In India christiamns are not attackled , they are the aggressers.
Missionaries in India are using their age-old tactic
of posing as victims to camouflage their aggression
-Dr. David Frawley
*Background: Christianity and intolerance*
Christianity does not have a notable reputation for tolerance and respect
for other religions.
The Christian failure to honor other religions,
particularly non-biblical traditions, is well known, with Christians still
denigrating the sophisticated yogic traditions of Asia as mere superstition,
idolatry and polytheism. Christian missionaries have had a reputation for
using methods to promote conversion that are not always honest, including
employing military and political force during the colonial era. Their
targeting of the poor and illiterate for conversion, shows that they don't
like open debates in the light of day. Yet Christians like to ignore such
inconvenient facts while posing as peaceful people concerned with human
welfare, not with conversion. They are surprised if members of other
religions are suspicious of them, even if they look at these religions and
condemn them as works of the Devil. They feel easily hurt and insulted
should anyone question their motives or their actions that they would
certainly not allow other religious groups to practice in their own
Christian communities.
In the modern secular world Christians now demand conversion as a democratic
right, even though their religion is authoritarian, not democratic,
accepting only one way, and not honoring pluralism in approaching the
Divine.
*Posing as 'victims'
* The Christians of India continue to harbor attitudes hostile to the other
religions of their country. They want a freedom to convert others but they
are not willing to accept the other religions of the land as valid. They
have abused Hindu tolerance and respect.
Today Christians in India are highlighting minor attacks on Christians
done by unidentified groups as a concerted Hindu campaign against them,
while they themselves are actively working to change Hindu India into a Christian
nation by all available means. While Christians have a long history of
aggression against other faiths that certainly has not come to an end, they
are quite offended if their religion faces minor obstructions or even
criticism from the groups they have long maligned and, not long ago,
actively oppressed. In all this they assume an aggrieved posture and claim
to be victims of the very type of persecution that they themselves have
historically practiced.
This came to the fore soon after the arrest of the members of a Muslim
organization showing it to be responsible for serial church bombings in
South India. It proved that the charges made by Christian leaders against
Hindu organizations for the bombings were unfounded, if not malicious.
However, instead of admitting their mistake Christian leaders and
organizations started a propaganda campaign, again blaming the Hindu
organizations for 'creating an atmosphere' that led to these crimes!
Recent arrests in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have shown that, Deendal
Anjuman, a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani national was behind most
of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India. The
Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite
well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not
ruled by the so-called Hindu BJP party. (See 'Church Blasts: Truth and
Propaganda' by S.Y. Seshagiri Rao, in this volume.) In fact many Christians
in India - especially its so-called 'leaders' - are defending the ISI, the
Pakistani intelligence agency that has long tried to destabilize India, by
absolving it of responsibility in the affair even without any investigation.
This would be like an American religious minority defending the KGB during
the Cold War. Whether the ISI is directly involved in such efforts to cause
communal conflicts in India, we must recognize that it is a project it would
certainly support and would be likely to promote. To dismiss their
involvement out of hand, as Christian leaders in India are doing, is highly
suspicious. Christians are publicly blaming Hindu organizations for attacks
for which they have no evidence, let alone proof, and which no court has
found them guilty of. (The latest evidence does suggest official Pakistani
involvement, possibly of the ISI.)
Christians in India exaggerate such minor incidents into a national and even
an international anti-Hindu propaganda campaign. More churches have been
burnt in America in recent years than in India. Several dozen black American
churches were burnt to the ground, not merely slightly damaged like the few
Indian churches that have been attacked. Christian priests and ministers are
also robbed, assaulted and sometimes killed in all Western countries in
numbers not unlike what occurs in India. We should also note that many more
priests in America have been arrested for sexual molestation of children
than have priests been assaulted in India. Should we use that to make
conclusions about the nature of Christianity?
That a few priests or ministers have been harmed in a country of one billion
over a period of several years is not surprising even if we only consider
ordinary crimes like robbery. Such things are law and order problems not an
attack on one religion in particular. Many more Hindu religious workers are
killed in India each year than Christians are in many years. That Christian
missionaries have run into difficulties in sensitive tribal areas where
there is not much government or police control is also not surprising,
particularly given their hostility to tribal culture and tribal religions.
