Francois Gautier The Sunday Indian 14 Oct 2008
http://www.thesundayindian.com/14092008/storyd.asp?sid=5571&pageno=1
Innocent and gullible Hindus are being lured into conversion
When I see what is happening in Orissa, I am very confused. I remember when Graham Staines and his sons were murdered and the scandal it created in India: for weeks, nay months, both the Indian and foreign Press went on about the dastardly murder and its blot on Hindu India. But when an 84-year-old Hindu swami and his Mataji are slaughtered in equally horrible circumstances, all the Press can do is to speak about the 'persecution of Christians'. Is it not a pure case of biased reporting?
Yes, I am a westerner and a born Christian. I was mainly brought up in Catholic schools, my uncle Father Guy Gautier a gem of a man, was the parish head of the beautiful Saint Jean de Montmartre church in Paris. My father Jacques Gautier, a famous artist in France, and a truly good person if there ever was one, was a fervent Catholic all his life, went to church nearly every day and lived by his Christian values.
There are certain concepts in Christianity I am proud of: charity for others, the equality of social systems in many western countries, Christ's message of love and compassion.
Still, I find too that it is wrong to convert people from one religion to another by using financial baits. And this has been going on for quite some time in the tribal belts of Orissa; Dalits and tribals, innocent, poor and gullible, are enticed to convert to Christianity by financial gains: free loans, free medical care, free schooling for children. Inevitably, it creates social tension between converts, who have more, and non converts, who resent it.
Nothing much to do about communal disharmony.
Yes, I agree that there are still unforgivable atrocities committed against Dalits, although very often they are done by backward castes themselves. I remember during the tsunami in Pondichery, how the Vanniars, an OBC caste, stopped the Dalits from a coastal hamlet from crossing the Vanniars' part of the village to bury their dead, as the Dalits' cremation ground had been submerged. At the same time, my 30 years in India have taught me that nowhere in the world has there been so much effort to rectify a wrong – from 1947 onwards. This resulted in a Dalit, the late K R Narayanan, born in a poor village of Kerala, to be elected President of India, one of the highest posts in this nation.
Has a black man ever been President of the United States? Reservations for Dalits have made it possible for them to access education and jobs regardless of their merits – and this is a unique feature of India today.
I have seen with my own eyes how conversions in India are not only highly unethical – that is, using unethical means of conversion – but also that they threaten a whole way of life, erasing centuries of tradition, customs, wisdom, teaching people to despise their own religion and look westwards to a culture which is alien to them, with disastrous results.
Look at what happened to countries like Hawaii, or to the extraordinary Aztec culture in South America, after Portuguese and Spanish missionaries took over.
Look how the biggest drug problems in India are found in the Northeast, or how Third World countries which have been totally Christianised have lost all moorings and bearing and are drifting away without nationalism and self-pride.
I also think that Indian Christians show very little gratitude to that Hindu ethos which has seeped into Indian Christian consciousness. It is because of that Hindu ethos, which accepts that God may manifest himself at different times in different names, that Christians were welcomed in India in the first century. Indeed, the Syrian Christians of Kerala constituted the first Christian community in the world.
It is because of this inbred tolerance in Hinduism that Christianity and many other persecuted minorities in the world flourished and practiced their religion in peace in India throughout the centuries.
But how do Christians thank the Hindus? When the Jesuits arrived in India with Vasco de Gama, they committed terrible persecutions, particularly in Goa, crucifying Brahmins, marrying local girls forcibly to Portuguese soldiers, razing temples to build churches and splitting the Kerala Christian community in two. The Goa Inquisition was most merciless and cruel.
And today, Christian priests, particularly the Indian ones, continue ranting against Hindus and promoting unethical conversions, using the massive power of the dollars donated by ignorant Westerners.
Furthermore, they use false statistics, saying that Christians are only 2 per cent in India, so why fear them? But in Tamil Nadu, from Chennai to Pondichery on the coast, at least 10 to 15 per cent Dalits have been converted to Christianity. The figures of conversion have to be revised.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
A Secular Protocol
Tarun Vijay The Times of India 11 Oct 2008
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/Tarun_Vijay_A_secular_protocol/articleshow/3584631.cms
Patience is the key that defines facilitating others' survival more than your own. Earth, mother we call her, symbolises that element of life. She lets the barbarian exploit her boons and the bliss, and waits for a millennium to show she is angry.
Indian society, which believes in the values of the civilisational flow so painstakingly preserved and handed over to us, is being subjected the same kind of test of patience by the forces that represent the colors of Roman and Arab ancestry.
Like history can't be understood through secondary or tertiary sources, original references have to be consulted, watershed incidents in a nation's life have to be analysed through original events. Hence after Meenakshipuram, the forced exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, Godhra and Kandhmal murders, and its now the turn of Bodo Hindus in Assam to face Muslim attacks.
So far 40 Hindus have been reported killed and 76,000 people have left their villages out of fear and taken refuge in 32 state government camps in Udalguri and Darrang. Twelve villages have been burnt. In Jhakuapara village the gaon budhaa (village head) was burnt alive along with his mother and sister. It all began after local Hindus resisted the forcible occupation of their lands by Muslims. The area has suddenly seen Bodo Hindus reduced to a minority and a spurt in the activities of the All Assam Minority Students Union (AMSU), SIMI, All Assam Muslim Chatra Parishad and Muslim Students Association (MUSA). Now, having burnt Hindu villages and forced them to flee, Muslims are occupying the villages vacated by Hindus.
The Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF - Badruddin Ajmal's Muslim Political Party) MLA Rasul Haq Bahadur and AAMSU president Abdul Aziz have been demanding a separate autonomous area for the Muslims in lower Assam. The recent violence is considered as a `warming up' exercise' to chase away Hindus from their traditional hamlets.
Saw any report or interviews of the victims or front page 'shame' editorials condemning the roasting alive of Hindus, or making them refugees in their own land? Got any call from Vatican or admonishment from Paris? Sorry, the victims happened to be Hindus so we can devote our space and time on matters more earthly like ICL cricket and red alerts in the stock exchange.
Hate sells. The more you add poison to it, the more you get elevated on the scales of leadership and fame. They say terrorism is the main issue. But do you think any one wants to fight it? All that appears on the list are a few ghastly pictures of the terror-struck common people, a few `good' slogans, emotional lines of poetry and the election plank is ready. Greed, intolerance, revenge and bigotry of the secular kind have taken centrestage to constitutionalise a hate regime that thrives on disrobing India of her unique characteristics. Anything that defines that uniqueness is under assault and like a colonial dispensation; this has become a business of profit and comfort. Grants, awards and fellowships are reserved for those who yield and say yes to the secular protocol that defines India as a non-Hindu entity, using terms like 'shackled in the old', `outdated', `obscurantist Brahmanism' and `weird ritualism which makes the practitioner rigid, backward looking' and `pot-bellied, unintelligent creature with a tuft'.
The sultans of this secular protocol define an assertive Hindu as anti-women, anti-minority (read Muslims and Christians), Hindi chauvinist, having a fossilized vision that tries to revive a dead language like Sanskrit, worshipper of snakes, rats, cow, phallus, trees, who uses cow urine, cow dung for various purposes including medicine. They light fire and throw some herbs to please gods, who are elephant-shaped, and use peacocks, oxen and owls as their vehicles. They have to be civilized. And to do that they get grants from the ministry of culture.
From the Germans and Dutch.
The contemporary seculars use exactly the same language and show identical concern as was used and shown by the British when they urged the Christian missionaries to civilise the Hindu savages a hundred years ago.
In 1913, British forces under Major Hamilton shot dead 1,500 Hindu Bhil freedom fighters who had waged a struggle under the leadership of a great reformist, Govind Giri, a disciple of Swami Dayananda. Having performed this act of "valour", Major Hamilton invited the church to start work amongst the Bhils to "give them the divine message". He made the following appeal to Rev. D.G. Cock of the Presbyterian mission, Neemuch: "Against my wishes, I ordered police to fire on the innocent persons. Knew and loved them for years together.
Really it was a sad experience of my life. You go there and do work which I could not do for them. Their hearts have broken. Give them divine message. I want to do something and I know the best one will be to establish a mission centre." (Planting a mission among the Bhils of south Rajasthan', in man and Life, vol 10, pp 77-96).
Fifteen hundred innocent Bhils were killed. And the British officer asks the Church, almost as an order, to go and work among them. First physical annihilation, then organizing efforts for disrobing them of their culture and religion.
And they are the adorable icons of the contemporary secular.
Hindus, medical doctors, MDs, law graduates, IITians,MBAs, working among tribals to help them get better education never finds a place of honour or even a mention in the passing. Because they preserve the culture and indigenous traditions. In secular protocol, only those who dispossess Hindus of their identity are eligible for enlisting.
Hence converting tribals to Christianity is acceptable, preserving their culture is not. An assault on a nun is deplorable; a murder of a lady Hindu monk is no news. Burning alive of Hindu Bodos finds a brief mention, burning alive of non-Hindus deserve a front page editorial. Post Godhra, Kandhmal, and Mangalore, Hindu symbols like Trishul must be turned into symbols of `Hindu terrorism'.
Post 90s till this date, jihadi symbols like crossed rifles in the backdrop of Koran or a jihadi killing infants or a NSCN activist in Nagaland demanding Nagalim for Christ, must not be used as symbols of hate because that's against secular tenets.
It's a universally accepted norm of the secular fraternity. Have you ever, anywhere seen a jjhadi's barbaric face as a symbol of terrorism? The only face you might have seen shows a Muslim tailor with folded hands, a Hindu "goon" with a saffron headband, a trishul terrifying the minorities. Even the Maoists are never depicted as barbaric goons who have killed more than 12,000 Indians so far and government has to set up a special cell in the Ministry of Home Affairs to tackle the left extremism problem. They are seculars, hence can't be depicted as terrorists.
Recently I saw a magazine depicting Jesus crucified on a trishul .
