Hindu elite is aiding and abetting the dirty politics of the Church  

Clubbing the Bajrang Dal and the VHP with the SIMI is a deliberate mischief being played by secularists, catholic priests, the Hindu elite, and respected names like Julius Rebeiro. They quote Swami Vivekananda, preach tolerance to Hindus, brush aside the ‘forced conversion’ issue as insignificant, and paint a very flattering picture of peace-loving padres and the Christian laity that constitutes just 2% of India’s population.

They are obscuring the real issues and conveniently ignoring the politics of the Church. The VHP and the Bajrang Dal activists, in spite of the media’s projection of them as rabid fundamentalists and chauvinists, have never ever shown disrespect to Christianity as a religious belief system. As true nationalists, they are merely resisting the politics of the Church. Aggressive proselytization is part of that politics and there are strong reasons to suppose that if unchecked, it may pose dangers to India’s territorial integrity. We cannot keep our eyes and ears shut to what has happened in India’s North-Eastern region and the hard-core political realities of these troubling times.

Julius Ribeiro is an experienced man. Is he not aware that since India’s independence, successive Indian governments have been working hard to control Christian missionaries from spreading their tentacles? Is he not aware that the instrument of the ‘Inner Line Permit’ was designed to keep our tribal areas off the bounds of these missionaries?  These were all Congress governments, led by the likes of Nehru, and Indira Gandhi, the secularist icons. There have been so many instances when foreign Christian missionaries have been asked to leave India by their governments. However, since the ascendance of Sonia Gandhi to the throne of India, proselytization activities have been on the rise all over the country. It is also a fact that the Church worked hard for her in the last parliamentary elections.  

The Sangh Parivar is rightly concerned about the conversion activities in the hinterlands of India. In fact, every Indian should be worried about it, including the nationalists among the Christians. If the tribal regions of India are allowed to become the happy hunting grounds of Christian missionaries, it will have disastrous long-term consequences for our territorial integrity and sovereignty. The threats being issued by the European Union, the Christian lobbyists in the US, and the Vatican’s pronouncements on behalf of the Christians of India is portentous. How is it that none of the secularists and enlightened Christians have spoken against such blatant interference of outsiders in our internal affairs? On the contrary, they have been seeking such intervention. Who urged the US administration to deny a travel VISA to Narendra Modi, an elected Chief Minister of an important Indian state, by calling him a monster and a killer? The American foreign office obliged and refused the VISA using unsubstantiated media reports as the reason for doing so.  

And the Hindu elite with its penchant to tom tom its liberal credential, and which is never tired of preaching tolerance to its not so celebrated  co-religionists, ignores the political history of India. They selectively quote Swami Vivekananda when it is convenient to do so. They do not even mention that great depository of human knowledge – Bhagvadgeeta that teaches us to fight for a just cause. Hinduism survived in this land in spite of eight hundred years of the barbaric, decapitating, and demeaning rule of Muslims and Christians no thanks to this turncoat elite. They were the first to cross over to the enemy’s side. The people who offered real resistance were the ones who faced the brunt of the barbarous attacks and devised their unique stratagems to safeguard their pluralist way of life. They were simple people, poor village priests, shopkeepers, farmers, and even those who belonged to the untouchable castes.  India survived as a pluralist state because of them. Had they not resisted the bloody campaign of the Islamists and the Church, it had been painted green or white a long time ago. While some of the Rajput kings were busy giving away their daughters to invading marauders to buy peace to keep their corrupt lifestyles intact, these simple folks refuse to give up on their faith. Why do you think Muslims and Christians rulers made it a point to destroy Hindu temples of various deities? They wanted to break the free spirit of these simple folks. They tried hard but failed. Hindus are born free and their colorful God resides within their heart. These sterling specimens of humankind cannot be destroyed so easily by sword or fake religious precepts and concepts.

Though the religious fervor of Hindus remained intact, it did not stop the process of their political and economic ghettoization. If our secularists are truthful, they should acknowledge this hard reality. And the fear of the RSS that it may happen again is not unfounded. The aggressive and condescending tone and tenor of the secularists, the haughty Christian celebrities, and the Anglo-Indian media towards Hindu groups amply prove the point. They calculatingly paint Hindus as marauders and lumpen. They mischievously compare them with terrorists. They don’t even talk about the dastardly killing of a Hindu preacher in ku klux klan style. They are obviously playing a role in the politics of the Church and have effectively used their media reach to marginalize the Hindu voice. They are not honest.

