AMRITSAR SAHIB (August 21, 2012)–According to sources, today at approximately 3:30pm (India time), 40 Sikhs have converted to Christianity in the village Dhotian (ਢੌਟੀਆਂ) in district Tarn Taran. There are 31 Gurdwaras in the village and one historical shrine, Gurdwara Raja Ram in memory of Baba Bir Singh Naurangabad. Langar is served in the village’s large Gurdwara, but the Mahzbi Sikhs, or so-called “low castes,” are refused entry–contrary to the tenets of the Sikh faith.

For the past few years, Baba Jagtar Singh of Tarn Taran Sahib has been doing ‘Kar Sewa’ (construction service). They have demolished the historical Gurdwara and rebuilt it in the name of sewa. Millions of rupees have been spent on the construction of a Gate and Langar Hall in which the so-called low castes are not allowed entry. Baba Jagtar Singh and the rest of his sewadars (volunteers) have been witnessed talking down to the so-called low caste Sikhs.

This was the first missionary tour by the Christians in the village, which has led to 40 conversions of Sikhs who originate from the so-called low caste backgrounds. It is likely in the next missionary tour they will construct a church in the village.

It is noteworthy that this is the village of the writer Jagjit Singh who authored the book ‘Sikh Inqalaab’ (Sikh Revolution) in which he strongly condemned the caste system and caste discrimination, in line with the Sikh faith. Since the time of the early Sikh Gurus, this village has been on the forefront for giving sacrifices for the Sikh religion and maintaining the Sikh religion.

One of the leaders of the local Sikh youth who have been fighting the so-called “Kar Sewa Sant” (Jagtar Singh) and caste discrimination said, “If the Christians make a church then they will invest 50,000 rupees because they want the poor Sikhs (from the lower social backgrounds) to join them and give them equal status.”

One group of Christian missionaries is very active on the banks of the River Beas in the village Dhahian. The ‘Mahzbi’ Sikhs in the villages where great Sikh freedom fighters hailed from like Shaheed Bhai Manochahal, Sangha, Naushira, Vein Poin, Nagoke, Sakheera and others are being groomed and converting to Christianity in large numbers. Churches are being constructed in which they are getting children to sing the praises of Jesus on loud speakers so that all the villagers can hear.

Sikh groups are asking Akal Takht Sahib to take strict action against the Saadh Jagtar Singh and his men who are not only demolishing historical Gurdwaras in the name of ‘Kar Sewa’ but committing a grave sin in the garb of Sikhs by pushing the poor and Mahzbi Sikhs away from the Sikh religion.

Pirates in Priest's Clothing

Continuing with exposing Christianity and its true agenda of imperialism in India. Written by Sita Ram Goel

The next encounter between Hinduism and Christianity commenced with the coming of Christian missionaries to Malabar after Vasco da Gama found his way to Calicut in AD 1498. It took a serious turn in AD 1542 when Francis Xavier, a rapacious pirate dressed up as a priest, arrived on the scene. The proceedings have been preserved by the Christian participants. They make the most painful reading in the history of Christianity in India. Francis Xavier had come with the firm resolve of 'uprooting paganism' from the soil of India and planting Christianity in its place. His sayings and doings have been documented in his numerous biographies and cited by every historian of the Portuguese episode in the history of India.

Francis Xavier was convinced that Hindus could not be credited with the intelligence to know what was good for them. They were completely under the spell of the Brahmanas who, in turn, were in league with evil spirits. The first priority in India, therefore, was to free the poor Hindus from the stranglehold of the Brahmanas and destroy the places where evil spirits were worshipped. A bounty for the Church was bound to follow in the form of mass conversions.¹

We shall let a Christian historian speak about what the Portuguese did in their Indian domain. 'At least from 1540 onwards,' writes Dr. T. R. de Souza 'and in the island of Goa before that year, all the Hindu idols had been annihilated or had disappeared, all the temples had been destroyed and their sites and building materials were in most cases utilised to erect new Christian churches and chapels. Various vice regal and Church council decrees banished the Hindu priests from the Portuguese territories; the public practice of Hindu rites including marriage rites, was banned; the state took upon itself the task of bringing up the Hindu orphan children; the Hindus were denied certain employments, while the Christians were preferred; it was ensured that the Hindus would not harass those who became Christians, and on the contrary, the Hindus were obliged to assemble periodically in churches to listen to preaching or to the refutation of their religion.'²

Coming to the performance of the missionaries, he continues: 'A particularly grave abuse was practised in Goa in the form of 'mass baptism' and what went before it. The practice was begun by the Jesuits and was later initiated by the Franciscans also. The Jesuits staged an annual mass baptism on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (25 January), and in order to secure as many neophytes as possible, a few days before the ceremony the Jesuits would go through the streets of the Hindu quarters in pairs, accompanied by their Negro slaves, whom they would urge to seize the Hindus. When the blacks caught up a fugitive, they would smear his lips with a piece of beef, making him an 'untouchable' among his people. Conversion to Christianity was then his only option.'³

