Gandhi's Passion
From Chapter Three

In 1891, when he moved to 52 St. Stephen's Gardens, Bayswater, Gandhi started a new local branch of the Vegetarian Society, serving as its secretary; his friend and roommate, Dr. Josiah Oldfield, editor of The Vegetarian, agreed to preside over all meetings of their West London Food Resource Society.

"Good Christian" that Dr. Oldfield was, he tried to convert his young Indian

	We review 'Gandhi's Passion' Gandhi and Jesus by Harris Wofford Quoting the Mahatma Members discuss Hinduism and Christianity

friend to the Anglican faith, urging him to read the Bible. Gandhi found the Old Testament much less appealing than the New, attracted on the first reading to the Sermon on the Mount, which "went straight to my heart." He thus received scriptural validation for nonviolence from Christian sources even before reading much about it in India's literature.

Two vegetarian bachelor "brothers" who had been studying the Hindu "Bhagavad Gita" (Song of the Blessed One), using Edwin Arnold's poetic rendition, "The Song Celestial," invited Gandhi to read and translate the original Sanskrit version of that epic poem with them. Edwin Arnold would later agree to serve as vice-president of Gandhi's Bayswater Food Society, and Mohan found his "Light of Asia," a life of the Buddha, just as compelling as his work on the "Gita."

The unnamed bachelor "brothers" were both Theosophists, and they tried to convert Gandhi to that esoteric sect. At one point they brought him to Blavatsky Lodge in London, where he met the mysterious founder of Theosophy, Madame Helena Blavatsky, then mortally ill. Her "Key to Theosophy," Gandhi recalled, "stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition." At London's Theosophical Society he first met Madame's recent convert, her most brilliant disciple, Anne Besant.

Continued on page 2: »