Author: Radha Rajan
Publication: Vijayvaani.com
Date: Jun 15, 2009
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=629
[The Italian Christian-led Congress-dominated UPA government has taken the
unprecedented step of inviting the USCIRF to visit Gujarat and Orissa to write
officious reports on religious freedom. The Vatican's Cardinal Jean-Louis
Pierre Tauran has already landed for an inter-religious dialogue (whatever
that means) in Mumbai on June 12-13. The Gujarati padre Cedric Prakash has
made the foolish claim that Narendra Modi must win the approval of western
nations (read US) to become Prime Minister of India, and that the USCIRF visit
has been welcomed by Gujaratis in America who want the US State Department
to remove Modi from their anti-Christ list and give him a visa to the US!
Radha Rajan wrote a paper on the USCIRF in 2002, which we reproduce here,
because it seems nothing has changed - Editor]
Sridhar Krishnaswami files a news report,
featured on the front page of The Hindu dated 2nd October, 2002, titled "Designate
India, Pakistan as countries of particular concern." The opening paragraph
reads thus: "The United States Commission on International Religious
Freedom (USCIRF) has recommended that the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell,
designate India, along with others, as 'Countries of Particular Concern' under
the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998."
According to this news report, the Commission
is reacting to 'periodic violence' against the religious minorities of the
country, violence which has been on the increase because of the "rise
in political influence of groups associated with the Sangh Parivar, a collection
of Hindu extremist nationalist organizations that views non-Hindus as foreign
to India and hence deserving of attack."
My first thought was, this description of
the RSS must have been given to these busybodies by Arundhati Roy or Shabana
Azmi or by Sahmat or Communalism Combat or all of them 'together separately';
and my first impulse was to consign this report to the 'Garbage Bin.' And
I would have, had this been the ranting of some American Southern Baptist
group or some disgruntled Christian or Marxist NGO in one of their periodic
diatribes against the RSS and the rising religious and political consciousness
of the Hindus of this country; or the ranting of the blatantly biased American
and European human rights industry.
But this is the ranting of a statutory body
of the US government, a Commission that has been constituted by law, a Commission
(which is however allegedly non-governmental), whose members work closely
with the American State Department. The Commission is headed by the Ambassador-at
Large and he is the Special Adviser to the US President and to the US Secretary
of State on International Religious Freedom. And so, the very least that a
native of a developing third world nation, whose country has been stood in
the dock by this "damning indictment" can do, when faced by the
impertinence of foreign busybodies, is to respond to this nonsense with a
modicum of seriousness.
The Hit-list
In the first three years of its existence,
from 1998 to 2001, the entire focus of the Commission is on China, Vietnam,
Laos, Sudan and Burma. And these countries continue to remain on the hit list
of this Commission not only because these countries are ruled either by Communist
governments or by the military as in the case of Burma, but more interestingly,
these countries have a marked antipathy towards Christianity and Christian
missionaries. Contrary to the pious statements of this Commission that it
is concerned about the lack of freedom of religion in these countries, and
that its heart bleeds for the Buddhists and the Falun Gong, it is the refusal
to allow Christian missionaries to operate in these countries that has incurred
the wrath of this Commission.
The list then expands to include Saudi Arabia,
Turkmenistan, and now Pakistan and India. Please note all of you, there is
this deafening silence on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 1998, despite
strong protests from women's groups in the USA about the Taliban's treatment
of women in Afghanistan. Of course, let us all succumb to a 'willing suspension
of disbelief' and believe instead that this silence had nothing to do with
the fact that major American oil and gas companies were talking to the Taliban
for rights to build pipelines across Afghanistan to transport oil and gas
from the Central Asian republics. The alternative was Iran, but then Iran
would have laughed the Americans out of town. So that was ruled out. The US
needed Afghanistan and the Taliban came as a package deal. Religious freedom?
What religious freedom? (Laughter please).
The USCIRF and its rationale
Now let us first look at this USCIRF. It was
constituted in 1998 because the US had no international agenda then to project
its superpower status. The WTO had become a reality, the Taliban were around,
but the USA needed pipelines across Afghanistan more than it wanted freedom
of religion from the Taliban. And September 11 was still three years down
the line. The Soviet Union had disappeared, the people of Iraq were being
subjected to slow and unexciting genocide by continuing US harassment and
the US had no excitement that real cloak and dagger stuff can give to its
national life. It was spoiling for a fight and so it discovered International
Religious Freedom.
