DAY 48: WERE YOU TAUGHT BOTH SIDES OF GANDHI? With all due respect, Gandhi engaged in a bit of hypocrisy as a Hindu that taught nonviolence (Ahimsa), while also helping recruit Hindus to fight World War I. However, when World War II came around, Gandhi did stick to Ahimsa in his resistance of that war and took a lot of flak for it. Of course, that nonviolence philosophy comes from Hinduism’s false hope of escaping samsara, the wrong belief that we are all in an endless cycle of death and rebirth because of our karma. With that false orientation to his thinking, listen to Gandhi's response when asked if Hindus should have sat and done nothing as the atrocity of the Jewish Holocaust was happening during WWII:; “Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from the cliffs.” That was Gandhi suggesting a “better” way that the Jews could have died, supposedly as heroes. Is he claiming that the way to counter evil is to kill yourself? What kind of philosophy is that? As you’ve no doubt seen, Gandhi’s image has been Westernized and greatly romanticized, to the point where people often quote him on social media. But why would we want to quote and promote a guy who believes in Hinduism? Instead, how about using passages from the Bible? Did we run out of Scripture quotes? Unfortunately, I even see Christians do this, and it makes me wonder why we would want to promote that. But, of course, it is from a lack of doing the homework on Hinduism and Gandhi.