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PUBLISHER'S NOTE While writing the publisher's note for the recent publication of Naimisha Research Foundation casually I mentioned about the difference between Dharma Yuddha and Jihad and Crusade. Where in I also had a word of wish about a publication to be penned by our esteemed authors describing the danger of crusades in India. And now, within a short time, as a pleasant and welcoming surprise we have a thorough and yet a lucid study of Christianity's struggle for survival in the post-colonial world in general and in India in particular by the same authors (Here we also have an article on the recent church blasts by Prof. S. V. Seshagiri Rao). Therefore it is needless to spare a word more to drive home our learned author's earnest concern for our country and its true culture. All the more this issue has a global concern too. This booklet is sure to buttress in our minds the grave need for yet another serious examination in our religions, social, economical, political and cultural histories. I don't want to harp much about the book for, the very reading and understanding of the same will be much rewarding. Hence I retrain from further dwelling upon it and feel contented by paying my heart felt thanks to Dr. Frawley, Dr.Raja Ram and Prof. Rao. Sahlvadhani Dr. R. Ganesh Hon. Director Naimisha Research Foundation Bangalore
CONTENTS Introduction:
Christianity's struggle for survival Background:
Image and reality Church Blasts: Truth and Propaganda Background Vatican's
Paranoia and its 'Cyber-crusade' Background: Strange bedfellows 'Christians
Under Siege:' A Missionary Ploy Background: Christianity and intolerance
INTRODUCTION: CHRISTIANITY'S STRUGGLE FOR
SURVIVAL by Dr. N.S. Rajaram and Dr. David Frawley
Background: Image and reality This perception is confirmed by what is happening to Christians at the hands of Muslims in neighboring Pakistan. In their article in The Sunday Times Magazine (reprinted in Reader's Digest, May 2000 as 'Pakistan's War Against Christians'), reporters Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy wrote that Christians are routinely "raped, falsely accused and beaten to death; their land is taken from them - all because of their faith." One of the more lamentable episodes in recent history is the willingness of Church leaders in India to come to the defense of these tormentors of their brothers and sisters in Pakistan. And the Pope did not cover himself with glory when, soon after meeting Prime Minister Vajpayee, expressed concern for Christians in India and Indonesia - an outrageous comparison - but said nothing about the hell in Pakistan. The reason behind this ignoble conduct is simple: Christian leaders are less concerned about the fate of Christians in India and Pakistan than advancing the missionary-political agenda of the Vatican and other Christian organizations. They feel that Muslims will be Muslims but the Hindus will not retaliate no matter what the provocation. They also feel that Indian Governments are more sensitive to criticism than Islamic governments like Pakistan. So a cynical reading of this: in a calculated move Christian leaders - including the Pope - have decided to let their brothers and sisters in Pakistan suffer atrocities in Pakistan, but use their torrnentors to defame the Hindus and destabilize the Government. This suggests that times are getting desperate for Christian leaders, which is what we examine next.
Christianity's crisis I: Doctrinal collapse What Biblical scholars who have studied the Dead Sea Scrolls tell us is that everything in Christianity, including the life of Jesus Christ found in the Gospels is a later fabrication based on texts that existed at least a century before the supposed birth of Jesus! Almost everything connected with Jesus Christ and his teachings can be traced to earlier sources like the Dead Sea Scrolls. John Allegro, a pioneer in the study of the Scrolls in the original, had this to say:
In other words, Jesus of Christianity probably' never existed, at least as Christian doctrine proclaims that he did. The story of Jesus of the Gospels is a later fabrication based on what people wanted their Messiah to be. It should also be noted that many important events of Christianity including the Last Supper and even the Crucifixion have no historical basis. Catholics observe a ceremony called the Lord's Supper as a commemoration of the Last Supper. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us that the Jews of Qumran used to observe the Lord's Supper a hundred years before the birth of Christianity. This means that the story of the Last Supper is a dramatization of this ancient Jewish practice. Recent documents released by Eisenman show the same to be true of Crucifixion. The seed of the story can be found in a fragmentary scroll the 'Pierced Messiah'. The distinguished scholar of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Neil Asher Silberman had this to say regarding this very important Scroll fragment - known as the 'Pierced Messiah' - discovered by Robert Eisenman. "Here, as Eisenman believed, was additional proof (as if any was needed) ... on explosive material for decades, material that would show that the passion of the messiah [by crucifixion] was a common expectation and not a historical event." So Jesus of the Gospels, the Only Son of God, who would bring salvation to believers, is a myth fabricated by borrowing upon ideas that were current in the Qumran region of Palestine more than a hundred years before the supposed birth of the supposed Jesus. This is well known in the West, but the Indian media has kept a studious silence probably because its missionary education has conditioned it not to look at any claims of Christianity with a skeptical or even a rational outlook. To go with this doctrinal collapse, Christianity is faced also with a crisis in the secular realm.
