Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Organiser
Date: May 28, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=132&page=4
It must have come as a surprise to Information
& Broadcasting Minister Priyaranjan Das-munshi that India's supposedly
small Roman Catholic community can field two hundred organisations to protest
the screening of the Hollywood blockbuster, Da Vinci Code, based on Dan Brown's
bestselling novel by the same name. Certainly it would have mattered to him
that not only are these the UPA chairperson's co-religionists, but belong
to the same majority Christian sect, headquartered in Vatican City.
Little wonder then, that while the Christian
world will view the film with no cuts or disclaimers, India's I&B Minister
feels the Catholic Churches' Association of India (CCAI), rather than the
Censor Board, should have the final say in the matter. After all, this is
a secular country, and secularism, as I have argued elsewhere, is the twin
god of Christianity, the face it turns towards the world when it wants to
conceal the designs of the cross.
In fairness, however, the Vatican and the
Indian evangelical industry are right to be wary of the film. The Da Vinci
Code is no ordinary fiction. It represents the latest in a long history of
dissent in the Catholic church regarding the true nature of the mission of
the Christian church that suddenly emerged in Rome in the early centuries
AD. Was Christianity ever intended to be anything more than a political movement,
or did it have religio-political goals, and why did Jesus and his Apostles
break with Jewish community and opt for aggressive evangelism among non-Jews?
These are not questions that will go away until the Vatican opens its archives
and furnishes some credible answers.
Indeed, the core issue is how and when the
early Christian Church conceived its plan for world dominion, and the driving
force behind this ambition. Anyone who is concerned with fundamentalist Islam's
jehadi face and its plans for world conquest, must be interested in the early
Christian Church, as this is where a blueprint for such dominion was first
conceived and implemented. It would be a mistake to believe that the quest
has been consigned to the dustbin of history-all rich Western nations have
a huge budget for evangelical activities oversees, and conversion is a major
foreign policy agenda. Indeed, the Christian nations do not spare even fellow
monotheistic traditions like Islam, and Christian missionaries are very active
in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, not to mention
other parts of the globe.
This central mission of an unknown group striving
for control of the whole world and its economic resources and thought processes,
is what the Da Vinci Code exposes in the form of a novel. It is bound to make
the thinking public ponder about the supposedly spiritual content of this
faith, which is unable to win adherents without resort to special tactics,
and does not even have a credible theology around its key figures. Forget
that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a child or children, or even the
stories that he was not the first born child of his own mother, Mary. These
are side issues for Indians.
What is important, however, is why there is
so much suspense about key components of the Christian story, when it is a
religion that supposedly began with one man and his band of followers. It
would be safe to say that Jesus was born in a Jewish family and initially
aspired for leadership of his own community. On being shunned, he turned towards
the Gentiles, the non-Jews of Jerusalem, who were in search of a religion.
But what was the religion he preached? Was
the heavenly father he spoke of the same as the Jewish Yahweh, or someone
else? Who or what is the Holy Ghost, the third element of the Christian Trinity?
To the best of my knowledge, there is absolutely no credible information about
the role and purpose of this divinity in the spiritual evolution of Christians.
Ultimately, we are asked to believe what the Vatican says, and it says very
little beyond the fact that belief in Jesus is imperative for human salvation.
Yet Christians are prone to deride Muslims for similar adherence to the Prophethood
of Mohammad.
This makes the criticism of the film by some
Indian Muslim organisations highly suspect, and the UPA government would do
well to take adequate precautions that vested elements do not create trouble
on the pretext of protests against the film. The protests are an act of muscle-flexing
by the Christian church that is determined to plant the cross in India. And
typically, Smt. Sonia Gandhi, a Roman by birth and a Catholic by faith, has
refused to reveal her mind over the agitations, though anyone who has observed
the disproportionate rise of Christians to top jobs in the Congress party
and its state governments will know how avidly she promotes her community's
interests.
