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Interfaith dialogues and Inculturation: The Pune Dialogue
by Thamizhchelvan on 09 Dec 2011 17 Comments

On 7 November 2011, the Indore edition of DNA newspaper carried a news item titled, “Vatican Cardinal, Swamis to join hands at meet”. The report said that Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president, Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue from the Vatican, would lead a 30-member Catholic delegation for dialogue with a 30-member Hindu team led by Swami Shrikantananda, Head of the Ramakrishna Mission, at the Jnana Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, from Nov. 6 - 9. The theme of the four-day Hindu-Christian meet was: ‘Enhancing Hindu-Christian relations and collaboration for justice, peace and harmony’. (1)


The Cardinal’s visit was well planned, with an itinerary covering senior Hindu, Sikh and Jain religious leaders. Yet despite arrangements being made well in advance, the Hindu Samaj in general, including major organizations like RSS and VHP and many traditional Mathams and Peethams, was not aware of it. As the four-day meet concluded, “Vatican Insider” dated Nov. 10 reported:

-       Before the assembly, composed of forty Catholic leaders and some thirty Hindu leaders, Cardinal Tauran said that religions are instruments of peace and unity, but was sorry to see that some groups still use violence in the name of religion, thereby creating mistrust between the communities: “It is urgent that we turn our backs on hatred,” said the Cardinal. These words are particularly important in the context of inter-religious tensions that exist in some parts of India, as reported by Eglises d'Asie, agency for Foreign Missions in Paris.

-       Attacks against Christian communities have in fact resumed in Karnataka, a state South of India regularly plagued by waves of collective violence. On 3 November in Kankanady, the Catholic Church of Saint Alphonsa, of Syro-Malabar rite, was desecrated in the night by a group of young Hindus who wore saffron-colored bracelets. One of them was a guest of the student college located in the vicinity. (2)


The Mangalore incident quoted in the above report is a white lie. While it is true the said Church was stoned, the police and media reports clearly establish that a man was arrested on the spot for the crime, in an inebriated condition. The story of stoning by a gang of Hindu youth wearing saffron bracelets etc was concocted. (3)


This is how the Church makes use of events like Interfaith Dialogue! There seems to be no report from the Hindu side about what exactly had happened at the four-day meet; who accompanied Swami Srikantananda; the various websites of RK Mission seem to be silent.


The Amritsar Dialogue


Cardinal Tauran had a two-day meet with Sikh leaders at Amritsar, Nov. 11 & 12, on “Enhancing Sikh-Christian Dialogue for World Peace”. He visited the Golden Temple and was presented with a replica of the Golden Temple by the Chief of the Akal Takht. Here, the Cardinal is reported to have said, “The purpose of organising this Conference was to bring attitudinal changes in the human being, so that they can relish the positive points of all religions and see the message of God in unison”.


Selling the usual stuff of universal brotherhood, he said, “we all are sons of God and we must learn to accept the individualities of every religion and every religion gives the message of universal brotherhood and peaceful co-existence and these conferences would reduce the mutual trust deficit between different religions.”(4)


The Delhi Meet


At New Delhi, he then met with the Jain community and spoke of the “need” for the joining together of Christian and Jain communities. He said, “Christians and Jains have many things in common. As Christians, we believe that life is very precious and the Jain religion too upholds the sanctity of life and urges its promotion and protection. Our vocation to promote respect for life, non-violence, peace and harmony in today’s world brings us together with the common bond of mutual affection for each other.”

Sadhvi Sadhna ji said, “A person has to believe in his/her religious scriptures as no religion teaches hatred or non-violence. We have to shun violence, ego, hatred from within ourselves, only then we will be able to bring a change in the world. The world will not have to conduct such conferences to promote peace and harmony if we bring a change in ourselves.”

The Christian side was well-prepared, marking specific areas like protection, preservation and promotion of life, work for betterment of ecology and environment, and preparing religious texts on major themes like family, social life, diversity and equality, etc., for “joint work” with the Jains. The seminar was organized by the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue, Archdiocese of Delhi, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and World Fellowship of Religions. (5)


It is an irony that the world’s worst persecutors talk of non-violence, peace and respect for life to the most non-violent and peaceful religion! While the Hindu contingent was sold “Freedom of Religion”, Sikhs were served “Universal Brotherhood” and Jains got “Protection, Preservation & Promotion of life”.

Had the Vatican Cardinal been sincere in his mission, he should have continued his dialogue with Kanchi Sankaracharya whom he met in June 2009 in Mumbai. Realizing he would face inconvenient questions – on the issue of conversions - he took simply engaged with a different set of sanyasis.      