Christianity's crisis II: Global collapse Anyone, who cares to look, can see that Christianity is in steep decline. This is especially the case in Europe, where church attendance levels in many countries have fallen below 10% or even 5%. ...Even more ominous for the survival of Christianity is the decline in the priestly vocations. Many parishes that used to have two to three parish priests now have none, so that the Sunday Service now has to be conducted by a visiting priest, who has an ever fuller agenda as his colleagues keep dying, retiring or abandoning the priesthood without being replaced... Many former churches in Europe have now been taken over by non-Christian religious and cultural organizations. The phenomenon is now spreading to America where Church buildings are being put up for sale. It is symbolic of this change that the famous Bharitaya Vidya Bhavan in West Kensington, London is a former church. Elst is by no means alene in seeing the impending collapse of Christianity in the West. David Yallop is probably England's foremost investigative reporter. He had this to say regarding the state of Christianity in Rome, the home of Christianity in most people's minds: 2 The new Concordat [agreement] recently signed between the Vatican and the Italian Government makes a fitting epitaph for the current Pope's [John Paul II] reign. Italy, for nearly two thousand years regarded by Catholics as the 'home of their faith, no longer has Roman Catholicism as 'the religion of the State'. The Church's privileged position in Italy is ending. (p 323) Rome has a Catholic population of two-and-a-half million [in 1978]. It should have been producing at least seventy new priests per year. When Luciani (John Paul I) became Pope [in 1978] it was producing six. ... Many parts of the city were, in reality. pagan, with Church attendance less than 3 percent of the population. ... (p 194; our emphasis.) This bleak picture painted by outside observers like Elst and Yallop is confirmed by official Vatican reports. Peter de Rosa, a former Catholic priest who had access to official Church documents cites a secret Vatican study; It revealed that from 1963 to 1969 over 8000 priests had asked to be dispensed from their vows and nearly 3000 others had left without waiting for permission. The study estimated that over the next five years 20,000 would leave. The estimate proved to be far too conservative. Matters were worst in countries that pontiffs had relied on for providing missionaries. Holland for example, used to produce over 300 priests a year. Now ordinations are almost as rare as mountains [in Holland]. The average age of those who remain is a startlingly high 54. [Today, it is closer to 65.] The future, too, looks bleak. Over the last twenty years, the number of Seminarians in the States [America] has fallen from 50,000 to 12,000.3 A loss of 76 percent in less than two decades! Even this understates the real loss because seminaries that do remain open have fewer students and teachers than they used to. Many of them have been kept alive only through a massive infusion from third world countries like India and the Philippines; even the United States Army has been reduced to employing many of these non-Americans as chaplains. And these men and women have been lured less by faith than by the attractions of a more comfortable life in the West. The situation has grown steadily worse since that time. When Pope John Paul 11 visited the United States in October 1995, newspapers reported that the number of Seminarians in the country was only 3500 in 1993! It is less than 3000 today. What is true of the losses in the priesthood is true also of its age profile; the numbers understate the real loss. Elst tells us that the average age of Catholic priests in the world is 55 (in 1992), whereas in the Netherlands (i.e., Holland) it is an astonishing 64 and still rising. And those that leave the priestly professions are invariably the younger members. All this is stark testimony to the spiritual bankruptcy of the institution. The simple fact is that the Church is collapsing. Thus the condition of the Church is of far greater importance to its officials than to its devotees who are deserting it in droves. A no less serious problem is the shortage of nuns. In America and Europe, health care is the largest single industry. Christian hospitals are major providers of health care to both individuals and corporate employees. These depend heavily on nuns for skilled workers like nursing sisters. Lay hospital workers - i.e., when not nuns - cost anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 in salary and benefits per year per person depending on the skill level. Nuns on the other hand cost next to nothing. The number of young women in America and Europe opting to be nuns is almost zero. The resulting shortage has to be made up by recruiting nuns from Third World countries like India, the Philippines, and African countries.4 This is one of the major factors behind the conversion drive in India. In fact, the major activity of some highly touted Christian missions in India like Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charities is to recruit nuns(through conversions) as cheap labor for Church run hospitals in Europe and America. The message is clear: without massive new conversions in India, Christianity is finished. This state of affairs accounts for the siege mentality bordering on paranoia that is displayed by Church authorities - including the Pope - when faced with resistance to conversion activities as is the case today. This also account for the willingness of Christian leaders to resort to any method - including possible collusion with Pakistani organizations - to save themselves from extinction. It also means that they will step at nothing to save themselves and their Church. It is against this background that one must evaluate Pope John Paul's pronouncement before the Asian Bishops' Conference in Manila, repeated during his recent visit to India: "A new harvest of faith will be reaped on this vast and vital continent." He presumably did not tell them that without this 'new harvest' their Church is all but doomed.
Message to Christians In all this there seems to be a mystical belief in the power of the Pope to influence political decisions in the West, to intervene in India to protect Christian interests. This is a delusion carefully nurtured by their 'leaders' to serve their own interests. The Pope is an insignificant figure in Europe today and in much of the world. It is only in the imagination of Indian Christians - and in that of the convent educated 'elite' - that he seems a figure of heroic stature. To see a concrete example, Christians are being decimated in Pakistan but Western nations and financial organizations like the IMF and the World Bank are still prepared to consider aid packages. Their only concerns are economic like excessive budget deficits, not the persecution of Christians. Even Britain has lifted its arms embargo against Pakistan. This should tell them where Western nations place their priorities. When the Pope is prepared to sacrifice Christians in Pakistan to serve his propaganda campaign against the Vajpayee Government, he cannot be too concerned about the fate of Indian Christians. They exist only to serve as pawns in the Vatican's foolhardy mission to convert a vulnerable India, by exploiting Hindu tolerance and the servility of the Indian elite. It is the tragedy of Indian Christians that their 'leaders' do not lead them but instead serve their own foreign masters who have appointed them to their offices. In other words, there are no Christian leaders but only Church officials. Such 'leaders' are no more concerned about the real welfare of Christians in India than of those in Pakistan. Their loyalty is to the Mother Church and not to the motherland- or her people. Their concern is to remain in the good books of their mother organizations so that they can hold on to their secure positions and keep missionary money flowing. In this scheme, the lives of Indians - including Christians - are a dispensable commodity. To see this, just look at Pakistan. It is time for Indian Christians to give up their slave mentality towards foreign organizations and reclaim their human dignity.
