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The Politics of Mother Teresa

Mother Teresa issued thousands of disclaimers about any knowledge of politics, but even a casual look at her career would make one wonder if she "doth protest too much."

On an international level, Mother Teresa's political agenda were narrow -- the "politics" of human reproductive intervention, and, Catholicism. In India however, she often involved herself with less subtle and more earthly politics. On the issues of abortion, contraception and Catholicism, she found her political allies in a particular spectrum in the political arena, who are most vociferous in the United States. Indeed, her biggest political allies were also in this country, as were her most powerful financial backers. Not all her political friends were Catholics, and some -- like Ronald Reagan -- are sturdy Christians from other denominations.

Mother Teresa frequently stated that the "happiest day of my life is when the Holy Father came to Calcutta." It was upon her insistence that the pope decided to visit this heathen - Marxist city with a virtually non-existent Catholic population. It is noteworthy that Mother's happiest day was not when she got the divine revelation that she must leave her cloisters, or when she founded her order, or her first home, or treated her first resident, but when she managed to bring the head of an alien order into an Indian city.

Once Edward Desmond from Time (17) magazine asked her, "Friends of yours say you are disappointed that your work has not brought about more conversations in this great Hindu nation." Her reply had not been very convincing. Desmond went on to ask, "And should they [Hindus] love Jesus too?", to which she replied, "Naturally, if they want peace, if they want joy, let them find Jesus."

Mother Teresa took a keen interest in the complex political processes of India; she allied herself with the political party which she felt was friendliest to Catholicism. This she felt was the Congress party, of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. Mother had a personal relationship with Indira Gandhi, and her ties with the Gandhi family became stronger after Mrs Gandhi's son Rajiv married the Italian Catholic Sonia. Even today, in all of Mother's Delhi homes large portraits of Indira and Rajiv (former Prime Ministers both) hang beside her own picture.

Another anecdote Datta-Ray tells is one when the head of the British Council in Calcutta took a titled Englishwoman to see Mother Teresa, but mentioned her title only in passing. Six months later, Mother telephoned the aristocrat in London from Rome, calling her by her correct title, and asked her if she could use one of her houses in a up-market area of London to put up some of her nuns.

Sunanda K Datta-Ray, formerly editor of the Calcutta Statesman and editorial adviser to the Singapore Straits Times, describes Mother Teresa as anything but publicity shy. 

It may come a surprise to people to know that Mother Teresa used to vote in elections in India in the 1960s and 70s. As the main opponents in West Bengal have always been the Marxists and Congress, it is not difficult to surmise who she voted for.

(source: The Politics of Mother Teresa - http://www.cephasministry.com/catholic_teresa_chapter_10.html). Watch Mother Teresa – Penn and Teller video - Features Dr Arup Chatterji and Christopher Hitchens

Media hype and medieval superstition?

The Rich Western world has a poor conscious and needed Mother Teresa to be a missionary to the heathen.

It is the evangelical zeal of the Church to substitute alien systems of belief and worship with its own icons and practices that has made it suspect. It is a mission that seems to spring from the same impulse as globalisation, which rests on the foisting of a standardised lifestyle and economic model, evolved in the West, on the rest of the world. Both movements are linked directly with economic and cultural ascendancy.

Almost a decade ago, British Television's Channel Four aired a film, titled Hell's Angel: Mother Teresa, that savaged her saintly image. If British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge idealised her, Christopher Hitchens, the investigator in the iconoclastic depiction, tried to pull her down from her pedestal.

(source: Of heroes and hero worship - By Anuradha Dutt - dailypioneer.com). For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism and Christian Aggression.

Mother Teresa instigated the closing of more than 20,000 Christian schools across India in November, 1995. She launched the campaign in Delhi. The "strike" is intended to put pressure on the government to meet demands that her low-caste (Dalit) followers--Christian converts from Hinduism--be given government jobs. "Up to 80 percent of India's 25-million Christians are Dalit," reports ENI Bulletin. Ironically, these converts had hoped to shed their caste identity, but they were never accepted as equals by high-caste converts. They continue to face the same discrimination as Hindu Dalits, perhaps more so now as government jobs reserved for Dalits are not open to low-caste Christians. Authorities rejected the demands, citing that since Christians do not recognize caste, they cannot make caste-based demands. "The very basis of her religion professes a casteless society," maintained BJP spokeswoman Sushma Swaraj.

