India's Problem, Krishna or Christ

by John P. Jones

In the Christian Bible we are permitted to see a progressive revelation. From age to age, and from page to page, we see new glimpses of truth and are attracted by the divine light whose illumination grows ever brighter from Genesis to Revelation. [pg 106] This is what we should have expected from a God-inspired book. We should have looked forward to a gradual transition from the starry midnight of the far-off past to the rising, in Christ, of the sun of righteousness with healing in His wings.

In Hindu literature this process is reversed. The surest, I may almost say, the only, evidence we have of divine guidance in the production of this literature is to be found among the earliest productions. There we see earnestness of purpose combined with heavenly aspiration and deep searching after truth. Subsequent to this we see the light vanishing and earnestness giving place to triviality of thought, to the ravings of superstition, to the inanities of ceremonialism and to the laws of social and religious bondage. All this progress downward is in direct ratio to our distance from Vedic times.

What could be more conclusive proof of the human source and direction of these prolific writings? Educated Hindus are sensible of this fact. They constantly hark back to the Vedas, to the Upanishads and to the Bhagavad-Gita, conscious of the fact that these represent the high water-mark of their faith and literature.

7. Other Distinguishing Traits.

These are not a few, and they aid in presenting the two faiths in bold relief.

(a) Their attitude towards the individual and Society. Nowhere are they more antipodal to each other than here. Christianity is preëminently a faith which exalts the individual. It presents, with marked clearness, his rights and responsibilities. His [pg 107] liberty of thought, of belief and of action, is fundamentally sacred and to be conserved at all hazards.

Hinduism is the staunchest foe of individual freedom. It concedes no right to the individual which others are bound to respect. It has erected above the individual, and in such a way as to overshadow him entirely, the stupendous caste system. And it has subordinated his every right and privilege to the whim of this demon caste. Man is its abject slave—cannot swerve one inch from its dictates; and these reach down to the smallest detail of his life. If the vast majority of the members of a caste were high in their morals and strict in their integrity and pure in their beliefs, the aid to a higher life which this system might render to the individual would, in small part, compensate for its destruction of his manly independence. But caste discipline directs itself to petty forms and observances and to the perpetuation of mean jealousies rather than to the development of character.

In India alone is caste a religious institution. The Brahman merged the individual in the corporate body, thus perfecting his bondage; and he set class against class to prevent the lower from rising and to make national union impossible. Men were said to have been created differently even as different kinds of animals; to bring them together is as unnatural as it is sinful.

Thus, every man within the pale of this religion has his social, as his religious, status fixed unchangeably for him before his birth; and woe be to him who tries to shake off this bondage, or even in a small degree to kick against the pricks. No better [pg 108] system than this has been devised under heaven to rob man of his birthright of independence and self-respect. And the population of India bears, in its character and conduct, ample testimony to the truth of this statement.