The Holy Text and Terror

18-09-2008
The Holy Text and Terror

... s gurumurthy

“Wait only for five minutes from now! Wait for the Mujahideen and Fidayeen of Islam who will make you feel the terror of Jihad. And stop them if you can. Feel the havoc cast into your hearts by Allah, the Almighty, face His Dreadful Punishment, and suffer the results of fighting the Muslims and the Mujahideen. Await the anguish, agony, sorrow and pain. Await, only for 5 minutes, to feel the fear of death.” Within minutes of this e-mail finding its way into media computers, the Jihadi bombs in Ahmedabad blew to smithereens over 50 persons. By the time terror hit Ahmedabad, such e-mails had become the pattern. The mails came ahead of the blasts in Jaipur and Bengaluru earlier. Also now in Delhi which was blasted on Sept 13. All in the name of Indian Mujahideen. See how, in its Ahmedabad mail, the jihadi outfit unveils its Islamic agenda against the Hindus – read India.
“O Hindus!....Haven't you still realised that the falsehood of your 33 crore mud idols and the blasphemy of your deaf, dumb, mute and naked idols of ram, krishna and hanuman are not going to save your necks, Insha-Alla, from being slaughtered by our hands? Nor is your fictitious faith in monkeys, pigs and nude statutes going to save you from the Wrath of Allah and His Humiliating Punishment. Know that it is only the true confession of the Oneness of Allah Alone, with no associates, that can save your blood from being spilled on the streets of your own cities. We call you, O Hindus, O enemies of Allah, to take an honest stance with yourselves lest another attack of Ibn-e-Qasim sends shivers down your spines, lest another Ghauri shakes your foundations, and lest another Ghaznawi massacres you, proving your blood to be the cheapest of all mankind! Have you forgotten your history full of subjugation, humiliation, and insult? Or do you want us to repeat it again? Take heed before it is too late!”
The IM goes further, quotes the most fundamental document, the Quran, to validate its theological stand. “Yes! We - the terrorists of India – THE INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN, - the militia of Islam whose each and every Mujahid belongs to this very soil of India - have returned, to execute the compulsion of Allah: “Fight them (the disbelievers), Allah will punish them by your hands and bring them to disgrace, and give you victory over them and He will heal the hearts of those who believe.” (Qur’an 9:14). It goes on to quote: “Fight those disbelievers who are near you and let them find harshness in you”. (Qur’an 9: 123). “Go forth light armed or heavy armed and fight with your wealth and your lives in the way of Allah”.[(Qu’ran 9: 41).
So the IM claim is simply this: we are doing what the Quran commands us to do against the non-believers, namely those who do not believe in Islam. The jihadis have openly challenged the pure Islamic theologians to deny that the position it takes against the Hindus is not the position of pure Islam. No Islamic theological school, not a single Mulla or Moulvi has shown the guts to tell the jihadis that non-believers in Quran do not mean non-Muslims. The Islamist scholars have kept deafening silence. The jihadis have thus effectively shut the Islamists' mouth by quotes from the holy Quran.
But what about the secularists? The terrorists are misguided youths, angered by the Hindu outfits in Gujarat and elsewhere, they would counsel. The grievances of the terrorists need to be addressed, they would pontificate, to dissuade them from the wrong path. But what the seculars miss is that the jihadis claim, on the basis of their faith, the right to kill ordinary Hindus. Do the seculars have the guts to ask the Islamic scholars to come out and deny that the theological position of Islam is not what the terrorists claim it to be? But, not surprisingly, not a single secular media or editor, nor any political party or leader would dare ask why the Islamic theologians are silent on the terrorists' view of the holy book. What has their grievance against Hindu outfits or the governments to do with their claim that Islam mandates them to attack non-Muslims? The real issue is whether the Islamic faith mandates so. If the jihadis are aggrieved then they can take to violence against the state. Terrorism normally isolates the terrorists from the mainstream society. But when the terrorists claim that they have been directed by their Holy Text to kill people of other faiths and that view is not challenged by the mainstream scholars or the secularists, then the terrorists cannot be isolated. This is what the seculars seem to have preferred to miss out.
Thus neither have the mainstream Islamic scholars challenged the jihadi's view that their holy text authorizes them to kill the non-believers nor have the secularists asked the mainstream Islamic scholars to deny the terrorists' version of the Islamic faith. Emboldened the terrorists have now moved a step further in the Delhi terror mail. While, in the Ahmedabad mail, the jihadis have embarrassed the Islamic theologians by quoting the holy text, they have embarrassed the seculars in the Delhi terror mail by relying on the seculars' view to justify their terror against the Hindus. The secular enthusiasts had carried on a relentless hate campaign against the BJP and Narendra Modi after the Gujarat riots. Then had even trivialized the Godhra terror attack that had roasted over 60 Ramsevaks, saying that it was an accident or that the victims themselves had lit fire to the bogy, which enraged the Hindu outfits even more. Later when acts of terror increased, the secular media even rationalized them by citing the Gujrat riots as justification for terrorists' anger. This secular largesse did not assuage the extremists. Instead it has put the Islamist terror on an escalator. Not surprisingly the jihadis have, in the Delhi email, used the very logic of the secular media, and very photographs carried by it a thousand times, to claim that they were taking revenge for the Gujarat carnage!
While the Jihadis see terror as a mandate of the holy book, the secular media remains juvenile in its oration. It still cites Shabana Azmi's inability to get a fourth flat, in the building of her choice in the place of her choice as illustrative of the failure of constitutional equity to minorities, and asks how could there be peace with such injustice! But, no section is more badly treated or discriminated than the untouchables in India. If the seculars' logic for jihadis' violence is applied to them, they can legitimately turn terrorists. But mere grievances cannot produce that deadly hate. It is the jihadi theological claim, uncontested by the Islamist clergy and the seculars, that makes terror a religious duty, and a deadly one at that. Injustice, minus theology, cannot breed that deadly terror. Unless the debate on terror transcends the trivia and gets to the root of the terror – the theological motive for terror – the seculars will end up promoting terror, not containing it. Will they introspect?

