Christians in India Offend the Hindus

The Beam In Your Eye

M. V. Kamath.

I have often wondered whether Christians realise how much offence their missionaries give to non-Christians in India, mainly Hindus, by their activities. There are two kinds of Christianity. One is that of simple god-fearing people who go to church, say their prayers, do what little they can for lessening the suffering or ignorance of their fellow citizens, and be at peace with the world around them. They are respected, loved and honored.

The other is the ‘Institutional Christianity’, which came to India with the marauding Portuguese in the 16th century. It is this Christianity that has been causing trouble in India in recent times. The argument adduced by Institutional Christianity is that it is God’s command that his good word be spread all over the world. They insist on their ‘right’ to convert people becuase God ordained that people must be converted. Such an attitude is insulting to non-Christians.

Some time in late January, the South Asian correspondent of Le Figaro, France’s most popular newspaper, wrote a scathing peice against missionary activity in the Hindustan Times. Francois Gautier must have felt really incensed at the insensitivity of Indian Christians.

More recently, Jon Stock, New Delhi correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (a London paper) wrote a revelatory piece in the Spectator, another British journal, about the activities of missionaries in India. Put simply, Stock wrote, “The Indian subcontinent has become the principal target for a wide range of western Christian missions determined to
spread the Gospel to India’s ‘unreached’ people before the year 2000.” Christian missions in the US have become particularly nasty and offensive.

Stock quotes what the US-based Bethany World Prayer Centre has been writing about Hinduism. Any American who wants to pray for the Ho tribals of south Bihar and northern Orissa, for example, is given a photo, he says, a detailed map and a description of how tribals live and what they believe in, with the suggestion: “Pray against the spirits of
animism and Hinduism that have kept the Ho in spiritual darkness for centuries.” Stock comments: “Bethany’s exhortation to pray against animism and Hinduism is hardly a mark of respect.” He’s being kind. I call that a downright insult to Hinduism. But we are not supposed to protest.

Then Stock quotes ‘The Native Missionary Movement in India’ as saying about Orissa: “Satan has successfully camouflaged his grip on the people of Orissa with a thin veneer of religion.” Is Hinduism satanic? As for ‘AD 2000 and Beyond,’ it says that Varanasi, Hinduism’s holiest city, is full of temples dedicated to Shiva, “an idol whose symbol is a phallus. Many consider the city the very seat of Satan.” Why are our Indian
Bishops quiet in this matter?

But Stock goes further. He writes: “Hundreds and thousands of dollars are being channeled into India through well-organised US-based evangelica missions. The  meticulously researched ethnographic data they are compiling on the region ensures that funds (as well as prayers) are being directed with military precision ot the right places, even to specific PIN codes, in remote tribal districts.”

Stock quotes ‘AD 2000 and Beyond’ as saying: “God is allowing us to spy on the land that we might go in and claim both it and its inhabitants for Him.” The kind of language being used by US evangelical missions to describe Hinduism is appalling. But there is not a word of apology from our Christian bishops.

According to Suresh Kumar Unnithan, writing in the Observer (March 23), “A detailed strategy for massive conversion of tribals, Dalits and backward classes and large-scale church planting was formulated at a meeting of church and missionary leaders in Bhpal recently.”  Unnithan quotes a document prepared by one Dr. Victor Choudrie,
co-ordinator of ‘Harvest Consultant’ (a proselytisation programme of the Protestant Church) and present at the meeting, as saying that “the goal is to plant about 30,000 churches and reach over 10 million ‘unreached’ in the state by the year 2007.” According to the report “MP has 70 million people in 70,000 villages and only 70,000 Christian families. We should strive to have one church in every village by 2010.”

