Author: Balbir K. Punj
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: November 11, 2003
The cruelties which in the name
of the religion of peace and love this tribunal practised in Europe, were
carried to even greater excesses in India, where the Inquisitors, surrounded
by luxuries which could stand in comparison with the regal magnificence
of the great potentates of Asia, saw with pride the Archbishop as well
as the Viceroy submitted to their power.
Every word of theirs was a sentence
of death and at their slightest nod were moved to terror the vast population
spread over the Asiatic regions, whose lives fluctuated in their hands,
and who, on the most frivolous pretext could be clapped for all time in
the deepest dungeons or strangled or offered as food for the flames of
the pyre.
J.C. Barreto Miranda, a Goan historian
on the Court of Inquisition
Nothing probably underscores the
duplicitous demeanour of the Church better than the two recent events that
made global headlines in close succession. But these should have come as
a surprise only to the uninitiated, and what mattered at the end of the
day was the divergent response of the "secular" media which went euphoric
over one but practically ignored the other.
The first and the less publicised
incident was reported in the reputed Guardian - Orthodox Russians see red
over plans for 'Hindu' Vatican in Moscow in a reportage by Nick Patson
Walsh (October 22, 2003). It pertains to a project of building an enormous
Hare-Krishna temple and Vedic cultural centre in Moscow by Alfred Ford,
a great- grandson of automobile patriarch Henry Ford. Junior Ford's plan
of building a huge centre which could accommodate up to 8,000 Hindu worshippers
has run into rough weather with the Russian Orthodox Church whose influence
has been increasing by leaps and bounds in Russia since the fall of Communism.
The cornerstone of the centre scheduled
to be laid later this month during Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to Moscow
has come under cloud. Eminent Russian Orthodox figures deem it as "open
religious expansion." According to the Guardian, the head of Union of Orthodox
Citizens of Russia, Valentine Lebedev said: "We know that in India, Christianity
is persecuted" (thanks to the Indian "secular" press that plays up Graham
Staines, Dang and explosions outside churches in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh).
Demanding the project be scrapped, Lebedev has written a letter to Moscow
mayor Yuri Luzhkov in which he has launched an attack on Mr Ford who is
financing the centre already dubbed by some as the "Hindu Vatican."
The other incident, the beatification
of Mother Teresa was eminently reported by the national and international
media. In 25 years of his papacy, John Paul II has canonised to sainthood
477 persons and beatified 1,319 in 50 canonisation ceremonies - convincingly
outdoing all his predecessors combined since the mid-16th century! They
include gypsies, itinerant preachers, even an illiterate horse trader known
as El Pele who was shot dead in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. It includes
the controversial Josemaria Escriva de Belaguer ý Albes, the founder
of a religio-fascist organisation like the Opus Dei which holds extremely
bigoted views and is dedicated to expanding the Christian grip on world
media.
Not unreasonably, his critics have
dubbed him as a saint-manufacturing factory. The canonisations of all four
Roman Catholic saints from India, whose ranks Mother Teresa would join
soon, came during Pope John Paul II 's papacy. In order to iron out the
creases of his instant sainthood plan, he, since 1983 has done away with
the office of advocatus diaboli (or devil's advocate) whose purpose was
to scrutinise the veracity of extraordinary claims of miracle.
As against his predecessor Paul
VI, who appointed only 26 cardinals in 15 years of his papacy, John Paul
II has already appointed 257. They are carefully chosen candidates sharing
his deeply conservative outlook, and one of them will steer the Vatican
ahead or backwards (pun intended) as his successor. Traditionally, it took
more than a hundred if not hundreds of years for someone to be elevated
to sainthood. It was not even possible to be nominated for sainthood until
after five years of one's passing away. But in the case of Mother Teresa
all norms were bent by the Pope's accepting a nomination within one year
of her death, a beatification in a little over six years, and probably
sainthood within seven.