Even if for the sake of argument one may say some Hindus are indulging in such activities which these seculars find bad, is their depiction of a Jesus crucifixion on a trishul to convey their dismay and disapproval acceptable and responsible behavior? Do they think the trishul is the sole property or the patented symbol of the kind of Hindus they despise? What about those Hindus who do not vote BJP or support Bajrang Dal? Do they all belong to a non-Trishul order of faith?
Depicting and institutionalizing the trishul as a hate symbol is acceptable behavior for the secular. What about the cross of the separatists in Nagaland who kill and maim non-conformists? And the two AK-47s around the Koran used by terrorist groups? Has any one; any secular, journalist, leader or human rightists ever used such symbols to depict bloodthirsty aggressors?
A subservient media, a colonized mindset, a "manageable" pen - this is all that is needed to clothe a secular protocol.
It's a protocol that directs them to bury and subvert the truth. When the killers of Swami Lakshmananada were arrested, the news was filtered and published in a muffled way. Only in one newspaper did I see a statement that pointed towards Christian involvement in the ghastly murders. Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda admitted to a group of media persons that "it is a fact that Christians form the majority in our organisation. Our supporters in Rayagada, Gajapati and Kandhamal also belonged to the Christian community". According to him, Saraswati was killed because he did not pay heed when the Maoists' warned him to end his anti-Christian activities.
Anyone condemned the confession?
This secular protocol insults a police officer even in death, humiliates his family in grief, reinstates a teacher involved in the attack on Parliament, demand a ban on Hindu organizations without any proof or court order, but comes out on the streets seeking freedom for a terrorist sentenced to death by the highest court of the land.
The secular protocol accepts permissiveness and exploitation of women as acceptable smart behavior; opposition to sex in Meerut parks was booed as "moral policing", "they" were dubbed anti-environment and as consuming more and conserving nothing. This protocol is anti-family values - it turns homes into serais by legitimizing `live-in' relations, it is anti-societal stability - which rejects institutionalised relationships, replacing them with discount coupons of pleasure trips, likes to invest in old age homes rather take care of parents. (So much power this secular protocol has wielded that the state felt compelled to make a law to punish children who do not care for their parents). It supports gay marriages as a mark of human advancement and abhors the only institution that has sustained global societies - motherhood, as a symbol of women's slavery.
Having done that, it organizes seminars on the fall in civility and ethics.
They love to say they are not Hindus but `humans' and when it comes to making profit they are in the forefront to sell Hindu songs and bhajans .All those media houses who love to deride Hindutva as a house policy, do not hesitate to make millions by selling Sanskrit mantras, bhajans, kirtans, in CDs and VCDs, and present the same dramas they deplore as "mythological" called Ramayana and Mahabharata, to increase TRP ratings. They are the same seculars who had opposed such Ramanand Sagar serials during the 90s, saying "such mythological dramas" helped fan the flames of the Ayodhya movement, which was, in their eyes, anti-minority.
When it comes to lucre and power sharing and a good birth after life, everyone comes closer to the forces representing Rama's side. So not a single secular Hindu would say he should be buried after death and no Sanskrit mantra be chanted because it's a dead language of deplorable Brahmins. So a sense of personal profit, here or after life, makes them to protect and support a Hindu character. If votes too begin flowing to their boxes this way, they, and not the BJP, would be the first to build Ram temple at Ayodhya.
That's the moral of their secular protocol.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Six Unmatched Features of Sanskrit
http://www.thevedicfoundation.org/valuable_resources/Sanskrit-The_Mother_of_All_Languages_partIII.htm
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The most striking feature of the Sanskrit language is the vowel-consonant pronunciation of the alphabet and the uniqueness of every consonant (or its combination) as a complete syllabic unit when it is joined with a vowel. For example: Its 16 vowels are the actual 'voice pattern' of the sound and 36 consonants are only the 'form' of the 'voice pattern' of the sound. So a consonant ( | |
In Sanskrit, the basic structure of its vowel-consonant pronunciation is the unique foundation of the language that precisely stabilizes the word pronunciation where each letter (or a combination of consonants with a vowel) is a syllable. |
) alone cannot be pronounced as it is only a 'form' of the 'voice pattern' until it is attached to a vowel. Thus, a vowel, which itself is a 'voice pattern,' can be pronounced alone (like,
) or it can be modulated by adding a consonant to it (like,
).The second unmatched feature is the formation of the Sanskrit words. Since the beginning there was a complete dictionary of root words called dhatu that could create any number of words based on the requirement by adding a proper prefix and suffix described in detail in the Sanskrit grammar. There are 90 forms (conjugations) for every verb to be used in the 10 tenses and 21 forms for other words. The formation, modulation and creation of words have been originally the same, in an absolutely perfect state since the beginning, as they are today. |
The most impressive uniqueness of the Sanskrit grammar is that, along with the Sanskrit language, it is unchanged in every age because it is a Divinely produced grammar. Its conjugation system, word formation and the style of poetry formation are all unique, unchanged and perfectly detailed since it appeared on the earth planet through the descended Saints. Take a line of the Yajurved, | |
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There is a noun janah (people), and verb gachcòhanti (to go into) which is formed of gam dhatu (to go), like, gachcòhati, gachcòhatah, gachcòhanti. All the 90 conjugations of the verb gaccòh (to go) and all the 21 forms of the noun jan (people) are used in the same way without any change in the Vedas, in the Puranas and in other Sanskrit literature as well, because they are ever perfect without any sound shift. The Sanskrit language represents the literal form of the Divinity on the earth planet. |
The three styles of Sanskrit are: (a) the Vedas (sanhita), (b) the Upnishads and (c) the Puranas. All of them were reproduced during the same period before 3102 BC. But their literature has its own style. The difference in the style and the uses of words in all the three kinds of scriptures does not mean any evolution or improvement in the vocabulary. | |
Vedic verses do not use the full range of words as is used in the Puranas because the Vedic verses are mainly the invocation mantras for the celestial gods and that too for ritualistic purposes, not for the devotion to supreme God. So they don't need too many words to relate a mantra. The language of the Bhagwat Mahapuran is very scholarly, poetic and rich as it explains the richest philosophy of God, God's love and God realization along with its other affiliated theories. The language of the other 17 Puranas is less rich. The language of the Upnishads sometimes leans towards the Vedic sanhita side. The peculiar characteristic of the Vedas can be observed in the tenth canto, chapter 87, of the Bhagwat Mahapuran where the Vedas themselves are offering their homage to supreme God Krishn. | |
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The whole chapter is like this, grammatically perfect, but it is a kind of twisted and uncharming style of language. This is the style and the character of the Vedas (the sanhita). All the chapters of the Bhagwatam, before and after this particular chapter, have elegant literary presentation but this particular chapter, which is in the style of the language of the Vedas, stands out with its own peculiarity. The difference in the literary presentation of the Vedic sanhita and the Puranas has their own nature and style and do not relate to their seniority or juniority. |
In every society there are many classes of people. Some are educated, some are less educated and some are much less educated. Accordingly, the quality of their speech differs. Thus, during the time of Ved Vyas, when Sanskrit was the spoken language of India, there may have been some people who spoke a localized form of less perfect Sanskrit. As time went on a new language developed in the Bihar area of North India which was a combination of the localized dialect with the apbhransh words of Sanskrit. The pronunciation of the Sanskrit word changes when it is spoken by the people who are less educated or not educated in the Sanskrit language, and then such words permanently enter into their locally spoken language. These, partly mispronounced words, are called the apbhransh. Just like the words teen and sat are the apbhransh of the Sanskrit words trai and sapt which mean three and seven. It was called the Pali language in which the teachings of Gautam Buddh were written around 1800 BC. Still, Sanskrit remained the spoken language of the literary class of India at least up to the time of Shankaracharya. | |
When Shankaracharya went to have an audience with Mandan Mishra he found two parrots in two cages that were hung in front of his house. They were happily uttering Sanskrit phrases, | |
That was the time when the Greek and Latin languages were in the course of their development. Trade communications between India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Greece were already well established. The stories of the Puranas and the Bhagwatam had already reached, in a broken form, into those countries which they then adopted in their society and incorporated into their religious mythology. The Iliad and the Odyssey in their earliest and incomplete forms were composed around 600 BC, and later on certain Sanskrit apbhransh words were added in the Greek and Latin languages. |
which they had memorized by listening to the scriptural discussions that were usually happening in the house. All over India Shankaracharya debated in Sanskrit language wherever he went. It was around 500 BC.Sanskrit is the language of Bhartiya scriptures. It is also the language of the Divine abodes. The word 'language' is termed as bhasha in Sanskrit. Thus, the bhasha of Vaikunth abode in its original form descended on the earth planet through Brahma in the form of the Vedas and the Puranas and all of its affiliates and branches along with its grammar. First it was called the bhasha as it was the only language of India, literary and spoken both. Later on, when its offshoots developed, it began to be called the Sanskrit bhasha (Sanskrit language) to distinguish it from the other local languages that used the apbhransh words of Sanskrit mixed with their locally spoken tongue. For convenience, these local languages were called the 'prakrit' languages by the history writers. | |
Sanskrit maintained the glory of eternal Bhartiya scriptures in its perfect linguistic representation since its appearance on the earth planet. If someone's conscience fails to comprehend the eternal authenticity of the Sanskrit language for some reason, then at least, according to the above descriptions, one can surely understand its unparalleled perfection that had the capacity of introducing hundreds of thousands of words according to its root system since the very beginning, when even the earliest known cursive writing systems of the world (Greek and Hebrew etc.) were at their infancy and were struggling to standardize the pronunciation and to improve their vocabulary. |
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
'Inculturation' - A danger to communal amity!