CHURCH BLASTS: TRUTH AND PROPAGANDA Investigations reveal coordination between the blasts and the propaganda campaign. There was also a ' Naxalite link between 'minority leaders' and the organization that carried out the blasts. by Prof. S. V. Seshagiri Rao
Background
Propaganda blitz When the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Mr. Chandrababu Naidu rushed to Ongole the same day to assess the situation, the church leaders present, significantly, demanded withdrawal of his support to the Vajpayee Government. That was their priority demand- not an investigation inio the blasts to catch the culprits. Within two hours of the explosion, by lOAM, the Marxists were seen distributing pamphlets attributing the crime to 'Hindu communalists'. [It will be seen later that some of those responsible for the bombings used to belong to the Naxalite (Marxist) War Group.] On June 10, Christian leaders from southern states issued a statement at Hyderabad rejecting outright the view that external agencies [like the ISI] were involved in these attacks and held the Union Government and the 'Sangh Parivar' 'directly responsible' for the incidents. They said that after the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt at Manoharpur in Orissa, the Sangh Parivar and a Union Minister spoke of a "foreign hand" and were repeating the same claim now in the wake of attacks on churches and Christians in different parts [of the country]. The Christians in general had "become sick of these statements" because all these were "engineered" by the Sangh Parivar, while the "Union Government remained a silent spectator." The signatories to this statement were Mr. Joseph D'Souza, Chairman, All India Christian Council, Mr. John Dayal, National Secretary, All India Catholic Union, Mr. G. Samuel, President, Fellowship of Telugu Baptist Churches, Mr. David Seamonds, President, Karnataka Christian Association, and Mr. K.P. Yohanan, Vice Chairman, Christian Council of Kerala. They urged the Chief Minister of AP to reconsider his alliance with the BJP. The next day, a delegation of thirty, including Rev. Fr. Hendry D'Souza, Rev. Fr. B. Julian, Chancellor and Vice-general respectively of the Hyderabad Archdiocese (Catholic), Mr. A. VUay Kumar, President, Baptist Churches Association of India, Mr. C. Francis, Vice President, All India Catholic Union, Mr. Sam Paul of the All India Christian Council (Protestant) Rev. D. John Augustine, Rev. Y. Thomos and Fr. G. Gananandam, priests of Ongole, Vicarabad and Tadepalligundam churches, called on the Chief. Minister of Andhra Pradesh (AP) and emphasized that the attacks on churches were the handiwork of the RSS. The Pentecoast priest from Ongole said that he had received a telephone call on June 10 from a person who spoke in Hindi threatening him about his religious activities. Citing this as evidence the dignitaries insisted that the attacks took place at the behest of BJP and RSS. They also proposed that the Christian youth be allowed to form self-defense committees. But the CM politely rejected the proposal. A 'fact-finding committee' consisting of C. Francis, National Vice President, All India Christian Council, Rev. P.P. Johnson, State Overseer, New India Church of God, A. Vijayakumar, President, City Baptist Church, J. Joseph Reddy, Secretary All India Catholic Council, and some Naxalite outfits, which visited the places of the blasts, insisted that the RSS had been found responsible for the blasts. [The Naxalites again!] Blaming the ISI for blasts was a propaganda ploy, they argued. They demanded that the RSS be banned. However, they have not shared any of the so-called evidence that they could collect. [The had none beyond the claim of the threatening phone call reported by the priest of the Ongole Church.] Speaking at a press conference on June 16 at Chennai, President of the All India Christian Council Mr. Joseph D'Souza announced that they would launch a campaign against "Parivar terrorism" from 8'" July onwards. [In effect they already had launched one against the Sangh Parivar.) Referring to the attacks on the churches, he said that the Government had been quick to attribute it to a foreign hand, making political capital out of the issue. "The foreign hand theory is nonsense and it is the work of an internal hand," Mr. D'Souza said. Mr. John Dayal added, "An extra-constitutional authority was having a free run of the State capitals and indulging in terror tactics." "Even a blind man will know who is behind these assaults," he added. The AICC [All India Congress Committee] lost no time in deputing a three-member 'fact-finding team' headed by none other than Mr. Ajit Jogi to Andhra Pradesh. They accomplished admirably the job expected of them by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi. Addressing the press at Vijayawada on June 22, Mr. Ajit Jogi said that the needle of suspicion pointed towards the communal and fascist forces (read RSS and VHP), which are out to vitiate the atmosphere in the country. [He also said, "Forget the ISI and arrest the 'real culprits'." (Again read RSS and VHP.)] On June 25 at 9.45 PM, a bomb of minor intensity exploded in Markaz Masjid of Guntur located near the busy APSTC bus station. A boy received some minor injuries and a few windowpanes were shattered. Within minutes a crowd of 200 Muslims collected and went on a rampage, torching State Government buses and private vehicles. About 50 buses were damaged and 5 shops were attacked. Private and public property worth rupees two crores (20 million) was destroyed. The Government had to impose a curfew for four days. Mr. YS. Rajashekara Reddy, leader of the AP Congress Legislative Party issued a statement repeating the usual Congresslie that the explosion was the handiwork of RSS, VHP and the Bajrang Dal. He also asserted that it was not the act of the {SI. However, the Chief Minister revealed that among the 50 persons arrested for arson there were several functionaries of the Congress (I). On July 8, Christian Organizations observed 'National Solidarity Day' in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Thiruvananthapuram and Chennai. They also held a demonstration near the Parliament Building in New Delhi. On July 9, a huge speech cum prayer rally was held in the Nizam College grounds, Hyderabad. Rt. Rev. M. Joli, Archbishop of Hyderabad, Rev. B.P. Sugandhar, Bishop, Church of South India, Medak, Mr. Joseph D'Souza, National President, All India Christian Council, Mr. G. Samuel, its State Vice President, and Rev. P.p. Johnson and others spoke. 25 Christian organizations participated in the mobilization for which lakhs of rupees were spent on advertisements alone.
