Author: Rajeev Srinivasan
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: February 23, 2001
The rantings of one T John, an erstwhile
minister in the Karnataka government, are now well known: he claimed that
"God was punishing Gujarat and Orissa for attacks on Christians." My first
thought on hearing this was that John was logically challenged. For I too
can come up with plenty of interesting theories for the earthquake:
1. God is punishing India for allowing
that Christian fundamentalist Sonia Gandhi to take a half-hearted dip at
the sangam at Prayag during the Kumbha Mela.
2. God is punishing India for allowing
the Christian Pope to come here and preach hatred recently, when other
sensible Asian countries refused to allow him in.
3. God is punishing India for not
controlling those Taleban-like missionaries and their vicious acolytes
in the northeast, who are running around killing Hindus and Buddhists.
4. God is punishing India for allowing
that missionary, M Teresa, to do immense harm to India's image and self-
image, with the sole and lamentable intent of conversion.
5. God is punishing India for having
welcomed with open arms the first Christians who came to India, the group
of Syrians led by one Thomas of Cana in the 4th or 5th century CE, who
were fleeing persecution probably at the hands of other Christians in West
Asia.
6. God is punishing India for not
having retaliated in kind against that madman Vasco da Gama in 1498 CE.
An emissary sent by the Zamorin of Calicut to meet the Portuguese ships
was sent back with his ears, nose and hands chopped off and strung around
his neck.
7. God is punishing India for having
tolerated that Inquisition-happy "Saint" Francis Xavier of Goa who dismembered
children alive in front of their parents (whose eyelids were cut off so
they had to watch), carefully cut off the extremities of people so they
were still conscious when they were nothing but torso and head, chopped
off and burned the genitals of men, cut off breasts, and penetrated vaginas
with swords, all in the name of his religion.
Good theories, aren't they? I know
these are absurd, but then I am merely following in the footsteps of Tertullian,
(ca 160 CE), a major figure in early Christianity, who said, credo quia
absurdum est (I believe, because it is absurd). He also said, "And the
son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And
buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible." Thus
my absurd theories must be right, true? QED.
There was also the curious case
(much like the singular event of the dog in the night-time in Sherlock
Holmes) of the sudden silence of the 'secular' 'progressives'. Let us consider
the usual suspects. What T John said is patently communalist; but Communalism
Combat's Teesta Setalvad did not fly into her customary rage. Shabana Azmi
was surprisingly silent. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International did
not wax eloquent. Why? It is as I have said ad nauseam before: these people
are themselves extremely communalist. According to them, only semites have
human rights.
Similarly, the many Christians in
the Indian media were also thunderously silent. Pamela Philipose, B G Verghese,
Sevanti Ninan, Amrita Abraham, Gita Abraham, et al, all well-known and
highly opinionated journalists, expressed no righteous indignation, so
far as I can tell. (T J S George did condemn T John, but bracketed the
VHP for good measure.) Nor did Christian fundamentalist columnists like
A J Philip, Gail Omvedt or rediff.com's own Dilip D'Souza, all of whom
are quick to condemn Hindu foolishness. From their own texts, I ask them:
"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest
not the beam that is in thine own eye?"
Incidentally, none of these worthies
condemned the Pope's outrageous statements in Delhi nor the deplorable
Dominus Iesus document either. Nor do they give any column-inches to the
ongoing murders of Hindus and Buddhists by neo- convert Christians, who
have become a majority in parts of the northeast. The plight of the Reang
tribals, ethnically-cleansed from Mizoram by Christian thugs, does not
get their attention. Why? I am forced to conclude that their silence implies
agreement, sympathy, or collusion.
There is an eloquent statement in
their own scripture: Bible, Mathew 23:13: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither
go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in."
Now what about other natural calamities
occurring elsewhere in the world?
1. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake
in San Francisco: how many Christians were being attacked there?
2. The 1994 Northridge earthquake
in Los Angeles: how many Christians were being attacked there?
3. 80 black Christian churches across
the US South were burned to the ground by unknown assailants in the recent
past. Why wasn't there an earthquake in the South?
4. What about all the hurricanes
and tornadoes that hit the US all the time? Are they the result of Christians
being attacked there?
5. The great plague that practically
wiped out Christian Europe in the Middle Ages: was this the result of attacks
on Christians by anybody?
6. The recent landslides and floods
in Latin America, a staunchly Christian place: were these the results of
any attacks on Christians? Similarly volcanoes and other calamities in
the Philippines.
7. Two hundred years of slavery
and several hundred years of apartheid (almost all of the victims were
Christians) didn't produce any retaliation for the attacks on Christians?
The obvious common-sense answer
to all the above is that they have nothing whatsoever to do with Christians
or anybody else. These are just periodic natural things that simply happen
with no divine intervention. God, one would imagine, is too busy to be
worrying about such piddling affairs as the religious affiliations of his
creations.
In point of fact, Christians have
been the greatest perpetrators of large-scale holocausts. The Jewish holocaust
is well-known; less well-known is the genocide of the Gypsies of Europe.
They also committed genocide against the native Americans of both North
and South America. They practically wiped out the natives of Tasmania (English
sailors simply kidnapped all their women to enjoy them sexually and then
throw them overboard). They reduced native peoples in the Pacific Rim and
much of Africa to absolute misery. See the the sad state of the once-proud
Maoris after Christianization, in the graphic film "Once Were Warriors"
(New Zealand, 1995).