The main purpose in all this drama is to whip up a propaganda campaign in
order to bring international pressure on India to give Christians more
freedom in their conversion efforts. Many Christians seem to prefer this to
dealing with the Hindus in a spirit of give and take.
What makes this affair is especially distasteful is that even when there is
a systematic cleansing of Christians in Pakistan, Indian Christian leaders
are prepared to ignore their plight for their propaganda purposes against
the Hindus. Even the Pope, while condemning Indonesia and India, refused to
mention the atrocities against Christians in Pakistan. His equating of
Indonesia where hundreds of Christians have been killed in recent months to
India, where only a few have died over several years, also highlights the
propaganda urge behind his statements. It was as though Christians wanted
the situation in India to be worse and are trying to promote communal
disharmony to highlight their presence in the country. Christians almost
seem desperate to make a scene in India to highlight to the world media.
All this is enough to make one wonder if Christians are staging some of
these attacks to pose as victims of persecution. Whether or not this proves
to be the case, certainly they are exaggerating such incidents out of all
proportion. Christianity has had a long history of using victimization in
order to promote conversion. We know of the stories of Christians being fed
to the lions in Rome. We are not told that many more pagans were killed by
Christians, and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe.
The great Greek (Neo-Platonic) Academy in Alexandria was destroyed and its
scholars like Hypatia killed by 'Saint' Cyril and his followers. The number
of native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in
the many millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by
the native Americans as being the real victims.
Such stories of Christian oppression are good ploys to gain donations in
Western countries. India as a pagan country, where image worship is common,
is an easy target for such conversion sentiments.
Christianity in India is still projecting a medieval view
of the church triumphant that has long been discarded in the West.
Even if the Hindu fear of missionary mischief is exaggerated, it is entirely
understandable. We should remember that the Pope in his recent visit to
India himself threw down the gauntlet, stating a renewed church policy to
convert Asia to Christianity in the coming years. To dismiss the Hindu fear
as baseless only shows that it is not. If Christians were really sincere
they would acknowledge that missionary activity has used such questionable
methods in the past and work to insure that it does not do so in the future,
and not simply ignore the issue. In the circumstances, it is prudent and
proper for Hindus to view Christian. activities and statements with
suspicion.
The missionaries have altered their tactics to what is possible in the
post-colonial era, but that is not a change of heart. They have not opened
to Hindus, dialogued with them sincerely, or sought a common ground with
them for social harmony or for seeking true knowledge of God. They have
aimed at the poor and displaced of Hindu society to promote a conversion
effort that has failed with the educated and affluent of the country. They
are striking below the belt and then complain of unfairness if their efforts
are exposed.
*Politics, not spirituality
*What is most surprising is that Christian missionaries have more freedom of
operation in India than in the rest of Asia. They are banned in Islamic
countries, including Pakistan, and strictly monitored in China, which has
its own nationalist Catholic Church apart from Rome. Even Russia under Putin
has recently come out against Christian missionaries as causing mischief in
the country and often being agents of the American government. Christians
are under direct attack in Indonesia where thousands of Christians have been
killed in recent years. Neighboring Pakistan does not allow the missionaries
the freedom they have in India and routinely oppresses its Christians. A few
years ago a Catholic Bishop committed suicide in a Pakistan court to protest
the issue. But it is India that being called to task in the world forum for
its oppression of Christians!
Mexico, which used to be part of the 'Catholic Empire of Spain', does not
allow missionaries the kind of freedom they enjoy in India. Only in some
so-called 'Banana Republics' of Latin America do we find missionaries being
so powerful. Even this, as has been revealed by recent hearings in the US
Congress, was often financed by the CIA, with priests serving as CIA agents.
Such information suggests that Christian leaders have given up most
countries of the world as beyond their reach but concentrated on India as
the US did on the Banana Republics.
. Missionaries and Christian organizations are very much on the defensive in
most of the world today, where they are simply trying to hold their ground.
