RE: i opener for few (or many) ?!

[Kartik Ramachandran <ramachan@grinnell.edu>]

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JM Blaut wrote an interesting book on the effect of colonialism and how it
shaped eurocentric history.

"Good" is the wrong term to use for colonialism. Effective for the colonizer:
probably. But from an ethical/moral viewpoint (does that make sense any
more?)
it should be rejected most absolutely (ie, if you come from a liberal
tradition, I presume).

Kartik Ramachandran

>===== Original Message From debate@indiapolicy.org =====
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>With due respect Sir , i beg to differ.
>
>As you have stated caste plays a very big (retarding)
>role in India. And so is religion(retarding role? -
>Iam not sure).
>
>We cannot ignore caste and religion and concentrate
>only on development. It is not right to think of
>development(economic) as a seperate entity, and
>blackout any discussion on religion/caste.
>
>I share your concern that any discussion on these
>issues may rise tempers and change the direction of
>this forum. But that is the point. As we all can see
>religion/caste can still force the most progressive
>minded people in this forum to issue strong statements
>and occassionally lose tempers.
> So we cannot and should not hide from it. We have to
>discuss with an open mind and understand role of
>religion/caste in the
>process of development.
>
>Also I am happy that we are discussing these issues in
>the most civilized manner (despite the genuine
>misgings of Dr.Roy and others) - compared to other
>news/discussion groups. (Did any body in this group
>ever tried to read messages in soc.culture.indian ?)
>
>My sincere thanks for the moderator and members for
>keeping things cool (sort of).
>
>Venkat
>
>A Detour from the main discussion and a
>Question to all members: After nearly 50 years of end
>of colonialism-  all colonizers are doing good.
>(rich/prosperous and scintifically advanced)
>and almost all countries who won independence fighting
>colonialism are in a very bad shape.
>What went wrong ? Is Colonialism, after all,a good
>thing?
>
>
>--- prabhu.guptara@ubs.com wrote:
>>
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>> You may be right about the Portuguese (I don't know,
>> I have not studied
>> anything on this, but this is what is usually said
>> by us Indians).
>>
>> However, you are quite wrong about British
>> missionaries.  For a detailed
>> study,
>> see Vishal Mangalwadi, INDIA: THE GRAND EXPERIMENT,
>> which I have
>> repeatedly
>> mentioned on this discussion list.
>>
>> As far as I know, not one person on this list has
>> actually read this
>> book yet.
>>
>> So we continue to get unintelligent remarks on the
>> role of British
>> missionaries
>> in India.
>>
>> HOwever, the question about missionaries and Muslims
>> is entirely
>> irrelevant to
>> the India policy pages and should be closed, as it
>> is evident that it
>> has
>> nothing to do with the real problems facing India.
>>
>> In spite of the worst depradations of the British -
>> which were bad
>> enough -
>> India was still one of the foremost countries in the
>> world at the time
>> of
>> Independence.  After 50 years of a desi government,
>> our country has slid
>> to
>> being the 147th country in the world.
>>
>> Let us stop blaming the Muslims and the British.
>> Let us take an
>> unbiased look
>> at how much has been stolen from India and by whom
>> since Independence.
>> Then
>> let us try to create policies which will benefit
>> India.  Conversion to
>> Hinduism
>> or away from it has nothing to do with it, though as
>> I have said
>> earlier, caste
>> is still the primary retarder of progress (and also
>> makes it easier for
>> the
>> ruling class to continue stealing).
>>
>> prabhu guptara
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: param
>> Sent: Mittwoch, 25. Oktober 2000 17:53
>> To: debate
>> Cc: param
>> Subject: FW: i opener for few (or many) ?!
>>
>>
>>
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>> I felt it is worthwile to shre with our members. As
>> it is always good to
>> get
>> an Objective analysis.
>>
>> http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/oct/25franc.htm
>>
>> Will Hinduism survive the present Christian
>> offensive?
>> When Prime Minister Vajpayee was in the US in
>> September, the National
>> Association of Asian Christians in the US (whom
>> nobody had heard about
>> before), paid $ 50,000 to the New York Times to
>> publish 'an Open Letter
>> to
>> the Hon'ble Atal Bihari Vajpayee, prime minister of
>> India.'