The Assisi Prayer


The Pune-Amritsar-Delhi are significant in that they happened within days of the “Prayers for Peace” Meet organized by the Vatican and led by Pope Benedict XVI in Assisi on 27 Oct, where, Catholic Free Press reports, 300 delegates from various religions and countries participated. Here again, Hindu society at large was kept in the dark and the person(s) who participated as “representatives” of Hindus have not identified themselves so far. The internet has revealed that Acharya Shri Shrivatsa Goswami from Sri Radharamana Temple, Vrindavan, attended as a “representative of India”, and Shri Rajmohan Gandhi was present (he attended a similar meeting in Assisi in 1986, convened by Pope John Paul II). Three other “representatives” are believed to have participated, but their names are still not known. 

While the Pope and others spoke of environment, terrorism, rich-poor divide, etc., Acharya Shrivatsav Goswami spoke about “inward journey”, without a murmur about the atrocities being perpetrated by the Church in India. The Pope conveniently avoided topics like conversion, which is also a form of terrorism. Unsurprisingly, the Indian “representatives” also avoided conversions. (6)

The Diwali Gift

 

After the Assisi prayer meet, the Vatican sent “Deepavali Greetings” to Hindus, audaciously proposing “religious freedom” as the answer to religiously-motivated conflicts:


“Religious freedom is a fundamental human right. When it is jeopardized or denied, all other human rights are endangered. Religious freedom necessarily includes immunity from coercion by any individual, group, community or institution. The human freedom to profess, practice and propagate religion or belief can take place in public or private, alone or in a community. The right to religious freedom also involves a “serious obligation” from civil authorities, individuals and groups to respect the freedom of others. It also includes the freedom to change one’s own religion. Respect for religious freedom allows believers to be “more enthusiastic” about cooperating with their fellow citizens to build “a just and human social order.” Its denial stifles and frustrates “authentic and lasting peace.


We cordially wish you a joyful celebration of Deepavali.” (7)


The Catholic News Agency pontificated: “The message comes after several years of tensions and anti-Christian violence in some parts of India. Hindu radicals have participated in deadly attacks that have driven Christians out of their homes and destroyed their churches.”

After sending this insult in the name of greetings, Cardinal Tauran had the temerity to visit India to dialogue with selected Hindu leaders, who did not have the wits to question the Vatican Padires about the threat they pose to Hindu dharma on this bhumi. 

Farce and futility


The far of Interfaith Dialogue has been going on for some time, always convened by the Church, and joined in a shoddy manner by Hindus. The Church has clear political objectives – to weaken the spiritual strength of Hindu India. Hence, it cleverly separated Religion from Politics and slowly captured the political establishment in the name of secularism. As “western secularism” got well entrenched in the polity of Hindu India, the nation’s ethos was removed from governance, leading to westernization of education and other important sectors like art and culture.

This led to a spurt in separatism, fanned by the Church, by Maoists, LTTE and other anti-national organizations and NGOs. And another western concept called “Human Rights” entered the polity, furthering the growth of separatism and disunity.


Despite having control over the political establishment, the Church feared Hindu Religious Institutions and their strengths. So it created conflicts between castes and divisions between sampradayas, along with inculturation techniques. To sustain both, it kept religious leaders engaged via interfaith dialogues.            

Our religious leaders fell into the trap. Instead of talking to the various caste leaders and reaching out to the oppressed and discriminated communities and united them, they moved away from them and started having dialogues with other religionists, particularly Christian Padires. As the distance between the common man and Hindu religious leaders increased, the Church entered the scene and wreaked havoc. 

Besides money and allurement, inculturation is the most potent weapon with the Church to convert masses. Inculturation is the copying of Hindu traditional practices like wearing saffron robes, rudraksha and tulsi malas, pilgrimage by padayatra, chanting ashtotra and sahasranama archana for Jesus, composing songs on Jesus and Mary on the tune of our devotional hymns, calling Mary as Maari (Mariamman), planting crosses and constructing prayer houses and churches (unauthorized) on hills and creating a ‘girivalam’ path around them and so on.


This writer had personally heard some of our religious leaders welcoming this danger, thinking that the Christians are now following our culture and method of worship! Naturally, in the recent interfaith dialogues, Hindu leaders did not speak of this insidious concept of inculturation, or the flow of foreign funds and construction of Churches out of proportion to population.


 
The clear talk

Confident of its approach, in 2009 the Vatican engaged Hindu traditional mathams and organized a dialogue with Kanchi Sankaracharya in Mumbai. The group included Sri Sri Ravisankar, Swami Vageeshananda (Ramakrishna Mission), Dadi Janakiji (Prajapati Brahma Kumaris), Swami Nirmalananda Nath (Karnataka), and Swami Chidananda Saraswati (Divine Life Society, Uttaranchal). Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran was accompanied by the Pontifical Council for Interfaith Dialogue,  Cardinal Oswald Gracias of “Indian Bible” fame, Vatican envoy to India Pedro Lopez Quintana, Archbishop Felix Machado of Nashik, Bishop Thomas Dabre of Pune, and Bishop Raphy Manjaly of Varanasi.

