[world-vedic] Open Letter To The Bishops Of India

[Guest guest]

Dr. Pravin Togadiya (India)

An Open Letter To The Bishops Of India--On the eve of the arrival of

Rev. Pope John Paul II to India

 

Dear Bishop,

 

I must compliment the Church for the boldness that the Archbishop of

Delhi, Rev. Alan De Lastic demonstrated the other day by rejecting our

demand for an apology for Church's past and ongoing misdeeds in spite

of clinching evidence about its conversion activity in this country by

resorting to force, allurement and fraud. I must also pay tribute to

the perseverance of the church leaders in pursuing a goal, which has

its foundations on complete falsehood.

 

But if the emerging evidence about the anti-secular, anti-national and

anti-pluralistic conversion activity of the Christian missionaries in

this country all these years is any indication then time is fast

catching up with them. So we again reiterate here that the Church

leaders starting with Pope John Paul II should accept the truth,

apologise for the crimes the missionaries have committed against the

people of this ancient country by striking at the root of their secular

traditions and promise that they won't henceforth convert the poor,

hapless people. The time has indeed come for the missionaries to accept

the ultimate truth with humility before it exposes them completely by

emerging from rooftops.

 

What constitutes the ultimate irony is the fact that while the Church

is running its hate-Hindu campaign in the name of secularism and using

Gandhiji and his ideology as a shield, the collected works of Gandhiji

are replete with the strongest condemnation of the Christian

missionaries. He went as far as denouncing the Church's conversion

activity as "the deadliest poison ever to have sapped the fountain of

the earth".

 

Other lines of Gandhiji on activities of the missionaries which one

finds in his collected works: "There is nothing but vilification of

Hinduism in the books distributed by the missionaries. The other day a

missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket,

converted the famine-stricken by distributing it amongst them and then

got them to demolish their own temple. That was outrageous. The advent

of a missionary in a Hindu household has meant the disruption of the

family. The missionaries are vendors of goods who target the most

susceptible when they are most vulnerable, using just not dialogue but

allurement and violence". "If I had power and could legislate, I should

certainly stop all proselytizing."

 

Not to speak of the description by Gandhiji of how the missionaries

tried to convert even him. The collected works of Gandhiji, who had

repeatedly appealed to the Church not to denationalize the poor,

contain several accounts in which the missionaries acknowledge to

Gandhiji that the institutions and services of the Church are indeed

incidental and that their main aim is to gather a harvest of converts.

 

That the church leaders continue to use the name of the Mahatma in

their defence in spite of his severest condemnation of their activities

is indeed a measure of their legendary capacity to indulge in

falsification by using the name of the apostle of truth himself.

 

There is tell-tale evidence to prove that the Church is still using the

same base methods to convert the people and denigrate Hindu religion,

which it was using several decades ago. Take the example of Dangs

district in Gujarat. In the past four years there have been over a

dozen and a half instances of desecration of the images of Hindu

deities by the local Christians at the instance of their preachers,

leading to frequent communal tension in the tiny district.

 

Many of these image desecration cases in Dangs are on police record. In

fact, just before controversy began in Dangs late last year the police

recorded three cases of image desecration and even arrested 25

Christians in these cases. That the Christian population in Dangs

jumped from 7824 in 1991 (census figure) to almost 35,000 in 1998 (even

the Christian preachers admit to a figure of 29,000) is perhaps the

worst example of aggressive proselytization.

 

Significantly, the systematic desecration of images in Dangs began only

after the Christian population had increased substantially, thus

exposing once again the fact that the aggressive designs of the Church

begin only after it manages to change the local demographic scenario.

The story of Dangs perfectly matches with the activities of the

missionaries in other areas over the past several years. It has been

graphically described and with clinching evidence in the 1954 Niyogi

Commission report on the missionaries' activity in the then Madhya

Bharat, which leaves little doubt that the activity of the missionaries

is not spiritual but one that aims at effecting demographic changes by

increasing the numbers and control the nation.

 

Reacting to the demand that Pope John Paul II apologize for the alleged

conversions in Goa during the medieval period, Rev. Alan De Lastic said

the other day: "How far in history are we going back? I think that we

all need to apologize to each other for a lot of things." It was at

best a crude attempt to brush under the carpet what is known as one of

the darkest chapters in India's history in which the most heinous

crimes were committed against humanity in the name of conversion.

 

How lakhs (one lakh = 100,000) of Hindus were ruthlessly persecuted and

prevented from even offering their daily prayers during the Portuguese

rule in Goa, how hundreds of Hindu temples were razed to the ground

during that period and how fearful Hindus were forced to solemnize

their marriages in boats in the midst of rivers and the sea to escape

the preying eyes of the ruthless Jesuits, has been graphically

described by A.K. Priolkar in his book "The Goa Inquisition" and by the

great statesman Sardar K.M. Pannikar, in his book 'Asia and Western

Dominance'.

