Dr. Surendra Singhvi
Jain Radiance On The Western Horizon
[03] Mr. Virchand Gandhi's other Work in the West
Mr. Gandhi was a great success in the Parliament and he stayed on away in the United States. A paper by him dating from this time is to be founded. The Arena of 1895.[4] It is entitled: Christian Missions in India.” He, since the Parliament, has spent on institutions and found “much that is commendable except its religion”. He has failed to find spirituality, brother hood and “love to those creatures dependent upon man.” He notices that remarks on the work of missions aroused hostile comment. Yet if Christianity has done so badly in America, why waste effort and money overseas. Mr. Gandhi especially admires American secular free universal education and opines that if India really had a system where children could get a free education without having to abandon its culture, religion, and caste then results in development, prosperity international trade would be rapid. If he came back today and spoke to a Chicago and grandmother in the central valley of California it would break his heart to learn of the traditional Mexican catholic children bring forced to abandon their faith, “class”, and language to obtain free” Education geared to well-off Anglo secular middle-class. We still need Jain “crusaders” like Gandhi, let us hope we can use such well and with as much dignity as India did in her years of “modernization agony a hundred years ago. The connection between the comings of the missionaries, the Imperial government and the break-up of India Traditional society with the introduction alcohol, oppressive taxation without representation and irresponsible economic politics are brilliantly set side by Gandhi. It is not difficult to imagine what a success Mr. Gandhi was as a lawyer.
He captured the hearts and minds of many and a permanent work was started. It is possible to grasp the overall scope of his teaching, the integration of his religion with his plans for education, social reform, politics, science and true happiness, by reading a book by his English disciple Herbert Warren It would be a labour of love for some young Jain historian of the born-in-America generation to visit the places in U.S.A. and U.K. where he spoke and collect and analyse his teaching and its implications. In the meantime we have to be grateful to a Mr. Bhagu F. Karbhad of Bombay for a helpful look which collects some of the speeches and gives an outline of his life available and popular style (vulgarisation in the best sense of the French wed) story of the life of this heroic and tragic figure is required. Probably the American Jain community will not make of him a Martin Luther King or a Cesar Chavez or a Sardar Mewar Singh but he was a great person of his own kind and of his own day and deserves our admiration and appropriate emulation.