The bubble bursts. One Hazrat Moulana Siddiqi of Gulbarga propunded the cult Deendar Anjuman in 1929 [sic 1924] at Hyderabad. His sons migrated to Pakistan. One of them, Ziaul Hassan now heads the cult with headquarters in Mardan in Pakistan. It was revealed that Ziaul Hassan usually made an annual trip to India for the urs [death anniversary] of his father. (Siddiqi's grave is in Hyderabad.) The Government of India further revealed that Ziaul Hassan set up the Jamaat Hizbollah Mujahideen with offices in Lahore, Mardan, Karachi, Faislabad, Rawalpindi and Sargodha (all in Pakistan). The DGP of AP, Mr. H.J. Dora revealed that Deendar Anjuman was involved in militant activity in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya through the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), A Saudi Arabia based fundamentalist outfit. During Mr. Bill Clinton's visit to Hyderabad, Deendar Anjuman published a pamphlet, where it advised Mr. Clinton to embrace Islam.. , '
During his visit to Hyderabad last November [1999], Ziaul Hassan [its present head] and his son Zahid Pasha conducted closed door meetings, where they called for lehad and asked the members to "create hatred among religious groups in India." Ziaul Hassan coordinated these explosions from Pakistan through his follower,s in southern states. [He also proclaimed a lehad claiming that, following widespread communal disturbances in India, he would bring 9 lakh Pathans on an invasion of the country!] Rahman Siddiqi [killed in the Maruti van explosion in Bangalore] was in the people's War Group of Naxalites for sometime. [The Naxalite connection again!] Along with ten associates he visited Pakistan to undergo training insubversion. Zakir maintained a low profile as an auto rickshaw driver in Hyderabad. A year back he was arrested by the Maharashtra police for desecrating the statue of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar in Prabhani. According to senior officials of the AP police, members of Deendar Anjuman were also responsible for attacks on Sikh Gurudwaras in Mumbai about three years back, which led to communal riots. The Pakistan connection Ibrahim visited Wadi, Goa and Hubli and handed over explosives to local contacts. Syed Muniruddin and Hiramath, secretary and joint secretary of Deendar Anjuman together with Zakir planted the bomb in the Hubli Church. Muniruddin and Hiramath were arrested by Karnataka police. The Andhra Pradesh police have arrested on July 17, Syed Iqbal, Secretary of the Deendar Anjuman of Vijayawada and his accomplice Najeemuddin. Both had received training in Pakistan. Investigations revealed that that they desecrated the statues of Dr. Ambedkar in Macharam and Purnandapet of Krishna District in 1996-97. The Deendar Anjuman of Vijayawada converted some Hindu students of Siddhartha Evening College into Islam according to a letter dated August 27, 1998, written by Iqbal to WAMY, Riyadh. He requested more funds to distribute Islamic literature. The police have recovered a copy of the letter. [The cult is known to have made extravagant claims about conversions, including supplying false names. This was one of the complaints that resulted in the expulsion of its founder by the Maharaja of Mysore.] The AP police have also arrested Shaik Khaja and MJ. Humayun Khan who planted the bomb in the Ongole Church. The police identified other culprits- Khaliq-ul-Zaman responsible for the blast in the Guntur Masjid, Maqbool and Abdul Khadar Jeelani for the Mauslipatam explosion. Maqbool also planted a bomb in the Kodandarama Temple in Vijayawada.
Church leaders' responsibility
VATICAN'S PARANOIA AND ITS 'CYBER-CRUSADE' The Vatican lives ill fear of the encroaching hand of Islam, now active in Kosovo, not far from Rome. One of its goals is to consume India with its vast resources of men and material to save itself. by Dr. N.S. Rajaram
Background: strange bedfellows
An extraordinary, even bizarre episode in the geopolitical scene is the recent inglorious campaign of Sonia Gandhi to become the Prime Minister- first in a coup attempt and then through the election brought on by its failure. It is a puzzle that only future can unravel. To this writer, who has made a study of the history and sociology of the Vatican, her surrealistic campaign looks very much like an example of the Vatican method of political subversion. Her methodology (or those of her manipulators)- from her failed coup attempt to the 'cyber-campaign' of media manipulation and repeating falsehoods - is pure Opus Dei, the shadowy militant organization that now controls the Vatican and many other Christian institutions. A question that begs for an answer is whether there was any connection between her destabilization campaign and the Pakistani infiltration into Kashmir that went on at the same time, or if it was pure coincidence. One hopes that future investigation will unravel the truth for it may hold important lessons for national security and world peace.
Christianity's fear of Islam But the Vatican sees it differently. With Islamic warriors in Kosovo, at the doorstep of Rome, Christianity feels besieged. Its recurring nightmare is that the Vatican may share the fate of Constantinople of 1453 (and Jerusalem in the first century of Islam). It is not just the Vatican but the whole world - notably Russia and the United States - that is now concerned about the threat of Islam. This is what is behind the dramatic change in US policy towards India and Pakistan. Countries of the West recognize that as the frontline state against Islamic terror, India holds the key to success in fighting it. This is what that has brought Western leaders calling on India. The Vatican, much more vulnerable than America or Russia should do the same. But characteristically, the Vatican and its institutions in India have been subversive and devious, trying to undermine the Indian state by creating social turmoil. The reason is ideological: it cannot concei ve of compromise with a 'heathen' country like India. Even when threatened with extinction, the Church wants to pursue the foolhardy mission of converting the population of India to Christianity - or at least turn India into a Christian dominated colony - in the hope of using India's teeming millions to defend itself against the onslaught of Islam. To understand the recent turmoil created by missionaries in tribal areas - and possibly also the engineered church bombings - it is necessary to view the state of the Church in its geopolitical context.