Swami Vivekananda on Shivaji

It was a beautiful moonlit night and Swamiji was sitting in the verandah of the bungalow of the late Mr। Bhattacharjee on the South Beach of Madras (already referred to), conversing in Hindi with Mr। Munshi Jagamohanlal, the private secretary of the Maharajah of Khetri। This gentleman had been sent by the Maharajah to trace out the whereabouts of the Swamiji and to fetch him back to Khetri to bless the newly born son and heir to the State. When Swamiji was at Khetri about a year previously, the Maharajah of Khetri had begged of him to confer the boon of a son and Swamiji while he was in one of his higher moods had actually blessed him saying that God had granted his prayer. So the Maharajah wanted Swamiji back in his palace at any cost and could not remain contented until he saw him. When I went over there after my office work I prostrated before Swamiji and took my seat; and suddenly Swamiji began to sing a Hindi song in praise of Sivaji in his own masterly way, the last two lines of which were:—दावा द्रुमदंड पर चित्ता मृग झुंड पर, भूषण बितंड पर जैसे मृगराज हैं ।तॆज तम अंशपर काह्न जिम कंसपर, त्यॊंमिलेच्छवंसपर शर शिवराज हैं ॥
(As forest-fire is to the forest trees, a leopard to the deer-herds and a lion to the stately elephants; as the sun is to the darkness of the night, as Krishna was to Kansa, so was king Sivaji, a lion, towards the hordes of Mlechchas.)It was a long song as I learnt it afterwards; but I who had learnt in my school days that Sivaji was a cunning unprincipled freebooter, ‘an upstart robber,’ a marauder and a treacherous mur-derer, suddenly interrupted Swamiji and asked him how that praise and those lines were justified in the case of Sivaji. Was he not a mere child of fortune, a marauder who collected similar men like himself and succeeded in establishing a kingdom by sheer cunning and treachery? Swamiji imme-diately gave up his singing and saw me full in the face, his face being lit up with the fire of indignation and said, “Shame on you, Doctor. You are a Mahratta and still that is all you know of the greatest king that India had produced within the last three hundred years; one who was the very incarnation of Siva, about whom prophecies were given out long before he was born; and his advent was eagerly expected by all the great souls and saints of Maharashtra as the deliverer of the Hindus from the hands of the Mlechchas and one who succeeded in the establishment of the Dharma which had been trampled under foot by the depredations of the devastating hordes of the Moghals. This is what comes of your reading Indian History written by foreigners who could have no sympathy with you, nor could they have any respect for your culture, traditions, manners and customs which they could not understand. Is there a greater hero, a greater saint, a greater bhakta and a greater king than Sivaji? Sivaji was the very embodiment of a born ruler of men as typified in your great Epics.
He was the type of the real son of India representing the true consciousness of the nation. It was he who showed what the future of India is going to be sooner or later, a group of independent units under one umbrella as it were, i.e., under one supreme imperial suzerainty.” I was simply thunderstruck and seemed to myself so small, so foolish and so ignorant; still the spirit of enquiry in me could not be put down even by those eloquent and fiery words of indigna-tion which Swamiji gave expression to, for I thought whatever might be said of Sivaji there could be no explanation for his treacherous conduct towards Afzul Khan, the great Pathan commander sent from the court of Bijapur, whom he is said to have killed under circumstances which any one who has a spark of morality in him could not but abhor. Still with some amount of hesitation but with a mischievous curiosity to find out how Swamiji could condone this treacherous deed of Sivaji, I begged of him to tell us something about the real life-history of Sivaji and what he thought of his one act which had been considered the greatest blot in his life and on account of which his character had been painted so black.Then Swamiji began to give a brief account of the life of Sivaji, with great feeling and enthusiasm and we listened to the same with great eagerness and rapt attention; for so engrossing and interesting it was to listen to those soul-stirring words of Swamiji who spoke at the time with so great an earnestness and yet with so much pity and kindness. It was a pity there was no one to take down all that he spoke that evening in shorthand, nor did I make any notes at the time either, for my mind was so absorbed in following his narrative that the idea of taking down any notes never entered my brain. Yet the indelible impressions he made on even our callous hearts that memorable evening do still persist though somewhat dimmed, and the following is but an imperfect reproduction of those impressions.