 

The graphic accounts they have given of the Portuguese atrocities in

Goa at the instance of crusading saints like St. Dominic and St. Xavier

are based on official Portuguese documents and so there is not an iota

of doubt about their authenticity.

 

Priolkar's book, which describes how the new forced Hindu converts were

flung into firepits by the Roman Catholic preachers under the laws of

the Inquisition when they were found to be secretly following their old

Hindu customs, can move even the demons. But it refuses to move Rev. De

Lastic and his fellow preachers. We simply can't comprehend as to what

kind of apology he is seeking from the Hindus when he says:" I think we

all need to apologize to each other for a lot of things." Does he have

a single example to prove that at any point of time in history the

Hindus committed such atrocities on Christians or for that matter on

any other community?

 

When it comes to conversion Rev. De Lastic says: "We propose but don't

impose our beliefs." I would like to ask him and the Church leaders if

that is truly the case, then why the missionaries of all hues in this

country have been repeatedly opposing enactment of foolproof conversion

laws? Right from the day India got independence attempts to enact a

strong anti-conversion law at the national level have been vehemently

opposed and repeatedly browbeaten by the missionaries in spite of the

fact that some of these attempts had the support of such secular

leaders like former Prime Minister Morarji Desai.

 

The missionaries first did it in 1954 and then in 1960 by raising false

cries of Hindu communalism and then in 1978 when they vehemently

opposed Om Prakash Tyagi's Bill on religious freedom which had the

complete support of the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai besides large

sections of the intelligentsia including retired high court judges.

This is how Morarjibhai reacted in a letter to Mother Teresa when she

opposed Tyagi's bill: "The Bill is an attempt to see that poor and

illiterate enjoy religious freedom without any fear. It does not

adversely affect propagation of religion. If charity and philanthropy

are not connected with any ulterior motive they are beneficial. But

charity and conversions can't go together. And this is what Tyagi, a

Janata Party leader said about his Bill: "The Bill aims at preventing

the missionaries from converting the poor people by exploiting their

poverty. Only those are opposed to it who are against national interest

or do not care for the nation's long term interest.

 

Significantly, apart from Mahatma Gandhi and Morarji Desai several

national leaders and philosophers of repute including Swami Vivekananda

and Chakravarty Rajagopalachari denounced the systematic conversion

activity by the missionaries from time to time. When the debate over

conversions has reached such a high pitch it is incumbent on the Church

leaders to clarify as to whether they agree with these great men or

else summon the courage to denounce their views.

 

A landmark Supreme Court judgment in 1977 following a keenly fought

case had clearly said that the right to, propagate religion on the part

of any religious group does not mean the right to convert. The apex

court had virtually ruled that conversion by missionaries was

unconstitutional. But in spite of the judgment the missionaries have

continued to convert using base means. The Church leaders must clarify

how long they will continue to violate the Constitution of India?

 

Worse, however, is the charge of practicing double standards that the

missionaries would find difficult to defend against. In 1995 when Pope

John Paul II was told by Roman Catholic preachers in South America

about the conversion of 6 lakh Roman Catholics by Protestants in the

region, he called the Protestants "rapacious wolves" (It was widely

reported in local newspapers).

 

Both Roman Catholic as well as Protestant missionaries should now tell

us as to what they should be labeled as in Bharat. Worse than rapacious

wolves? Recently, when the Pope was told in Austria about the

aggressive proselytizing activity of the Protestants, he asked the

local Roman Catholics not to be secular. And just imagine the word

"secular" is the missionaries' strongest shield in this country.

 

History proves that the missionaries' ultimate aim is

denationalization. The most recent example of how conversion leads to

denationalization and secessionism was seen in East Timor where the

locals, who were converted by the Portuguese in the previous centuries

have finally separated from Indonesia after much bloodshed. The Niyogi

Commission report records extracts from a Roman Catholic publication,

"Nishkalank" calling upon the Christians in the 1950s not to support

the struggle for Goa's independence from Portuguese rule.

 

The publication said: "Why should India desire that Portugal, which has

been ruling for 400 years over Goa, should surrender it? Only a handful

of Goans and Indians are shouting for Goa's merger with India. Those

who are following this course are giving an unrighteous lead to India".

The Church's role in the secessionist movements in the Northeast are

too well known to merit description.

 

Does it leave any doubt about the missionaries' anti-secular,

anti-democratic and anti-national role in this country? Does it leave

any doubt that the activities they have been running in the name of

public welfare all these years have had only one goal: Conversion and

thereby denationalization. The idea behind this communication to the

Bishops is to make them aware of the state of the Hindu mind against

the ongoing onslaughts of the missionaries.

 

But let it be clear that the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Hindus in

general are by no means against Christians but against their preachers'

provocative activities, which strike right at the root of Bharat's

ancient pluralistic traditions. Whether your leader should apologize

or not is now for you to decide.

 

Thanking you,

 

Yours in the service of

Maa Bhaarati and Dharma,

Sd./-

[Dr. Pravin Togadiya]

{M.S., Cancer Surgeon}

Secretary General

Vishva Hindu Parishad International