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EDITORIAL October 26, 1999 VNN4991 Comment on this story Open Letter To The Bishops Of India BY VISHVA HINDU PARISHAD INTERNATIONAL EDITORIAL, Oct 26 (VNN) — Dr. Pravin Togadiya (India) An Open Letter To The Bishops Of India--On the eve of the arrival of Rev. Pope John Paul II to India Dear Bishop, I must compliment the Church for the boldness that the Archbishop of Delhi, Rev. Alan De Lastic demonstrated the other day by rejecting our demand for an apology for Church's past and ongoing misdeeds in spite of clinching evidence about its conversion activity in this country by resorting to force, allurement and fraud. I must also pay tribute to the perseverance of the church leaders in pursuing a goal, which has its foundations on complete falsehood. But if the emerging evidence about the anti-secular, anti-national and anti-pluralistic conversion activity of the Christian missionaries in this country all these years is any indication then time is fast catching up with them. So we again reiterate here that the Church leaders starting with Pope John Paul II should accept the truth, apologise for the crimes the missionaries have committed against the people of this ancient country by striking at the root of their secular traditions and promise that they won't henceforth convert the poor, hapless people. The time has indeed come for the missionaries to accept the ultimate truth with humility before it exposes them completely by emerging from rooftops. What constitutes the ultimate irony is the fact that while the Church is running its hate-Hindu campaign in the name of secularism and using Gandhiji and his ideology as a shield, the collected works of Gandhiji are replete with the strongest condemnation of the Christian missionaries. He went as far as denouncing the Church's conversion activity as "the deadliest poison ever to have sapped the fountain of the earth". Other lines of Gandhiji on activities of the missionaries which one finds in his collected works: "There is nothing but vilification of Hinduism in the books distributed by the missionaries. The other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, converted the famine-stricken by distributing it amongst them and then got them to demolish their own temple. That was outrageous. The advent of a missionary in a Hindu household has meant the disruption of the family. The missionaries are vendors of goods who target the most susceptible when they are most vulnerable, using just not dialogue but allurement and violence". "If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing." Not to speak of the description by Gandhiji of how the missionaries tried to convert even him. The collected works of Gandhiji, who had repeatedly appealed to the Church not to denationalize the poor, contain several accounts in which the missionaries acknowledge to Gandhiji that the institutions and services of the Church are indeed incidental and that their main aim is to gather a harvest of converts. That the church leaders continue to use the name of the Mahatma in their defence in spite of his severest condemnation of their activities is indeed a measure of their legendary capacity to indulge in falsification by using the name of the apostle of truth himself. There is tell-tale evidence to prove that the Church is still using the same base methods to convert the people and denigrate Hindu religion, which it was using several decades ago. Take the example of Dangs district in Gujarat. In the past four years there have been over a dozen and a half instances of desecration of the images of Hindu deities by the local Christians at the instance of their preachers, leading to frequent communal tension in the tiny district. Many of these image desecration cases in Dangs are on police record. In fact, just before controversy began in Dangs late last year the police recorded three cases of image desecration and even arrested 25 Christians in these cases. That the Christian population in Dangs jumped from 7824 in 1991 (census figure) to almost 35,000 in 1998 (even the Christian preachers admit to a figure of 29,000) is perhaps the worst example of aggressive proselytization. Significantly, the systematic desecration of images in Dangs began only after the Christian population had increased substantially, thus exposing once again the fact that the aggressive designs of the Church begin only after it manages to change the local demographic scenario. The story of Dangs perfectly matches with the activities of the missionaries in other areas over the past several years. It has been graphically described and with clinching evidence in the 1954 Niyogi Commission report on the missionaries' activity in the then Madhya Bharat, which leaves little doubt that the activity of the missionaries is not spiritual but one that aims at effecting demographic changes by increasing the numbers and control the nation. Reacting to the demand that Pope John Paul II apologize for the alleged conversions in Goa during the medieval period, Rev. Alan De Lastic said the other day: "How far in history are we going back? I think that we all need to apologize to each other for a lot of things." It was at best a crude attempt to brush under the carpet what is known as one of the darkest chapters in India's history in which the most heinous crimes were committed against humanity in the name of conversion. How lakhs (one lakh = 100,000) of Hindus were ruthlessly persecuted and prevented from even offering their daily prayers during the Portuguese rule in Goa, how hundreds of Hindu temples were razed to the ground during that period and how fearful Hindus were forced to solemnize their marriages in boats in the midst of rivers and the sea to escape the preying eyes of the ruthless Jesuits, has been graphically described by A.K. Priolkar in his book "The Goa Inquisition" and by the great statesman Sardar K.M. Pannikar, in his book 'Asia and Western Dominance'. The graphic accounts they have given of the Portuguese atrocities in Goa at the instance of crusading saints like St. Dominic and St. Xavier