B R Haran Tuesday, 07 October 2008
Religious conversion has been a subject of dispute for ages and the
Church has been well known for conversion activities to spread
Christianity through out the world in its pursuit of souls for
harvesting. It mostly follows the strategies of allurement and
pressure to convert the people following other religions. Pope John
Paul, when he visited India, had openly called for the evangelisation
of Asian continent and ordered his Padres to harvest maximum number of
souls in Asia in general and India in particular. The renewed
campaign, which started then with full force, has increased manifold
with the development of a close relationship between the Church and
the Pseudo-secular political parties. This relationship has been
possible due to the considerable chunk of Christian vote bank and the
Church's involvement in education and health sectors
The old style of the Church with regards to conversion has been to
influence the elite class of a society first, and in India it did
attempt to propagate and influence the Brahmin community during the
initial stages. But, as the Brahmins have been the protectors of the
Vedic philosophy and practitioners of the Vedic traditions, which have
been the hallmarks of the cultural heritage of this great nation, they
strongly opposed the moves of evangelizations. Later on, as it
realised that the focus on Brahmins would be a waste of time and
resources, the Church started to focus on other castes and in the
process it drove a wedge between the Brahmin and non-Brahmin elites.
As a last resort, it forced its way into the so-called lower
denominations, which also formed the major chunk of the society. As
its target group was gullible, the Church easily exploited the
innocence, thereby earning huge dividends.
The three hundred years of Christian invasion helped the Church to
establish its missionaries at various pockets of the country,
particularly in tribal areas and rural India and since then the
harvesting has been going on slowly and steadily. After Independence,
the Constituent Assembly's noble intention of giving room for
'propagating' one's religion' helped the Church to score brownie
points. This is evident from the fact that the Northeast, which was
predominantly Hindu at the time of independence, has become almost
totally Christian within fifty years. Similarly in the south, where
the Portuguese onslaught paved the way for the establishment of
Christianity, conversions have been rampant. Goa, which was the focus
of Christian Persecution during the Portuguese invasion, has turned
out to be predominantly Christian. As the Portuguese landed in the
coastal areas of Tamilnadu too, the state has witnessed laborious
activities by the missionaries, which was helped by people like
G.U.Pope and Bishop Caldwell. Later on the Church and Missionaries
were, and are still, aided and abetted by the Dravidian Movement, with
an ulterior motive of isolating the Tamil people from the Hindu fold.
Kerala has a few districts, which are dominated by the community,
particularly Syrian Christians, who form 80% of the 22% Christians in
the state. After achieving a considerable harvest in Goa and Kerala,
the other three states of TN, AP and Karnataka have become the focus
of missionaries.
With stiff opposition from the Hindu religious, cultural and social
organszations, the Church has been adapting different strategies to
achieve the objective of soul harvesting. As the nation was reeling
under poverty, illiteracy and ill-health due to the thousand years of
looting by the Islamic and Christian Invaders, the education and
health sectors came in handy for the Church and Missionaries to
strategise and channelise their conversion methods. Apart from Health
and Education, they also started applying a novel method called
'Inculturation', which dates back to as early as the 17th Century.
Robert de Nobili, a Jesuit from France, who came to India in the early
17th century, wanted to pose himself as a Brahmin from Rome after
learning Sanskrit and a few Vedic scriptures too. He wore saffron
robes and conducted discourses living in a hut and claimed that the
Bible was one of the lost Vedas! As he gave a Hindu colour to himself,
he was quite successful with a large gathering of followers, until
when the people realised his dubious motives (Refer: The Portuguese in
India, Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 1990). As the European religious
leaders were not convinced of his methodology, they didn't apply his
strategies elsewhere.
Moreover, as Hindu leaders like Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji, Ambedkar
and Narayana Guru had thorough knowledge of Christianity and its
motives of evangelisation, the Church and missionaries could not
extend their activities beyond a certain limit and confined their
operations to rural and tribal areas. Even during the time of Nehru,
who made no bones about his sense of vagueness for Hinduism, the
Congress government in Madhya Pradesh constituted the Niyogi
Commission (1956), which confirmed the dubious methods adopted by the
Churches & Missionaries for harvesting souls and it also recommended a
'ban' on conversions. Despite Nehru's mistake of failing to table the
Commission's report, the Congress government in MP went on to enact
the anti-conversion law called the Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantraya
Adhiniyam in 1968 following Orissa, which passed the Orissa Freedom of
Religion Act, 1967. Later in 1977, the Supreme Court of India upheld
the Constitutional validity of both the laws through the Stainislaus
v. State of Madhya Pradesh (AIR 1977 SC 908) case. Now, Gujarat has an
Anti-Conversion Law in practice and other BJP ruled states have also
followed suit.
In the last three to four decades, the Church and Missionaries have
developed a close rapport with the pseudo-secular political parties by
showing its vote bank as a trump card. The Church has now revived the
process of 'Inculturation' with an aim to adopting the
well-established Hindu cultural practices to make a changeover in the
minds of the gullible masses.
The Church has started setting up Hindu type of buildings and called
them as 'Catholic Ashrams' controlled by 'Saffron robed' Padres
projecting themselves as 'Swamijis'. The Hindu style of architecture,
construction, layout and interior designs are being followed. The
buildings also have the Sanskrit 'Ohm' symbol in front of them and the
saffronised Padres claimed that Ohm is not Hindu, but Vedic! Some
Churches also sculpture the statues of Jesus in 'meditating' posture
(Kerala), Jesus sitting cross-legged on a lotus (Hyderabad), Jesus
emerging after a purification bath in Ganges (Haridwar) and they even
claim that yoga and meditation are not connected to Hinduism and that
they are universal, common to all religions! The 'Ashtothram' and
'Sahasra Naamam' (108 and 1008 names) have also been prepared for
performing 'Archana' on Jesus and the 'Aarti' is also being performed.
In Tamilnadu, Churches have started 'Padayatras' for Velankanni
Shrines, some times even with the 'Irumudi' (similar to the one taken
for Sabari Mala Yatras). The Velankanni pilgrims have started wearing
saffron robes. Many Churches have started giving 'Chakra Pongal'
(Sweet Rice) as 'Prashadams' for the people. Apart from Velankanni in
Nagapattinam, the Velankanni shrine in Besant Nagar, Chennai also
follows these practices of inculturation. The seemingly deliberate
setting up of 'Mary shrines' in street corners, next to 'Vinayaga'
enclosures / small temples, is a concerted effort to replace 'Goddess
Maariamman' from the scheme of things as they exist now. Evangelists
have been seen brazenly telling the village people that Mary (Mother)
and Mari (Amman) are one and the same. During festival times one can
find digital banners in the Santhome area of Chennai City near Marina
Beach, claiming Mary as 'Thiru Mayilai Annai' (Mother in Mylapore),
while the true 'Thiru Mayilai Annai' is Goddess Karpagambaal of
Kapaaleeshwarar Temple, which was demolished by the Portuguese. The
whole world knows that 'Girivalam' (Circumambulation of Hill Temples)
is being performed at Thiruvannamalai every 'Pournami' (New Moon Day)
and the same practice has been started by Churches at many places
after erecting a huge Cross and a Prayer House on Hillocks. A Church
on the hillock at a place called Achirupakkam near Melmaruvaththur Adi
Parashakthi Temple is a classic example for Chrsitian Girivalam. The
Church has adapted every Hindu practice and the only thing left is the
replacement of 'Hindu Murthis' with Jesus and Mary statues, which is
most likely to happen anytime if this inculturation continues. The
Churches claim that this concept of inculturation has been aimed at
bridging the divide between Indian Cultural Experience and the Western
Character of Christianity.
Similar to the Christianising of Yoga and Meditation, fine arts like
Baratha Natyam is also allegedly being Christianised by a few
institutes in the country. The adaptation of practises of Hindu
religion, culture and fine arts by the Church and missionaries with an
intention of de-Hinduising them, have created havoc in the psyche of
the Hindu majority provoking it beyond the limits of tolerance.
The only remedy lies in bringing a Constitutional Amendment. At
present, the Constitution ensures 'Freedom of Religion' to practise &
propagate and certainly doesn't grant the right to convert others. The
relevant 'Article-25', which ensures freedom of religion, is subject
to public order, morality and health. But, the process of
inculturation being practised by the Church now, violates all and
calls for a total ban on such attempts and a legislation of a Central
Anti-Conversion Law. Also, the Constitution must be amended, so as to
remove the word 'propagate', which is deviously used by the Church.
The minorities must be allowed to practice their religion. But it
should not be done at the cost of national interest and communal
amity.
Monday, October 6, 2008
I Too Am Hurt Dear Father
Vivek Bharat 6 Oct 2008
http://desicritics.org/2008/10/06/051310.php
http://desicritics.org/2008/10/06/051310.php
Reacting sharply to the attack on Churches in Karnataka, the Archbishop Bernard Moras of Bangalore fumed indignantly that Christians were deeply hurt. I, too, have been badly traumatized, dear Father, not once but repeatedly. Your compatriots have consistently trampled upon my sensibilities and those of millions of others like me for sometime now. The only difference is that I am a Hindu and in the broad framework of India's warped secular ideology, Hindu sentiments are dispensable to maintain this hollow but grandiose show of communal harmony that has been essentially built on the backs of the Hindu community. So, neither you or nor the authorities have bothered to take any corrective action to assuage the Hindu hurt. It does not even register as a cause for remedy on your moral radar.
Lest this be dismissed as the rant of a hate mongering Hindu fundamentalist (a label that is promptly assigned to anyone taking up the Hindu cause) let me place before you certain facts and analyze the sequence of events that lead to the present Hindu Christian fracas to put things in true perspective. Also at the outset, let me unequivocally condemn the violence that has accompanied this controversy for any defense of Hinduism is promptly blown up and misrepresented as a defense of violence. It is not.
The immediate provocation for the current imbroglio appears to be a pamphlet titled Satya Darshini (everybody agrees to that) that was being freely distributed among members of the New Life Fellowship sect of the Pentecost Mission in Mangalore and which contained derogatory references to Hindu Gods and Goddesses. The book, originally written in Telugu by one Rev Paravastu Sooryanarayana, has been translated into Kannada by Sriramreddy of Bangalore, and revised by Rev Samson S Malekar of Davangere.