He floored the Vatican team with his explicit assertions that:

-       Pope Benedict XVI visited Jerusalem and gave Jewish religious leaders an undertaking to “desist from all missionary and conversion activities” among the Jews. Swami Jayendra Saraswati demanded a similar pact with the Hindu community in India.


-       Regarding Pope John Paul II’s call for planting the Cross in Asia to cause the Second Coming of Jesus, Swami ji demanded that Vatican explain the rationale for the First Coming of Jesus Christ when there was no Christianity or Church to undertake the mission of christianising the world.

-       Kanchi Acharya strongly condemned the [then] proposed visit of the USCIRF and said Hindus would not permit such interference in the internal affairs of India.

-       He demanded the setting up of a common pool to collect all foreign funds received by the Church and their equal distribution amongst all social welfare organisations, irrespective of religious affiliation. He urged all Hindu organisations to work together to eradicate the menace of conversion.


-       He called for an immediate end to all devious ‘inculturation’ methods being adopted by various Christian denominations and the canard of preaching that conversion to Christianity would cure all diseases, which is violative of the DRUGS AND MAGIC REMEDIES ACT, 1954.

-       He endorsed the proposed anti-conversion law in Sri Lanka, mooted by the Joint Council of Buddhist Organisations. 


-       Emphasising Sanatana Dharma, he said the soul of India is religious and spiritual, and urged the government to declare India a “Spiritual” and not a “Secular” country, as secularism is an administrative quality and cannot be the soul of the nation.

-       Kanchi Acharya condemned the usurping of Hindu scriptures for incorporating them in the so-called ‘Indian Bible’ and demanded immediate withdrawal of copies of the book, if necessary by the government.   


The Acharya underscored the importance of faithful adherence to points agreed at the meeting; else failure would result in the futility of such meetings. No wonder Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran dodged the Kanchi Acharya this time! (8)


Institutions of Inculturation

The Pune venue amply proves that Interfaith dialogue and Inculturation are a twin-strategy of the Church. While “Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth” sounds like a Hindu institution, it is actually a Christian body blatantly indulging in Inculturation. Attempting to give a Hindu colour to its emblem through the Kathopanishad, saying that the tree in the emblem denotes asvatha and the meditating figure is seeking Brahma-vidya; the game becomes clear when it says that, all the components of the emblem merge at the summit in the Cross of Christ which, as the linchpin of time and eternity, interlocks the human and the divine. (9)


Its mission is to mediate the vision of Jesus for India. For this, it will “promote dialogue among religions, cultures, communities and secular movements, all of which will be facilitated by a positive thrust towards inculturation…” (10)


Other institutions concentrating on Inculturation include “Shantivanam”, founded in 1950 by two French Priests Fr. Jules Monchanin, a diocesan missionary and Fr. Henry le Saux (Abhishiktananda) from the Abbey of Kergonam. They named it Saccidananda Ashram, equating “Sath-Sith-Ananda” with the “Holy Trinity”.

 

Later Fr. Bede Griffiths, who came to India in 1955, took charge of Shantivanam in 1968 on the invitation of Fr. Henry le Saux, after short stints at Bangalore and Kurisumala in Kerala, where he took the name Dhyananda and adopted saffron robes.


The Saccidananda Ashram inside Shantivanam has a temple built like a Hindu temple but with idols of various Christian saints and a “Cosmic Cross”. The Ashram spends much time and money for “Academic Research” on Inter religious understandings and meeting points, encounters of Christianity and Hinduism, Christian Vedanta, etc. Jesuit Priests from the West regularly land here to establish Christianity.  (11)


Another institution has been established exclusively for fine arts - Kalai Kaviri College of Fine Arts, Trichy. It is nationally accredited with Grade A by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and recognized by the Government of Tamil Nadu; it has tasted success in christianising the divine Hindu art of Bharat Natyam. It also focuses on vina, mridangam, and  violin; all classical music and dance are taught on Bible themes. (12)


Thiruvannamalai based Swami Devananda Saraswati ji has exposed the Atma Jyoti Ashram which has infiltrated into Sri Ramana Ashram in Thiruvannamalai. The Atma Jyoti Ashram operates from Mexico and is well connected with Shantivanam, Trichy. The padres from both bodies masquerade as Hindu Sanyasis and visit Ramana Ashram where some members of the Ashram’s management seem to be hand in glove with them. (13)


The “International Sanatana Dharma Society” run by one Frank Morales masquerading as “Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya” targets US-born and bred Hindu youths who are distanced from their native culture by two to three generations. His seeks to establish Jesus as “Dharma Master” through the Hindu scriptures, like the local fraudsters like Sadhu Chellappa and Vedanayagam Sastri. (14)