(source: Hinduism Today). 

Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints

During his 26-year papacy, John Paul II elevated 483 individuals to sainthood, reportedly more saints than any previous pope. One personage he beatified but did not live long enough to canonize was Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun of Albanian origin who had been wined and dined by the world’s rich and famous while hailed as a champion of the poor. The darling of the corporate media and western officialdom, and an object of celebrity adoration, Teresa was for many years the most revered woman on earth, showered with kudos and awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 for her “humanitarian work” and “spiritual inspiration.”

What usually went unreported were the vast sums she received from wealthy and sometimes tainted sources, including a million dollars from convicted savings & loan swindler Catholic fundamentalist and anti-abortionist Charles Keating, on whose behalf she sent a personal plea for clemency to the presiding judge. She was asked by the prosecutor in that case to return Keating’s gift because it was money he had stolen. She never did. She also accepted substantial sums given by the brutal Doc Duvalier dictatorship that regularly stole from the Haitian public treasury.

(Note: Keating, a “Catholic fundamentalist”, gave Mother Teresa one and a quarter million dollars and “the use of his private jet.” During the course of Keating’s trial, Mother Teresa wrote Judge Ito asking clemency and asked Ito “to do what Jesus would do.”).

Mother Teresa’s “hospitals” for the indigent in India and elsewhere turned out to be hardly more than human warehouses in which seriously ill persons lay on mats, sometimes fifty to sixty in a room without benefit of adequate medical attention. Their ailments usually went undiagnosed. The food was nutritionally lacking and sanitary conditions were deplorable. There were few medical personnel on the premises, mostly untrained nuns and brothers.

When tending to her own ailments, however, Teresa checked into some of the costliest hospitals and recovery care units in the world for state-of-the-art treatment.

Teresa journeyed the globe to wage campaigns against divorce, abortion, and birth control. At her Nobel award ceremony, she announced that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.” And she once suggested that AIDS might be a just retribution for improper sexual conduct.

Teresa emitted a continual flow of promotional misinformation about herself. She claimed that her mission in Calcutta fed over a thousand people daily. On other occasions she jumped the number to 4000, 7000, and 9000. Actually her soup kitchens fed not more than 150 people (six days a week), and this included her retinue of nuns, novices, and brothers. She claimed that her school in the Calcutta slum contained five thousand children when it actually enrolled less than one hundred.

Teresa claimed to have 102 family assistance centers in Calcutta, but longtime Calcutta resident, Aroup Chatterjee, who did an extensive on-the-scene investigation of her mission, could not find a single such center.

As one of her devotees explained, “Mother Teresa is among those who least worry about statistics. She has repeatedly expressed that what matters is not how much work is accomplished but how much love is put into the work.” Was Teresa really unconcerned about statistics? Quite the contrary, her numerical inaccuracies went consistently and self-servingly in only one direction, greatly exaggerating her accomplishments.

Over the many years that her mission was in Calcutta, there were about a dozen floods and numerous cholera epidemics in or near the city, with thousands perishing. Various relief agencies responded to each disaster, but Teresa and her crew were nowhere in sight, except briefly on one occasion.

When someone asked Teresa how people without money or power can make the world a better place, she replied, “They should smile more,” a response that charmed some listeners. During a press conference in Washington DC, when asked “Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?” she said “I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.”

But she herself lived lavishly well, enjoying luxurious accommodations in her travels abroad. It seems to have gone unnoticed that as a world celebrity she spent most of her time away from Calcutta, with protracted stays at opulent residences in Europe and the United States, jetting from Rome to London to New York in private planes.

Mother Teresa is a paramount example of the kind of acceptably conservative icon propagated by an elite-dominated culture, a “saint” who uttered not a critical word against social injustice, and maintained cozy relations with the rich, corrupt, and powerful.

She claimed to be above politics when in fact she was pronouncedly hostile toward any kind of progressive reform. Teresa was a friend of Ronald Reagan, and an admiring guest of the Haitian dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier. She also had the support and admiration of a number of Central and South American dictators.

Teresa was Pope John Paul II’s kind of saint. After her death in 1997, he waived the five-year waiting period usually observed before beginning the beatification process that leads to sainthood. The five-year delay is intended to dampen impulsive enthusiasms and allow for a more sober evaluation. Claims made on behalf of a candidate are then subjected to critical challenge by an advocatus diaboli, a “devil’s advocate” assigned to the beatification process. John Paul brushed aside all this. In 2003, in record time Teresa was beatified, the final step before canonization.