The book replete with disparaging remarks about Hinduism, is basically a litany of hate. I reproduce below a couple of excerpts (translated into English) that reflect the ugly tenor of the publication:
Urvashi - the daughter of Narayana- is a prostitute. Vashitha 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)
To brush this aside as an isolated example of vilification or dub it as an aberrancy would be naive. For this is a microcosm of the larger Machiavellian game plan that has been in play in this country for over a hundred years; a deceptive practice that has never been aggressively countered by the timid Hindu community until now.
To bolster my contention let me present to you other instances of unadulterated hate that have been the hallmark of missionary propaganda in India:
The Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture... India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people .... are literally living a cosmic lie! Could Satan have devised a more perfect system for causing misery?" (Gospel of Asia, Texas: reproduced from Arun Shourie's book, Missionaries in India. (Harper Collins 1998)
On a personal level, I have first hand experience with similar offensive remarks during my school tenure in a prominent Jesuit institution. In one instance, a Jesuit priest categorically remarked in front of a class of docile seventh graders that Rama would never qualify as a God. On another occasion, a reverend smirkingly questioned the veracity of immersion in the Ganges absolving one of his/her sins. Religion is an act of personal faith. Whether I dip myself into a river or not as an act of ablution is my prerogative and not for anybody else to comment upon. This is the line in the sand that religions in a pluralistic society like ours should abide by.
I still remember that morning in eleventh grade when I entered the Principal's office with a great deal of trepidation to explain why I had chosen an additional Mathematics subject for my ISC exam in preference to Biblical Scriptures that had been recommended by the authorities. Inwardly defiant but lacking the courage to speak up, I mumbled something about getting better grades. Acts of subtle intimidation like this one are all too common.
While the Bajrang Dal and its associates cannot be in any way excused for the present violence if proven guilty, there is something that must be highlighted in its favor. In 2006 when Satya Darshini was first released, the Bajrang Dal had registered a formal protest with the police. No action was taken.
When the Satanic Verses, a novel published in the UK can be banned in India in deference to Muslim sentiments and when The Da Vinci Code, a movie produced in the United States can be proscribed from our movie theaters to appease Christians, why couldn't remedial action be taken against a book derogatory to Hindus? The only answer that I can think of is what I have repeatedly maintained: Hindu sentiments are dispensable in secular India.
I have used these examples as a prop to pose some important questions that are relevant to the controversy at hand: While the respected Archbishop now seethes with righteous anger, I would like to ask the Reverend whether the Christian leadership has done enough to police itself? Have they taken measures to ensure that their religious zeal does not violate the sentiments of another? Have guidelines been issued to its proponents regarding the rules of a civilized society? Would proactive condemnation by the Christian leadership of such hate literature have preempted this spate of violence?
Hindus of India have another legitimate grouse against the Christian establishment: they are the recipients of an unfair largesse doled out by the government at the expense of the Hindu community. Money collected through Hindu temples is illegally siphoned off to support Churches and madrassas.
Here are some figures from the Karnataka State government to support this claim.
Of the 52 crore rupees entered into the government coffers by Hindu temples in 1997, barely 17 crores was earmarked for Hindu causes; the remaining 35 crores was diverted to finance Churches and madrassas and other government sponsored projects. A purview of figures for the succeeding years upto 2002 (for which information is available) exhibit a similar deceptive strategy. This practice probably has been in place since independence without the Hindus even being aware of it.
This travesty of justice pains me greatly, dear Father and irks me, as well. But who cares: Hindus in India are the children of a lesser God. Finally in 2006, the Karnataka High Court intervened and categorically decreed: "Devotees of Hindu temples provide money for temple purposes and it cannot be spent for non-Hindu causes."
In summary the picture is very clear. As long as the Hindu community stoically bears the load of insults heaped on it, as long as the Hindus do not protest the large tracts of land doled out to Christian institutions and as long as the Hindu community overlooks the crores of rupees siphoned from its temples to support Churches, the Christians are willing to co-exist peacefully with Hindus.
But God forbid if the Hindus register even a syllable of protest. Christians will raise a hue and cry and seek the support of extraterritorial agencies to muscle the government in order to persist with their unhealthy practices.
While physical violence in a civilized society is unacceptable and must be dealt with firmly, every effort should be made to aggressively counter those events that have the potential to engender violence. We would be better off if we nip in the bud the seeds of violence before they are sown. Prevention is better than cure. That is the premise of this article.
The path to Hindu-Christian amity as I see it is two-fold:
1. The Christian leadership must make a conscious effort to delete any derogatory references to Hinduism by any of its manifold churches and continuously monitor them for infractions. This to me is a simple proposition.
2. Desist from active proselytization. This is a much more complex area and will need another article to address this when I eke out some time.
We can start with the first step if the Christian community is really serious of co-existing peacefully with the Hindus.
References
1) The Katherine Mayos and Pat Robertsons of India. Part I. V. Sundaram. Newstoday September 24, 2008.
2) Hindu Temples in the Age of Pseudo-Secularism. Lies, Lies and More Lies. The Campaign to Defame Hindu Nationalism.p96-99. iUniverse. June 2007.
Lest this be dismissed as the rant of a hate mongering Hindu fundamentalist (a label that is promptly assigned to anyone taking up the Hindu cause) let me place before you certain facts and analyze the sequence of events that lead to the present Hindu Christian fracas to put things in true perspective. Also at the outset, let me unequivocally condemn the violence that has accompanied this controversy for any defense of Hinduism is promptly blown up and misrepresented as a defense of violence. It is not.
The immediate provocation for the current imbroglio appears to be a pamphlet titled Satya Darshini (everybody agrees to that) that was being freely distributed among members of the New Life Fellowship sect of the Pentecost Mission in Mangalore and which contained derogatory references to Hindu Gods and Goddesses. The book, originally written in Telugu by one Rev Paravastu Sooryanarayana, has been translated into Kannada by Sriramreddy of Bangalore, and revised by Rev Samson S Malekar of Davangere.
The book replete with disparaging remarks about Hinduism, is basically a litany of hate. I reproduce below a couple of excerpts (translated into English) that reflect the ugly tenor of the publication:
Urvashi - the daughter of Narayana- is a prostitute. Vashitha 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)
To brush this aside as an isolated example of vilification or dub it as an aberrancy would be naive. For this is a microcosm of the larger Machiavellian game plan that has been in play in this country for over a hundred years; a deceptive practice that has never been aggressively countered by the timid Hindu community until now.
To bolster my contention let me present to you other instances of unadulterated hate that have been the hallmark of missionary propaganda in India:
The Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture... India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people .... are literally living a cosmic lie! Could Satan have devised a more perfect system for causing misery?" (Gospel of Asia, Texas: reproduced from Arun Shourie's book, Missionaries in India. (Harper Collins 1998)
On a personal level, I have first hand experience with similar offensive remarks during my school tenure in a prominent Jesuit institution. In one instance, a Jesuit priest categorically remarked in front of a class of docile seventh graders that Rama would never qualify as a God. On another occasion, a reverend smirkingly questioned the veracity of immersion in the Ganges absolving one of his/her sins. Religion is an act of personal faith. Whether I dip myself into a river or not as an act of ablution is my prerogative and not for anybody else to comment upon. This is the line in the sand that religions in a pluralistic society like ours should abide by.
I still remember that morning in eleventh grade when I entered the Principal's office with a great deal of trepidation to explain why I had chosen an additional Mathematics subject for my ISC exam in preference to Biblical Scriptures that had been recommended by the authorities. Inwardly defiant but lacking the courage to speak up, I mumbled something about getting better grades. Acts of subtle intimidation like this one are all too common.
While the Bajrang Dal and its associates cannot be in any way excused for the present violence if proven guilty, there is something that must be highlighted in its favor. In 2006 when Satya Darshini was first released, the Bajrang Dal had registered a formal protest with the police. No action was taken.
When the Satanic Verses, a novel published in the UK can be banned in India in deference to Muslim sentiments and when The Da Vinci Code, a movie produced in the United States can be proscribed from our movie theaters to appease Christians, why couldn't remedial action be taken against a book derogatory to Hindus? The only answer that I can think of is what I have repeatedly maintained: Hindu sentiments are dispensable in secular India.
I have used these examples as a prop to pose some important questions that are relevant to the controversy at hand: While the respected Archbishop now seethes with righteous anger, I would like to ask the Reverend whether the Christian leadership has done enough to police itself? Have they taken measures to ensure that their religious zeal does not violate the sentiments of another? Have guidelines been issued to its proponents regarding the rules of a civilized society? Would proactive condemnation by the Christian leadership of such hate literature have preempted this spate of violence?
Hindus of India have another legitimate grouse against the Christian establishment: they are the recipients of an unfair largesse doled out by the government at the expense of the Hindu community. Money collected through Hindu temples is illegally siphoned off to support Churches and madrassas.
Here are some figures from the Karnataka State government to support this claim.
Of the 52 crore rupees entered into the government coffers by Hindu temples in 1997, barely 17 crores was earmarked for Hindu causes; the remaining 35 crores was diverted to finance Churches and madrassas and other government sponsored projects. A purview of figures for the succeeding years upto 2002 (for which information is available) exhibit a similar deceptive strategy. This practice probably has been in place since independence without the Hindus even being aware of it.
This travesty of justice pains me greatly, dear Father and irks me, as well. But who cares: Hindus in India are the children of a lesser God. Finally in 2006, the Karnataka High Court intervened and categorically decreed: "Devotees of Hindu temples provide money for temple purposes and it cannot be spent for non-Hindu causes."
In summary the picture is very clear. As long as the Hindu community stoically bears the load of insults heaped on it, as long as the Hindus do not protest the large tracts of land doled out to Christian institutions and as long as the Hindu community overlooks the crores of rupees siphoned from its temples to support Churches, the Christians are willing to co-exist peacefully with Hindus.
But God forbid if the Hindus register even a syllable of protest. Christians will raise a hue and cry and seek the support of extraterritorial agencies to muscle the government in order to persist with their unhealthy practices.
While physical violence in a civilized society is unacceptable and must be dealt with firmly, every effort should be made to aggressively counter those events that have the potential to engender violence. We would be better off if we nip in the bud the seeds of violence before they are sown. Prevention is better than cure. That is the premise of this article.
