[Fwd: NGOs spreading disaffection]

may 6th

this is yet another purely political ploy by white christist
fundamentalists and their temporary pals, the marxists.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: NGOs spreading disaffection
Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 15:55:01 EDT
From:
To:
CC:

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=129&page=4
*US-funded NGOs spreading disaffection
*By Sandhya Jain

The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data on the number of
major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and
have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR
means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste
Hindus.

Under the guise of human rights and freedom of religion, America has for
some time been promoting certain activists from weaker sections, who
regularly report to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom
(USCIRF) and the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights
and Labour, about India’s internal affairs. Now, American academics are
synergizing their work with the political concerns of their government,
seeking to aggravate and exploit differences in Hindu society.

The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data of a number of
major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and
have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR
means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste
Hindus, then it would know very well that it is the OBCs who oppose the
entry of SCs/STs in temples. This kind of study by an outside agency is
dangerously divisive, and a combative Hindu intellectual has countered
that Indian intellectuals should in turn ask how many American churches
attended by White people have Black priests.

In any case, since the Hindu tradition is not centralized in the manner
that denominational churches are, it is unlikely that any such
statistics would be available in Hindu society, and the concerned
academics would certainly know this. They would also be aware that there
are several gurus and paramparas in India today that are training
SCs/STs as priests, should they desire to be priests. What is
interesting to note, however, is that SC/ST desire to have temples with
Brahmin priests, because they feel confident that they know the proper
way to conduct pujas!

Another question is how many formerly lower caste Hindu leaders have a
significant following among the other castes. Politically, Smt Mayawati
is way ahead of all leaders in Uttar Pradesh, and in Bihar, Shri Ram
Vilas Paswan has a certain following. In the spiritual tradition, one of
the most important leaders is Ma Amritanandamayi, a woman from the
fisherman caste, whose most loyal devotees belong to the upper castes.
Thus, the tradition of overlooking the caste of a realized saint is very
much alive in India. But I can’t think of a single significant Black
politician in the United States who would be cultivated by White people;
not even the late Martin Luther King, or a Hispanic or Native American
spiritual leader with a White Anglo Saxon following.

Becoming more overtly political, the American scholars want to know how
many SCs/STs figure on the VHP’s governing board. Here I think the more
pertinent question would be how many such persons figure in the Congress
Working Committee, especially as that party flourished for decades on
SCs/STs support, and is today headed by a White European Catholic, whose
Government is committed to such token affirmative action. Even more
pertinently, since the Church has long evangelized most of the African
continent, how many Black cardinals are there in the Vatican, and how
many bishops in the Baptist, Adventist, Methodist and other churches?

The American scholars wonder why former weaker sections form separate
sects of their own rather than with other castes; and whether they
prefer to call themselves Dalits or Harijans in order to gain the
respect of caste Hindus. It is obvious that the questions are more
political than academic, and such studies are intended to promote the
agendas of successive American administrations in interfering in the
internal affairs of other countries.

Hindu society does not have sects; by definition, sects are splinter
groups within monotheistic religions. I do not know if American Blacks
are a separate sect or not, but it is a fact that covert discrimination
even today compels them to have separate churches, and this apparently
applies to other ethnic minorities in that country. Moreover, those
minorities do not get respect by calling themselves Christian, but they
get a political value by calling themselves Black, Hispanic, Korean,
Chinese and seeking safety in numbers. Hindu society is a concentric
circle of jatis, which are cohesive social groups claiming descent from
a common ancestor, or some other common affinity. Thus, SCs/STs that
adopted the Sikh faith constituted themselves into the Ramgarhia
community, to distinguish themselves from their former Hindu brethren.
Proliferation and distinction go hand in hand in India, and do not lead
to disintegration or division.

In this context, it is worth mentioning that just as the dominant White
Christians have failed to assimilate other groups on an equal basis in
their own societies, despite converting them to their faith, so also in
India the church has failed to uplift the weaker sections despite luring
them away from Hindu society on the pretext of granting them social
equality and economic mobility. The church has inflicted grievous
injuries upon its constituents from weaker sections, forcing them to
build separate churches or to sit in segregated areas of the church,
take their dead to separate cemeteries, take holy water and communion
separately.

Christian activists of weaker sections estimate that church institutions
and Christian NGOs together receive approximately Rs. 2,500 crore of
foreign aid annually, but there is no intra-community transparency
regarding the utilization of these funds. Christian bodies earn huge
incomes from elite schools, colleges and hospitals managed by them, as
also from massive commercial properties they own in major cities. Yet
weaker sections which comprise the bulk of the community get no share of
its enormous wealth.

It is a travesty of justice that the church is now shifting the burden
of its responsibility to the Indian Government and demanding reservation
benefits for the weaker section Christians. The latter were misled away
from the Hindu fold and then betrayed by denying them a just share in
the church’s colossal resources.

According to Census 2001, there are 24.20 million Christians in India,
more than half of whom belong to the weaker section of South India. Yet
power in the Indian church is jealously guarded by priests belonging to
upper castes. The 200-member Catholic Bishops Conference of India will
never disclose the number of bishops or cardinals from weaker sections,
possibly because there are none. The UPA government has done the rich
Christian educational institutions a favour by exempting minority
institutions from the burden of reservation quotas that have been (and
are being) extended elsewhere, so they are literally without
accountability to their poorer brethren.