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Truth behind the appeal to Hindus
by R L Francis on 16 Nov 2011 9 Comments

Vatican’s thinking about Indian Christians is not based on facts and that is why the Pope’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue issued a message for Hindus on the eve of Dipawali. The message urged Hindus to fight against anti-Christian propaganda in the country. The appeal says that Dipawali is the festival of the conquest of the forces of light over darkness. It says Hindus and Christian should jointly fight and pave the way for religious freedom.

 

The Vatican’s appeal is very shrewd; it justifies Conversion in the garb of freedom of religion.

 

The Vatican is well aware that the Catholic Church in India enjoys equal freedom to Hindus. The representative of Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, directly appoints Bishops in India without any problem. The Church is continuously building new churches and schools in the name of minority rights. How much more freedom does the Vatican truly need?

 

The Vatican maintains that Christians have been victimized by Hindu extremists in the last few years and that this has posed problems for missionaries. But Vatican needs to understand that the main reason behind these conflicts is Conversion.

 

Many enquiry commissions set up by various states in Odisha, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh have pointed fingers towards this direction. At the same time, all Christians enjoy the right and freedom to follow their religion in India.

 

The problem arises only when and where missionaries try to increase the empire of the church. Is this not a fact that poverty stricken areas of tribal regions are the target of these missionaries? Why do missionaries help only those who accept their religion? “Jesus had said that if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect. (Math. 5:47-48)”

 

Missionaries face problem only at places where they try to convert the populace. This has increased tensions in tribal regions. Hindu organizations believe that the Vatican is preparing the ground for conversions on the basis of huge foreign funds. The fact is that these funds are received for social activity. But there is no improvement in the conditions of those who have already converted.

 

Ten percent of the total population of Catholic Christians in India lies in the Chotanagpur region. Even church documents accept that 91.47 percent of domestic girl workers are Christians, while the non-Christian (Sarna) comprise merely 1.3 percent. Sixty percent of the converted SC (dalit) Christians comprise the total population of Christians in this country. Yet the Church is currently trying to include them in the list of Hindu dalits.

 

It is a clear admission that conversion does not open the doors of liberation. The opposite seems to be true.

 

Kanchi Shankaracharya Swami Jayendra Saraswati and some other spiritual leaders met with Cardinal Jean Louis Pierre Tauran, President of Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue for Communal Harmony in 2009, in Mumbai. Here everybody accepted that conversion is the main obstacle in the path of religious harmony. Now Pope Benedict XVI is meeting the world’s spiritual leaders in Asisi, Ital,y and they are again discussing communal harmony.

 

The problem is that the success of evangelical activity has been linked with an increase in numbers. India is no exception. In the north-east region, Protestants and Catholics are fighting among themselves. The local Catholic Bishop Jose Mukala says that Protestant Christians are forcing Catholics to become Protestant in the Kohima region. Properties of Catholics are being subjected to arson. They have appealed for their safety to the United Nations! Some years ago, Catholic and Protestant missionaries had agreed that they would not convert each others’ members; but the question arises, from where will the numbers come?

 

In October 2011, hundreds of tribal representatives from nine states were called by the Catholic Church to Bhopal, for an Adivasi Mahotsava. The motive was to liberate them from social, economic and political exploitation. They were indoctrinated that they were not Hindus and were free to chose their religion. The motive is obvious.

 

Two years ago, the Catholic Church had told the Vatican that the church is still in infancy stage among tribal people. The meaning is obvious. But now, the rift between tribal Christians and non-Christians is getting wider.

 

The Vatican appeal to Hindus talks about anti-conversion laws in some Indian States and the problems these pose for missionaries. But the Vatican must be made to understand that the Indian constitution permits citizens to follow any faith of their choice.

 

The Indian constitution allows citizens to propagate any religion. But there is a thin line between Conversion and Propagating a religion. It is the duty of the State to restrict the freedom of those whose only goal is to just convert people.

 

It is well known that wherever people have been converted, social tension has increased. Now, the onus of establishing social harmony lies on the shoulders of the Church. The Church should spend the money it collects in the millions on the welfare of those who have already been converted and are now being exploited inside the Church. The Vatican should think about their genuine liberation.