I call this Institutional Christianity and it seems to be hell bent on creating trouble in the name of religion. And the money for all these church-building activities comes from the USS, where Christianity hardly exists. Fro that matter, what sort of Christianity exists in Europe? In Ireland, Catholics and Protestants are at each others’ throats. Not one
of Christ’s preachings are practised anywhere. Germans sent god alone knows how millions Jews to death during the Nazi era. The French ravaged Vietnam and Nigeria. Italians almost destroyed Ethiopia. The record of the Spaniards is despicable as is that of the Portuguese. Americans almost levelled Vietnam – a small nation that had done them no harm – to dust.

Is this Christianity in action? And they have the cheek to come to India to instruct us in pacifist ways? Eurpoean Christianity is the ntithesis of Christianity. It is an insult to Christ. US evangelists dare not send money to support proselytisation in Muslim countries. Let
them try to do so in any Muslim country and they would know what would happen. In India we allow our religion to be trampled upon, our gods insulted – all in the name of secularism.

I would like to know what Sonia Gandhi thinks of all this and what her Indian National Congress Party’s veiws are on this matter.

The government needs to be warned in advance so there is not repetition of the Staines incident. The missionaries need to be told to cry a halt to their activities. And foreign church bodies should be told to lay off.

The point can be made that if non-resident Indians can support the International Hindu Council (Vishwa Hindu Parishad or VHP) financially, why shouldn’t foreign Church bodies finance Indian churches?

The point is that these expatriates are not attempting to convert Christians. In any event, it is a matter of Indians supporting Indians. The people needing conversions are Europeans and Americans. We do not need US-style or European-style Christianity in India; thank you. We are quite happy and at peace with the local variety.

  Pastor

  unitedchurch@eml.cc

 

Plight of Nuns in the Kerala Churches

The Dreadful Dracula Houses of Kerala

Dr. C. I. Issac

The Central Kerala, particularly, the Kottayam district is the highest Christian populated [8, 95,000 or 45.83%] area and is the Vatican of India. It is the bastion of Christian vested interests also. In the recent Assembly elections also this Christian upper hand reflected well,
and to a certain extent it helped to save the face of Congress led front [UDF]. A sizable number of priests and nuns works all over India are haling from this particular area. So it is the nuclei of India’s Christian conversion programme [India for Christ Programme]. Above all, the contemporary European Church is facing spiritual crisis due to its youths reluctance to ordain as priests and nuns and the Churches of Central Kerala solves that through the export of the same. Through this thumbnail sketch of the present-day Kerala Church, this article is intended to draw the attention of the esteemed readers on the malady of those Christian girls who destined to be as nuns or ‘bride of the Jesus’, within the four walls of the convents.

For the last two decades the disastrous end of young girls who embraced the nun-hood turned to be a news item in the column of the vernacular newspapers of Kerala. So far a dozen such news catches the headings of the press. Of the first is the pathetic end of 19 year old student cum
nun Sr. [Sister] Abhaya of Pius X Convent in the heart of the town, Kottayam. She belongs to a lower middle class Catholic family of Kottayam district. On 1992 March 27th, her body was found in the well of the said convent. Her father Thomas Areekkara and mother Leelamma raised
serious doubts about the death of their daughter Beena [changed her name in to Sr. Abhaya after taking the veil]. They categorically say that her daughter has any raison d’être to commit suicide.

The dawn of 27th March was a sad day to the students and teachers of BCM college of Kottayam, where Sr. Abhaya was a student, who met disastrous end in the Pius X convent. The Christian police officer who rushed to the spot was given priority to destroy the evidences, instead of collecting evidences related to her suspicious death. No doubt it was with the political blessings from above. Later ups and downs in the investigations are much evident to justify this doubt. The growing economic and political power of Christians [particularly the Church] in Kerala considerably influenced the course of its investigation. The parents of the deceased nun and the philanthropists of Kottayam continued their legal battle to book the culprit, miserably failed. The
Christian CBI officer who was in charge of investigation resigned from the office while investigation was in progress. The suspected priest and the mother of the convent who ought to be the prime witness in the case were sent to Vatican by the Church authorities and subsequently they became the citizens of the Papal State. Even though the government of India has a healthy diplomatic relation with Vatican, the investigating agencies miserably failed to extradite them for interrogation.