“Doctor,” began Swamiji, “it is a pity that in our schools, History of India written by foreign-ers alone is taught to our boys। The foreign writers of the Mahratta History can never shake off their bias nor understand the real character and greatness and the inner motive of the actions of Sivaji. We cannot blame them for their beliefs which more or less depended on the writings of the Mussalman chroniclers who out of spite and hatred, denounced Sivaji as a falim or freebooter. On the other hand there are many Mahratta bakhars or chroniclers who have written about him but who, true to their ancient puranic ideal, looked upon Sivaji as an incarnation of God born to relieve His devotees from the oppressions of Mahomedan fanaticism and to re-establish the Dharma. Naturally the foreign writers leaned on the side of the Mussalman chroniclers and considered the account given by the Mahrattas as mere superstition. But fortunately there are many independent Persian manuscripts dealing with the history of Aurangzeeb, Sivaji and the Bijapur kings. They corroborate the account of the Mahratta chroniclers so far as facts are con-cerned, though they do not share in their belief of the superhuman nature of the exploits of Sivaji. And if young men who have any patriotic feeling towards the history of their motherland were to make researches in finding out and translating these manuscripts much truer light may be thrown on the greatness of the doings of Sivaji and of many others who helped in the formation of the great Mahratta Confederacy and it will be a valuable addition to our knowledge of the real His-tory of India.” (November 1914, p. 218-219)

Swami Vivekananda on ShivajiSwami Vivekananda on Shivaji source: http://shriramakrishna.blogspot.com/2007/07/swami-vivekananda-on-shivaji.htmlThe Lion of Vedanta Looks BackFrom the Archives of The Vedanta KesariThe Echoes of Teachings of Swami VivekanandaBY DR। M.C. NANJUNDA ROWIV(An Evening-talk on Sivaji).

Selected Quotes by narandra modi

I didn't become CM on 07-10-2001.I have always been CM,I am CM today and shall be CM forever.For me CM means not Chief Minister but Common Man.



Religion to me is devotion to workand devotedly working is being religious



Terrorism is not just in Kashmir,It is present in various forms,It is present in a 500 rupee counterfeitnote, as well as in a drug deal



Files in the Government travel a lot.We should adopt short routes and not short cuts to reduce the pains of this travel



The flow of Narmada River,is not just a flow of water,It is the abundance of Electricity,It is the abundance of Development



Politics for me is not Ambition... but a Mission.



In days to come, weapons will not be the real power,



INFORMATION will be the power.I.T. is not merely Information Technology but India Today, andB.T. is not mere Bio-Technology but Bharat Tomorrow



IT+IT=ITIndian talent + Information technology = India Tomorrow



CT is not just about communication technology, it is also about Civilization and Traditions to create CT - Citizens of Tomorrow...