The US passed the International Religious
Freedom Act in 1998 and soon thereafter, in 1998, it also constituted the
Commission for IRF by law. The rationale for the Act is best expressed by
the Act itself - SEC. 2. FINDINGS; POLICY.
(a) FINDINGS - Congress makes the following
findings:
(1) The right to freedom of religion undergirds the very origin and existence
of the United States. Many of our Nation's founders fled religious persecution
abroad, cherishing in their hearts and minds the ideal of religious freedom.
They established in law, as a fundamental right and as a pillar of our Nation,
the right to freedom of religion. From its birth to this day, the United States
has prized this legacy of religious freedom and honored this heritage by standing
for religious freedom and offering refuge to those suffering religious persecution.
I will come to this hilarious self-description
of "pillar of our nation" in just a while, but it will be interesting
to see what triggered this pious decision to monitor international religious
freedom. There are two major causes for the US' sudden love for religious
freedom.
First - religion was coming back in a big
way in the former Soviet Union and in Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine, in
Georgia and Armenia the Church was once again becoming a force and an influence
to contend with. While all these republics were Catholic, none of them acknowledged
the supremacy of the Vatican. Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Serbia, Armenia
and Georgia were all components of the Eastern Orthodox Church. They all had
their own national churches and the Hierarchy too was national. Most of these
republics refused to allow the Vatican or the American and European churches
to open shop in their territories. Indeed, the climate was distinctly hostile
to the expansionist designs of the Vatican and the American and European churches
in the vulnerable soil of these fledgling nation-states. This of course incensed
the US and the Vatican.
Second - rapidly declining numbers of their
flock in the West had the Vatican and the American and European churches looking
for new territories to conquer, new peoples to evangelise and convert. They
all turned their attention on Asia. On Easter's eve in 1996, Pope John Paul
II led 20,000 Roman Catholics in an Easter vigil at St. Peter's basilica.
"In his homily John Paul II spoke specifically of Asia after having previously
denounced discrimination against Catholics in Vietnam and China. He spoke
of 'the great desire of Christ and the Church to meet the populations and
cultures of that immense continent, rich in history and noble traditions.
You constitute in a certain way the answer of nations to the new evangelization,'
he said."
The Vatican and Asia
The Vatican had decided that in the third
millennium the Church would plant the cross in Asia and harvest the souls
of the non-Christian and non-Muslim peoples of Asia - the Hindus, Buddhists,
Sikhs and peoples of other non-proselytizing faiths that originated in India.
To this end, a Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for Asia was held
in April/May of 1998 in the Vatican.
The Vietnam government as early as in January
1998 had refused permission to its Bishops to attend the Synod. By April,
China too had refused permission to the Bishops in China and Taiwan to attend
the Synod. On May 14th, a Mass in Saint Peter's basilica brought to a close
the work of the Special Assembly for Asia of the Synod of Bishops. According
to 'Fides' the Vatican news agency, "At the end of his homily, the Holy
Father voiced his intention to visit Asia in the near future to present the
post-synodal exhortation. This led to excited discussion among the Synod Fathers
about possible places for the visit. In the end they suggested a journey with
three laps: Bombay, Manila, Hong Kong. Others suggested Jerusalem, Beijing,
Calcutta, Ho Chi Minh city, Tokyo or Baghdad."
The intention of the Vatican was clear. It
intended for the Pope to make a high profile visit to deliver the post-synodal
exhortation in one of the Asian countries - China, Vietnam, India or Japan
- countries where the majority of the population is non-Christian - Hindus
or Buddhists. China of course, and Vietnam too, promptly refused to allow
the Pope to come visiting them. In India too there was growing awareness and
unease about the intentions of the churches of the world to aggressively convert
the Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs to the Christian religion and the Hindus were
organizing themselves not only to expose the intentions of the Vatican and
the American and European churches, but also to resist, militantly if need
be, any and all attempts at religious conversion.
