[IndianCivilization] Rajeev srinivasan(rediff) on mother teresa

[Guest guest]

http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/oct/17rajeev.htm

The saint businessRajeev

Srinivasan | October 17, 2003 | 23:20 ISTIt requires only a slight change in

perspective to understand thewhole rationale behind the M Teresa sainthood

circus, which willculminate in a major song and dance on October 19th. That

perspectiveis: the Vatican is the world's oldest, largest and

richestmultinational corporation. And perhaps the most rapacious. Microsoft,eat

your heart out! As such, it runs on sound business principles: brand

building,competition, promotion, strategic alliances. The saint business is

aperfect example of promotion and brand building: it gets enormousfree

publicity (that money cannot buy) for the overall Vatican brand,and by

positioning a particular individual forcefully, it allows forbrand

extension/new product development, opening up new customerbases.The current

Pope understands this basic fact. His is clearly a keenbusiness brain. He also

believes more is better, for he hasmanufactured more saints in his tenure than

all his many predecessorsput together! So much so that an 85-year-old Italian

cardinal, SilvioOddi, was moved to criticize what he called the 'saint factory'

inhis memoirs.(http://www.christusrex.org/www1/news-old/4-96/es4-14-96.html

)Between 1978 and 1999, the Pope

created(http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/vatican4.htm ) 283 saints plus819

beatifications, a near-world record already. As of now, he hasimproved this to

477 saints plus 1,318 beatifications, 'more indeedthan all previous Popes

combined'! ('Pope turns Vatican into saintfactory,' Indian Express/Reuters,

October 14, 2003). An astonishingrecord!Some of his most dubious choices: Friar

Savanarola, who terrorizedpeople during the Inquisition, and who was hanged to

death 'onaccount of the enormous crimes of which [he] had been

convicted'(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13490a.htm ); and Josemaria

deBalaguer, founder of the shadowy Opus Dei group that leads theVatican's most

reactionary culture war agendas, including opposingbirth control, and which

reports directly to the Pope.This Pope is much more than the average godman,

obviously, for he hasalso pulverized the opposition: he practically did a

hostile takeoverof his main competition, Marxism, or at the very least

decimated it,some say partly by forming a tactical alliance with the CIA.

EvenRupert Murdoch would be impressed. Speaking of media barons, the Pope

handles the mass mediabrilliantly. In India, many Catholic priests regularly

joinjournalism school. Result? News hurtful to the Catholic image, forexample

the widespread sex and pedophilia scandals in the US or theindictment of

Catholic nuns for crimes against humanity in Rwanda arehardly mentioned in the

Indian media.Terrific image management, really. Top ad agencies couldn't

possiblydo any better.I have for years thought of religion as equivalent to the

marketingof soap powder, but the Vatican is especially clever at it. I thinkit

has something to do with the so-called Enlightenment in Europe.After the

Vatican lost its brute-force hold on the people of Europe(and not

coincidentally, they began thereafter to make intellectualprogress), it was

forced to market itself as a kinder and gentlerversion of what it was

before.But the Vatican now faces savvy American competition:

charismaticevangelists like Mormons, Pentecostals and Baptists. They are

makinginroads into Catholic strongholds such as Latin America. In astatement

pregnant with unintended irony, the Pope complained thatthey were 'preying upon

his flock like wolves' (Houston Chronicle,October 13, 1992). This, when the

godman himself traveled to Indiaand declared boldly that all of Asia was going

to be colonized by hissect in this millennium. Good for the goose, etc.?The

Vatican utilizes its vast infrastructure, money power, andnetwork of propaganda

contacts in such subtle ways that its victimsalmost never recognize they are

being taken for a ride. Interestinglyenough, it was through a damning Malayalam

short story that I readyears ago that I first understood the subtleties of the

saintbusiness.That short story was Vazhthappetta Kochappi (The Beatified

Kochappi),written, if I am not mistaken, by lapsed Catholic Ponkunnam Varki,who

often got into trouble with the faithful for letting the cat outof the bag, so

to speak. The 'beatified' refers to the state justbefore sainthood is

conferred, the waiting period. It is the story ofone Kochappi who, based on

certain alleged miracles, is beatified andon the high road to

sainthood.Kochappi is one of those wild eyed religious madmen, who go

aroundshouting, "Repent, ye sinners! For the end is nigh!", and "Yechildren of

serpents, ye shall fry in hell," or words to that effect,in this case in

Malayalam. The locals tolerate this eccentric.Then one day, Kochappi dies; and

thereafter, miracles take placeregularly at his grave. The blind begin to see;

lepers are cured; thelame start to walk; infertile couples return bearing

gurgling babies.The usual media limelight. Kochappi's case is referred to

theVatican, and he is, like M Teresa, fast tracked. He gets beatified.The

pilgrim traffic is tremendous; tens of thousands come every week;and hoteliers,

restaurateurs and vendors of mementos in the vicinityenjoy their windfall.

