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child from asking a relevant question."
And I used to ask all kinds of questions which those poor fellows were not able to answer... just small things. In Jainism a woman cannot go into ultimate freedom, and if the man was talking about that I would ask him, "How do you know? Are you a woman?"
He would look here and there... some support...?
"On what grounds do you say that a woman cannot enter heaven?"
All that he could say was, "It is written in the scripture."
I said, "Then it is not your experience. Have you been to heaven? Have you seen that there are no women there?"
He said, "My God, nobody has asked about this, and nobody comes back from heaven."
"Then," I said, "who has written that scripture? Somebody who has not gone to heaven writes that a woman cannot enter heaven, and you are repeating it like a parrot...?"
The poor fellow's learnedness was finished, and my grandfather would take hold of me and say, "Child, let us go."
Back home my father would say, "I asked you to come but at that time you were talking great philosophy. Why did you go with your grandfather?"
I said, "I never deny him, he is so old. And I wanted him with me; otherwise you would have been preventing me. In his presence you cannot prevent me. I don't trust that you will go against the so-called manners of your society. I trust him. In fact he is a revolutionary."
He used to take me to other religions' meetings. He was so old and respected by the community, but seeing me with him, everybody became nervous that "something is going to happen. Both these fellows should not be seen together." And he was always ready.
Whenever I would find that something was happening, somebody was talking about God, I would tell him, "This is not a time to waste. You are tired, but you have to come, because alone, I am too small and they will all start shouting at me and trying to silence me."
He said, "Don't be worried. As long as I am alive nobody can stop you from asking questions. The basic purpose of these assemblies is to find out, to inquire, to question."
And to the man who was speaking on God, I would
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