The Duplicity of the Vatican and the US
One must see the US' sudden love for international
religious freedom against this background - of Asia's growing hostility to
Western trade war through globalization and Christian missionary activities,
both of which historically have always acted in tandem. Pope John Paul II
succeeded to the Papacy precisely because he was Polish and Poland was the
weakest link in the Soviet bloc - Roman Catholics like the people of Croatia
and not Eastern Orthodox like Serbia or Russia. The Polish Pope John Paul
II succeeded to the Papacy because his mandate was clear - to exert pressure
on the weakest link - on Poland and bring about the collapse of communism
and consequently the Soviet Union.
And the calculation was, when communism fails,
the west can step in with its IMF and the World bank and capitalism and free
market, and when the Soviet Union disappeared it would also signal the end
of the already weakened and debilitated Eastern Orthodox Church and the Vatican
can step in to open shop. A dream the West and the Vatican had nurtured and
pursued unceasingly for more than five decades. They succeeded only partially.
Communism failed, the Soviet Union disintegrated, but the Eastern Orthodox
Church rose like the phoenix and reacted ferociously to the Vatican and other
western churches attempting to open their industry in these territories.
One must also see the antipathy of the USA,
the West and the Vatican to China, Vietnam, and Serbia in this context. While
the USA passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, the seeds
of the Act were sown cleverly in 1995 itself, to coincide with the creation
of the WTO, when Pope John Paul II was invited to address the UN General Assembly
on 5 October 1995, to mark the 50th year of the UN. And he devoted his entire
talk to the rights of people to freedom, to human rights, to the rights of
nations to come into being and to exist (a call for enabling the fructifying
of movements for self-determination, a forewarning of the creation of Croatia,
East Timor).
It is one of the cleverest, most cunning speeches
ever made. Every sentence should be read to mean that he is talking only of
Christian interests, Christian political and religious rights. Wherever he
appeals for diversity, he is appealing to those nations and peoples who are
non-Christian to allow the Christian faith with its missionary agenda, to
exist, to grow. And for the first time, the Church, and immediately thereafter
American think tanks, begin to make a distinction between 'patriotism' which
is in their view, positive, and 'nationalism' which in their view is negative,
because it is synonymous with protectionism and shuts its doors on the face
of religious and economic invaders.
One of the reasons cited by the US for constituting
the USCIRF is: "Though not confined to a particular region or regime,
religious persecution is often particularly widespread, systematic, and heinous
under totalitarian governments and in countries with militant, politicized
religious majorities."
This is an accurate paraphrase of the Pope's
UNGA address in 1995 where he invents his own definition of nationalism and
patriotism thus:
"We need to clarify the essential difference between an unhealthy form
of nationalism, which teaches contempt for other nations or cultures, and
patriotism, which is a proper love of one's country. True patriotism never
seeks to advance the well-being of one's own nation at the expense of others.
For in the end, this would harm one's own nation as well. Doing wrong damages
both aggressor and victim. Nationalism, in its most radical form, is thus
the antithesis of true patriotism, and today we must ensure that extreme nationalism
does not continue to give rise to new forms of the aberrations of totalitarianism."
Patriotism, Nationalism and all that Crap
Now let us apply the Pope's yardstick of 'true
patriotism' and 'extreme nationalism' to religion, to Christianity and the
Church specifically. If the Pope were indeed sincere about his call for allowing
diversity to exist, about his devout respect for all cultures and traditions,
he will acknowledge that all cultural values and traditions derive from the
religion and faith of the people.
Then he owes us all an explanation about the
basis for religious conversion and the determination of the Vatican to convert
all peoples of the world to the Christian faith. Will this allow for diversity,
will this express respect for other cultures and traditions? Is this not an
agenda for homogenization and does this not violate the principle of the right
to existence of other religions and faiths? Has the Pope not learnt anything
from the destruction and the total annihilation of the religions of the Native
Americans and the Africans by the Church?
The west, of course, is rediscovering 'nationalism'
and is now beginning to understand the need for protectionism when globalization
opened the borders of their countries to immigration. Now they realise how
important it is to preserve their culture and their way of life from the onslaught
of third world natives. So while the USA and the West want Asians to open
their borders to their capital and goods, and throw open the doors of our
societies and homes to Christian missionaries, they frown upon religious and
economic nationalism a.k.a. protectionism. They, however, want to clamp down
on immigration, shut their borders to Asians and Africans and rediscover what
it is to be American, British, German and French.