Apparently the way to get the great man'sblessings is to consume daily a little

soil from around his grave.There is great demand for the soil at Rs 100 per

scoop, and everynight many loads of earth are trucked in to replenish what is

removedduring the day by the pious. Local landowners make a nice living outof

their value added soil. All's well with the world.And then one night, horror of

horrors, Kochappi reappears, with histrademark, "Ye children of serpents!"

Apparently, he,the-about-to-be-sainted one, had not died, but just wandered

offsomewhere.Now ask yourself, what's a businessman to do? Faced with the

whollyunwelcome prospect of losing considerable revenue, not to

mentionprestige, the good folks there (including, if I remember right,

thepadres and other godmen) do what every self respecting capitalistwould do:

they beat Kochappi to death and bury him without furtherado!This cutting story,

in my opinion, exposes the humbug of the religionbusiness better than anything

else I have ever read. I have looked atsaints with skepticism ever since. That

skepticism has been bolstered by the facts around three of thesaints

manufactured in India (for some reason, they are all whitepeople, and not mere

brown locals):St Thomas the ApostleSt Francis Xavier of GoaSt M Teresa (nee

Agnes Bojaxhiou) of CalcuttaThere is considerable mystery surrounding the

Apostle St Thomas. Theconventional story that the faithful believe is that he

arrived inKerala in 52 CE, converted seven Namboothiri Brahmins, and set up

anumber of churches. Then he went to Madras, where he is said to havebeen

killed with a spear by Brahmins near St Thomas Mount. Hisskeleton was

'discovered' in 1523 CE in a tomb on the premises of theKapaleeshwar temple,

along with the spearhead that had allegedlykilled him.There are only a few

things wrong this story:There is absolutely no evidence that St Thomas went to

India, as inthe Indian Union of today. The word 'India' in those days

meantanything from Ethiopia to Persia, indeed anything east of PalestineMost

scholars believe the Thomas fable is a laterPortuguese/missionary fabrication,

deliberately confusing the apostlewith a relatively verifiable historical

figure, one Thomas of Cana, aSyrian merchant who went to Kerala to escape

religious persecution in345 CE. For details, see The Myth of Saint Thomas and

the MylaporeShiva Temple at hamsa.orgThere were no Namboothiri Brahmins in

Kerala at the time, when it wasentirely Buddhist and Jain. Namboothiris arrived

in Kerala some 500or 600 years later and this is on authority of E M S

Namboothiripad,veteran Marxist leader, himselfCertified by the Vatican itself,

St Thomas' skeleton has beenpreserved at Ortona in Spain since 1258 CE; now it

would be trulymiraculous if Thomas possessed two skeletonsThe plain truth

appears to be that the St Thomas tale was concoctedin order to give

Christianity in India the impression of being veryold and practically native.

This would have been a tactic inconversion attempts, another tactic being the

demolition of Hindutemples and the building of churches over them. The

ancientKapaleeshwar temple itself was demolished circa 1550 CE and convertedto

the San Thome Basilica (yes, dedicated to the same St Thomas) bythe

Portuguese.Now, on to the good deeds of St Francis Xavier. Here is an

extractfrom The Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts (Harper

Collins,1999):'Xavier embodies and exemplifies the bewildering contradictions

of[the Jesuits]. The Goans of the time saw the best side of Xavier inwhat

little of him they saw. They knew nothing of the part he hadplayed in

Portugal's Inquisition, nor did they know he had pleadedwith his monarch, Dom

Joao, to 'order the establishment of theInquisition in Goa.' Most of Xavier's

mass conversions --?duringwhich he Christianized entire villages in a stroke

--?were performedin Kerala."'Set up as a kind of tribunal, the Inquisition was

headed up by ajudge dispatched from Portugal? The palace in which these

holyterrorists ensconced themselves was known locally as Vodlem Gor--?the Big

House. It became a symbol of fear. Children were floggedand slowly dismembered

in front of their parents, whose eyelids hadbeen sliced off to make sure they

missed nothing. Extremities wereamputated carefully, so that a person could

remain conscious evenwhen all that remained was a torso and head. Male genitals

wereremoved and burned in front of wives, breasts hacked off and

vaginaspenetrated by swords while husbands were forced to watch.''So notorious

was the Inquisition in Portuguese India that word ofits horrors even reached

home. The archbishop of Evora, in Portugal,eventually wrote, "If everywhere the

Inquisition was an infamouscourt, the infamy, however base, however vile,

however corrupt anddetermined by worldly interests, it was never more so than

in Goa."And it went on for two hundred years.'In Xavier's 'defense', Roberts

says, 'Xavier was undoubtedly not theonly one to request the Inquisition -- and

he didn't live long enoughto help supervise the fun himself.' Small mercies,

indeed.And finally, to our heroine M Teresa. Now MT, it appears, was

anordinary, garden variety missionary godwoman prone to uttering pioushomilies.

