Missionary Aggression
Introduction
As much as one would like to believe that the Christian/Islamic onslaught is a relic of the past (Hindu Holocaust), it is by no means so. One might say it has come back in the form of radical Christianity/Islam, whose goals are singular and straightforward: hegemony – to establish their faith as the dominant faith, as only such a goal will sustain their business model. Again, to any Christians/Muslims reading this, I emphasize “radical”. If you think there are no radical Christians/Muslims, then you don’t know the half of what is going on in the rest of the world.
It is important to make the distinction, that these aren’t your average Christians/Muslims. What’s being addressed here the are radical Christians/Muslims – who have a very different power structure and ideology: they are both a multi-billion dollar industry with enormous sophistication, in a rat-race with each other, and whose unintended side-effect is the establishment of a global hegemony in the name of their religion. The former is funded by missionary dollars (accrued from 1400 years of the conquests of the wealth of nations and missionary activities), and the later is funded by primarily by Saudi oil money (see Wahhabism). These radicals, not surprisingly, have tremendous influence on power and politics compared with the moderates.
Radical Christianity and Radical Islam have been very problematic issues for open-minded cultures that embrace pluralism (Hindus, Buddhists, and modern Christians). People don’t realize that there are more Christians in Hindu majority India, than there are in Hindus in Christian majority USA (by a factor of about 9x) and there are more Muslims in India than in any other country. Often times the distinction is blurred between radical and non-radicals. A good solution would be if the respective religions look into the radicalization of their religion and the impact it is having on the society at large, alleviating the need for third-party intervention or interference.
Radicals
When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.
– Jomo Kenyatta, in Absurdities in the Name of Religion
A common mistake is to consider all Christians/Muslims as sharing the same ideologies as that of radical Christians/Muslims. Not only would that be wrong, but it allows radical Christianity/Islam to hide under the cloak of post-modern Christians/Muslims. Note the following distinctions:
- It is important to distinguish between Christian/Muslims and their radical counterpart, and recognize that these radicals dominate their religions – their voice, power, and influence has far more outreach and is far more dangerous as its targets and exploits the many poor and underprivileged people in the world, grooming their consciousnesses into a radical ideology. Example: the 1040 Project of Christianity targeting India, and the massive Islamization of African countries. For example, the Christian missionaries in India are a most virulent breed of Christianity. The unrelenting aggressiveness and methods used by these radicals, make the Southern Baptists of the USA seem very mellow and tolerant.
- In the modern world, radical Christianity/Islam grows by taking full advantage of nations with very liberal democracies, and by hiding being the cloak of post-modern Christians/Muslims (who if anyone have the better chances of weeding out these radicals, but are often silent). This can be seen in India, and also the increasing wake of radical Islam in European nations.
- One must understand that radical Christians/Muslims in any nation, are not minorities (however small their population may be). They are the extensions of a multi-billion dollar global empire/conglomerate, representing their own interests, and not the interests of the nation. For example, if you had just one or two WalMart’s in India, would you give them your support (government subsidies, tax exemptions, sympathy) just because they are “minorities“, and ignore the thousands of indigenous/native retail stores in India? The sophistication of a multibillion dollar corporation like WalMart cannot be underestimated. Same goes for radical Christianity/Islam. A big mistake would be to look at them as “helpless minorities” that need your support and sympathy.
- Christian/Islamic radicals use sophisticated methods reminiscent of imperialism: demonize the native culture, create internal conflicts (divide-and-conquer), keep the natives behaved or on a leash (reward-and-punishment), take over the power centers, reap the harvest (land, media, taxes). Radical Christianity has almost two millennia of experience in honing their skills (in planning, marketing, strategy, and cash flow). In other words, when they come, they come fully equipped, sharpened by centuries of experience, on a target population that is naive, making for an easy unsuspecting kill. Radical Islam also has a method they’ve successfully used for almost a millennium – that of terrorism, i.e. acts of violence against anyone who threatens their ideology or authority.
- As a final note: one should realize that radical Christianity and Islam are in a global rat-race with each other, and that native culture (and even the people themselves) are mere collateral damage.
The Damage
The business of religion is a business of ideologies. It is a rat-race of ideologies competing for winner-take-all, using a business model. It pits one culture against another. The fundamentalist nature of radical Christianity/Islam destabilizes a nation by causing extreme polarizations (and more often than not, exploiting and further fueling/igniting existing differences instead of removing them). This has been seen in almost every nation that radical Christianity/Islam has touched. The ones I know off the top of my head are: Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Papua New Guinea, Sudan, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, and number of South American countries. As an illustration, in this excellent seven minute video lecture, Prof. Valentine Daniel of Columbia University, shows how the Sri Lankan crisis between Ceylonese Buddhists and Tamil Hindus is a result of a divisiveness that was never there before. The division between them was created as a result of Christian missionaries who introduced the idea of identity based on ethnicity and religion. The missionaries left, but the division they left behind remained.
