Gandhi and Gita (was Indology Lists A,B,C,D)

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Dr. Ganesan wrote :

 

"It never ceased to amaze me that Mahatma Gandhi,

in his quest for the alleviation of caste-caused

problems (1964 et passim), kept insisting that

the Bhagavadgiitaa contained caste-denying or

caste-rejecting teachings. Now Gandhi did not

read Sanskrit, his first acquaintance with that

text was Annie Besant's rendition in the Theosophical

Society edition (1923)........"

 

Robert Payne, The Life and Death of Mahatma Gandhi, provides

many statements that contradicts the statement of when Gandhi

first learned the Gita.

 

In England in 1889, Gandhi "met two unmarried brothers who

professed a deep interest in Indian religion ... [and in theosophy].

The brothers were reading the Bhagavad Gita in the English

translation of Sir Edwin Arnold....Gandhi was attracted by

the high moral fervor displayed by the translator; some vestiges

of the original could be found at intervals; and he recognized

he was in the presence of one of the great classics of ancient

India. With the help of the two brothers he read the book

through ..."

 

Payne records that Henry Polak, who met Gandhi in March 1904,

observed that Gandhi's bookcase had a Bible, Sir Edwin Arnold's

The Song Celestial, a number of works by Tolstoy and Max Muller's

India : What can it teach us ?

 

In Gandhi's first prison term, starting on January 10, 1908,

in South Africa,

 

"[Gandhi] had ample leisure for reading. He read the Bhagavad

Gita in the morning, the Koran in the afternoon, and spent some

time in the evening reading the Bible to a Chinese Christian

who wanted to improve his English".

 

When Gandhi was arrested again in October 1908 and thrown into

Johannesburg jail, "he took up the Bhagavad Gita and began to

read the passages that provide solace at times of danger".

 

In 1909, in Volkrust Jail "nearly every day he read from the

small pocket edition of the Bhagavad Gita, which was always

with him".

 

[incidentally, he also "studied Tamil, an language that

fascinated him, though he never came to know it well. He

would later say that he made "desperate efforts" to learn

the language and always failed." ]

 

-Arun Gupta