Gandhi's Unjust Criticism

This is an "extra" post. It's not a 1-minute read. It will take you 3-5 minutes. I wrote it because Christians are facing greater and greater persecution, and we need to understand valid criticism versus bigotry.

Let me start by saying that Gandhi did some very good things in his lifetime, but his criticism of Christians is hypocritical and unjust.

There is a story about Gandhi that I've heard repeatedly. I'm sure that many of you have heard it as well.

According to numerous sources, Gandhi was interested in learning more about Jesus, but he was refused admittance to a particular church that was only for high caste Indians and whites. 

“He was turned off by the sin of segregation” and said, “If it weren’t for Christians, I’d be a Christian.” (source)

It’s abhorrent that a Christian church would follow the caste system, but Hinduism created the caste system. So it's quite hypocritical that Gandhi, a life-long Hindu, would judge Christians for using it.

"Manusmriti, widely regarded to be the most important and authoritative book on Hindu law and dating back to at least 1,000 years before Christ was born, 'acknowledges and justifies the caste system as the basis of order and regularity of society'." (source)

In an interview Gandhi was asked how he felt about the Hindu origin of the caste system and he excused it saying, “Do not take men's imperfect interpretation, as you see it, for the real teaching of any great faith.” (source)  

He excused Hinduism for creating the caste system, but he rejected Christianity because a Christian church used it. That's pretty extreme hypocrisy.

But the greatest error in this story is the belief that Gandhi or anyone else might have become a Christian were it not for bad Christian examples.

If Gandhi actually rejected beliefs based on bad examples, he would have rejected every faith including atheism and Hinduism. 

Bad examples may impact our search for faith, but anyone who rejects Christianity is rejecting Christ, not Christians. Please read "Thank you that I'm not like other people" to better understand this common excuse for rejecting the gospel.

Furthermore, when Gandhi was asked about Christianity in a recorded interview, he did not claim that he rejected it because of the poor example of Christians. He said it was because all religions worship the same God. 

Interview transcript in Gandhi's own words (source)

Beginning of quoted material:

Gandhi: I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith. The gentle figure of Christ, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek - I thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man. 

Millie: But you did not embrace Christianity did you? 

Gandhi: No. I studied your scriptures for some time and thought earnestly about them. I was tremendously attracted to Christianity; but eventually I came to the conclusion that there was nothing really in your scriptures that we had not got in ours, and that to be a good Hindu also meant I would be a good Christian...If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him...Hinduism teaches the same great truth, and Mohamedanism and Zoroastrianism, too. 

End of quoted material

This is either a dishonest excuse or an extremely uneducated one. Anyone who has studied different faiths knows they are completely incompatible with vastly different ideas about God's character and purposes. For more on this, see Why Muslims Can't Believe Jesus was a Prophet, Can All Religions Coexist? and Jesus is Who the Bible Says He Is.

Gandhi's Bigotry and Sexual Perversion

As I said at the beginning, we can appreciate the good things Gandhi did for India, but he is not a valid critic of Christianity or Christians.

Here are a few examples of strange, hypocritical, and ungodly behavior:

It is well documented that Gandhi carried on ungodly sexual practices. He claimed that celibacy was godly, but he regularly bathed and slept with naked women and young girls as part of his religious rituals and “experiments.” (source)

He was obsessed with bowel movements and diet. (source)

He refused to let his wife have the “alien medicine” (penicillin) that would have saved her life from pneumonia. Shortly after she died, he took the “alien medicine” quinine to cure his malaria. (source)

Gandhi “believed menstruation was a manifestation of the distortion of a woman's soul by her sexuality.” (source)

Known as a person who fought bigotry, he actually participated in it while in South Africa: 

“While the movie [Gandhi] accurately depicts Gandhi's successful organization of Indians in South Africa against the state's apartheid laws, it skirts a key issue: what about the Africans? It turns out Gandhi's concern with racial discrimination was limited to Indians--in fact, he offered to organize a brigade of Indians to help the English colonial rulers crush an African rebellion. On a related note, we never see how Gandhi (Sergeant-Major Gandhi) earned a War Medal from the British Empire for valor under fire while assisting the violent suppression of South African Blacks.” (source) 

Considering Gandhi fought against black African's rights, it's quite ironic that Dr. Martin Luther King praised Gandhi as “the guiding light of our technique of nonviolent social change” (source). I think this illustrates the distorted image most people have of Gandhi.

Gandhi fought bigotry against his people and fought in favor of bigotry against black Africans. He judged a Christian church for adopting the Hindu caste system but excused Hinduism for creating it. He lived a perverted lifestyle and needlessly let his wife die without available medicine.

He has no business judging Christians, so let's quit using his hypocritical quotes.

Instead, let's quote someone like William Wilberforce who spent his life fighting against slavery. I think this Wilberforce quote is a fitting warning to us when we fail to identify "deeply flawed" arguments like Gandhi's. And it is a fitting response to Gandhi's criticism of Christianity:

“Christianity has been successfully attacked and marginalized…because those who professed belief were unable to defend the faith from attack, even though its attackers’ arguments were deeply flawed.” ― William Wilberforce, Real Christianity (source)

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