christianity an imperialist ideology

CHRISTIANITYAn Imperialist Ideology

Major T.R. VedanthamRam Swarup

Sita Ram Goel

VOICE OF INDIA

Christianity: An Imperialist Ideology

Pdf: 2015.

1st Edn.: March, 1983

I

Church as a Tool of Imperalism in theModern World

Major T.R. Vedantham

Christianity, throughout the ages, has been apolitically oriented religion. The unholy church-statealliance which began at the beginning of the 3rd centuryA.D. acquired a set pattern at the end of the 4th centuryA.D. under Emperor Constantine. In the centuries thatfollowed, the church-state relationship played animportant part in the fortunes of the Empire ofByzantium and was further strengthened underCharlemagne.

The wars that the European countries waged againsteach other then and in the period that followed, were allinstigated by the Popes, who claimed both temporal andspiritual power. After this came the ProtestantReformation, when Europe was convulsed by a series ofwars, called the ìwars of Religionî, caused by the hostilitybetween the Protestant and the Catholic blocs.

The French revolution towards the end of the 18thcentury and the upsurge of rationalism in the 19th centurydid weaken the power and influence of the Church on theGovernment. But it did not weaken the fanaticism of the

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Church which now became active in Asia and Africathrough numerous missionaries.

Medieval Europe was feudal. So was the Church and asa rule they worked had in glove and shared power. TheEuropean invaders brought this tradition with them to Asiaand Africa and have always been trying to seize politicalpower.

Christianity proper came to India with the Nestorians,also known as Syrian Christians, by about the end of the 4thcentury from Antioch and Damascus. Persecuted in theirown country they sought asylum in Kerala and were wellreceived and looked after. Having no proselytizing zeal,they had a peaceful co-existence with the Hindus forcenturies.

Christianity as an aggressive, acclesiastical colonialism ofthe European invaders starts with the advent of thePortuguese under Vasco da Gama. The Portuguesecombined trade with proselytism and colonial expansion.The ships of Vasco da Gama had the Cross painted on theirsails, but at the same time carried cannons on the deck withwhich to frighten the Zamorin. His seamen were mostlypirates while at sea, but they took holy orders in the Churchwhen they came ashore for long periods. Force was freelyused for conversion. After they got a tiny bit of a territorialfooting here, they introduced a branch of the notoriousSpanish Inquisition in Goa.1

Vasco da Gamaís initial efforts to gain converts were notvery successful. He however, made it clear to the King ofPortugal that territories in this country could not bepermanently and successfully held unless the people weremade to adopt the Catholic Religion and made loyal to theChurch. The king of Portugal then asked Ignatius Loyola tosend a battalion of Jesuits to India. Ignatius Loyola could

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not grant this request immediately. But in 1541, St. FrancisXavier was sent. He was in India for about four years.During this period he is said to have converted at least fiftythousand fishermen along the West Coast.

The fishermen in the southwestern and thesoutheastern coastal regions were being constantlyharassed by pirates. One Christian fisherman living at thattime in Goa persuaded the fishermen of the Kerala coast toapply to the Portuguese Viceroy for help. The Portuguesewere themselves pirates and were only too willing to doaway with their rivals on the Arabian coast. So the Viceroyagreed, subject to the condition that the whole communitybecame Christian and subjects of the King of Portugal. Asan initial move, the members of the delegation werebaptized. A fleet was sent, and the pirates roaming aboutthe West Coast were dispersed, as also on the CoromandalCoast. A few weeks later, the rest of the group of fishermenwere also baptized.

St. Francis Xavier, about this time, wrote to the King ofPortugal that the only hope of mass conversions on theWest Coast lay in the use of the temporal power of theState. The king responded by issuing orders that in Goaand other Portuguese settlements ìall idols shall be soughtout and destroyed and severe penalties shall be laid uponall such as shall dare to make an idol or shall shelter or hidea Brahmin.î2 He also ordered that special privileges shouldbe given to Christians so that it acts as an incentive forconversion.

This work was followed by Robert de Nobili, the ItalianJesuit who established himself at Madurai in 1605. He issaid to have baptized 87 Brahmins, and about a lakh ofnon-Brahmins. But they all melted away after his death. Hewas in the long run a failure.3 This was due among other

Church as a Tool of Imperialism 3


things to the fact that Christianity was highly exclusive andridden with untenable dogmas and doctrines. Hence acompromise formula of coexistence before a finaltransition could not work. One other important reason thatcontributed to his failure was that his approach toconversion was somewhat non-political and so he did notget adequate support from the Government of Portugal aswell as from the Church.4

The Protestant missions came to India in the beginningof the 18th century with the landing of German Lutheransat Tranquebar in 1706. Right from the beginning theeducational institutions of the missions identifiedthemselves with the political interests of the Government.Even as early as two years after the First war ofIndependence (1857), Lord Palmerston, the PrimeMinister of England, announced that it was in the interestsof Britain to provide for the diffusion of Christianitythroughout the length and breadth of India. The Secretaryof State, Lord Halifax, appended another statement to it:ìEvery additional Christian is an additional bond of unionwith this country and an additional source of strength tothe Empire.î5

After 1857, the British were genuinely afraid ofinterfering with the religious setup of the country. Soonthey realized that there was not that much of a risk. Theyfirst permitted Christian missionary activities to a limitedextent. It paid good dividends. Then they went all out insupport of the missions.6 This policy they have continuedwith American collaboration after independence. Theattitude of the Government of India has been one ofsupreme indifference. The crux of the problem is that thepeople at the helm of affairs do not understand theseriousness of the threat.

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Seventy years of mission work made it clear to themissionaries that the depressed, the untouchables andothers at the lower strata of Hindu society were aloneamenable and willing to come into the Christian fold. In1920, the Jesuit missions sent a report to the Pope thatthere was no hope of the educated elite, the upper castesand the intelligentsia, ever becoming Christian. But theHarijan communities were excellent targets for theirproselytizing activities. It was also clear that even with thesecommunities, conversion by faith was out of question.Economic aid and welfare measures as incentives werealone applicable. The object was to build up numbers andthey were to be constituted as a seprate community isolatedfrom the rest of the people. Disruption of Indian societywould thereby follow. The position was the same withregards to the tribals.

Different methods were adopted to keep thechurchgoer loyal to the British Empire. One of thecommon practices in most of the churches was to read outchapters 2 of 1 Timothy which runs as follows: ìFirst of allthen I urge that petitions, prayers and intercessions andthanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all whohold high positions that with all reverence and dignity wemay lead a quiet and undisturbed life... etc.î This Biblicalexhortation was interpreted to mean that Christians shouldbe loyal to the British Government and should not have anytruck with the ìagitatorsî of the national movement.

The political ideology of Christian missionary hasfollowed the same pattern in different countries duringthe last one century and more. The missionaries go for theoppressed and the rejects of every society, give theminducements, economic aid, etc. and then prop them up as

5Church as a Tool of Imperialism


a force in support of the colonial rule which in most caseswas the British Government of the country.

The same thing happened in China in the 19thcentury. The missionaries built up a Chinese Christiancommunity loyal to the foreign rulers and hostile to theirown country. The part that they played in the ìArrow Warîand the ìOpium Warî is a sordid tale. About a hundredyears ago the Dowager Empress of China complained:ìFirst the missionary, then the trader, then the gunboat,and then the land-grabbin. This is the order of events inthe Chinese minds.î It ultimately resulted in the BoxerRebellion and the Taiping Rebellion, in which twentymillion people died. Majority were Christians.7

Towards the end of the 19th century, Christianity wasintroduced into Burma as well. The tribes known as theKarens were the oppressed and the suppressedcommunities in that country at that time. Theycorresponded to the Harijans of India. The response toChristianity from the Buddhist Burmese was very poor. TheChristian missionaries converted more than 80% of theKarens (aborigines of Burma) to Christianity. They weregiven schools, hospitals, new houses, economic aid andother welfare measures in support. Even though theybecame Christians, the majority retained much of theirancestral beliefs and practices. There was no religiousconversion through faith. By 1920, the more literateamong the Karens were put through the seminary at Insein(a township north of Rangoon) and later sent out toreform the tribes. It was a partial success. By 1930, a smallband of educated Karens had come up. They groomed theentire lot to accept and adopt Western culture, religionand ways of life. They built up a local militia known as theKaren Irregulars. These were given military training and

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used to serve as additional flank support to the Britishforces of occupation in the country. The Karen Irregularswere more of less on the same footing as the AuxiliaryForce of India which consisted of Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmese. During the turbulent years between 1924 and1940 in Burma, when the nationalist upsurge took place,the Karen Irregulars faithfully discharged their duties andobligations as subjects of the white man, by supporting theBritish and betraying their own country, When Burmabecame independent, the Karens were expelled anddriven out of the lower Burma regions. They took refuge inthe nothern triangle. They are now collaborating with theKachins and the Chinese to help the Naga rebels to go toChina for training and for their saft return through theBurma border, before re-entering India.8

There was some talk of the British giving DominionStatus to Burma and installing the Karens in power. It didno, however, turn out that way. The Karens are today in thewilderness serving as the errand boys of the Chinese, theKachins and the Nagas. This is a typical example of the wayChristianity and the Church has been used to bolster upthe colonial empires of the West in Asian countries. Thestandard method has always been to exploit the socialinequality and injustice in Asian countires, and then splitthem into hostile groups and support the one against theother in the name of the Church.

The Czarist regime in Russia was a tyranny fullysupported by the Greek Orthodox Church. In March 1959,Bishop Rajah Manikkam met the then Chinese premierChou-en-Lai in Peking and wanted religious freedom forthe Christians to be restored and ties to be renewed withthe World Council of Churches. He was told in clear terms:ìSurely it cannot be on the basis of Ecclesiastical

7Church as a Tool of Imperialism


Colonialismî. It was further made clear that China had toexpel all foreign missionaries who were at heart colonialistsand agents of foreign powers and did great harm to China.Chou-en-Lai also pointed out that in China there wascomplete religious freedom to every citizen, only subject tothe condition that he realized that his religion was hispersonal and private affair and that he could not andshould not try to make an impact of it on his neighbour. Noone in the country, he said, was allowed to bring religioninto politics. When Bishop Rajah Manikkam furtherquestioned him about the Christian leaders imprisoned inChina, he was told: ìIt is simple, because they have tried tooverthrow our Government under the instigation of ourenemies, and no Government worth its name can allowthat.î Later, Bishop Raja Manikkam wrote to the editor ofthe China Bulletin, New York, saying: ìIn my opinionnothing is harming our relationship with our Chinesebrethren as much as the circular letters about Chinawritten by Americans, particularly ex-Chinese missionaries,now at Hongkong. The same story is now being re-enactedin the Northeastern tribal territories of Nagaland, Mizoramand Arunachal. It is a war declared by the soldiers of theAmerican Baptist Mission on the Hindu Government ofIndia. The Americans and the British are reported to havetold the tribals that they were not Indians because theywere Christians.î9

The havoc which the foreign missionaries of theAmerican Baptist Mission Church played in theNortheastern tribal territories, Nagaland and Mizoram,deserves special mention. During the years 1840 to 1920,the then British Government took a lot of trouble tosubdue the tribals in these areas. There were manyexpeditions and many casualties on both sides. It may be

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said that by 1900 the British were fairly successful inbringing these territories under their control for allpractical purposes. The Christina missions then startedtheir conversion work. It paid them rich dividends. Thethen British Government gave the missionaries its fullsupport. English education was introduced and with thatthe Western mode of life. When the Second World Warstarted in the year 1939, there were 90% Christians insome areas and in others about 50 to 60%. Right from thebeginning they were indoctrinated with the theory thatthey were not Indians because they were christians and alsothat being a Mongoloid race, and the Indians being non-Mongoloid, they certianly couldnít be Indians.

The 1963, one Rev. Scott offered to negotitate with therebel Nagas and bring about an understanding and thensettle the disputes amicably. The Government of Indiaaccepted the offer. It was then found that right from thestart he was actively engaged in instigating them to furthrintensify the fight. The first advice he gave to the rebels wasto stand firm on the principle that ìthe Nagas were notIndians because they were Christians.î He was pulled outand thrown out of the country. The short-sightedpoliticians in Delhi were slowly beginning to see theenormous danger involved in tolerating foreign Christianmissionary activity in the country.10

During the last six months and more, some strangethings are happening in the coastal region of Tamil Nadu.The Christian evangelists are carrying on a vigorouspropaganda among the Christians, particularly thefishermen communities along the sea coast and the slumareas in the cities, telling them in plain language that alanding of the American Marine Commandos on theIndian coast is imminent. The gist of their thesis is: ìYou are



the rejects of Indian society. You are slaves. The Americansare our friends; they are not only willing but also anxious toliberate you. That will make you enjoy all fundamentalhuman rights enhrined in the U.N. Charter. So the churchhas formulated what is known as ëLiberation Theologyí andhence this preaching. All of you should now try toconcentrate in camps and area not far from the coast andwithin reasonable distance of seaports wherever possible.An American landing of troops here is possible any time.They will liberate you and thereafter it will be the kingdomof God for you.î A lot more of pro-American propaganda isgoing on in the name of Christianity. It is all very cleverlyworded. In substance it is a direct incitement to rebellion.American help is taken for granted. Communal riots areflaring up. All this has given rise to the opinion in theminds of the public that the Christians are gettingorganised as the fifth-column for USA and the Muslims aregetting organised as the fifth-column for Pakistan. How farpolice intelligence is aware of all these happenings and ifso what action they would take, remains to be seen.11

The stage is now set for a military solution in Mizoram,where all negotiations have failed. During the last WorldWar there was a sarcastic remark against Winston Churchillsaying that he was absolutely determined to fight theGermans to the last Frenchman and the last Russian.A parallel situation exists in Mizoram today. The tribals aremade the scapegoats for fighting the indirect war of theAnglo-American group.