The Yoga Marketers


Then we have some Indian cults that do not want to identify themselves as “Hindu”. Corporate yoga teachers who lead these cults, dress up like “Jesus” to sell their yoga globally. The precedent was set by Paramahamsa Yogananda who set up his Yogada Satsang Society’s International Headquarters in Mt. Washington in 1925. He may be the first Indian Hindu yogi who legitimised the legend of Jesus and gave the Christian god a permanent place in the pantheon of Hindu Gods, next to Krishna. Now his Yogatha Satsang Society is almost christianised. (15)


An American ballet dancer called Shivaya Subramanian Swami who met Shivagnani and Siddhar Jnanaguru Siva Yoga Swami in Jaffna in the 1950s, exposed the claims made by Paramahamsa Yogananda in his book “Autobiography of a Yogi”.  (16)


Hindu yoga is marketed by Corporate Gurus who identify themselves as secular or spiritual, but not Hindu. The disciples are foreigners with huge money; ashrams are worldwide; and after endless globetrotting they end up selling Jesus in India and help inculturation leading to the christianisation of Yoga.


Tamil Chauvinists and their Tamil Saivism


Sadly, some traditional Saiva Mutts in Tamil Nadu are opposed to the Vedas and Sanskrit and fall prey to the Church’s Tamil card. They are so chauvinistic, they fail to realize the damage they are causing to their own philosophy. World Saiva Council headquartered at London organizes World Saiva Conferences with the sole aim of promoting Tamil Kumbabishekams, Tamil Marriages, Tamil worship in temples, all sans Vedic hymns and Sanskrit Mantras. They also peddle something called “Tamil Agama”. (17).


Some sectarian and racist Tamil outfits subscribe to Shaiva Siddhanta and pretend it has nothing to do with Vedic Hinduism. These people have been wittingly or unwittingly christianized by the early missionaries who tried to identify Shaiva Siddhanta with Christianity and separate the Tamils from the greater Hindu family. Some chauvinistic saivite heads brazenly flirt with anti-Hindu forces such as atheistic Dravidian parties and Christian inculturation institutes. (18)


Church’s Missionary Agenda


From the day the Portuguese, French, Dutch, German and British missionaries landed on our soil, they have been working to convert the nation. “Roman Brahmin” Robert-de-Nobili, “Italian Munivar” Constantine Joseph Beschi, “German Iyer” Barthalomaus Ziegenbalg, “Italian Iyer” G.U. Pope, “Racist” Caldwell and other rapscallion padires from the 16th century to the contemporary reverend Francis Clooney, have all been working with the same objective. (19)

 

Late Sitaram Goel, in “Catholic Ashrams: Sanyasins or Swindlers?” explained the church agenda: “Christianity has to drop its alien attire and get clothed in Hindu cultural forms. Christianity has to be presented as an indigenous faith. Christian theology has to be conveyed through categories of Hindu philosophy; Christian worship has to be conducted in the manner and with the materials of Hindu puja. Christian sacraments have to sound like Hindu samskaras; Christian churches have to copy the architecture of Hindu temples; Christian hymns have to be set to Hindu music; Christian themes and personalities have to be presented in styles of Hindu painting; Christian missionaries have to dress and live like Hindu sannyasins; Christian mission stations have to look like Hindu ashramas. And so on, the literature of Indigenization goes into all aspects of Christian thought, organization and activity and tries to discover how far and in what way they can be disguised in Hindu forms."

The Jesuit “Jackals”
Even two decades after Sitaram Goel wrote this warning, we have learnt nothing, and our own people support dubious characters like Francis Clooney of “The Society of Jesus”, a Roman Catholic Religious Order founded in 1540 by Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556). This society is notorious for its evangelical works in the guise of charitable, educational and social services; its members are bound by the Vows of Apostolic Order. Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552) was the first Jesuit to work in India facilitating the “Inquisition of Goa”.  (20)

 
Pope Clement XIV (1705–1774) abolished the Jesuit order in 1773; but it was reconstituted in 1814 by Pope Pius VII. They are well established in India with hundreds of schools, colleges and other educational institutes.


