WHAT MADE HINDUS ANGRY IN KARNATAKA
[email protected]
Express Buzz
Oct. 06 2008
India
Francois GautierFirst Published : 06 Oct 2008 02:12:00 AM ISTLast
Updated : 06 Oct 2008 07:40:54 AM ISTI 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 ( ),
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.