Editorial for BP
India Under Siege - Cannot Suffer The Conversion Onslaught in Orissa
52 “For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three.
53: “Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother.
The internationally funded, stridently executed conversion activities of various denominations of Christian missionaries and their colluders in our country seem to be bearing out the truth, the whole truth of what Jesus Christ according to the above gospel had said. In homes and Villages, Christian missionaries, sumptuously funded [mostly unlawfully] from abroad are carrying out the mission of Jesus Christ as inscribed in the Gospel above. Families are split, communities are at war, and all the conversion activity is justified by invoking the Constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice and profess a religion. The Supreme Court of India has already definitively ruled that this particular Article of the Constitution does not confer a right to convert.
People can give up their nationality and their political conviction and a party membership but they do so after profound study and thinking and after acquiring a new conviction but in the case of Christian missionaries, it is a businesses venture. They have plans. They have targets. They have marketing techniques, fulltime paid propagandists and retainers in Villages. This is just like multi national business selling spurious drugs under barrage of advertisements. Scores ofTV channels are purchased by them for evangelism leading to conversion. Pastors in receipt of huge funds from abroad have risen from rags to riches with beautiful mansions for themselves and churches afterwards. In many Villages of Andhra Pradesh and other states, since several denominations of missionaries are competing, there are several churches while centuries-old temples are getting dilapidated. Their sources of revenue, the lands that they received as endowment from the Hindu rulers and benefactors are encroached and taken away by government for non-Hindu purposes. The militant marketing of a spurious foreign origin religion, converting to which both Gandhiji and Dr B R Ambedkar said, will make them abandon Indianness, that is leading to strife within a family, within a village and the community. This is acute in Orissa because that is the state where the scheduled tribes population is high and their poverty and illiteracy are also high. The missionaries are competitively engaged in programs to reap harvests of converts as enjoined by Pope John who came here at the turn of millennium.
The murder of Swarupananda Swamy in the Kandamal District of Orissa in august 2008 is to be viewed in the context of the conflict raging between missionaries and their harvests of converts on the one hand and Hindus defending themselves from aggressive militant offensive conversions on the other hand. It appears that a number of tribal converts to Christianity are also infested with communism-Maoism. Dalit/tribal converts to Christianity are incited by Christian missionaries are militantly anti-Hindu and so are allied with all sects of communism (the political theology as exclusivist and world-domination seeking as Christianity) with Maoists whose history since the 1920s in India has been one of anti-Hinduism and anti-Indian. It is not yet clear whether the killing of the Swamy is a Christian deed or a Maoist deed [please read the article “Who killed Swami Lakshmanananda?” in this issue].
There is an anti-conversion act passed in the times of Congress rule still operative in Orissa. Just as enforcement of many laws goes by default, so is this law. There are not many organised anti-conversion activities by Hindus activity to preserve Hinduism and to prevent conversions. Now Hindus are awakening to the onrushing waves of conversion and are organizing to preserve their faith and culture against the internationally funded enterprises marketing Christianity like any multi-national corporation (MNC). Communists, since the formation first communist party 80 years ago, have been openly and militantly against Hinduism. That is why they are always aligned with Christians and Muslims both of whom see Hinduism inimical to them as a false religion. So Hindu tribals converted to Christianity and further captured by communism have two forces of enmity and hatred for Hindus.
Till recently, there had been no communal riots between Christians and Hindus on the same scale as between Hindus and Muslims. That is because the Christian conversion activities under British rule were not directly encouraged by the British government. Hindus were able to defend themselves theologically and practically against Christians, challenging and proving that Christianity is much more wanting than Hinduism and therefore Hindus were not in large numbers converted to Christianity. But after the death of Gandhiji and Sardar Patel, Nehru’s 'secular' socialist ideology and programs were loudly and patently against Hinduism. He riled against Hindu communalism, an invention of his. Faced with diminishing patronage for churches, Christian missions from affluent countries are using all their financial marketing, technological and propagandist clout and techniques to heap harvests of converts in India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and China refused to admit Pope John Paul II to their countries. On the other hand, the 'secular' government in India welcomed him. Enjoying our hospitality, the Pope called for “a harvest” of Hindu souls to Christianity. In consequence, financial, technological and marketing abilities of the missionaries have descended upon India. Through their various under-cover social service organizations, they have been able to purchase 'seculars’ from different parties. They are in fact receiving positive allurements from governments like Andhra Pradesh where the Chief Minister is a practising and promoting Christian, for their conversion activities. Resistance to them by Hindu society is characterized by Marxists, communists, fellow- travellors and various Christian organizations as onslaught on minorities.
Wherever the Christian conversion machine has become ubiquitous and powerful, Hindus are organizing, though not to a significant extent, to preserve freedom of their religion; they resist to be converted. They counter the propaganda. This is being seen as an obstacle for the Christian conquest of India’s souls. Herein lies the seed for Hindu-Christian communal strife and riots just as between Hindus and Muslims. United are the Marxists, Islamist Muslims, missionaries and the Macaulayan-educated [Indian only in blood and colour and unIndian in every other aspects], to demonise Hinduism and their organizations. There are Christian democratic parties in Germany and Italy. If any body starts a Hindu Democratic Party, then this Evil Quartet would characterise it as Hindu fascist. This is verbal violence backed by armed violence.
The strife it is likely to increase in proportion to the militancy of the Christian conversion enterprises. Make no mistake; conversion is not a spiritual movement as several times asserted by Mahatma Gandhi. Social service work Christian missionaries and their cover organisations do in India is with the motive of gaining converts, so said Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhiji even asked the missionaries that if their aim is not gain of converts, could they not do social service in their won countries, where also there are poor people. Why should they leave their own poor brethren and come to India to serve the poor here, if it is not for the evil motive of conversion. The Indian state and patriotic political parties must not allow any organised conversion activities. That is not genuine exercise of the right to profess and practise a religion. It is a fraud; subversive of social harmony and communal peace and family bonds. [Not all members of the family convert. Conversion of some leads to the break-up of the family; that is father against son; daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, as envisaged in the Gospel. Hindus must exercise their right to profess practice and propagate their religion as vigorously as Christian missionaries and their likes.