>> While 'warmly welcoming the PM,' the NAAIC expressed
>> deep concern about
>> the
>> 'persecution' of Christians in India by 'extremist'
>> (meaning Hindu)
>> groups,
>> mentioning as examples 'the priest, missionaries and
>> church workers who
>> have
>> been murdered,' the nuns 'raped,' and the potential
>> enacting of
>> conversion
>> laws, which would make 'genuine' conversions
>> illegal. The letter
>> concluded
>> by saying 'that Christians in India today live in
>> fear.'
>> The whole affair was an embarrassment (as it was
>> intended to be) to Mr
>> Vajpayee and the Indian delegation, which had come
>> to prod American
>> businessmen to invest in India, a peaceful,
>> pro-Western and democratic
>> country.
>> I am born a Christian and I have had a strong
>> Catholic education. I do
>> believe that Christ was an incarnation of Pure Love
>> and that His
>> Presence
>> still radiates in the world. I also believe there
>> are human beings who
>> sincerely try to incarnate the ideals of Jesus and
>> that you can find
>> today
>> in India a few missionaries (such as Father Ceyrac,
>> a French Jesuit, who
>>
>> works mostly with lepers in Tamil Nadu), who are
>> incarnations of that
>> Love,
>> tending tirelessly to people, without trying to
>> convert them.
>> But I have also lived for more than 30 years in
>> India, I am married to
>> an
>> Indian, I have traveled the length and breath of
>> this country and I have
>>
>> evolved a love and an understanding of India, which
>> few other foreign
>> correspondents have, because they are never posted
>> long enough to start
>> getting a real feeling of this vast and often
>> baffling country (nobody
>> can
>> claim to fully understand India). And this is what I
>> have to say about
>> the
>> 'persecution' of Christians in India.
>> Firstly, it is necessary to bring about a little bit
>> of a historical
>> flashback, which very few foreign correspondents
>> (and unfortunately also
>>
>> Indian journalists) care to do, which would make for
>> a more balanced
>> view of
>> the problem.
>> If ever there was persecution, it was of the Hindus
>> at the hands of
>> Christians, who were actually welcomed in this
>> country, as they have
>> been
>> welcomed in no other place on this planet. Indeed,
>> the first Christian
>> community of the world, that of the Syrian
>> Christians, was established
>> in
>> Kerala in the first century; they were able to live
>> in peace and
>> practice
>> their religion freely, even imbibing some of the
>> local Hindu customs,
>> until
>> the Jesuits came in the 16th century and told them
>> it was 'heathen' to
>> have
>> anything to do with the Hindus, thereby breaking the
>> Syrian Church in
>> two.
>> When Vasco de Gama landed in Kerala in 1498, he was
>> generously received
>> by
>> the Zamorin, the Hindu king of Calicut, who granted
>> him the right to
>> establish warehouses for commerce. But once again,
>> Hindu tolerance was
>> exploited and the Portuguese wanted more and more.
>> In 1510, Alfonso de
>> Albuquerque seized Goa, where he started a reign of
>> terror, burning
>> 'heretics,' crucifying Brahmins, using false
>> theories to forcibly
>> convert
>> the lower castes, razing temples to build churches
>> upon them and
>> encouraging
>> his soldiers to take Indian mistresses.
>> Indeed, the Portuguese perpetrated here some of the
>> worst atrocities
>> ever
>> committed in Asia by Christianity upon another
>> religion. Ultimately, the
>>
>> Portuguese had to be kicked out of India, when all
>> other colonisers had
>> already left.
>> British missionaries in India were always supporters
>> of colonialism;
>> they
>> encouraged it and their whole structure was based on
>> 'the good Western
>> civilised world being brought to the Pagans.'
>> Because, in the words of
>> Claudius Bucchanan, a chaplain attached to the East
>> India Company,
>> 'Neither
>> truth, nor honesty, honour, gratitude, nor charity,
>> is to be found in
>> the
>> breast of a Hindoo!' What a comment about a nation
>> that gave the world
>> the
>> Vedas at a time when Europeans were still grappling
>> in their caves!