Gujarat is all about Trade with Tradition, Commerce with Culture, Enterprise with Entertainment and Development with Disaster management



The concept of value addition is defined in five Fs From Farm to Fibre to Fabric to Fashion to Foreign Gujarat shall usher in a second green revolution through Water Revolution and Lab to Land and Soil to Satellite approach



For me whole Gujarat is SEZ - Spirituality, Enterprise and Zeal



We do not run government on whims of an individual, our progress is reforms driven, our reforms are policy driven and our policies are people driven.

Kandhamal competes with Bengaluru

Kandhamal competes with Bengaluru

... S Gurumurthy
11-09-2008

Contrary to what Indians here and Christians elsewhere have been told by evangelical missionaries, media and seculars, the Kandhamal arson is not, as it has been concocted, a clash between Hindu and Christian faithfuls at all! The truth is that it is a continuation of the clashes that had started in early 1990s between the 'Kandha' tribe, who did not convert to Christianity and 'Pana' caste, most of whom had converted. Religion is the spice added to this mix.

Kandhas are a Scheduled Tribe [ST] and 'Panas' are a Scheduled Caste [SC]. Both are entitled to reservation benefits under the Constitution, yet, with a difference. While the ST reservation will continue even if the beneficiary becomes a Christian, the SC reservation will cease on conversion. So, when the Panas became Christians they lost their reservation rights. But, under the influence of the missionaries and secular parties, and claiming to speak the same language 'Kui' as Kandhas, they agitated for ST status. So that, despite becoming Christians, their reservation rights would continue if they got listed as ST. But, the Kandhas, who saw that their share of reservation would be cut into if the Pana demand were conceded, began resisting it. Thus, reservation is a cause of the Kandha-Pana divide, but not the only cause; dispute over land is another.

The Kandhas were the traditional rulers of Kandhamal and that is the reason the district bears their name. The lands at Kandhamal belonged to them by the traditional rights that go with the tribes. It was their misfortune that the Kandhas chose to remain true to their traditional faith and resisted conversion to Christianity. The Panas were fortunate as most of them became Christians accepting the allurements offered by over 360 evangelical outfits operating in Kandhamal and harvesting souls for The 'Only True Faith' and 'God' and, in the process, raking in millions and millions of dollars from global funds for the noble harvest. Besides the perks that conversion yielded, the Panas, as Christian minorities, have now the protection of the state, patronage of the media and secular parties, and above all, the powerful support of the Christian nations all over the world. The Kandhas, whose only fault was that they did not convert, have none of these. So they suffer all the limitations of the majority community under the skewed Indian Constitution that clubs the Hindus in Mumbai with the Kandhas in Khandmal! With such powerful secular forces ranged against them, the Kandhas are being further corned in two ways. One, the Panas who have become relatively better off have gradually taken over much of the lands of the Kandhas, by commerce and fraud, as the Khands see it. Two, on top of it, the Panas are also claiming the ST status to grab a share of the reservation from the Kandhas, and thanks to the secular parties' support, seem to be nearly getting it. In substance thus, it is a Khand vs Pana war over land rights and reservation. Surprisingly, in the face of the 'itch of his colleagues' to paste Hindu-Christian label on Kandhamal, Shivraj Patil, the Union Home Minister, saw the truth and 'refused to treat' the ongoing clashes 'as communal'! But, more surprisingly, only one newspaper, a financial daily, reported his view while others had blacked it out!!

This is not the first time that the Kandhas and the Panas are at war. In the year 1992, the war between them lasted for three months, resulting in over 20 deaths. The issue was then, as it is now, land and reservation, which was the very consequence of the conversion of the Panas to Christianity. The Panas got financial and political advantage and also gained lands that belonged to the Kandhas. But though they lost their reservation benefits in the bargain, they began reclaiming it through their demand for ST status. It needs no seer to say that it is religious conversions that sequenced into hostilities between the Kandhas disadvantaged as Hindu majority and the Panas protected as Christian minority. No major clash between the Kandhas and the Panas was reported before the missionaries entered Khandmal. The Christian population in Kandhamal which was some 2% in 1961 and 6% in 1971, rose to 27% in 2001.These numbers speak volumes without words. Yet, now the missionaries, media and the seculars shout from house tops that only after VHP and Bajrang Dal have entered the scene, there are clashes and the minorities are being butchered. In 1992 there was no VHP worth the name in Orissa; and the Bajrang Dal was not yet born. Yet bloody clashes did occur in Kandhaamal between the Khands and the Panas. This points to only the one and the only fact, namely, that it is not the VHP or the Bajrang Dal, but, the entry of global evangelism aided by unlimited global funds for harvesting the Panas to Christianity that has turned the Kandhas and the Panas hostile to each other and had led to clashes between them. Actually it was the unresisted conversions that brought the Hindu outfits into Kandhamal. Now their resistance is faulted. But what about the cause – the global evangelical conversions powered by huge global funds? Why is the entire secular establishment deafeningly silent on this.

