As already pointed out, the three aims of the insidious missionary
propaganda are:
a) to tell the
tribals that they are not Hindus and have no connections with the larger Hindu
society around them,
b) to tell the
world that the tribals are not Hindus in the first place, and so it is no
business of the Hindus to interfere if the tribals are converted to
Christianity, and
c) to tell posterity that Hinduism is as foreign a religion to India as Christianity,
in the name of the Aryan invasion theory, as the tribals follow “pre-Aryan”
religions while Hinduism is an “Aryan” religion brought by “Aryan invaders”
from outside.
Now, except for the existing Hindu Category Three religions (Sarna,
Donyi Polo, Khasi, Meitei, Garo, and possibly others practiced by more
microscopic sections of other isolated tribes), we have seen that, in the
overwhelming majority of the cases, the
tribals in every state declare themselves to be Hindu (Category One) in overwhelming
numbers, often well above 97% of the population of the tribe, and certainly
well above the percentage of Hindus in the general non-tribal population of the
state concerned.
So it is clear that the tribals are certainly Hindus, having
connections with the larger Hindu society around them as much as any other
Hindu caste or community, except to the extent that physical isolation or separation from the general population (since
these tribals usually reside in remote areas like hills, forests or separate
settlements, where they have been living for centuries or millennia or more)
has led to greater individuality and distinctiveness of culture and social
organisation. It is equally clear that it is certainly the business of
Hindus to interfere if these tribals are being converted to Christianity, more
than it is the business of Christian missionaries to come from far off lands to
interfere in the religious beliefs and practices of the Indian tribals.
Incidentally, at this point, the question also arises: how did these
tribals, who declare themselves to be Hindu (Category One) in such overwhelming
numbers, get to be branded as “non-Hindus” or “Animists” in the first place?
The answer lies in the history of the British colonial rulers of India in other
parts of the world: the British colonialists had acquired colonies in other
parts of the world as well, and in each of these areas they naturally had to
deal with the local inhabitants of those areas. In certain areas like
Australia, New Zealand, and North America, they dealt with them so effectively
that they took over the entire land, and the original inhabitants, or “aboriginals”,
were reduced to small groups of people living in isolated settlements and
reserved areas, and the whole continents in question became completely
Anglicized. The same did not happen in South America, Asia and Africa, where
the original populations continue to flourish in large numbers (in South
America, of course, getting ethnically mixed with the European intruders, and
accepting the overwhelming dominance of their religion, language and culture).
But, in the meantime, linguists had discovered that the major dominant
languages of North India, and the ancient
classical language of India,
Sanskrit, were related to the languages of Europe,
Central Asia and Iran. This led to the concept of an
“Aryan” or “Indo-European” language family and to the theory that these
languages must have been brought into India by an “Aryan Invasion of
India” in ancient times. The British and other colonial scholars applied their
own experience in North America and Australia to
the Indian case, and decided that the tribal people living in remote hill and
forest areas, and in separate settlements, were the descendants of the
“aboriginal” population of India.
The missionaries who accompanied the colonial rulers decided to use
this idea to further their own proselytizing activities by branding the tribals
as followers of “aboriginal” religions distinct from the “Hinduism” allegedly
brought in by the theoretically postulated Aryan invaders. In 1866, Sir Richard
Temple edited a book “Papers Related to
the Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces”, based primarily on the
writings of, and of those inspired by, the missionary Reverend Stephen Hislop
(1817-1863), which set the trend in “scholarly” writings on the subject.
This rapidly became a matter of colonial policy. The Census
Commission of 1891 was asked to classify the tribals as Animists instead of
Hindus. However, the Commissioner of the Census, J A Baines, pointed out in the
census report itself that it was not possible to bifurcate the forms of
religion followed by different sections of Indians into separate categories of
“Hinduism” and tribal “Animism” because "every stratum of Indian society is more or less saturated with
Animistic conceptions…”.
But, in the next census of 1901, the British administration made it
mandatory to brand the tribals as “Animist”. This policy continued to be
meticulously followed till the Census of 1931, although every single Commissioner of the Census during this period expressed,
within the Census report itself, his clear disagreement with the policy that he
was implementing:
Sir Herbert Hisley, Commissioner of the Census 1901, clearly opined
that Hinduism was itself “Animism more
or less transformed by philosophy”, and “no sharp line of demarcation can be drawn between Hinduism and Animism”.
J T Marten, Commissioner of the Census 1911, equally clearly opined
that “There is little to distinguish the
religious attitude of the Gond or the Bhil from that of a member of one of the
lower Hindu castes. Both are essentially animistic…. It is obvious, therefore, that the term Animist does not represent the
communal distinction which is the essence of the census aspect of religion”.
[While he refers particularly to the religious attitude of the “lower Hindu castes”, it is significant
that the topmost elite layer of Hinduism, the “Vedic religion”, is also equally
“essentially animist”]
P C Tallents, Commissioner of the Census 1921, not only pointed out
the “difficulty of distinguishing a
Hindu from an Animist”, but went further to declare: “I have, therefore, no hesitation in saying that Animism as a religion
should be entirely abandoned, and that all those hitherto classed as Animists
should be grouped with Hindus in the next census”.
But, the administrative policy continued in the next census, leading
to J H Hutton, the Commissioner of the Census 1931, complaining again that “the line is hard to draw between Hinduism
and tribal religions”.
Finally, the British administration was forced to abandon its policy
of classifying tribals as “Animists”, and fell back on another ploy to deny the
Hindu identity of the tribal people in the Census of 1941, the last Census
conducted by the British rulers: the Census Commission was asked to classify
each tribe by its tribal name (Gond, Santal, Naga, etc.) in the column demarking
religion, leading to as many distinct “religions” as there were tribes.