But in 2007 her canonization confronted a bump in the road, it having been disclosed that along with her various other contradictions Teresa was not a citadel of spiritual joy and unswerving faith. Her diaries, investigated by Catholic authorities in Calcutta, revealed that she had been racked with doubts: “I feel that God does not want me, that God is not God and that he does not really exist.” People think “my faith, my hope and my love are overflowing and that my intimacy with God and union with his will fill my heart. If only they knew,” she wrote, “Heaven means nothing.”

Through many tormented sleepless nights she shed thoughts like this: “I am told God loves me—and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”  Il Messeggero, Rome's popular daily newspaper, commented: “The real Mother Teresa was one who for one year had visions and who for the next 50 had doubts---up until her death.”

(source: Mother Teresa, John Paul II, and the Fast-Track Saints - By Michael Parenti - author of the book God And His Demons).

Lower-caste villagers who converted to Christianity were barred from a Christmas Mass
Police guard church after some Christians block others from a Christmas celebration.

The villagers, known as Dalit Christians after the lower-caste Hindu social group they once belonged to, were prevented from attending midnight Mass at St. Ebiben's Church in Manjakuppam, in southern Tamil Nadu state, about 1,100 miles south of New Delhi, by high-caste converts, Father Christopher Rethinasamy said.

He said he was helpless to do anything because he feared an outbreak of violence. The Dalit Christians were made to wait an hour and half as Mass was conducted for the converts from the Vannia community, who were formerly high-caste Hindus. 
They were allowed entry an hour after the ceremony ended, after police intervened and negotiated with church authorities. 
"I know it is against the teachings of Jesus," Rethinasamy said. "But I had to go along with the decision of the Vannia Christians. I did not want the situation to deteriorate."

In the report  Last Among Equals, veteran broadcaster Mark Tully OBE reports from India on how caste discrimination in the Christian church is leading to exploitation, violence, and in some cases murder. The Christian missionaries came to India preaching 'blessed are the poor'. They converted the poorest of the poor, the low-caste (actually no-caste) Hindus or 'Untouchables', who were eager to escape the hardships that the caste system imposed on them. However, as Tully reveals, these so-called 'Dalit' Christians found themselves treated just as harshly by their Christian brethren as they had been by the upper-caste Hindus. 

Caste divisions in the church are particularly acute in rural areas like the village of Tutchoor, 60kms from Madras. Here, the upper caste Christians live on one side of the hill,  nearer the church. Their religious processions do not pass the Dalits' homes, and they even worship and are buried separately.

(source: Low-Caste Converts Barred From Mass in India  - LA Times.com). 


Mother Teresa: Where are her millions?
By Walter Wuellenweber
http://members.lycos.co.uk/bajuu/
 

French journalist, Francois Gautier has called her: "an incarnation of Western post-colonialism and the Nobel prize she got is their endorsement of her work."

(source: A Western journalist on India : The Ferengi's Columns - By Francois Gautier p. 114).

MOTHER TERESA - Some Little Known Facts -  By G. P. Srivastava
http://www.vhp.org/englishsite/g.Challenges/dConversion%20to%20Christianity/mother_teresa.htm
). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel

*** 

Why Mother Teresa should Not be a saint - By Christopher Hitchens

"Saints are dead sinners, revised and edited."  - Ambrose Bierce

***

I discovered that she had taken money from rich dictators like the Duvalier gang in Haiti, had been a friend of poverty rather than a friend of the poor, had never given any account of the huge sums of money donated to her, had railed against birth-control in the most overpopulated city on the planet and had been the spokeswoman for the most extreme dogmas of religious fundamentalism. She fawned upon her shrewd protector Indira Gandhi at a time when the Indian government was imposing forced sterilisations. Above all, she urged the poor to think of their sufferings as a gift from God.

Mother Teresa was given, to our certain knowledge, many tens of millions of pounds. But she never built any hospitals. She claimed to have built almost 150 convents, for nuns joining her own order, in several countries. Was this where ordinary donors thought their money was going?

Now, so they tell us, a woman in Bengal has recovered from a tumour after praying to Mother Teresa. I have received information from both the family and the physicians that says it was good medical treatment that did the job.

And when she got sick, she would check herself into the Mayo Clinic or some other temple of American medicine. As one who has visited her primitive "hospice" for the dying in Calcutta, I should call that a wise decision. Nobody would go there except to check out, in one way or another.

