided his activities out
of it was self sacrifice for others. He regarded that the sole purpose of Jesus’ whole life
was to preach the lesson of self sacrifice , and if someone is not able to derive that les-
son from it , it would be a great failure and disappointing for Jesus. He says “Jesus
lived and died in vain if he did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the
eternal Law of Love." It is thus worth noticing that Gandhi’s philosophy of nonviolence
–satyagraha has three basic principles/guidelines : Truth- Sat/Satya, Nonviolence-
Ahimsa and self-suffering- Tapasya . All of these of which are clearly pointed out in the
Sermon. Even after all this acceptance and practice of Christian teachings Gandhi’s

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most famous remark of all times on Christianity stands out , “ I love your Christ but I
hate your Christians because your Christians are unlike your Christ .” This has
been interpreted in many different ways and has posed a challenge to modern Chris-
tians all around the globe . After going through its text Gandhi must have obviously ex-
pected the Christians to resemble Christ . Be compassionate to others , observe non-vi-
olence etc. But this was not to be. He had bitter experiences in South Africa which
deeply disappointed him. He was very eager to exploring to become a christian after
reading about it so he went to a church in order to attend a church service. There he
was rebuked and stopped from even entering the church. A church elder called him kaffir
and said , “there is no room for kaffirs in the church.” This must have pained gandhi. The
picture of christ that he had in mind was that of the epitome of love , unity etc. Events
like these stirred his thought and he came to the conclusion that on the pretext of being
civilised the christians had long forgotten what fundamentals Christ wanted to teach to
abide by.
S.K. George remarks that it was the result of the
church itself which had painted the life of jesus in such a way that a normal individual
cannot even think of replicating it in his time on earth , that christians had become like
that. The church implied that it was impossible for someone to survive in times like these
by the methods of jesus. But if Gandhi , a man from a completely different part of the
world , a completely different religion could do it , it was a matter of shame for the chris-
tians to treat Jesus’ teachings as redundant and pointless in the modern world. One of
the examples to this context is Bernard shaw’s remark "the vegetarianism of the cow
makes no appeal to the tiger," to which Gandhi replied by saying that he does not be-
lieve that the Britisher is all tiger and no man. Therefore Gandhi as a person himself ,
and his methods of living and politics became an enigma to the West.

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People have tried to jeopardise this attempt of Gandhi of
trying to challenge the existing christians by saying that gandhi has his own image of Je-
sus which is completely different to what an orthodox christian understands. For in-
stance some people regard Gandhi’s method of self sacrifice as suicidal whereas Christ
gave his life and did not take it. As for Gandhi’s thought on conversion where he says
that one must prevent himself from converting to other religions on the the advice of oth-
ers for monetary or other gains , unless its his heart and soul that compels him to do so.
According to him religious might wasn't in the numbers that a particular faith had . He
said that religion must thought of as a garment that can be cast of at will. People argue
that Christianity is a missionary faith and even Jesus asked his disciples to go and prop-
agate it to all the countries and to all the people of the world.
Gandhi was always against the class discrimina-
tion that hindus practiced and said that it was one of the main reasons that people want-
ed to leave it and believe in a kind of faith which had no discrimination whatsoever. He
propagated the fact that one should never undermine other’s faith since all are synony-
mous thus leading to the conclusion that conversion becomes baseless. He advocated
conversion on an intellectual and spiritual conversion. He was of the view that if some-
one could transform into a true devotee of god by conversion then he had no objections
to it but if someone changes his religion just to meet personal greeds it was wrong.
Since all religions underlined same things one who understood religion would himself
not want to convert to other religions. Gandhi has been criticised on this topic as well.
He once invited a lady who was a christian to his ashram. She was impressed with Hin-
du teachings. Here Gandhi advocated hinduism and showed her the glory of the religion
rather than asking her to find glory in Christianity itself. Episodes like these just show
that always , Gandhi treated Hinduism as elite , the leader of the pack.

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Gandhi did not take Jesus, as the Jesus of the bible.He did not
refer to the Jesus who stands reading with a sword of judgment, the Jesus who made
unwavering claims of his own deity and eternality, who declared that he was and is
the only way to be made right with God. Jesus spoke kind words and did great deeds;
he comforted and healed and gave hope and a future. But not to everyone. Jesus re-
served the harshest of words for the religious elite, those who declared that they were
holy, that they understood the nature of God, that they had achieved some kind of en-
lightenment. Jesus had no love for such people. Thus scholars say that this quote of
Gandhi needs to be stopped from being used all the time on one major grounds : Gand-
hi liked only the Christ of his own making .
Bibliography , References :
a) Gandhi’s challenge to Christianity , S.K. George.
b) What Jesus means to me , M.K. Gandhi.
c) The Jesus i love , M.K. Gandhi.
d) Suneera Kapoor and Shrawan Singh , the Indian Journal of Political Science, Vol.
66, No. 3 (July-Sept., 2005), pp. 503- 514.
e) A Critique of Gandhi on Christianity , Edited by Robert Ellsberg, copyrighted 1991, Orbis
Books .
f) My experiments with truth , MK Gandhi.

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