The story of the disastrous deaths of nuns in the convents of Kerala not ends with the mysterious death of Sr. Abhaya. It was the beginning of a new turn in the history of church sponsored criminalism in Kerala. Subsequently, after two weeks, another nun called Sr. Mercy found dead
in a waterless pond in the compound of the convent at Mukkootuthara in the Kottayam district. The all-powerful church hierarchy was able to manipulate the course of investigation from its bud and write-off the death as an accident of drowning. The story of the disastrous death
coming out from the convents of Central Kerala is shrouded in mystery and equal or more than that in the 19th century detective novel Dracula of Bram Stocker.

Another scapegoat of the ‘convent-death’ is Sr. Paulcy of the Snehagiri [Hill of Love] Convent of Palai near Kottayam. It was on 17th May 2000. She died of the consumption of poisoned meet food. No other inmates of the convent is affected with food poison, is the paradox to be answered.
But the convent authorities had given obituary advertisement in leading vernacular newspaper that Sr. Paulcy [35] died of heart attack. Even though she lost her life in the night of 17th May, the matter was informed to her parents who reside very near to the convent only after eight O’clock in the morning of the next day. Parents of the unfortunate nun raised doubts about the death and the police intervened. The post-mortem report negated the Convent hierarchy’s argument of the ‘heart attack’. The sister and mother of the deceased nun recollected the story which told her a few weeks back that, “a lot of foreign remittance is flowing to the Convent and she happened to see the details of the remittance caused the wrath of the Mother superior of the Convent and she scolded a lot her”. [2nd largest circulated daily of Kerala; Matrubhoomi Daily, Kottayam, 25th June 2000]. Any way the story of mysterious deaths of nuns clearly giving some clue that most of the convents in the Central Kerala are not only the abodes nuns but also the
seat of mysterious transactions including the violation of the Commandments 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th. [For the details of the quoted Commandments, see Exodus, Chapter XIX, Aphorisms 2 – 17].

After a couple of months, Sr. Sofi, a 27 year old nun of Velliyappally Valakkattu Convent of Palai became the next victim of “Convent Tragedy”. Her body found in the well of the convent. As usual police has registered an FIR. But the investigation not yet reached any shore of conclusion. It is quite natural that a prominent leader of Kerala politics and his party is the product of the Catholic Church and he belongs to Palai. So in all the church/priest/nun related criminal offences are always shrouding in obscurity. Hence the unnatural death of Sr. Sofi also got the same destiny.

The story of the destiny of Sr. Anjo has yet another dimension. A 22 year old nun found solace in suicide on 29th December 2003. She was an intelligent and smart girl who opt the path of “Bride-ship of the Christ” owing to the compulsion of the family and parents. She was the inmate of SH Convent, Chanjodi near Kottaym. To the Anjo the life in the monotonous convent was boring and she thought about the deliverance. The parents and the Convent authorities insisted her to continue in veil. She lost all hopes of deliverance and finally she fond solace in hanging
on the fan. [Feature from Keralasabdham Weekly,- a prominent Malayalam news weekly - 19th January 2003, pp 12, 13].

The tragic death Sr. Ancy, 32, of Bethany Convent of Ranny-Perunnadu was the story of yet another unfortunate who found [it is said] her destiny in the well of the convent. She was a teacher of the school run by the church. Her dead body found in the well in the early morning. But the convent authorities informed the police only after 10′O clock in the morning. This response of the convent authorities was doubtful. The police investigation lost its momentum elsewhere in the deluge of time. Once again the name of one more nun, Sr. Ancy, was also written in the list of Christ’s Brides, which appears, on the walls of paradise.