Concocted Miracle? - The beatification of Mother Teresa 

Monica Besra is a 30-year-old tribal woman from Dulidnapur village. She is illiterate and speaks her tribal mother tongue only, laced with a few words of broken Bengali. Until recently she has not been a Christian. Dr. Manju Murshed, superintendent of the government hospital in Balurghat, informed that Monica Besra was admitted in the hospital with severe pain. She suffered from tubercular meningitis and from an ovarian tumor, which was discovered during an ultra-sound investigation. She was subsequently treated by Dr. Tarun Kumar Biwas and the gynecologist Dr. Ranjan Mustafi.  After she left the hospital, the treatment was continued in the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital and ended successfully in March 1999. A final ultra-sound investigation showed that the tumor had disappeared.

According to the Vatican, Monica Besra’s ovarian tumor was cured by the powers of Teresa’s picture, placed on her abdomen. But the medical records prove that it was sheer conventional medical treatment that rescued her life. “In the 21st century how can you talk about miracle healing?” says West Bengal Health minister Suyrya Kanta Nishra. The Vatican has approved the story officially as a first-class miracle.

Dr. Ranjan Mustaphi is one of the doubters, questioning the Vatican's belief that Mother Teresa ever performed a miracle. "I am really astonished," he said. "This is nothing, but a farce." One doctor who treated Besra told CNN there was no scientific explanation for her recovery. But the doctor who first diagnosed Besra, says the church should not push Besra's case because it was medication, not a miracle that cured her. "It is scientifically proven that the tumor that she had was linked to tuberculosis," he said. "And it responded to an anti-tubercular drug."  

The most important of those bundled paranormal claims is the miracle, which Teresa has allegedly done on her first death anniversary. At least one proven after-death-miracle is a must for any saint. Teresa’s managers have offered the “Healing of Monica Besra” for this purpose and the Vatican has officially accepted it as a suitable ticket to sainthood. But unexpectedly the miracle has met with a tough challenge. Stripped off the veil of holiness, it looks like a rough-cut fake. 

If Mother Teresa was a saint, why could she not heal herself? Christopher Hitchens notes that Mother Teresa “has checked into some of the finest and costliest clinics and hospitals in the West during her bouts with heart trouble and old age.”

Mother Teresa was admitted to Woodlands Nursing Home at 2:30 am Friday morning for the third time since August with severe heart problems 1989: Has a second and nearly fatal attack. Doctors implant a pacemaker.

(source: Indian Rationalists question mother Teresa’s ovarian miracle - By Sanal Edamaruku ). Mother Teresa - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Exposing Mother Teresa Hitchens’ Book A Devastating Insight - by John Swomley and Mother Teresa's miracle in doubt and What's Mother Teresa Got to Do with It? - time.com and Mother Teresa The Final Verdict - By Aroup Chatterjee and On Mother Teresa - By Atanu Dey and Medicine cured 'miracle' woman - not Mother Teresa, say doctors - By David Orr in Calcutta - telegraph.co.uk - 10/5/03). 

Christian Charity?
"Woman 'cured' by Mother Teresa lives in poverty"

My hut was frequented by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity before the beatification of Mother Teresa," Besra said.

"They made of lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children's education," she claimed, adding that she was also escorted to the Vatican for the beatification ceremony.

"After that, they forgot me," said Besra, tears welling up in her eyes.........................

Every piece of the above conforms to the modus operandi of the Christist missionaries. After all, what use would they have for this woman after she has served her purpose in inventing the myth of "gutter saint" around the
ghoul of Calcutta ?

(source: "Woman 'cured' by Mother Teresa lives in poverty" - Mother Teresa).   Refer to Amen - an autobiography of a nun and Mote and the beam - By Sandhya Jain.

The Saint business - By Rajeev Srinivasan

"The picture that emerges is a little less than flattering. Mother Teresa makes great copy, though, for the Vatican's brand-building. Indian taxpayers paid for a grand state funeral for her, unaware that she single-handedly set back India's own brand image by ten years by projecting a picture of a prone, impoverished and criminally negligent country that needed a white missionary to help its destitute. Since both the Marxists of Calcutta and MT needed to perpetuate poverty for their own agendas, was there a little tactical alliance between the Vatican and the Marxists on this front?

