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Hindu Vivek Kendra |
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA |
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22. Annexure 2
I came to bring not peace but a sword - Jesus
Christ
For seven-year-old Shreema, 13th Jan 2002 was
a special Sunday. All through the year, the girl had awaited the dawn of this
day. For, that was the day one goes out and purchases new clothes, new toys
and sweets, as the next day would be Makar Sankranthi -- the harvest festival
celebrated throughout India. The Singicherra Bazar was bustling with activity.
Like Shreema's family there were many people looking forward to a happy Makar
Sankranthi. But they didn't realise that they were violating a fatwa issued
by the Baptist Church-created Christian Al-Qaeda, the National Liberation Front
of Tripura (NLFT). Nor did they know that they would pay with their lives for
celebrating a heathen festival of their motherland.
Shreema would never again celebrate Makar Sankranthi.
She died, along with sixteen others, on the spot as 13 terrorists of the NLFT
encircled the people shopping for the festival and fired indiscriminately[1].
The soldiers of Christ have done again in Tripura what they have been doing
for centuries to heathens throughout the world.
The Baptist Church of Tripura is not just the
ideological mentor of the NLFT; it also supplies the NLFT with arms and ammunition
for the soldiers of the holy crusade[2]. Never mind that the holy war involves
killing infants and torching the huts of 'heathen Hindoos'. The NLFT does all
these to bring to the infidels the peace and love of Christ. So, when Nagmanlal
Halam, secretary of the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura, was arrested by the
Tripura police he had rather curious tools for evangelisation, which included
along with the gospel 50 gelatin sticks, 5 kg of potassium and 2 kg of sulphur
and other ingredients for making explosives. Mr. Halam confessed that his activities
for the saving the heathen souls involved buying and supplying explosives to
the NLFT over the past two years. Another church official, Jatna Koloi, who
was also arrested, admitted that he received training in guerrilla warfare at
an NLFT base last year. Surely, gelatin and AK-47s have more efficiency when
it comes to bringing the light of the only revealed truth to the disbelievers
suffering in 'spiritual darkness'. Those who are in doubt can check it out with
another great light-bearer of the other 'only true book', Osama bin Laden (that
is, when and if the prophet of terror is captured).
The Baptist Church of Tripura was initially
set up by proselytizers from New Zealand 60 years ago. Despite their efforts,
even until 1980, only a few thousand people in Tripura had converted to Christianity.
Then the Church used one of its most efficient and time-tested weapons of evangelisation
-- creating racial and ethnic divide among the people. In the aftermath of one
of the worst ethnic riots, engineered by the Church[3], the NLFT was born --
but not without the midwife role of the Baptist Church. From its very inception,
the NLFT has been advancing the cause of Christianity through armed persuasion.
Every trace of indigenous culture is being eliminated through violent means.
Every resisting group is made to bleed its way to extinction.
The case of Jamatya tribals provides a telling
example. These tribals have strong spiritual leaders and a network of social
service organisations headed by their religious leaders. These indigenous sects
are neither exclusive nor expansionist. The Baptist Church has always failed
miserably in its conversion efforts with regard to this well-knit community.
Hence, it is no wonder that the NLFT has made Jamatya institutions and their
religious leaders the targets of their attacks. In the August of 2000, religious
leaders of the Jamatya community like Jaulushmoni Jamatya and Shanti Kumar Tripura
were killed by the NLFT, and Jamatya families were uprooted from their homelands
and made refugees. The death threats issued by the NLFT to the inmates of these
institutions have already forced the closure of 11 Jamatya institutions like
schools and orphanages, set up by the slain religious leaders in various parts
of Tripura[4] . Interestingly, these tribals are not close-minded fanatics.
For one thing, they do not mind teaching the theory of evolution in their schools.
The greatest challenge to the Bible inspired
mission of the NLFT comes from the Sangh Parivar's Banbasi Kalyan Kendra. The
dedicated life workers of RSS have started empowering the tribals by running
many educational institutions which while empowering them through imparting
secular technical education also retain their tribal cultural and spiritual
identity. Rather than making them disown their roots, the Kendra made the tribals
feel proud of their culture. It even conducts national level tribal sports festivals.
If the NLFT is to carve out a kingdom for Christ out of the secular republic
of India, it has to make sure that the Kendra activities are stopped at all
costs. In July 2000, armed NLFT militants torched a residential school and students
hostel run by the Seva Mission in the remote Ananda Bazar area of North Tripura[5].
They had also taken hostage four RSS life workers. These RSS workers were all
in their sixties. The crime committed by these old men was that they had dared
to run educational institutions for tribals while preserving the tribals' culture.
Later, all four were killed by the NLFT.
The NLFT has been an active partner of the Baptist
Church in winning converts to the Christian creed. They have killed tribal priests
to threaten communities and effect mass conversions. But those tactics have
obviously backfired. In 2001 alone, the NLFT killed more than 20 Hindus who
refused to 'accept the love of Christ'. They also torched to death a Hindu family
sleeping in a hut[6]. In 2001, community chiefs and religious heads of 19 tribes
formed the 'Tribal Culture Protection Committee' to counter the threat posed
by the NLFT[7]. Despite the NLFT taking all possible steps to enforce conversions,
the conversions are still slow. Frustrated, the NLFT has now begun an all out
war against Hindu tribals. They have issued fatwas against infidel activities.
These fatwas prohibit people from celebrating festivals like Durga Pooja and
Makar Sankranthi, listening to Indian music, watching Indian TV channels and
films, and prohibit women from wearing bangles or sporting bindis , etc. Just
a year before the NLFT started all these atrocities in India, the Southern Baptist
Church of the United States of America had given a clarion call to bring the
light of the gospel to "millions of Hindus and Jews lost in the darkness"
of their religions[8].
Shreema, the seven-year-old girl from Tripura,
died with bullets pumped into her tender body. Her crime was that she violated
the Christian fatwa which prohibited her from celebrating an Indian festival.
She was not just a victim of barbaric terrorism but she is also a martyr for
Indian culture, a culture that has preserved thousands of tribal customs from
barbaric persecution. Yet, she will not make it to the glossy covers of the
weekly magazines of English speaking Indian media. Unsubstantiated, fabricated
stories of Hindu fundamentalists (an oxymoron) killing Christian priests have
been making their headlines. However, these fabrications have their use. They
do help in the covering up of such acts of Christian love like killing in cold
blood a seven-year-old girl or burning a family to death.
References:
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