are based on official Portuguese documents and so there is not an iota of doubt about their authenticity. Priolkar's book, which describes how the new forced Hindu converts were flung into firepits by the Roman Catholic preachers under the laws of the Inquisition when they were found to be secretly following their old Hindu customs, can move even the demons. But it refuses to move Rev. De Lastic and his fellow preachers. We simply can't comprehend as to what kind of apology he is seeking from the Hindus when he says:" I think we all need to apologize to each other for a lot of things." Does he have a single example to prove that at any point of time in history the Hindus committed such atrocities on Christians or for that matter on any other community? When it comes to conversion Rev. De Lastic says: "We propose but don't impose our beliefs." I would like to ask him and the Church leaders if that is truly the case, then why the missionaries of all hues in this country have been repeatedly opposing enactment of foolproof conversion laws? Right from the day India got independence attempts to enact a strong anti-conversion law at the national level have been vehemently opposed and repeatedly browbeaten by the missionaries in spite of the fact that some of these attempts had the support of such secular leaders like former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. The missionaries first did it in 1954 and then in 1960 by raising false cries of Hindu communalism and then in 1978 when they vehemently opposed Om Prakash Tyagi's Bill on religious freedom which had the complete support of the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai besides large sections of the intelligentsia including retired high court judges. This is how Morarjibhai reacted in a letter to Mother Teresa when she opposed Tyagi's bill: "The Bill is an attempt to see that poor and illiterate enjoy religious freedom without any fear. It does not adversely affect propagation of religion. If charity and philanthropy are not connected with any ulterior motive they are beneficial. But charity and conversions can't go together. And this is what Tyagi, a Janata Party leader said about his Bill: "The Bill aims at preventing the missionaries from converting the poor people by exploiting their poverty. Only those are opposed to it who are against national interest or do not care for the nation's long term interest. Significantly, apart from Mahatma Gandhi and Morarji Desai several national leaders and philosophers of repute including Swami Vivekananda and Chakravarty Rajagopalachari denounced the systematic conversion activity by the missionaries from time to time. When the debate over conversions has reached such a high pitch it is incumbent on the Church leaders to clarify as to whether they agree with these great men or else summon the courage to denounce their views. A landmark Supreme Court judgment in 1977 following a keenly fought case had clearly said that the right to, propagate religion on the part of any religious group does not mean the right to convert. The apex court had virtually ruled that conversion by missionaries was unconstitutional. But in spite of the judgment the missionaries have continued to convert using base means. The Church leaders must clarify how long they will continue to violate the Constitution of India? Worse, however, is the charge of practicing double standards that the missionaries would find difficult to defend against. In 1995 when Pope John Paul II was told by Roman Catholic preachers in South America about the conversion of 6 lakh Roman Catholics by Protestants in the region, he called the Protestants "rapacious wolves" (It was widely reported in local newspapers). Both Roman Catholic as well as Protestant missionaries should now tell us as to what they should be labeled as in Bharat. Worse than rapacious wolves? Recently, when the Pope was told in Austria about the aggressive proselytizing activity of the Protestants, he asked the local Roman Catholics not to be secular. And just imagine the word "secular" is the missionaries' strongest shield in this country. History proves that the missionaries' ultimate aim is denationalization. The most recent example of how conversion leads to denationalization and secessionism was seen in East Timor where the locals, who were converted by the Portuguese in the previous centuries have finally separated from Indonesia after much bloodshed. The Niyogi Commission report records extracts from a Roman Catholic publication, "Nishkalank" calling upon the Christians in the 1950s not to support the struggle for Goa's independence from Portuguese rule. The publication said: "Why should India desire that Portugal, which has been ruling for 400 years over Goa, should surrender it? Only a handful of Goans and Indians are shouting for Goa's merger with India. Those who are following this course are giving an unrighteous lead to India". The Church's role in the secessionist movements in the Northeast are too well known to merit description. Does it leave any doubt about the missionaries' anti-secular, anti-democratic and anti-national role in this country? Does it leave any doubt that the activities they have been running in the name of public welfare all these years have had only one goal: Conversion and thereby denationalization. The idea behind this communication to the Bishops is to make them aware of the state of the Hindu mind against the ongoing onslaughts of the missionaries. But let it be clear that the Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Hindus in general are by no means against Christians but against their preachers' provocative activities, which strike right at the root of Bharat's ancient pluralistic traditions. Whether your leader should apologize or not is now for you to decide. Thanking you, Yours in the service of Maa Bhaarati and Dharma, Sd./- [Dr. Pravin Togadiya] {M.S., Cancer Surgeon} Secretary General Vishva Hindu Parishad International Comment on this story  Contact VNN about this storySend this story to a friend
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