In 1924, an American missionary, Dr. Stanley Jones,toured this country extensively preaching Christianity.Hindus asked him a simple question: ìWe Hindus arewedded to religious tolerance. We approach the Christianswith goodwill and sympathy. We have in our country,

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Hindus, Parsis, Buddhists, Arya Samajists, Brahmos,Theosophists, Vaishnavites, Saivaites, Sikhs, etc. We getalong amicably and take part in each otherís celebrations,festivals and congregational worship. As Indians we have acommon base. Why is it that Christians alone adopt anattitude of exclusiveness and hostility and refuse to have acommon base with us?î Dr. Stanley Jones said: ìIunderstand your question very well. You are trying to sellme your idea of the syncretical method. With thissyncertical method you destroyed Buddhism in the land ofits birth. With this same method you blunted the sword ofIslam. If I should accept your proposition then it is only aquestion of time before the Indian Christian communitywill become christianised members of the Hindu society.This is a catastrophe that we are determined to prevent.îThe emphasis is on the negative aspect. There is a saying inthe Bible: ìHe who is not with me scattereth abroad.î(Matthew, 12.30)

The motivation for Christian evangelism is simple.Disrupt and destroy. The missions make no secret of it. It isa mistake to think that Christian missionary enterprise is areligious movement. The Christians themselves neverclaimed it to be a religious movement. It was a declarationof war and an attack on the religious and cultural setup ofthe people of Asia and Africa, and it was always politicallymotivated.

Traditional religion has collapsed in Christendom,which is no more Christian. This is a post-war phenomenon.The divorce of the Church and State relationship, the oldpattern, is now complete. But it has now emerged in adifferent form. The old theology based on untenabledoctrines and dogmas has been totally discarded by theindustrialized West with its new religion of scientific



technology. The Church, therefore, is undergoing aprocess known to social scientists as politicization. The termdoes not mean merely political activity. By politicization ofreligion is meant the internal transformation of the faithitself so that it comes to be defined in terms of politicalvalues. This has resulted in the entry of the State into areaswhich were formerly the traditional preserve of thechurches. That means, the Church-State relationship hasbeen reinstated in a new form. The Church is today a toolfor organizing political action as decided and directed bythe State. There is a clear distinction between theinvolvement of religion with politics and thereinterpretation of religious values as political values. Thisis the politicization that is happening in the modernChurch. If the Church does not agree then the justificationfor its existence just disappears. Christians as a religiousbody do not exist today in the Western world in ameaningful way. But Christian evangelism is still reaping aharvest in the Third World. Thus the politicalconsciousness of Christianity in the developing worldactually originated within the politicized churches of theold world. The Christian religion has lost the power andthe confidence to define its areas of influence andjurisdiction even on questions of social morality. In theirdeath agonies, the churches are distributing the causes oftheir own sicknessóthe politicization of religion of thechurches in the developing world in Asia and Africa. Thiscan be a fatal inheritance in the Eastern countries wherereligion is no yet so dead.13

Liberation Thoelogy

This is the post-war model of Christian religion. TheChristian missions now claim that it has become their duty

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to liberate the oppressed and the suppressed all over theworld. This movement works through the World Council ofChurches (WCC) and the International Christian Council,etc. These organisations work under the direction andcontrol of the governments of the Western superpowers.The USA, Canada, Britian, and Australia are in theforefront. USSR and China also seem to have a finger inthe pie on their own terms. The Anglo-American group iskeen to liberate India, Afghanistan, Laos, Kampuchea,Viet-Nam, Thailand, Cuba, Iran, etc. According to them,Tibet, South Korea, South Africa, Rhodesia, EI Salvador,Nicaragua, Diego Garcia etc. do not come into this scheme.Countries in the Soviet zone of influence feel that thesecountries like Tibet, Salvador, South Korea etc. have to beurgently liberated from the ìtyranny of the Imperialistsîand the ìReactionaries.î Leftist groups have also beenmaking lot of noise about the need for drastic action to betaken to eliminate Racism from Africa.14

It is interesting to note that many of the high-rankingdignitaries of the Church, occupying key positions in theseWorld Councils and the international missionaryorganizations, happen to be all war veterans of World WarII vintage. These Patriarchs installed as the heads of theChurch hierarchy are talking in the language of exportingrevolution to other countries. These Christianorganizations, when making serious inroads into politics,use some special type of technical phraseology to makeeverything euphemistic. In the concept of LiberationTheology are also included the concepts of internaldisruption, use of violence, civil disobedience, organizingresistance movements, etc. 15

While the programme continues and even expands it isworth noting that most of the money disbursed throughthese special funds has come not from traditional donors,



but from new ones, mostly governments. Thisgovernmental element worries some critics within theorganizations who see in it some dangerous portents. It isbreach of the Church and State relationship brought abutnot necessarily by philosophical arguments, but bypragmatic ones involving a political approach. Anotherserious implication is that some governments will beconsciously aiding subversion in some other country. In1925, in a conference at Stockholm sponsored by Life &Work and the Faith & Other Movements they postulatedthe slogan ìDoctrine divides: Service Unites.î These criticsor the dissenters now feel that this slogan has now beenreversed to read ìDoctrine unites; Service divides.î Theethical philosophy of Jesus is dead, and a politicalphilosophy of violence has now taken its place. Thedeveloped countries are now making a serious effort tosubvert and overthrow the governments established by lawin the developing countries, using the churches as theirtools.16

John Foster Dulles has published a book, War or Peacein 1957 (Macmillan, N. York). In the chapter ëPolicies inAsiaí he writes: ìIn the past the United State policy in theeast rested on the foundations of friendly relations withChina. Our people, through Government, missionaries,doctors and educators, have shared and built Chinesefriendship for more than a century. Out of it have comesuch political doctrines as the ëHay doctrine ëHay doctrineof the open doorí in China, the ëHughes doctrine ofterritorial integrity.í Out of it have also come Boxer Fundscholarships, Christian Colleges in China, and Christianmedical centres, including a Rockfeller Foundationdevelopment at Peking.î17 Here Mr. Dulles is making aclear-cut statement that the USA has been using the

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Church and the mission organizations and institutions tobuild up its close relations with China. The Church inChina is no more under the tutelage of the USA. Similarchanges are coming up in other areas also.

Sixty years ago Christianity was at loggerheads withCommunism. But today Liberation Theolgy is working inthe grooves of Marxism. This has produced a mostanomalous situation for the World Council of Churches,which is very much dependent on the Anglo-Americans forits finances. They have to apply this ideology to support thepolitical ambitions of the capitalist West which has usedand still contnues to use the Church as a tool. The Churchis only too willing to co-operate.

In the meanwhile, Christianity has become a dangerand a threat to the safety, security and freedom of India. Itis not yet too late. But it will brook no further delay. It istime that the Government and the people of this countrytackle this problem with all the energy and resources attheir command.

REFERENCE:

1. Malabar and the Portuguese by Sardar K.M. Pannikar.2. Niyogi Commissission Report, Part II, Chapter 11, p.13

(Abridged ed.).3. Ibid.4. A Pearl to India by V. Cronin, Rupert Hart-Davis, London.5. Niyogi Commission Report, Part II, Chapter 11 pp. 14-15.6. The British Baptist Missionaries in India by E. Daniel Potts,

Cambridge University Press, 1967.7. Christianity in China by Walter Mann, Rationalists Press

Association.8. The Loyal Karens of Burma by San C. Po. The American

Baptist Mission Press, Rangoon.



9. (a) Rajah Bhushanam Manikkam; A Biography by Kari Gustavand Theodore Beemann, C.L.S.

(b) The Christian Manifesto by Y.T.Wu, YMCA.(c) Christianity in Asia, Christian Conference of Asia

Magazine, p.26.(d) Christianity and Asian Revolution by Rajah Manikkam.

10. The author was serving in the Army in Nagaland in 1963,when Rev. Scott burst upon the scene.

11. The author has passed on a confidential note to the I.G.Police, Tamil Nadu, regarding this matter

12. Christ of the Indian Road by Dr. Stanley Jones.13. Christianity and the World Order by Edward Norman,

Oxford University Press, 1979.14. Bulletins of the National Christian Council and World Council of

Churches.15. The Rejuvenation of the Russian Orthodox Clergy, a paper read

before the Institute for Study of the USSR by NadezhadaTheodonovich.

16. To Set At Liberty the Oppressed, W.C.C. Geneva, 1975.17. Summary of the Niyogi Committee Report.

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II

ìLiberalî Christianity

Ram Swarup

The practice of Christianity may make a manbetter in some respects but it does little to widen hissympathies and to open up his heart to larger spiritualwealth of different peoples and cultures. This is also trueof Islam, another revealed religion, but in the presentdiscussion we shall restrict ourselves to Christianity alone.

From its early days, Christianity has claimed a monopolyof things divine. It has held that there is no salvationoutside of the Church. But the world has considerablychanged during the last two hundred years. A wave ofrationalism and humanism has reached the shores ofEurope. This has made Christian theology with its exclusiveclaims look pretentious. This has also fostered a new spiritof liberalism and universalism and also a new awareness of awider human family, including within itself members whoare neither European nor Christian and yet are rich in thethings of the spirit.

This new intellectual ferment has not left the Christiantheologians entirely untouched. In the past, they saw inreligions other than their own nothing but the hand of theDevil and it cost them little pang of conscience to send


even the best and wisest of the men of these religions toHell. But in the new intellectual and humanist climate, thiswill not do. The Christian Devil and Hell have lost theirterror; their old monopolistic claims have also becomelaughable. In the new context, if they are to be heard at all,they must appear somewhat more modest, and must notappear to reject altogether or too summarily religionsother than their own.

So under the changed conditions there is a newtheology under construction. This does not regard otherreligions as the handwork of the Devil. On the contrary, itsays that there is a natural religious impulse which has beenat work throughout history and throughout the worldgiving birth to natural religions having their own validity.But, it further adds that this impulse, so necessary at aparticular stage, finds its culmination and fulfillment in therevealed religion of Christianity. Other religions arepreparatory to Christianity.

There is also another problem that the new theologiansface, the problem of finding a place in their scheme fornon-Christian saints and good men. True, they cannot yetbe sent to HeavenóChristian theology precludes thatóbutthey cannot also be so unceremoniously sent to Hell as inthe good old days. The new intellectual climate does notcountenance it.

So some theologians, liberal and ingenious, have beenat work trying to find a solution. One of them was the lateCardinal Jean Danielou. In his Holy Pagans of the OldTestament, he observes that even the Bible mentions saintswho are not biblical. Abel, Seth, Henoch, Daniel, Noe, Job,Melchisedec, Lot, the Queen of Sheba are examples ofnon-Christian and even non-biblical saints mentioned inthe Bible. Abel was anterior to Abraham; and so were

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Henoch and Noe. Lot was a relative of Abraham but was nota party to the Godís Covenant. Daniel was a Phoenician andJob an Idumean; the Queen of Sheba was a non-Jewishprincess.

All these examples show that some sort of saintliness orholiness is possible outside the Christian fold though,according to the Cardinal, that holiness by its very natureìmust always be inferior to Christian holiness.î Butìnonetheless, the fact remains that holiness of that sort ispossibleî.

This does not seem to say much or concede much, butconsidering that it comes from a Christian theologiantrained to see Devil in everything connected with non-Christians, it is a great deal. Danielou goes on and makes afurther concession. He admits that ìthere are men who didnot know Christ either because they lived before Him orbecause knowledge of Him did not come their way(presumably because a Christian missionary had notreached their locality), and yet were saved; and some ofthese too were saints.î But that is all. For he hastens to addthat ìthey were not saved by the religions to which theybelonged; for Buddha does not save, Zoroaster does notsave, nor does Mohomed. If they were saved, then it isbecause they were saved by Christ Who alone saves, Whoalone sanctifies. Again, if they were saved, it is because theyalready belonged to the Church for there is no salvationoutside the Church.î

II

The new theology will not go as far as to say that the holymen of other religions are damned, though it knows thatthey are not saved except through the Church.

These holy men are not saved partly because theirholines is not holy enough. There are three levels of

ìLiberalî Christianity 19


holiness, the pagan holiness being the lowest, governed asit is merely by the law of conscience and not by Godís ownrevealed Laws. Danielou tells us that Godís will isìexpressed on the Christian plane by the law of the Gospel,on the Jewish plane by the Mosaic law, on the cosmic planeby the law of conscience,î the last being obviously aninferior agency of holiness corresponding to the inferiorreligion of the pagan which is merely natural, merely cosmic.According to Danielou, at the lowest level, which is thepagan level, ìholiness within the sphere of cosmic religionconsists in a response to the call of God made known byconscienceî. At a more advanced stage, God makes His willknown through a Revelation to Moses. Finally, God comesdown into the world in a human form as Jesus Christcompleting His Revelation. Hence the three degrees ofholiness and three orders of holy men. ìThe glory whichshines from the face of Jesus Christ overshadows, as St. Paultells us, that which shone from the face of Moses. In likemanner, the glory shining from the face of Mosesovershadows that which shone from the face of Noe.î

Manís religion, like holiness, has progressed from thenatural or cosmic to the Jewish, to the Christian. ìAllChristian liturgyóEaster, Pentecost, Christmasóhave atthe back of their Christian significance, a Jewishsignificance; and behind the latter there is a cosmicsignificance.î

This three-level development is evident in all spheresand aspects touching on religious life. For example, thereis a three-level development in the mode of worship.On the lowest level, the pagan level, there is a cosmictemple. The house of God is the whole Cosmos, heaven Histent, and the earth His footstool. In the Old Testament,this primitive atmosphere still lingers. Abraham has that

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parrhesia with Godóthat freedom of speech which inancient Greece was the right of free citizens.