A section follows the “Inculturation” of Robert-De-Nobili, experimenting with a Hinduised version of the Mass that incorporates Hindu serving dishes, Hindu music, language, and postures of prayer. They adopt the life-styles and manner of Hindu sanyasis while working as Roman Catholic priests. Two such Jesuits were Swami Amalananda and Swami Animananda, who worked in remote, poor villages in the state of Mysore. (21)


The Clooney Story


Francis Clooney, a Jesuit Padire and Professor at Harvard Divinity School, easily deceived some self-centered Vaishnavites in Tamil Nadu with his “studies” on “Comparative Theology”. For over two decades he has made regular visits to India, especially Tamil Nadu: “I work in certain traditions of classical Hinduism, including Mimamsa Vedanta and Srivaishnavism. Of course, my work as a professor leads me to write on other topics and themes at times, but these are my areas of focus in the study of Hinduism. Beyond these, I am also a comparative theologian, and so, I reflect on what I learn from Indian traditions alongside my understanding of my Christian bearings. And, to understand comparative study, I am also a bit of a historian, studying how Western Jesuits over the centuries have understood Hinduism.” (22)


Declaring Srivaishnavism to be parallel to Roman Catholicism, with similar depth, breadth, and wholeness, he adds, “I have several book projects in mind, including more work on the Srivaishnava Bhagavatha Visaya, certain songs and commentaries compared with medieval Christian commentary on the Biblical Song of Songs. I have also been doing research on the Jesuit tradition of inter-religious learning in India, and may soon have something more to write on that.” Wikipedia says his current projects include an introductory volume on comparative theology, and a study of yoga and Jesuit spirituality (whatever that means). (23)


During annual sojourns in Chennai, he makes it a point to address Hindus either in a College or a University organized by Vaisnavites who aid and abet him with all details, information and relevant references. They feel no shame or guilt when he compares and equates “Sri” (Goddess Lakshmi) with “Mary”, or Maariamman with Mary, or Francis De Seles with Sri Vedanta Desika. Clooney’s deliberately misinterprets Indian religious texts and “invents” similarities between “Hindu Theology” and Christian Theology.   


Barring half a dozen individual Hindu nationalists in Chennai, no organization feels the necessity to scuttle this devious strategy. Blogger-historian Vedaprakash closely followed Clooney and his activities and exposed him by carefully documenting his mischief. (24)


References:

1.      http://epaper.dnaindia.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=75&username=&useremailid=&parenteditioncode=75&eddate=11%2f7%2f2011

2.     http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/world-news/detail/articolo/india-9813/

3.     http://www.mangalorean.com/news.php?newstype=broadcast&broadcastid=274620
and      http://mangalorecitypolice.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-11-08T17%3A55%3A00%2B05%3A30&max-results=7

4.     http://www.indianewscalling.com/tip.php?tipid=17161

and
7.     http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-council-sends-deepavali-greetings
-to-hindus/

8.     http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=642

9.     http://www.jdv.edu.in/web/jdv_crest.php

10. http://www.jdv.edu.in/web/jdv_vision_statement.php

11.   http://www.bedegriffiths.com/shantivanam/

12. http://www.kalaikavirifinearts.com/index.php

13.  http://bharatabharati.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/atma-jyoti-ashram-sannyasis-or-
snake-oil-salesmen-swami-devananda-saraswati/

14. http://www.dharmacentral.com/index.php
and http://www.youtube.com/user/DharmaNation?feature=mhum#p/c/0/3NYMBb65wVY
and http://www.agniministries.org/Default.aspx

15.  http://www.yogananda-srf.org/tmp/py_notitle.aspx?id=44
and http://www.yssofindia.org/programmes/150-Years-of-Kriya-Yoga

16. http://www.himalayanacademy.com/ssc/

17.  http://www.saivaworld.org/pageview.cgi?iD=201&cat=2
and http://www.saivaworld.org/pageview.cgi?iD=1016&cat=10

18. http://www.hindu.com/2006/06/13/stories/2006061310820400.htm
and http://www.kutcheribuzz.com/news/20030124/phd.asp

19. http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=1324
and

Myth of Christian contribution to Tamil – 2

Myth of Christian contribution to Tamil – 3

Myth of Christian contribution to Tamil – 4

Myth of Christian contribution to Tamil – 5

20.           http://www.bookrags.com/research/jesuits-in-india-ema-03/

21. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,945244,00.html                 
22.           http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/
tp-fridayreview/article659525.ece                  

23. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Xavier_Clooney

24.           www.vaticanculturation.wordpress.com
 

(To be continued…)

The author is a freelancer 
User Comments Post a Comment
We should not fall in the trap of the christians like what they did during the seventeenth century. they talk in nice sweet langauges like what they did in the seventeenth century and eventually took over the country. Now they want to destroy the the only strong unifying force in Indila, the spirutualilty, and eventually destroy the Hindus and hinduism. We should not rest till the CHRISTIAN MUSLIM SECULAARILSM IS DRIVEN OUT OF LTHIS COUONTRY ALONG LWITH THE VATICAN'S VICEROY SONIA GANDHI.