And then there is the small matter of the unseemly hurry to fast-track the godwoman to sainthood. It appears that the Vatican broke all its guidelines about 'miracle' verification and waiting periods in its haste to get the deed done.....So if these are the Vatican's 'saints,' we must really hope we are spared the Vatican's 'sinners.' And now we understand the reason for the unseemly haste: they had better get the deed done, sealed and delivered, before further questions crop up about the 'miracles.'

(source: The Saint business - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com).

Mommie Dearest - By Christopher Hitchens
The pope beatifies Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.

As for the "miracle" that had to be attested, what can one say? Surely any respectable Catholic cringes with shame at the obviousness of the fakery. A Bengali woman named Monica Besra claims that a beam of light emerged from a picture of MT, which she happened to have in her home, and relieved her of a cancerous tumor. Her physician, Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, says that she didn't have a cancerous tumor in the first place and that the tubercular cyst she did have was cured by a course of prescription medicine. Was he interviewed by the Vatican's investigators? No.

MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty.

She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

The rich world has a poor conscience, and many people liked to alleviate their own unease by sending money to a woman who seemed like an activist for "the poorest of the poor." People do not like to admit that they have been gulled or conned, so a vested interest in the myth was permitted to arise, and a lazy media never bothered to ask any follow-up questions.

(source: Mommie Dearest - By Christopher Hitchens - slate.com). Refer to Former Catholic Sister Says Even Mother Teresa Is a Fraud - By By Greg Szymanski June 6, 2007

Bizarre Media hype

I find the whole spectacle of the so-called beatification (coming soon: a full-fledged canonisation!) of Mother Teresa foolish and comical. And I find all the hype and media-excitement surrounding the event absurd and bizarre. 

The second is that as wonderful as Mother Teresa was — and yes, she was pretty wonderful — many other people  and organisations whose work was as laudable (in Calcutta itself,  there’s the example of the Ramakrishna Mission) were ignored by the western media because they were brown and it made a much better story for the international press to focus on a white woman who had given up everything to work with the poor of the Third World.

why are we paying so much attention to this ropey, medieval practice of conferring posthumous  magical powers on the poor, old dear? When Sai Baba says he can perform miracles, rationalists snigger. When Ganesh idols are said to be drinking milk, a steady stream of debunkers rush to prove that this all a hoax.

And yet if you look at the reverential way in which the Indian media — press and those TV channels which even provided live coverage of the beatification! — have treated this strange conversion of Mother Teresa from missionary to magician, you begin to wonder: do we have different standards for Indian miracles and for firangi magic?

(source: Some Mothers do ’ave ’em - By Vir Singhvi - hindustantimes.com).

Charity to a Missionary

The Leftist West Bengal government, under pressure from rationalist groups and doctors conducted an inquiry and rejected the miracle as ridiculous. The doctors who went into the whole affair have also spoken about the 'approach' by the Vatican to get a 'favourable' verdict from them. Yet, the rational Commies of Calcutta themselves have maintained a diplomatic silence on the miracles of Teresa of Calcutta. In case, their intellect has got corroded, they can always refresh themselves say, by reading the revelations of Christopher Hitchens, a secular author at that, who mustered the courage to call some of the Blessed Bluffs in his seminal book titled The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa's Crimes Against Humanity. The author, among other things, makes no bones about the evangelical intent behind the Mother's acts of charity. And if that is the tendency of a Bharat Ratna Mother Teresa, who is supposed to be 'selfless service personified' we can well imagine the disposition of lesser missionaries. The book would make one shudder, in disgust and worse at having been taken for a jolly, or rather, holy ride. 

(source: Charity to a Missionary - By T R Jawahar - newstodaynet.com December 26' 2002).

Christian Slander Campaign

The rape of four nuns in Jhabua kept figuring in 1999 Christian lists of "Hindu atrocities on Christians" even when a largely Christian gang of local tribals pleaded guilty. Apart from the Jhabua case, there were the alleged rape of one nun in Orissa, but police investigation showed this to be wholly fictitious, as documented in the official Justice Wadhwa Report. In fact, no rape of nuns was committed by any Hindu militants during the previous year. Yet, the calumny continued to spread even in supposedly neutral sources.

(source: Harvesting Our Souls: Missionaries, their design, their claims - By Arun Shourie ASA pub ISBN:81-900199-9-6).

