Author:
Publication: Hindu Human Rights
Date:
URL: http://www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindupagans.htm
What is called paganism, heathenism,
and polytheism is in fact the Natural religion of humanity. In areas where
it has survived the onslaught of anti-human ideologies with their ego gods,
it has retained its self-respecting name. In Japan it is Shinto, in Taiwan
Confucianism And Taoism, and in India as Hinduism.
When Christianity became the official
religion of the Roman Empire under Constatantine, the natural humanistic
beliefs were proscribed. With the spread of Christianity after the fall
of Rome, the story was the same across Europe, the Maghreb and the former
Roman Middle East. The high philosophy of the Greeks, the ancient beliefs
of ancient nations like the Armenians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Celts, Teutones,
Norse, Slavs, and last of all, right up to the thirteenth century, the
Lithuanians, fell to the rapacious jaws of iconoclastic and dogmatic Christianity.
Under both the dominant Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, manifestations
of the natural religion was condemned as sorcery, Satanism, and witchcraft.
The incineration of heretics at the stake replaced the pluralism which
had been the standard of classicalist Europe under Celtic, Roman and Greek
cultures. Schism and reformation brought no respite. The Russian Orthodox
church became perhaps the most backward and regressive of all Christian
sects. Protestants saw veneration of icons and celebration of life as remnants
of paganism which had to be stamped out. The Catholic multinational machine
became even more zealous. Yet this could not stem rationalism which stemmed
from the Renaissance, a rediscovery of the classical past. Christ now paled
in the shadow of a resurrected Plato, Aristotle, Socrates and Pythagoras.
Voltaire saw that Confucianism made Chinese civilization every much as
valid as Europe but without the inflexible dogmatism that made science
a slave to the accursed one, the Church. Thomas Jefferson pondered whether
the Christian deity was a god or a devil. It was these rationalist ideas,
which fuelled The industrial revolution, made western states the most powerful,
brought ideas of democracy and free thought, as well as toleration of pluralism
in personal belief. It had nothing to do with Christianity, which now sought
refuge in opposition or mutated form, seeking allies with Fascists, National
Socialists, and Marxists, people for whom the very idea of personal belief
was a complete anathema.
In Europe today Christianity presents
a different face, of compassion, equality, multiculturalism, and interfaith
pluralism. But this has not been the case throughout history. It is not
even the case now in India. While the fundamentalist Christian propaganda
machine, losing souls it once considered its private property in Europe,
pumps out the blatant untruth of Hindus as Nazis, fundamentalists, and
satanic followers in India, it is forgotten just how much damage Christianity
did to the paganism of Europe. How many were burnt at the stake or killed
by some other means? How many were forcibly converted by zealous crusaders
like Charlemagne? How many temples were desecrated and turned into churches
for the one ego god? How many Pagan festivals were reincarnated as Christianity
such as Christmas itself? Yet this is happening in India right now. In
the northeast Christian inspired terrorists are wiping out the indigenous
Hindus. Pope John Paul II has said that the future harvest lies in India,
and that Hinduism should be annihilated where it contradicts the teaching
of the church, which means that it will be annihilated per'se, just as
paganism was in Europe. The pagans of Europe who have been told they must
have nothing to do with the Hindu Nazis of India should ask themselves
if they should believe an ideology which threw Europe under its dogmatic
boot for almost two millennia, and yet now cries wolf in the face of resistance
in India, the last refuge of what it calls paganism. The propaganda machine
pumps out a stream of stories that Hindu Nazis are persecuting Christians.
But is it never asked just exactly what Christians are doing converting
Hindus in India by? fraud, force or bribery, desecrating Hindus shrines,
and demanding heroic status for criminals like Francis Xavier. How quickly
the Inquisition of Goa has been forgotten. If paganism is to be revived
and flourish as it once did, the pagans of Europe needs to ask themselves
this, Should they keep calling themselves by the term pagan, an insulting
subjective term invented by the close-minded church? Second, should they
not have sympathy for the Hindus of India, who are suffering the same fate
that their like minded spiritual brethren did in Europe centuries of Europe?
India is the spiritual mother of natural religion. Without India the natural
beliefs of humanity can never be fully realised. Can the pagans of Europe
thus sit back and let happen in India what they have taken almost two thousand
years to throw off themselves? These are not issues for the next few years,
but ideas long overdue for now. It must be understood that a renewed fundamentalist
church in India would threaten the physical existence of neo-pagans of
Europe. The battle between rationalism and dogmatism is not yet over.