M.Srinivasan
Srinivasan
December 09, 2011
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Interfaith meetings are nothing more than the opportunities to convert others to Christianity. I hope this article puts the last nail in the coffin of interfaith meetings.
Nirmal
December 09, 2011
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Never trust Catholic/Christian priests for a single second. They always have a hidden agenda & ulterior motives. They need only one thing, to convert people from other religions.
Kumar
December 09, 2011
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The Interfaith dialogues are for Inculturation. So be aware of it.
Udayabhanu
December 09, 2011
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Why are you people so scared of these meetings,it shows a major lack of confidence in your own faith,if you think that your faith has got all the answers for the problems then what is this holdup and hesitation for?
observer
December 09, 2011
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Observer one must always have a healthy fear of evil. Only fear of evil can rouse people to destroy evil. Fear is of many kinds - fear of God is not the same as fear of heights, fear of death or fear of evil. So before advising us you begin some thinking.
R Divakar
December 10, 2011
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The Christians have already won in Tamil Nadu. It happened the day the Shankaracharya was arrested and we sat around wondering what to do instead of going on the streets and protesting his treatment. The reason they have won is that we handed them the weapon. Every guru I have heard talks of the equality of religions . Even ordinary Hindus who are totally ignorant about Hinduism think the Bible and Koran has teachings similar to Hinduism. If a Frank Morales talks of Jesus as a dharma master, it is because so many of our Hindu gurus have blabbed similar nonsense. Even the RSS a few years back said something to the effect that they will accept Mohammed as prophet if the Muslims accept Rama as one. Are they crazy? To compare Mohammed who killed indiscriminately with Rama who was prepared to forgive Ravana on the eve of the war?? Yet, there it is.

Hindus as a class are less inclined to actually doing anything. All they want to do is to talk about doing something. If talking and writing on website forums alone could achieve anything, we would have had a Hindu nation by now.
k.harapriya
December 10, 2011
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The Ravidas Mandir in Haiderabad, Sindh,Pakistan is still safe, as is the Balmiki temple, because the community is needed for the services it provides. This is how, our hindu society survived even through the 1000 years of muslim rule.. every jathi had expertise in their profession, which invading muslims lacked.. they might have occuped the political structure, but they need a society to rule.. the society will function, only if all jathis did their profession… Most jathis offered only two choices.. either to leave enmasse, or to die.. so the muslim kings could not do much about these jathis…… since jathis were self-organised and independant, they had the confidence to withstand against muslim kings.. UNFORTUNATELY, the Hindutva people today, had been advocating destruction of jaathi.. As a result, our society had lost all those skill sets, which continued for 1000s of years..
s
December 10, 2011
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@s,You are right. In the year 2001, there were 826 terrorist attacks in Tripura in which 405 persons were killed and 481 cases of kidnapping by the rebels. The case of Jamatiya tribals provides a telling example. These tribals have strong spiritual leaders and a network of social service organizations 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 Jamatiya institutions and their religious leaders the targets of their attacks. In the August of 2000, religious leaders of the Jamatiya community like Jaulushmoni Jamatiya and Shanit Kumar Tripura were killed by the NLFT, and Jamatiya 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 Jamatiya institutions like schools and orphanages, set up by the slain religious leaders in various parts of Tripura.
ravi
December 10, 2011
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The purported objective of the NLFT is to establish an ‘independent’ Tripura through an armed struggle following the liberation from ‘Indian neo- colonialism and imperialism’ and furtherance of a ‘distinct and independent identity’
ravi
December 10, 2011
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“Islam and Christianity are the only religions which treated man with honour and equality,” is an extract from a textbook for Class V in West Bengal. From the books written by our “eminent” historians, we learn that Veer Savarkar, Khudi Ram Bose and Hardayal were terrorists; Bengal’s disparate revolutionaries, bound by their devotion to Ma Kali, were terrorists; Aurangzeb was a “zinda pir”; in ancient India, “people ate beef but did not take pork on any considerable scale”; Chhatrapati Shivaji’s victories were a mere “growth of Maratha national sentiment”; Jats were “plunderers”; the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur “was due to the intrigues of some members of his family”; and Alauddin’s attack on Chittor to get Padmini is a “popular legend.”
http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/aug/12varsha.htm
s
December 12, 2011
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These Bengali Marxists (degenerate Hindus) are having their women raped by Muslims — serves them right. The horror stories of what is happening in Muslim majority areas of West Bengal have to be heard to be believed. Bengali men have become traitors to their own women — this is their achievement after learning Marx.
jay
December 13, 2011
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Missionaries are systematically targeting specific regions of India in hopes of converting the entire nation to their brand of fanatic Christianity. Below is a detailed look into their designs and plans.
Figure 1 – “The Hindu Belt”
The central states of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh (red) have the highest percentage of Hindus and are what missionaries have labeled as “The Hindu Belt”. The church has aims to eliminate Hinduism believes the entire population of India can be converted to Christianity if this region is converted first. In fact, the church has deemed that the “Evangelization of the Hindu belt of India may be the greatest single challenge in world evangelization today
Figure 2 – “Church Planting and Workers”
Churches have already been built in those areas, but missionaries are not available to convert the local population. This is true because on average in India for every 8 churches there is only one missionary or pastor. This is an outright proof that churches are being built in India, not to satisfy the needs of the existing Christian population, but rather to provoke and convert the non-Christian population.
Figure 3- Christian Population of India
The highest concentration of Christians is in the south in the states of Kerala and Goa, where many were forcibly converted by Portuguese and British Missionaries centuries ago. In addition, also note that the Northeastern wing of India due to conversions by Missionaries over the past decade due to the forced conversion of local population by Christian terrorist groups.
We can also observe that there are lesser but noticeable areas of Christians along the south and eastern coasts of India in the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka and Orissa. These are the areas of India that under currently being targeted the most by missionaries.
Figure 4 – The Two Fronts
Church has effectively launched two major fronts to target the “Hindu Belt”, the heartland of India. One front is being launched from the missionary stronghold of Kerala up through Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh towards Orissa. The other front is coming from the Christian majority Northeast through West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar also towards Orissa. We can notice that these two fronts converge on the “Hindu Belt”.
Figure 5 – The Santal Tribe
In fact, the Church has already begun its attack on the “Hindu Belt”. Missionaries from the Northeast front are currently attempting to convert the 4,800,000 people of the Hindu Santal tribe by exploiting their impoverished situation. The Santals are spread through Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkand and Orissa. Missionaries are hoping to convert this innocent tribe to gain access into areas with large Hindu populations such as Orissa.
Figure 6 – Siege of Orissa
Missionaries have also begun to target Orissa in particular because a large portion of the Hindu population is comprised of tribals who are distanced from mainstream Hinduism. There have also been many reports of “Christian Persecution” in Orissa by Western media such as the death of Missionary Graham Staines.
Western media never reports that this violence upon Christians is provoked and instigated by the systematic attempts to destroy the religion of Hindus and other members of the local population.