 

 

The writer is President, Poor Christian Liberation Movement 
User Comments Post a Comment
instead what hindus must do is to confiscate the vast lands held by christian missionary institutes and hospitals which were looted by the britishers from the hindus and generously donated to them . let us start a movement for this or at least the missionary funds that are pourng in must be paid to the respective state governments for these lands at least in today's market value and after getting funds from abroad they cannot enjoy the benefits of minority doled out by the government
balayogi
November 16, 2011
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Authour is right.Issue ,rather only issue is conversions.No Christian religious leader is prepared to accept this.Yet All of them plead for harmony.
Foreign funding has too is causing lot of problems.MIssionary support to Maoists is yet another example , how the Church is bent upon distabilising India.But then God is watching this from the upstairs.Greece, Portugal,Spain,Italy list is getting longer.Church will need to do a lot nearer home, than pontificate in far flung forests and hills.
Jitendra Desai
November 16, 2011
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The most appropriate question is to tell the vatican in most clear terms, that the freedomsin India will be taken away to match the freedom given to the Hindus in the church controlled ares, & will be matched in proportion...in percentages...not 1 to one...they need to match it in the vatican & in the world over, for the vatican is a corporation & is not qulified to claim minority status.
Poonam
November 16, 2011
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My question is simple. If you need to find peace and prosperity how is Christianity going to help in comparison to Hinduism. That in spite of quota system in India, the intellectual capability of a person remains inherent. And this is the exact thing that Bhagawad Gita describes in Chapter 3, of how the Varna classification is done (based on intellect). For the so called developed countries to remain developed, they need a whole host of countries to remain developing, so that they can force their wares on these so called emerging markets. And religion is a tool for that. It only goes to show that in this materialistic world, the Abrahamic religion are just another tool for materialism. Everything else has got fitted into it as the evolution started taking place over years of conquest.
K P Ganesh
November 17, 2011
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Maoists supporting Christian Missionaries in forced conversion
Archana Bhagat, a 21-year old Vanvasi woman from Jashpur Nagar district of Chhattisgarh, made her way to Delhi to give her testimony before a Tribunal comprising of eminent bureaucrats, retired judges, ambassadors, academicians and journalists on September 5. Her husband was brutally assassinated by missionaries for resisting an onslaught on his Vanvasi culture two years ago, leaving Archana to fend for herself and her ten months baby.

The proceedings of the Tribunal were conducted under the banner of Forum for Social Justice. The Tribunal comprised of eminent people like former DG of Punjab Police Shri KPS Gill, senior writer Bhavdeep Kang, former IPS Shri PC Dogra, Air Marshal (retd) Shri RS Bedi, Swami Shantatmananda, Justice (retd) Shri Suresh Soni, Justice (retd) Shri BK Gupta, Justice (retd) Shri DS Tewatia, former Ambassador Shri Prabhat Shukla, director of Centre for Policy Studies Dr JK Bajaj, Smt Usha Goel, Shri Vinod Bawari, Shri Shaurya Doval and Col. (retd) Shri PK Panda. The Tribunal, after preparing a detailed report, will present it the Union Minister of Tribal Affairs, different Commissions and authorities with a memorandum within one month.

Archana Bhagat’s heartbreaking story is not in isolation. More than 100 Vanvasis from different parts of India were in Delhi from September 5 to 6 to appeal to the government authorities to take preventive measures to save their culture, economy and the distinguished way of life.
jay
November 17, 2011
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I have nothing personally against Sonia Gandhi, in fact she probably is a good person to win the allegiance of so many and certainly a loving mother. I share with her a love for India, like her I have lived in this country for over 30 years and like her I have married an Indian. But nevertheless, since she is at the top, Christian conversions in India seem to have gone in overdrive. More than 4,000 foreign Christian missionaries are involved in conversion activities across different states. In Tripura, there were no Christians at independence; there are 120.000 today, a 90% increase since 1991. The figures are even more striking in Arunachal Pradesh, where there were only 1710 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. Many of the North-East separatist movements, such as the Mizo or the Bodos, are not only Christian dominated, but also sometimes function with the covert backing of the missionaries. In Kerala, particularly in the poor coastal districts, you find “miracle boxes” put in local churches: the gullible villager writes out a paper mentioning his wish: a fishing boat, a loan for a pukka 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. During the Tsunami, entire dalit villages in Tamil Nadu were converted to Christianity with the lure of money.