"Nuns have been raped", according to the New York based Human Rights Watch, which blamed "Hindu Nationalism" in a report presented nearly a year after the Jhabua incident, when the truth was already well-known. (refer to "India faulted for Christian attacks, Associated Press, London, 29-9-1999).

Newsweek magazine cited "rapes of nuns" among the atrocities committed by Hindu nationalists. The Belgian weekly Le Vif/L'Express likewise cited "nuns raped" among the Christian victims of Hindu violence. The leading Dutch quality daily NRC-Handelsblad claimed to know that "rapes of nuns" formed part of a "planned campaign by the Sangh Parivar.

Defamation of Hindus

For the best proof of your non-fascism is that you denounce others as fascist, just as the proof of your "secularism" in India is that you accuse others of "communalism". All weapons which can damage Hinduism are welcomed, and no scruples should stand in the way of the christianization of India, a vital interest of the Christian Churches. In this war context, the "fascist" smear is a welcome addition to the arsenal. Now that demonization in terms of "idolatry" and "devil-worship" is not very effective anymore, a new demon is called out to defame Hindus by association. 

(source: The Saffron Swastika - By Koenraad Elst Voice of India ISBN 8185990697 p.9-10).

The Mother of All Myths 

When Mother Teresa died, she was surrounded in her bedroom by sophisticated and expensive cardiac equipment, which had been specially fitted for her.

Such privilege is usually granted to kings, presidents and dictators. Whether such exclusive facilities befit a future Saint is for the Committee to decide, but I would ask it to take note of the wide discrepancy between Mother Teresa's deeds and her pronouncements.

It was upon her insistence that the pope decided to visit this heathen - Marxist city with a virtually non-existent Catholic population

(source: The Mother of All Myths - by Aroup Chatterjee - This book is available online - Mother Teresa The Final Verdict
By Aroup Chatterjee
). 

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Religious Apartheid

The Pope wants to convert all Hindus. The Southern Baptist Mission recently claimed that Hinduism is eternal darkness, and is Satanic. Millions of Hindus revere Jesus Christ as a great religious leader. Hinduism is a tolerant, inclusive religion which is not judgmental towards other religions. But this friendly feeling is not reciprocated by many Christian missionaries, who maliciously demonize the Hindu gods and portray them as satanic in order to win converts. The chauvinist and intolerant philosophy of the hard line Christian missionaries - that only Jesus is the real savior - is religious apartheid. The Christian Church, it would seem, does not understand that the hegemony's of the West is over and gone. To suggest that because conversion is basic to Christianity and should therefore not be challenged is childish.

The Christian missionaries' attitude - "My God is real, yours is false and is Devil" - is religious racism. (Friedrich Nietzsche, the great German Philosopher, once said that the old gods laughed themselves to death when a god proclaimed there was only one God.) One must practice one's religion without demonizing and seeking to eliminate other religions. The claims of Christian missionaries to deliver the poor from oppression and poverty is false. Had that been so, there would have been no poverty, illiteracy and dictatorships in the vastly Christian lands of Latin America, Africa, Philippines etc. 

(Note: Hindus in India were shocked by a controversial report in The Kansas City Star newspaper that Roman Catholic priests in the United States are dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate four times higher than the general population. The most likely explanation--sexual activity on the part of the supposedly celibate priests--causes less stir in America. Here the Catholic Church has already paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in court judgments as a result of cases involving priest misconduct with children under their care. 

(source: http://www.hinduism-today.com/2000/5/). 

According to the National Catholic Reporter,
Reports of abuse: AIDS exacerbates sexual exploitation of nuns, reports allege - By John Allen JR. and Pamela  Schaeffer
. Five confidential Roman Catholic Church reports written by senior members of women's religious orders and an American priest over a period of seven years allege numerous cases of sexual abuse of nuns by priests and a failure by church leaders to discipline the clerics who were involved. The reports contend that the abuse has been taking place in 23 countries, including India......
The Church is already reeling from loosing lawsuits involving priests' abuse of young children. 

(source: http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/031601/031601a.htm)

There is a calumny against Hinduism. In 1994, at a conference in Vadodara, Religion and Society in Contemporary India, Shri Nirmal Verma, the eminent Hindi writer, said: "The type of abuses which missionaries hurled against the Indian Gods and Goddesses, if you read today, would be outrageous to any Hindu believer. Krishna is lecherous person, Shiva is some demonic force. All sorts of sexual abuses (are hurled) against Kali Durga."