And where does Swami Laksmananda fit into this theatre of Kandhas and Panas, evangelists and the seculars and why was he murdered? A vedanta scholar, his only fault was that, when the establishment had let down particularly the Khands, who refused convert, he stood by them. He did to resist what the missionaries did to convert. Namely, he ran schools, colleges, satsangs, and discourses that had become a great hit with the Kandhas and also the Panas who refused to convert. He became the biggest roadblock to the missionaries in their harvest. He was targeted by the evangelists for a long time. In December 2007 an attempt was made on him in the village of a Congress MP and a Christian convert. Again, some 24 hours before he was murdered, the Swami got a letter threatening that he would be done away with if he did not close down his work against conversion in Kandhamal. He personally lodged that letter as FIR with the police. Yet, the Swami, along with four of his disciples, was done away with the very next evening. The Kandhas reacted violently when their best hope, the Swami, was snuffed out. This was the context for the August 2008 clashes that was always waiting to happen between the Kandhas and the Panas. Yet it was no one-sided affair, as made out to be. A secular newspaper has investigated and reported that the Panas responded to Kandhas attack with gun fire and killed four which has alerted the State to the possibility of the emergence of Christian-extremist alliance in Kandhamal.

This the story of how Kandhamal, the backward district of Orissa, competes for global status with Bangaluru now, but for entirely different reasons. While the fortunate Bangaluru became the pride of India thanks to the twenty-year old software techies who have put the nation on the knowledge map of the world, the unfortunate Kandhamal has become the shame of India, thanks to the seculars aggregating votes and the evangelists harvesting souls, with the media turning blind eye to both and finally to truth.