This gave way to the Temple of Moses. Theestablishment of the Tabernacle, whose ultimate from isthe Temple, is the fundamental mission entrusted by Godto Moses. The Covenant was Abrahamís mission, theTemple that of Moses. Uptil then, God was everywhere butfrom the time of Moses till the death of Christ, when a stillhigher stage begins, the Temple is the dwelling in whichthe glory of Yahweh abides. Upto the time of Moses,sacrifices could be offered to God anywhere. But after thatonly those sacrifices were pleasing to God that were offeredin the Tabernacle. ìYe shall utterly destroy all the places,wherein the nations which ye shall possess served theirgods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, andunder every green tree.î (Bible, Deuteronomy 12.2)

In a divine plan, we are assured by Cardinal Danielou,this was a necessary stage, for the great danger waspolytheism; the singleness of the sanctuary was, as it were,the sign of the Oneness of God.

Thus a second great step is taken. The religion of Sinaicreates a gulf between God and man. No longer doesYahweh talk on easy terms with the patriarchs. Henceforth,He dwells in the secrecy of the Holy of Holies. Separatingman from God marks an advance, for it draws attention totwo things: first, to Godís transcendence. Hisincomprehensibility, that He is wholly Other; no easy-goinganthropomorphism any longer; second, to maníssinfulness, his essentially fallen nature. Without this, thenext and third step was not possible.

In the next stage, the abode of Yahweh is no longer theTemple, but the Manhood of Jesus. ìThe glory of the lorddwelt in the Temple until the coming of the incarnation.



But from that day it began to dwell in Jesus. The divinepresence is no longer to be found in an enclosure of stone,it dwells in Jesus Himself. With Him the Mosaic ordercomes to an end.î There is a qualitative leap, as theMarxists would love to call it, for Jesus is not just ìa higherkind of Moses. Moses and the Temple are figures but Jesusis the reality.

From this to the Temple of the Church was a mostnatural and easy step. In fact, it was no new step at all. It is amode of saying the same thing. ìIt is the manhood of Jesusthat is the Temple of the New Law, but this Manhood mustbe taken as a whole, that is to say, it is the Mystical body in itsentirety; this is the complete and final Temple. Thedwelling of God is this Christian community whose Head isin the Heaven.î God now resides in the Church.

There are other variations but the above is the essentialtheme of the new liberal theologians. For example, there isHenry de Lubac, the author of Catholicism; A Study of Dogmain Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (Publsihers;Burns, Oates & Washbourne, London, 1950). In this book,he says; ìOutside Christianity humanity can doubtless beraised in an exceptional manner to certain spiritualheights, but the topmost summit is never reached, andthere is the risk of being the farther off from it by mistakingfor it some other outlying peak. There is some essentialfactor missing from every religious ëinventioní that is not afollowing of Christ. There is something lacking, forexample, in Buddhist charity; it is not Christian charity.Something is lacking in the spirituality of great Hindumystics; it is not the spiritually of St. John of the Cross.Outside Christianity nothing attains its end towards which,unknowingly, all human desires, all human endeavours,are in movement: the embrace of God in Christ.î

22

If this is true, then his conclusion is a fair one: ìSo longas the Church does not extend and penetrate to the wholehumanity, so as to give it the form of Christ. She cannotrest.î

F.H. Hilard in his Man in Eastern Religions finds that tothe question what is man, the Christian answer is the best.According to Christians ìman is to be understood asprimarily a person and not a mere manifestation.î In thisview man is ìan individual,î while the others, ìHinduism,Buddhism and Taoism, agree in thinking of man primarilyas an aspect of ultimate Reality.î

Nicolas Berdyaev, in his Spirit and Reality (Publishers:Geoffery Bles, Centenary Press, London, 1939) says:ìTheosis makes man Divine, while at the same timepreserving his human nature. Thus instead of humanpersonality being annihilated, it is made in the image ofGod and the Divine Trinity. The mystery of the personalityis intimately related to that of freedom and love. Love andcharity can flourish only if there are personal relationships.Monistic identity excludes love as well as freedom. Man isnot identical with the cosmos and with God; man is amicrocosm and microtheosis.î

Again, he says: ìIn Hindu and Platonic mysticismeverything is diametrically opposed to the dialogical anddramatic relationship between man and God, between onepersonality and another. Spirituality is interpreted as beingopposed to personality and, therefore, as independent oflove, human freedom and a relation between the pluraland the one. The mystical way is that of Gnosis rather thanthat of Eros.î According to him, Hindu spirituality ìis anaustere and unloving mysticism. The absence of love isexplained by the fact that this mysticism is unconscious ofpersonality; it is concerned with abdicating rather thanpreserving the personality.î



Evelyn Underhill, the well-known author of Mysticism(Publishers: Methuen & Co. Ltd., London, Reprint 1952),too seems to share this scheme. She Says: ìIn Christianity,the natural mysticism which like natural religion is latent inhumanity, and at a certain point of development breaksout in every race, came to itself; and attributing for the firsttime true and distinct personality to its object, brought intofocus the confused and unconditioned God whichNeoplatonism had constructed from the abstract conceptsof philosophy blended with the intuitions of Indianecstatics, and made the basis of the meditations on theReal.î

She repeats similar sentiments at another place. Aftermaking the statement that a mystic is ìwilling to use themap of the community in which he finds himself,î whichmeans that mystical experience is compatible withdifferent theologies about it, she continues to add that ìweare bound to allow as a historical fact that mysticism, so far,has found its best map in Christianity,î and that ìtheChristian atmosphere is the one in which the individualmystic has most often been able to develop his genius in asane and fruitful way.î

III

In India, too, there is a group of Christian theologiansworking in the direction of liberalism. These theologianshave become noticeable after Indiaís independence.While Christian money and missions continue to work byand large in their old style (see the Report of the ChristianMissionary Activities Enquiry Committee, Madhya Pradesh),there is a group of Christian theologians who want anencounter with Hinduism on a different plane.

Here their greatest difficulty is the rival slogan that isfashionable among Hindu intellectuals that all teachers

24

preach more or less the same things and that differentreligions are just different paths to the same goal. Theproblem of these new liberal Christian theologians is howto salvage their religion from this demolishing, equalizingslogan. So they preach that every religion is unique andthat we should all meet in our individual richness in afruitful dialogue. While secretly hoping that this dialoguewould prove that they are unique in a superior way theyinvite us all to this encounter. And this should be welcome.

Some of them have taken Hindu names, live in Indianstyle and have put on Indian dress. Some of them haveeven donned the habits of Hindu Sanyasins. The motivesare mixed. Some may be following St. Paulís practice ìtobecome all things to all men, by all means to win over someof themî (1 Cor. 9.22); others because they find this stylemore informal and under Indian conditions morecomfortable; still others, as they argue, in order tounderstand and enter into the Hindu psyche better. Forsome it may be no more than a change of tactics and fronts,but there are genuine elements too. They simply doníthave the heart to send a whole people to eternal perditionwhich their orthodox theology demands.

The late Dr. Jacques-Albert Cuttat, the SwissAmbassador to India in the 1950s, poses the problem andinvites us to this dialogue. He says in his The SpiritualDialogue of East and West (Max Muller Bhavan Publication):ìThe West inclines to exclusivism, the East to syncretism.The view that salvation is only possible within the visiblechurchóa view expressly rejected by the CatholicChurchóhas been sustained by missionaries and eminenttheologians even today; such blindness for the spiritualriches of the East, for its mystical depth and intuition of thetransparence of the cosmos to higher Realities, suchblindness always implies a blindness for some basic aspects



of Christianity itself. The East is tempted by the oppositeextreme, syncretism; it consists in wrongly equating biblicalvalues with Eastern religious categories. Such universalismis undoubtedly more tolerant, less violent than WesternExclusivism, but equally blind to the specific inner visage ofChristianity and other biblical spiritualities.î Dr. Cuttatteaches that each religion is unique and different religionsshould meet and encounter each other in their individualuniqueness. He is a philosopher of uniqueness, encounter,dialogue, and exchange.

Another eminent name which has to be mentioned inthis connection is that of the late Fr. J. Monchanin. He wasattached to India and settled in Tiruchirapalli. He built forhimself a retreat to which he gave the name SachidanandaAshram. He himself assumed the name Swami Param ArubiAnandam and put on the dress of an Indian Sanyasin. Fromthese facts one should not assume that he became a Hindumonk. He understood his own mission differently. As theeditors of his papers said when he died in 1957 his ìmissionhere was not so much to become fully an Indian or torealize in himself the final synthesis of West and East as tobring to India in a pure form, yet with a remarkablesympathy and understanding, the riches of a Christiansoul.î He himself defines his mission in these terms: ìI havecome to India for no other purpose than to awaken in a fewsouls the desire (the passion) to raise up a Christian India.I think the problem is of the same magnitude as theChristianization, in former times, of Greece (theHellenization of Christendom modelled on the form ofGreek sensibility, thought and spiritual experience). It willtake centuries, sacrificed lives, and we shall perhaps diebefore seeing any realizations. A Christian India,completely Indian and completely Christian will be

26

something so wonderful; to prepare it from afar, thesacrifice of our lives is not too much to ask.î

Just two years before his death in 1957, he was writing:ìI believe more in ëexchangeí. India must give the West akeener sense of eternal of the primacy of Being overBecoming, and receive, in turn, from the West a mereconcrete sense of the person, of love (of which India alas!knows so little).î

Fr. J. Monchann found a good deal in Hinduism whichhe appreciated. But let us see what all this ëappreciationíamounts to. All the merit Hinduism has accumulated isonly a pointer to her conversion to Christianity. We give inhis own language what he says on the subject :

ìIndia has received from the Almighty an uncommongift, an unquenchable thirst for whatever is spiritual. Fromthe Vedic and Upanishadic times, a countless host of hersons have been great seekers of God. Centuries aftercenturies there arose seers and poets, singing the joys andsorrows of a soul in quest of the One, philosophersreminding every man of the supremacy of contemplation:upward and inward movements through knowledge to theultimate.

ìCommunion with Him and liberation from whateverhinders that realization, was for them the unique goal.

ìHundreds and thousands of men and women haveconsecrated themselves entirely to that end... We mayrightly think that such a marvellous seed was not planted invain by God in the Indian should. Unfortunately, Indianwisdom is tainted with erroneous tendencies and looks as ifit has not yet found its own equilibrium. So was Greekwisdom before Greece humbly received the paschalmessage of the Risen Christ. Man, outside the uniquerevelation and the unique Church, is always and



everywhere unable to sift truth from falsehood, good fromevil.

ìBut once Christianized, Greece rejected her ancestralerrors; so also, confident in the indefectible guidance ofthe Church, we hope that India, once baptized to thefullness of her body and soul, will reject her pantheistictendencies and, discovering in the splendours of the HolyGhost the true mysticism....

ìIs not the message she had to deliver to the worldsimilar to the message of the ancient Greece? Thereforethe Christianization of Indian civilization is to all intentsand purposes an historical undertaking comparable to theChristianization of Greece.î

Hindus may have the necessary underlying spiritualqualities like a sense of the holy in abundance, but theChurch has the Truth in its possession. Therefore, ìIndiahas to receive humbly from the Church the sound andbasic principles of true contemplation. The genuineChristian contemplation is built on the unshakablefoundation of revealed truths concerning God and menand their mutual relations.î The mystic East should be ledby the doctors of theology of the West, the forest-sages bythe university men.

On another occasion, he says: ìIn that mystery,Hinduism (and specially Advait) must die to rise up againChristian. Any theory which does not fully take intoaccount this necessity constitutes a lack of loyalty both toChristianityówhich we connot multilate from its essenceóand to Hinduismófrom which we cannot hide itsfundamental error and its essential divergence fromChristianity.

ìMeanwhile, our task is to keep all doors open, to waitwith patience and theological hope for the hour of the

28

advent of India into the Church in order to realize thefullness of the Church and the fullness of India. In this age-long vigil, let us remember that love can enter whereintellect must bide at the door.î

He hopes that ìIndia cannot be alien to this process ofassimilation by Christianity and transformation into it.î Butìshould India fail in that task, we cannot understand,humanly speaking, how the mystical body of Christ couldreach its quantitative and qualitative fullness in Hiseschatological Advent.î

IV

The discussion will gain in fullness if we referred to twocolloquia organised by Christian theologians of thisapproach. These were held at the invitation of Dr. Cuttatwho attended them both personally. The first one was heldat Almora in April 1961; the second one at Rajpura,Dehradun, in the same month next year. A general andsympathetic account of the second one is given by BedeGriffiths in his Christ in India: Essays Towards a Hindu-Christian Dialogue (Publishers: Charles Scribnerís Sons, NewYork). We ourselves shall discuss here only the first colloquyat Almora. It was attended by individuals connected withvarious Christian institutions, Catholic and Protestant, likeAsirvanam, Kenkeri; Snehasadan, Poona; Santi Bhavan,Calcutta; Vrindavan, Kottagiri; Jyotiniketan, Kareli. OneHindu, Shri Viveka Dutta, was also present at the discussionfor the first few sessions. The summary of the papers anddiscussion was prepared by Fr. J. Britto C.M.I., ofDharmaram College, Bangalore, himself one of theparticipants. The summary is titled Indian Interiority andChristian Theolegy.



All the participants in this colloquy advocate a dialoguewith Hindu India on a deeper level. But let us see whatkind of mind they bring to the proposed dialogue.