Now the story of unnatural deaths in the convents is not at all news to an ordinary Malayalee. Even though, it is genuine to bring the news of the tragic end of the last but not least nun. On 23rd June 2006 Sr. Lisa of Saint Francis Clarist Convent of Iravuchira, a hamlet near Kottayam,
who ends her life in the convent by consuming poison. The relatives and guardians of the deceased Sr. Lisa strongly believe that her decision of ending life is the outcome of the torture and humiliation that met by her from the convent authorities. [Janmabhoomi Daily – a prominent Hindu news paper - Kottayam, 26th June 2006].

The above mentioned are only some identical incidents from a dozen convent tragedies that took place in the recent past. Those politicians who cast their covetous eyes on the vote banks of the Church have no sufficient will to ensure justice to the souls of the ill-fated women who forced to take veil. The parents of the unfortunate Sr. Abhaya’s fight for justice not yet produced any fruits. The power seeking politician’s interference in the investigation turned down as the stumbling block behind the way to ensure justice to the soul of Sr. Abhaya.

The wretched girls who fettered in the convents are hailing from economically poor Christian families of Kerala. The wealth and religion are not traveling together in the practical experience/case of Christianity in the west. The contemporary European Christian experience
substantiates this universal truth. The rich European region is now reluctant to contribute priests and nuns to cater the demands of the Church. Now this gap is filled from less prosperous countries of Asia and Africa. The Church in Kerala is booking profit out of the economic
backwardness that still exists amongst the Christian families and thus recruits girls from such families as nuns. Usually girls are enrolled in to the bandwagon of nunnery at the tender ages. The compulsions of the parents who are allured by the Church are grazing its lass to the
‘heavenly prisons’ [convents]. One cannot deny the role of convents schools to motivate young and innocent girls to the ‘slaughter houses’ [convents].

The Syrian Christian community with immense wealth, celebrating their marriage ceremonies with the pomp of “Maha Kumba Melas”, is the real culprit behind the plight of poor girls behind the bars of convents. The seven-digit dowry and celebration turned as a nightmare to the poor
Christian families. So the economically weak in the Christian community can’t imagine marriage of their daughters. Kottayam, a small town of 25 lakhs of people and five Cathedrals with Christian economic dominance, has one and a half dozen ‘five star jewelers’ shows the extent of the pompous of richness of Syrian Christians. Now money is a deciding factor in this community. So, economically weak Christians are gearing to compete with the rest through acquiring money. As a result they are compelling their lasses to opt either to nursing or to nunnery. The convent is dam cheap as compared to nursing. So the economically too poor parents are forced to herd their damsels to the convents. Therefore, the Kerala’s Syrian Christian Church is the chief contributor
of the 95% of nuns required for the proselytism activities of the Churches in India.

The allegations both moral and material are the universal ghost haunting the Christendom all over the world. One Catholic Priest from India [Kerala] got four months jail term for sexually abusing a twelve year old laity girl in USA. The convicted Rev. Francis X Nelson [38] hailing
from Kerala served as the Confidential Secretary Kottar [Tamilnadu] Bishop Leon Tharmaraj. [The New Indian Express, Kochi, 28 March 2003]. Broklyn [USA] Diocese Bishop has forced to transfer 42 files related to sexual abuses involved by twenty five Catholic priests to the
authorities during the trial of the Rev. Nelson’s case. [Janmabhoomi Daily, Kochi, 28 March 2003]. The Vatican recently confessed that priests and nuns under the Roman Catholic Church in several countries including India and Italy involving in sexual relations. La Republica
daily of Italy reports that priests and nuns involved rape, conception and abortion are frequently reported from various regions. [Janmabhoomi Daily, Kochi, 22 March 2001]. Priests involvements in murder and other subversive activate are increasing at a high rate.

It is believed that the Catholic Priests and Nuns are chronic bachelors and chronic spinsters respectively who practices Bramachariay/Sanyasaa Ashram/life of hermit are using high calorie fat food is one among several reasons of the increase of sexual appetite. This is the main
reason for the sex related crimes also. If the church is interested to maintain the purity of the concept of hermit life amongst its soldiers of proselytism, it is better to follow Hindu practices of vegetarianism and yoga. Otherwise papal effort to maintain hermitage in the Church order will be a futile effort.