The Archbishop of Delhi went to the extent of differentiating between Hinduism and Hindutva in a recent TV interview. He termed Hindutva as an idea imported from the west. He seems to have been working on this theory for very long, and reading a lot of Savarkar’s writings. He would not like Hindus to have a political voice. It suits his purpose. He fears Hindu unity. It may mean the end of the Sonia rule which may be disastrous for the Church's grand strategy. That is why he works diligently to emphasize the oppressive caste divisions within Hindu society. He even dares to talk about it openly in his media interviews. One wonders if he could speak so openly about Muslims. His big brother who sits in Vatican would have had to tender a public apology for doing so. The Archbishop knows he can get away with his propaganda in India and only the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and the RSS can challenge his lies and expose his wily machinations. He wants these organizations to be banned so that his army of wily padres can have a free run in India’s hinterlands.   

Now, let me return to the ghettoization issue. If you want to witness a horrendous example of this, go to Varanasi. You will not know where the holiest of holy Kashi Vishwanath temple stands unless there is someone who shows you the way to it through the overcrowded narrow lanes.  Same is the case with almost every Hindu temple in India’s heartland. The temples in the south of India were the only ones that survived the ravaging impact of the Muslim rule. The sprawling Christian cathedrals in Goa were built on the ruins of Hindu temples.  There were just a handful of Hindus who had access to prime property or land if they sucked up to their Muslim or Christian rulers. Has anyone ever given a thought to the fact that almost all the sea facing properties in Mumbai are owned by Christians and important Hindu temples are invariably located in lanes and bylanes of our major cities? Even the respected Mr. Julius Rebeiro admits it in his Times of India article. This humiliating existence greatly damaged the highly experimentalist and freedom-loving Hindu spirit. Our fatalism is a result of that. We also turned to devotional poetry to succour our tormented and tortured spirits and forgot about our glorious past and refused to seek inspiration from it any more.

So, what had led to all this? Everyone knows that the political and economic subjugation of India started with the weakening of our military strength thanks to the widespread impact of a passive religious idea like Buddhism and the renunciation of violence by great warriors and kings like Ashoka. These great warriors whose very sight had stopped the mighty Alexander in his tracks, and ended his campaign of great military conquests at the periphery of our great nation, had turned beggars surviving off the food served to them by peace-loving businessmen and traders. And Hindus are constantly reminded that these weaknesses were actually their strengths. The exalted state of sanyas (renunciation) is their destiny.  They should not worry about their political marginalization, and dying in bomb blasts is in a way good since it frees their souls from their earthly bodies. In the face of the threat of jihadi terrorism, and aggressive proselytization of the evangelists, preaching Hindus to be tolerant is so insensitive, callous, and inhuman. The jihadis and the evenagelists are targeting Hindus, and not vice versa. Not to resist or respond to these well-organised attacks will be a cowardly and politically idiotic posture.

The English-speaking elite knowingly shuts its eyes to the political dimensions of the proselytization activities of the Christian zealots. I don't understand why. Are they trying to be politically correct? Why is it politically correct to decry Hindu organisations like the Bajrang Dal and the RSS? Is it because the media presents them as a group of lumpen who look dangerous and demonic when juxtaposed against a suave and sophisticated English-speaking Padre who can actually be a scheming bigot? The wily maneuverings of the Church to defame the Hindu organizations underline their strategic importance as the defenders of the nation’s sovereignty and its pluralism. Islam, Christianity, and Marxism don’t recognize pluralism as a virtue. It is an evil in their eyes. They want all icons and ideas that clash with their extremely boring and inhuman worldview to be eliminated. In the name of serving humanity, they kill its very spirit.

Can our English-speaking large hearted liberals be as open minded while dealing with a suave and sophisticated cheat, a thief, a robber, a scheming colleague who plays games and stealthily encroaches on their territory? They will not. When it comes to defending the territorial integrity of this country which is directly related to the religious configuration of its population in various regions of the country, their liberal pretentions quickly come to the fore. They will not come out on the streets when Hindus get killed in Kashmir valley. However, they will hate chakka jams by the VHP. They will be all right with Christian missionaries shutting their schools in protest over some incidents of vandalism and taking out protest marches, and fulminating against Hindu organizations. They also join the chorus and enthusiastically stand in the queue of the candle burning mourners, showing solidarity with those who are doing their best to destroy the beautiful and liberal Hindu way of life.  

How can we forget the fact that institutionalised Christianity and Islam are extremely intolerant and oppressive entities, and an anti-thesis of the pluralist Indian (Hindu) ethos? They are dangerous weeds that have damaged and destroyed the colorful Indian life in the past and are continuing to do so with a vengeance. They don't tolerate the great idea of 'ekam sat, viprah bahudha vadanti.'  The jihadis want their Caliphate. The Church wants to harvest every pagan soul.

They are determined to kill or subjugate the free Hindu spirit, the only solace of true liberals across the world. And everything they do has a political, economic, and social dimension. It is a carefully planned, and a well-organized onslaught and media management is a key component of their strategy.

RKS