Author: NT Bureau
Publication: News Today
Date: February 4, 2004
URL: http://newstodaynet.com/04feb/ld1.htm
For long they have said Hindu Gods
were devils and any worship of Them is a heathen practice. Now Christian
zealots have outdone themselves by taking a giant leap of faith and claiming
that the various Vedic Sanskrit slogans were in praise of Jesus and not
Hindu Gods.
Christian propaganda pamphlets and
booklets in circulation especially in and around Madurai district also
make the ludicrous suggestion that Swami Vivekananda had asked the people
to worship Jesus.
The pamphlets, which have been put
in circulation by the Madurai-based Infant Jesus Hospital (headed by one
Rev Fr. Caleb), also fraudulently invoke Bhagawat Gita slogans saying that
they preach against idol worship.
The highly inflammatory but dubious
pamphlets, which the footsoldiers (primarily women) of Christian expansionism
have been delivering at doorstep after doorstep in Southern districts,
go as far as to decree that 'people should not follow any other faith other
than Christianity'.
Just sample some of the 'interpretations'
in the pamphlets:
Om Sri Brahma Puthraya Nama reads
as 'I worship Jesus, who came to the world as God's son (Yowan 3:16.17)'.
Om Shri Dakshina Murthaya Nama is
translated as 'I worship Jesus who is sitting on the thigh of his father
(Yowan (1:18)'.
Taking specific mantras from Sama
Veda, the Christian marketers say 'Om Sri Panchakaya Nama refers to Jesus,
the one with five wounds (panchakaya) Yowan 20:25.27. Om Sri Ummathiya
Nama is translated as 'I hail one born to the holy spirit' (Mathew 1:18).
Parajapathi is taken to be representing
the Christ and several quotes are given to suggest that Hinduism had all
along had been talking about the 'Holy Saviour'.
The pamphlets go the whole hog and
reel out several texts from the hoary Rig Veda, saying all of them were
meant for Christianity.
The mantra from Brihat Aranyako
Upanishad (Asathoma sadhgamaya, Tamasoma Jyothirgamaya...) is laboriously
expanded and explained to mean that Jesus is leading as the light of the
world. And the 'explanation' goes on to add: 'there is a word-to-word answer
in the bible to every prayer in the Upanishad'.
Bhagwat Gita is also not left alone.
In a seeming translation of a verse from Neethicharam, the pamphlet says
that 'those fools who worship statues made up of stone, wood and metal
would beget nothing other than misery and would not be pardoned'.
Of course, this is plain duplicitous
misinterpretation. But they have not stopped with that.
They go on to plain falsehoods.
The pamphlets invoke Swami Vivekananda
and say that he wanted hundreds and thousands of Christian religious workers
to come to India so that the preaching of Jesus could go to the hearts
of all Hindu people.
Understandably the locals are highly
offended at the effrontery of the evangelists. Apart from the farcical
and facile reasonings in the hand-outs, the locals say the fact they (evangelists)
made bold to deliver them in every household makes clear their rabid fundamentalism.
The brazen approach of the Christian
preachers is a major talking point in the Southern districts for quite
some time. They brook at no niceties. Anything goes for them. The ways
are unimportant to them.
In going about their patently communal
ways, they have vitiated the general atmosphere in the districts.
The prayers (real ones) of the peace-loving
people to the authorities have had no effect so far.