>> And it is in this way that the British allowed
>> entire chunks of
>> territories
>> in the East, where lived tribals, whose poverty and
>> simplicity, made
>> them
>> easy prey to be converted to Christianity. By doing
>> so, the Christian
>> missionaries cut a people from their roots and
>> tradition, made them look
>>
>> westwards towards a culture and a way of life which
>> was not theirs.
>> And the result is there today for everyone to see:
>> it is in these
>> eastern
>> states, some of which are 90 per cent Christian,
>> that one finds the
>> biggest
>> drug problems (and crime) in India. It should also
>> be said that many of
>> the
>> eastern separatist movements have been covertly
>> encouraged by Christian
>> missionaries on the ground that 'tribals were there
>> before the "Aryan
>> Hindus" invaded India and imposed Hinduism upon on
>> them.'
>> The trouble is that the latest archaeological and
>> linguistic discoveries
>>
>> point out to the fact that there NEVER was an Aryan
>> invasion of India --
>> it
>> just was an invention of the British and the
>> missionaries to serve their
>>
>> purpose.
>> Secondly, Christianity has always striven on the
>> myth of persecution,
>> which
>> in turn bred "martyrs" and saints, indispensable to
>> the propagation of
>> Christianity. But it is little known, for instance,
>> that the first
>> "saints"
>> of Christianity, "martyred" in Rome, a highly
>> refined civilisation,
>> which
>> had evolved a remarkable system of gods and
>> goddesses, some of whom were
>>
>> derived from Hindu mythology via the Greeks, were
>> actually killed (a
>> normal
>> practice in those days), while bullying peaceful
>> Romans to embrace the
>> "true" religion, in the same way that later
>> Christian missionaries will
>> browbeat "heathen" Hindus, adoring many gods, into
>> believing that Jesus
>> was
>> the only "true" god.
>> Now to come to the recent cases of persecution of
>> Christians in India at
>> the
>> hands of Hindu groups. I have personally
>> investigated quite a few,
>> amongst
>> them the rape of the four nuns in Jhabua, MP, nearly
>> two years ago. This
>>
>> rape is still quoted as an example of the
>> 'atrocities' committed by
>> Hindus
>> on Christians.
>> Yet, when I interviewed the four innocent nuns, they
>> themselves
>> admitted,
>> along with George Anatil, the bishop of Indore, that
>> it had nothing to
>> do
>> with religion: it was the doing of a gang of Bhil
>> tribals, known to
>> perpetrate this kind of hateful acts on their own
>> women. Today, the
>> Indian
>> press, the Christian hierarchy and the politicians,
>> continue to include
>> the
>> Jhabua rape in the list of atrocities against the
>> Christians.
>> Or take the burning of churches in Andhra Pradesh a
>> few months ago,
>> which
>> was supposed to have been committed by the "fanatic"
>> RSS. It was proved
>> later that it was actually the handiwork
>> <http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/16anju.htm>  of
>> Indian Muslims, at
>> the
>> behest of the ISI to foment hatred between
>> Christians and Hindus. Yet
>> the
>> Indian press which went berserk at the time of the
>> burnings, mostly kept
>>
>> quiet when the true nature of the perpetrators was
>> revealed.
>> Finally, even if Dara Singh does belong to the
>> Bajrang Dal, it is
>> doubtful
>> if the hundred other accused do. What is more
>> probable, is that like in
>> many
>> other 'backward' places, it is a case of converted
>> tribals versus
>> non-converted tribals, of pent-up jealousies, of old
>> village feuds and
>> land
>> disputes. It is also an outcome of what -- it should
>> be said -- are the
>> aggressive methods of the Pentecost and Seventh
>> Adventists missionaries,
>>
>> known for their muscular ways of conversion.
>> Thirdly, conversions in India by Christian
>> missionaries of low caste
>> Hindus
>> and tribals are sometimes nothing short of
>> fraudulent and shameful.
>> American
>> missionaries are investing huge amounts of money in
>> India, which come
>> from
>> donation drives in the United States where gullible
>> Americans think the
>> dollars they are giving go towards uplifting "poor
>> and uneducated
>> Indians."
>> It is common in Kerala, for instance, particularly
>> in the poor coastal
>> districts, to have "miracle boxes" put in local
>> churches: the gullible
>> villager writes out a paper mentioning his wish: a
>> fishing boat, a loan
>> for
>> a pucca house, fees for the son's schooling... And
>> lo, a few weeks
>> later,
>> the miracle happens! And of course the whole family
>> converts, making
>> others
>> in the village follow suit.
