Menace of the Christian Missionaries

India is a land marked by religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity. India’s culture is one of the oldest in the world. Indians are best known for their spirituality without which India is nothing. It is the home of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. This country has over the ages welcomed religions like Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. The advent of these religions has menaced its culture. First it was the Islam in the 7^th century, followed by the Christianity in the 15^th century, which have created havoc in Indian society. These days, the rising proselytization by the Christian and Islamic missionaries is posing a threat to the nation.

I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one
person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such a wealth I have seen in this country,
such high moral values, people of caliber, that I do not think we would ever
conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which
is her spiritual and cultural heritage and therefore I propose that we replace her
old and ancient education system, her culture, for if Indians think that all that is
foriegn and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their
self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want, a truly
dominated nation.

~Lord McCauly (in his speech of Feb 2, 1835, British parliament)

The Christian missionaries have launched a proselytizing campaign in almost all corners of the world. These missions have well built up strategy to promote evangelism, who derive their financial support from foreign sources. The primary targets are the poor section of the society. Poverty and ignorance have enabled these missionaries to convert the poor people into Christians. Not only Hindus, but even Muslims who are considered to be staunch believers of their religion have also fallen prey to these missions. Even the fundamentalist Muslims are in the same path of spreading their religion, though they are operating on a much smaller scale as compared to the Christians. These missionaries have been quite successful in the African continent. The number of pagan worshipers in this continent were 50% in 1900, today these missionaries have reduced this to less than 10%.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, "Let us close our eyes and pray." When we opened our eyes we had the Bible and they had the land.

~ Archbishop Desmond Tutu (S. African cleric and peace activist)

In the first millennium the whole of the Europe was Christianized, in the second it was the America, Australia and Africa. The pope has openly proclaimed his wish to Christianize the entire Asia in the 3^rd millennium. If this happens then both the Hindu and Buddhist civilizations which have been predominant on the Asian continent for more than two millennia will be wiped off.

Only recently I became aware of the fact that since 1974, the International Congress for World Evangelization (ICWE) has been quietly developing a grand design to evangelize the rest of the non-Christian world which is known among Christian fundamentalist circles as the Joshua Project. I was amazed after I had surfed through their entire website http://www.joshuaproject.net/index.php. They have acquired the database of almost all the people in the world, and have grouped them on the basis of caste and region.

Their Purpose ...
To spread a passion for the supremacy of God among all unreached people

Their Mission ...
To highlight the people groups of the world that have the least Christian presence in their midst and to encourage pioneer church-planting movements among every ethnic people group.

Their Rationale ...
"This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations and then the end will come."

All the above information regarding their purpose, mission and rationale has been copy pasted from the link mentioned above.

The increase in proselytization in India is mostly because of tolerance of large majority of Hindus who believe in pluralism, and also because of the ignorance of its apathetic citizens. In contrast, the activities of all Christian missionaries in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been vastly curtailed due to the intolerance of Islam to the spread of other faiths. The tactics used by these missionaries are nefarious. They give financial support to the backward people on the basis of visiting the church, after being converted to Christians. Sometimes they promise to defray the marriage expenses of the Hindu girls if they are married to Christian boys. I have also come across cases where Christian girls make the Hindu boys fall in love with them, finally convert this guy into a Christian, who is pretty crazy about the girl and is even ready to desert his family and elope with the girl. The ace Mumbai cricketer Vinod Kambli has been one such victim, who has deserted his family and finally had a divorce with his wife. In some cases the Hindu students are given admissions into schools only after their family is converted into Christians. This I have personally encountered after interacting with the students of Nagaland, where almost 90% of the population has been converted to Christianity.

“The great human tragedy of the missionary conquest of the Pacific is being repeated now in all ‘untouched’ parts of the world. In another thirty years no trace of aboriginal life anywhere will have survived. Many Christian missionaries have perpetrated the destruction of native cultures through their ruthless and relentless practices – from the stripping of forests and theft of land to the wholesale enslavement of populations."

~Norman Lewis (author of ‘word power made easy’)

I am well aware that fundamentalist Christians and Muslims may condemn my views expressed in this article. I just plead them to keep their mind open while reading this article. I have seen enough of their activities to comment up on, or even heard from my close friends whom I can no way suspect them of giving me a misleading information. Iam not a religious scholar. But I can judge what is right and what is wrong on religious issues. There is no problem when one starts worshipping Christ after getting inspired by reading the holy Bible, but I do consider this proselytization through nefarious tactics as fraudulent. I do not condemn these missionaries, perhaps they are good for them, but not for us. In this article I would like to highlight the perils that this proselytization can lead to

The world has witnessed many conflicts in the name of religion. To name a few are the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Israel-Palestine conflict etc., which were the consequences of the religious issues, which has only led to the destruction of mankind. Jerusalem is considered as the holy land of Christians, Muslims and Jews. They were fighting over this holy land, who claimed that this belonged to their own god. But these fools could never realize the fact that all the three gods were indeed the same, although they call him by different names. There is a verse in Sanskrit “ekam sadvipra bahudha vadanti”(That which exists is one, sages call it by different names). I would like to support the above argument by an analogy. Every religion claims that god is infinite. Let us consider a cube painted with 6 different colors on each side. When six different people view it in a direction normal to each side, they view it differently. One claims that it is green and the other claims that it is red, but all six opinions are indeed correct. So is the case with god. When you say that God can only exist as Jesus or Vishnu or Allah, you are restricting god from being infinite.