As the Indian Interiority and Christian Theology tells us,the participants start with the assumption that ìChristianityas the one revealed religion for all men, cannot be lackingin any truth necessary for the salvation of man; it has theguarantee of the Divine testimony.î

But their procedure is not to be to denounce Hinduismforthright; on the other hand, it is to take differentcategories of Hindu thinking and ìafter exhausting all thepositive points that Hinduism provides as solutions,proceed to show that Christianity gives fuller and ultimatesolution to those and all other problems.î

The intention is also not to inquire whether ìHinduismhas some positive religious values which are wanting inChristianityî; for that is ìnot logically tenableî believing asthey do that Christianity is ìthe true revealed religion for allhumanity.î But they are prepared to look at particularvalues more intensely realized by some Hindu sages whichmay direct ìthe Christian back to his own religion, in whichhe finds the same values more naturally embedded.î Thisposition is not without its modesty. It seems that Christians,if not Christianity, too can learn a few things even from theheathens, though these things are nothing but theneglected truths of their own religion.

But the participants soon forget the learning part andassume the teaching role, probably due to compulsion ofhabit. They become polemical. According to theprocedure they laid down for themselves, they takedifferent Hindu categories of thought and spirit and showthat Christianity offers a better answer. One such categoryis Teacher-Disciple or Guru-Shishya relationship, animportant spiritual institution in Hinduism. After

30

discussing it, the participants find that ìthe only person inwhom the positive values of the Hindu Guru are bestverified is Christ.î

Similarly, after discussing the Hindu concept of history,the colloquy finds that the positive values found ìin theIndian view of history have their full meaning and naturalsetting in the Christian concept of history.î

The participants discuss Yoga too, its positive as well asits negative aspects. At the end, they find that while inChristianity the negative aspects are avoided, the positiveaspects of Hindu Yoga ìfind their natural setting and fullmeaning in Christianity. Non-dualism, and dualism, Yogaabsolutism and Bhakti personalism, Sankara and Ramanujaare in different ways related to Christianity. The Christianworships the Absolute of Sankara with the devotion ofRamanuja.î

The Hindu concept of Avatarhood is discussed. It isfound inferior to the Christian one. ìChristís incarnation isa unique fact, and not repeated in every age..... He is trueGodhead in true humanity.î

Hindu symbolism and idol worship have some positivepoints but the dangers are far greater. ìThe fundamentaldefect of Hindu idol-worship is that it is purely a humanattempt so to say to trans-substantiate the material thingsinto the divine without a prior incarnation, namely,without a divine guarantee which assumes the humansymbol, into the divine economy of self-communication toman. Man cannot by his own powers raise himself to thedivine level, which far transcends him. Hence the Hinduconviction that when the priest recites the prayers over theidol it becomes inhabited by the deity is gratuitousassumption and hence superstitious.î

But it is different with Christian symbolism. Forexample, ìthe Eucharist marks the culmination of human



symbolism. In it the food of man is turned into the bodyand blood of God. There manís attempt to trans-substantiate the material world into the divine iswonderfully realizedóthe Eucharist may be taken as asummary and completion of all human endeavour to graspthe divine Reality in human symbols. Hence it should formthe converging point of all religious cult.î

Hindu Bhakti too has more demerits than merits. Itschief defects are that (1) ìthe notion of love itself is notperfect,î (2) ìthere is no integration between knowledgeand love,îóone has to choose between them; and (3) itlacks a ìperfect concept of alterity and there is no properconcept of sin.î

Nevertheless, the Bhakti of a Hindu could still be aìpreparation for the final confrontation with the personalGod who manifests Himself in the Christian Revelation.î

Discussing jnanamarga, the colloquy finds that theHindu doctrine of Advaita is irreconciliable with theChristian doctrine of Trinity, but even that could become astep to the understanding of the doctrine of the threePersons in One. How ? First, by opposing polytheism.Second, by its strong metaphysical bias for unity: ìOnlyagainst the background of the unique and absolute Realityof God can the doctrine of the Trinity and the immortalpersonality of man be properly understood. God in hisprovidence insisted on the strictest monotheism, anduncompromisingly exterminated all tendency topolytheism, in the chosen people in the Old Testament,before revealing against the background of themonotheism the Trinity of Persons in that one God, in theNew Testament. Hence Advaita with its strongmetaphysical basis can be a proper preparatio evangelica foran understanding of the Christian message.î

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V

Once it is admitted that Christianity is the uniquely truereligion, the summit towards which all religions areadvancing, the liberal theologians will not mind concedingcertain subordinate spiritual qualities and attributes andvalues to Hinduism. In this expansive mood, theygenerously admit that some European Christians ìhave feltthe wealth of Indiaís religious pastî. The deep interioritywhich India has inculcated has even ìled some of them todeepen their own Christian interiorityî. Some of themhave been ìstruck by the vision of the spirit of povertypreached by Christ (but) so fully and cheerfully practisedby millions in India.î The religious outlook in whicheverything of every event is looked upon as a work of God, amanifestation of the divine, has impressed many. Manyhave noted with admiration ìthe so to say national aptitudefor deep prayer and the contemplation of divine thingswhich Indians manifest.î

When the pope came to India in 1964, he ìpraisedîIndiaís deep spirituality. But it is in the light of the aboveapproach that this praise should be understood. It was notanything spontaneous or genuine. It was diplomatic anddeceptive. In fact, it amounted to cheating, if cheatingincludes a double-tongued approach, half-truths spokenand full aim unstated. The Popeís ìpraiseî concealed morethan it revealed. It meant to say: Hinduism is very good. It isa useful preparation for Christianity. The Pope praisedHinduism for its secondaries hiding a condemnation of itsprimaries.

His deputy in India, Cardinal Gracias, could afford tobe more candid in putting forth the unstated aim. Hebemoaned: ìIt is a matter of grave concern for us thathardly three percent of the local population in India could



so far be drawn to receive the Grace of Christ over the lastseveral centuries.î The strategy may change but the aimremains fixed. It may be a soft-spoken approach now, butthe goal is unaltered. Liberal Christianity is like Euro-Communism: the tactics and the slogans have changed butthe mind remains the same.

In the past, in the heydays of British imperialism,fanatic Christians like Carey and Wilberforce were tellingtheir people something like this: ìThe natives live in the sinand superstition and darkness of paganism. Surely God hasnot granted us their charge for nothing. He wants us tobring them to the light of the Gospel, to convert them toChristianity.î But it seems the rulers were less convincedabout the benefits of Christianity to the natives. But in aChristian country, they could not express this feeling orbelief too openly. So the took to a more equivocal course.The pretended to agree with the crusaders but counter-argued thus: ìYou are very correct in your judgement ofthe natives. But precisely because they are superstitious, wemust go slow with them and their religious beliefs; if wetouch their religion, it would become a law and orderproblem and we may lose the Empire itself.î This attitudeof the British rulers saved India from the worst ravages ofChristian missionaries.

But now the political equation has changed and alsothe ideas have changed. What was possible a hundred yearsago is no longer possible now. The Church is also lesspowerful now even in countries nominally Christian. Itspretentious claims jar on the more sophisticated ears andminds of the age. So a new liberalóor at least liberal-soundingótheology is in the offing, which is trying to giveup the old method of forth-right denunciation and takingthe new method of partial praise, a grudging (and

34

sometimes even genuine) appreciation of the values of areligion they aim to supplant.

Behind the praise of the neo-theologians, we can hear,if our ears are attentive, another message expressedsometimes openly, sometimes sotto voce. They are sayingsomething like this: ìYou are too good to remain what youare. Your destiny is to become Christians. We see in yourcountry spiritual things deep and uncommon. But Godcould not have planted these things amongst you in vain.He must have been preparing you for Christianity, forblessing you with the truth he blessed us with; in short, hemust have been aiming to make you as good as we are.î

The neo-theologians admit that the Hindus have lived alife of dedication and constant quest, that they havepondered over things spiritual from times immemorial.But, in spite of that, somehow, the Truth eluded them.Why? Because, as they seem to say, while the Hindus hadthe seeking, they lackd the key. They did not know JesusChrist. God has to be found not in God but in Jesus Christand the Church.

The Bible says: Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, andyou shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Butto the Christian theologians, seeking and knocking,however dedicated and sincere, are not enough. For donítwe meet the strange phenomenon that while the Hindusasked, as the neo-theologians are ready to grant, God save itto the Christians; while the Hindus sought, the Christiansfound; while the Hindus knocked, it was opened unto theChristians. A mystery, perhaps a trinitarian mystery,perplexing to the heathens but easily understood by theChristians.

The Christian theologians call pagan religions natural,while their own they call revealed. In this they pay to pagans



an unintended compliment. The opposite of the natural isnot the revealed, but the artificial, and there is somethingartificial about the Christian theology. A natural religionmeans that it is about the things inherent and intrinsic; thatis about a seeking of the heart which is innate; it is aboutman in his deeper search, and not about a particular personor a church; that is does not deal with the accidental butwith the universal. Its truths are not adventitious, addedfrom outside by a sole leader or institution; on the contrary,these reside in the ìcave of the heartî, to put it in theUpanishadic phrase. These truths are also not fortuitous,happening by a lucky chance consisting in the appearanceof a particular individual, or in the crusading labours of achurch burdened with a self-assumed role. On thecontrary, these truths happen because man in hisinnermost being, by nature, is a child of divine light.Man grows from within, by an inherent law of his being,responding to That which he already is secretly.The purusha or person within responds to the purushawithout. Tat tvam asi; tat aham asmi; sah tadasti. (You areThat; I am That; he is That.)

Christianity has two pillars: a narrow piety and a word-juggling theology. What is true in it is also found in otherreligions which it supplanted in the past and which itcontinues to do in the present as well; what is claims to beunique to it is merely intellectual bluff.

Christian theology, as it has developed, is not a productof a tranquil and purified heart; rather, it derives from amind prejudiced, self-centred and self-righteous, a mindcontentious and cantankerous, out to prove the otherfellow in the wrong. It is an artificial mental construct withvery little spirituality in it. Above all, like Islam, it is inwovenwith bigotry and fanaticism and lacks charity,understanding and the deeper vision of the spirit.

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III

Genesis and History of thePolitics of Conversion

Sita Ram Goel

While Mao-tse Tung was licking his wounds after the longmarch to his hideout in Yenan, an American journalistasked him the following question: ìA lot of people in theUSA have been led to believe by our liberals that youpeople are not communists, but only agrarian reformers.What do you have to say on that subject?î Mao-tse Tungsmiled mischievously and said: ìSo long as the belief helpsthe revolution, we do not care what the sons-of-bitchesbelieve about us.î

The Christian missionary and the muslim Mulla in Indiacan comfortably express the same sentiment about theHindus who have been led to believe that Christianity andIslam are religions towards which Hindu society shouldpractice the samabhava (sentiment of equal honour) as thevarious sects of Sanatana-Dharma have been practisingtowards each other throughout Hindu history. Neither themissionary nor the mulla will concede for a moment thatany Hindu religious sect can claim to be a religion. Neitherof them will grant to any Hindu religious sect even thestatus of an inferior religion. Any missionary who is honestto his calling will confirm that, according to Christianity,


the whole of Hinduism is heathenism, which word thedictionaries define as the condition of those who aredevoid of any religion whatsoever. Any mulla who knows hiskalmia will clarify that, according to Islam, the whole ofHinduism is kufr which means ìa wilful denial of the oneand only true revelation.î

Nor is the missionary or the mulla prepared to practisesamabhava towards any Hindu religious sect. Each of thempleads his helplessness in this respect because hisìscripturesî do not sanction such ìsophistryî. And each ofthem appeals to the Hindus to understand his position andhelp him honour the fundamentals of his faith. The faithof the missionary as also of the mulla makes it obligatory onhim to convert to his own creed as many Hindus as he can,by all means including force and fraud. The Hindus areexpected to understand, indeed appreciate, thisobligation also as a proof positive of the missionaryís andthe mullaís profound devotion to his own religion. But bothof them deny to the Hindus the same right to convert anyof their followers to the latterís ancestral faith. Each ofthem points out that apostasy is punishable with deathaccording to the fundamentals of his faith. The fact thatthe missionary or the mulla cannot enforce thesefundamentals under the present dispensation in Indiadoes not mean that the fundamentals have become invalidor should be refashioned. It only means that the Christiansor the muslims should strive to change the dispensation sothat they can enforce the fundamentals without let orhindrance.

Meanwhile, both of them hail as very helpful the Hinduslogan of sarva-dharma-samabhava (all religions are equal).The slogan proves, if proof was needed, that the Hindus donot mind some of their own flock going over to Christianity

38

or Islam. It does not, should not, make a difference to aHindu if he becomes a christian or a muslim. Do not theHindus proclaim, day and night and from the house-tops,that Christianity and Islam are as good religious as theirown Sanatana Dharma?

Hindu society is thus trapped by a slogan which it hasitself coined and made respectable. It cannot turn awayfrom practising samabhava towards Christianity and Islameven when these creeds decimate Hindu society bycontinuous conversions. Nor can it expect samabhava fromChristianity or Islam when it tries to win back some of itsown lost sheep. In such a situation, Christianity as well asIslam can resort to violence which is legitimate according tothe fundamental tenets of these faiths.

It is the same sort of trap into which a democracy getsentangled the moment it concedes that communism is alsoa political ideology as good as the democratic ideology, andthat a communist party should be permitted to function asfreely as any democratic party. Communism also pleadsthat its very first premises put it under an obligation todestroy democracy, and that a democracy, by its verydefinition, is duty-bound to facilitate the spread ofcommunism. And a communist party can legitimately taketo the path of an armed struggle whenever a democracytries to deny this fundamental democratic right to theparty.