Finally, he comes to 'Financing Church Growth' and concludes: '...the government transferred to the Church and religious orders the properties and other sources of revenue that had belonged to the Hindu temples that had been demolished or to the temple servants who had been converted or banished. Entire villages were taken over at times for being considered rebellious and handed over with all their revenues to the Jesuits. In the villages that had submitted themselves, at times en masse, to being converted, the religious orders promoted competition to build bigger and bigger churches and more chapels than their neighbouring villages. Such a competition, drawing funds and diverting labour, from other important welfare works of the village, was decisively bringing the village economy in Goa into bankruptcy.'⁴

During the same period, Christianity was spreading its tentacles to Bengal. its patrons were the same as in Goa; so also its means and methods. 'The conversion of the Bengalis into Christianity,' writes Dr. Sisir Kumar Das, 'not only coincided with the activities of the Portuguese pirates in Bengal but the pirates took an active interest in it.'⁵ The Augustinians and Jesuits manned the mission with bases at Chittagong in East Bengal and Bandel and Hooghly in West Bengal. Mission stations were established at many places in the interior. 'It was the boast of the Hooghly Portuguese,' records Dr. P. Thomas, 'that they made more Christians in a year by forcible conversions, of course, than all the missionaries in the East in ten.'⁶

The Portuguese captured the young prince of Bhushna, an estate in Dhaka District. He was converted by an Augustinian friar, Father D'Rozario and named Dom Antonio de Rozario. The prince, in turn, converted 20,000 Hindus in and around his estate. 'The Jesuits came forward,' continues Dr. Das, 'to help the neophytes to minister to the needs of the converts and this created bitterness between Augustinians and Jesuits... In 1677, the Provincial at Goa deputed Father Anthony Magalheans, the Rector of the College at Agra, to visit and report on this problem. According to his report nearly 25,000, if not more, converts were there but they had hardly any knowledge of Christianity.... He also observed that many of them became Christians to get money. The Marsden Manuscripts now preserved in the British Museum containing letters of Jesuit Fathers, give evidence that Portuguese missionaries gave money to perspective converts to allure them.'⁷

The quality of the converts, though bewailed frequently by the missionaries, did not really perturb them. Frey Duarte Nunes, the prelate of Goa, had foreseen the situation as early as 1522. According to him, 'even if the first generation of converts was attracted by rice or by any other way and could hardly be expected to become good Christians, yet their children would become so with intensive indoctrination, and each successive generation would be more firmly rooted.'⁸

It was a very difficult situation for Hinduism. But, by and large, Hindus chose to stay in the faith of their forefathers in spite of all trials and temptations. There was no mass movement towards the Church except the 'mass baptisms' staged by the Jesuits. The mission was in a fix. The strategy of forced conversions recommended by Francis Xavier had failed.

Another Jesuit, Robert Di Nobili, came forward with a new strategy. When he came to the Madura Mission in 1606, he had found it a 'desert' in terms of conversions. He had also seen that Hindus had retained their reverence for the Brahmanas in spite of missionary insinuations. So he decided that he would disguise himself as a Brahmana and preach the gospel by other means. The story is well-known - how he put on an ochre robe, wore the sacred thread, grew a tuft of hair on his head, took to vegetarian food, etc., in order to pass as a Brahmana. He also composed some books in Tamil and Sanskrit, particularly the one which he palmed off as the Yajurveda. When some Hindus suspected from the colour of his skin that he was a Christian, he lied with a straight face that he was a high-born Brahmana from Rome!

Some Christian historians credit Di Nobili with converting a hundred thousand Hindus. Others put the figure at a few hundred. But all agree that his converts melted away very fast soon after he was exposed by other missionaries who were either jealous of him or did not like his methods. Christian theologians hail him as the pioneer of Indigenisation in India and the founder of the first Christian Ashram. A truly ethical criterion would dismiss him as a desperate and despicable scoundrel.⁹

One wonders how Hinduism would have fared in South India if its encounter with Christianity under the Portuguese dispensation had continued uninterrupted. Hindus were helpless wherever Portuguese power prevailed and Hindus outside could not help as they themselves were groaning under the heel of Islamic imperialism after the defeat of the Vijayanagara Empire by a Muslim alliance in 1565 AD. The situation was saved by the Dutch in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The Dutch destroyed the maritime monopoly of the Portuguese and drove them out of Malabar and southern Tamil Nadu. Christianity had to break its encounter with Hinduism except in the small Portuguese enclaves where it continued for two more centuries. But most of the heat applied on Hinduism had to be taken off because 'the fear of retaliatory raids by the powerful Marathas in the neighbourhood acted as an effective check on the missionary zeal and coercion.'¹⁰