It is true that there have been a few backlashes against missionaries and nuns, particularly the gruesome murder of Graham Steins and his two sons. But Belgium historian Koenraad Elst laments that « When over a thousand Hindus are killed and a quarter million Hindus ethnically cleansed in Kashmir, the world media doesn’t even notice, but watch the worldwide hue and cry when a few local riots take place and a few missionaries are killed by unidentified tribal miscreants. Christian Naga terrorists have been killing non-Christians for decades on end, and this has never been an issue with the world media, except to bewail the “oppression” of the Nagas by “Hindu India” ». More than 20,000 people have lost their lives to insurgency in Assam and Manipur in the past two decades. As recently as last week, four paramilitary Assam Rifles soldiers were killed in an ambush yesterday by the outlawed United National Liberation Front (UNLF).By Francois Gautier (written on Monday, September 22, 2008)
mohit
November 18, 2011
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The banning of rakhi within the armed forces, which passed without vigorous protest from India’s seasonal nationalists, is an illustration of the vicious warfare being waged against India’s warriors. India’s first two Param Vir Chakra awardees, Majors, Somnath Sharma and Piru Singh, made the supreme sacrifice with the teachings of the Gita in their hearts and Sri Ram on their lips. In addition, the misuse of human rights ruses, sponsored by foreign intelligence services, to harass the armed forces, also promoted with alacrity by India’s English media, is merely a vehicle to reduce effectiveness in situations of armed combat in which civilian casualties are unavoidable. The spectacle of rampant corruption at the highest levels of Indian society, shielded by the Indian Prime Minister himself, constitutes a further grievous danger since it must inevitably affect their commitment to fight and die for their country. In the end, the integrity of India’s armed forces depends on the survival of legitimate political authority within the country, without which it cannot engage in integrated combat and will be left rudderless.

Ordinary Indians may somehow imagine their country is immune to the dangers of a new partition or the loss of national sovereignty, but the signs of peril are flashing bright. The contemporary attempt to perpetuate the Nehru dynasty, turning the Indian Republic into a quasi-monarchy, has prompted a non-holds barred contest that is reducing the most critical political and administrative structures of the Indian polity to a hollow shell. The vital decision-making apparatus of government, the Indian Union Cabinet and the office of the Prime Minister have virtually ceased to exist.
mohit
November 19, 2011
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A computer worm is a software program, self replicating in nature which spreads through a network. It can send copies through the network with or without user intervention.
Christians are self replicating, one person convert two of his friends, later these two bring each two (four), four brings each two (eight), likewise replicating like a worm. They have Christian network, without others intervention they do all hook & crook method to catch people for their conversion. Christians are spread like worm.
s
November 20, 2011
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Project Thessalonica is a sub-project of Joshua Project II. Joshua Project II set the scope and strategy for converting the “heathen” of the world in 10-40 window (regions that lie between the latitudes of 10 and 40 degrees north) whereas project Thessalonica (called PT) prioritizes the tasks to be taken. Joshua Project II strategized the methodology called ‘Adopt-a-peoples’ wherein every mission agency or church adopted a ‘people group’. Tribals were the first and easy missionary targets. Unfortunately the missionary activity didn’t weaken Hinduism as the church strategists had anticipated – many of the converts still celebrated and attended Hindu festivals and continued to follow Hindu traditions. As a counter measure Project Thessalonica was started in 2004.

Here are the damages done by this project in India so far:

Project Thessalonica aims to stop or limit Hindu activity by converting people who form the pillars of Hindu culture, festivals, traditions and activity. Traditionally missionaries hate any public expression or display of heathen religions in the form of festivals and temples. Missions want to ensure that no new temple construction activity starts. With this objective they are converting masons, craftsmen and others involved in temple construction activity. The First Baptist Church of Nashville, Tennessee adopted towns where the annual Kumbh Mela takes place and has been actively converting the locals so that visitors face extreme hardship during their next visit trying to find services and supplies. Another mission group is adopting boatmen of Kasi where Hindus drop rice balls in river Ganges as an offering to their forefathers. The boatsmen are being trained in other fields so that they abandon this profession. They are making environmental groups raise the voice so that Ganesh processions, Kumbh Melas and Jagannath Rath Yatras are limited. One big worry seems to the extremely popular Hindu television programs. Christian agencies have decided on buying these prime slots at a premium and are actively working with programming sources. Over the past 20 years, missionaries also appear to have invested a lot in handling the political leadership, so much so that their activities appear to be almost immune to the ruling political party. It seems that a good section of media is also on their side to such an extent that any group opposing their activity finds itself identified as a militant or extremist group in the news media.
shiva
November 20, 2011
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