Page:Fischer - A Week with Gandhi.pdf/96

 comes irresistible to an Indian nationalist like Nehru.

I urged Nehru to go to America and talk with President Roosevelt. I told him that Americans spontaneously react in favor of any nation’s desire for independence and that, furthermore, America’s economic interests in India were different from those of Britain.

We also discussed the Hindu religion. Nehru said that Hinduism has no fundamentalism and that no Hindu therefore can be punished or ex-communicated for being unorthodox. “You can even be a Hindu and an atheist,” he said. “As Gandhi said this morning, ‘You don’t cease being a Hindu because you do not believe in caste or in untouchability.’ In like manner, you can be a religious Hindu even if you hang Christ’s picture on your wall and believe in his precepts.”