There is the horrifying book Late
Victorian Holocausts by Macarthur Fellow Mike Davis (Verso) that shows
how Christian greed directly caused the deaths of some 50 million people
in India, China and Brazil. For instance, during the great famines in North
India in the late 1800s, record amounts of grain were being exported to
England from India! Amitav Ghosh's Glass Palace (HarperCollins) details
how Christian imperialist thievery decimated once-prosperous Burma, ravaged
its forests of all old-growth teak, and reduced Burmese to penury.
And Christians moan about "attacks"?
Theirs has been a civilisational attack on the rest of the world, their
religion no more than a convenient facade for European imperialism.
Furthermore, what exactly are these
loudly trumpeted "attacks on Christians" in Gujarat? The Sarvodaya leaders
who reported on this last year were clear: it was Christian missionaries
who created the problem, by getting the tribals to dishonor their gods.
I understand that they even went to the extent of urinating on images of
Hanuman. I remember one reader writing to me in high dudgeon about how
she, as a Christian, would be attacked in Gujarat. Reader dear, you will
be just fine in Gujarat if you simply keep your fly buttoned: just don't
pee all over the place. The same holds good for all the other missionary
types. Have some self-control.
There is also the belief some Christians
have held that the year 2000 of their calendar would see the end of the
world. In 1999, I publicly made an offer to wager US $ 1,000,000 with any
Christian fundamentalist that the world would not end in the year 2000
CE. My rationale was that the alleged anniversary of the birth of Jesus
Christ had absolutely no significance in the large scheme of things.
I was right; alas, no fundamentalist
chose to take me up on my offer, or else I would have been a million dollars
richer. So much for the courage of their convictions. Clearly, they don't
themselves believe in the Christ legends, or in the literal truth of the
Bible. All that is for marketing purposes, strictly for the consumption
of the gullible targets of their conversion machinery. Did I ever mention
they were hypocrites?
There really is nothing unique about
Christianity. Jesus was yet another preacher, of which there have been
many; Christianity is just one of many religions that have come and gone;
it will also disappear when its time has come. The only thing unusual about
it is the remarkable amount of havoc -- cultural and environmental -- its
adherents have been able to wreak all over the globe.
On further thought about T John's
statement it occurred to me that I was looking at this whole thing from
the wrong frame of reference. I was thinking about God as a Hindu would:
God as the omnipotent One, Lord of all Creation, It that pervades the Universe
and is the Universe. I have a lot of Christian Indian friends and most
of them share the same definition for God. But T John's definition of God
is different: he is looking at the God of the Fundamentalist Christians
(GOF for short). In that frame of reference (odd though it may be), his
statement is internally consistent.
For T John's GOF is only the God
of Christians -- not a Universal God. The GOF is a limited god, a tribal
god. A tribal god has no existence without his tribe, and is therefore
a lesser god, a second-class god: one dependent on the tribute of his flock.
He is afraid of losing his tribe, and is most jealous about their affections.
He is a pathetic and neurotic God, whom his tribe can only fear, not love.
Notice that, significantly, Christians never talk of themselves as "God-loving",
only "God- fearing". This God is not worth loving, it appears, only worth
fearing.
So T John's GOF, this God only of
Christians, may be unhappy at anything that affects the attempts of his
tribe to dominate. But then, I wonder: being a second- rate god, would
this tribal GOF be able to produce earthquakes? I understand he once parted
a sea, a pretty good special effect indeed, but earthquakes? Are they within
his powers, this old man with a long, flowing beard?
This GOF is roughly like one of
the devas, demi-gods, in Hindu mythology: like Indra, always insecure about
his position, always trying to convince people to pay him obeisance. This
is one of the many things that makes Christian theology unsatisfying: they
have not progressed beyond this idea of a second-rate, jealous GOF. They
have not figured out that beyond the many demi-gods lies a Formless, Absolute,
One, that which is beyond all attributes. Their monotheism is naïve
when compared with Absolute Monism.
The GOF is merely a desert god,
one invented for desert people: in the desert, you must follow a few simple
rules, or else you die. Therefore he is the god of a few simple rules.
He is also known as the God of the Israelites: a parochial God, who only
looks after the welfare of his tribe. For instance, there is the story
of the Canaanites. These people were unfairly harassed and hounded and
destroyed by the Israelites, with their partisan GOF cheering from the
sidelines.
This narrow-minded GOF is only the
God of humans even in the broadest interpretation of Christian texts. For
it is said that the Christian God made man in his image. And therefore,
obviously, animals and plants are inferior creations, made for the exploitation
and pleasure of humans. This concept works today, because humans are more
intelligent than other flora and fauna.
But what if there is a day when
we discover there is indeed extra-terrestrial intelligence, and those intelligent
beings are nothing like humans? Maybe they are like spiders, or cockroaches?
Since they are not in the image of the Christian God, then they must have
a different God. And what if, horrors, these creatures are more intelligent
than humans are, and can exploit and enslave humans like we have the other
animals? Then that God, the God of the spider-creatures, would be clearly
a greater god than the GOF.
So it is up to Christians to decide:
are they children of some lesser, second-rate GOF, like T John is? Or are
they children of the real God, the One who created everything? If they
are the latter, then they must know that the One True God would not discriminate
against any of Its creations: It doesn't care about their religions. It
does not send calamities indiscriminately to hurt Its children, all of
whom are equally dear to It because they are all part of It.
As Albert Einstein said famously,
"God does not play dice with the Universe". The God he was referring to
was the One, the Absolute, the True God, not the GOF. Most Christians do
not believe they are children of this lesser god; but there are some like
T John who, alas, believe they are. Only they make inane statements like
T John's.