Meaning of Meenakshipuram

The mass conversions at Meenakshipuram seem to haveshaken Hindu society out of its sloganized slumber. But thecredit for this shock-therapy should go to the spokesmen ofIslam, in India and abroad. Hindu society would have takenthese conversions also in its stride, as in the past, had not

Genesis and History of the Politics of Conversion 39


the spokesmen of Islam proclaimed publicly that massconversion of the weaker sections of Hindu society was partof a political plan to win power for Islam, and convertsecular India into an Islamic state.

Hindu society has had a full and first-hand taste of anIslamic state in the not too distant past. But it is doubtful ifthe spectre of such a state would have haunted HinduSociety, had not Pakistan and Iran demonstrated themodel with such earnest showmanship.

As a cumulative effect of all these events, a new phrasehas gained currency in Indiaís prevalent political parlanceóthe politics of conversion. What was regarded as a religiousevent till recently has now come to be recognized as apolitical event. This is a great gain. But it is only the adventof an awakening which would have to go a long way beforeit achieves an adequate perspective. For, Meenakshipuramhas only dramatized a process of subversion which has beenpreying upon Hindu society for well-nigh thirteenhundred years.

The first current of this process entered India in thepersons of muslim merchants and sufis who settled down inseveral parts of India, particularly Kerala, in the second halfof the seventh century A.D. It surged forward when anArab army under Mohammed bin Qasim succeeded insecuring a foothold on the soil of Sindh in the first quarterof the 8th century. It overflowed the ramparts in ourNorth-West when Kabul and Zabul were overrun by theIslamized Turks in the second half of the 10th century. Itreached the heartland of India at the close of the 12thcentury and spread eastwards and southwards till ittouched every nook and corner of this ancient land.

The tide turned at the end of the 17th century A.D.But in the meanwhile large sections of Hindus in the Eastand the West had been alienated from their ancestral

40

religion and culture. The separation of Afghanistan,Pakistan and Bangladesh from Bharatavarsha was at onetime regarded as the culmination of this current. But theconsolidation of its aggression has not made it content withwhat it has already submerged. It is now looking forward toengulfing for good the residue that is Hindustan.

Another current of this process of subversion enteredIndia in the wake of the Portuguese, Dutch, French andBritish adventurers. A horde of missionaries belonging todifferent denominations of Christianity and coming frommany Western countries including the Americas, swarmedtowards our shores. Christianity secured firm footholds inSouthern, Central and North-Eastern India while Westernimperialism was ruling the roost. By the middle of thetwentieth century Western imperialism was dead andgone. But the missionaries continued to multiply. Theirexperience over the past five hundred years hasemboldened them to envisage a day when India willbecome yet another christian colony.

The process cannot be understood fully and in itsinherent dynamics if we keep our gaze confined to whatChristianity and Islam have been doing in India. We wouldhave to travel backwards in time and go to the beginningswhen the politics of conversion was first perfected in thegarb of religion and projected into the midst of the pagansocieties as unsuspecting as Hindu society. In India itselfthe politics of conversion is thirteen hundred years old inthe case of Islam, and nearly five hundred years old in thecase of Christianity. But India is a late-comer in thismaelstrom. The world at large has been familiar with thepolitics of conversion for almost two thousand years. Wholecontinents had already been conquered by means of thispolitics before it arrived in India.



The first principles of the politics of conversion wereformulated by the founding fathers of the Christian churchin the very first century of what has become known as theChristian era. Its methods were perfected in ancientAlexandria, Antioch, Athens, Rome, Carthage andConstantinople, over a period of 300 years, at the end ofwhich it conquered the Roman empire. In the next 700years, it conquered the whole of Europe from Ireland tothe Urals and from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. Itstarted surging towards distant shores at the beginning ofthe 16th century and, in the course of the next 300 years, itconquered North and South America, the West Indies, theCaribbeans, Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, thePhilippines and several parts of Africa. Its impact was nowbeing felt in the rest of Africa and over the whole of Asia.

Meanwhile, another politics of conversion was takingshape in Medina in the second quarter of the 7th century.By the end of that quarter it engulfed the whole of Arabia,Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran Egypt. In the next one hundredyears it conquered the whole of North Africa, Sicily, Spain,Khorasan and Turkistan, and entered India via Sindh. Inthe course of the next few hundred years it conquered AsiaMinor, Malaya and Indonesia, and invaded the Philippineswhere it was rebuffed by Christianity which was alreadygetting entrenched in that land.

The same thing happened in Asia Minor and theBalkans. Their fortunes waxed and waned for severalhundred years. Christianity came out victorious in the finalround at the close of the 15th century and resumed itsconquest of the New World which had just come under itspurview. Now the Islamic politics has revived and iscompeting with its sister faith on more than equal terms inAfrica and India. The petro-dollars have come as a timelyshot in the arm of Islam.

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It would be interesting to survey the genesis and historyof the politics of conversion which pass as Christianity andIslam. In the process we will discover the fundamentalformulas and the mature methods developed andemployed by the two for achieving what they have alreadyachieved and what they aim at in future. The discovery maybe useful to Hindu society in its encounter with thesesubversive techniques.

Politics of Conversion Called Christianity

Christianity generally describes itself as the Church.The designation is derived from the Greek ìKurosî whichmean ìmightyî. The Greek word is a cognate of theSanskrit ìshooraî which signifies a ìwarriorî. Militancy isthus inbuilt in the psychology which projected thisplatform.

There is no evidence that Jesus, the son of Joseph andMary, had any intention to found a religious order or sect.The gospels, even when a lot of their language has gotgarbled in the mouths of their narrators, reveal himprimarily as a mystic. He gave to his people, the Jews, theusual spiritual messageóthe Kingdom of Heaven is not tobe sought in the world outside, the world of space andtime; the Kingdom is with us, in our hearts, and also near athand for all those who see it in right earnest.

Moreover, Jesus was too much of a free spiritual seekerto become the founder of any closed community ororganization, far less the founder of a farflung monolithlike the later-day christian Church. Those passages in thegospels which Church cites as its source and inspiration areafter-thought on the very face of it. The passages do not fitin psychically with the rest of what Jesus had to say. Theresponsibility for converting Jesus into the ìonly son of godîrests upon his disciples, and also upon Paul, whom the



Church hailed as apostles in later history. Christiantheologyódogmatics, polemics, apologetics and the restóis not even remotely related to what Jesus had stated abouthimself or about God or about the World.

It is significant that all disciples of Jesus ran away orrepudiated him when the temple guards of Jerusalemcame to arrest him. None of them was present when Jesuswas crucified, except John who watched from a safedistance. The body of Jesus was taken down from the crossand entombed by two kindly Jews who had some influencewith the Roman governor. Again, none of the disciplesaccompanied the three womenóMary Magdalene, Marythe mother of James, and Salomeówho went to visit thetomb of Jesus two days later.

Yet as soon as the disciples were sure that Jesus wasdead and could not contradict them, they startedproclaiming that Jesus had appeared to them in a vision,that Jesus had bodily risen into heaven before their eyes,and that the Holy Spirit which was of Jesus had enteredinto them. They flocked back to Jerusalem after the dust ofcontroversy about Jesus had settled down. And they nowclaimed that they had been endowed by the Holy Spiritwith miraculous poers of inspiration, speech and healing!

Saul, who became known as Paul in Christian history,was not even a disciple of Jesus. He had not met Jesusduring the latterís life-time. Stephen, a disciple of Jesushad enraged the Jew in Jerusalem by abusing them fortheir failure to recognise Jesus as the Messiah. He wassentenced to death by stoning. Saul participated incarrying out the sentence. Saul now traveled to Damascusto kill some more followers of Jesus whom he suspected tobe hiding in the city. Something happened to him outside

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Damascus, or so he claimed. Most probably it was the guiltof killing Stephen which had surfaced. In any case, Saulreincarnated himself as Paul and proclaimed that Jesus wasthe Son of God!

Paul travelled to many cities in Palestine, Syria, AsiaMinor and Greece wherever some Jewish communitieswere to be found. He made some converts to his new-fangled faith. But, by and large, the Jews were notprepared to listen to him. Paul got so angry at this attitudeof the Jews as to announce that henceforth men were to besaved not by the Mosaic Law but only by an active faith inChrist as the Son of God. Jesus had by now beentransformed into Christ, the anointed one.

There was a great stir amongst the Jews everywherewhen they learnt that Paul had repudiated the law ofMoses. Paulís life was now in danger, wherever he went,which seems to have had a very sobering effect on him. Herushed back to Jerusalem and offered to repent andundergo the rites of purification at the Temple. The Jews,however, were in no mood to be mollified. He was about tobe flogged on order from a Roman magistrate when herevealed that he was the son of a Roman citizen and that, assuch, he was entitled to a trial in Rome. That is how hesecured a safe conduct to the imperial city.

It is from Rome that Paul fired a number of frenziedletters to Jewish communities elsewhere. The Churcheulogized these letters and incorporated them in theNew Testament. It is in these letters that we find the firstformulations of what became a full-fledged but completelyclosed Christian theology in due couse. It is in these lettersthat, having finally despaired of the Jews, he wrote:ìUnderstand, then, that this message of Godís salvation hasbeen sent to the heathen. They will listen to it.î



Contours of Christian Theology

According to Paul, every man born of woman inheritedthe guilt of Adam and could be saved from eternaldamnation only by the atoning death of Christ. Christ wasthe Wisdom of God as also the first born Son of God. Christwas before all things, in him all things existed; through himall things had been created. Christ was not the Messiah whowould deliver the Jews from bondage; he was the Logoswho had become flash and whose death would deliver allmen. Paul also promised that ìthe Lord is coming soonîand that the ìappointed time has grown very short.î Onsecond thoughts, he amended that the second coming ofChrist would be delayed until after Satan appeared on thescene and ìproclaims himself to be Godî.

John, called Son of Thunder in christian tradition, tookup from where Paul had left. Pointing towards Nero andRome, he proclaimed that the Satan and his regime ofwickedness had already arrived. The Roman empire, hethundered, was headed towards some great calamities inwhich all except the christians would perish. The lastjudgement would come after a thousand years when thedead would be raised from their graves; all those whosenames were not entered in the Book of Life would beìflung into a burning lake of fire and brimstoneî. TheChristians would then ìgather for Godís great banquet andwill eat the bodies of kings, commanders and mighty men...the bodies of all men who have not heeded the call ofChristî. Next, a ìNew Jerusalem would descend on earthîwhich would be inherited by the Christians who would notknow ìdeath any longer, not night, nor any grief or painî.

This theology of great promise for the Christians andgreath punishment for the rest of mankind, was more or

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less complete in its essentials by the time John died towardsthe end of first century A.D. It had borrowed some of thelanguage of later-day Greak philosophies like Neo-Platonism, as also some symbols from the mysticism ofEgypt, Persia and Asia Minor. The language and thesymbolism has led people to give a mystic meaning to thistheology. They forget that the founding fathers hadformulated it as literally and historically true. That is whythe Church had always laid such great emphasis on thehistoricity of Jesus who ascended the cross to become theChrist.

Human reason revolves round concretee evidence,empirical or mystical, and has no use for affirmations ofmere faith, however hysterical or high-sounding. ButChristian theology had no use for human reason in therealm of its dogma, though it used this reason to the pointof casuistry when it came to its own polemics andapologetics. It was based upon a denial of human reasonfrom the first day of its birth in the fevered brains of peoplelike Paul and John. The theologians who followed madethis lack of reason the basis of an inverted snobbery.Terteullian, a theologian from Carthage, summed up thecase for Christianity when he said: ìGodís Son died; it isbelievable because it is absurd. He was buried and roseagain; it is certain because it is unbelievable.î Who couldbeat that in a debate based upon evidence of humanexperience, and human reason?

Human reason is also the basis of a true universalism.True universalism recognizes that although basic humannature is the same, always and everywhere, yet differenthuman beings dwell at different stages of developmentómental, moral, psychic and spiritualóand, therefore, standin need of a diversity of doctrines, philosophies, aspirations,



godheads, and ways of worship. Pagan religions of Europe,Africa and Asia, which Christianity destroyed in due course,recognized this true universalism and, therefore, causedno conflict between different communities or warsbetween different nations on account of religion.Christianity, on the other hand, propounded only onehistorical personality as the sole saviour, propounded onlyone theology as the infallible gateway to God, and proppedup only church as exclusive trustee of truth. It was a verygross violation of universalism. It divided humanity intochristians and non-christians. Christians were now calledupon to convert or kill all those who differed from them.At the same time, Christian theologians went aboutboasting that their creed and church were the harbingersof universalism in human history!

History is a witness that all doctrines, however fantasticor fanciful, have found their fans (or victims) in allsocieties. Kautilya has elaborated in his Arthashastra thepsychological principles which alienate some people fromtheir own society, and lead them straight into the lap ofthose who are out to subvert that society. The first group ofpeople who can be alienated are the maneevarga, that is,those who are conceited and complain that they have beendenied what is their due on account of birth, brains orqualities of character. The second group consists of thekruddhavarga, that is, those who are self-righteous, whoclaim that they alone know how to set things right and whobecome angry because the powers that be do not listen tothem. The third group comprises the lubdhavarga, that is,those who put a price on everything and sell themselves towhosoever can pay the price. The fourth group is thebheetavarga, that is, those who have committed crimes, areafraid of being caught and, therefore, collaborate with

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whosoever is out to overthrow the existing order and thelaws which threaten them.

