Francois Gautier - A Statement

25th Oct08

Dear All

Not that I want to rake the ashes and start another acromonious fire but then I just recd the attached mail. In all fairness I thinkit should be read by all who have been part of this discussion. It is not mean't to excuse what is being done in the name of Hinudism - THAT can NEVER be condoned - but then for those who are concerned and have only seen the tragic side of the story it is perhps important that you read the article. If you are REALLY concerned and would like to do SOMETHING about it then I would suggest " Please speak to your respective elders / priests / pastors / fund raisers in the USA / Europe and inform them that rabid rantings and descecration of the Hindu pantheon is no way to win converts. It will not only create ill will but will also push away any help,sympathy and empathy for the Cause" Those of you who will speak to the your ecclestiastical elders will be helping to spread the True Word of Christ. AS thelady fromLC wrote- yes, this is definitely NOT the Hinduism we knew NOR the Christianity we saw in our schooldays.

Also there was an article on a similar note in the Times of India. The author, a pro-Catholic pacifist from the tone of the article, ended his article with the on the lines of " The Indian press made much ado about Manmohan Singh accepting meekly the protests made by the US and Europe but at the same time did NOT make any mention of the fact that he had brought to the notice of the US and Europe these inflammatory remarks made by the Christians. Was it a case of prejudiced Press ? And also , would the Christians have dared to make allegations of the same magnitude about Islam ? "

Those of you in the West and Down Under who feel especially concerned please speak to your Priest / Bishop / Pastor today.You owe it to yourself, to India, the country you were born and grew up in, and to your religion. On our part, here in India, we too shall try to calm the storm in our own little ways.

thondup

What made Hindus angry in Karnataka

François Gautier
First Published : 06 Oct 2008 02:12:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 06 Oct 2008 07:40:54 AM IST

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 western-funded 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.

fgautier@rediffmail.com