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By François Gautier
06 Oct 2008 02:12:00 AM IST
WHAT MADE HINDUS ANGRY IN KARNATAKA
I WAS born in a Catholic family. My uncle was a priest, a wonderful
man of warmth and compassion and I spent most my early years in
Catholic boarding schools. When I was young I wanted to become a
missionary and to 'convert' pagans in Asia. What I was taught by
priests was that Hindus worship false gods and they needed to be
brought back to the True Word by Jesus Christ.
Then of course, I came to India and discovered that actually Hindus,
far from being the heathens, as had been portrayed in Europe, not only
believed God's diversity, the wonderful concept of avatar, but had
given refuge to all persecuted minorities of the world, whether the
Syrian Christians, the Parsis, the Jews (India is the only country in
the world where Jews were not persecuted), the Armenians, or today the
Tibetans.
I am also aghast at the one-sided coverage by the Indian media of the
Christian- Hindu problem: blasts after blasts have killed hundreds of
innocent Hindus in Varanasi, Delhi, Mumbai train blasts, Jaipur, etc.
Yet, neither Manmohan Singh nor Sonia Gandhi have pronounced once the
word 'Islamic terrorism.' But when furious Hindus, tired of being made
fun of, of witnessing their brothers and sisters converted by
financials traps, of seeing a 84-year-old swami and his Mataji
brutally murdered, of reading blasphemy about their Gods, vent their
anger against churches, many of them makeshifts, the Indian government
goes after the soft target which the Hindus are. The same thing
applies to the United States: they never warned Muslim organisations
in India about the killing of Hindus, but when dollars are used to buy
new converts and it angers the majority community of India,Washington
has the arrogance to issue a warning, and Manmohan Singh does not have
the pride to tell the US to mind its own business.
Neither the Indian press nor the western correspondents bothered to
write about what made Hindus angry in Karnataka: Newlife, one
important western funded missionary centre (
http://www.newlifevoice.org), began making conversions in and around
Mangalore by accosting poor people in market areas, or in bus stands,
befriending them and then taking them to churches to introduce them to
the father.
Upon introduction they were paid Rs 2,500 per person and then taken to
the Velankanni shrine, in Tamil Nadu, where they would get another Rs.
3,000.
When they finally converted to Christianity by changing the name, they
got an incentive of Rs 10,000 onwards.
Newlife would then give them instructions to abandon wearing tilak on
forehead, not to visit and offer prayers at the Hindu temples,
replacing the photos and idols of Hindu gods and goddesses with a
Cross, etc.
But what really angered local Hindus was when Newlife went one step
further and published a book in Kannada — Satya Darshini — which was
widely distributed by its missionaries. Here below is the translation
of some of the most abusive passages:
"Urvashi — the daughter of Lord Vishnu — is a prostitute.
Vashistha is the son of this prostitute.
He in turn married his own Mother. Such a degraded person is the Guru
of the Hindu God Rama. (page 48).
When Krishna himself is wallowing in darkness of hell, how can he
enlighten others? Since Krishna himself is a shady character, there is
a need for us to liberate his misled followers (page 50). It was
Brahma himself who kidnapped Sita.
"Since Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were themselves victims of lust, it is
a sin to consider them as Gods. (page 39).
When the Trinity of Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) are consumed
by lust and anger, how can they liberate others? The projection of
them as Gods is nothing but a joke. (page 39). God, please liberate
the sinful people of India who are worshipping False Gods. (Page 39)."
When blasphemy and much worse is brought against the most sacred Hindu
Gods, Hindus are supposed to take it meekly as sheep and let
themselves be converted to a foreign religion!
There are more than 4,000 foreign Christian missionaries involved in
conversion activities across different states.
In Tripura, there were no Christians at the time of independence.
There are 1,20,000 today, a 90 per cent increase since 1991.
The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there
were only 1,710 Christians in 1961, but 1.2 million today, as well as
780 churches!
In Andhra Pradesh, churches are coming up every day in far-flung
villages and there was even an attempt to set up one near Tirupati.
Christians throughout the ages have strived on the concept of
persecution and as a brought up Catholic, I remember feeling bad about
all those martyred saints of Christianity. Christians in India like to
say that they are only two per cent and can do no harm. But it is a
sham: in the Tamil Nadu coastal belt from Chennai to Kanyakumari,
there must be now 10 per cent Christians post-tsunami and the same may
be true in other parts of south India.
My heart goes out to Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa who took
a courageous stand against unethical Christian conversions, but is now
under pressure from the Centre.
The BJP, having learnt from bitter experience that the Congress has no
qualm in invoking President's rule under fallacious pretexts in states
which are ruled by non-Congress governments is in a quandary: it must
show some action against militant Hindu groups while remaining true to
itself.
This is why Yeddyurappa took some action against Hindu groups while
saying that his government will not tolerate forcible conversions and
will take stringent action against missionaries involved in
conversions.
And ultimately, the blame must fall on Hindus: they are 800 million in
India, the overwhelming majority; they have the brains, they have the
money and they have the power. But either their intellectual and
political class sides with the minorities, out of fear, inferiority
complex imbedded by the British or just sheer crass political
opportunism, or the bigger mass is indifferent inert, selfish,
un-civic conscious. Every Hindu is the inheritor of the only surviving
spiritual knowledge which at the moment is under a concerted attack by
Christian missionaries, Americanisation, Marxism and Islamic
fundamentalism.
fgautier@rediffmail.com