A study of the Roman scene in the three centuriespreceding the Christian takeover at Constantinople in 323A.D., leaves a strong impression that the Church wasinstinctively employing the psychological principlespropounded by Kautilya. The pagan societies in the Romanempire were encumbered with an elite which had becomespiritually bankrupt, morally neutral, and devoid ofintellectual discrimination. The common people in thesesocieties loved their gods, flocked to their temples, andrejoiced in their sacrifices and religious procession. Butmost members of the elite, who had been educated inschools set up by a variety of sophists, could no longer findany satisfaction in the hallowed traditions of their society,nor harbour any aspiration beyond personal ambition forpower and pelf.

Christian missionaries could find quite a few and easyconverts amongst these upper classes precisely because theChurch had declared war on their society. Christiantheology helped these converts to betray their Gods, theirculture and their country, with a clean conscience; theycould now believe that the betrayal was in the interests of aìhigher causeî and a ìloftier purposeî. Incidentally, it alsohelped the upper classes to avoid military service to a statewhich the Church had placed under a taboo. Like thelater-day hippies in the United States of America, theupper classes were now free to ìmake love instead of warî.

Myth of Christian Martyrdom

Christian historians have made much of theìmartyrdomî suffered by the early Christians under severalRoman regimes. No pagan records have survived to tell the



other side of the story. But the Christian recordsthemselves provide ample evidence as to who was thesinner and who the sinned-against. The Christians abusedand poured contempt upon the pagan Gods andGoddesses in the foulest possible language. Theydenounced pagan culture as degenerate, devilish andimmoral. They called upon all christians not to rendermilitary service or pay taxes to a regime run by what theydescribed as the Antichrist and the Devil, John describedRome as the ìharlot who sins on the great waters, withwhom kings of the earth have committed fornicationî;Rome was the ìWhore of Babylonî, he wrote. Romansociety was not yet entirely dead and it was but natural thatsome Romans reacted strongly against their enemies and intheir own defence, every now and then.

Roman records which have survived also show that it wasnot the ruling classes but the common people who reactedagainst christian aggression. Mob action against christiansin many a city street forced the hands of authority quite afew times. But, by and large, the upper classes eitherremained indifferent, or smiled indulgently on what theyregarded as a conflict between tweedledum andtweedledee, or privately advised the christians not toprovoke the ìmobî. The common people thus foundthemselves leaderless and felt bewildered in the face ofapathy on the part of rulers whom they regardered as theirown. On the other hand, the ìmartyrdomî suffered by thechristians, who were in a minority for quite some time,evoked sympathy for them, particularly amongst the upperclass women whose hearts ìbled for innocent victims ofmob violence.î

The Christian minority succeeded in the long runbecause of the two peculiar methods it usedómethods

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with which the pagan societies were unfamiliar, and whichthese societies did not know how to counter.

First, the concept of a wholetime missionary, who hadnothing to do except convert people, was unknown topagan societies. These societies had their priests whohelped them perform certain religious rites, at home aswell as at places of public worship and pilgrimage. But thepriests themselves were householders who had many otherthing to do besides helping their patrons. The saints,mystics and philosophers in these societies advised thosewho visited them about methods of self-improvement orthe paths towards spiritual progress. Neither did theyknow, nor did they have the aptitude to train theirdevotees in the art of combat against a rival creed. Thechristian missionary thus found the field free for practisinghis casuistry on simple and straight-forward people whocould neither argue with him till the end of time, nor putup a show of piety at which the missionary was a past-master.

The Christian Church: A State Within A State

Secondly, the christian missionaries went on organizinginto a monolithic and militant Church the community oftheir converts. The Church was created after the pattern ofthe Roman empireóterritorially as well as administratively.The entire imperial territory, at the centre as well as in theprovinces, was divided into parishes, dioceses, districts andother divisions over which priests, deacons, archdeacons,bishops, prelates and archbishops presided with despoticpower derived from a ìdivine revelationî. In due course,the Church could raise its own resources, provide for anincreasing number of missionaries, build monasteries fullof militant monks, and sent money to christian



communities in poorer places. The roads, sea-routes andother means of communications, which the Roman statehad built and devised for its own use, also became vehiclesof the fast spreading christian creed. The pagan people, onthe other hand, were divided into many communities eachof which led its own life in terms of its own culturaltraditions. They were hardly in a position to withstand thechristian onslaught which went on gaining might andmomentum with the passing of every year.

These methods of the Church were matured and madeprogressively more powerful in the midst of heresy-huntingand schisms which were inevitable in a community whichlooked with suspicion on every departure from dogma, andevery innovation in ritual. Far from weakening the Church,these recurring quarrels made it ever more ruthlesstowards those whom it regarded as its enemies. Dogma wasdoggedly tailored to the needs of Church authority and theauthority in turn served the spread of dogma with anuncompromising zeal.

By the end of the 3rd century A.D., the Church hadbecome not only a powerful edifice next only to theimperial government itself, but had also evolved a well-defined dogma deceptively dressed in the language ofGreek philosophy and Egyptian mysticism. No wonder thatit started finding an increasing number of adherentsamongst merchants who had money, amongst politicianswho wielded power, amongst military commanders whowere superstitious or in need of popular support, andamongst gilded ladies who were out to make the best ofboth the worlds.

The mother of emperor Severus (222-235 A.D.) hadbecome a disciple of Origen, a well-known christian

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theologian. Emperor Philip the Arabian (240-249 A.D.)had himself become a Christian. The wife of emperorGalerius implored him, when he fell sick in 311 A.D. tomake peace with the ìundefeated God of the Christianî.He promulgated an edict recognizing Christianity as alegitimate religion, immediately before he died the sameyear. Helena the mother of Constantine, who convertedthe Roman empire into a Christian theocracy, was aChristian convert and exercised considerable influence inthe counsels of her son.

Divine Right of Kings

Scholars have debated the question whether theconversion of Constantine was religious or political. It isdifficult to give a definite answer at this distance in time,more so because the evidence is conflicting. But one thingwhich decided Constantine in favour of Christianity was thedivine right of kings coupled with dynastic successionóadogma which the Church had evolved and was prepared toextend to any contender for power who acceptedChristianity as the state religion.

The Roman state had continued to pretend to be arepublic long after it had become an imperial edifice for allpractical purposes. But there was no dynastic successionand no divine right of kings known to Roman politicalparlance. Every emperor had to wade his way throughblood before he could ascend the imperial throne.Constantine saw the future of his family as well as of his ownimperial power bound with the Christian dogma ofdynastic succession and the divine right of kings. Heremoved his capital from Rome to Constantinople to avoidresistance which was likely to be stronger in the former city.



And he succeeded in the gamble with the help of theChurch.

But Constantine was not the last to sanctify his imperialcrown with the insignia of the Church. In the years tocome, the kings of Celts, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Germans,Bulgars, Danes and Slavs solicited and obtained the aid ofthe same Church to proclaim absolute power over theirsubjects. A king in these pagan societies was only the firstamongst equals, and he could be dethroned if he fell foulof the time honoured tradition of allowing autonomy tolocal units. The Church helped these democraticmonarchs to become unbridled despots who, in turn,helped the Church to stamp out all pagan practicesóreligious, cultural and social.

Destruction of Pagan Religions

The pattern followed by the Christianized monarchiesvis-a-vis pagan religions was the same in every country ofAsia, Africa and Europe.

To start with, the pagan temples were closed, paganprocessions were prohibited, pagan sacrifices weredeclared sacrilegious, pagan priests were deprived of theprivileges which they had enjoyed since times immemorial,and state partronage of pagan schools was withdrawn.Simultaneously, finances were made available for buildingchristian churches, seminaries and monasteries; christianceremonies and public festivals were patronized by kings,princes and princesses; christian sacraments were madeobligatory on all citizens; and Christian priests and monkswere granted special privilege such as non-payment ofstate taxes and non-performance of public duties. TheChurch was permitted to inherit extensive properties from

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those who wanted to will that way. Soon it became a deviceto save properties from being sequestered to the state.Those who could not inherit properties legally got themwilled to the Church which they themselves joined in somecapacity or the other. And the Church was also allowed tohear and decide such legal disputes as were broughtbefore it by the citizens.

In the next round, the pagan temples were demolishedor converted into christian churches; properties attachedto pagan shrines were transferred to the christian shrines;pagan scriptures were burnt; and pagan priests were killedunless they agreed to get converted. The campaigns fordestruction of pagan temples, burning of pagan scriptures,and killing or converting of pagan priests were announcedand sanctioned by the hierarchs of the Church and thechristian mobs who carried out the commands, particularlyin the countryside, were mostly led by christian monksliving in the fast multiplying monasteries.

It would be a long story if we were to relate, country bycountry, what the Church did to pagan religions andcultures, prevalent from times immemorial, in Europe,Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and North Africa. It is a story of howthe Church subverted one pagan society after another;how hundreds of thousands of pagan temples and sacredshrines were destroyed; how millions of ìheathensî weredispatched to the ìchristian hellî by fire and sword; andhow the last vestiges of every pagan religion and culturewere stamped out.

What is still more painful about this story is how some ofthe savages and lunatics who instigated, inspired,sanctioned and supported this sanguine saga weresanctified as saints by the Church. Many pious people are



impressed as soon as they find the letters ìSt.î added to aname. They would be shocked if they found out what thehonorific hides most of the time.

On top of it all, the Church labeled the pagan people asìbarbariansî who had ìinvadedî the then ìcivilized worldîof the Roman Empire. Scholars in several Europeancountries have now delved deeper into the pre-christianpast of their societies. The evidence they have piecedtogether about the quality and character of the paganpeople tells an altogether different story. It was not thepagans but the christians who were the first barbarians inhuman history. The doubtful distinction of passing offpolitics under the cloak of religion must go to the christianChurch in ancient and medieval Europe.

Christianity in the New World

There was no scope left for expansion after 1000 A.D.or thereabout, because its path towards the East and theSouth had, meanwhile, been blocked by another thoughsimilar politics which had taken shape on the sands ofArabia. The new world of the Americas, Australia and NewZealand and the old world of Africa, India, Southeast Asiaand the Far East were not yet accessible to the Church,though its individual missionaries were mapping out thescene in different Asian countries. Meanwhile, Christianityhad become more and more brutalized as a result of severalcenturies of heresy-hunting, inquisition and the burning ofìwitchesî. Spain and Portugal were in the van of thisprocess of brutalization.

It was the Spaniards who discovered America towardsthe close of the 15th century A.D. about the same time thePortuguese travelled round the western and southern

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coast of Africa to reach South India, Ceylon, Burma,Malaya, Indonesia, Indochina, Korea, China and Japan.The Philippines were soon to be invaded by the Spaniardswho crossed the Pacific from their base in Mexico. Themissionaries found that all these countries and continentswere inhabited by pagan societies as unsuspecting as thepagan societies of ancient Europe, Asia Minor, Egypt andNorth Africa. The politics of conversion called Christianitystarted playing its game once again, and over a far largerfield. The Pope in Rome drew a line on a certainlongitude, and handed over the two hemispheres to thetwo Christian nationsóSpain and Portugal.

As soon as the Spaniards saw the vast expanse of North,Central and South America, they were filled with theconviction that it was the very land which their ìLord Godîhad ìpromisedî to them at the dawn of human history. Theìdivine promiseî was all the more promising because of theplenty of gold it contained, particulary in those parts whichlater became known as Mexico, Peru and Guatemala. TheRed Indians who inhabited these lands appeared to beintruders to the Spaniards. At least that is how the sailorsand soldiers of the Church argued amongst themselves.The fact that these Red Indians were welcoming theChristians with open arms, and offering them plenty ofgifts including gold, did not change the situation. It onlyconfirmed that the lands for which the Red Indians werenot prepared to fight could not really belong to them.

The slaughter and pillage that followed all overAmericaónorth, centre and southóstill remainsunparalled in the annals of human history. It was aslaughter of unarmed people who had given noprovocation, and who were prepared to share with the



Spaniards whatever wealth they had. Their only ìcrimeîwas that they were not christians and the ìLord Godî hadnot ìpromisedî to them the lands on which they had livedfor untold ages.

The Red Indians who escaped the sword of theChristian soldiers were enslaved by the plantation pioneerswho followed soon after. The missionaries, in their turn,found a rich harvest for conversion in these harassedhuman beings. The ìpoor devilsî had lost everything in thislife. Their bodies were not likely to last for long under thelashes of the Christian slave-drivers. But their souls could besaved for a life everlasting after the second coming ofChrist. Meanwhile, the Portuguese were selling to theSpaniards a lot more slaves which the former had capturedfrom all over Africa. The missionaries had their hands fullwith the work of saving souls.

In course of time, the Christians from Spain werejoined by many more from other European countriesóparticularly the Catholics from France and the Protestantsfrom Great Britain. They frequently came to blows over thedivision of the land and the loot. But none of them had athought to spare for the Red Indians who, in due course,almost disappeared from North America and whoseremnants were converted to christianity in Central andSouth America. It was only when the Dark Age, ushered inby Christianity, came to a close towards the end of theeighteenth century that the Red Indians were recognisedas human beings, equal to the christians who had killedmost of them and enslaved the rest. But the Church wasnot prepared to concede that its mission amongst the RedIndians had been anything except a mission of ìChristianmercyî. The Church kept on brandishing its belief that thegreat Mayan culture in Central America was a species of

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ìbarbarismî, specializing in ìhuman sacrificesî at the alterof its ìblood-thirstyî gods. The Church was to tell similarstories about the Hindus, though in less loud tones,because the Hindus were soon in a position to hit back.

Christian Politics of Conversion in Asia

Due to a number of circumstances, the Portuguese didnot do so well in the lands which the Pope had bequeathedto them. But they had an ample opportunity to practise thepolitics of conversion along the Western coast of India.Francis Xavier who presided over this politics for a few yearshad the Christian satisfaction of demolishing a number ofHindu temples in South India and seeing several thousandìheathensî4 slaughtered in Goa. He invited the king ofSpain to use the secular arm for the spread of christianity inIndia. The Church sanctified him as the ìPatron Saint ofthe Eastî, and his corpse was enshrined in Goa, to beworshipped in perpetuity by the victims of his politics.