(
source: Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Project Nr 14, 1996, p 60.)

Many Christian researchers have documented the cause of the antipathy of the missionaries towards the Brahmins. Elizabeth Susan Alexander wrote, 

“For the missionaries Brahmans (sic) had been in the forefront of the staunch Hindu opposition to missionary endeavours in Madras Presidency. They had also been the vanguard of the Indian nationalist movement that had taken alarmingly extremist turns.” 

(source:
The Attitudes of British Protestant Missionaries Towards Nationalism in India, Konark Publishers, Delhi, 1994, p 67 and Christianity in India - By Ashok V. Chowgule).

According to Koenraad Elst  "Christianity in India is not the toothless, softened Christianity, but has retained the aggressiveness and self-righteousness of the colonial period; and even the European Churches become a little bit aggressive again when advertising their work among the wretched Pagans of India."
 

(source: Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar By Koenraad ElstFor more refer to chapter on European Imperialism and Christian Aggression).

At the Bethany site, India is divided with scientific precision into 186 individual "people groups." A long description is followed by advice on how to convert each to Christianity. (http://www.bethany. com/profiles/c_code/india.html ). Notably absent from these sites is "social service" as an aim in India--contrary to missionaries' claim. The real goal is conversion of men, which means the destruction of Hinduism.

The Catholic Church believes it is the one and only means to salvation. Priests such as Father Bede Griffiths, who dress, act and worship like Hindus do confuse Hindus and seek to make Catholicism, a foreign faith, appear indigenous. (source: Hinduism Today June'99). Today, the Indianization of Christianity, known as 'inculturation,' has become one of the central themes of the Church in India. Pope John Paul II invites the entire Church to respond to the call of the Holy Spirit for a renewal of Christian life and mission in the world.  Read between lines - Christians must be more assertive, a new evangelical zeal inviting Christians to spread the good word, make more converts. Why is the Christian community in India so crucial to the Pope? India is the last stronghold of ‘heathenism’. The Caste system is judged offensive by Christian standards. Hinduism is a growing menace to the Monotheistic bloc. Gurus are exporting their teachings all over the world. New Age, also called neopaganism resulting from the teaching of gurus in the West, is the major threat of the Abrahamic monotheist religions. If the Pope is calling for a reconciliation of the Churches and asking forgiveness for the faults of the past, why is he calling for a conversion of India? It is easier to ask forgiveness for the destruction of Native American cultures when these have been massively Christianized. It is contradictory to ask pardon for faults of the past when destruction of native cultures is still called for. The goal is to establish a strong Christian community that will make more converts. A call for the emergence of Christian India for the coming millennium. 

(An interesting book - Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit - By Gary Wills ). Religious conversions have another angle, a political one. As pointed out by the Niyogi Committee, they seem to be intended to create a State within a State. Foreign missionaries and foreign funds are suspect from this point of view and so they should be either totally banned or strictly regulated.

Malachi Martin, in The Jesuits : the Society of Jesus and the betrayal of the Roman Catholic Church, writes: "The subcontinent of India, in the eyes of the Vatican planners, has a primordial importance at the one country in Asia where the Church can make huge headway. The Roman Catholic Church has poured vast resources into India. Religious orders run 115 colleges with 135,000 students, 1,200 high schools with over 500,000 pupils. 242 technical schools with over 400,000 students. It is estimated that 60 percent of all students in India attend Roman Catholic schools and colleges. In those seats of learning, 50 5 of the teachers are non-Christians. Jesuits are involved on the local, state and national level." 

Raymond James Paul, in A Catholic's Believe It or Not, writes: "More than 7,000 educational institutions have been established by the Catholic Church in India. "the real figure is much higher as these books were published in 1987 and 1963 respectively. They do no include non-Catholic educational institutions which have prolifigated in recent years with the rapid spread of evangelical Protestant churches in India. A truer picture of the Christian landscape in India can be got from the 1992 report of the world Council of Churches, which say, "Indian churches put together are the biggest single land owner in India."