While the political establishment in “post-Independence” India
allowed the tribal people to declare their religion freely and recorded the
same in its Census reports, it, at the same time, in the name of “Secularism”,
gave more freedom and even active patronage and political and administrative backing
to the foreign missionaries than the British establishment had been able to
comfortably do. And at the same time, the fifth columnists of the missionaries
in the media and academia are still able to propagate on a war footing the
insidious terminology that even the
British Commissioners of the Census had felt embarrassed at being forced to use:
classifying the members of each individual tribe as followers of a “traditional belief system, which is
animistic”, as we saw in the case of the Wikipedia entry on the Karbi
(Arleng) tribe of Assam.
That the tribals are Hindus (Category One) is true of the tribal
population of India in general, but what about the few groups of tribals in
India who have indeed declared themselves to be followers of other (i.e. Hindu
Category Three) traditional religions like Sarna, Donyi Polo, Khasi,
Meitei, Garo and Gond, and possible microscopic sections of other tribes who
regard their tribal beliefs as distinctive? Are those tribes indeed neutral in
identity between Hinduism and Christianity, and therefore legitimate fodder for
the Proselytising Armies (assuming that being distinct from Hindus makes them
legitimate fodder)?
To understand all this, one must first understand what exactly
Hinduism is in the first place. What
needs to be thrashed out in detail is: what is Hinduism and who is a Hindu? And
in order to answer this basic question one must understand the place of
religions as a whole in the history of human society and human civilization. And,
also, we must first understand what religion is in the first place, and
more particularly what is Christianity.
What is Christianity?
It is clear that when human beings in prehistoric times started
settling down in groups, the world of humanity was divided into thousands of “clans”
and “tribes”, or distinctive groups of people settled in different areas, the
members of each group bound together by common ties of ancestral affiliations,
geography, endogamy, economic interests, etc. Likewise, in the course of time,
each such group of people, or tribe, developed its own views (based on the speculations
and discussions of the more active thinkers among them, these again being based
on their responses to the vagaries of nature and society around them) on
subjects like life and death and the hereafter, on the material world and possible
non-material worlds beyond this one, on social customs and systems, on rights
and duties, and on the human, natural or “divine” origins of all these things. Further,
abstract Gods arose from natural phenomena, stories of these Gods and their
activities developed when the abstract Gods were anthropomorphised to different
degrees, customs and rituals were devised for the worship of these Gods,
priestly classes evolved for different kinds of interactions with these Gods,
rules and regulations were devised by these priestly classes, and as many
tribal religions came into being as there were tribes.
In the course of history, tribes all over the world expanded or
contracted (some became extinct), merged with each other or split into
sub-tribes, congregated in specific areas or dispersed in different directions;
and, as technological evolutions (in agriculture, industry, communications, etc)
led to tribal societies expanding into small states and areas of the
development of larger civilizations, the individual religions of small tribes
began to play more prominent roles in history as these states became the
vehicles of power for particular tribes, and the particular religions of such
individual tribes became state religions.
Different trends evolved in matters of religion.
Thus we had the great religion of Egypt (the religion of Ra, Nut,
Isis, Osiris, Horus, etc) which had complicated and magnificent rites and
rituals, mysticism and myths, and created immortal monuments (temples, pyramids
and sphinxes) which are the wonders of the world to this day, which was the
national and state religion of the whole of Egypt for millennia, but which
rarely transgressed the boundaries of Egypt.
On the other hand, we had the Jewish religion, which was based on a
very much accentuated tribal identity. The Jewish texts describe (in a grand
admixture of myth, theology and historical narrative) the genesis and history
of the Jewish tribe(s) and the central role played by the (“jealous”) tribal
God of the Jews, Jehovah, in the formation of an intolerant, exclusivist tribal
religion which (as per the accounts in the Old Testament) led to the invasion
and bloody occupation of a land (Palestine) “promised” to the Jewish tribes(s)
by this God in a dream to a mythical ancestor (Jacob) and to the extermination
of the non-Jewish tribes who were the original inhabitants of that land. The
religion has ever since remained a religion restricted to the descendants of
the original Jewish tribes [at least in theory, since common sense indicates, and
early records of West Asia make it clear, that many original non-Jewish groups
must have been co-opted into the religion throughout the ages and certainly
there was a great racial admixture of “original” Jews with all kinds of races
and peoples of the world (except perhaps natives of the Americas, Australia and
Oceania) in two thousand years of the Jewish diaspora], and its emotional and
historical claims have been restricted to the “promised” land of Palestine.
The ideological difference between religions like that of the
Egyptians and that of the Jews, both basically tribal-national religions
affiliated to one particular geographical area, was that the Egyptian religion
had very little to say about “other” religions, and was merely a complete
religion on its own, concentrated on its own myths, festivals, mysticism, and
complicated laws, rites and rituals, while the Jewish religion (although it
also developed complicated systems of laws, rites and rituals, festivals,
customs and mysticism) concentrated on cultivating an animus towards other
religions: the overriding concern of the God of
the Old Testament of the Bible is his “jealousy” of (repeatedly
expressed in the phrase “I am a jealous God”) and hatred towards other Gods,
and therefore towards the followers of other Gods and other religions. To be
fair, he also spews hatred and vengeance on his own people, the Jews, whenever
(and, from the text of the Old Testament, this “whenever” appears to be “all
the time”) they fall short in fulfilling his hate-filled commands against these
worshippers of “other” Gods, and fail to slaughter and punish them to the
extent desired by him!