A plausible case has been made by Christian historians, namely, that the Portuguese were using Christianity as a cover for their predatory imperialism. But what about the Augustinians and the Dominicans and the Franciscans, all of whom belonged to the holy orders? And what about Francis Xavier and his Jesuits? It cannot be overlooked that the Catholic Church hails an-arch criminal like Francis Xavier as the Patron Saint of the East. His carcass (or plaster cast) is still worshipped as a holy relic and the basilica where it is enshrined remains a place of Christian pilgrimage. It is shameless dishonesty to say that the Christian doctrine had nothing to do with the atrocities practised in Goa and Bengal and elsewhere under the Portuguese dispensation.
 

Footnotes:

¹ Francis Xavier was the pioneer of anti-Brahmanism which was adopted in due course as a major plank in the missionary propaganda by all Christian denominations. Lord Minto, Governor General of India from 1807 to 1812, submitted a Note to his superiors in London when the British Parliament was debating whether missionaries should be permitted in East India Company's domain under the Charter of 1813. He enclosed with his Note some 'propaganda material used by the missionaries' and, referring to one missionary tract in particular, wrote: 'The remainder of this tract seems to aim principally at a general massacre of the Brahmanas' (M. D. David (ed.), Western Colonialism in Asia and Christianity, Bombay, 1988, p. 85). Anti-Brahmanism has become the dominant theme in the speeches and writings of Indian secularists of all sorts.

² M.D. David (ed.), op. cit., p. 17.
³ Ibid., p. 19.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 24-35. For a detailed account of Christian doings in Goa, see A.K. Priolkar, The Goa Inquisition, Bombay, 1961, Voice of India reprint, New Delhi, 1991 and 1996.

⁵ Sisir Kumar Das, The Shadow of the Cross, New Delhi, 1974, p. 4.
⁶ P. Thomas, Christians and Christianity in India and Pakistan, London, 1954, p. 114.
⁷ Sisir Kumar Das, op. cat., p. 5.
⁸ M. D. David (ed.), op. cit., p. 8.

⁹ The masquerade of Robert Di Nobili has been described in detail in Sita Ram Goel, Catholic Ashrams: Sannyasins or Swindlers?, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1995.

¹⁰ M.D. David (ed.), op. cit., p. 19.

Hallucinations of the Devil's Devotees

By Sita Ram Goel

For a long time, the Syrian Christians provided the only contact which Hinduism had with Christianity. India lost touch with the Christian West for well-nigh seven centuries because Islamic empires in the Middle East and Central Asia, had raised a barrier between the two. Christians and Muslims were involved in mortal combat soon after the death of prophet Muhammad in AD 632. Christian travellers ran the risk of death if they tried to come east through Muslim dominated routes on land and sea. Hindu merchants, too, lost the incentive for going to Europe. Muslim merchants had monopolised all trade between the East and the West. Hindu sages and savants could hardly think of going abroad; they were having a very difficult time at home where Islam was heaping humiliations on them.

It goes to the credit of medieval Christianity that in spite of this total loss of physical contact, it kept alive the memory of the Brahmanas in its theology. Christian theologians never forgot to remember the Brahmanas whenever they thought of the Pagan Greeks, which was quite often. Only the status of the Brahmanas vis-a-vis the Greeks had suffered a decline. In Pagan times, the Brahmanas were known as teachers of the Greeks, but in Christian centuries they came to be known only as Pythagoreans who avoided animal food and believed in transmigration. That, however, did not make a difference to Christian perception of the Brahmana religion.

So, when the Church Fathers converted the Gods o the Greeks into devils, the Gods of the Brahmanas suffered a similar fate. 'St. Augustine,' writes Professor Partha Mitter, 'sanctioned the idea that demons persuaded the ancients to false belief. Some of the most virulent attacks on pagan gods are to be found in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, where he argued that devils presented themselves to be adored, but they were no gods but wicked fiends and most foul, unclean and impotent spirits.'¹ The Christian travellers who started trickling into India from the fourteenth century onwards, could not help seeing the hosts of hell in Hindu temples.