Let us return to Kerala scenario. In September 2001 St. Alphonsa Church at Kolayad near Kannur was ransacked by some [the discontented laity] people. Those who are lamenting of Sanga Parivar attack on churches in other states followed lukewarm attitude towards this attack. This was happened so, because of the frustration that brewing inside the church. Fr. Job Chittilappally, a 71 year old padre of St. Varaprasada Matha Church, near Chalakudi in Trichur district found dead with stab injuries in August 2004. The Church has shown no enthusiasm in booking the culprit, is noteworthy. Earlier for petty problems nuns and priests along with laity display their might in the street. But in this case there were no such road shows. All these are the signs of the ever-deteriorating morale space of the Church and Christianity all over.

So here comes the question of social justice. The ill-fated girls who destined to the hellish suffering within the four walls of convents have the right to live. The government and constitution has moral and legal right to ensure the right of life of them. So the practice of recruiting girls to the convents before the growth of ‘wisdom teeth’ must go. The recruitment to the profession of nunnery at the tender age is not different from girl-foeticide. So it must be treated as criminal act and those who involve, with out considering the social status of person,
must brought before the law. If criminal laws are not sufficient to deal with, it should make further laws to book the culprits.

  unitedchurch@eml.cc

Help save the Indian Tribals and Dalits from Evangelists,  who Degrade the Tribal and Dalit Culture & tradition with a View to “Harvesting our Souls”

http://burningcross.net/

 

Italy Summons Indian Ambassador Re Fate of Indian Christians

The Katherine Mayos and Pat Robertsons of India-II

V Sundaram
25 September 2008
NewsTodaynet.com

The chairman of the UPA Co-ordination Committee Sonia Gandhi has succeeded in converting India into a banana republic.  Ever since the minority UPA anti-Hindu Government came to power in New Delhi with the outside support of known fifth columnists from the days of Quit India Movement in 1942—I am referring to the Communists of all grades and shades—the sovereignty of India has been on sale in the International market under the malignant umbrella of ‘National Soul Destroying Secularism’.

When Swamy Laksmanananda was brutally murdered by Christian missionaries in Orissa on Krishna Jayanthi day on 23 August 2008, the Hindus of Orissa rose in revolt in Kandhamal District. At that time the Italian Government had the temerity to summon the Indian Ambassador in Rome to take ‘decisive action to curb anti-Christian violence in Orissa’. Even a first year graduate student of international relations will declare without much ado that the 62nd Government in Italy after the end of Second World War in May 1945 (almost at the rate of one new Government every Calendar year!) breached all known canons of diplomatic propriety, resulting in a public relations disaster of enormous magnitude, when it summoned the Indian Ambassador. The UPA Government, maintained an indifferent attitude of cold, neutral, and secular silence without even lodging a protest with the Government of Italy for brazenly interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country like India.
   

The fascist Italian Government’s poor diplomacy followed the Pope’s condemnation of bloodletting in Orissa. As the head of a denominational commercial enterprise, which is what the Vatican is, Pope Benedict XVI is perhaps justified in raising questions about the security of Christians everywhere. However, in the immediate context of India, he chose to look at the issue only selectively. The fact of the matter is that in Orissa, like elsewhere in India, Christian evangelists — largely from Pentecostal and Baptist groups in the United States but sometimes from Catholic orders as well — look upon local populations as a viable market, and converts as ‘market share’. Their known business is ‘The Harvest of Pagan/Heathen Souls’.