What we see in the case of the Jewish religion is one of four
possible attitudes of a tribal religion to the religions of other tribes (respect,
tolerance, indifference and hatred) carried to an extreme extent: in this
case of course it is hatred. But it was still all right so far as it was
restricted only to the Jewish religion: the Old Testament makes it clear that
this intolerant attitude was generally difficult for the Jewish people
themselves to stomach, and hence we find frenzied prophets, and the Biblical
God who reportedly spoke through them, constantly cursing the Jews themselves for
their failure to hate as much as they should and for their tendency to “lapse”
into taboo practices themselves. Further, this was in a world divided between
one Jewish tribe (or conglomeration of tribes) and countless other non-Jewish
tribes, so that in practice this hatred could not in any case be very effective
in doing much harm. Most important of all, this state of hatred and conflict
was ideologically restricted only to their “promised” land, and left the rest
of the world in peace; and when the Jews dispersed into the rest of the world,
it became totally irrelevant.
However, the birth of Christianity led to a new kind of “religion”
of a kind totally unknown to the world before. Christianity originated in
Palestine as a sect within the Jewish religion: a real or mythical character
named Jesus was believed by this group of Jews to be the long-promised and
long-awaited messiah of the Jews, come to liberate the Jews from their
captivity (from the Romans), and as myth after myth (borrowed from the myths and
beliefs of other neighbouring religions like those of the Buddhist-influenced
Essenes, the Osiris-worshipping Egyptians, etc.) was adapted and added to the
narrative, the sect spread like wildfire as an underground sect among sections
of Jews in Palestine and then in other parts of the Roman Empire and finally in
Rome itself. Finally it was emboldened to break itself completely from its
Jewish origins and declare itself a new religion. The revolutionary ingredient which catapulted it out of the tribal sphere
and on to the world stage was the new principle of Proselytization or
conversion of people from other “false” religions to the “One True Religion” of
Jesus Christ, who graduated swiftly from being an ordinary Jewish messiah
to being the “Only Begotten Son” of the One and Only “true” God. The Christian
religion was a grand combination of Jewish Intolerance and Roman Imperialism.
As opposed to religions of single tribes, Christianity became a religion into
whose tribal ambits co-option of members of other tribes was not only allowed
but was in fact now a central and most
primary tenet of expansionist religious belief.
Christianity is therefore basically a religion which evolved out of
a tribal religion, Judaism, and became a kind of supra-tribal religion. The
central belief is that there is only One God, the Jehovah of the Jewish Tanakh,
and that Jesus is his Only-Begotten Son, who was sent on earth to suffer and
die for Mankind. As originally an offshoot of Judaism, Christianity accepted
the holy book of the Jews, the Tanakh (consisting of three sets of books, the
Torah, the Neviyim and the Ketuvim) as a canon, and therefore the entire tribal
history of the Jews as the history of the world from the day of creation.
However, this book was renamed the Old Testament, as it represented the old
covenant between Jehovah and the Jews, which recognized the Jews as the Chosen people of God. With the advent of Jesus, the old
covenant was abrogated, and now there was a new covenant between Jehovah and
Mankind in general, so that all those who accepted him would attain Heaven
after one life on earth, and all those who did not accept him would go to Hell
forever. This was represented in the new holy book of the Christians known as
the New Testament (consisting of four sets of books, the Gospels, the Epistles,
the Acts and the Revelations). Now, the Jews themselves were no longer the
Chosen People of God, and those Jews who did not accept the New Testament and
convert to Christianity automatically became earmarked for Hell.
After the Roman emperor Constantine became a Christian, and forcibly
imposed Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, the religion spread all over
Europe, West Asia and northern Africa, and its spread was only brought to a
halt by the birth of Islam in Arabia, which was the third religion in the
Abrahamic lineage (after Judaism and Christianity) and closely followed
Christianity in its Imperialistic supra-tribal ideology and history. However,
Christianity got a fresh lease of life after the “discovery” of the Americas and Australia and
the sea-routes to India
and southern Africa, and spread like wildfire
in these areas.
Christianity is therefore a supra-tribal religion which is
based on certain fundamental dogmas and ideologies, and whose primary objective
is to uproot, destroy and supplant every single other existing
(tribal and civilizational) religion in the world, which it sees as its enemy,
and which it classifies as a satanic religion whose followers are bound
for the everlasting tortures of Hell.
What is Hinduism?
In India,
as in the rest of the world, religion was originally a tribal affair. Tribes in
every corner of India,
as of the inhabited world of the time, were followers of different tribal
religions. As in other parts of the world, the rise of civilization in one
particular part of India
led to the development of one particular kind of religion among the different
tribes and people spread out over a certain area. This area was the north and
northwest, covering particularly northern Pakistan, Punjab,
Haryana, Delhi,
Himachal Pradesh and the western half of U.P., and extending to some
neighbouring areas. The area still covered many different tribes, notably the
conglomerates of tribes known to traditional Indian history as the Druhyu,
Anu and Puru. In present-day linguistic terms, this could be described as
the Proto-Indo-European area.
The religion which developed in this area concentrated on worship of
the elements (the sun, moon, clouds, rain, sky, earth, rivers, etc.) and
worshipped the Gods perceived in these elements through sacrifices offered
through the medium of fire, and through the medium of sounds couched in the
form of hymns. This religion is found in the Rigveda (the religious book
of the Puru tribes), the Zend Avesta (the religious book of the
main groups among the Anu tribes who migrated westwards into Afghanistan),
and in the religious practices of the ancient European priests, mainly the Celtic
Druids (emigrants to Europe from among the
Druhyu tribes). Other versions of these elements with more developed
mythologies are found in the other European religions (Greek, Teutonic,
Lithuanian, etc.).
In India,
after the emigration of the Anu and Druhyu tribes, the religion of the Purus, with its highly developed priesthood and rituals,
spread over the rest of the country along with Vedic culture. As the religions
of the different tribes all over the country converged into the increasingly
diluted Puru religion, the original Puru (Vedic) rituals and myths increasingly
came to occupy the position of a nominal upper layer in a new multi-layered and
multi-facetted religion which was rapidly becoming the common Pan-Indian
religion of the sub-continent. When this pan-Indian religion came to be
known as Hinduism is a matter of irrelevant dispute. That it is
known as Hinduism is an indisputable fact.