(source: The Myth of Saint Thomas and The Mylapore Shiva Temple - By Ishwar Sharan p. 123). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel

***

The following figures have been declared by the Census Commissioner of India. The last religion-based statistics were published in Census of India 1991, Paper 1 of 1995, overseen by Dr M. Vijayanunni; those exclude Jammu & Kashmir and, in some cases, Assam. These states are included in the database of the US Bureau of the Census. The Christian headcount:  

(source: http://www.pragna.org/Iss04204.html)

     1961: 10,728,086
     1971: 14,225,045
     1981: 16,165,447
     1991: 19,640,284

Did someone say the Christian population had fallen...?  According to The World Evangelism site, 
The State of World Evangelization  "Evangelical Christians are the fastest growing major religious group in the world today and it is the only one growing rapidly by conversion." - says Patrick Johnstone. 

For obvious reasons, the missionaries have always been trying to mislead people on the census data. But certain reports, which they do for their internal consumption, are highly revealing and equally disturbing. For example the Church Growth Centre reports that by the end of the 20th century the Christian population will increase 13 times as compared to that at the beginning of the century. It further clarifies that the increase of the non-Christian population would be only 4.6 times during the same period. “In 1900 there were 60 non-Christians for one Christian and by the end of the century there will be only 20 non-Christian to every Christian. Christians’ estimated population in the year 2000 will be 50 million,” the report says.

 

According to the report entitled Trends and Issues in Evangelisation in India by Augustine Kanjamala SVD, a CBCI Secretary: “In the North-East, conversions among the tribals continue. During the last 30 years the Catholic population has increased nine fold to nine lakhs. In Arunachal Pradesh about 10,000 people join the Church per year, half of them into Catholic Church. In West India more than 45,000 Bhils have joined the Church (source: The Church In’ India: Its Missions Tomorrow, p. 40). 

The same report reveals: “Amri, Kerbi tribal people in Assam have totally declared to become Christians for the prosperity of the tribe.” According to it every day 4,000 new Christians are added to the Church, and 35 new congregations are formed every week. One can very well imagine the aggressive nature of the “harvesting plan”. 

In their “hate and insinuation” literature, even Sikhs are not spared. A section of the Sikh community is often compared to thieves and dacoits. (Page 180 of Uttar Bharat tatha Pakistan main Masihi Dharma by Bishop Deendayal and published by Hindi Theological Literature Committee, Jabalpur). To substantiate its point the author refers to “historical instance” when Sikh soldiers allegedly attacked the enemy from behind and indulged in looting.

(source: Hate Literature - By Rajendra Chadha).

Most people targeted for conversion are poor, illiterate and uneducated Hindus and Tribals. Christian missionaries dare not try to convert the poor and destitute Muslims for the fear of violent confrontation. The Christian missionaries have effectively used the 3Ms - Media, Money and Manipulation. 

Recently, a 140-page document was approved by the Roman Catholic Church after the meeting of the Catholic bishops held in Delhi under the guidance of the Pope. The document says: "Just as in the first millennium the Cross was planted on the soil of Europe and in the second on that of the Americas and Africa, we can pray that in the third Christian millennium a great harvest of faith will be reaped in this vast and vital continent of Asia." 

What has this Christian religion accomplished in Europe? We should remind the Pope and the Bishops that two of the bloodiest world wars in history were started by European Christians and how a Christian Germany sent over 5 million Jews to the gas chambers.
In 1929, after the Concordat between Mussolini and the Holy See, the Pope saluted II Duce as a "man of God" and in 1932 he gave him the Papal blessing at St. Peter's. Four years later, the Italian clergy were ordered to celebrate the Fascists victory  over Ethiopia with special services for thanksgiving in the churches. 

(source: Recovery of Faith - By Sir Sirvepalli Radhakrishnan. p 30-31. 

It was Fray Diego de Landa, the second Bishop of Yucatan, reduced the Maya Library in Yucatan to ashes in 1562. And today we still see how Christian Catholics and Protestants are still fighting each other to death in Ireland? (Note: Please refer to an interesting book online by Avro Manhattan (1914-1990), called The Vatican Holocaust). 

Many Europeans are realizing that Christianity is a negative and destructive force and recall its history. Belgian writer Hughes Henry, wrote on  Pagan renaissance says: " How harsh had been Europe's conversion to Christianity? They burned temples, smashed statues, massacred the priests and established extremely harsh laws. By 392 CE, Paganism died. (Source: Hughes Henry- Hinduism Today July 1999). The basic problem with Christianity is that the Church actually lacks respect for other faiths and ways of life. 

(Please refer to article -
Religions aren't equal, Vatican says). 

What right has Christianity to claim to be the absolute religion? Why is it not content to be one religion among many? 

(For more information please refer to Indians Against Christian Aggression).

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