The first Christian traveller to India who has left a written account was a friar, Father Odoric of Podenone. He was in South India from AD 1316 to 1318. 'He was the first traveller,' proceeds Professor Mitter, 'to leave a description of a monstrous idol in the form of half man and half ox. The monster at Quilon in South India gave responses from its mouth and demanded the blood of forty virgins to be given to it.'² This description passed into a painting by Boucicau Master, the greatest illuminator of manuscripts in Paris in the first years of the fifteenth century. One of his illustrations in Livres de marveilles, a famous manuscript, is 'on human sacrifice taking place in Quilon in front of an idol.'³ This painting 'for the first time assigned horns and goat-head to an Indian god which had until now been the common features of the devil.'⁴

But by far the best Christian commentator on Hindu Gods was the Italian traveller, Ludovico di Varthema, from Bologna. He was in South India between AD 1503 and 1508. According to his 'description of the religion prevailing in the area', the Raja of Calicut 'paid respect to a devil known as Deumo in these parts.' He had an eye for detail, small and big, as is evident from his Itineratiopublished in AD 1510. The Raja of Calicut, he wrote, 'keeps this Deumo in his chapel in his palace.' The chapel had in its midst 'a devil made of metal.' This devil had 'four horns and four teeth with a very large mouth, nose and most terrible eyes.' Its hands were 'made like those of a flesh-hook and the feet like those of a cock.'  Varthema saw many more devils in 'pictures around the said chapel.' On each side of the chapel, he found a Satan 'seated in a seat, which seat is placed in a flame of fire, wherein are a great number of souls, of the length of half a finger and a finger of the hand.' He concluded his account of the Raja's chapel by stating that the Satan 'holds a soul in his mouth with the right hand and with the other seizes a soul by the waist.'⁵

An illustrated edition of Varthema's Itineratio was published in Germany in AD 1515. The Deumo of Calicut came alive in a woodcut by an Augsburg artist. Varthema was translated in all major European languages and ran into numerous illustrated editions. It became the best travel guide for most European visitors to India during the two succeeding centuries. Professor Mitter has summarised the reports of these travellers so far as they refer to Hindu Gods. He has also reproduced pictorial samples of what these travelers 'saw with their own eyes' in one Hindu temple after another. He prepares his readers before he proceeds with the travelogues. 'It does not surprise us,' he explains, 'that these travellers believed in the essential truthfulness of their reports which were of course unquestionably accepted by their contemporaries. Yet as a comparison of actual Indian sculptures with their early descriptions reveals, the early travellers were far from being objective. That is not to say that there was a deliberate conspiracy, for that would have made things easy for us. It is simply that early travellers preferred to trust what they had been taught to expect instead of trusting their own eyes.'⁶

Professor Mitter puts the blame on the Church Fathers who had taught that 'all pagan gods were demons and devils.'⁷ But that does not explain why devils and demons occupied all the attention of the Church for many centuries to the exclusion of everything else even when no 'pagan gods' were around any more. It has been calculated by scholars of the subject that the number of devils and demons known to the Church ran up to eight millions. We have to face the fact that Christianity has been and remains a cult of devil-worship. That is why its adherents see only devils and demons wherever they go. There is no other explanation for the hallucinations of Varthema and Company. The fact that the Devil is described as God in the Bible should make no difference.
 

Footnotes:
¹ Partha Mitter, The Much Maligned Monsters, Oxford, 1977, p. 9.² Ibid., p. 11.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid., p. 14.
⁵ Ibid., p. 17
⁶ Ibid., p. 2.

⁷ Ibid., p. 17. The medieval Christian image of Hindu Gods persists in our own times. Abbe Duboi, the famous French missionary, wrote a whole chapter on Hindu temples in his book, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies. Coming to Hindu idols he says, 'Hindu imagination is such that it cannot be excited except by what is monstrous and extravagant' (p. 607). The third and final edition of this book was published in 1897, nearly a hundred years ago. But it remains the best primer on Hinduism for the average Western traveller to India. Max Muller recommended it 'as containing views of an eye-witness, a man singularly free from all prejudice' (p. vii). It has run through a dozen reprints in England. The Oxford University Press has printed its Fifth Indian impression as recently as 1985. Several other Indian publishers have produced it in different shapes and sizes because it is in constant demand. We have no idea in how many languages it has been translated and how many reprints it has run elsewhere. The total turnout over the years must have been considerable. For many modern Hindus, it is the only source of their knowledge about the religion of their ancestors.

Encounter in Malabar

 By Sita Ram Goel 

It is not known whether the news of the Christian onslaught on Hinduism in the Roman Empire reached India. One wonders whether the merchants and monks who survived and returned home grasped the import of what was happening. If they gave to their countrymen an account of what they had witnessed in a distant land, the record has not survived or is not yet known. Nor do we know how the Hindus at home reacted, if at all. What we do know, however, is that Hinduism in India had not heard of Christianity when the two had their second encounter, this time inside the homeland of Hinduism.

The Hindus of Malabar were the first to see Christians arriving in their midst. They were mostly refugees from persecution in Syria and later on in Iran. Christians in Syria were persecuted by their own brethren in faith. They had become suspect in Iran from the fourth century onwards when Iran's old adversary, the Roman Empire, became a Christian state. They suffered repeated persecutions in both countries. As most of them were heretics in the eyes of Christian orthodoxy, they could not go west. So they fled towards India and China, which two countries were known for their religious tolerance throughout the ages. Later on, they were joined by refugees from Armenia flying from Christian heresy-hunters.