But there was a big difference in the spread of Hinduism all over India and the
spread of Christianity all over the world. Unlike Christianity, which
demonised the Gods, beliefs and rituals of the religions which it sought to
uproot, destroy and supplant, Hinduism accepted and internalised the Gods,
beliefs and rituals of the tribal religions which converged into it. The result
is that today the most popular Hindu deities in every single part of India are
originally tribal Gods: whether Ayyappa of Kerala, Murugan of
Tamilnadu, Balaji of Andhra, Vitthala (originally) of Karnataka (Vithoba
of Maharashtra), Khandoba of Maharashtra, Jagannatha of Orissa, etc., etc., or
the myriad forms of the Mother Goddess, with thousands of names, in
every nook and corner of India: every single local (originally tribal) God and
Goddess is revered by every Hindu in every corner of India, in the form of the kuladevata,
the grihadevata or the gramadevata. In time, of course, myths
were formed nominally associating many of these deities with one or the other
of the main Gods and Goddesses of Puranic Hinduism as their manifestations,
these Puranic Gods themselves being additions from different parts of India to
the Hindu pantheon (or originally Vedic Gods like Vishnu and Rudra with basic
characteristics adopted from the other local and tribal deities). But these
associations were not an imposition “from above”, they were the result of popular
local myth-making and part of the consolidation of the national popularization
of the local deities: the deities retained their local names, forms, rituals
and customs, and became all-India deities, objects of pilgrimages from distant
areas.
But it is not only in respect of “Gods” and “Goddesses” that Hinduism
freely and respectfully adopted from other tribes and religions: even the
most basic concepts of the Hindu religion are originally elements adopted from
the tribal and local religions from every part of India. The original Puru (Vedic)
layer of religion which forms the pan-Indian umbrella of Hinduism was
originally more or less the religion depicted in the Rigveda: the worship of
Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Agni, Soma, the Maruts and Ashvins, and other specifically
Vedic deities (including Vishnu and Rudra, who later become the most important
Puranic Gods), and the main religious rituals were the Agni rituals (homa,
yadnya, etc.) and the Soma rituals. The Soma rituals are completely
defunct today (in fact, no-one knows the exact identity of Soma), the Agni
rituals are still performed, but only during major ceremonies (birth, death,
weddings, ritual inaugurations of houses, etc.) and on other major occasions,
and the major Vedic Gods are minor figures of Puranic stories.
Practically every single basic feature of Hinduism today was
adopted from the religious beliefs and rituals of the other, originally tribal,
religious traditions of the people from every single corner of India as they
all converged into Hinduism. To begin with, Idol-worship which is
absolutely the central feature of Hinduism and which includes (a) the
worship of the lingam, “rude blocks of stone” with eyes painted on them, or
roughly or finely carved or cast images of stone, metal or some other material,
(b) treating the idols as living beings (bathing, dressing and feeding them,
putting them to sleep, etc.), (c) performing puja by offering flowers,
water and fruits, bananas and coconuts, clothes and ornaments to the idols, (d)
performing aarti by waving lights and incense before the idols, (e)
performing music and dance before the idols, (e) partaking of prasad of
food offered to the idols, (f) having idol-temples with elaborate carvings and
sculptures, with sacred tanks and bathing ghats, temple festivals with
palanquins and chariots, etc. (g) applying sandal-paste, turmeric, vermillion,
etc. on the forehead as a mark of the idols, etc. This entire system in all its
variations was adopted from the various practices of the people of eastern,
central and southern India,
along with the Gods and idols themselves.
All the basic philosophical concepts of mainstream Hinduism are
likewise adopted from the tribal and local populations of different parts of
India: the concept of rebirth and transmigration of souls, the concept
of auspicious moments based on the panchanga and the tithis,
the worship of particular trees and plants, animals, birds and reptiles,
of particular forests, groves, mountains and rivers; the worship of
ancestors in elaborate ceremonies, etc., etc.
The fact is, Hinduism can never be in
true conflict with any other religion (other than the two predator Abrahamic
religions which themselves choose conflict with all other religions) since it
has no particular God, Ritual or Dogma to impose on the followers of other
religions. In itself, Hinduism contains the seeds of every kind of philosophy,
and is comfortable with all streams of thought, and not necessarily to do with
the worship of “Gods”. In Hinduism, we find all kinds of atheistic and materialistic
philosophies, the most well known being the Lokayata philosophy of
Charvaka, who believed that there is only one life, that there is no such thing
as an afterlife, or heaven or hell, or rebirth, and that our only purpose in
life should be to maximize our pleasures and minimize our pains. The very basic
texts of Hinduism contain the seeds and roots of agnostic philosophies,
from the Rigvedic Nasadiya Sukta (X.129. 6-7, which says: “Who
verily knows and who can here declare it, whence it was born and whence comes
this creation? The Gods are later than this world's production. Who knows then
whence it first came into being? He, the first origin of this creation, whether
he formed it all or did not form it? He whose eye controls this world in
highest heaven, he verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.”) to the
Upanishadic speculations which reject everything, after deep discussion, with
the phrase “neti, neti”: “not this, not this”, i.e., “no, this
is still not the ultimate truth”. And then of course, there is every kind
of deistic, henotheistic, pantheistic, polytheistic,
and every other kind of -theistic philosophy, including even (but not
exclusively) monotheistic philosophy (minus the hatred of “other” false
religions and false Gods, and the concepts of permanent Heaven for believers and
Hell for non-believers, characteristic of Abrahamic monotheism).
This is not to say that intolerant
strands are not found in Hindu texts: among the countless philosophies that
flowered within Hinduism there could be found stray voices of intolerance and
hatred, but they are just that: stray voices in the wilderness, which never
became the voices of mainstream Hinduism, unlike in the Abrahamic religions,
where they represent the Only Voice.