"Our respect for the culture of others
is therefore rooted in our respect for each community's attempt to answer
the question of human life. And here we can see how important it is to safeguard
the fundamental right to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience, as
the cornerstones of the structure of human rights and the foundation of every
truly free society. No one is permitted to suppress those rights by using
coercive power to impose an answer to the mystery of man."
Right, right!! The irony or shall I say, the
black humour of it all! The last line can be understood better if we know
that the Vatican believes that the catholic faith alone is the repository
of all Truth and it alone has the answer to the mystery of man. So when the
Pope talks of coercive power and the use of coercive power to impose an answer,
he is referring to regimes and governments which have refused the Vatican
and Christianity even a toe-hold in their countries - China, Vietnam, Japan,
Burma (Myanmar), and of course the Asian Islamic nations of Malaysia and Indonesia
where to proselytize and distribute Christian propaganda material is a crime.
What the Pope is in fact demanding is the Christian right to propagate, evangelise
and carry out individual and mass conversions in Asian countries with very
large non-Christian populations.
The Deep Pocket of Human Rights
So, the seeds for an intrusive and aggressive
foreign policy eroding national sovereignty are being sown as early as in
the late 1980s and in the 1990s with the USA, the West, the Vatican and the
European churches acting in tandem. Concrete shape for renewed aggression
by the USA against the nations of Asia is given through the inequitable WTO
and the designing of the deep pocket called 'human rights.' It is a pocket
deep enough to yield several agendas demanding unilateral or multilateral
interference into domestic national affairs. Human rights can accommodate
right to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, women's rights, children's
rights, rights of labour, right to self-determination, right to….the
list can be made as endless as the US wants.
But the striking absence of right to freedom
from racial discrimination and the right to participatory democracy has not
been noticed it would seem. The US is yet to begin the process of participatory
democracy. The highest offices of this land of the brave and the free are
reserved for the white/Christian (Protestant)/male [President Barack Obama
is the son of a white American woman, and a Christian - Editor]. As long as
women, African-American Christians and Muslims, Native Americans and Jews
and the minorities do not qualify to be elected to the White House, the USCIRF
should deny itself the luxury of pointing fingers at India. By this single
act of commission alone, the US is guilty of several counts of human rights
abuse.
The US owes us an explanation now. Is the
USCIRF empowered to monitor religious freedom only in the rest of the world
or is it empowered to monitor systemic denial of religious rights, which includes
right to practice of rituals, within the USA too? Because there are enough
documents to prove denial of the right to practice the rituals of their faith
by Native American students in the universities of the USA.
The US also owes the world an explanation
on its silence and its polite looking the other way when the Taliban incarcerated
the women and children of Afghanistan in their homes. Now is the time to deal
with the "pillar of our nation" joke. All of you, who are not averse
to waging this intellectual war against our adversaries, must read without
fail two books - "A Little Matter of Genocide - Holocaust and Denial
in the Americas: 1492 to the Present" by Ward Churchill and "American
Holocaust - The Conquest of the New World" by David E. Stannard. Once
you have read these two books, it is difficult to listen to or read anything
the Pope or the USA is saying about freedom and human rights and democracy
and pluralism without rolling on the ground, clutching your stomachs in laughter.
"Religious freedom - the pillar of our
nation"
What was that again? "The right to freedom
of religion undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.
Many of our Nation's founders fled religious persecution abroad, cherishing
in their hearts and minds the ideal of religious freedom. They established
in law, as a fundamental right and as a pillar of our Nation, the right to
freedom of religion."
Yeah right! Now just see what these noble
nation's founders, 'who fled religious persecution abroad,' did to the Native
Americans in the name of the Church and Christianity, in the name of religion.
There is an encyclical by the Pope in the 15th century severely condemning
the genocide of Native Americans. The Pope says that as long as these barbaric
natives are fit to receive the message of Christ, their lives should be spared
and should be elevated into the service of Christ.
From then on begins the savage christianising
of the Native Americans. They are driven like so much cattle into Christian
missions and there they are put to hard labour by the priests who think hard
labour is good for the soul of the Native Americans. They thought the same
thing about the Africans whom they transported into North America later. Hard
labour is always good for the non-white, non-Christian peoples of the world,
particularly if the labour is for furthering the trade and economy of the
white Christian nations.
