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."

To perform proxy baptism to a Hindu is "deeply offensive" because of the belief in rebirth, said Suhag Shukla, co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation and now its managing director and legal counsel.
"Each of us is innately divine, which is diametrically opposed to this concept that we are innately sinful and needing to accept Jesus as our savior in order to cleanse our soul," she said in an interview. "We do not believe there is only one way to salvation."

The history of British colonialism in India was inextricably tied to Christian missionaries who viewed Hindus and other non-Westerners as "heathens languishing in religions other than Christianity," Shukla said. She said many Hindus view missionaries -- whether Mormon or from other groups, as unwelcome "church-planting" operations.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/mormon-proxy-baptism-mahatma-gandhi_n_1299676.html?ref=hinduism