The Mahatma and the Missionary: Gandhi's Conflicting Accounts of his First Encounter with Christianity
Date
2018-04-10
Authors
Renold, Leah M.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press
Abstract
Biographies of Mahatma Gandhi often begin with an examination of Gandhi’s childhood and adolescence. Most coverage of the early life of Gandhi includes at least a mention of his first encounter with a Christian missionary in India and the negative effect that it had on Gandhi’s perceptions of Christianity. In biographies and other studies of Gandhi, Gandhi’s autobiography is the sole source of information on most of the events in his early life, including his initial encounter with Christianity. However, another generally neglected source on Gandhi’s early life, Joseph Doke’s M.K. Gandhi: An Indian patriot in South Africa, presents a different narrative of Gandhi’s first encounter with Christianity that contrasts drastically with that in the autobiography. The paper explores the context of Gandhi’s two contrasting descriptions of a missionary in Rajkot, the exchange of letters between Gandhi and Rev. Hugh Robert Scott, the missionary of whom Gandhi wrote, the controversy that ensued regarding Gandhi’s description of Scott in his autobiography, and the writings and work of Scott. The disparity between Gandhi’s two accounts of the missionary calls into question the reliance on Gandhi’s narratives of his own life as an entirely accurate source of historical information.
Description
Keywords
Gandhi, Mahatma, Christianity, missionaries, political figures, History
Citation
Renold, L. (2018). The Mahatma and the Missionary: Gandhi's conflicting accounts of his first encounter with Christianity. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 19(1).
Rights
This article first appeared in the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 19:1 (2018). Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press. Permission does not apply to any part of the selection (text or graphic material) that is independently copyrighted or bears a separate source notation. The responsibility for determining the source of the material rests with the prospective publisher of the reprinted material.
Rights Holder
© 2018 Leah Renold and The John Hopkins University Press.