The record that has been preserved by the Christian refugees themselves tells us that they were received well by the Hindus of Malabar. Hindu Rajas gave them land and money grants for building houses and churches. Hindus in general made things so pleasant for them that they decided to stay permanently in Malabar. No Hindu, Raja or commoner, ever bothered about what the refugees believed or what god they worshipped. No one interfered with the hierarchs who came from Syria from time to time to visit their flock in India and collect the tithes. In due course, the refugees came to be known as Syrian Christians.

It is not known how the Syrian Christians viewed their Hindu neighbours. If they despised the Hindus as heathens, they kept it a closely guarded secret. Nor did they try to evangelize and convert the Hindus, the two practices which had been proclaimed by the Founding Fathers of the Church as inseparable parts of the Christian Creed and inalienable rights of Christians everywhere. On the contrary, they lost their separate identity and became a part of the local population, so much so that Christian travellers who came to these parts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did not notice them as different from Hindus. They learnt the local language and took to Hindu modes in dress and food and the other externals of life. They intermarried with certain sections of Hindu society. Even inside their churches, their rituals acquired the character of Hindu 'Puja'.

Latter-day Christian theologians and historians would claim that Syrian Christianity had. a tremendous impact on Hinduism. The notion of One God which some sixteenth-century missionaries 'discovered' in Hinduism would be seen as a contribution of Christianity. Nineteenth-century Christian scholars would assert that Hindus had derived the concepts of bhakti (devotion) and mukti (salvation) from the Christian contact in South India which was held by Hindus as the original home of the medieval Bhakti Movement. Christ was seen disguised in Krishna who figured prominently in certain Vaishnava schools of bhakti. Hindu philosophies like the advaita of Shankara and the vishisTAdvaita of Ramanuja were also traced to Christian sources.

No scholar today takes these hair-brained Christian speculations seriously. The current fashion among scholars of medieval India is to see Islam as the source of the Bhakti Movement. But that is a different story. it is also a different story that some Christian theologians are trying to use advaita and vishisTAdvaita as vehicles for implanting Christianity into the heart of Hinduism. What is pertinent in the present context is that the Syrian Christians were never known to their Hindu neighbours for spiritual or philosophical profundities. The only thing that was known about them was that they were hardworking and intelligent businessmen, some of whom had succeeded as prosperous spice merchants. They were also known for keeping slaves as well as trading in them.

The significant point to be noted about the Syrian Christians, however, is their sudden change of colour as soon as the Portuguese arrived on the scene. They immediately rallied round the Portuguese and against their Hindu neighbours, and when the Portuguese started pressurizing the Hindu Rajas for extraterritorial rights so that their co-religionists could be 'protected', the Syrian Christians evinced great enthusiasm everywhere. They became loyal subjects of the king of Portugal and pious adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. Was it the demonstration of Portuguese power which demoralised the Syrian Christians and made them do what they did? Or was it the Christian doctrine which, though it lay dormant for a long time, surfaced at the first favourable opportunity? The matter has to be examined. Looking at the behaviour of Syrian Christians ever since, the second proposition seems to be nearer the truth.¹
 

Footnotes:

¹ cf. K.M. Panikkar, Malabar and the Portuguese. Bombay, 1929.

Encounter on the Euphrates

by Sita Ram Goel

Christian historians will have us believe that Hinduism first came in contact with Christianity in AD 52 when St. Thomas, an apostle of Jesus Christ, landed in Malabar. He is supposed to have travelled in South India and founded seven churches before he was. 'murdered' by the 'malicious' Brahmanas. The old Christians in Kerala, who knew as well as introduced themselves as Syrian Christians till the other day, now take pride in calling themselves St. Thomas Christians. We have examined this story elsewhere¹ as also the motives for floating it. Here it should suffice to say that the more scrupulous Christian historians have foundthe story too fanciful to be taken seriously.

Coming to facts of history, the first encounter between Hinduism and Christianity took place not in India but in those parts of West Asia, North Africa and Southern Europe which comprised the Roman Empire at the dawn of the Christian era. There is evidence, archaeological as well as literary, that Hinduism had made its presence felt in Graeco-Roman religions and philosophies long before Jesus was born. The imprint of Samkhya, Yoga and Vedanta on Eleatic, Elusinian, Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonist, Stoic, Gnostic and Neo-Platonist philosophies is too manifest to be missed easily. It was widely believed in the ancient Western world that the Greeks had learnt their wisdom from the Brahmanas of India. Evidence of Hindu colonies in some leading cities of the Roman Empire is also available. Hindu temples had come up wherever Hindu merchants and traders had established their colonies. Hindu saints, sages and savants could not have lagged behind.