Figure 7 – Indigenous Missionaries
One of the most effective strategies that Missionaries have employed is to create indigenous missionaries. Indigenous missionaries can relate to the local population and also are not faced with visa restrictions.. The church is attempting to brainwash the Santal peoples into being indigenous missionaries to indoctrinate the local population as well. The Christian onslaught of India can be noticed by the simple fact that India has more indigenous missionaries than any other country in the world. The number of indigenous missionaries has increased nearly four-fold in less than a decade to 44,000 indigenous missionaries!
If the statistical trends above continue, India seems doomed to become a Christian nation. However, with coordinated efforts by the citizens and government of India, we can stop these sinister designs of missionaries and hope that India can remain to be a bastion of true religious freedom.
s
December 13, 2011
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Since the mid-1960s, the evangelical movement has systematically computerised its entire global operation, creating huge databases of information on its non-Christian enemies, centralising administration, and linking some 500 million ‘Christian computers’ worldwide for the purposes of fighting ‘spiritual warfare’ against non-believers in strategic places.

In their view,” the Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture… India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people …. are literally living a cosmic lie! Could Satan have devised a more perfect system for causing misery?”

Christians have waged such ‘spiritual warfare’ against their enemies for centuries, and with the same kind of language.
What is new is the vastly increased facility, offered by the electronic media, for fighting such a war.

Most of the major evangelical corporations (like World Vision, Campus Crusade, Youth with a Mission, and Samaritan’s Purse) operate in partnership with the US government in its pursuit of foreign policy goals.

World Vision, which is effectively an arm of the State Department, is perhaps the most notable example of this. There is also the benefit of a custom-built legislation, with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 providing necessary sanction to bring errant nations into line.