Hinduism thus represents the opposite end of the spectrum
from the Abrahamic religions: of the four possible attitudes towards
other religions and religious beliefs (respect, tolerance, indifference and
hatred), Hinduism represents respect for all other religions and streams of
thought and philosophy, while Christianity (as also Islam) represents hatred.
This is the central thread of Hinduism: even the Manu Smriti enjoins that when
a king wins a victory over an enemy king and enters his (i.e. the enemy)
kingdom, the first thing he must do is to pray and worship at the feet of the
deity of that king and kingdom. The Bhagawad Gita, even as it asks Arjuna (and
presumably mankind in general) to abandon all other dharmas (i.e. duties, not
religions) and surrender to the Supreme Entity (an abstract concept although
nominally represented by “Bhagwan Shrikrishna” here), assures him that whatever
form of worship he indulges in, that worship reaches Him (i.e. that Supreme
Entity) and Him alone – a far cry from the “One True” God and “One True” form
of worship as opposed to other “false” Gods and “false” forms of worship
classified by Christianity (and Islam).
This is the reason a Hindu would not think twice before bowing his
head in genuine reverent worship before an idol of Osiris or Isis
in Egypt, Quetzalcoatl or Kulkulcan in Central America, or Kuan
Yin in China (or, indeed, before visiting churches and dargahs, not
realizing the difference between non-Abrahamic and Abrahamic religious
entities). This is the reason why the Zoroastrians who fled Iran from Abrahamic
persecution, and the Jews who fled ancient Palestine, found safe,
respectful and helpful refuge only in Hindu India and nowhere else. And
this is also the reason why the tribal Gods and tribal religions in different
parts of India which, either due to isolated location or out of choice, did not
choose to merge, or merge fully, into the greater pan-Indian Hindu
entity (where, in any case, their distinctive characteristics would only have
been respected, preserved and popularised everywhere) continued to freely maintain
their distinctive identities to this day – i.e. till the advent of the
predatory missionaries.
Christian Expansionism
Christianity spread by way of four Grand Tactics, which are still as
effective today as they were in the past:
1. Conversion: Conversion
of individuals and groups from other “False Religions” to the “One True
Religion” is the most fundamental tactic of Christian expansionism. To begin
with, within the Roman Empire, this was done from below: i.e. individuals were converted
and initiated into the Christ-cult, first in Palestine and then in Rome itself,
on the force of the fanatical zeal of the already initiated, the promise of
everlasting pleasures in heaven (for those who accepted Christ and his God as
the only path to liberation) coupled with threats of everlasting tortures in
hell (for those who, whether or not they accepted Christ, accepted that there
could possibly be other paths to liberation), and the community bonding of the
converted. The early history of Christianity is the history of Crypto-Christians
in Rome: secret
Christian cultists who met in secret places, including underground catacombs,
and organized themselves and initiated others into their cult.
But with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine (306-337
CE), conversions started from above as well, i.e. rulers were converted
to Christianity and they slowly (or swiftly by issuing edicts) Christianized
the lands. A primary method was to get a Christian convert girl to marry the
king, emperor or ruler; secretly convert the male progeny of the marriage to
Christianity; see that this secretly converted prince becomes the king, emperor
or ruler after his non-Christian father; if possible see that his queen
is also another converted Christian; and finally gradually employ the full
force of the royal or imperial power to make Christianity the official
religion, convert large sections of the populace to Christianity, persecute or
severely handicap those who refuse to convert, and finally to spread the Word to
other kingdoms and lands by aligning with Christian populations in those
kingdoms and lands and using them to help conquer those kingdoms and lands and continue
the same process there. This was the method by which Rome was converted, and which set off the
trigger of conversions over the whole of Europe
and the rest of the world in the course of time. This was the method which
similarly almost worked in ancient Persia (see Sohrab Modi’s film “Nausherwan-e-Adil”),
but then the Islamic hurricane came and wiped out all the gains there. This is
also the method which almost worked in modern post-Independence India!
Today this Conversion or Proselytisation is at work on a grand scale
in the tribal areas, mofussil rural areas, remote suburban areas, and, within the
urban areas, in slums, footpath-dwellings and isolated localities, carried out
on a systematic basis by foreign or local missionaries or strategically
established “miracle” centres. Converts are generally of two kinds: direct
converts and crypto-Christians. Crypto-Christians, who are secret
converts to Christianity, are found mainly among (a) scheduled caste converts
(since they lose their constitutional rights to reservations on open
conversion, and hence the sustained campaigns to extend reservations to
“scheduled caste” Christians), (b) tribal converts (in areas, e.g. Arunachal
Pradesh, where there is strong and often violent reaction within the particular
tribes to conversions. This continues till the converts achieve enough numbers
to come out of the closet) and (c) among certain categories of socially
well-placed converts (who feel they will be better placed to serve the cause by
remaining crypto-Christian and working behind the scenes than by declaring
their conversion openly). The proportions of the conversions going on in India today are
humongous (to borrow Jaipal Reddy’s favourite phrase) and simply should not be
underestimated. The various methods and tactics employed need not be spelled
out here: the Niyogi Commission had exposed them in ruthless detail very
long ago.
2. Military Strategy: This is the second tactic of
Christian expansionism. Christian expansionism is not merely “conversion” by
hook or crook involving only the individual Proselytisers and the individual Proselytised;
it is a Perpetual War carried out on a war footing with full military
precision. There are international think-tanks and organisations, with
multi-billion dollar budgets, which plan out and execute the conversion
campaigns in different countries. And they have huge armies of foot soldiers.
In recent times, most of them, who may have been rivals in earlier times, often
carry on their activities in coordination with each other. Their budgets and
strategies are not secret documents or products of the fevered imaginations of
opponents: they are set out in detail in black-and-white in their own
publications, and are referred to and quoted by opponents (in India, notably
in the writings of Ram Swaroop and in related Voice of India
publications).