>> American missionaries (and their government) would
>> like us to believe
>> that
>> democracy includes the freedom to convert by any
>> means. But France for
>> example, a traditionally Christian country, has a
>> minister who is in
>> charge
>> of hunting down "sects." And by sects, it is meant
>> anything that does
>> not
>> fall within the recognised family of Christianity --
>> even the Church of
>> Scientology, favoured by some Hollywood stars such
>> as Tom Cruise or John
>>
>> Travolta, is ruthlessly hounded. And look at what
>> the Americans did to
>> the
>> Osho movement in Arizona, or how innocent children
>> and women were burnt
>> down
>> by the FBI (with the assistance of the US army) at
>> Waco, Texas, because
>> they
>> belonged to a dangerous sect...
>> Did you know that Christianity is dying in the West?
>> Not only is church
>> attendance falling dramatically because spirituality
>> has deserted it,
>> but
>> less and less youth find the vocation to become
>> priests or nuns. And as
>> a
>> result, say in the rural parts of France, you will
>> find only one priest
>> for
>> six or seven villages, whereas till the late
>> seventies, the smallest
>> hamlet
>> had its own parish priest.
>> And where is Christianity finding new priests today?
>> In the Third World,
>> of
>> course! And India, because of the innate impulsion
>> of its people towards
>>
>> god, is a very fertile recruiting ground for the
>> Church, particularly in
>>
>> Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Hence the huge attention that
>> India is getting
>> from
>> the United States, Australia, or England and the
>> massive conversion
>> drive
>> going on today.
>> It is sad that Indians, once converted, specially
>> the priests and nuns,
>> tend
>> to turn against their own country and help in the
>> conversion drive.
>> There
>> are very few "White" missionaries left in India and
>> most of the
>> conversions
>> are done today by Indian priests.
>> Last month, during the bishops's conference in
>> Bangalore, it was
>> restated by
>> bishops and priests from all over India that
>> conversion is the FIRST
>> priority of the Church here. But are the priests and
>> bishops aware that
>> they
>> would never find in any Western country the same
>> freedom to convert that
>>
>> they take for granted in India? Do they know that in
>> China they would be
>>
>> expelled, if not put into jail? Do they realise that
>> they have been
>> honoured
>> guests in this country for nearly two thousand years
>> and that they are
>> betraying those that gave them peace and freedom?
>> Hinduism, the religion of tolerance, the coming
>> spirituality of this new
>>
>> millennium, has survived the unspeakable barbarism
>> of wave after wave of
>>
>> Muslim invasions, the insidious onslaught of Western
>> colonialism which
>> has
>> killed the spirit of so may Third World countries
>> and the soul-stifling
>> assault of Nehruvianism. But will it survive the
>> present Christian
>> offensive?
>> Many Hindu religious leaders feel Christianity is a
>> real threat today,
>> as in
>> numerous ways it is similar to Hinduism, from which
>> Christ borrowed so
>> many
>> concepts (see Sri Siri Ravi Shankar's book: Hinduism
>> and Christianity).
>> It is thus necessary that Indians themselves become
>> more aware of the
>> danger
>> their culture and unique civilisation is facing at
>> the hands of
>> missionaries
>> sponsored by foreign money. It is also necessary
>> that they stop
>> listening to
>> the Marxist-influenced English newspapers's defence
>> of the right of
>> Christian missionaries to convert innocent Hindus.
>> Conversion belongs to the times of colonialism. We
>> have entered in the
>> era
>> of Unity, of coming together, of tolerance and
>> accepting each other as
>> we
>> are -- not of converting in the name of one elusive
>> "true" god.
>> When Christianity accepts the right of other people
>> to follow their own
>> beliefs and creeds, then only will Jesus Christ's
>> spirit truly radiate
>> in
>> the world.
>> The author, who writes 'The Ferengi's Column' in The
>> Indian Express, is
>> the
>> correspondent in South Asia for Le Figaro, France's
>> largest circulating
>> daily. He has just published Arise O
>> India(Har-Anand).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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