And ‘spiritual warfare’, for the evangelical Christian movement, is not just a matter of prayers and metaphor: it is also, very decisively, a matter of ‘virtuous’ troops, tanks, and drones
ray
December 15, 2011
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An Indian tragedy: Aryan invasion theory:
Scientists had long ago dismissed the idea of the Aryan race
All this makes abundantly clear that theories based on the Aryan myth are modern European creations that have little to do with ancient India. The word Arya appears for the first time in the Rig Veda, India’s oldest text. Hitler did not invent it. The idea of Aryans as a superior race was already in the air— in Europe, not India.
An African tragedy: Tutsi invasion theory
When we look at the map of middle Africa, we see two little countries named Rwanda and Burundi, bordering on Zaire (or the Democratic Republic of Congo). As reported in the Western media, these countries are inhabited by two supposedly different ethnic groups, the so-called Hutus and Tutsis. The ethnic composition of these two countries is as follows.
Rwanda: Hutu 84%, Tutsi 15%, Twa (Pygmies) 1%
Burundi: Hutu 85%, Tutsi 14%, Twa 1%
In other words, their compositions hardly differ at all. But according to Western anthropologists, mainly colonial bureaucrats and missionaries, the Tutsi are supposed to be a Hamitic people, a race that was often intermixed with the whiter races of the North, notably from Ethiopia and Egypt, which in their turn were intermixed with some West Asiatic people, mainly the Hittites, by repeated invasions from the North. These people, the Tutsis, are supposed to have arrived from the North and not native to Rwanda.
This in essence is the Tutsi invasion theory, the African version of the Aryan invasion theory. The similarities are startling, even to the extent of the Dravidians in India being preceded by earlier inhabitants, the aborigines (the so-called adi-vasis), who have their African counterpart in the Pygmies. So we have the African Pygmy-Hutu-Tutsi sequence corresponding to the Indian aborigines-Dravidian-Aryan scheme.
As with the Aryan theories and their various offshoots, this Tutsi-Hutu division has no factual basis. They speak the same language, have a long history of intermarriage and have many cultural characteristics in common. Differences are regional rather than racial, which they were not aware of until the Europeans made it part of their politics and propaganda.
The explosion came following independence form colonial rule. Repeated violence after independence fueled this hatred driven by this supposed ethnic difference and the concocted history of the Tutsi invasion and oppression. Some 2.5 million people were massacred in this fratricidal horror of wars and genocides.
Why did India not go the way of Rwanda-Burundi? Not for lack of trying but because the cultural foundation of Hinduism proved too strong. It defeated the designs of politicians and propagandists masquerading as scholars. It is no coincidence that Rwanda and Burundi had been converted to Christianity, preparing the ground for sectarian conflict. Several church figures, including priests and nuns have been found guilty of complicity in the Tutsi massacres. As in India, Christianity was a colonial tool and missionaries little more than imperial agents.
avi
December 15, 2011
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Barely seven years after Prof. B B Lal penned “The Sarasvati Flows On: The Continuity of Indian Culture” (2002)[ also at Nausharo in pre-partition India (now Pakistan), French excavator Jean-Francois Jarrige], the defiantly-in-denial UPA has been forced to admit the existence of the Pre Harappan civilization- the Vaidic Saraswati Civilisation-the oldest civilisation of India, supporting this bold hypothesis is powerful evidence from hydrology, geology, literature, archaeology and radiocarbon dating, in response to a parliamentary question, the government revealed that a study by scientists of ISRO, Jodhpur, and the Rajasthan Government’s Ground Water Department has found irrefutable evidence of palaeo-channels and archaeological sites of pre-Harappan, Harappan and post-Harappan ages, indicating the existence of a mighty river matching descriptions of the Saraswati in Vedic literature.
But who were these Vedic people ?
Were they Aryan invaders as we were taught in school, or indigenous ancestors whose achievements were ‘stolen’ by ascribing them to so-called Aryans, a people who have left no traces of like achievements in any of the lands from where they supposedly descended upon the Indian plains?
This era also created the ploughshare and spoked wheel, the tandoor and roti, chulha and chapatti, and pots and pans and other vessels of daily use.
But, who were these Vedic people ?
There was a rich industry in bead-making, shell, ivory-working, mainly copper and bronze, though gold and silver ornaments had also arrived.
Truly a Golden Age. The only thing missing is the inscrutable script, surely a precursor to Brahmi, the language that developed later!
This is augmented by the famous limestone statuette of the Mohenjo-daro priest-king, with his eyes introvert and eyelids half-closed, a meditative form later associated with Buddhist tradition, especially in Tibet and China.
Yet this form of dhyana is mentioned in the Bhagvadgita (ch. 6, verse 13) which states that the gaze should be fixed on the tip of the nose!
Town planning, especially given the chaos in our cities today, will remain ancient India’s greatest contribution to civilisation. Be it Kalibangan, or Sisupalgarh near Bhubaneshwar, Orissa, the grid pattern with streets running north-south and east-west was the rage. This, it is pertinent, was an era in which Egypt or Mesopotamia (the West’s favourite ‘cradle’ of civilisation) had no notion of such town planning – which must be conceded was original to India. To cap it all, there were covered drains and manholes for discharge of sullage.
Bricks were kiln-fired, and there was bonding, with bricks laid out in alternate courses – length-wise and breadth-wise – for strong walls, way back in the third millennium BCE. And clay floors were soled with fragments of terracotta nodules and large pieces of charcoal – to absorb moisture, prevent dampness travelling up the walls, and inhibiting termites!
But, who were these Vedic people ?
It is now conclusively established that there was no Aryan Invasion, or even Migration (the current theory). What does remain, however, is a West-led mental resistance to accepting the indigenous origins of the Vedic (Hindu) religion, culture, and civilisation.
ravi
December 15, 2011
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Ravi, brilliant. Thank you Sir.
Radha Rajan
December 15, 2011
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