By the time the French, the British and the Dutchappeared on the Eastern scene, Christianity had beenfound out in the West for what it had always been in factópower-hungary politics masquerading as religion. Thelater-day European imperialists, therefore, had only amarginal use for the christian missionary. He could be usedto beguile the natives. But he could not be allowed todictate the parallel politics of imperialism. Moreover, theEast had some highly developed pagan cultures whichcould discuss on equal terms quite a few fundamentals withthe christian fanatics, and which were also not too weakmilitarily.

The field for the christian politics of conversion hasbecome considerably smaller in Asia due to the resurgenceof Islam, and the triumph of Communism in China, North



Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos. If a missionaryconverts a single muslim in any Islamic country, he is sure tobe murdered immediately by a muslim mob, even beforethe Islamic state has considered the case for hisexpulsion. Nor can the missionary find a convert in anycommunist country. He will be immediately caught as anìimperialist agentî and sent to a labour camp. BuddhistBurma has also seen through his game and barred hisentry. It is only in India, Ceylon and Japan that themissionary continues to practice his professioneffectively. India is perhaps his most fertile field becauseIndia has yet to understand the true character ofChristianity in spite of the opportunity provided by themissionaries over the past five hundred years.

Politics of Conversion Called Islam

Although Islam entered India some 800 years beforeChristianity, it appeared on the world scene some 600 yearslater. By the time Mohammed proclaimed himself aprophet in 610 A.D., the christian politics of conversionhad already conquered all those countries in Europe, Asiaand Africa which had formed parts of the Roman Empire atthe height of its expansion. The Church was castingcovetous eyes towards the North and the East in Europe, astowards the sprawling Persian empire in the South-East,seeking fresh pastures for its enthusiastic enterprise. Thedesert of Arabia did not count for much in the calculationsof the Church. Some missionaries had visited the southernparts of the Peninsula and made some converts. But theìchosen onesî had been left to live alone the company ofArab ìheathensî and the ìaccursed Jewsî who had quite afew colonies in the oases spread over the central and

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northern parts of the desert. Little did the Church suspectthat the ìheathensî of Arabia were to challenge very soonthe christian monopoly of the politics of conversion.

ìislamî is derived from the Arabic ì sallamî and hasbeen presented to mean ìpeaceî or ìsurrenderî,depending upon the time and place of presentation. In acountry and at a time where and when muslims are not inpower, it is presented as ìpeaceî. But as soon as themuslims become dominant, it means surrender, and thattoo at the point of the sword. The surrender is supposed tobe made to allah the only God according to Islam. But allahis sure to spurn the surrender unless it is preceded by asurrender to the prophet, the sole spokesman for allah. Ineffect, it means a surrender to whichever mulla happens tobe hailed as the authentic interpreter of the quran and thehadis, in the eyes of the Sultan who wields the sword, thesole arbiter under Islam in matters moral and spiritual.

While Jesus was not the founder of the Church and hadnothing to do with the dogmas of Christianity, the ummahor millat, which became the vehicle of Islam was foundedand given a finished from as well as a fanatic ideology byMohammed himself. Again, while the personality,preachings and performance of Jesus can be pitted againstthe Church and its dogma, there is little in Islam which isnot derived directly from the personality, preaching andperformance of its prophet.

Allah and His Prophet

What exactly happened to Mohammed in themountain cave outside Mecca has remained a controversialquestion. We are told by the theologians of Islam that hisìexperienceî is not verifiable by any other human being,



nor is his ìrevelationî subject to human reason. One has toaccept Mohammedís word that he was the last and the mostperfect prophet, and that whatever he said or did in a state ofwahi or otherwise was the pronouncement andprescription from ìalmighty allahî.

Those who took Mohammed at his word and acceptedhis prophethood were acclaimed by him as momins, whilethose who rejected his mission were denounced as kafirs.The momins did not have to be better men than the kafirsin terms of consciousness or charcter. They had only torecite the kalmiaóthere is no god but allah, andMohammed is the prophetóand they became qualified tokill as many kafirs as they could, or pleased.

Allah himself had been a part of the Arab pantheon atMecca for many centuries past. He had shared his divinitywith a large number of other Gods and Goddessesworshipped by the Arabs, and he even enjoyed a certainprimacy. The Bedouin, who roamed the desert, flocked toMecca at appointed times for pilgrimage, and worshippedhis Gods and Goddesses with whatever offerings he couldspare from his meagre possessions. Neither the Bedouinsnor the settled citizens of Arabia had ever suspected thattheir allah was soon going to become the sole cock of thewalk, and the cause of a bloody and prolonged strife inmany parts of the world.

It is also debatable as to why Mohammed whose allahalone, out of a large-sized Arab pantheon. He could have aseasily bestowed this singular honour on any other God orGoddess in Mecca, or in the temple of some other town inArabia. The Gods and Goddesses had obviously no choicein the matter. The only rational explanation is that thesound of the name allah was near to the sound of Elohim,the God of the Jews. Jesus had also cried out to Eli before

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he died on the cross. There are too many Judaic elementsin Islam to rule out this explanation. But whatever thereason for Mohammedís choice, there is no reason todoubt that allah would not have assumed the status he didwithout the help of Mohammed. It is small wonder thatallah in his turn felt so tender towards Mohamed, andproclaimed the latter to be the last and the most perfectprophet in human history.

Things started happening soon after the covenantbetween allah and his last prophet was struck in themountain cave outside Mecca, through the good offices ofan angel named Gabriel. The Quraish who were thedominant tribe in Mecca would not have minded amember of their clan acclaiming allah as the only God.They were used to such prophets appearing in Mecca andother Arabian towns, every now and then. They were aliberal people in matters of religion and did not mind howa man fancied himself or his god. But they were painfullysurprised by the proclivities of this new prophet. He hadstarted frequenting the forum outside the kaaba todenounce, in a rather strong language, all that they hadcherished so farótheir Gods and Goddesses, their culturaltraditions, their social system, and what notóday in and dayout.

Muslim mullas have made a martyr out of Mohammedduring his twelve years of prophethood at Mecca, the sameway as the Church has made martyrs out of the earlymissionaries at Rome. They have also explained away orjustified the vindictiveness of Mohammed towards his ownpeople of the Quraish by citing the ìmany injusticesincluding violenceî which Mohammed had ìsufferedî atMecca. No contemporary records of the Quraish havesurvived to tell the other side of the story. But there is



enough in the contemporary Islamic records to clinch theissue as to who was the aggressor and who the aggressed-against. Here was a man sending all ancestors of the Arabs,including his own mother and father, to an eternal hell,and promising the same hell to the present and futuregenerations of the Arabs, unless they accepted him as thelast prophet of the only allah. The Quraish would havebeen a dead people indeed if they had not reacted, andtold Mohammed to leave their city for whereever he couldfind a more attentive audience.

It is for this ìcrimeî of the Quraish that Muslim mullashave blackened the religion and culture of pre-IslamicArabia as Jahiliya (ignorance). The mullas forget that theArabic language which is their proud possession in thequran and the hadis was not invented by their prophet atthe spur of the moment, nor ìrevealedî by allah out of theblue. This rich language had a long ancestry, and reflectedthe genius of a culture which was deep as well as endowedwith diverse dimensions. The pre-Islamic Arabs were apagan people who allowed a God or Goddess to eachaccording to his or her need and who expected worshipfrom each according to his or her capacity. They had manyother qualities of head and heart which the post-IslamicArab society and culture lost completely.

Islam professes to have brought peace to the warringtribes of Arabia. But its own chronicles tell of nothingexcept wars, more fierce than ever before, which the Arabsfought, first amongst themselves, and later on with theirnear and distant neighbours on all sides, soon after theywere forced to surrender to Islam.

Islam and Christianity Compared

The Christian Church had taken 300 years to conquer

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the Roman empire. The Islamic millat triumphed muchfaster over Arabiaóin a matter of 10 years afterMohammed arrived in Yathrib which became known asMedina after a massacre of its Jewish population. But inspite of this difference in time-scale the methods used bythe millat were more or less the same as were used earlierby the Church. The difference arose because of thedifferent situations in which the two politics of conversiontook shape.

The Roman empire was a powerful political edifice.The Church had to build a state within the state before itcould subvert Roman society. Arabia, on the other hand,was divided into a number of independent tribal republics,with nothing to share amongst them except a fierce lovefor local freedom. The millat had only to build theapparatus of a centralised stateóa reliable revenue systemand a standing armyóin order to be able to reduce thetribal republics, one by one.

The religious mask worn by the politics of conversioncalled Islam was also more transparent than the thick veil ofverbiage with which Christianity had to decorate itself.Christianity had its beginnings in an environment suffusedwith sophistry. It had to acquire a similar language andidiom to percolate itself. Islam, on the other hand, wasinvented in an environment which was simple andstraightforward. It could, therefore, advocate the politics ofconversion with less hypocrisy and shoot straight from theshoulder.

The Momins and Kafirs

If we leave aside the myths and legends which Islamborrowed from Judaismólock, stock and barrelóthemessage of Islam was very simple, almost simplistic.



To start with, it divided Arabian society into two tightcompartmentsóthe momins and kafirs, The momins wereasked to muster together into a militant millatóarmed tothe teeth, and ready to use force and/or fraud accordingas occasion demanded. The millat surprised thesettlements and caravans of the kafirs in a series of armedraids. The kafirs who were always caught unawares had nochoice but to surrender, many a time without a singleskirmish. The swordsmen of the millat selected andslaughtered, in cold blood, all kafirs who were capable ofbearing arms. The movable and immovable properties ofthe kafirs were appropriated by the millat. The women andchildren of the kafirs were captured and sold as slaves orfreed for ransom, after members of the millat had theirpick of the maidens.

Once in a while, the millat discovered that the kafirswere in no moode to surrender in spite of the surprise, andthat the armed conflict might turn out to its disadvantage.Then the millat made overtures of peace on the conditionthat the kafirs got converted to Islam. The lives and familiesof the converts were spared but not their properties whichwere taken away as booty.

The mullas take pride that Islam did away with tribal tiesand united all Arabs into one solid brotherhood. It must beadmitted that the millatís method of doing away with tribalties was very effective indeed. Quite often, one or moremembers of a family or tribe happened to be momins,while their other kinsmen were ranged against them askafirs. The millat encouraged a brother to engage hisbrother in armed combat, so that one of them was sure toget killed. In case of kafirs who had to be slaughtered afterthe war, the millat searched its own ranks for the nearest

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kinsmen to perform the ëpiousí deed. A momin wassupposed to retain or recognise no relationship except thatof a common creed. All other human ties were nowrendered irrelevant.

The momins were, of course, not risking their lives fornothing. Four-fifths of the booty and prisoners captured ina war was their share according to a ëlawí laid down by theprophet himself. The prisoners included quite a numberof young and fair maidens who could set any mominísmouth watering. No wonder that the infant state of Islam atMedina was able to assemble very soon quite a number ofìdedicatedî swordsmen without spending a penny from itsown coffers. The principles of free enterprise applied toplunder and pillage was functioning with full force.

In case a momin got killed in the ëholy warí, he waspromised a permanent place in heaven. ìThe blessedî, saidthe quran, ìwill be dressed in silk brocades and adornedwith gems. They will recline on couches and be served byhadsome youths, and eat from trees bowing down to filltheir hands. There will be virgins never yet touched by menor jinn, in beauty like the jacinth and coral stone ... withswelling bosoms but modest gaze, with eyes as fair and pureas sheltered eggs, and bodies made of musk, and free fromthe imperfections and indignities of mortal flesh.îAccording to one tradition, quoted by Will Durant, eachmomin was promised 72 of these houries, who would neverage or stop being solicitous. According to other traditions,the number could be many times more. It was surely not amean attraction.

The balance one-fifth of the booty and prisoners of warwere assigned to the Islamic state which the prophet hadset up at Medina to start with and which moved to other



cities in due course, under the caliphs or amir-ul-mominin.This one-fifth had to be the pick of the bunch beforemembers of a military expedition could claim their share.No wonder that the Islamic state at Medina was very soonrolling in riches. The wealth which flowed to the Islamicstate in later times grew progressively in volume andvariety, and the stage was set for the flowering of thatIslamic ìcultureî in which the millat takes such mightypride. The prophet and the earlier caliphs, who controlledand commanded these riches, were inclined to lead a lifeof ìpovertyî. This ìpietyî impressed the momins who hadto be satisfied with much less, and served to create manymyths about Islamic ìideal of equalityî. The ìequalityînever made any difference to the despotic power whichthe prophet and, later on, the caliphs had at their disposal.

Sweep of the Islamic Sword

The prophet of Islam had proclaimed that allah hadassigned the whole earth to the millat. Not a patch was to beleft for the kafirs to dwell. And no corner of the world wasto be bereft of mosques form which the muezzin could callthe ìfaithfulî to prayer. But it seems that allahís knowledgeof geography was not so good. His prophet had not heardof many lands beyonds Syria, Iraq, Iran, Ethiopia and Egypt.He knew nothing about India and the Hindus which wantof knowledge was to lead to a heated theologicalcontroversy later on.

Notwithstanding this lack of geographical knowledge,the prophet divided the world into two contendingspheresódarul-Islam (the zone of peace) and darul-harb(the zone of war). The inhabitants of darul-Islam, that is,the muslims were commanded to wage unceasing war

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upon darul-harb till the latter was converted intodarul-Islam. The frontiers of darul-Islam were to be pushedprogressively in all directions. The theory of Islamicimperialism was thus perfected by the prophet himself,like the latter-day theory of communist imperialism whichLenin elaborated as ìinternational proletarian revolutionî.

