Page:Speeches And Writings MKGandhi.djvu/922

 832 MISCELLANEOUS him, that he may change the hearts of the Mussulmans, and Bil them with pity for their Hindu neighbours and make them save the animal the latter hold dear as life itself. Ican no more describe my feeling for Hinduism than for my own wife. She moves me as no other woman in the world can. Not that she has no faults. I daresay she has many more than I see myself. But the feeling of an indissoluble bond is there. Even so F feel for and about Hinduism with all its faults and limitations. Nothing relates me so much as the music of the Gita or the Bamayana by Tulasidas, the only two books in Hinduism I may be said to know. When I fancied I was taking my last breath, the Gita was my solace. I know the vice that is going on to-day in all the great Hindu shrines, but I love them in spite of their unspeakable failings. There is an interest which I take in them and which I take in no other. I am a reformer through and through- But my zeal never takes me to the rejection of any of the essential things of Hinduism. I have said I do not disbelieve in idol worship. An idol does not excite any feeling of veneration in me. But I think that idol worship is part of human nature. We banker after symbolism. Why should one be more composed in a church than elsswere ? Images are an aid to worship. No Hindu considers an image to be God. I do not consider idol worship a sin. It is clear from the foregoing that Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. In it there is room for the worship. of all the prophets of the world. It is not a missionary religion in the ordinary sense of the term. It has no doubt absorbed many tribes in its fold, but this ahsorp~ tion has been of an evolutionary impsrceptible character.