Vatican's new-old mission
Nor does Father Kanjamala leave any room for doubt about his mission when he writes: "The objective of conversion and numerical strength - the top priority during the colonial mission - is not rejected here." In other words, the goal of Christianity is to establish a colonial empire in the name of God and Christ! The more things change, the more they remain the same. Father Kanjamala's is not by any means a solitary voice. Reinhard Bonnke, widely regarded as the world's foremost evangelist, has spoken openly about his mission. At a press conference in Kochi (Kerala), Bonnke boasted that in the twenty years that he was acti ve in Africa, the Christian population rose from just 2 percent to over 40 percent. (This refers probably to the areas in which he was active, and not all of Africa.) He further stated: "Now India is on top of my agenda." The present Pope also, in his various publications, has expressed similar sentiments. During his recent visit to India he proclaimed that" A great new harvest of faith will be reaped on this vast and vital continent." He also demanded conversion as a fundamental human right - a right that Christianity denies others. So there cannot be the slightest doubt that the goal of Christianity is to use every avai]able resource to promote its mission to 'evangelize the world' - a euphemism for establishing a theocratic world empire in the name of God and Christ. This has been the goal of Christianity ever since its inception by Saint Paul. But now there is a new development: many Christian institutions in the world - the Catholic Church in particular - have passed under the control of a secret organization known as the Opus Dei ('God's work). It now controls much of the world media. Direct]y or indirectly, it may control also a good deal of the English language media in India - not to mention something like 70 percent of the N GOs. What is worth noting is that the Vatican coming under the control of this purely secular institution - the Opus Dei - is a natural development in the face of the threat from Islam, now at its doorstep in Kosovo. The Vatican sees itself under siege, and under Opus Dei, it has now become a military state. I will present a brief glimpse into this 'secret, sinister, Orwellian' organization as Dr. John Roche of Oxford - a former member of Opus Dei - called it. I will focus on the Vatican and the Catholic Church, but Opus Dei is making rapid inroads into other Christian organizations also. Its formula for success is a combination of turmoil, terror and propaganda. (The recent church bombings also fit this pattern.) But like all secretive and sinister organizations, it lives in a wold dominated by paranoia - of the ultimate defeat of Christianity at the hands of Islam. It has cast its covetous eyes on the billion Hindus to save itself. In the process, it is trying to use India, either by conversion or through subversion by having one of its own as the leader. The Vatican's plan is to fight Islam to the last Indian.
The politics of turmoil What the Indian media doesn't know - or doesn't want to face - is that there is now a new thrust by the Vatican (and other churches) to expand its presence in India and other third world countries. To achieve this, it is using its vast missionary apparatus to provoke conflicts between Christians and non-Christians. This is the pattern not only in India, but also in Indonesia, Sudan and several African countries. There is much more to it than meets the eye. While it sees tolerant countries like India as a soft target that it is safe to attack, its real concern is the threat of Islam. Creating turmoil is the centerpiece of its strategy. Recognizing this, the publication Saudi Gazette (13 February] 993) observed:
Replace 'Muslims' by 'Hindus' and 'Sudan' by 'India', and what one is left with is a perfect description of the turmoil being created by the missionaries in India. So there is nothing new in the spate of church bombings, which had the same goal. This is the historic pattern going back to the beginning of Christianity. St Paul began the process by attacking the Jewish congregation making up the then Church of Jerusalem headed by James the Righteous. He then accused them of causing the death of Christ! A few centuries later, St Cyril and his hooligans destroyed the great academy of Alexandria and killed Hypatia, beginning the process that destroyed the Greek Civilization. A thousand years later, Columbus and his successors, along with the Jesuits, destroyed several great American Indian civilizations like the Inca, Maya and the Aztec. Having committed unspeakable atrocities, the priests accused the victims of being instruments of the Devil. At Yucatan in Mexico, after destroying a large quantity of ancient manuscripts containing priceless records, Bishop of Landa wrote: "As they contained nothing but superstitions and lies of the Devil, we burned them all, which the Indians regretted to a great degree and which caused them great anguish." Jesuits in India were no better though they had less 'success' than in the Americas. Indianswere less insular and better prepared to resist than Native Americans even though there were bursts of vandalism. A French priest (Louis Jacolliot) reported that Catholic priests consigned to the flames those manuscripts that seemed the oldest. 'Saint' Xavier went much further by demanding the Inquisition in India to punish those who refused to convert to Christianity. It was their knowledge of this record of the Church, as well as the Inquisition, that made the Founding Fathers of the American Republic like Jefferson and Madison pass the First Amendment to the US Constitution: This made the American Constitution secular ~ not pseudo-secular as in India - by removing the influence of religion on the government.
India and the 1857 uprising
Among such aggressive activities, Majumdar noted the practice of "open unchecked denunciation of their cherished social usages and customs in most violent language, and filthy ahnses of their gods and goddesses by bands of Christian missionaries." The situation today does not look much different, with the 'secularists' in the English language press and the so-called intellectuals, heaping abuse on the sensitivities of the Hindus. Even when forced to acknowledge that Christian mobs often began the violence and the Hindus only reacted, reporters gratuitously pontificate: "Of course, two wrongs don't make a right,"It means of course that the party, which commits the first offence, gets to keep the fruits of its crime. The point of all this: Christian institutions, the Vatican in particular, are always looking for any opening to advance their interests. But now, the Vatican is concerned for its survival. (It is also worth noting 'that these intellectuals and' columnists have fallen silent following the arrest of Muslim fundamentalists responsible for the Church bombings.)