The good citizens of Calcutta welcomed her when she showedup there and announced

her intention to do 'good works,' whateverthat meant. MT toiled in well-deserved

obscurity for years until she got a hugelucky break. Malcolm Muggeridge, a

British newspaperman who gotreligion in his old age, stumbled upon her and

induced the BBC to doa feature on her. The rest, as they say, is history.

ChristopherHitchens recounts her rise and rise in his savagely witty The

Ghoulof Calcutta(http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu/Teresa/hitchens_nov1992.html

),quoting Dante, that 'The Pope is still fornicating with the Emperor,'that is,

ostentatious religiosity flirting with secular power.There's a lot of

fascinating stuff out there that is ignored amidstthe unrelenting hagiography.

For instance, an interview with Hitchensafter MT's

death(http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu/Teresa/hitchens_interview.html ), anda

review of Hitchens' The Missionary

Position(http://www.ffrf.org/fttoday/august96/hakeem.html ). Hitchenssummarizes

the real MT as 'a religious fundamentalist, a politicaloperative, a primitive

sermonizer and an accomplice of worldlysecular powers.' By the miracle of

propaganda, this scheming godwomanhas now been elevated to the rarefied realms

of sainthood. Lest you think Hitchens is on a monomaniacal trip to besmirch a

poorold woman, here is an article by Sunanda K Datta

Ray(http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu/Teresa/sunanda_dattaray.html ) andfinally, a

review of? Aroup Chatterjee's 'Mother Teresa: the FinalVerdict,' a rather

comprehensive report(http://are.berkeley.edu/~atanu/Jarts/teresa.html ).The

picture that emerges is a little less than flattering. MT makesgreat copy,

though, for the Vatican's brand-building. Indiantaxpayers paid for a grand

state funeral for her, unaware that shesingle-handedly set back India's own

brand image by ten years byprojecting a picture of a prone, impoverished and

criminallynegligent country that needed a white missionary to help

itsdestitute. Since both the Marxists of Calcutta and MT needed toperpetuate

poverty for their own agendas, was there a little tacticalalliance between the

Vatican and the Marxists on this front? There is also the question of the large

amounts of money -- untoldmillions of dollars --?that were donated by the

credulous, and whichdisappeared into the coffers of MT's organization, never to

reappear.Or perhaps, to reappear discreetly as part of the Vatican'sconversion

efforts?And then there is the small matter of the unseemly hurry tofast-track

the godwoman to sainthood. It appears that the Vaticanbroke all its guidelines

about 'miracle' verification and waitingperiods in its haste to get the deed

done. It took Joan of Arc 500years to be sainted, but MT made it in six.

Clearly, we are living in'Internet time.'Apparently the guidelines call for two

genuine 'miracles.' In MT'scase, here are the 'miracles:'A woman named Monica

Besra (a non Catholic at that!) who had a tumorin her stomach, prayed to MT. Lo

and behold, the cancer disappeared.Only one slight problem: Monica's husband,

and the doctors whoattended to her, say the tumor was treated. Said the doctor:

'It isnot a miracle when there is definitive clinical evidence of hertaking

tubercular drugs for nine months and the tumor disappearing.'But who cares

about these minor technical details?A film cameraman shot footage of MT, and

lo! she was well lit,obviously with her divine light, even though there was

little ambientlight. Only one slight problem: the cameraman acknowledged that

hewas using unfamiliar film for the first time, and he probablyoverexposed

it.So if these are the Vatican's 'saints,' we must really hope we arespared the

Vatican's 'sinners.' And now we understand the reason forthe unseemly haste:

they had better get the deed done, sealed anddelivered, before further

questions crop up about the 'miracles.' After all, the Vatican is very unhappy

that the Pope did not get theNobel Prize this year. They made their complaint

public, much thesame way a businessman took out full page ads in American

newspaperscomplaining that his role in the invention of the MRI had

beenoverlooked. This must be another marketing tactic, intended to makethe

Nobel Committee think twice next year about awarding the prize tothe Pope, thus

adding a final marketing triumph to his resume beforehe goes on to the Great

White Cathedral in the Sky.The saint business is absolutely brilliant, whoever

invented it was amarketing genius: you get enormous publicity, the gullible

paygigantic amounts of money, and you can attribute it all to selflessservice.

The Beatified Kochappi's friends would approve.

[uNQUOTE]______________________Want

to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Messenger

http://mail.messenger..co.ukTo from this group, send an email

to:IndianCivilizationTo change your subscription

options go to this

URL..IndianCivilization/join?referer=1Your use of

is subject to the