Christianity did not fail to notice this Hindu presence as soon as it became a force in the Roman Empire. It was, from its very birth, wide awake towards all currents and crosscurrents of thought and culture. We find St. Hippolytus attacking the Brahmanas as a source of heresy as early as the first quarter of the third country.² It was not long after that Hinduism faced a determined assault from Christianity as did other ancient religions of the Roman Empire.

Hindu temples were the most visible symbols of the Brahmana religion. They became targets of Christian attack like all other Pagan temples. 'According to the Syrian writer Zenob,' writes Dr. R. C. Majumdar, 'there was an Indian colony in the canton of Taron on the upper Euphrates, to the west of Lake Van, as early as the second century B.C. The Indians had built there two temples containing images of gods about 18 and 22 feet high. When, about AD 304, St. Gregory came to destroy these images, he was strongly opposed by the Hindus. But he defeated them and smashed the images, thus anticipating the iconoclastic zeal of Mahmud of Ghazni.³

Historians of the Roman Empire have documented the large-scale destruction of Pagan temples by Christianity from the fourth century onwards.⁴ It is more than likely that some of these were places of Hindu worship. The word 'pagan' is a comprehensive term in Christian parlance and covers a large variety of religious and cultural expressions. Hindu historians will have to examine all archives, Pagan as well as Christian. Meanwhile, let Christian theologians tell us of the Christian virtues for which Gregory was canonised as a saint.
 

Footnotes:

¹ Sita Ram Goel, Papacy. Its Doctrine and History, Voice of India, 1986, pp. 55-58. The St. Thomas story has since been examined in great detail in The myth of Saint Thomas and the Mylapore Shiva Temple by Ishwar Sharan, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1991, reprinted in a revised and enlarged second edition in 1995.

² D. P. Singhal, India and World Civilization, Calcutta, 1972, Volume I, p. 85.

³ The History and Culture of the Indian People, Volume II, The Age of Imperial Unity, Fourth Edition, Bombay, 1968, pp. 633-634. It would have been more appropriate to mention Francis Xavier in this context. Islamic iconoclasm is not the only iconoclasm which Hinduism has known. Christian iconoclasm pioneered by Xavier was no less ferocious and predatory. It is true that due to geographical and historical factors, Christian iconoclasm came to this country much later, was confined to a much smaller area and spread over a much shorter time-span as compared to the large-scale and prolonged iconoclasm practised by Islam. But, it was no less criminal in its inspiration. Moreover, Islam did not invent iconoclasm. It had learnt it from the Bible and the Christian practice down the ages.

⁴ The evidence of Christian iconoclasm in many countries for many centuries lies scattered in many Christian and non-Christian accounts. During my travels in 1989, I searched several leading libraries in Switzerland, Germany, France, England and the USA for a consolidated study of the subject but failed to find any. A glimpse of what Christianity did to Pagan temples in the Roman Empire can, however, be had from Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachussetts, USA, 1990.

Did the Ancient Vedas get written in 1200 BC? Says Who?

The ancient Indian history as taught today to our youth is mostly based on a number of distortions and mis-dated chronology that Kosla Vepa, director of the prestigious Indic Studies Foundation based in US, says “were deliberately engineered to create confusion and inferiority complex among Indians” by the  British Raj’s pseudo-historians of 19th century.

It is time for us Indians to reclaim our history from the clutches of people of another race — who have no stake in our civilisation — and set right these malicious distortions. Prof. B.B. Lal (former DG, ASI) in his paper at the International Conference on Indian History, Civilisation and Geopolitics to be held from January 9 at New Delhi, has given several examples of these distortions in Indian history. 

I quote from his paper and bring to you the Deliberate Distortion Number One engineered by that infamous rogue Max Mueller that is still haunting us Indians today:

Way back in the 19th century, the renowned German scholar Max Muller dated the Vedas to circa 1200 BCE. This he did on a very ad-hoc basis. Having accepted that the Sµutra literature could be as old as the sixth century BCE, he assigned a duration of two hundred years to each of the preceding periods, namely those of the Araynakas, Brahmanas and Vedas. Thus, 600+200+200+200= 1200 BCE was his ready-made date for the Vedas.

However, when his contemporary scholars, such as Goldstucker, Whitney and Wilson raised objections to this kind of ad-hocism, he relented and came out with the following statement:

“I have repeatedly dwelt on the merely hypothetical character of the dates, which I have ventured to assign to the first periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates, and that the literary productions of each period which either still exist or which formerly existed could hardly be accounted for within shorter limits of time than those suggested.”

