Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
CWSA 35
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Mahatma Gandhi [11]
In a recent statement, Gandhi criticises the attitude taken by Dr. Ambedkar and his followers at the Bombay Presidency Depressed Classes Conference. They passed a resolution recommending the “complete severance of the Depressed Classes from the Hindu fold and their embracing any other religion which guaranteed them equal status and treatment”. About this Gandhi says: “But religion is not like a house or a cloak, which can be changed at will. It is more an integral part of one’s self than of one’s body. Religion is the tie that binds one to one’s Creator and whilst the body perishes, as it has to, religion persists even after death.”1 Is there any truth in what Gandhi says? Why should a particular religion persist after death? Why should one be bound to one form of religion if one feels the necessity of a different approach to Truth?
If it is meant by the statement that the form of religion is something permanent and unchangeable, then that
cannot be accepted. But if religion here means one’s way of communion with the Divine, then it is true that that is something belonging to the inner being and cannot be changed like a house or a cloak 
for the sake of some personal, social or worldly convenience. If a change is to be made, it can only be for an inner spiritual reason, because of some development from within. No one can be bound to any form of religion or any particular creed or system, but if he changes the one he has accepted for another, for external reasons, that means he has inwardly no religion at all and both his old and his new religion are only an empty formula. At bottom that is, I suppose, what the statement drives at. Preference for a different approach to the Truth or the desire of inner spiritual self-expression are not the motives of the recommendation of change to which objection is made by the Mahatma here; the object proposed is an enhancement of social status and consideration which is no more a spiritual motive than conversion for the sake of money or marriage. If a man has no religion in himself, he can change his credal profession for any motive; if he has, he cannot; he can only change it in response to an inner spiritual need. If a man has a bhakti for the Divine in the form of Krishna, he can’t very well say “I will swap
Krishna for Christ so that I may become socially respectable.”
19 October 1935
Current publication:
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Himself and the Ashram // CWSA.- Volume 35. (≈ 26 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2011.- 658 p.
Other publications:
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga // SABCL.- Volume 22. (≈ 28 vol. of CWSA).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1971.- 502 p.
[A letter: ] Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo and Mother to Prithwi Singh: Correspondence (1933-1967).- Mysore: Mira Aditi, 1998.- 183 p.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters on Yoga. I // CWSA.- Volume 28. (≈ 22 vol. of SABCL).- Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 2012.- 590 p.
Sri Aurobindo. Letters of Sri Aurobindo: In 4 Series.- Second Series [On Yoga].- Bombay: Sri Aurobindo Sircle, 1949.- 599 p.