In the passing, I would like to
mention here another incident from London. The temple under construction
in Wembley, Ealing Road would be one of the finest Hindu temples in Europe
on completion. On Diwali, a band of British hoodlums entered the temple
uttering racist abuses, ripped off the apparels from the idol of Lord Rama
and even damaged the idol itself. I came to know about the incident from
an e-mail sent to me by a Gujarati professional based in London. Imagine
the reaction of the "secular press" if such a robbery would have taken
place in a church in India. The "secular press" would have immediately
branded it as a handiwork of the "Hindu fundamentalists" on the lines of
Jhabua, Dang, Karnataka or Orissa.
The institution of the Church is
inspired by Jesus Christ's teaching: "Go, therefore and make disciples
of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son
and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19). It envisages itself as fulfilling
a divine mission in the world. Nowadays, this is accomplished by kind,
persuasive means, but history attests this to be done with great violence
in Europe, South America, and India. The progress of Christianity in Europe
out of the Roman Empire in the first millennium AD, amidst the "barbarians,"
was a gory saga of violence.
The genocide and the depredation
of the South American continent (a host to several flourishing civilisations)
in the 16th century and its "Latinisation" by Spanish and Portuguese marauders
with the blessings of the Vatican was a tragedy of incalculable magnitude.
The consolidation of the Portuguese rule in Goa (Gomantak) was attended
by unthinkable atrocities on the local populace. If a cold-blooded bigot
like Xavier who initiated a reign of terror on the Hindus in Goa through
his hideous "Court of Inquisition" (1560) and drew comfort by chopping
off 6,000 pagan heads per day can become a "saint," little more is left
to be said about the Church.
It will be pertinent to pursue the
observations of Babasaheb Ambedkar on the ruthless exploits of the Portuguese
missionaries in Goa in the 16th century. Babasaheb was surely no Hindutva
zealot and hence his observations should carry weight even with the toughest
"secularist."
"The entry of the Catholic Church
in the field of spread of Christianity in India began in the year 1541
with the arrival of Francis Xavier. He was the first missionary of the
new society of Jesus formed to support the authority of the Pope. The Syrian
Christians shrank with dismay from the defiling touch of the Roman Catholics
of Portugal and proclaimed themselves Christians and not idolaters. The
other is that the Malabar Christians had never been subject to Roman supremacy
and never subscribed to the Roman doctrine.
"The inquisitors of Goa discovered
that they were heretics and like a wolf on the fold, down came the delegates
of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches. Don Alexis de Menzes was appointed
Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts than to
reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung himself into (the) work of
persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have greatly endeared
him to Rome. Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force,
he summoned the Syrian Churches to submit themselves to his authority.
"Fraud took the place of violence;
money took place of arms. He bribed those whom he could not bully, and
appealed to the imaginations of men when he could not work upon their fears.
The persecutions of Menzes were very grievous - for he separated priests
from their wives; excommunicated, on trifling grounds, members of the Churches;
and destroyed old Syriac records which contained proofs of the early purity
of faith." (Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, Volume 5, pg 435-37.)
Christianity, unlike Islam, doesn't
de-recognise nationalism. And no surprise our standard texts of nationalism
are Euro-centric, inspired by the 16th century movement towards nation
states in Europe. This view is rooted in Christ's aphorism, "Give unto
Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give unto God what belongs to God,"
that is metaphorically separating religion from politics, and spirituality
from the secular sphere of life. But in many senses the Church is an anti-thesis
to Christianity - concerned only about its external influence even at the
cost of propriety. Speaking about Christianity, it is quite necessary to
separate Christians from the Church.
The secular institutions emerged
in Europe as a result of the Renaissance which challenged the authority
of the Church. But the Church as a whole in India refuses to be nationalised,
commands un-wielding property concentrated in a few hands, and looks outside
for inspiration. Whereas, the Christians in India are patriotic (often
more patriotic than Hindus), friendly, qualified industrious people. This
is not a paradoxical position either - Europeans who are born Christians,
and medieval Europe in grips of Church was a backward place to be in, registered
immense progress in every field in proportion to those Europeans dissociated
from the Church.
(Balbir K. Punj is a Rajya Sabha
MP and convener of the BJP's Think Tank. He can be contacted at bpunj@email.com)
