Author: Francois Gautier
Publication: Samachar.com
Date: October 6, 2008
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.