The path to Hindu-Christian amity as I see it is two-fold:
1. The Christian leadership must make a conscious effort to delete any derogatory references to Hinduism by any of its manifold churches and continuously monitor them for infractions. This to me is a simple proposition.
2. Desist from active proselytization. This is a much more complex area and will need another article to address this when I eke out some time.
We can start with the first step if the Christian community is really serious of co-existing peacefully with the Hindus.
References
1) The Katherine Mayos and Pat Robertsons of India. Part I. V. Sundaram. Newstoday September 24, 2008.
2) Hindu Temples in the Age of Pseudo-Secularism. Lies, Lies and More Lies. The Campaign to Defame Hindu Nationalism.p96-99. iUniverse. June 2007.
What made Hindus angry in Karnataka
Francois Gautier | ExpressBuzz | 06 Oct 2008
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?artid=oqi6n5w6kGE=&Title=What+made+Hindus+angry+in+Karnataka&SectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&MainSectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&SEO=NEW+LIFE&SectionName=m3GntEw72ik=
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 westernfunded 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 posttsunami 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.
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?artid=oqi6n5w6kGE=&Title=What+made+Hindus+angry+in+Karnataka&SectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&MainSectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&SEO=NEW+LIFE&SectionName=m3GntEw72ik=
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 westernfunded 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 posttsunami 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.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Don't forget the real issues
Tarun Vijay The Times of India 5 Oct 2008
The author is the Director, Dr Syamaprasad Mookerjee Research Foundation.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Columnists/Tarun_Vijay_The_real_issues/articleshow/3563336.cms
No amount of hurt and pain inflicted on Hindus by aggressive Christian proselytizers can justify what we are seeing in Orissa. It's neither resistance, nor courage. It's simply a self-injury borne out of ineptitude, weakness and cowardice.
We must stand with the sorrows of the Christians in Orissa with as much conviction and courage as we opposed and condemned the dastardly murder of a great soul - Swami Lakshmanananda ji. We have to decide who we are. A committed Hindu, who believes in the loftier ideal of Vedanta and Sanatana Dharma, which had its flag bearers in Adi Sankara, Paramacharya, Vivekananda and Dayananda, or be counted with the Taliban.
Yes, defend your dharma, never pardon the unrepentant wicked, but the method and rules of your battle can't be Adharma. Then you cease to be a Hindu. The problem before the Hindu today is the self-obsessed, political and money-making Hindu who doesn't care a hoot for the Hindu interest and remains busy in counting votes and money at the cost of the Hinduness of the land.
After all, how many Hindu saints and great preachers reached and condoled the murder of the Swami? How many Hindu politicians reached the ashram and sympathized with the poor ashramites and sternly demanded an inquiry and arrest of the culprits? The real enemies of the Hindus are not among the Muslims and Christians but among hypocritical Hindus. They earn money, wield political power; enjoy immense wealth - all for their personal ends.
How many rich, politically powerful Hindus felt perturbed over such incidents? Isn't it true that the largest number of slaughterhouses are run by Hindus and that illegal smuggling of cows to Bangladesh is facilitated by Hindu officers and politicians? They say they worship the cow. What a joke. Hindus alone facilitate cow slaughter and they have been unable to impose an effective law banning this in spite of its inclusion in the directive principles of the Constitution because Hindu leaders and seculars opposed it.
Who treats their own flesh and blood and religious fellow travelers with as much hate and contempt as we do, just because they belong to a different caste? Except RSS and a few other reformist religious organizations like the Arya Samaj, Gayatri Pariwar and Swaminarayan, not many organizations have been successful, that too partly, in removing discrimination based on the caste system. Why?
Name one Hindu millionaire who has set up a school of excellence for the disadvantaged sections of Hindus from among Scheduled Tribes and Castes? They only make a mockery when someone takes the initiative in this regard. After Babu Jagjivan Ram, how many SC or ST leaders has this heavily casteist political system been able to produce who are accepted and respected as national leaders and not just leaders of their caste segments?
Equality, you said?
Yet, it will be injurious to the health and values of the land if we simply brush aside the reason for this unusual Hindu unrest which has gone beyond the control of any organisation. Look at today's newspapers. The front page informs about how a poor girl was raped. Yesterday, there was a story of a Kargil victor brutalized in his village. Can there be anything more shameful than this? But will you allow me to say, in the same breath, could there have been a more shameful incident than the killing of an old woman monk Bhaktimoyee on the night of Krishna Janmashtamai, 23rd September to be exact?
I have yet to see a picture of the slain woman in any newspaper and any nice, humane Indian perturbed by the incident. None of the channels broadcast her story, how she had devoted her life for the cause of tribals and tried her best to serve the poor. Not a single soul was pained or felt compelled to write a line condemning her slayers. None demands that the murderers of Swami Lakshmanananda be brought to book. Orissa Chief Minister Navin Patnaik's head is demanded because he is supported by the BJP. When Graham Staines' ghastly murder took place there was a Congress government in the state - nobody demanded its dismissal. Still they say they are secular, civilised and want everyone treated equally.
And then they want us to feel bad when a light goes off in their house. But pray, who, among the French, Americans, seculars, pseudo-seculars, Saudi rightists and Jamia's "my student, my children brigade" rose to wipe the tears of those Hindus who were driven out of their homes and whose women were raped, children killed and temples razed?
Gandhi path.
Love, sympathies and civility can't be weighed in religious colours. False seculars have taught Hindus to do so. So, even if they don't do to us what they expect us to do to them, it's fairly Hindu to stand with the victims and fight for our just cause with the instruments of Dharma. They will have to stand up in solidarity, choosing a path that makes them proud adherents of their faith. There can't be any shortcut to greater goals.
Gandhi was one of such strong-willed ideal Hindus. Many would disagree with his path, yet he re-defined India for the world community.
He was frail, yet could bend the fiercest steel. Had unassailable faith in his Hinduness, yet loved all and received every faith's respect, lived to his professed ideals and entertained severest criticism too, could innocently love his enemies and stayed away from Delhi when the nation became independent to share the grief of the riot-hit in Noakhali. He was a Mahatma who died with Ram on his lips. India is known the world over as the land of Gandhi.
Those who disagree with him hate him. Those who love him, find it hard to follow. Yet he has become an indispensable icon, for India and as the years pass the more relevant he becomes. He emerges as the new icon of the Gen X who finds in him an essence of Indianness, so Hindu, yet overwhelmingly acceptable to all. A quintessential part of our land and her culture.
Gandhi. All encompassing, yet no power on earth could shake his commitment to Ram and get a nod for religious conversion of Hindus. Those who find it hard to come closer to him, stone him. So what? The Buddha statue being damaged and bombed in Bamiyan is a reflection on those who bombed it. None could steal his smile or lower his power to make the world feel peace and breathe the deep, cool air of bliss.
I met Gandhi.
I met him last week in Yeotmal, the region where the first cotton crop flowered more than a century ago. The Vidarbha land where the largest number of farmers are committing suicide. The land which is still struggling to come back on a path to its green future. Here Vinoba established his world famous Pabnar ashram on the banks of river Dham. Many RSS workers donated their land to his Bhudan andolan land, to the landless movement. They have done wonders in encouraging and supporting farmers to get more yield and get the Pardhi nomadic tribe's children good education. This tribe was known as the 'criminal tribe' thanks to the arrogance of the British and still suffers 90 per cent illiteracy. I saw Gandhi in the dreamy eyes of those Pardhi children, first-generation learners who were studying in various classes in a hostel run by Sangh workers.
I saw him again when Devaji Topha, a simple villager, rose to receive the Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay award for bringing about a social revolution in Gadchiroli, an area better known as the hotbed of the Naxalites in Maharashtra. He is small and frail, wears a short loin cloth and none could imagine he would deliver such a powerful speech in Marathi whose each line drew claps and spontaneous praise. He said: "Shashak aur shoshan ek saath ata hai - governance and exploitation come together. No governance, no exploitation. So we resolved we will have our own Raj, our own village government, we will decide what we need here and how, and not let those decide who come from Delhi or Mumbai.
"We started a struggle saying that the forests belonged to the whole village, and not any individual or official. We are Gond tribals, and there are around 80 families in our village. People used to get firewood for use and for sale, but after Independence, the forest officials stopped this. The village faced lots of problems because of this new measure. A gram sabha was organised and everybody participated. It was decided in the gram sabha that the forest belongs to the village, and its permission must be taken. We felt that if the villagers did the work, then the villagers and not somebody in the government should fix the pay. We had no idea about government rules, so went to the government office to find the wage rate. We found that the contractor was giving us only half the required payment, since the previous five years. We confronted him with the evidence and forced him to pay the required fee. Later we felt that it would be better if the villagers were the contractor and not some outsider.
"Ten per cent of our wages for labour goes to the village and 10 per cent of all the grain produced goes to the village. The teacher should be able to speak the Gond language, and should not drink alcohol. We feel that one, who is educated in the present system, forgets his parents and village and becomes an exploiter. Women have an upper hand in decision-making. Our culture keeps changing; we retain what is good and discard what is bad. The women in our village have all authority, who are we to give it to them."
Aren't these the real issues? No Dharma, empty stomach.
Devaji receiving a Deen Dayal Upadhyaya award represented such a positive energy that I am sure the issue of hate and communal divide would never show their ugly heads. Vivekananda said you can't teach Dharma to the poor on an empty stomach. Why are we forgetting that?
These are inconvenient questions and there is no escape route except to answer.
