NOTE TO “THE BISHOP’S MANIFESTO”

[The Theosophist, Vol. II, No. 7, April, 1881, p. 163]

[In a letter to the Editor the writer who signs himself P.A.P., draws attention to an alleged danger which hangs over The Theosophist. He says: “While His Excellency, our liberal Viceroy . . . was receiving lately the Mussulman deputation at Calcutta, and reiterated to them the assurances of ‘strict religious neutrality’ guaranteed to the people of India, by the Queen’s Proclamation of 1858 . . . ., the Christian priesthood through one of its Bishops openly preaches the necessity of religious aggression against ‘the false religions’ of India.”
The Bishop of Bombay to whom the writer refers, is quoted as having said: “whatever adumbrations of positive truth may have been vouchsafed to other religions, they are so far diabolic and pernicious as they keep men from believing in Christianity. . . .”
The writer, himself a Hindu, says: “We as a class neither think nor persecute our brothers of another faith, nor do our priesthood urge us to aggression. ‘Live and let live’ is our motto. . . . I finish this letter by suggesting to the Christians the expediency of keeping what they have, before they direct their efforts and thoughts to those which they may never get. A religion which has not enough vitality in it to keep true to itself its best-educated sons . . . can hardly in decency ask us to prefer it to our veteran religions.”]

The above temperate and logical argument from one of the least bigoted Hindus of our acquaintance should be thoughtfully considered by all Asiatics. In fact, it reflects the common sense of both Eastern and Western observers. The promised “strict neutrality” seems to amount to this—“You Heathen fellows shall not ask us to favour either of your religions, nor shall you say a word when we take the money,

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all you have paid into the Treasury to support our priests—that few of us either care to hear—and build our Churches—that as few of us care to worship in. As for your devilish and pernicious faiths, if you don’t see what they really are, the Bishop of Bombay does, and we pay him with your money to abuse you and your religions. What are you going to do about it?”

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