Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country.
It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. “Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.” From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept.
I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction while I held a contrary belief. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons.
It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life.
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