they have struck again.

[Guest guest]

In

light of the latest carnage in Bombay,

Politicians

are not willing to take up the real issue.

 

Why

is everyone scared to say that what is shouted out daily in the mosques about

the people they live with being Kafirs has to be outlawed first?

 

The

temples in India pay heavy taxes to the Indian government, so much that they

are not able to properly develop or even support the temple community and

culture. In contrast, the many mosques and churches are funded by the

government (to work against India and other communities?). Why are we scared to

say that this is wrong and should be outlawed?!!! Why is there no legislation

outlawing this practice that is blatantly done every day in the streets and

villages in so called secular India? Why are they allowed to sow and develop

seeds of hatred in the young minds being sent for religious studies to the

mosques and churches?

 

The

first day that I went to my son’s school in Canada, I saw that they had

put up big charts in the reception area in the entrance of the school. There

were 6 charts, each talking about one religion. The first three were about

Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism. The first line in the Hindu religion chart read

that Hindus worship many Gods and Goddesses that are all different aspects and

forms of the same Universal God that they believe in. They had listed out the

different books in Hinduism and what they spoke about so well. How many

children in India are able to explain why we have multiple gods and goddesses?

We are made ashamed to talk about the Hindu religion and the media is made to

feel that it makes no sense!

 

It

is time we took pride in our identity and put up our heads and say we are

HINDUS and tell our children the same. Why allow our own country men to defame

our culture? It is time we inculcate religious studies in our schools that would

talk about the holy books of all religions (including the Geeta and Upanishads)

in their true light.

 

An article from a

Frenchman…

 

 

 

From The New Indian Express -

21.10.2008 Edition

Be aware of your roots

 

Francois Gautier

First Published : 21 Oct 2008 12:40:00 AM IST

 

AS a Frenchman, I was coached right from childhood that logic, what we in

France call Cartesianism, is the greatest gift given to man. Thus,I taught my

students in a Bangalore school of journalism that the first tool of a good

reporter is to go by his or her own judgment on the ground, with the help of

one's first-hand experience — and not by second hand information: what

your parents thought, what you have read in the newspapers, what your caste,

religion, culture pushes you into.

 

Yet in India, logic does not seem to apply to most of the

media, especially when it touches anything Hindu.

 

One cannot, for instance, equate Muslim terrorists who blow up innocent

civilians in market places all over India, with angry

ordinary Hindus who burn churches without killing anybody.

 

We know that most of these communal incidents often involve persons of the

same caste, Dalits and tribals, some converted to Christianity and some not.

 

Then, however reprehensible the destruction of the Babri Masjid, no Muslim

was killed in the process.

 

Compare this with the 'vengeance' bombings of 1993 in Mumbai, which killed

hundreds of innocents, mostly Hindus. Yet Indian and western journalists keep

matching up the two, or even showing the Babri Masjid destruction as the more

horrible act of the two.

 

How can you compare the RSS, a bunch of harmless daddies, with the Indian

Mujahideen, a terrorist organisation? How can you make of Narendra Modi a

mass killer, when it was ordinary middle-class, or even Dalit Hindus, who

went out on the streets in fury when 56 innocent people, many of them

women and children, were burnt in a train?

 

How can you lobby for the lifting of the ban on SIMI, an organisation which

is suspected of ha ving planted bombs in many Indian cities,killing hundreds

of innocents , while advocating the ban of the Bajrang Dal, which burns

churches when an 84-year-old Hindu swami and his Mataji are brutally

murdered?

 

There is no logic in the perspective of journalists in this country when

it comes to minorities. Christians are supposed to make up two per cent of

the population in India, but last Sunday many major television channels

showed live the canonisation ceremonies of sister Alphonsa, an obscure nun

from Kerala. Union minister Oscar Fernandes led an entire Indian

delegation to the Vatican ceremony along with the Indian ambassador. It would

be impossible in England, for instance, which may have a 2 per cent Hindu

minority, to have live coverage of a major Hindu ceremony, like the

anointment of a new Shankaracharya.

 

What was NDTV, which seems to have deliberately chosen to highlight this

nonevent, trying to prove? That it is secular? But it is absolutely

disproportionate. Some might even call it antinational.

 

The hea dline, 'India gets its first woman saint', in many newspapers, Indian

and western, is misleading.

 

India has never been short of saints. The woman sage from over 3,000 years

ago — Maithreyi, Andal, the Tamil saint from early in the first

Millennium CE and Akkamahadevi, the 15th century saint from modernday

Karnataka, are but a few examples.

 

What many publications fail to mention in this story is that this is the

first woman Christian saint, not the first Indian woman saint.

 

Such a statement is OK when it comes, for instance, from the BBC,which always

looks at India through the Christian prism, but when it comes to the Indian

media, it only shows their grave lack of grounding in Indian culture and

history.

 

The same thing is true of Sonia Gandhi, who seemed, even though the Congress

should by all means have already collapsed with 12 per cent inflation,

scandal after scandal, a nuclear deal with the US that leaves India

vulnerable to the Chinese and Pakistani nuclear threat, and bomb blast after

bomb blast, still ruling India with an iron hand. Yet newspapers and TV

channels keep praising Sonia Gandhi.

 

And the question must be asked: how is it possible that a nation of a billion

people, with some of the best minds on this planet, allows itself to be

governed by a non-Indian lady, who, however sincere she may be, is actively

overseeing the dismantling of whatever is good and true in India? It would be

impossible in France for a Hindu woman, or for that matter a non-Christian

person, who is just an elected MP, to govern our country from behind the

scenes like an empress. Why is it allowed in India and why is the Indian

press so selfrighteous about it ?

 

Finally, when will Indians start being proud of themselves and their own

culture and stop looking down on their own society ? This inferiority

complex, as expressed by NDTV's live coverage of the canonisation of

sister Alphonsa, is a legacy of the British, who strove to show

themselves as superior and In dian culture as inferior (and inheritor of the

'White Aryans', a totally false theory).

 

Is it not time to institute schools of journalism, both private

and public, where not only a little bit of logic is taught, but

where students are made aware of Indian history and the greatness of

Indian culture, so that when they go out reporting, they use their own

judgment and become Indian journalists, with a little bit of feeling, pride

and love for their own country?

 

fgautier <fgautier%40rediffmail.com>