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"Men
never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they
do it from religious conviction." -Blaise
Pascal |
Adherents of Sikhism and Islam, after having had their
share of en-masse 'collective
punishments'
for the
crimes being committed by a few amongst them, now it's time
for the Christians of India, to be brought to task...
Though one
may never discover the identity or motive of those who killed
Brother George in Mathura or who attacked Father Joseph in
Kosikalan, it is evident that the assailants acted secure in
the knowledge that they would never be apprehended. Even by
India's abysmal standards of law enforcement, the performance
of UP's police force leaves much to be desired. Equally
alarming is the extent to which politics in the state has
become criminalised. Criminal elements view political parties
as a vehicle to advance their interests and, likewise,
politicians make free use of gangsters as a means of
furthering their own political agendas. It is in this context
that organizations like the Bajrang Dal have acquired
prominence -- and immunity from the laws of the land. Senior
BJP leaders seem happier to blame all incidents of violence on
Pakistan and on an "international conspiracy" to defame the
Vajpayee government than to turn the light inwards and see
whether the party's strident stand against Christian
missionaries and religious conversions might have something to
do with the recent violence. If anything, the anti-minority
propaganda of the sangh parivar provides an opportunity for
foreign powers to interfere and subvert; all the more reason
for any government interested in national security to clamp
down on inflammatory campaigns and ensure that every citizen
feels secure. Yet on this account, the BJP governments in
Lucknow and Delhi have been a dismal failure. Even as it
probes the various acts of anti-Christian violence in UP and
elsewhere, the Vajpayee government must ensure that the
anti-minority rhetoric of the sangh parivar is ended
immediately.
"Jesus
said to them, those enemies of mine who did not want me to be
king over them, bring them here and kill them in front of me."
Luke, Chapter 19, verse 27
This is not an extract from Christian literature but from
pamphlets brought out by anonymous fringe Hindu groups.
"Conversion, slaughter, subjugation, rape are the tenets of
Christianity," claims one such booklet and exhorts the
faithful to take to arms. "Aryans have the right to slay
anyone who's a danger to their lives. A war against
Christianity has been initiated by Aryavarta. The criminals
must vacate Bharatmata."
VHP vice-president Acharya Giriraj Kishore elaborates on this
thesis: "Pakistan is jealous since India's ties with the US
have improved. This is an attempt to destroy the BJP and harm
its relations with the West." As for the Mathura murder,
Kishore implies the priest was killed because he was engaged
in homosexual activity with a 12-year-old who slept next to
him and witnessed the murder. "Why did the attackers spare the
boy? Because he was too small to be blamed."
Though denying any VHP role, Kishore is candid about his
dislike of Christians. "This community is worse than Muslims
in converting. You people (this correspondent) breed too much.
But Christians go around desecrating Hindu gods and asking
tribals to accept Jesus." Saying the VHP will oppose
conversion in any form, the acharya elaborates further on the
relative evils of the two communities. "Muslims are upfront in
their hostility. Christians are a sugar-coated people. They
pretend to be harmless when they're actively against Hinduism.
For us, Akbar is more dangerous than Aurangzeb. One's a known
evil, the other more dangerous as he is hidden." Another
nugget from the acharya: "Another difference is Muslims claim
to be present in larger numbers than they are, Christians
claim they are a declining populace when actually they are
growing."
This perceived growth lies at the heart of the problem. Not
only does the RSS deny any orchestrated campaign, it has done
its own investigations to prove many of the so-called
incidents are exaggerated and some completely concocted. Says
Vijay: "Attacks on Christians will only increase sympathy for
the missionaries. The Christian West in any case sees India as
a country of heathens, snake charmers and elephants. If they
hear that these pagans are attacking the messengers of good
news, those who sent $1,000 will make it $10,000. And the
Christian MNC lobby will get further ammunition to discredit
the BJP and RSS. What gain is there for us in attacking
Christians?"
Yet, the core of the problem lies in the belief rampant in the
parivar that the Christian population is rapidly expanding,
contrary to actual statistics that show a decline. Kishore
even has a term for the neo-converts. "They are
crypto-Christians. They hide their religion but have actually
converted. Don't be fooled. There are many more Christians
than the official numbers, they are limited to pockets where
the media doesn't go."