In the words of Ward Churchill:
"In actuality, the missions were death-mills in which Indians, often
delivered en masse by the military, were allotted an average of seven feet
by two feet of living space in what one observer described as 'specially constructed
cattle pens'. Although forced to perform arduous agricultural labour by the
priests from morning to night, six days a week, the captives were provided
no more than 1400 calories per day in low nutrient foods, with missions like
San Antonio and San Miguel supplying as little as 715 calories per day."
Probably most remarkable in this regard is
Fray Junipero Serra in charge of the northern California mission complex during
its peak period, and a man whose personal brutality was noteworthy even by
those standards (he appears to have delighted in the direct torture of victims,
had to be restrained from hanging Indians in lots, a la Columbus, and is quoted
as asserting that the entire race of Indians should be out to the knife).
Proposed for canonization as a saint by the
Catholic Church, Serra's visage, forty feet tall, today peers serenely down
upon motorists driving south from San Francisco along Highway 101 from its
vantage point on a prominent bluff. Another statue of Serra, a much smaller
bronze which has stood for decades before San Francisco's city hall, is being
moved to a park.
Officials denied requests from local Indians
that it be placed in storage, out of public view, however, offering the compromise
of affixing a new plaque to address native concerns about the incipient saint's
legacy. (Hindus of India and Jews of the world please note, 'Mother' Teresa
and 'Hitler's Pope' are both all set to be canonized as the new saints of
the twentieth century in the Catholic pantheon, a gesture of gratitude for
services rendered in the cause of furthering the Catholic Church in difficult
times and in difficult climes).
Church lobbyists however have undermined even
that paltry gesture, preventing the inclusion of wording which might have
revealed something of the true nature of the mass murder and cultural demolition
over which Serra presided. Both man and mission, the Vatican insisted, were
devoted to ''mercy and compassion."
In passing this Act on International Religious
Freedom, the US is basing its case on the noble founders of the nation, on
'the pillars of our nation' - a nation that was built on the blood and sweat
of genocide and slavery - both of which were practiced in the name of the
Christian faith!!
What is right for you, is right for me
The US has set several precedents post September
11 - precedents worthy of emulation. The right to revenge, the right to pre-emptive
strikes when faced with threats to national security, the right to demonstrative
nationalism/protectionism.
The US must ask itself why other religious
minorities in India, the Parsis, the Sikhs, the Buddhists and Jains never
face the problems that Christians and Muslims in India face at the hands of
'Hindu extremists'? Why did the normally gentle Hindus take to extremism?
Why did the US carpet bomb Iraq and Afghanistan?
National security is threatened not only when
our borders are threatened by foreign invaders in conventional war, but when
our homes, communities and societies are threatened by religious invaders
and terrorists. Christian missionaries and Islamic terrorists threaten Hindus
and Hindu society. The right to revenge is as much the prerogative of Hindus
as it is of the US. So USCIRF or ABCDEF, the US cannot preach to India what
it has never practiced. Enough of this impertinence USCIRF. Care for your
backyard before you venture into other nations.
And one more thing, this constant harping
on rising Hindu extremism threatening the secular, democratic fibre of the
country, and all that crap. The Indian State is democratic and secular. The
Indian nation is not. The Indian nation, like most nations of the world, is
religious. And the rich diversity and pluralism which you keep harping about,
it has existed for over two thousand years, when the first Christian and Muslim
missionaries/traders/invaders begin to appear in our country, not because
of the USCIRF or the UN or the Indian Constitution or the Human rights industry.
It has existed for centuries because the nation
was Hindu. The Hindu thought is assimilatory, not exclusivist like the Abrahamic
faiths. And it is this nation which is being threatened by the missionary
activities of the Christian fundamentalists and the secessionist activities
of Islamic fundamentalists. The Hindus have survived 600 years of Muslim barbarism,
200 years of savage colonialism. We survived violent partition in 1947, and
we are living through the problems in J&K and the North-east.
Hindus have the right to exist, the right
to protect their faith, the right to territory, the right to protect and defend
their women and children, the right to revenge and the right to pre-emptive
strikes against their aggressors - (October 2002)
- The author is Editor, www.vigilonline.com