Following the Government of Italy and the Pope in Rome, it is now the turn of the US Government to interfere in the internal affairs of India.  The disgraceful track record of blatant interference of American Government in the internal affairs of countries in Asia after the Second World War is too well known.  The American Government has been functioning as the self declared ‘Head Constable of the World’. The US State Department issues two significant reports annually—one on International Religious Freedom and the other on Global terrorism.  The report on terrorism is titled ‘Patterns on Global Terrorism’ and is issued normally in the first week of May. The report on Inernational Religious Freedom is issued in September of each year by the Office of International Religious Freedom of the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.  This report is besides the other report on International Religious Freedom issued by the more infamous USCIRF!
  in May of every year.  Both the USCIRF and the Office of International Religious Freedom were constituted by an Act of Congress, the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.

Two days ago, the US Government has condemned violence against Christians in India during the last two months.  Ambassador at large for International Religious Freedom Thomas Hanford, has said: ‘We urge all parties to refrain from violence and urge government officials to protect religious freedom throughout India and thus preserve India’s longstanding tradition of religious tolerance.’  Our External Affairs Minister, perhaps awaits his instructions not from South Block (which he can ignore without any detriment to the safety of his (In!)- glorious ‘PUBLIC OFFICE’) but from No 10, Janpath, New Delhi. For all our Union Cabinet Ministers and more so for our Prime Minister, the Sovereignty of India can be compromised at any time, anywhere in any part of the world!.  What can never be compromised at any cost is the Sovereignty of Sonia Gandhi.

The political inspiration for Thomas Hanford’s uncalled for interference in the internal affairs of India stems from White House in Washington. President Bush has politically chased two things like an American Bull Dog during the last eight years—the first being Saddam Hussain and his ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ in Iraq and the second being Faith Based Social Service Initiative emanating from a White House Office to promote Government aid to Churches and Christian faith-based Organizations.

In these columns on 20 February 2007, in an article titled ‘Bush-sponsored Evangelization of India’, I had commented as follows: ‘One of the early and most important major policy decisions which President Bush took on 29 January, 2001, was in regard to a ‘Faith Based’ social service initiative that included a new White House office to promote government aid to churches and Christian faith-based organisations. This had the immediate effect of throwing the massive weight of the federal government behind religious groups and religious conversions. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was set up in the White House in the first week of February 2002 and a man called Jim Towey was appointed as Director. The most interesting and important point to be noted in this context is that Jim Towey was the legal counsel to Mother Teresa in the late 1980s. Thus he was fully qualified in every sense of the term to play the role of an aggressive evangelist. What is mos!
t disturbing to note is that though Bush’s initiative as a 11th century Crusader to fund ‘salvation and religious conversion’ has been stalled in the Congress over constitutional and civil rights concerns, yet he has pushed for its implementation through his own executive orders. Consequently, new waves of aggressive evangelism have been emanating and issuing out from America and invading India, with its epicenter in Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, under the control of Seventh Day Adventist Chief Minister Dr. Samuel (Rajasekhar Reddy). This White House-sponsored movement for the evangelization of India is well funded, superbly networked and backed by the highest of the land in America. This is being fully supported informally by the UPA government in New Delhi under the stranglehold of a de facto Prime Minister, tracing her spiritual and cultural roots to Italy in general and to Vatican in particular’.

I am very amused to see that Christian Leaders like Bengaluru Archbishop Dr Bernard Moras, V Devasahayam, Convenor of the Chennai Churches Fraternity, (CCF),  All India Christian Council (AICC!!) President Joseph Dsouza, National Integration Council Member John Dayal, etc. etc., are crying hoarse about the persecution of Christians in the India of today.  In this context I would like to invite their kind attention to what I had written in these columns on 10 July 2007 under the title ‘Genuine tears in Pakistan vs Hypocritical tears in India’: ‘Let us contrast this politically imagined situation of fictionalised atrocities against the Christians in India with what is actually happening in Pakistan today. It has been extensively reported in all forms of media during the last one week that Christian clerics in Multan District in Pakistan are being forced to convert to Islam or face death. Naveed Amer Jeeva, Pastor Joseph Daniel, Dr Elvin and Pastor Mehtab Masih, all front!
  rank leaders of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) stated at a joint news conference on 6 July 2007 in Multan: “As many as 10 Christian Clerics have received threatening letters from unidentified people reading  ‘Embrace Islam, Stop Preaching Christianity and quit your faith. Otherwise the count down of your life has begun’. Naveed Amer Jeeva of the APMA said: ‘A state of fear prevails in Shanti Nagar (Multan Town) because District and Provincial Governments have turned a deaf ear to our problems. We are feeling insecure and unsafe today because of these threatening letters from Muslim fanatics. Pastor Mukhtar Barkat had received a similar threatening letter from Muslim fanatics in 2004 and was assassinated on 5 January 2004 in Khurrampura Khanewal. The minorities in general and the Christians in particular are not safe in Pakistan. Recently, Christians in Charsadda also received threatening letters warning them to shut their Churches and convert to Islam.!
.. Even a petition has been filed against the appointment of J!
ustice B
hagawan Das as acting Chief Justice of Pakistan on the ground that he is a non-Muslim (a Hindu)’.