Sudarshanji on Vijayadashami Utsav, Nagpur
Respected Chief Guest of the Vijayadashami function Manniya Gyani Keerat Singhji Butiyal, Vidarbha Prant Saha-sanghachalak Manniya Shriramji Joshi, Nagpur Mahanagar Sanghchalak Dr. Dilipji Gupta, assembled dear Sisters and brothers and dear Swayamsevak bandhugana,
Gyani Keerat Singhji in his short, sweet and meaningful speech has averred that Bharatiya ethos and culture are in ancient most in this world. He has also said that Sheri Guru Granth Sahebji represents the unity of our people because in his compendium of seven out of ten revered Gurus as also composition of 26 bhaktas devotees. He also exhorted us to inculcate the spirit of the famous slogan 'Vahe Guru ki Phatah' and spread the message of National unity to each and every household of our land with patience and supreme confidence. As a matter of fact the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has been devoted to this very mission for the last 83 years. Its aim is crystal clear "Let our victorious consolidated strength enable us to take our Nation to its highest pinnacle of glory by protecting 'dharma' i.e. righteousness." And there is no doubt that strength with dharma as the substratum will ultimately be victorious. The Revered tenth Guru Gobind Singh organized Khalsa with the aim of protecting our dharma from the onslaughts of the demonic forces. He had said –
Sakala jagatmo khalasa panth gaje
Jage dharma hinduk turak dhundh baje
i.e. let the 'Khalsa panth' (Gods Army) spread its glory the world-over, protect the Hindu Dharma and clear the mist created by the invading Islamic armies.
The tradition of the Ten Gurus right from the Guru Nanak Dev to Guru Gobind Singhji store for uniting the society by exhorting is to raise above the considerations of the caste, creed and language. Guru Nanak Devji started the tradition of 'Sangat' and 'Pangat'. Sangh is following the same tradition. Coming daily to Shakha is 'Sangat' and dining together without any discrimination is 'Pangat' which the Sangh observes in different camps, training classes and conferences. Dedicated to protection of Dharma for the past 83 years, Sangh today is standing as a pillar of strength.
Gyaniji pointed towards the divide and rule policy of the Britishers. After the first war of Independence in 1857, they tried to sow the seeds of dissention and divided the society into different denominations of Sikh, Jain, Budhha, Lingayat, Aboriginals, Depressed classes etc. They also tried to restrict the meaning of Sikh to only the Khalsa. On the contrary there are Sahajdharies, Sevaks, Singhs and Khalsa are all part and parcel of the Sikh panth. Guru Gobind Singhji himself averred that my Sikhs belong to three categories, Sahajdhari, Sevaks and those bearing the Sword. Sikh itself means Shishya is disciple and we are all disciples of Gurus dedicated for the protection of Dharma.
Guruji drew our attention to the problem of terrorism. In reality so many serious socio-political-economic problems are staring us on our face
Today our country is standing at the cross-roads unable to decide as to which path it should tread. On one hand there is the hangover of the western developmental path which we had been treading for last 61 years. Today when the West itself is very much concerned about its negative fallout, how can our country get anything different? Everybody is witnessing that the poor have become poorer and the rich richer. On one side there is rejoicing that some of our rich persons have aquired the place among the top ten in the world, on the other the stark reality staring us at our faces is that more than one and a half lakh people have, according to government's own confession, committed suicides and the wave has not ebbed yet. It is also becoming more and more evident that the so called most affluent country of the world United States of America is on the verge of insolvency. The million dollar question is how this has come to pass?
Soon after the collapse of communism, global capitalism was pushed by the West under the leadership of the USA which emerged as the financial super-power with its Dollar as the reserve currency of the world. More than two thirds of the global forex reserves of 5.7 trillion Dollars (equal to 256.5 lakh crores of rupees) are today invested in Dollar securities. An International Monitory Fund (IMF) was floated and all nations were asked to deposit their share of gold in the fund. The second world-war had just ended and many of the European countries because of their empty coffers could not deposit their share. Then America took the responsibility of giving gold when demanded in exchange for Dollars. On 14thAug 1971 Britain sent a cheque for 121 million dollars and demanded from the USA to offer gold from the Federal Reserve. However on the 15th of Aug.1971, America backed out of its commitment to offer gold when demanded and dissociated itself from the US Dollar Gold Standard. This deceit sent shock waves to all those who had invested in Dollars, they included many princely states and also corrupt political leaders from Bharat and other countries. They were then pressurized by US to keep the value of the Dollar intact in their own interest. At that point of time Japan had a trade surplus against USA. Therefore, the value of the Japanese currency 'Yen' was sought to be curbed. This came to light after the Lockheed Scandal was exposed and Japanese Premier Kakuei Tanaka and his ministers had to resign.
Today it has become quite evident that the American financial system is collapsing. There are two types of banks in all the countries – One, the Commercial Banks and two, Investment Banks. The Commercial Banks are controlled by the Central Bank of respective countries, but the Investment Banks collect the money from all sources available and invest them in share-markets, housing societies and insurance companies etc. Big investment bank Lehman Brothers has declared insolvency. The largest insurance company of the world in US too has been nationalized. The US President has warned the American people of serious crisis ahead. The US Congress is being asked to divert tax-payers money of over 800 billion dollars (34 lakh crore rupees). Initially there was resistance but subsequently it was won over.
More than two thirds of the total forex reserves of 5.7 trillion dollars (Rs. 256.5 lakh crores) are invested in American securities. This represents the part of the borrowings from the rest of the world. The total U.S. borrowings from rest of the world held in Dollars, stands at 12.5 trillion U.S.D. equivalents to 566.5 lakh crores. Over and above that America is borrowing from rest of the world at the rate of 2 billion dollars (Rs. 10,000 crores) everyday. In fact an American magazine mockingly wrote that American Government is borrowing from the rest of the world to pay salary for its President also.
In America there is an institution named US Federal Reserve System which advices the Federal Government on economic matters. Alan Greenspan headed this institution for about two decades. He theorizes that the prosperity of the people to save is a sign of underdevelopment. The developing countries save for a rainy day or retirement. Alan Greenspan says that in the developed countries through their fast financial networks, a significant fraction of the consumers is enabled to spend beyond their current incomes. Here Mr. Greenspan's thinking comes very close to the philosophy of Charvak, our ancient philosopher who says –
Yavat jeevet sukham jeevet, rnam kritva ghritam pibet.
Bhasmibhootasya dehasya, punaragamanam kutah.
Meaning – "So long as you live, live a life of unrestricted enjoyment, even if you have to incur debt because once the body is cremated there is no question of rebirth."
Because of this philosophy of living beyond means American families have ceased to be cultural, social and economic support systems. The American families have degenerated with more than 50% of the marriages ending in divorces. Single parent families emerged, mostly with divorced mothers heading the families; with the result that enormous amount of government support for the families is needed by way of social security. To meet this economic burden the US Government has to borrow from the rest of the world and families in the US borrow from the banks through credit cards. The total number of credit cards in circulation in US is 120 crores whereas the total population of the US including old and children is only 30 crore.
Our soft hearted Prime Minister went to USA to discuss the Nuclear Deal with President George Bush. But witnessing the dire strait into which the U.S. economy had fallen, he was moved so much that along with the Reserve Bank Governor Shri D. Subbarao he immediately worked out and announced a package for injection of Rs. 56,000 crores (approximately 12.5 billion Dollars) under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF). On the other hand to keep the prices under control, the RBI will issue the Market Stabilization Scheme (MSS) Bonds of the same value as the amount injected under the LAF Thus the proceeds from the sale of the bonds will deposit the same amount of Rs 56,000 in the till of the RBI. The RBI must invest this amount somewhere, and since the Prime Minister is disposed to help the American economy in its hour of crisis, the RBI following the current practice will invest this amount in US Treasury Bills.
On the face of it our funds are said to have been invested, but what actually transpired is that the money creation by the RBI which was transferred to the Bharatiya banks by way of long term loan, ends up with the issue of a short term loan of like amount to the United States. Thus Bharat will end up foregoing even the interest charge on this sum of US 12.5 billion Dollars which it is providing to support the American economy in its hour of crisis.
Further if the Government of Bhrat purchases additional American Bonds and Bills, then the rupees 56,000 crores, which were introduced into our economy, will go to America. This will give the American economy right to call upon goods and services available for domestic consumption. This will have four-fold effect on our economy. Firstly, production is already stagnating, secondly inflation is rising, and thirdly there is disincentive to increase goods and services because of inflation and rising interest rates. Had the condition been only one of pure inflation, there would have been some incentive for growth in production. But the twin condition of stagnation in production and inflation will unleash 'stagflation', which will shrink markets, unleash economic hardships and cause economic ruin. Some traders may benefit with these massive sums bought and sold and commissions and arbitrage profits accruing in the very short term, but everybody stands to loose as the economy plummets into a downward spiral.
This is not the first time that our Prime Minister has shown his magnanimity. In 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) disintegrated and the value of rouble fell fifteen thousand times of its original value and the value of the loan that the USSR had given to Bharat plummeted to as low as 23 crore which Russia was ready to write off. But our Prime Minister, who at that time was the Union Minister of Finance, was so moved that he on his own offered to revalue it according to the 1978 protocol. On the 26th Feb.1993, the then Minister of State for Finance Dr. Abrar Ahamad in answer to a query by an M.P. (Shrikant Jena) replied that the loan standing against Bharat on 1st April 1992 was, according to the new agreement, fixed at 31.75 rupees per Rouble. At that point of time the market value of Rouble was only 20 paise.
Hence full credence must be given to the charge leveled by Shri Arjun Singh, who was then out of congress that the Narasingh Rao government was embroiled in scams and misappropriation to the tune of 80,000 crore rupees.