But when even this explanation-cum-apology did not satisfy the scholars, Max Muller threw up his hands in sheer desperation. His confession, as follows, is worth noting (Max Muller 1890, reprint 1979):

“If now we ask how we can fix the dates of these periods, it is quite clear that we cannot hope to fix a terminum a qua [sic]. Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC, no power on earth will ever determine.”

In so far as Max Muller was concerned, the matter was closed from his side. But the greatest irony is that his original fatawa of 1200 BCE, given in the 19th century, is sill ruling the roost in certain quarters even in the 21st century!

The disastrous effect of this fatawa was seen in the 1920s when the Harappan Civilization was discovered and attempts were made to identify its authors. On the basis of the occurrence of several objects of this civilization in deposits of certain already-dated West Asian cultures, it was assigned to the 3rd millennium BCE.

The net result was that the Vedic people were never even considered to have been the authors of the Harappan Civilization, since according to Max Muller.s fatawa the Vedas were only as old 1200 BCE.  Simultaneously, without any sustainable reason the authorship was thrust on the Dravidian-speaking people. And this is how the first major distortion took place in interpreting ancient Indian history!

What kind of a “historian” was Max Muller? How can a historian make wild guesses without any basis and circulate his day-dreaming into public discourse, fully knowing that regardless of how absurd they are, his words will carry the weight of his name behind them and be taken seriously by people who don’t know any better? This is exactly what happened.

Was it necessary for Muller to circulate these dates about the Vedas and other literature to others when he himself admitted that no power on earth could determine when these holy books actually got written, “whether in 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC”? It is a crying shame that this date of 1200 BC as origin of the Vedas pulled by Mueller out of his hat is still being taught to Indian school children as a “fact.”

Does anyone in India even know how Muller arrived at this date? He decided that Sutras may not have been written any later than 600 BC (even this date has no basis in fact) and then on a whim he gave a nice packet of 200 years to each sacred literature — namely, Aranyakas, Brahmanas and Vedas — to develop and grow, totalled up the figures and, low and behold, he had 1200 BC as the date of origin of Vedas! Is this some kind of a joke? On top of that, he was fundamentalist in his Biblical belief that nothing in this world could be older than 4000 BC because that is when God created the universe! He wanted to give about 2000 years for the world and human race to evolve since the Creation and thus 2000 BC was his cut-off limit for antiquity of anything.

This is nothing but a criminal act of robbing Indian civilisation of its antiquity. Today, any historian who plays tricks like Mueller did with his dating of the Vedas will be declared a clown and get laughed out of the town by his peers. From dating of the Vedas to his equally absurd theory of Aryan race and Aryan invasion, there is no other “historian” who has spread more rumours about Indian history than this lout.

Beware of those shameless Indians

Beware of those shameless Indians

By RSN Singh

The Maoists, who have unequivocally declared their resolve to capture power through violence, and the Kashmiri separatists came together on one platform in India’s capital ‘New Delhi’.

Some of the faces that represented them were Geelani and Arundhati Roy respectively. Such open acts of sedition can only happen in India.

The forging of alliance between pro-Pak elements in Kashmir, the Maoists, insurgent groups in the Northeast, Chinese agencies, and some Church organisations is well established by the intelligence agencies. But what is most intriguing is the support they receive from a segment of the mainstream media.

This is evident from the posturing of some of the media personalities and so-called intellectuals during debates on television. Such is the backing, infiltration and leverage of some international organisation that the government can do nothing against these elements and is in fact beholden to them.

Therefore, I can only appeal to the people of this country to save themselves from the evil designs of these shameless Indians.

How do these these shameless Indians operate?

A patient suffering from painful disease goes to a doctor. The doctor correctly diagnoses the ailment and chalks out an effective treatment plan. But even as the patient embarks on his way to recovery, another person, who has stakes in property after the death of the patient, comes in the garb of a well-wisher and convinces the patient that the doctor cannot be trusted. The patient discontinues the treatment and ultimately fades away into the trap of death.

One hopes that ‘Operation Green Hunt’ does not meet the same fate.

A constituency without responsibility

There is a constituency in India which does not allow any line of treatment to ‘security ailments’ that afflict the country after they are correctly diagnosed. As a result, some of these ailments have acquired cancerous proportions.

This is the constituency of some shameless activists and protagonists of criminals and terrorists, who thrive on the psychological reality that in India, the lifespan of shock and outrage that follows a terrorist incident is short.

This is the constituency without any responsibility. Their contribution to the nation is zilch. They have never found solutions to problems, but are adept at creating them. Their business is to derail and dissuade the state and its apparatus from taking any decision that may contribute the progress and well-being of India.

Let’s look at another analogy to illustrate the attitude of this constituency of professional activists towards their ‘accidental’ country, India.