The whole of Arabia had been terrorized intosurrendering to the sword of Islam by the time the prophetpassed away in 632 A.D. The militarized millat which hadìelectedî an amir-ul-mominin in the same year, now startedseeking fresh fields for the mission of Islam. Iran hadexhausted herself in an unceasing war with the Romanempire. The provinces of the Roman empire in Asia andNorth Africa were seething with rebellion againstpersecution of ì heresiesî by the Church at Rome whichhad by now reduced every other ecclesiastical dispensationto a subordinate status. Iran and Roman provinces fell inquick succession after the armies of Islam first found outthe feebleness of their defences, and then delivereddecisive blows.

Thus, within a hundred years after the death of theprophet, the amir-ul-mominin at Damascus became themaster of a mighty empire, spread over Spain, Sicily, NorthAfrica, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Khorasan andSindh. It was a military triumph unprecedented in humanhistory till that time. The triumph could be easilyexplained in terms of political and military causes andconsequences. But the mullas chose to attribute it to themight of allah which had been ìfully and finally thrown onthe side of Islamî. Henceforward, there was no justificationfor anyone to dwell in the ìdarkness of Kufrî. The ìlightî ofIslam was now accessible to all.



The newly conquered countries were inhabited not bythinly spread-out tribal settlements but by populoussocieties, urban and rural. It was no more possible for themomins to kill all kafirs who rejected Islam or capture andcarry away all their women and children. Besides, theproperties which the kafirs possessed, and the lands onwhich they lived, were so voluminous and vast. The mullas,therefore, developed a more elaborate theory of an Islamicstate out of the embryo of principles which the prophethad already propounded.

The millat led by the amir-ul-mominin was, of course, themaster class under the Islamic state. But this state had amission larger than providing power and privilege to themillat. The state had to see to it that the kafirs who hadbeen conquered were brought into the fold of Islam as fastas possible. The kafirs were, therefore, given, a newstatusóthat of zimmis to start with. The zimmis wereallowed to live under the aegis of an Islamic state, providedthey agreed to pay jiziya (poll-tax) and other discriminatorytaxes, and accepted a status of second class citizens placedunder draconian disabilities. It was expected that theburden of taxes and the disgrace of disabilities would forcethe kafirs to get converted to Islam before long. Theexpectation was more than fulfilled in most countriesexcept India and Spain. The kafirs in other countries werenot only converted to Islam but were also brainwashed tofulminate against their own forefathers and forget thatthey had been conquered by a foreign race and creed.

The mullas applaud the concept of a zimmi and describeit as a privileged position because, ìunlike the momins, thezimmis are exempted from military servicesî. It is difficultto know how the mullas arrived at this self-congratulatory

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conclusion. They certainly did not consult any kafir to findout if he wanted to become a zimmi and be ìexemptedîfrom military service. The whole thing looks like adeliberate device adopted in order to disarm andemasculate a subject population. People who could notbear arms were in no position to defend themselves againstIslamic barbarism which became more pronounced withthe passing of every day, in direct proportion to theestablishment of ìpeaceî under the Islamic state.

The Islamic state allowed some time to the kafirs toìmendî their ways and receive the ìtrue revelationî. But ithad no patience for the religious and cultural institutionsof the kafirs. It systematically destroyed and desecrated thetemples and shrines of the kafirs, killed their priests, burnttheir scriptures as well as secular literature, closed theirschools and monasteries and heaped insult and injury onevery precept and practice that they had cherished so far.It completed the job of ìcleaning upî the scene asthoroughly, if not more, as the Christian Church had doneearlier. The conquered lands were at the same timeìadornedî with mosques, mazars and khanqahs in whichthe mullas mugged up the quran and the hadis, and theSufis sermonized on the maqams they had ìattainedî.

Islam: An alibi for Arab Imperialism

For several centuries after its advent, Islam was an alibifor Arab imperialism. And it was an imperialism of a typewhich the world had not known so far. The Arabs not onlyimposed their ruthless rule and totalitarian creed on thecountries they conquered; they also populated thesecountries with a prolific progeny which they procreated onnative women. Every Arab worth his race ìmarriedî scores,



sometimes hundreds of these helpless women. Divorce of awedded wife had been made very easy by the ìlawî of Islam.A muslim male could go on marrying and divorcing at therate of several women during the span of a single day andnight. What was still more convenient, there was norestriction on the number of concubines a muslim malecould keep. The Arab conquerors used these maleprivileges in full measure. And in a matter of a hundredyears, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt and North Africa, whichhad been non-Arab countries for countless ages, becameArab countries in race, language and culture. Conversionwas not confined to creed alone; it covered oneís blood aswell.

The Arab power declined in due course. The mission ofIslam was next taken over by the Turks whom the Arabs hadconverted earlier. It was the Turks who succeeded wherethe Arabs had failedóconquering Asia Minor, invadingCentral Asia, India and Eastern Europe. Asia Minor waswrested from Christianity, converted en masse, andpopulated by a prolific Turkish progeny. It is known asTurkey to-day. Central Asia, which was already Turkish,became Islamic as well. It was only in India and EasternEurope that the Turks failed in the final round. But in bothplaces, they crystallized colonies of native muslims to carryforward the politics of conversion under changedcircumstances. The success achieved by this Islamic politicsof conversion has been quite significant in India so far. Howfar that politics will progress in future depends uponwhether Hindu society understands it or not, at present.

The Situation of Hindu Society Today

The state of Hindu society today presents a closeparallel to the state of pagan societies in ancient Europe,

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Asia and Northern Africa, on the eve of their subversion bypolitics of conversion called Christianity and Islam.

The pagan societies of the ancient world were alsopluralistic societies like the Hindu society, accommodatingseveral streams of social, cultural and spiritual traditionsand allowing a large measure of autonomy to theirconstituent units. And like the Hindu society, these pagansocieties also reacted instinctively against totalitarianideologies like Christianity and Islam.

But these pagan societies were betrayed by their elitewhich had become spiritually bankrupt, morally neutraland intellectually devoid of discriminationóin short, self-forgetful and self-alienated. Hindu society to-day is beingbetrayed in a similar manner by its own elite.

The Hindu masses suspect the slogan of sarva-dharma-sambhava in the context of Islam and Christianity, and resistit instinctively. The instinct is very sound because it issupported by the historical experience of what the Hindushave suffered at the hands of these two political ideologieswhich came from outside, and as accomplices of imperialistinvaders. It is the Hindu elite who must take full ìcreditîfor circulating as genuine the counterfeit creeds of Islamand Christianity.

The elite was expected to know better, and in a moresystematic manner, the true character of Christianity andIslam. The Hindu scholar was expected to study first-handthe ìscripturesî and theologies of these two ìreligionsî,and compare them with his own scriptures andphilosophies. The Hindu historian was expected to surveyand evaluate the record of these ìreligionsî in countriesand continents they had conquered. But the Hindu elitehas failed to do it duty towards his society, culture andcountry.



Most of the time, the Hindu elite is either too pious tobelieve that ìrealî religion can be a cause for social orpolitical discord; or too trusting to question the exclusiveclaims of any creed; or too devoid of discrimination todiscern the fundamental difference between SanatanaDharma on the one hand, and Islam and Christianity on theother; or too indifferent towards religion to count it as asubject of serious study; or too ìforgivingî or toopreoccupied with his ìleadership of all sections of theIndian peopleî to notice any sentiments or susceptibilitieswhich may divide them. In most members of the Hinduelite the psychological motive is mixed. But in every casethe end result is the sameóto be impervious to thecontinuing aggression from Islam and Christianity.

Some sections of the Hindu elite have become too selfalienated to really care for the welfare of the society whichgave them birth and brought them up. Most of the timethey harbour a deep-seated animus against everythingHindu, and let no opportunity pass to harangue againsttheir own heritage. They are the most privileged sectionsunder the present dispensation, with whom it is difficult tohave a dialogue on matters of life and death for Hindusociety. They dismiss every Hindu cause with a shrug of theshoulders, if not with utter contempt. They are beyond anyappeal of reason or evidence. They need psychiatrictreatment.

What is worse, the Hindu elite in general is mortallyafraid of being called ëcommunalistí by the missionary andthe mulla or the muslim and christian elite which functionsfrom all political platforms pledged to what passes assecularism in India at present. One is sure to invite thisswear-word as soon as one takes cognizance of any Hindu

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cause, however legitimate, or questions any claim orìgrievanceî which the ìminoritiesî may cook up.

And most members of the Hindu elite get frightenedout of their wits when the leftists in general and thecommunists in particular bounce upon them asìreactionaryî and ìrevivalist,î working in league withìcapitalismî and ìimperialismî, the moment they espouse aHindu cause.

Perverse Scholarship and Journalism

This atmosphere of self-forgetfulness, self-alienation,self-righteouness and swearology aimed exclusively atHindu society, has given birth to a brand of scholarship andjournalism which always draws wrong, even perverseconclusions from a right array of facts and premises which ititself marshals, many a time quite perceptively. We havewitnessed a lot of such ìscholarshipî and ìjournalismî inthe aftermath of Meenakshipuram. At the back of it all,there is a mind which can be summed up in onesentenceówhatever be the facts, its conclusions are thesame.

This mind starts by reporting that the spate ofconversions to Islam is part of a plan to convert India into amuslim majority country. It quotes verbatim the spokesmenof Islam, in India and abroad, to the effect that hugefinancial resources are being mobilized in all muslimcountries to help the conversion of Harijans. But it ends byciting the actual figures of Harijans converted in this orthat town or village, and dismiss the whole affair as too smallto justify the ìhue and cry which the Hindus have raisedî.In the final round, this mind concludes that short-termstatistics are more meaningful than the long-term strategy.



This mind starts by warning Hindu society that thissociety is in for serious trouble unless it secures social justicefor its underprivileged sections. But as soon as it finds thatthe RSS, the Vishva Hindu Parishad, the Mathadhipatisand the Arya Samajóthe only organisations which work forthe welfare of Hindu societyóhave entered the field forensuring social justice to the Harijans, it starts shriekingabout a ìHindu backlashî which endangers ìcommunalharmonyî.

This mind ridicules the Vishva Hindu Parishad forexpressing satisfaction that the tide of mass conversions hasbeen contained. It also quotes the spokesman of IshathulIslam Sabhai of Tamil Nadu to prove that many morethousands are waiting to get converted in the next round,which may not be far off. But it sees a danger to secularismif the Vishva Hindu Parishad takes its warning seriously andstarts putting in more effort.

This mind cites some significant instances of Harijanshaving committed atrocities on caste Hindu. It reports thatquite often the caste Hindus who came in conflict with theHarijans were only slightly higher than the Harijans in theHindu caste hierarchy. Its own analysis proves conclusivelythat the Harijans who clamour the loudest in favour ofconversion belong, not to the lower strata of Harijancommunities but to the prosperous and privileged Harijanelite which has emerged through the prevalent politicalprocess. Yet it concludes that there seems to be no otherway of securing social justice from the ìupper casteHindusî except through conversion, and cites severalauthorities including Dr. Ambedkar in support of thisconclusion.

This mind discovers through its own field-survey thatmost stories of police atrocities on Harijans are pure

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concoctions, and that quite often the police saved theHarijans from the wrath of another community which theHarijans had wronged. It probes into to motives forconversion and finds that in most cases they are quite lowsuch as the lust for a second ìwifeî, or the lure of gifts andemployment in Gulf countries, or fear of conviction forcrimes committed. It quotes those instances to prove thatthe muslims can always give a communal turn to anyattempt by the police to arrest a criminal who has gotconverted to Islam in the meanwhile. Yet, when the samefacts are cited by some Hindu leader or organization, thismind starts smelling ìHindu communalism trying to distortsome significant sociological phenomenaî.

This mind is on record for pressing the point thatKanyakumari district was a paradise of communal peacebefore the RSS and ìother Hindu communalorganizationsî became active in that area. But it refuses toread the history of christian proselytization spread overseveral centuries as a result of which this district hasbecome a christian majority district, so much so that thechristians are emboldened to demand a change of its namefrom Kanyakumari to Kania Maria. An aggression which wasnot challenged was no aggression at all, according to theìmoralî perceptions of this mind. On the contrary, theaggressor is he who challenges the aggression and tries toundo the wrongs perpetrated in the past.

To sum up, this mind sees India as a conglomeration ofcommunities- Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists,Jats, Yadavs, Lingayats, Ezhvas, Harijans, Caste Hindusóand addresses them all from its olympian heights ofsecularism, national solidarity, non-violence, dharma, andso on. It can never find anything to choose in theìunseemlyî quarrels of these communities, whatever be



the nature of conflict or whoever may be the aggressor. If itis pointed out to this mind that the Hindus should not bethus divided into diverse communities, and that howeverdivided the Hindus may be, they still constitute the nationin the only Hindu homeland, it gets alarmed by what itdescribes a ìHindu chauvinism,î and calls upon all ìsecularforcesî to come together to save ìour composite culturefrom an imminent danger.î

And in the midst of all its contradictions, this mind has aconstantófor it, the Hindus must always be in the wrong,and the ìminoritiesî must always have justice on their side.

The dominant Hindu elite and its confused,contradictory and, many a time, cowardly scholarship havebecome irrelevant, if not sinister, in the present situationwhen the politics of conversion has come out in the open,and is becoming progressively more powerful. A new andideologically equipped Hindu elite has to emerge andrestore the perspective if Hindu society has to be savedfrom the machinations of this politics.

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