The Indo-Nuclear Deal got the approval of both the houses of America only when the U.S. Secretary of the State Condoleezza Rice wrote a letter to Senate majority leader Harry Reid saying that the Indian Government intends to uphold the continuation of the Nuclear testing moratorium in 2005 and reiterated it to the broader international community as recently as Sept.5, 2008. In case India goes for nuclear test it would result in "most serious consequences" including immediate cut off of nuclear-fuel, its technology and the supply of atomic reactors. In spite of all this, if the Prime Minister thinks that Bharat has got a waiver for atomic test then it means that he considers the people of Bharat as fools. The logical conclusion is that Bharat has mortgaged its right to conduct nuclear tests and bound itself with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Our Prime Minister has sent a Letter of Intent to America that Bharat will buy 10 atomic-reactors, each costing 6 to 10 billion Dollars (Rs. 3050 to 4700 crores) thus sending 60 to 100 billion Dollars into its kitty. No normal procedure of inviting tenders was followed and what about the cost of electricity per unit from the reactors? Whether it will be cheaper than what we are being charged today? The Reliance Company is installing a mega-power-plant in Madhya Pradesh which will supply electricity at the rate of Rs. 1.19 per unit. Whether the nuclear electricity is cheaper than this? The reply given in the Rajya Sabha was it will cost Rs. 2.70 to 2.80 per unit i.e. more than two and half times that of Reliance. But immediately it was countered by Dr. Kastoorirangan, the renowned atomic scientist. He said that the rate quoted is the subsidized rate; the actual rate will be Rs. 9 per unit. This rate however does not include the cost of storage of nuclear-waste. America is still in the process of constructing a store house for nuclear spent fuel even after 25 years at a mountain called Yucca. If we take into account that also, will not the rate per unit of nuclear energy be exorbitant?
In its place why cannot the solar-power houses, manufactured by Natural Energy Power Corporation (NEPT), Chennai, by integrating solar-energy with the cell-technology be considered which neither requires erecting poles nor extending transmission lines? Even the light from the moon, street lamps etc. can activate the cells and so they can produce electrical energy even during night time or when the sky is over-cast with clouds. The whole cost can be recovered in two to three years.
Apart from the nuclear reactors, a proposal to call tenders for the purchase of 126 fighter planes is also in the offing. According to an expert this will entail an expenditure of 40 to 50 thousand crores, which will replenish the American kitty.
Apart from this, three more letters of Intent have been drafted and awaiting signature from both the countries. They are –
(1) Logistic Support Agreement: - Under this agreement both the countries will be entitled to use the airport, seaport and other facilities. Who will be the real beneficiary? We are not going to invade Mexico and other countries. But if the U.S. thinks of invading Iran, then the Americans can use our facilities of air-strips, harbors, naval bases etc. Will that not endanger our relations with Iran? We shall all be placed in the same category as that of Pakistan?
(2) Communications Inter Operability Agreement: - Whatever facility like naval ships, fighter aircrafts, commercial ships etc. we shall buy from America, it will have to fit with equipments that are compatible with those of USA, to the extent that the Americans can may have access to whatever we speak.
(3) End Use Monitoring Agreement: - Under this agreement whatever aircrafts, ships, spare parts etc. whether for war purposes or commercial use, we shall purchase, they even after becoming our property will remain open to their inspection. They will be able to come to our airports and shipyards and inspect any of our equipments any time, any day. Is this not an encroachment on our sovereignty? These documents have not been signed yet by our Defense Minister, A.K.Antony only because he is apprehensive of its negative fall out in his home state Kerala, ruled by the Left Coalition. I earnestly beseech the Prime Minister to altogether cancel these letters and protect the sovereignty of our Nation.
It will be better if the prime Minister, instead of making such controversial decisions, concentrates on curbing the bane of terrorism which will be backed by the whole Nation. What is the message he is sending by not executing the perpetrator of terror–blasts Afjal Guru, even after his mercy petitions were rejected by the superior courts? Is it not an encouragement to terrorists, especially when he has supporters in his cabinet who speak of giving legal protection to the suspected terrorists and advocate lifting of the ban on the dreaded terrorist organization 'SIMI'? Our Home Minister is of and on repeating that there is no need of any stringent law and the present laws are sufficient. Here he makes such statements and before long metropolitan cities like Delhi, Bombay, Jaipur etc. are rocked by serial blasts. The people want results. They are not interested whether there were more incidents during the NDA tenure or during the NDF regime, whether the number of casualties then was more or now, whether the laws should be stringent or the present ones are enough. The head Mufti, Mohammad Sherkhan, has boldly declared in a public meeting at Jaipur-"A terrorist is the offspring of a bitch. Shoot him or hang him or according to tenets of Islam sever his hands and feet and terrorism will vanish. There is no other way." Only such toughness can rid the country from the scourge of terrorism. If the Government exhibits such toughness, it will get full public support.
Why doesn't our Education Minister concentrate on his ministry? He is more concerned about imparting sex-education to the upcoming generation only because UNESCO has recommended it. Why didn't he ponder that those of the present generation in Bharat from the age of 40 to 80 or 90, or their parents never got sex-education in their adolescence.
Both houses of our legislature expressed deep concern over the proposal. Such education during the adolescence period will only encourage promiscuity and loss of character. After that a committee of 10 Rajya Sabha members was constituted to look into the matter. More than 40 thousand articles and 4 lakh 15 thousand signatures were received against the introduction of the sex-education. This may be the biggest campaign in educational field of our country. Eleven states imposed a ban on it. Prominent Sagas and Saints including Jain pontiff Vijayaratna Sooriswarji Maharaj, respected Asaram Bapu, Yogaguru Baba Ramdeoji opposed the proposal. A committee formed by the National Aids Control Organisation (NACO) presented an alternative educational curriculum which contained nacked pictures of men and women. The Shiksha Bachao Andolan (Save Education Movement) vehemently opposed the curriculum and demanded that no such report should circulate in public before the Rajya Sabha committee gave its report. Hence the NACO curriculum has been held back. The Save Education Movement has also presented an alternative curriculum in consonance with Bhartiya ethos.
Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), the Open University under the auspices of the Delhi University, the National Commission on Education and Research and Training (NCERT) have all published books for schools and colleges containing obscene and objectionable materials and also distorted history. Here are certain examples-
* Guru Gobind Singh was a courtier in the court of Muslim kings. Guru Tegbahadur was a plunderer and a killer. Aurangjeb was a living saint (Pir). Swami Dayananda was a hack of Christians.
* The Jats were plunderers. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Veer Savarkar, Lala Lajpat Rai and Arbindo Ghosh were terrorist leaders. There was no mentionable role of Netaji Subhash in India's freedom struggle.
* Ravana and Mandodari worshiped Lord Shiva to get an offspring. Shiva gave them a fruit to eat which was mistakenly taken by Ravana and he became pregnant and suffered pregnancy for nine-months. Not able to bear the birth-pangs he sneezed and Sita was born. Sita was the daughter of Ravana whom he abandoned in the fields of Janakpuri.
* Hanuman was a small mischievous monkey. He was amorous and use to peep into the bedrooms of Lanka and shamelessly witnessed the sexual acts of men and women. Ravana was not killed by Rama but by Lakshaman. Ravana and Lakshaman had illicit relationship with Sita.
The Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, All India Teachers Federation, All India Shiksha Bachao Andolan and others held demonstrations, dharanas, courted arrests, sued in the courts and subsequently were successful in getting all the objectionable parts expunged from the books. All of you will be glad to know that Sanskrit learning and speaking is becoming popular in some of the states in USA A two day Sanskrit seminar, attended by about 36 participants, was held in Washoe County, Nevada State, USA at a place called Reno and declared 12th January as the 'Sanskrit Day'. Inaugurating the seminar Robert M. Larkin, Chairmen Washoe County Commission said -"As Hinduism expands in the West, it is important to understand Hinduism and one should have the working knowledge of Sanskrit for it." And what is happening in our Country? English is sought to be taught from the first standard and English medium schools are proliferating. Compulsion to pass in English is making many budding talents discontinue their education. Even those who pass-out of their educational institutions find it very hard to express their thoughts and feelings in English. An interesting example came to light when a candidate Mahesh Pande appearing for the Union Public Service Commission examination was asked to write an essay on 'The Indian Cow'. Some excerpts from the essay that he had written are here-
^^He is a cow. The cow is a successful animal. Also he is four-footed, and because he is a female he gives milks…..The milks comes from four taps attached to his basement…. He has got tails also, situated in the backyard. It has hairs on the other end of the other side. This is to frighten away the flies which alight on his cohesive body, here upon he gives hit with it.**
Can Mahesh Pande be blamed? The blame lies on those who have imposed the educational system with an alien language as the medium for the past 61 years of Independence. Propaganda goes on that without English there can't be any progress. Then how could China, Japan, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, Portugal etc. progress? They don't have English as the medium. Are they in anyway backward? There is no connect between progress and English. Our Minister of Education needs to take three steps – (1) Let the nine Hindi-speaking states have one university each, teaching Physics, Chemistry, Information technology, Management, Law, History, Geography and all other subjects in Hindi medium. Reading, writing and speaking skills in any one of the other Bharatiya languages be imparted in the middle and higher secondary schools of those states. (2) In the non-Hindi speaking states let the medium of instruction be the language of that state and instead of English, knowledge of Hindi be imparted and (3) Let there be a common technical terminology for all our Bharatiya languages.
Once this is done, many latent talents will begin to surface. One inspiring example can be given of a young man named Navinkumar from Trissur who completed his higher secondary education in Malayalam medium and then abandoned his further studies. For nine years he toiled and ultimately was able to invent a method with the help of which one can have a continuous supply of energy from a battery. Recently I have received news that he has developed a generator also which can meet all the electricity requirements of a house. Using this method a bus, a car or an auto can be made to run continuously for long distances without any recharging whatsoever.
Coming to Kandhamal in Orissa and Mangalore and Udipi in Karnataka, incidences there have been hitting headlines for the past nearly one and half months. Revered Vedanta Kesari Swami Lakshamanananda Saraswati along with two other sanyasis, a sadhvi and a devotee were brutally killed at midnight in his Jalespata ashram by church goondas armed with AK 47 rifles. In Mangalore and Udipi one group of Christian published derogatory literature about Hindu gods and goddesses and distributed it. This incensed the public and in retaliation a few so called prayer halls were burnt. Today Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajranga Dal are being blamed for this. But to know the truth, instead of entering into arguments it will be better to read the contents of a nine page letter written by Congress Secular Hindu Forum addressed to president of the Congress Party. Some excerpts from the long letter tell the whole story:-
"Everyone in our country is very much aware that the huge amounts of foreign funds coming from certain countries, received by the Christian groups are being diverted only for religious conversion of Hindu followers to Christian faith all over the country. After the British period, Christian missionaries have been in the country's backyard with the help of American funding and political support."