The Totalitarians

The Totalitarians
7 Sep 2008, 1612 hrs IST, Tarun Vijay
So what if you expose and warn about the grave fallout of continuing with the special status to Kashmir, that strengthens feelings of separation, we will go ahead with it. So what if Mahatma Gandhi and Vivekananda had opposed vehemently the proselytization campaigns of the Christian aggressive 'harvesters', we will support them. So what if the RSS guys were amongst the first to rush to help Bihar flood victims; we shall continue to paint them as barbaric goons busy burning down faith places, who had no time to help the poor, deluged fellow citizens. So what if a Hindu monk and three others, including a woman monk, were killed brutally by Christian assailants using AK47, we shall put the victims in the category of unmentionables and keep on repeating, 'Hindus attack churches.' So what if a Google search on Vatican's scandals produces 1.5 million results in less than 0.37 seconds and that includes how a Pope turned his palace into a whorehouse and how their bank swindled millions and the papal authority helped the disintegration of the Soviet Union, not to say apologies on gay scandals. We shall continue to reward those Vatican's protégés who use derogatory terms against Hindu monks and testify against their country in a foreign senate. The icons of hate and barbarism look good and acceptable if made of saffron headbands and tridents. It looks photogenic. Have you ever, even in the passing, saw an icon of hate created out of green flag Jihadis who kill five- year-old girls in the thick of night (Wandhama and Doda) or the Christian rifle wielders who kill an 84-year-old monk and an ochre-robed lady celebrating Krishna's birthday? Have you ever heard or read the agony and pains of those who just want to remain what they are religiously and get killed for that alone? Waiting for a voice of reason If I say attack on any religious place - Hindu, Muslim or Christian - is inhuman and as bad as the attacks on American Indian temples and Iran's fire temples, I look around to hear a feeble voice condemning attempts to snatch my Ram and Krishna by firangs and their cohorts who declare 'your God is bad, we have been ordained to bring you to our ministry of heavens - come or else.' Snatching others' gods is a good business and in the media they are portrayed as noble souls who couldn't find solace in their New Zealand, Australian or Dutch surroundings where Churches are being used for secular purposes in the absence of a laity. So they came to India for spreading education and providing medical help. What's wrong if they also convert? At least they are doing good service. Hence, if a Hindu monk is killed, he must have done something really bad to invite such a death (that's actually written in a petition to the Indian President by a Christian leader). If, in reaction, churches are torched, that's the handiwork of the goondas of the dead swami - condemn it and caricature Hindus as attackers. The media, government, parliament and even those who negotiate stairs to power romping on the sacrifices of 'bad, violent, semi literate' saffronites keep a safe distance. Orissa Government and the officials might have thought correctly that the sadhu killed must have been a discarded, mentally ill person who didn't open showrooms of Gods and nirvana in Haridwar and Rishikesh and came to the jungles of Kandhs to educate them. If he were a great soul, at least a few bigwigs from Delhi would have attended his funeral. The Vatican was shaken up and spoke on Orissa, Delhi kept silent on a swami's murder. So be it.
A noble light extinguished Lakshmanananda was a soul Vivekananda would have been proud of. He carried forward the work of Adi Sankara in the region inhabited by the most disadvantaged people. He left comforts of a religious person enjoying dollar grants and global following and based his small centre to spread new techniques of farming and modern education fortifying faith as a resistance to foreign allurements. He died a martyr but the state government stopped even the mourners to attend his shraddha - the religious ritual done after the 13th day of death, barricading all roads that led to his place. What the Christian evangelists did to the tribal of the Americas, New Zealand and Australia, completely annihilating and subjugating them to an extent that nothing of their pre-Christian civilization survives, (post Columbus, violence saw seven crore aborigines being killed in America in a span of 100 years and millions in Puerto Rico, Brazil and Australia, just for the lust of gold and to spread the Gospel) the same is being repeated in India's tribal lands to Christianize them with an aggression unknown to the Eastern world, which had believed in the principle of 'live and let live' declaring and practicing the mantra that every path leads to one God hence there is no need to proselytize or convert. Uninvited harvesters Nobody understands what's the urgency of the Western forces to earmark billions of dollars to change the faith of India's poor and struggling masses? Who has invited them? They say it's their right to spread the message of the Gospel and bring heathens under the umbrella of Christ. Which Christ do they talk about and who has given them a right to deride and demonise and insult the gods and goddesses of other faiths and say you won't have salvation unless you turn Christian? Why as Hindu tribals they can't reach the God they have been worshipping for ages? We are the only place of Hindus on this planet that has survived the assaults of Turks, British, Portuguese and all other Abrahamic faiths that brought their book under the shadow of swords and bayonets. Still, they find it uncomfortable to tolerate a great Hindu civilization flourishing and send their proselytizers and dollars to ensure that this millennium becomes a Christian one after conquering Europe, America and Africa. Is that fair and should that be acceptable? If Hindus can't assert their Hindu characteristics and protect their society in India, would they be expected to do so in Saudi Arabia? And why all the liberal concepts to demoralize and reduce us in numbers are put to action only in Hindu Buddhist majority nations a like India, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Nepal and not in Pakistan or Malaysia or the Arab states? Communism and Christianity have become the biggest annihilators of Hindus in the modern age, yet the largest stocks of candles and peace psalms remain stored in their backyards. What an irony, indeed! As a Hindu, I celebrate the birth of Jesus as was started by my ideal Vivekananada and is still practiced in all the Ramakrishna maths all over the globe. I could write a piece on Jesus I adore and still be an adherent to my faith. I can show almost every Hindu religious centre in our great pilgrim places having pictures of Jesus with respect and saying all paths lead to one god. Before Swami Dayananda's Shudhi movement, it was impossible to convert to Hinduism as to be a Hindu you had to be borne in a Hindu family, yet we always welcomed and provided equal rights to other faiths - Christians, Muslims, Jews and Parsis. We respected their gods and what, in turn, did they do to us?
