Author: Surya Narain Saxena
Publication: Organiser
Date: January 15, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=113&page=14
Politico-evangelical onslaught on Hindus
I was startled to read a recent newspaper
headline "India asks Israel to stop Conversion". For a moment I
refused to believe my eyes till I read the full report that it was really
the present brand secular UPA Government and not the predecessor NDA that
has taken courage in both hands to speak against religious conversions. A
wonder of wonders! A government and all those who partner it whereas are so
benumbed to notice and react to scores of conversions of Hindus to Christianity
should demonstrate such alacrity and concern over conversions as to protest
a foreign country to stop conversions of a handful of Christians to Judaism.
Christianity to Judaism-No
Isn't unusual and unnatural for super secular
Government to go to the extent of applying diplomatic pressure on Israel for
preventing loss of some Christian souls to another Abrahamic faith! No. It
is an intolerable profanity in a circus known as UPA, whose ring master is
devout Catholic. Anyway, the matter is like this: A small north eastern tribe
known as Bnei Menashe inhabiting Mizoram and Manipur somehow discovered about
a decade ago that they are descendents of ancient Israelites or one of the
ten lost Biblical tribes. After prescribed verification Israel accepted the
tribe's claim. According to Israeli law every Jew enjoy the "right of
return" or "the right of abode" in Israel. Some 800 tribals
from Mizoram and Manipur since 1994 have migrated to Israel and many more
wanted to follow. A group of Israeli Rabbis visited Mizoram in September and
converted 218 Christian Mizos to Judaism. This rattled the Christian Church
and the Mizoram government to pressurize the UPA Government to stop conversion
of Christians to Judaism and their migration to Israel, who in turn forced
Jerusalem to stop this. This shows that while the UPA is too sensitive to
conversion of Christians to another faith is totally desensitized to conversion
of Hindus, thanks to their secular conscience.
A very natural and pertinent question arises.
Will the UPA Government on the present analogy pressurise the Vatican, which
is a sovereign state like Israel headed by the Pope to ban conversion of Hindus
to Christianity by the Catholic Church in India. A tall order though, but
a test case indeed.
More about where the Government to Government
action is called for to counter politico-evangelical onslaught of America
on Hindus. President Bush often claims to have received divine sanction for
his imperialist-expansionist actions in Afghanistan, Iraq or in the 'Empire
of Evil' or for global evangelization of the cursed souls. As they say 'a
man is known by the company he keeps', President Bush is surrounded by rabid
evangelists and Hindu haters like Pat Robereson, Billy Graham his son Franklin
Graham, who are never tired of abusing Hindu Dharma in vilest terms. Numerous
TV channels are vomiting day in and day out hateful propaganda against Hinduism.
Courtesy Bush administration's silent but unflinching support to evangelists,
joint naval or air exercises, nuclear cooperation and growing diplomatic accord
not withstanding. Much has been written about pernicious Rand-CIA report that
espouses white settler ideology that hates and demonises all individuals and
groups that resist evangelical thrust in their homelands. Target is clear
Hindus. CIA funded Rand report clubs RSS with Al Qaeda and other world terrorist
organizations whereas no Pakistan or Bangladesh based and I.S.I. funded terrorist
group has been listed.
Anti-Hindu Bill in Congress
Let us have a look into US Congress and note
what nefarious moves are on its agenda against Hindus. New Jersey Republican
Congressman Christopher Smith's bill to be discussed shortly in the US Congress
on the conditions of the Dalits in India can be likened to Miss Mayo's 'Mother
India' during the British Raj, which Mahatma Gandhi had discarded as a 'gutter
inspector's job'. The very title of the congressional hearing, convened prior
to tabling the bill by Christopher Smith, Chairman of the House International
Relations Sub Committee on Global Human Rights and International Operations,
'India's unfinished Agenda-Equality and Justice for Victims of Caste System'
fore tells a lot of condemnation and mudslinging on Hindu Society and its
social system. Who denies there are no social evils in Hindu society and for
that matter no society-white, black, eastern, western, Christian, Muslim,
Jewish, modern, medieval and even atheistic is or was free from social evils.
I do not mean that by blaming others we wash off our own faults. But what
an enlightened forum like a Parliament or congress of a really free and liberated-not
a bigoted one-country should debate is how far and long the other country
has moved from its past but critics like Mr. Smith just do not want to look
how not one but a train of reformists over centuries have endeavoured and
succeeded to a large extent in ridding Hindu society of its caste related
aberrations. Just the other day 85 per cent Hindu India had a Dalit Christian,
K.R. Narayanan its President, three Presidents and present Prime Minister
from the minority communities, a number of Dalit Governors, Chief Ministers
and Cabinet Ministers at the Center and the state, right from day one of Independence,
Christian and Dalit Presidents of the two largest political parties, Dalits
like Dr B.R.Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram held in high esteem by all castes, a
Dalit laying foundation of the proposed Ram Temple at Ayodhya, aren't these
the sign of rapid progress towards leveling down the caste barriers.
Reforms Ignored
Hindus haven't done mere lip service to the
betterment of Dalits and have sincerely enshrined their pious intention of
Dalit uplift into the country's constitution, providing reservation, safeguards,
incentives and concessions for Dalits and tribals and in all spheres of national
life-legislature services, education, business and industry, thus empowering
them to enjoy the fruits of democracy and freedom. Untouchability is now punishable.
Constitutional right of adult franchise extends the right to vote and contest
to Dalits and tribals like all others.
Let me remind incorrigible Hindu baiters that
the franchise was not available to women in America till the thirties of the
last century and to blacks for centuries. Will the American crusaders of equality,
liberty and human rights pointing accusing finger at Hindus tell us how many
black and native Presidents they have had over the centuries. None and why?
The widespread agitation and fight for equality and removal of racial discrimination
against the blacks by Senior and Junior Martin Luther King, and Rosa Park
who passed away recently racial riots of 1967 in the US are few of the many
ugly pock marks on US's white face. Hindus never perpetrated on Dalits and
tribals genocide and forced conversion to Christianity and still keeping them
downtrodden (Dalits) till today like the white Americans did with the natives
of the continent. If the past is to bury its dead, let it apply to Hindus
as well and Congressman like Christopher Smith not go on parroting, "Dalit
and Tribal People are treated as virtual non-humans and suffer pervasive discrimination
and violation of Human Rights", which is a travesty of present day truth.
Less said the better about the life and rights of Dalit converts to Christianity
in their adopted society in India. It can best be described as life after
the promised 'paradise lost'. American cynicism can be gauged from the fact
that in the seventies there was a major scandal in which white American doctors
were found indulging in forced abortions of native American women visiting
hospitals for checkup. It may be a study how the nation of immigrants keeps
its non-white population in check.
Ideological Weapon
Back home, has our secular UPA Government
any foreign policy initiative to combat issues like the stated mischief of
Congressman Christopher Smith trying to seek congressional sanction for his
hate India move? Perhaps none. They probably believe that the target of American
misdemeanor is not they but the BJP or the Hindus. So why worry. Anyhow let
us not forget that the politico-evangelical tirade of Christian America is
an ideological weapon to permanently annihilate our Hindu identity. This has
successfully worked in the Republic of South Korea, which is now largely Christian,
but tried and failed in China.
(The writer can be contacted at B-79, Swasthya
Vihar, Delhi-110092.)