When a Church in Cochin near Nedumbassery International Airport was attacked recently, in an orchestrated Anti-Hindu chorus, many Christian Leaders unconscionably attacked the Sangh Parivar.  Now I have received the report that the Kerala Police have arrested a Christian named Elias in connection with this attack.  The pseudo-secular mafia of mass media in India—both print and electronic—which ran ‘sensational’ stories to link Hindu organisations with the attack along with Pinarai Vijayan is not uttering a word since the arrest of Elias – A laity of the Jacobite church!
         

Last year Swamy Dayanand Saraswati told me in Chennai that three leading Rabbis who met the Swamiji in New Delhi had told him that India is the only country in the world where the Jews have never been persecuted at any point of time in the last 2000 years. Our hypocritical Christian leaders should also take their lessons from them, if not from the fanatic Muslims of Multan District in Pakistan today. In this context, I cannot help quoting the brilliant words of VOLTAIRE (1694-1778):

‘Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world- – -Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but harm?’ (LETTERS TO FREDRICK THE GREAT, 1767)’.

(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
e-mail the writer at
vsundaram@newstodaynet.com

Christians in Tripura Supporting Separatists

y Subir Bhaumik

18 April 2000

The government in India’s north-eastern state of Tripura says it has evidence that the state’s Baptist Church is involved in backing separatist rebels. Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar said state police had uncovered details of the alleged link after questioning a church leader.

Mr Sarkar said that allegations about the close links between the state’s Baptist Church and the rebel National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) have long been made by political parties and police. Now for the first time, he said, hard evidence supporting the allegations had been found.

Explosives

Mr Sarkar told the BBC that Mr Halam was found in possession of more than 50 gelatine sticks, 5kg of potassium and 2kg of sulphur and other ingredients for making explosives. Nagmanlal Halam, secretary of the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura, was arrested late on Monday with a large quantity of explosives.

He said that two other junior members of the same church, arrested last week, had tipped the police off about the explosives which were meant for the NLFT rebels. The chief minister said that Mr Halam confessed to buying and supplying explosives to the NLFT for the past two years.

Another church official, Jatna Koloi, was arrested in south Tripura last week.

Police say Mr Koloi had received training in guerrilla warfare at an NLFT base last year.

Conversion

Guards have been placed outside the headquarters of the Baptist Church in Tripura’s capital, Agartala, to prevent possible attacks on it once the news of Mr Halam’s arrest spread. The NLFT is accused of forcing Tripura’s indigenous tribes to become Christians and give up Hindu forms of worship in areas under their control.

Last year, they issued a ban on the Hindu festivals of Durga Puja and Saraswati Puja.

The NLFT manifesto says that they want to expand what they describe as the kingdom of God and Christ in Tripura. The Baptist Church in Tripura was set up by missionaries from New
Zealand 60 years ago.

It won only a few thousand converts until 1980 when in the aftermath, of the state’s worst ethnic riot, the number of conversions grew.

-- 
  Reverend D'souza  catholicunion@eml.cc