A couple, whose child was not performing well in school began to harbor doubt about the teacher. After much analysis, they realised that the teacher was not to be blamed. Even after working on the child, the results were the same. They again found a scapegoat in the teacher.

The other successful students, however, sang paeans to the teacher. This rattled the parents and they vowed to demolish the teacher’s sincerity and reputation.

This exactly is the make, motive and modus operandi of these shameless activists. For those who have made activism the means of their bread and butter, particularly the latter, it is the larger good that disconcerts them.

When a terrorist strike takes place, these activists and commentators talk about the ‘resilience of the people’, and very grudgingly appreciate the sacrifices of the security forces.

Remember Kargil? The overwhelming sense of concern for wounded and dead soldiers was mainly motivated by TRP rather than any genuine feeling. Otherwise, how can the same set of commentators and activists accuse the Indian Army of rape and unbridled violence in insurgency areas, and support the cause of removing the Armed Forces Special Power Act (AFSPA).

Whenever a terrorist attack takes place, this shameless variety of activists and protagonists go into hibernation. Some of whom, who still get intercepted, avoid discussion on television by saying “I condemn violence” by any side — as if they are doing a favour by condemning it, and as if the force applied by legitimate forces is the same as violence by illegitimate outfits.

Some members of this ilk are compelled to speak words of sympathy about the victims of terror. They bide their time and resurface when the dust has settled. They then begin to question the veracity of the very act of terror. Some suggested that Karkare was not killed by terrorists! Other suggested that SIMI was a charitable organisation! Some of them also suggest that the Maoists are ‘Gandhians with Guns’, whatever that means.

Remember the protagonists of militancy in Punjab and Sri Lanka – some of them have gone into oblivion and some have reinvented themselves.

26/11 and the rich

There are some apologists, who defend the position that the attack on Hotel Taj, attracted so much attention because the rich were targeted – as if the attack was pointedly and carefully made on rich India by a thoughtful and benevolent bunch of terrorists from Pakistan. As if there are only rich guests in a five star hotel and no employees. Had they expressed similar views during or in immediate aftermath of the attack, they would have met devastating response from then angry Indians.

If Azmal Kasab had not been caught alive, these shameless activists would have surely raised doubts about the fact that the attacks originated from Pakistan. Pakistan has read and understood this constituency of the shameless activists and commentators, and their disproportionate influence in India. Some of them have surreptitiously worked their way into the highest policy making circles. Accordingly, a fidgety Pakistan has now been emboldened to adopt an aggressive posture with regard to 26/11 attack.

Take the case of the attack on Indian parliament in December 2001. An individual who was absolved by the courts on technical ground was portrayed, as victim of state conspiracy by the same shameless bunch of activists. Most of them knew pretty well about his key role in the attack. They are more than aware that the constraints of judiciary in absolving a person of any criminal charge due to lack of legally appropriate evidence does not actually mean that the person is innocent.

There are any number of judgements, wherein the judges have categorically stated that much against their personal conviction about the involvement or complicity of the accused in a crime, they have to absolve the individual due to imperatives and constraints of law.

After the passage of a suitably-considered gap between two terrorist attacks, some platforms, in their desperate bid to dilute the resolve of the nation, stage-manage debates on terrorist incidents – Making such issues “debatable” requires some genius.

It is here that the shameless variety of activists come handy, and they emerge out of hibernation. The subjects of debate can be as preposterous as: Is China a threat to India?, Did China attack India in 1962?, Is terrorism exported from Pakistan? Is the Kashmir insurgency a proxy-war by Pakistan?, Do Maoists indulge in terrorism?, Should security forces continue to be deployed in Kashmir?

The shameless activists will come up with theories that Pakistan and China have no hand in fomenting trouble in India! There is no proof that China has supplied missile and nuclear arsenal to Pakistan! The strategic encirclement of India by Pakistan is a myth! Karkare was not killed by terrorists! There was no element of local facilitation in the 26/11 attacks!

So what if Musharraf scripted Kargil, his intention with regard to India was benign! So what if the Maoists behead ‘informers’ and security personnel, they are basically peace loving people!

These shameless Indians have vested interest in poverty. That they are funded by inimical powers to India is well-known. They laud the progressive policies of their benefactors like China, but find all the time to agitate and block the same policies and programmes in India.

Is it a ploy by the adversaries of India, particularly China, to derail India’s economic development?

With the proliferation of the media, and increased role and influence of these shameless activists and commentators, the level of development in China started weighing overwhelmingly in favour of the latter, and is contributing much to its aggressive posture. Therefore, patriotic Indians need to be beware of these shameless Indians.

RSN Singh is a former military intelligence officer who later served in the Research and Analysis Wing, or R&AW. The author of two books: Asian Strategic and Military Perspective and Military Factor in Pakistan, he is also Associate Editor, Indian Defence Review.