I regard Jesus as a great teacher of humanity, but I do not regard him as the only begotten son of God. That epithet in its material interpretation is quite unacceptable. Metaphorically we are all sons of God, but for each of us there may be different sons of God in a special sense. Thus for me Chaitanya may be the only begotten son of God … God cannot be the exclusive Father and I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus

~Mahatma Gandhi

India is a land for many religions – hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs, jainis, parsis etc. India is a secular state, where the constitution honors all religions equally. A nation in which you will find a Christian supreme leader in a country where there are only 3 per cent Christians, a Sikh prime minister where there are only 2 per cent Sikhs and a Muslim President with only 12 per cent Muslims, and not to forget, a communist who is the speaker of the parliament in a democratic form of govt. There lies the greatness of the nation, where every religion is treated par equally.

And it is here and here alone that toleration and sympathy become practical; it is theoretical in every other country; it is here and here alone, that the Hindu builds mosques for the Mohammedans and churches for the Christians.”

~Swami Vivekananda

There were many conflicts in India after the advent of Islam and Christianity. You might have hardly encountered any conflicts between hindus and Buddhists or jains or Sikhs or even the parsis. But there were numerous conflicts between the muslims(who constitute of just 12% of the Indian society) and the rest of India. Have you ever wondered about this? Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jainis etc. have almost the same ideology. In contrast, the muslims and Christians have completely different ideologies, who believe in adamant monotheism. This is the main reason for numerous conflicts in India. To cite a few are the recent godara and the vadodara violence. The case kashmiri pandits is even more appalling, who were rendered homeless out of the vengeance of hatred by the kashmiri muslims, and are currently living as refugees in their own country. About 750000 people had to flee their houses, 60000 were murdered and their women were raped in this atrocious event. It is all because of the muslims getting into majority. Of course, this issue has another dimension. After the independence, most of the converted muslims were willing to adopt Hinduism. But they were restricted by these pandits, who articulated that it will contaminate the Hindu society, which I honestly detest. Similar results can be anticipated when the Christian community enlarges, who currently constitute of 3%, this is just an official data, god only knows what the real statistics are!, as these statistics do not include the crypto-christians, which are strategically hidden by the Christian leadership during every census operation, and all are counted as hindus. The primary reason behind this is because they do not want to avert the use of reservation, as most of them belong to the backward classes. One such example of a crypto-christian is the current chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Dr.Y.Samuel Rajashekar Reddy.

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

~Jonathan Swift (an Anglo-Irish priest)

The north-east India which comprise of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh has witnessed mass proselytization by these Christian missionaries. Almost 90% of people in Nagaland and Mizoram practice Christianity, with the rest of the states emerging to be almost the same with almost half of them currently being converted to Christianity. Due to the change in religious faith these people have lost their identity, they no longer associate themselves with the rest of India, with whom they have nothing in common. The lack of strong nationalistic feelings has led to an upsurge in the rebellious movements in these states, demanding for secession. Almost all these states have raised a flag of revolt against the Indian state. These religious changes are leading to the break-down of our nation. The most appropriate example that comes to my mind is the case of East Timor, which was once a part of Indonesia. The indigenous tribes in that island were first converted to Christianity by Dutch and Portuguese missionaries. Then they were helped by the western nations to secede from Indonesia. The fate of India looks somewhat similar to me.

It would mean the loss of India's ancient culture, the loss of its unique identity, with India becoming just another nation cloning the West. Even the Muslims and Christians of India, who are like no other Christians and Muslims in the world, would lose something. Today I feel sad, sad for India, sad for the world. For India is in mortal danger, its eternal Sanatana Dharma is under threat. And if India dies spiritually, the world will also die.

-Francois Gautier

Most of the states in India have levied anti-conversion laws. In case of Tamil Nadu, the bill was passed in 2002 but it was overturned after the DMK party came into power. Andhra Pradesh has not levied any anti-conversion law as yet, where you can witness large scale Proselytization, esp. in the backward rural areas, with the backing of the govt., where the leader himself is an evangelical Christian. Inspite of all these laws you can find Christian missionaries working in most of the tribal and slum areas. As a resident of Mumbai, I have come across these missionaries working in the slums of this city, where almost 60% of the population resides. When the media doesn’t cover all these nefarious activities, I think it has no right to point a finger at any Hindutva party for reconverting the Christians into Hindus. I had read an article where the media criticized RSS, when they reconverted about 3000 tribal people of Orissa into Hindus, alleging that it hurt the sentiments of the Christians. I would like you to refer to this link for more information. (as I don’t want to lengthen this article unnecessarily)

http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=ARTICLES

If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be a Christian.

~Mark Twain (an American writer)

For every man it is the bread first and then the religion. So it is harsh to blame the person who is getting converted to earn his bread. I would rather blame the impotent govt. for its incapabity of protecting its citizens, perhaps even the society, which is equally to be blamed. As Lord Buddha says “the cause of misery in this world is because of the man he himself, because of his selfishness”. For example, when India was wrapped up in the darkness of caste system, the people of the backward classes were discriminated by the upper class, but if he changes his religion and changes his name to a hodge-podge English name or a muslim name, he was never discriminated. I have a strong conviction that problems like these can only be eradicated by the society itself.

~"Trying to improve the nation by changing it's political preferences is like trying to improve your daughters handwriting by giving her a new fountain pen"

Finally, I would like to plead every Christian, Muslim and even the Hindu to accept other religions open heartedly and to share a common brotherhood with the rest of the society. After all, god has not created us to fight for his name and protect him. God can take care of himself.

The message of Christ is one of Love, of respecting other's cultures and creed - not of utilising devious and unethical means for converting people. It is false to say that Jesus is the only "true" God. The Divine has manifested Himself throughout the ages under different names and identities, whether it is Christ, Buddha, Krishna or Mohammed. Let this be the motto of the 21st century. Only then will true spirituality emerge, beyond all religions and intolerances.

~Francois Gautier