The Conversion Agenda

“It was Brahma himself who kidnapped Sita. Since Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv were themselves the victims of lust, it is a sin to consider them as gods.” (page 39) “When Vishnu asked Brahma to commit a sin, he immediately did so. How can such a ‘evil Brahma’ be a Creator of this Universe? How is it possible for both the sinner and the entity which provoked the sin to be gods?” (page 39)

“God, please liberate the sinful people of India who are worshipping ‘f’alse gods’ that believe in the pleasures of illicit ‘vyabhichari’ relationships.” (Page 39)[Seriously Sandeep » Burden of the Cross: My Op-ed in Pioneer]

Those are quotes from a nefarious pamphlet distributed by an evangelist organization called New Life in Karnataka. Their goal – convert people to Christianity by denigrating Hindu gods and goddesses. Though conversions have been going on for 2000 years since the time of Paul, for Indians one of the biggest challenges happened during the British rule. This was a time when evangelicals openly treated Hinduism with condescension.

In 1792 from Charles Grant, a British politician and Evangelical, proposed English education instead of Indian vernaculars mainly as a way to undermine what he called the Hindu fabric of error. Introduction of English, he reasoned, would show Hindus how absurd their religion was and dispel many of their myths. The spread of English arts, science and philosophy, along with the spread of Christianity, according to Mr. Grant, would enable the Indian people to rise to the level of human beings.

Initially the East India Company maintained a policy of religious neutrality even denying permission to missionaries to work in the country. When the charter of the East India Company came for renewal before the Parliament in 1813, the Evangelicals, including Zachary Macaulay, father of Thomas Macaulay, had become influential as to add a provision allowing missionaries to enter the country legally, as well as provide public funding for Indian education.

Trevelyan, Thomas Macaulay’s brother-in-law, was sure that English education would bring the end of the idolatrous religion of India since Hinduism was not a religion which would bear examination. All that was needed, according to him, was to prove that the world did not rest on the back of a tortoise or is it composed of concentric circles of wine, cake and milk and the religion would be gone. The enlightened natives would need a religion and they would go for Christianity.

One such gentleman, a Professor of Philosophy from Poland named Krezenski came to meet Gandhji on January 2, 1937. Prof. Krezenski told Gandhiji that Catholicism is the only true religion and if he converted he would be as great as St. Francis. Gandhiji had a simple question: why can’t a poor Hindu be St. Francis?

The reason is that both religions are not equal. In the market place of monotheism, there may be tolerance for other religions, but they do not believe that all religions are equal. They sincerely believe, since the days of Akhenaten, that there is only one way — their way — and that is the correct way. It then becomes their moral responsibility to show the heathens the correct way.

The correct way is shown by denigrating what is held sacred by the vast majority of the population following examples set by Saudi Arabian school texts and Taliban madrassas. Fed up with the missionary material, Gandhiji wrote

The outward condition has perhaps changed but the inward mostly remains. Vilification of Hindu religion, though subdued, is there. If there was a radical change in the missionaries’ outlook, would Murdoch’s books be allowed to be sold in mission depots? Are those books prohibited by missionary societies? There is nothing but vilification of Hinduism in those books. [Vol 67]

Swami Vivekananda wrote to the Hindus of Madras from United States

What is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy and get more money. If all India stands up, and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesmal part of that which you are doing to us.”[Complete Works]

This caused Swamiji to ask a rhetorical question, “What have the Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus “vile”, and “wretches”, and the most horrible devils on earth?.” The missionary tactics have not changed since the days of Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi. As Maoists mysteriously kill Hindu swamis and rape victims miraculously appear, there is little discussion on the material created and distributed by the missionaries. Their literature needs to be collected and displayed for it will expose them for what they really are: peddlers of hate in the name of a Palestinian Jew who preached love.

 http://varnam.org/blog/2008/10/the_conversion_agenda/