The self-appointed guardians of the Hindu faith are therefore
vigilant. It does not require a call from Nagpur for the
extremist fringe groups to indulge in a bout of minority
bashing. On the contrary, there would have been a bloodbath if
there had been any such call to arms. It is even likely that
the BJP has appealed for the containment of the cadres. But
one hothead here, another there, can do all the damage. It
does not require much effort to get a VHP stalwart like
Kishore to verbally lash out at minorities. Some of his
followers, unfortunately, speak with their fists. As Shourie
has argued so persuasively in his book, when a seed has been
sown, a harvest will be reaped.
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In a relatively new development recently, let's take a peek at the story appearing in the news
media: which tends to challenge our IQ levels. The whole
blame of the inefficiency of Indian government dealing
with the crime and it's perpetrators, is once again laid
to rest by blaming their own wrong doings to some
innocent Muslims of South India and linking them to Pakistan's
ISI and in turn, for a dozen(th) time, trying to
stereotype the image of all Muslims as 'traitors' to be
viewed with suspicion. The report says, " The
culprits are found to be aided by Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence, and belonging to a sect
called as the Deendar
Anjuman who follow a strange eclectic theology, and
are allegedly behind the recent blasts in south
Indian churches. The 12,000-odd Anjuman members are
spread across the two southern Indian states,
which their guru Deendar Channabasaveshwara Siddiqui
adopted seven decades ago. But many of these sect
followers lament that the police are harassing them for
no mistake of theirs. "We were living happily. The
police arrested my husband simply because we were
Deendar followers," complained Waheduunisa, wife of
Syed Khalid Uz Zaman, who was picked up soon after the
bomb blasts in churches."
"Our
religious order has been in existence for the last seven
decades. How come that we are branded anti-nationals and
pro-Pakistanis in July 2000?" Qureshi asked.
"It
is not us but the proven fanatic Hindu groups that have
been attacking and killing Christian priests and
missionaries in the country," he alleged.
So,
What precisely did the Anjuman hope to gain by bombing
churches? The report cites to the hypothetical
references of the Investigators and their weird
explanations: One, the Anjuman wanted the people to
blame Hindu groups like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,
Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad for the blasts. It
wanted to scare Christians into believing that they were
no longer safe under the Atal Bihari Vajpayee
government. ( Will someone remind the investigators to
reopen the files of the self-confessed 'Vishwa Hindu
Parishad 'VHP' activist 'dara'
who had confessed to murdering the Graham
Stains and his two kids. The case still lies eerily hushed up.
See The Christian
Attack row for your own judgements on the Who's the
culprit and who lies accused?)
The
second reason, as put forward by the Karnataka's Corps
of Detectives that is investigating the sect, is that
the blasts were carried out because Anjuman founder
Siddiqui hated Christians.
CoD
officials say though Siddiqui propagated amity, harmony
and oneness of religions, he had taught his followers to
hate Christians. The apparent reason was that in 1934,
Siddiqui and 18 of his followers were jailed by the
British government for indulging in inflammatory
speeches and writings.
"Siddiqui
had then pledged to take revenge on the British
officials -- (Christians) -- who humiliated him in
jail," said a CoD official, quoting from one of
the sect's pamphlets. Most innocently, the official
seems to relate the two words (erstwhile British
colonials and today's Christians) as synonyms to each other.
The CoD,
however, is unable to explain why the sect was silent
towards the usage of the word 'Christian' all these years with no written or
recorded instances of it's preaching towards it's
hatred for Christians.
On the
contrary, organizations like the 'RSS-Sangh Parivar'
have gone to the press and the country with the most
vociferous charges against the minority communities in
the garb of religion. Once, BJP
sources said Vajpayee has already met RSS chief Rajendra
Singh and joint general secretary K S Sudershan and VHP
leaders Ashok Singhal and Vishnu Hari Dalmia and told
them not to whip up a communal frenzy on the incidents
in Gujarat.
But
the adamant Hindutva brigade told the prime minister
that representatives of Christianity and Islam are
propagating their religions in India to such an extent
that people of other religions are finding it difficult
to survive. They seem to follow the policy 'Cry
wolf', when there is none. We all know what that story
lead to.
The
brigade also submitted to Vajpayee reports of the demographic
composition of places like the Dangs in Gujarat where
the population of Christians has shot up to 40,000 in
1998 from a mere 50 in 1947.
They
also told Vajpayee that it is only under a BJP
government that the Sangh's cultural nationalism can be
implemented seriously.
...But
the irony is, the fingers of violence are still pointed
at the people who are previously unheard of in the
context of violence and anti-social activities, like
Deendar Anjuman and the confessed and proven perpetrators of
violence walk scotfree.
The cooked up charges are usually baseless...but in this
era of Indian lawlessness,
might seems to be Right. - [Source
Rediff.com] |
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