Vatican's CIA Opus Dei was founded shortly before the Spanish Civil War by a Spanish adventurer and Christian fanatic by name Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer. Born in the sleepy town of Barbastro, he rose by the dint of his determination, industry and ruthlessness to become the virtual dictator of the Vatican - often called the 'Super Pope'. With 80,000 members worldwide, and more than a million activists, his Opus Dei now controls the Catholic Church worldwide. When Escriva died in 1975, the organization he had created was so strong that its officials openly boasted: "In 20 or thirty years, all that remains of the Church will be Opus Dei." This has now come to pass. As a result, the Catholic Church today - along with numerous other Christian organizations - is controlled by a covert, militant organization like the CIA with a fundamentalist mindset, except that it is far more efficient than the CIA. In addition, unlike the CIA, it does not have to report either to the President of the United States or the Congress. It is as if the CIA itself were to control all aspects of the United States Government, and the beliefs of its citizens. Opus Dei's agenda IS t0 combine economic and political control with thought control. It believes that the first two cannot be achieved without the third. So conversion is simply the means to the end of the political and economic control of the world - or the establishment of a world empire in the name of God and Christ. But first it must gain control of India. To understand the makeup of Opus Dei, one must go to its founder Jose Maria Escriva (1902-75). The Vatican regards him as its savior, 'God's gift to the Church in our time.' His beatification - prelude to his elevation to sainthood - was rushed through in record time by John Paul II. Escriva was a strange man, to say the least. He expressed sympathy for Hitler as a victim of bad publicity in the West. He once told his colleague Vladimir Felzman that Hitler "could never have killed six million Jews. It could only have been four million at the most."
Crusade driven by paranoia This is the institution that now controls the Catholic Church- as well as much of Christianity. Being exclusivist like Islam, Opus Dei cannot conceive of a world of 'live and let live'. This is rooted in its idea of an unending crusade against unbelievers. We may think of the Crusades as history, but to the Vatican and also to fundamentalist Islam, it is an ongoing struggle. From at least the eleventh century, the Vatican has lived in fear of Islam. History books treat the Crusades as a series of campaigns by the Christian armies of Europe to gain control of the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslims. This is a serious contraction of the true scope of the struggle between the Christians and the Muslims. More importantly, neither Christianity nor Islam sees the Crusades as past history, but as a struggle continuing into the present. The grand strategy of Christianity - now controlled by Opus Dei - is to use India and its vast resources in men and materials in its war against Islam. But for this to happen, it must win the Crusade in India before it can defeat Islam. (Was this the reason why the Vatican and its 'leaders' in India supported Sonia Gandhi's campaign to be Prime Minister of India? Did it hope that they could get her to commit Indian troops to defend the Vatican when Islamic warriors make the short leap from Kosovo to Rome? Is this still the reason why the first concern of Christian leaders after the church bombings was to get Chandrababu Naidu to withdraw support to the Vajpayee Government rather than solving the crime?) To return to the Crusades, after the conquest of Spain by the Moors in the early Middle Ages, Muslim armies penetrated into France, to the banks of the river Loire. But in 732, Charles Martel inflicted a crushing defeat on the Moors and drove them back into Spain. This was one of the decisive battles of European history. For more than six centuries, the Moors ruled Spain except for a small part in the north. The Christian reconquest of Spain began with the siege of Barbastro in northern Spain in 1064. (Barbastro is the birthplace of Opus Dei founder Jose-Maria Escriva.) Both Christians and Muslims regard this as the real beginning of the Crusades. By 1492, the year in which Columbus discovered America, Ferdinand and Isabella had completely driven Islam out of Spain. In the east, Crusader armies led by European princes and knights took Jerusalem in 1099 and established the Kingdom of Jerusalem with Godfrey of Buillon as king. Unlike the reconquest of Spain, the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem was short lived. It was ended in 1187 by Saladin (Salah al-Din)- one of the heroes of Islam. Repeated attempts by European princes to retake Jerusalem failed. Less than three centuries later, in 1453, there was a much greater catastrophe for the Christians. Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, fell to the Ottoman Turkish ruler Mehmed II. And for the next three centuries, the Turks menaced the heart of Europe, while ruling large parts of southern Europe including Greece, Yugoslavia and parts of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. In 1570, they were at the gates of Vienna. It looked as though Rome itself might fall to the Turks like Constantinople in the previous century. It was saved by the naval victory of Don Juan in Battle of Lepanto in 1571. This was the high point of the Turkish Empire. It went into along decline until it broke up in 1919. (Gandhi's Khilafat Non-Cooperation movement was meant to restore it!) In 1917, British and Indian troops led by General Allenby 'liberated' Jerusalem, only to have the Jewish state of Israel established thirty years later. As a result of all this, while Islam regards the Crusades as a defeat because of the loss of Jerusalem and Spain, Christianity also sees it as a defeat because of the loss of Constantinople. But now the conflict has reappeared in Kosovo, less than a hundred miles from Trieste on the Italian border. This is history repeating itself because the Turkish conquest of the Eastern Roman Empire began with the takeover of Kosovo by the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid. The media refers to the conflict in Kosovo as ethnic, thereby obscuring the fact that it is really religious in nature. The Kosovo Liberation Army is an Islamic army, reinforced by Mujahadeen from countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are only biding their time, and the Vatican knows it. Weighed down by this memory - compounded by the reality of Islamic warriors on its doorstep - the Vatican now sees itself being encircled by a rising tide of Islam in Europe itself. France and Germany, not to speak of Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Turkey and now Italy itself, have significant Muslim populations. To make matters worse, unlike the Muslims, Europeans, though nominally Christian, show no willingness to lay down their lives for the Vatican. The Vatican also knows that many fundamentalist Muslims believe that Allah has promised them Europe as Dar-al-Islam- or the land of the faithful. All they have to do is fight for it. When Pope John Paul II visited India recently, he openly stated that he wanted the third millennium of Christianity to be in Asia. There is more to the statement than meets the eye. In the first millennium, Christianity lost Jerusalem to the Arabs. In the second millennium, the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople (now Istanbul). The Vatican now fears that with Islamic armies in Kosovo less than a hundred miles from the Italian border, it may next lose Rome itself. Its only hope of survival is expansion in Asia- meaning India. Nowhere else is it welcome. The scenario just described is not simply a reconstruction based on history and imagination. It is supported by direct evidence that is available from formal and informal sources. Participants at a closed-door Opus Dei seminar near Barcelona concluded that, "a parallel exists between the present situation in the Occident [Europe] and the fall of the Roman Empire." A leading Canadian expert on Opus Dei observed: "Now this was an alarmist, not to say scaremongering conclusion. But it was perfectly in line with Opus Dei's use of the psychology of fear." At the same time, one cannot ignore the fact that "Christianity has lost the West," as the Pope has himself stated. The issue here is not whether this doomsday scenario is valid, but the undeniable fact that Opus Dei (and Vatican) regards it as valid, and uses it as the basis for its plans and actions. To make matters worse, many Islamic armies also believe that Rome is theirs for the taking. This background is needed to understand the Vatican's paranoid behavior like its self-destructive conversion campaign in India and its possible connivance in the foolhardy mission to bring down the Indian Government with church bombings. It helps also explain the enormous influence enjoyed by Christian organizations in the Indian media, which they used in their desperate effort to make Sonia Gandhi Prime Minister. This influence is part of what Opus Dei (and the Vatican) calls 'cyber-crusade' .
