Gandhi and the Nonconformists: Encounters in South Africa

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Many have recognized Mahatma Gandhi's interest in Christianity, and much has been written about its possible effects on the development of his ideas. Few have thought to ask, "Which kind of Christianity did Gandhi experience?"

James Hunt shows that British Protestant Nonconformity is the form of Christianity with Gandhi knew best by personal experience. This book tells the stories of two such experiences, both in South Africa when he was a young man.

The first was with a band of Biblical literalists, missionaries who attempted to convert him. They urged him to decide for Christ, but instead he decided about Christ in a manner that brought him home to Hinduism. A decade later, when Gandhi began passive resistance in Johannesburg, his activities attracted the interest and support of more than a dozen clergymen of that city, mainly Nonconformists. The extent of this clergy support for Gandhi has never before been recognized, nor the reason for it.

Behind the story of the Johannesburg clergy lies another story. In the years 1902-1907 the Nonconformist churches of England conducted a passive resistance campaign in which thousands violated the tax laws and hundreds were jailed. This largely forgotten campaign and its connections with Gandhi's own first attempts at passive resistance are shown here for the first time.

Carefully documented from research in South Africa and Britain, this study reveals unexpected dimensions of Gandhi's experience in the years of his first experiments with satyagraha.

Jacket: Gandhi convalescing in Rev. Joseph Doke's home where he was taken immediately after a murderous assault on him in February 1908.

JAMES D. HUNT (1931-2011) was emeritus professor in humanities and philosophy from Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. Born in Massachusetts in 1931, he obtained degrees in sociology and theology at Tufts University and Boston University, and for several years was a minister in the unitarian Universalist church. His doctoral degree in Humanities was granted by Syracuse University. He authored Gandhi in London and An American Looks at Gandhi: Essays in Satyagraha, Civil Rights and Peace and various articles in history and ethics and had been active in peace and civil rights groups using Gandhian methods, including the Congress for Radical Equality and Witness for peace. Since undertaking research on Gandhi's life, he studied for a year in London and visited India, Israel, and South Africa. Jim is survived by his wife Jane and four children.

While much has been written about Gandhi's religion and the possible influence of Christianity on his thought, little attention has been given to examining the actual forms of Christianity which he knew. All the great religions contain a great variety of branches, divisions, sects and deviant forms, each of which presents a different face to the world. Gandhi, like most people, encountered only a few of the forms of Christianity.

Much of his knowledge of Christianity came through literature, from the Bible and some theological works recommended to him to accomplish his conversion. The literature to which he responded most affirmatively came from deviant sources-theosophy and Tolstoy. The effect of this reading has been widely discussed by Gandhi himself and by various writers. These helped him resist the claims of Christian orthodoxy, and to understand Christianity as one form of the basic religion shared by all humanity. They also helped him establish his criteria for testing the truth of religious claims, which were reason and conscience.

Further light can be shed on Gandhi's knowledge of Christianity by examining his early encounters with Christians and their churches. Practically all of them were with British Protestants, and the most significant were with Nonconformists, that is, not members of the established Church of England. These are the subject of this book.

After surveying the Western religious groups which touched Gandhi's life, to show how few they were, I shall tell two stories, and behind one of them I have discovered a third.