Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Mahatma Gandhi coerced into being a posthumous Mormon

The shameless Mormon Church has baptised Mahatma Gandhi as a Mormon after his death.
As per Huffington Post:

Mahatma Gandhi, who employed nonviolent civil disobedience to lead India to independence after more than a century of British rule, was posthumously baptized by proxy by a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, according to information provided to The Huffington Post.

Helen Radkey, a former Mormon who has until now has focused on researching incidents of proxy baptisms being proposed for or performed on dead Jews, discovered the Gandhi records on February 16 in a genealogical database restricted to Mormons. She was prompted to search for his name after seeing a statement by a Nevada-based Hindu activist, Rajan Zed, who expressed concern the practice might be performed in the name of many Hindus.

A screen shot of the database page sent to HuffPost by Radkey shows a proxy baptism for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was completed in a Salt Lake City Temple on March 27, 1996. The record has since been removed and Radkey said a subsequent search came up with "Unknown Name."

TOI:
Suhag Shukla of Washington-based Hindu America Foundation said, "The proxy baptism of Gandhi is deeply offensive, not only to Gandhi's legacy as a devout Hindu, but to Hindus world over.

What would Mahatma Gandhi have thought of it? It is evident from his writings that he was very much against proselytization. In 1927 he said in a speech at Sholapur he said "I cannot understand a man changing the religion of his forefathers at the instance of another". The same year in a long answer to the question of "what has Hinduism done for us?" he said that one of its beauties was the absence in it of modern proselytization.

One day, maybe, the Mormon Church will grow up and learn elementary respect for other people. But don't hold your breath.

No comments:

Post a Comment