"In Orissa State, there is freedom of religious act, 1967, that is clearly against any religious conversion by use of 'force and by means of inducement or allurement. Each conversion needs a compulsory prior sanction from the District Magistrate. After the 1967 act became a part of the law, till today only a few people have obtained legal sanction for getting converted to Christianity. The Congress Secular Hindu Forum finds out that thousands of families have been converted through illegal means…."
"The Congress Secular Hindu Forum is totally concerned about the current situation. The time has come to stop the policy of appeasement towards the Christians and blaming Hindu Community for every communal tension. The missionaries and NGO's armed with abundant foreign resources are converting the gullible Dalits and tribals. They are not interested in the unity of our society but they want the disintegration or our great nation. The violence in Orissa state is a launching pad for their crooked designs. The brutal murder of Swami shri Lakshamanananda Saraswati and four of his disciples on the midnight of 23rdAugust is pointing to the handy work of well trained and planned extremists action. The Hindu community in Orissa and other parts of our country believe that the emerging Christian militancy is the real culprit behind the murder."
"The Christian Missionaries are publicly threatening that they have already formed a militant organization named 'Surksha Vahini' for the protection of their cadres indulging in Christian conversion activities. The emergence of Surksha Vahini is a major threat to the already fluid law and order situation in Orissa…. After committing the heinous crime against Swami Lakshamananand Saraswati and others, the Christian leaders were in Delhi and met the Indian Union President and the Prime Minister and presented their grievances. The Congress Secular Hindu Forum is strongly demanded that the Central and the State Governments must do all that is necessary for the unity of the nation and don't entertain the baseless arguments of Christian missionaries….."
"Every citizen of our country is aware that the daylight murder of Smt. Indira Gandhi was planned and executed by the progress of American imperialism. Indiraji is still remaining light and hope of poor and down trodden classes throughout the country, still they are worshiping her and affectionately calling her 'Indiramma' and expecting that the Congress Party will one day deliver them the 'Indiramma Rajyam'. Ironically now our party leadership is overwhelmingly working and searching to collude new avenues of friendship with the murderers of our great leader Indiraji. All over India, Congress workers are completely shattered and are in utter disbelief about the newly found friendship and cooperation with the American colonialism…."
"Wearing the mask of the 'Maoist' organizations the Christian extremists organizations meticulously planned and executed the murder of Swami Lakshamanananda Sarswati and his followers. The so called 'Maoists Liberation Front' has already declared that 'we are the perpetrators of this elimination work….The Naxalite Organisation 'Maoist Liberation Front', which formally raised slogan of class-war, have been converted to be the real protectors of American missionaries and American colonialism. They have already declared that many more actions will be followed in the lines of Kandhamal district in Orissa to protect the activities of the Christian missionaries actively engaged in the conversation work."
"The pressure tactics applied by the Christian lobby on the Congress leader, Shri K. Karunakaran the main pillar of the Kerala politics, from the Congress party gave another shock to the Hindu community in Kerala. These were the main reasons behind Kerala debacle. There have been bloody clashes between C.P.M. and its allied organization with the R.S.S. and its affiliated organizations. There is a general tendency in RSS and its affiliated organizations to extend support to the congress led alliance to get rid of the murderous politics practiced by the CPI (M) and its alliance partners. If there is a silence from the Sangh organizations it will definitely create an advantage for the CPI (M) alliance.
"In the last four years we have sent several letters to Soniaji and other important Congress leaders to discuss the issues facing the Hindu workers of the Congress Party…..There is no reply from the authorities whether they are rejected or entertained…This is an example of callousness and arrogance the Hindu party workers are facing from our party. There are no restrictions for the Christian missionary workers, Bishops, Pastors and Muslim religious leaders to visit Smt. Sonia Gandhi and discuss their matters within hours of their intimation letter or message seeking for permission. The No.10 Janpath authorities are always keen to express their discrimination against the Hindu follower of the Congress Party for granting permission to visit the Congress President." This admittance on the part of the general secretary of the Congress Secular Hindu Forum reveals many things and for that he deserves congratulations."
Today the utmost need for the Hindu society is to stand up against any injustice perpetrated against it in the same way as the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board Andolan had done in Jammu-Kashmir recently. The struggle they launched by rising above the consideration of caste, creed, religious denominations, language etc. has set a new example in the history of our country. The political leaders run after vote-banks. So long as they find that the Hindus are divided they run after the Muslims and Christian vote-banks and care hoots for Hindu's sentiments and injustices perpetrated against them. But Jammu has changed all this. If we just take cognizance of the 'jail bharo andolan' of three days – 18th, 19th and 20th August– we shall be able to gauge the uniqueness of this movement.
Jammu has a population of 56 lakhs of which 16 lakhs are Muslims. From the rest of the Hindu society 2 lakh 21 thousand men came on foot and voluntarily courted arrest. On the 19th, 1 lakh 74 thousand women came out of their homes and got arrested. When asked for their names, every one of them replied 'Parvati', husband's name? – 'Shiva', address? – Baltal, Kashmir. Perhaps this was the biggest turn up of our 'matri-shakti' in the history of world. The third day was for the children. 1 lakh 12 thousand children between the age of 5 to 15 years courted arrest. No mother or grand-mother expressed any concern about what will happen to the children in case of any stampede. None of the children thought what would happen to their future career. In the jail when asked for the name, the reply was 'Ganapati', mother's name? –'Parvati', father's name? –'Shiva', residence? – Baltal, Kashmir.
On a particular day the government and non-governmental service personnel decided to go on mass casual leave. A question cropped up – how could the doctors go on casual leave leaving the emergency patients unattended. It was decided that during day time they would be on casual leave and during night they will be attending serious patients. When the patients of different hospitals came to know about this decision, they, some of them were in a critical condition, informed the doctors that –"They need two things - 'dawa' (medicines) and 'dua' (blessings) and it is said that blessings are more potent than medicines. You administer medicines daily, now we need your blessings. You are being on a full day (24 hours) casual leave that will be 'dua' for us. Rest assured, nothing will happen to us." And by the blessings of 'Bhole Baba', nothing happened.
The movement was in its ninth day. Seeing that there was no positive outcome, one Shri Kuldeep Dogra came to the venue, recited a poem there, and in his three minutes address said –"This movement now needs sacrifice and I shall sacrifice my life." Saying this he sat down and immediately fail down with a bang. Seeing froth coming out of his mouth, it was revealed that he had taken 'sulfaz' and before he could be admitted in the hospital, he had already become a martyr on the way.
Before that six martyrs had already fallen to the bullets of the police force and one to that of security personnel. Now this new series of people seeking martyrdom had started. Had this not been checked, the number could have risen up to 50-100. Is this not a grand example of martyrdom for a noble cause?
This movement for saving the Ramasetu proved to be the harbinger of united resistance movement of the Hindu-society. On 12th Sep.2007, a call was given for 'rasta roko' (blocking the roads) from 8 am to 11 am, which culminated in success even in the left-ruled states. The case of Agartala (Tripura) however needs special mention for its novelty. There the RSS and the other Hindu forces are not strong enough but the Hindu society strongly wished to do something to show solidarity with the Ramasetu movement. An idea flashed in the fertile mind of a young man and he immediately shared it with some of his colleagues. Accordingly in early morning at 4 am they placed an old motor-tyre in the middle of the national highway joining Agartala to Silchar and putting some dry twigs, leaves etc. set it on fire. When the flames rose, immediately some people awoke from their slumber and began to shout 'agun, agun' (fire-fire). Somebody informed the fire-brigade and immediately 9-10 vehicles reached the spot and the area was cordoned. This blocked the highway and before long there was a long queue of trucks, buses and cars on both sides. By the time jam was cleared it was already 10-10.30 and thus the 'chakka jam' movement was successful.
In Jammu, when the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board movement was going on, people were courting arrests and making sacrifices. People decided to show their solidarity with the movement all over the country. It was decided that they should resort to 'jail-bharo' movement at their places. Freedom was given to local units to choose any date convenient to them between 12th and 21st August. Apart from Jammu, some 5 lakhs 25 thousand people offered themselves to get arrested at 6120 places. Some of them were arrested; the rest peacefully registered their protests by squatting at a square or road for three hours. The highlight was men of high status who generally do not come out of their homes also participated in support of this movement.
Time has come for the awakened Hindu Society should to shed its image of being docile, always prone to be bullied and attacked by others. We never go to attack anybody but if anybody attacks, in self-defense we should never hesitate to resist. The resistance should be such that the attackers get a lesson that we have authority of law to retaliate in self-defense. The self-defense should be such that the attackers get a lesson for their life that the attack on the Hindu society will only be counter productive.
Today, shedding its centuries old torpor, our country is rising. When we use the term Hindu, it encompasses all those who accept Bharat mata as our mother, all the great personalities of the nations as our ancestors and subscribe to the main ingredients of our 'sanskriti' i.e. ethos that says that the truth is one and the wise men describe it in various ways, as also the principle that there are many paths leading to the Ultimate goal and all those paths are true. Those who say that only our way is the true one, all others are false, cannot be a part of Hindu society. Those who indulge in proselytization by force, allurements and inducements have no place in this Nation's life.
If all of us move in unison, tread our own respective paths cooperating with each other then the day is not far away when the flag of our Nation will fly highest in the world. Let us move with our heart throbbing with the spirit contained in the following stanza-
O immortal son's of our Motherland,
Cultivate unquenchable fiery power in yourselves,
Fill the sons of the soil with devotion to the Nation,
And spread far and wide Bharats name and fame.
Afflicted are the Himalayas is the measuring rod of this Earth,
And evil forces want to sever the saffron fields from us,
Think again about the safety of Ganga, Geeta and Gomata
Fill the sons of the soil with devotion to the Nation
And spread far and wide Bharats name and fame.
Note:- This is the translation of original speech in Hindi
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