Missionaries in India - Arun Shourie .......

[Guest guest]

dear child of devi and other interested members,

 

in the last few days we saw several posts on 'conversion', the caste

system and the missionaries role in conversion ...

 

dear ones, to those of who like to read a famous indian author's wel

researched book on this subject- missionaries in india - i would

highly recommend this book of the same name Missionaries In India by

ARUN SHOURIE- ....

 

here is a review of this book...

 

Missionaries in India

by ARUN SHOURIE

 

List Price: $16.00

Price: $16.00

 

Edition: Paperback

 

Paperback: 200 pages

Publisher: South Asia Books; ISBN: 8172232705; 1 edition (May 1,

1998)

 

Amazon.com Sales Rank: 693,870

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Christian Missionaries in India, August 15, 2002

Reviewer: Dr. C. J. S. Wallia from Berkeley, California United

States

Reviewed by C. J. S. Wallia

 

 

Arun Shourie is India's leading writer on politics and history. He

has been an economist with the World Bank, a consultant in the

planning commision and the editor of Indian Express. Among the many

honors and awards for his writings, noted for rigorous analysis and

meticulous research, he has received the International Editor of the

Year Award, the Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Magsaysay Award, and the

Astor Award.

 

In Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas, Arun

Shourie focuses on the intentional misinterpretations of Hinduism by

Christian missionaries. The book is based on an invited lecture, he

gave at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Catholic Bishops

Conference of India in January 1994. The bishops got quite an earful!

Nonetheless, to their great credit, Shourie notes, "the bishops, the

senior clergy, and scholars gathered at Pune heard him politely with

unwavering attention." He adds, "Had I urged the themes of this

lecture to our 'secularists', they would have denounced them

as 'communal', 'chauvinist-fascist' and, having labeled them, they

would have exempted themselves from considering what was being said."

 

Shourie quotes from a recent issue of the Texas-based magazine Gospel

for Asia: "The Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a

living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture...

India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people .... are

literally living a cosmic lie! Could Satan have devised a more

perfect system for causing misery?"

 

Swami Vivekananda during his historic visit to the U.S., a hundred

years earlier, wrote: "Part of the Sunday School education for

children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not

a Christian, and the Hindus especially, so that, from their very

childhood they may their pennies to the missions .... What

is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where the

Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in

the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to

arouse more sympathy and get more money. What is meant by those

pictures which paint a man burning hisown wife at a stake with his

own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the husband's

enemy? .... If all India stands up, and takes all the mud that is at

the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western

countries, it will not be doing an infinitesmal part of that which

you are doing to us."

 

Is this fair to the missionaries? one asks. What about the numerous

schools, colleges, and hospitals the missionaries established in

India? Did they have a hidden agenda? Yes, says Shourie quoting from

Gandhiji's Collected Works. In Gandhiji's discussions with

missionaries, they acknowledged that "the institutions and services

are indeed incidental, that the aim is to gather a fuller harvest of

converts for the Church."

 

Many of the missionaries who came to see Gandhiji had in his

words "designs to convert" him to Christianity. "But what is your

attitude to Jesus? the missionaries would always come around to

asking Gandhiji. He was a great world teacher among others, Gandhiji

would say But that he was the greatest, I cannot accept. He had not

the compassion for instance of the Buddha, Gandhiji would recount....

The reverend gentlemen would retire with the imprecation, 'Mr.

Gandhi... soon there will come a day when you will be judged, not in

your righteousness, but in the righteousness of Jesus."'

 

In the central section of the book, "The Division of Labour"-- among

the British administrators, missionaries, and European Indologists--

Shouire cites extensively from historical documents to establish that

these three groups colluded in essential agreement that "India is a

den of ignorance, inequity and falsehood; the principal cause of this

state of affairs is Hinduism; Hinduism is kept going by the Brahmins;

as the people are in such suffering, and also because Jesus in his

parting words has bound us to do so, it is a duty to deliver them to

Christianity; for this, it is Hinduism which has to be vanquished."