These Proselytising Armies are backed by three categories of back-up
groups which facilitate the expansionist activities of the warriors: (a)
powerful lobbies within the mother countries (the USA, Australia, various
European countries, etc.) which exert pressures on their respective governments
to in turn exert pressures on India and on international bodies, (b) effective moles
and Trojan horses within the media, intelligentsia, academia, political parties
and social organisations (including NGOs), judiciary and bureaucracy of the targeted
country, and (c) effective moles and Trojan horses actually within the
religious organisations of the targeted communities themselves. The combined
potential of all these various open or hidden forces is almost limitless.
In India,
there is a further strategic alliance by the Christian expansionists: with
Islamic forces, Leftist and Secularist political forces, and casteist forces.
3. Hidden Indoctrination: A third major tactic of Christian
expansionism is hidden indoctrination through educational institutions. A
significant proportion of the white collar and the upper crust segments of
society (particularly in India)
are educated in English schools, and most of them are run by Catholic or other
Christian organisations. Now an increasing number of educational institutions
run by Christian organisations also give education in regional languages,
particularly in semi-rural and tribal areas. These educational institutions
turn out ex-students in the millions who occupy positions of importance in all
fields of society.
These ex-students continue to be followers of their respective
religions, but without realizing it a very large number of them have
internalized some of the tenets, principles and beliefs of Christianity, or
have learned to view things through not just Western but specifically Christian
categories and viewpoints. They are indoctrinated from the earliest formative
years through the media of “children’s story books” with a marked Christian
stance, advice by teachers to visit the chapel or pray to Jesus whenever in
trouble, sympathetic Nuns and Fathers (or preachers in Protestant schools) who
give counselling to them in their problems, “moral science” periods for
non-Christian students (while Christian students have Bible Classes) with
text-books emphasising the “truth” of “monotheism” over “atheism”, “polytheism”
or “pantheism” or subtly preaching the errors of “idol-worship”, regular
story-telling sessions on the “historic” life of Jesus or “non-religious” talks
by visiting missionaries, choir singing for all (especially in girls’ schools),
etc.
Thus, without actually converting them, Christian expansionism creates
an automatic sympathetic spectrum of people within the targeted non-Christian
society which creates a very conducive atmosphere for actual conversion
activity and neutralizes opposition.
4. Popular Perception-Building: The fourth important
tactic is building up a popular image based on myths and perceptions which
neutralizes public opposition to Christian expansionism. This takes Christian
influence beyond its converts, strategic allies and indoctrinated students,
into the domain of common people not otherwise influenced by Christianity in
general.
Thus, there is the common lazy-intellect belief that “all
religions say the same thing” which is particularly strong among Hindus. This
is applied to both Christianity and Islam. The common Hindu, who may not know
the “a b c” of either the Bible or the Quran and Hadiths, or of the history of
either Christianity or Islam, will knowledgeably assert that “all religions”, including
or particularly Christianity and Islam, are religions of “peace” and “love”. “No
religion teaches you to steal, kill or hate”, they will sagely affirm, as
if they have studied the tenets of all religions in great detail. Likewise,
they will visit the dargahs of Muslim peers, and the churches of Christian
“saints”, with equal respect and devotion.
But when it comes to viewing the two communities (Christian and
Muslim), as opposed to the two religions (Christianity and Islam), there is a
vast difference in approach. The common Hindu knows little or nothing about the
bloody history of the early Church Fathers, the Popes, the Crusaders, the
founders and perpetrators of the Inquisition, the Templars and the Jesuits, the
Conquistadors, the missionaries, etc. Of course, he also knows little or
nothing about the bloody history of early Islam in West
Asia from the day of its foundation.
But he does know (inspite of over half a century of
apologetics and falsification of history by Leftist and Secularist historians)
about the barbarism of the umpteen Muslim invaders and rulers of India, the
Muslim League during the Independence movement, the Muslim Underworld in India,
the nature of Islamic rule in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, and the activities
of the Pakistani Army, ISI, Taliban, international Islamic terrorists, and,
presently, the ISIS. What he sees around him, in the speeches of Mullas and
Muslim politicians, the generally visible Muslim sympathies for extra-Indian Islamic
entities and issues and the propensity to indulge in violence in their support,
the disquieting practice of large scale public ritual slaughter of animals
during Bakr Id, etc., only adds to the picture. The common Hindu is therefore
inclined to be prejudiced against the common Muslim in general. This prejudice
becomes apparent in daily life: how many Hindus would like to buy a house and
reside permanently deep inside a Muslim locality, or would like to see a Muslim
buying a house in their society or building, or would take a Muslim paying
guest in their own house? How many Hindus would be all right with finding out
that their daughter wanted to marry a Muslim?
On the other hand, the public relations work of Christian
missionaries has been excellent. The religion, known of course for its
well-established system of expansion through schools and hospitals, has somehow
acquired a “saintly” image. The picture of much-publicized “Nobel laureate
Indian” Mother Teresa (the truth about whom is unknown to the gullible Hindu) adorns
police stations, government offices and countless Hindu homes, along with the
photos of Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Bose, Shastri and Indira Gandhi, and her name
is invoked by everyone, from schoolgirls to beauty contest aspirants and
winners, as their “ideal”. This one name perhaps symbolizes the success of
Christian propaganda more than anything else. It follows that while Bollywood
films regularly depict Hindu priests as corrupt, crafty and villainous,
Christian priests and nuns are regularly depicted as the epitome of compassion:
they inevitably appear on the scene when the Hindu heroine or child or old
person is in trouble and shower their compassion and help on them (a benign “my
child” being a ubiquitous phrase in their speech), although on the
international level, they are most famously known for their pederasty! The
Christian missionary and priest, known everywhere in the world as the very
epitome of craftiness, ruthlessness and treachery, has become, in the eyes of
the common Hindu, a benign, saintly figure.