The West continues to discard Christianity. The Islamic world will not let
it in and China is keeping it at a safe distance. In America such missionary
groups, which would still like to ban the teaching of evolution in the
schools, complain how the country has all but abandoned real Christianity.
But in India the missionaries remain aggressive. The reason is simple. India
allows missionary activity and so is a soft target. Islamic countries and
China are hard targets. The missionaries are targeting India because they
feel they can make headway in India, not because India is a place where they
are particularly under siege!
The hypocrisy of the whole thing is easy to see. It shows the condescending
attitude that missionaries have towards Hindus, thinking that they can bully
them or appeal to their tolerance by a feigned persecution. It ollly proves
that Christians are still promoting a medieval religion that will not honor
other religions and is still seeking world domination by any means, fair or
foul. If we count the victims of Christian aggression on one side and the
Christians themselves who have been victimized we will find that the victims
of Christianity are overwhelmingly in the majority. While some Christians
have apologized to African and Native American groups for such missionary
misdeeds, the Hindus have so far not received any such apology, though they
have suffered from the same methods. The reason is that the missionaries
have not yet triumphed in India. The apology, like crocodile tears, comes
only after the victim is dead.
In the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, Christian colonial
governments used their influence to promote conversion in the countries they
ruled. Now Christians want to use freedom and democracy, which they didn't
allow under their rulership, to continue the conversion process. And all
without an apology or explanation for this about face! If Christians want to
be honored and respected let them first proclaim that Christianity is not
the only true religion and Jesus is not the Only Son of God. Let them say
that Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, J ainism, Zoroastrianism and other Indian
religions are as good as Christianity. Let Christians say clearly that
members of other religions will not go to hell but will gain immortality in
the presence of God by following what is good in their own teachings.
Major Christian groups, however, will certainly not make such statements,
though they may cover over their exclusivism with platitudes about human
peace, brotherhood and Divine love. Their,failure to honor other religions
shows an intolerance that naturally breeds conflict and inevitably leads to
communal tension.
it is-imperialism in the name of God and Christ, the proverbial wolf in
sheep's clothing. It is a political, worldly movement with little
spirituality in it. Unfortunately such Christians confuse the real Divine
work, which is improving ourselves through introspection, with the
institutional work of imposing a single belief upon all humanity. This
political view of religion has no place in the global age of consciousness
that is dawning in enlightened minds all over the world today. The quicker
it comes to an end, the better it will be for all humanity.
2006-06-29 08:14:44
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answer #1
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answered by rian30 6
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In India Christians need to be takled.
They create problems with unethical conversion tactics and then cry wolf to divert attention from what really happenned.
In the 4th century AD, Christianity became the dominant and then the established religion in the Roman Empire. The Sassanian rulers of Iran wisely foresaw that the Syrian Christians within their borders would develop into a fifth column of their powerful neighbour. Their solution was to persecute the Syrian Christians. Some of these Christians fled Iran and one group, led by Thomas Cananeus (whose name would later get confused with that of Thomas Didymos the apostle), arrived on India's Malabar coast and asked for refuge. The generous and hospitable Hindus granted the wish of the refugees and honoured their commitment of hospitality for more than a thousand years. The Christian world has no record at all of any such consistent act of hospitality: the only non-Christian community which they tolerated in their midst were the Jews, and the record of Jewish-Christian co-existence is hardly bright. The Hindus, by contrast, have likewise welcomed Jewish and Parsi communities. Unfortunately, the Portuguese Catholics gained a foothold on the Malabar coast and started forcing the Malabar Christians into the structure of the Catholic Church. Even so, the Christians, who had gotten indianized linguistically and racially, tried to maintain friendly relations with the Hindus. This attitude is not entirely dead yet, a recent instance is the statement by a Kerala bishop denying the false allegation that the BJP was behind the gang-rape of four nuns in Jhabua, a lie still propagated by the missionary networks till today. However, many other Malabar Christians have been integrated into the missionary project, and are now gradually replacing the dwindling number of foreign mission personnel.
My question to them: don't you think that working for the destruction of the very religion which allowed your community to settle and integrate, is an odd way to show your gratitude?
2006-06-29 08:39:10
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answer #2
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answered by Karma 4
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