 

Macaulay's notorious minute instituting English as the medium of

instruction in India, says Shourie, "was laced with utter contempt

for India, in particular for Hinduism, for our languages and

literature: of course, Macaulay did n6t know any of those

languages... his ideas about Hinduism had been formed from the

calumny of missionaries .... But the breezy, sweeping damnation--

even a century and a half later, the imperialist swagger takes one's

breath away."

 

Shourie quotes, at considerable length, from the writings of two high-

ranking nineteenth century British administrators, Richard Temple and

Charles Treveylan. Richard Temple: "...the missions in India are

doing a work which strengthens the imperial foundations of British

power.. the results are fully commensurate with the expenditure."

Trevelyan: "A generation is growing up which repudiates idols. A

young Hindu, who had received a liberal English education, was forced

by his family to attend the shrine of Kali, upon which he took off

his cap to'Madam Kali,'made her a low bow, and hoped her ladyship was

well."

 

Most of the European Indologists were far from being the objective

scholars they pretended to be. The two most prominent Indologists

were Max Muller and Monier-Williams, both committed to uprooting and

destroying Hinduism.

 

Here's what Max Muller, the best-known European Indologist, wrote in

a letter to his wife. "...I still have a lot of work to do... my

translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the

fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country.

It is the root of that religion and to show them what the root is, I

feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it

during the last 3,000 years."

 

Monier-Williams, the second holder of the Boden chair of Sanskrit at

Oxford University and whose Sanskrit-English dictionary is still

used, wrote in its preface that "the Boden chair of Sanskrit was set

up by Colonel Boden to promote the translation of Christian

Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed

in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion."

He told the Missionary Congress held at Oxford on 2 May 1877, "The

chief obstacle to the spread of Christianity in India is that these

people are proud of their tradition and religion." His dictionary, he

hoped, would enable the translation of the Bible into Sanskrit

and "when the walls, of the mighty fortress of Brahminism are

encircled, undermined, and finally stormed by the soldiers of the

Cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete."

 

Looking at the cauldron of calumnies cooked up Christian

missionaries, the imperialists, and the so-called objective scholars,

makes the outrage expressed by Swami Vivekananda and Gandhiji

entirely understandable. Gandhiji wrote: "If I had the power and

could legislate, I should stop all proselytising.... it is the

deadliest poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth."

 

To present the point of view of the Church, Shourie has included a 50-

page report distributed by the Catholic Bishops at the Conference.

This report describes the four churches which make up the Church in

India--the Syrian Christian communities in Kerala; the Padroado

Church originating in Goa, the Tribal Churches in Central India and

in the North East; and the Dalit Churches.

 

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the intellectual

history and cultural make-up of contemporary India.

 

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folks, arun shourie was a contmporary of mine when i was doing my

honours course in economics at a women's college in Delhi... He was

Good looking, intelligent and was much sought after by girls ( if i

recall) - i knew he would make it big... he was also the editor of

indian express and se4ved in the foreign service and has authored

many books...

 

so, child of devi- here is a 'controversial' book by a controversial

author - who explodes all the myths surrounding the 'philantrophical'

motives surrounding the conversion of hindus to christianity by

missionaries... please, read it and let me know!!! i will also raed

it and we will xchange notes!ok? smiles!!!!

 

love

[Guest guest]

Namaste MAA Adi_shakthi!

 

I have a great regard for Arun Shourie. When I was

kid, when he used to be editor of Indian Express, I

used to read his editorials with great interest though

I sometimes think that he has a little bit of

extremism in him.

 

I fully agree with you that altruism is not the motive

for converting; in fact the church has "business

plans" for mass conversion and sometimes the pastors

make their living off dollars per head converted. My

teacher the late Satguru Sivasubramuniyaswami made

considerable efforts to counter church propaganda.

 

 

Aum Namasivaya

 

 

 

 

 

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[Guest guest]

hello child of devi! how very interesting to learn that you are the

sisya of of the late Satguru Sivasubramoniyaswami ...

 

I had met Swamiji when he had come to MARYLAND a few years ago to

participate in a Homa in the Sri MURUGAN tEMPLE... wOW! i remember

how charismatic swamiji looked - we were all overwhelmed by his sheer

physical presence- six foot tall, swamiji had the perfect body of a

great Hatha Yogi and above all he had such luminosity in his face (

tejas) and the eyes were so bight .. i shivere in his presence... i

felt like i had directly come into contact with some super being!