Cyber-crusade It must be noted that America also fears Islam. This is what seems to have prompted the US to give its blessings to the activities of Christian missionaries in India, including at least tacit support to the campaign of Smt Sonia Gandhi in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections. The right wing Heritage Foundation, an Opus Dei front with links to the CIA was behind Smt Sonia Gandhi's decision to bring down the Gujral Government leading to fresh elections. Media and missionary propaganda had portrayed India as a weak country that could be turned into a Banana Republic, with a stooge like Sonia Gandhi at the helm. At the same time, the US by law cannot get directly involved with any religious organization. So the CIA pays many missionaries as covert agents. This was acknowledged in the US Congress by former CIA Director John Deutch. (There now seems to be a change of policy in the U.S., following the recognition that India is now led by a strong Government. There are reasons to believe that it has given up on Sonia Gandhi. It is now preparing to work with the Vajpayee Government to fight terrorism. This has since been confirmed by President Clinton's visit to India and Pakistan. This shows that successive weak Governments in India forced the US to look for individuals and groups that would protect its strategic interests. Let there be no mistake about it: the greatest fear of the US is disruption of oil supplies by Islamic terrorists, making the leap from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the strategically vital Middle East. The result would be a Kashmir or Chechnya type situation in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, with catastrophic consequences for Western economies.) To return to Opus Dei, Christian organizations frequently use the word 'conquest' in describing their evangelical activities. But Opus Dei sees is this at least as much as a 'cyber-crusade'a war on all fronts, especially propaganda and mind control. Its principal assault is on higher education and the media. It has set up several universities and research institutions with names like the Institution for Human Sciences in Vienna, University of Human Rights in Geneva, the Weatherford Foundation for African Students in New York and many others. It even attempted to set up a college at Oxford but was thwarted. As early as 1979, an Opus Dei memorandum stated:
This was twenty years ago! Now it is many times more. To give an idea of the scope, in 1989: "Christian churches in the world command $145 billion, 4.1 million full-time Christian workers, 13,000 major libraries, 22,000 periodicals published, and 1800 Christian radiorrV stations. Missionary activity is being carried out by 4000 Mission Agencies with an apparatus manned by 262,300 missionaries at an annual cost of $8 billion. There are 10,000 new books and articles of foreign evangelization alone. " A good part of this has now come under the control of Opus Dei. (Seven Hundred Plans to Evangelize the World: The Rise of a Global Evangelization Movement by David Barrett and James Reapsome.) Of course such an enormous machinery that is not fully productive is more a liability than asset. Opus Dei has not neglected governments. Among its prize catches were FBI director Louis Freeh and CIA director William Casey! India has not been ignored either. We can be sure that Opus Dei is well represented at Indian universities, NGO's, foundations and the media. Indian English language publications, because of their serious financial problems, are especially vulnerable to Opus Dei influence. (This may account for the fact that during the recent election campaign many English language publications in India functioned as political propaganda sheets, fabricating stories and repeating Sonia Gandhi's lies. In a recent interview of Defense Minister George Fernadez, the interviewer referred to the 'Kargil Fiasco', a description used by Sonia Gandhi in her election speeches.) As recently as 1993, Opus Dei opened a new center in India headed by a Spanish wool merchant. But this was far from being its first active interest in India. More than forty years ago, Raimundo Panikkar came to India armed with a scholarship from the National Scientific and Research Council (NSRC) - another Opus Dei front. (It should come as no surprise if the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation were to be found to represent Opus Dei interests, as does its American counterpart The Heritage Foundation of Washington. I already noted that Sonia Gandhi visited a Heritage Foundation seminar before withdrawing support to the Gujral Government.)
Conclusion: Church as agent of destruction
The challenge for India today is defeating the forces of terror masquerading as religion. India and her spiritual civilization do not exist to serve the Vatican and its camp followers that have nothing constructive to offer the world in this time of crisis. They seek to survive by consuming others. The Vatican in particular is now in a state of paranoia. Its plan for survival calls for fighting Islam to the last Indian. This is what India is up against.
'CHRISTIANS UNDER SIEGE': A MISSIONARY PLOY Missionaries
in India are using their age-old tactic Dr. David Frawley
Background: Christianity and intolerance In the modern secular world Christians now demand conversion as a democratic right, even though their religion is authoritarian, not democratic, accepting only one way, and not honoring pluralism in approaching the Divine. Christianity and its Churches have always been despotic institutions. They offer no freedom of choice about the savior, the book or the creed that can bring salvation and there is little tolerance for those who chose another way outside their faith. Europe had to reject the church and Christian dogma in order to become democratic over the past several centuries. So Christian churches are the last people on earth who should be talking about 'democratic rights'. It is merely a smokescreen for promoting their own agendas, spreading their authoritarian and exclusivist beliefs, recklessly eliminating other cultures and religions along the way.