The 'return gift' They consolidated their position to reduce us in numbers and published literature to convince that Hindu gods are good for nothing, so become Christian. They abused Hindu hospitality and then complained against them. Show me a single Christian school in India having a picture of Ram, or even a Vedic scientist like Bhaskaracharya who was father to us all - including Christians of this land? Denying your Pa and adopting new parents can't be called a spiritual experience. India is passing through a phase of great memory loss. What was ours has been discarded and what we are is looked with suspicion and hate. So you will never find a place called Hindu Heritage Centre of Glory and Invincible spirit. You will never find a picture of Shivaji or Maharana Pratap in any Christian mission school, because they 'are Hindu icons' and not the national ones. But surely you may find pictures of those old proselytizers whose names are too Roman and Greek to be pronounced correctly for any Indian language user, just because they were the propagators of the Christian faith even though they had nothing to do with this land. By the same yardstick, next time you go to drop your kid to a convent school, pause there to mark that although in some room pictures of Romulus and Remus, the traditional founders of Rome appearing in Roman mythology as the twin sons of the priestess Rhea Silvia, fathered by the God of war, Mars, are found and taught in their textbooks but never would you see a mention of Luv/Kush. Why? Because Roman twins belong to an acceptable memory to the Christian world and Luv-Kush belong to the Hindus. Hence they are unacceptable. There are Hindus, very well meaning and lovable, who declare ad nauseam that they were educated in a Christian school and are proud of the fact they were never converted. May I also submit my name to the list of such honourables? I was taught in a Christian school and I love my teachers like Jacob sir and Father Benjamin. But should that stop me to say, sir, I do not approve of the work some people do in the name of the faith you belong to and as a Hindu I respect? Seeing all these proselytizing absurdities Swami Vivekananda had cried - 'Oh God, you are not Christian, go back to Christ.' Today, there is no Vivekananda or his follower to say what he could say a hundred years before. The eraser called secularism had made it sure that those who were Hindus just a couple of years before begin hating their fathers and grandfathers so much that when one of them pens a petition to the President of a Hindu majority India, and she too happens to be a devout Hindu, he uses intensely insulting words for the Hindu monk who was murdered at the age of 84 by the followers of his faith. He doesn't feel ashamed that his forefathers touched the feet of a Hindu monk, and he, a descendant of that family is behaving as if he was an enemy of that legacy. Deny all that you had, delete all that was your history, forget all that belonged to you, and then only you become a good Vaticanised Christian. Is that the way Indian constitution should allow such barbarity in the name of secularism that has come to mean 'erase Hinduism' from Hindustan?
Oh, this is what Bapu said This government swears by Gandhi and prints his pictures on currency notes as a mark of genuine respect. Now read what he said about conversions: 'It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress toward peace. Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?' (Harijan: January 30, 1937) No conversion can take place without a straight hate attack. None can convert the other without telling him that the faith he has been following is useless, bad and his gods are incapable to assure salvation. Do you think when the Christian proselytizers go for a 'hunt' they say, 'yes sir Ram and Krishna are also as good and great as our gods?' If they say so, where will be the scope to convert? If just love and compassion are the vehicles to proselytize, what's the need to get the billions of dollars as grants from Western countries? And have you seen the literature they publish to deride and insult Hindu practices and pantheon? It's too ugly even to refer to them. Just go to Catholic sites and ask for the literature they send abroad to gather dollars, it must open your eyes. Friends who live Jesus There are good Christians whose life and ideals are worth emulating and who really live Jesus. I know highly respected Syrian Christians of Kerala who are a symbol of goodness and brotherly behavior. They never believed in proselytisation and in fact when there were news- items about Russian Orthodox Church opposing a Krishna temple in Moscow, I had contacted their Arch Bishop and he did help saying Krishna belongs to our nation. Like Wahabis amongst Sunnis, aggressive Vatican followers do not represent the Christian world that are sowing the seeds of hate and distrust in the Indian society. Wherever they have pockets of influence that very area demands secession from India. Why? Do Vatican's followers have guts to denounce the Church openly supporting Nagaland's NSCN (IM), a terrorist insurgent movement? The NSCN (IM)'s open declaration is that they are fighting to create a Nagaland for Christ. Has Vatican denounced that too as a 'violation' against the land that has ensured all liberties to propagate their faith? In a land where democracy and pluralism run in our veins, why are we shy to say no to the totalitarianism of a few? Isn't it the time when all of us must sit together to think and devise methods ensuring never again a Kosi bundh breach will occur and our people suffer, and guarantee a respectful living for each and every Indian and resolve to win a few more gold medals at the London Olympics and eradicate poverty from India's map as well as terrorism? Are these questions less important than the issues of conversion and Hindu-Muslim, Christian issues? Will our gods be angry with us if we simply stop telling people about the religious book they MUST read and work for their happiness through providing vehicles to move ahead? Are our gods jealous of other gods and want us to read only what He thinks must be read or is He a Universal symbol of love and just love? Decide ye, the followers. Choose totalitarianism or pluralism. The choice is yours but then the consequences will not be in your hands.
The author is the Director, Dr Syamaprasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.