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HVK Archives: Exploding the missionary myth

Exploding the missionary myth - The Hindustan Times

Bamprelle ()
28 September 1997

Title: Exploding the missionary myth
Author: Bamprelle
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: September 28, 1997

'Bamprelle' finds the whole world has been introduced to a negative image
of India with its poverty, miseries and sickness, thanks to western
missionaries

The missionaries arrived in India on the heels of the British. Their first
prey were the Adivasis, the tribal people, who they promptly proceeded to
name as the "original" inhabitants of India, and the untouchables, who they
said "were colonised by the (bad) Brahmins, during the mythical Aryan
invasion". Was it not right, they argued to free them from the grip of
their masters, who had enslaved them both socially and religiously? Thus
they set the Adivasis and the untouchables against the mainstream of Hindu
society and sowed the seeds of an explosive conflict which is ready to blow
u today, particularly in UP and Bihar, where the caste antagonism has been
exploited politically by the likes of Mulayam Singh, Kanshi Ram and Laloo
Prasad.

The missionaries in India were always supporters of colonialism, of "the
good Western civilised world being brought to the pagans". In the words of
Claudius Buchanan, a chaplain attached to the East India Company......
neither truth, nor honesty, honour, gratitude, nor charity, is to be found
in the breast of a Hindoo"! Lord Hastings, Governor General of India from
1813, could not agree more; he writes in his diary- on October 2 of the
same year: "The Hindoo appears a being nearly limited to mere animal
functions... with no higher intellect than a dog or an elephant, or a
monkey..." After the failed mutiny of 1857, the missionaries became even
more militant, using the secular arm of the British Raj, who felt that the
use of the sword at the service of the Gospel, was now entirely justified.
There were also the Portuguese and their missionaries, such as "Saint"
Francois Xavier, who in Goa, broke down many 'idol' temples, crucified
Brahmins by the thousands and converted Hindus by force. Belgium historian
Koenraad Elst writes that: "At the time of Independence, Christian mission
centres had dreamed up a plan for a Christian partition in collaboration
with the Muslim League. Ale far Northeast, Chotanagpur and parts of Kerala
were to become Christian states, forming a non-Hindu chain with the Nizam's
Hyderabad and with Pakistani Bengal. Sadly for the Christians, Sardar Patel
foiled their plans. Even after Independence, the missionaries seem to have
been involved in secessionist activities in India's north-east, as well as
on the Burmese side of the border. Always pretending to act as mediators,
they appear to have actually helped the separatists with vital information.
Since then, they have been dictating policies in Nagaland, Meghalaya and
Mizoram, which recently celebrated with great fanfare its century of
Christian rule."

No history of the missionary involvement in India, can be complete without
mentioning its positive aspects. It is true that Kerala got 100 per cent
literacy, thanks in greater part to Christianity, that the best schools in
India are Catholic, that their hospitals and dispensaries provide the best
medical care. True that you still find in India a few wonderful
missionaries doing real selfless work. But generally, there can be no doubt
about the ultimate purpose of missionary work in India. The South Indian
Missionary Conference of 1858, set forth very clearly the goals of
education in India: "the object of all missionary labour should not be
primarily the civilisation, but the evangelisation of the heathen...
schools may be regarded as converting agencies and their value estimated by
the number who are led to renounce idolatry and make an open profession of
Christianity"... Nothing symbolised better the continuing spirit of the
missionaries in India than Mother Teresa.

Yes, Mother Teresa certainly did saintly work. But was caring for the dying
and orphaned children her only goal? The problem is: she never said much.
She did speak against contraception and abortion, in a country of nearly
one billion, where an ever growing population is swallowing whatever little
economic progress is made. She spoke of the dying of the streets in
Calcutta, of course, of the poor of India left unattended, of the miseries
of the cities. Fair enough, but then did she realise that she projected to
the whole world an image of India which was entirely negative: of poverty
beyond humanity, of a society which abandons its children, of dying without
dignity. And even if there is some truth in it, did Mother Teresa ever
attempt to counterbalance this negative image of India, of which she was
the vector, by a more positive one? After all, she had lived here so long,
that she knew the country as well as any Indian, having even adopted Indian
nationality. Surely she could have defended her own country?

The trouble is that even after her death she continues to generate that
image of a negative India. Take her funeral for instance: the world's
attention turned towards India, but not towards an India which is fast
liberalising, which possesses remarkable people, whether yogis, atomic
scientists, or brilliant programmers, of a land of beauty, of hospitality
and unsurpassed culture. No, the world turned its attention towards that
India which it always associated with Mother Teresa: poverty, misery,
people dying in the streets, the India of Lord Hastings. And did the Indian
Press and the Indian Government try to correct that negative impression of
India, at a time when they got so much media attention? On the contrary,
they went overboard in praising Mother Teresa, "her saintly work", her
deeds for the poor, her dedication (to our degenerate race). It was as if
the whole media, the entire intelligentsia of this country had made Mother
Teresa a matter of personal ego: "she is ours, she belongs to us." You had
Lady Di, now we have our Mother Teresa. Unfortunately, Diana carried with
her, even in her death, an aura of beauty, of wit and intelligence, of
charm and affluence; while Mother Teresa only evoked notions of poverty,
degeneration and squalor.

And this is our second question: why do India's intelligentsia, born
Hindus, defend her? These are intelligent, educated people; they must
surely have had some inkling of Mother Teresa's true purpose.

As for the Indian government's stand on Mother Teresa, it is like biting
one's own tail. She said she cared only for the poor and the downtrodden.
Why give her funeral on par with that of Gandhi and Nehru? And the funniest
thin is that the Vatic; which quickly took over the running of the
Mother's funeral, made a parody of the supposed inter-religious service.
The Prime Minister, the President and the hundreds of Indian dignitaries,
most of whom had never attended a Christian service, had to sit through
three hours of mass. India had the generosity of giving the Church a full
stadium and an unprecedented international coverage. But the other faiths,
Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam and Buddhism, were only granted five minutes each
and the Hindu participant was not even a priest, but a university
professor, a reminder of what Catholicism thinks about heathen Hinduism!

India is not respected in the world today, because of its image of a, meek
third-world country, which our Prime Minister constantly enhances,
particularly when he runs to New York at the behest of Americans. There is
no chance that India will get the permanent UN seat which she deserves, as
long as she is seen as the land of Mother Teresa.

("Bamprelle" is the correspondent in South Asia for one of Europe's largest
dailies)


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