Posing as 'victims' for all religions, which allows Hindus to honor Christ and Christian mystics, and used it as a pretext to promote Christian superiority, not to reciprocate with honoring Hinduism and its great sages and yogis. They say Christ must be great because Hindus honor him. They don't honor Hindu teachers in return. Today Christians in India are highlighting minor attacks on Christians done by unidentified groups as a concerted Hindu campaign against them, while they themselves are actively working to change Hindu India into a Christian nation by all available means. While Christians have a long history of aggression against other faiths that certainly has not come to an end, they are quite offended if their religion faces minor obstructions or even criticism from the groups they have long maligned and, not long ago, actively oppressed. In all this they assume an aggrieved posture and claim to be victims of the very type of persecution that they themselves have historically practiced. This came to the fore soon after the arrest of the members of a Muslim organization showing it to be responsible for serial church bombings in South India. It proved that the charges made by Christian leaders against Hindu organizations for the bombings were unfounded, if not malicious. However, instead of admitting their mistake Christian leaders and organizations started a propaganda campaign, again blaming the Hindu organizations for 'creating an atmosphere' that led to these crimes! Recent arrests in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have shown that, Deendal Anjuman, a Muslim organization led by a Pakistani national was behind most of the bomb blasts and attacks on Christian groups in South India. The Christian response has been to ignore or deny the report, though it is quite well documented and occurred in states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not ruled by the so-called Hindu BJP party. (See 'Church Blasts: Truth and Propaganda' by S.Y. Seshagiri Rao, in this volume.) In fact many Christians in India - especially its so-called 'leaders' - are defending the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency that has long tried to destabilize India, by absolving it of responsibility in the affair even without any investigation. This would be like an American religious minority defending the KGB during the Cold War. Whether the ISI is directly involved in such efforts to cause communal conflicts in India, we must recognize that it is a project it would certainly support and would be likely to promote. To dismiss their involvement out of hand, as Christian leaders in India are doing, is highly suspicious. Christians are publicly blaming Hindu organizations for attacks for which they have no evidence, let alone proof, and which no court has found them guilty of. (The latest evidence does suggest official Pakistani involvement, possibly of the ISI.) Christians in India exaggerate such minor incidents into a national and even an international anti-Hindu propaganda campaign. More churches have been burnt in America in recent years than in India. Several dozen black American churches were burnt to the ground, not merely slightly damaged like the few Indian churches that have been attacked. Christian priests and ministers are also robbed, assaulted and sometimes killed in all Western countries in numbers not unlike what occurs in India. We should also note that many more priests in America have been arrested for sexual molestation of children than have priests been assaulted in India. Should we use that to make conclusions about the nature of Christianity? That a few priests or ministers have been harmed in a country of one billion over a period of several years is not surprising even if we only consider ordinary crimes like robbery. Such things are law and order problems not an attack on one religion in particular. Many more Hindu religious workers are killed in India each year than Christians are in many years. That Christian missionaries have run into difficulties in sensitive tribal areas where there is not much government or police control is also not surprising, particularly given their hostility to tribal culture and tribal religions. The main purpose in all this drama is to whip up a propaganda campaign in order to bring international pressure on India to give Christians more freedom in their conversion efforts. Many Christians seem to prefer this to dealing with the Hindus in a spirit of give and take. What makes this affair is especially distasteful is that even when there is a systematic cleansing of Christians in Pakistan, Indian Christian leaders are prepared to ignore their plight for their propaganda purposes against the Hindus. Even the Pope, while condemning Indonesia and India, refused to mention the atrocities against Christians in Pakistan. His equating of Indonesia where hundreds of Christians have been killed in recent months to India, where only a few have died over several years, also highlights the propaganda urge behind his statements. It was as though Christians wanted the situation in India to be worse and are trying to promote communal disharmony to highlight their presence in the country. Christians almost seem desperate to make a scene in India to highlight to the world media. All this is enough to make one wonder if Christians are staging some of these attacks to pose as victims of persecution. Whether or not this proves to be the case, certainly they are exaggerating such incidents out of all proportion. Christianity has had a long history of using victimization in order to promote conversion. We know of the stories of Christians being fed to the lions in Rome. We are not told that many more pagans were killed by Christians, and thousands of pagan temples were destroyed throughout Europe. The great Greek (Neo-Platonic) Academy in Alexandria was destroyed and its scholars like Hypatia killed by 'Saint' Cyril and his followers. The number of native Americans killed or forcibly converted by Catholics was also in the many millions, and yet the Catholics emphasize a few priests martyred by the native Americans as being the real victims. Such stories of Christian oppression are good ploys to gain donations in Western countries. India as a pagan country, where image worship is common, is an easy target for such conversion sentiments.
The Indian scene Even if the Hindu fear of missionary mischief is exaggerated, it is entirely understandable. We should remember that the Pope in his recent visit to India himself threw down the gauntlet, stating a renewed church policy to convert Asia to Christianity in the coming years. To dismiss the Hindu fear as baseless only shows that it is not. If Christians were really sincere they would acknowledge that missionary activity has used such questionable methods in the past and work to insure that it does not do so in the future, and not simply ignore the issue. In the circumstances, it is prudent and proper for Hindus to view Christian. activities and statements with suspicion. The missionaries have altered their tactics to what is possible in the post-colonial era, but that is not a change of heart. They have not opened to Hindus, dialogued with them sincerely, or sought a common ground with them for social harmony or for seeking true knowledge of God. They have aimed at the poor and displaced of Hindu soci |