In combination with the increasing westernization of Indian society
(and the spread of Christmas, etc. celebrations on a large scale in modern
times), Christianity, which is on the decline everywhere in Europe
and America
itself, is on a roll in India.
The attitude of the general Hindu public towards Christian expansionism ranges
mostly from the indifferent to the faintly admiring. I still remember the
admiring tone in which the Hindu girl, at the counter of the neera stall
outside the Khadi Emporium near Hutatma Chowk in Mumbai, said (in Marathi), “how
devoted they are to their religion, no?”, as I stood there with a glass of neera
in my hand while a protesting crowd of hundreds-of-thousands of Mumbai
Christians passed in a vociferous procession through the streets in 1978 in
protest against the Freedom of Religion Bill sought to be introduced in
Parliament by MP Om Prakash Tyagi. It never even struck her that her admiration
for the “religious devotion” of a crowd which was demanding their right to
convert people from her religion into theirs spoke volumes for her own lack of
devotion to her own religion!
In these circumstances, Christian expansionism is clearly at
least as dangerous as Islamic terrorism to India – perhaps more so in being a
silent and unrecognized killer.
Tribal Religions vis-Ã -vis Christianity and Hinduism
Keeping in mind that by tribal religions, we are referring only
to the Hindu Category Three religions (Sarna, Donyi Polo, Khasi, Meitei,
Garo, and possibly others practiced by more microscopic sections of other
isolated tribes), since the other tribals are themselves fully conscious
that their religious practices are “Hindu” (which is why they clearly declare
their religion to be “Hindu” in the census, as accepted even by the Joshua
Project), can we say that these Hindu Category Three tribal religions
are neutral between Christianity and Hinduism?
The first and most
fundamental factor which places Hinduism and these tribal religions in one
fundamental category completely distinct from Christianity is the
geographical factor. Hinduism Category One, Hinduism Category Two and
Hinduism Category Three religions are all Indian religions, as
distinct from Christianity which is a foreign import.
This has further
automatic implications. It means that the sacred places, the sacred rivers,
mountains and groves, the sacred plants, animals and birds, the materials used
in religious rituals, etc. of all the three Categories of religions are Indian.
India
is the stage of activity of the acts and events involving all the
historical and mythological characters in the narratives of all these
religions. The languages in which the original religious lore, poetry and
traditions of all these religions are couched are Indian
languages. The traditional religious music, the traditional religious food, the
traditional religious costumes, etc. of all these religions are representative
of the traditional culture of some part or the other of India.
The traditional religious beliefs and rituals of all these religions are
derived from their Indian ancestors.
This geographical factor alone and in itself is so important
that Dr Ambedkar placed emphasis not only on the necessity of placing in
one legal class the followers of all religions other than those of foreign
origin (Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Judaism), but put the matter in
even more categorical terms with specific reference to the question of
conversion itself: “If the depressed
classes join Islam or Christianity, they not only go out of the Hindu religion,
but they also go out of the Hindu culture…What the consequences of conversion
will do to the country as a whole is well worth bearing in mind. Conversion to
Islam or Christianity will denationalize the depressed classes”
(Dhanajay Keer: “Dr Ambedkar: Life and Mission”, p.279). That conversion
to Christianity (or Islam) would “denationalize” the converted Indians,
with adverse “consequences” for “the country as a whole” was very
clearly a matter of deep concern to him.
But the geographical factor is only the beginning. Quite apart from
the fact that there is no form of religious belief or philosophy (from atheism,
through agnosticism, to all forms of “theism”, and from the most “ahimsak”
philosophy to the most violent bloody rituals) which is not found in some part
or the other of Hinduism, and which therefore, basically makes it almost
impossible to point out fundamental opposition between Hinduism and any
particular tribal religious system, the fact is that all the tribal religions
have features which fit into the most basic accepted definitions of standard
Hinduism: idol-worship, totemism, polytheism, pantheism, animism, worship of
the elements and of nature, belief in reincarnation, ancestor worship, etc., every
single one of which is pure anathema to Christianity. Note that in the
Wikipedia entry on the Karbi tribe, quoted earlier, we are told with a straight
face that the “practitioners of
traditional worship believe in reincarnation and honour the ancestors”. In
fact, almost all these elements, and even most of the local deities in every
village and town of India, which are now the core of Hinduism, entered standard
Hindu religion from these very local tribal religions in the course of millenniums
of mutual interaction and influence; even as every local tribe and
community preserved its own religious traditions without interference, a
circumstance which would have been impossible in a Christian dominated country.
And by this is not meant only some mediaeval Inquisition-instituting
and Crusades-mongering Christian country: see what has been the fate of other Pagan
religions which have fallen prey to the Proselytising Armies in the very
citadel of the Proselytisers, the U.S.A., which, along with its other white colleague
nations (in Europe, Australia and the Americas), is always first and foremost
in condemning any curbs on “religious freedom” (read curbs on missionaries) in
India, and which prides itself on being the beacon of internal Democracy and
Freedom:
“From the 1600s European
Catholic and Protestant denominations sent missionaries to convert the tribes
to Christianity. These efforts intensified during the mid 19th century through
mid-20'th as US Government and Christian churches' joint efforts forcibly registered
Native Americans as Christians, which caused contemporaneous official
government records (and sources that reference these government records) to
show "Christianity" as the majority religion of Native Americans for
the past 100 years. These forcible conversions often occurred through US
government and Christian church cooperative efforts that forcibly removed
Native American children from their families, and forcibly moved those Native
children into a Christian-US government operated system of American Indian boarding schools (aka The Residential Schools) where
Native children were indoctrinated in European Christian beliefs, mainstream
American culture and the English language. This forcible conversion and
suppression of Indigenous languages and cultures continued through the 1970s.[1][2][3]
As part of
the US government's suppression of traditional Indigenous religions, most
ceremonial ways were banned for over 80 years by a series of US Federal laws
that banned traditional sweat lodge and sun dance ceremonies, among others.[4] This government persecution and
prosecution continued until 1978 with the passage of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA).[5]”
(Wikipedia entry on “Native American
Religion”)
All this, please note, was being done blatantly and on a war footing
in the U.S.A.
till 1978. Must we assume there was a sudden magical about turn in that year
which miraculously brought about an overwhelming love for the indigenous
religions of the native American Indians in the hearts of those who had been
carrying on the above mentioned activities so blatantly till then, and that the
suppression and persecution completely ceased thereafter?