 

i am a regular reader of 'hinduism today' and specially love

swamiji's translation of great shaivite texts like thirumandiram

etc...

 

SWAMIJI was very fond of taking part in 'question and answer'

seesions in which devotees could freely ask questions and clarify

their doubts...

 

in one of those question and answer sessions, a devotee asked

swamiji...

 

" Devotee: How do you view the practices of religious persons who

embrace all at once Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and all the

religions in a kind of universal ecumenism?

 

Gurudeva: This is a perfectly understandable phase of spiritual

evolution, but it is not the true or final path for sincere seekers.

It is certainly not what Shri Ramakrishna was trying to tell people,

nor was it what our own beloved satguru, Siva Yogaswami, stood for.

They were both staunch Hindus, one a Shakta and the other a Saivite,

who understood their religion deeply. Shri Ramakrishna did not cease

being a Shakti devotee, but so fully embraced Her worship that he

came to know Her vastness in embracing everything. Nor did Siva

Yogaswami abandon God Siva to become everything to everyone, but was

everything in being the perfectly devout Saivite.

 

They were simply indicating, as I do, that religions are one in their

movement toward God, some offering knowledge, others service, others

love, attainment and direct experience. At the same time, they are

different in their practices and attainments, and most assuredly

distinct in their beliefs, the foundation of the attitudes of their

members. It is good to love and respect all religions; it is a

necessary condition of spiritual unfoldment. But it is necessary to

keep firmly to a single path toward God. Our Siva Yogaswami taught

that a train can only run on the tracks. Following the path given by

our religion leads one onward through religious practices and sadhana

into divine realization. Otherwise, there is no longer a path, but a

trackless plane where each wanders totally on his own, as his own

guide, often without experience, in a desert of ignorance seeking

solace in a mirage, an imaginary enlightenment he can see just on the

horizon but which, in reality, does not exist.

 

Devotee: Some Hindus, particularly in the West, embrace all religions

as if they were one, feeling that sectarianism is too narrow, too

prone to conflicts. Why do you disagree with that view and prefer

instead to promote sectarianism?

 

Gurudeva: Religious people do not cause conflicts. They resolve them

and bring peace into the world. The Anglican British in India played

upon sectarianism to create strife among the members of the sects

toward one another to fulfill their own divide-and-rule policy,

hoping the sects would destroy each other. They did the same with the

caste and sub-caste positions, as well as with money exchange between

the provinces. Much strife was created through communalism, stirring

dissension between Hindus and Muslims, which was exactly what the

British were attempting to do.

 

I argue against nonsectarianism because it doesn't work. It may have

been good for a time, but proved to be a dead-end street, leading

well-intentioned followers into an abyss of mental confusion,

divorce, abortion and suicide, leading its followers to the

question, "Where is the true path of Hinduism?" Our final answer to

that question is the path of Hinduism is Saivism; it is Vaishnavism;

it is Shaktism; it is Smartism. It is not in a Hinduism that is

divorced from sectarianism, because Hinduism does not exist without

its four major sects or denominations. It is a four-fold religion,

the sum of its four sects. If you destroy the parts, you destroy the

whole. If you eliminate the four denominations, you also eliminate

Hinduism.

 

In theory, the idea that all religions are one, or that all religions

are the same, is a convincing notion. But the great experiment to

abandon one's religion to embrace all others or to relinquish one's

sect to become nonsectarian has not worked. Nor was this the first

effort to create an eclectic, man-made religion, one that took a

little of this and a little of that and a few ideas from its founder

and a few improvements by its successors, and so on into an

idealistic emptiness. This is always true of religious efforts which

do not uphold dharma. Throughout history utopian movements have risen

and fallen, bright and promising in their birth, neglected and

forgotten in their demise.

 

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very powerful words, would you not agree?

 

 

on another note, yes arun shourie is well known for hi controversial

views on many subjects but most journalists in india get 'publicity'

and 'attention' this way.... "they are opposed to everything"...

smiles...

 

thank you for sharing ....

 

 

love