When those same ruthless forces of Christian Evangelization, who
thought nothing of indulging in the above barbarism to destroy the native
religions of the U.S.A., send their Proselytizing Armies into India to do the
same to the native religions of India (whether Hindu Category One, Two
or Three), clearly it is the duty of all the native religions to unite
against the common enemy. And clearly it is not only the right of Hindus
to protect the tribals (whether Hindu Category One, Two or Three) from
the depredations of Christian missionaries, it is their sacred duty to
protect their fellow-Indians and fellow-Hindus from these wolves. Anyone who
has read beyond the leftist and missionary sponsored articles in the media
blaming Hindu organisations, every time there is conflict over conversions in
tribal areas, will see that the conflicts are basically between the converted
tribals and the non-converted tribals, the latter literally
fighting a last-ditch battle for the preservation of their ancestral religions
from the Proselytising Armies with their multi-pronged military divisions.
Note: (1) Hinduism Category One itself is basically a Parliament
of (Indian) Religions. (2) If there are some religions born out of
mainstream Hinduism (Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism) which have acquired
distinctive identities over the centuries, they have still remained part of the
Hindu cultural stream (having a common history, a common viewpoint towards
life, common religious symbols like Om, respect for Sanskrit as a
Sacred language and for the saffron colour as a Sacred colour, vegetarianism
as an ideal ethic, similar religious-philosophical terms and institutions,
etc., and, as Dr. Ambedkar pointed out: “The
application of the Hindu Code to Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains was a historical
development, and it would be too late, sociologically, to object to it. When
the Buddha differed from the Vedic Brahmins, he did so only in matters of
creed, but left the Hindu legal framework intact. He did not propound a
separate law for his followers. The same was the case with Mahavir and the ten
Sikh Gurus” (Keer, p.427).) And, (3)
if some tribal religions have retained or acquired identities with a
distinctive name, all these are included within the different Categories of
Hinduism (One, Two and Three), which together form a Full Parliament of
Indian Religions. In fact, all these Categories of Hinduism fall
within a larger Parliament of World Religions, namely Paganism (which includes all the native religions
which existed in the world before the rise of the Abrahamic Religions:
Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
Strangely, while this whole article has been only about the
conversion of “tribals”, whom the ubiquitous moles of the missionaries in India
assure us are “not Hindus”, the main theme dominating the media these days
is about the inalienable right of the missionaries to convert Hindus (including
Hindu Category One Hindus) coupled with the utter inadmissibility of any
right of Hindus to even re-convert converted Hindus back to the fold! “Why
does not Modi speak out against the ghar - wapasi programs of the VHP?”
is the common
refrain among media people, who never bother to ask why Modi does not speak out
against Christian missionaries, almost as if they believe that the BJP came to
power only on the development plank, and put Hindu issues on the back burner in
its election campaign, but it also at the same time promised: “we will not
allow Hindu organisations to reconvert ex-Hindus to Hinduism, but we will allow
missionaries to continue to convert Hindus to Christianity”! And the media
is on a campaign to convince the nation that the “youth” are becoming
increasingly disillusioned with the BJP because of its failure to curb
re-conversions to Hinduism, as if those same youth are perfectly all right with
conversions from Hinduism to Christianity; and that the “youth” feel that
allowing Hindu organisations to reconvert ex-Hindus to Hinduism is a “deviation”
from the “development agenda”, but allowing missionaries to convert Hindus to
Christianity is not!
If all this is not the height of slave mentality, what is? [This is
not to suggest that the expectations of the media are necessarily misplaced.
Past experiences have shown that the BJP abandons its Hindu “cards” as soon as
it comes to power, and becomes a super-secular version of the Congress, more
dangerous than the Congress because it converts militant Hindus into apologists
for its about turns. And when “Hindu” organisations organize and publicize farcical
and self-defeating “ghar wapasi” events like the one in Agra, it does not help. But, even if the
media expectations from the BJP are well-founded ones, that does not make it
any the less slave mentality]
No Hindu organisation need spend its time and energy in trying to
explain its position on conversions to its critics. The need of the hour is to bring
to a grinding halt the military incursions of the missionaries and to protect
the cultures and traditions of Hindus (Category One, Two and Three). As the
Catholic theologian Louis Veuillot (1813-1883) arrogantly declared; “when we
Catholics are in a minority, we demand freedom in the name of your principles;
when we Catholics are in the majority, we deny freedom in the name of our
principles”. This is the basic principle of the predator religions, and it
is up to us to decide once and for all whether this state of affairs is to be
allowed to be continued till we are completely annihilated, or whether it is
time to wake up before it is too late. Hindus should refuse to be treated
any more like Oliver Twist asking for more. The need of the hour is for all
the three Categories of Hindus, along with the other few remnants of other
Pagan religions still surviving in the world, to unite positively against
Christian Evangelism and to recognize and isolate the moles and Trojan horses
within their own fold who are working to create divisions and cleavages among
them.
Fantastic body of work.
ReplyDeleteOn "...it is up to us to decide once and for all whether this state of affairs is to be allowed to be continued till we are completely annihilated.." in the final paragraph, what is meant by "up to us". How would the common man do anything and to whom would they petition as these activities are being silently endorsed by the much of the very top leadership ?