Nations have been left in eternal ethnic conflicts and turmoil – between the native population and the encroaching fundamentalist culture (whose allegiance is to a foreign entity, and which seeks to oppress, subjugate, or supplant the native culture – either with intent or as an indirect consequence). Any culture touched by radical Christianity/Islam has been contaminated by their trademark alpha-male pathology – the desire for power, control, domination – i.e. the “my way or the highway” ideology.
The diversity of India is built on a singular construct, that of freedom: its diversity of thousands of faiths, and the dazzling expressions of these faiths in culture, arts, music, dance, philosophy, literature, schools of thought, etc. You destroy that freedom of expression, you destroy Hindu culture (and the freedom of expression and plurality that comes with it). Though I doubt it (see concluding section), they can cause considerable strife and damage.
While many countries move forward, such as by adopting and demonstrating plurality as if it is their great achievement, India, which has been long ahead in pluralism a good 2-3 thousand years before Western civilization even heard of the concept, will regress back in time with increasing culture clashes with radical Christianity/Islam which seek to supplant that plurality. These radical Christian/Muslim missionaries that have been shunned and rooted out like weeds in developed countries are now finding root in India.
Understanding Power – in a Nutshell
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.
– Noam Chomsky
To control a nation is to control its power centers, and using those power centers to subjugate the people (while giving them the illusion of freedom):
- Control of Media. Media is power. It is used to sway power in the favor of those who control it, and demonize those who don’t. As Noam Chomsky put it, “propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state”. In the past they kept you under control using a bludgeon (literally). Today’s bludgeon is the media. There is not a soul these days that is not plugged into the media. You control the media, you control the people.
- Control of Academics. Western history has shown, that if you want to control a land and its people, you suppress anything related to their culture that would make them feel proud of themselves. This includes distortions of Hindu’s practices, customs, and principles, and suppression of events in history that make the conquerors look bad (like their 800 years of onslaught on India). There has been a rampant step up in the production of such material in academic institutions. Many studies in religion, sociology, history, anthropology, culture, and literature of many of the leading universities receive a generous amount of funding from foreign agencies, which in turn have links to Christian/Islamic organizations. (see Defamation of Hindus and Demonization of Hinduism). Unfortunately Hinduism does not have such a network.
- Ownership of Land Resources. A major portion of the Vatican’s wealth comes from [the assets created from] the wealth conquered from continents over 1,500 years and from land taken up during the colonial the era (it still has strings attached to sovereign nations, through a couple of levels of indirection by handled very efficiently). A little known statistic: over 80% [need to confirm this] of non-governmental land in India is owned by external interests – the multi-billion dollar global extensions of radical Christianity.
- Ownership of Energy Resources. A major portion of the radical Islam’s funding comes from Saudi Arabia.
Imperialism 2.0
Here are just few examples of post-imperialism in action:
- The media went into over drive on the news by the Indian government to pass a legislation that would make it illegal for practitioners of alternative medicine (like Ayurveda) to make claims of healing or cures. But there is a proud silence by the media when it comes to criticizing Christian faith healers and their televangelism of curing almost any ailment in the name of Jesus.
- There is a proud silence in the media when radical Christian/Muslims routinely disparages Hindus, but if a Hindu dares publicly speak out in defense, the Indian media hounds him as being a “Hindu Fundamentalist” (why not applying the same measure to Christians/Muslims spewing vitriolic hate speech)?
- Increasingly Hindu temples are being deprived of funding (even for basic structural maintenance), by Christian/Muslim “minorities” because of their powerful foreign-funded lobbies. On top of that millions of dollars worth of donations to Hindu temples are taken by the government — while churches/mosques are exempt (they get to keep their donations). Can you imagine this lopsidedness happening in the USA (i.e. the government takes all church donations, while Hindu temples and mosques are exempt)?
- When Hindus destroyed one mosque – the Babri Masjid (probably in all of history, compared with the thousands of temples destroyed by Muslims), the media worldwide was in full swing. I don’t condone any sort of radical behavior, but to point out the glaring media bias against Hindus, I would propose two questions:
- Where is the media when dozens of Hindu temples are being routinely destroyed by the Malaysian Muslim government, despite all public outcry. You’ll find plenty of tragic videos on this online. Where is the media when the dozens of Hindu temples in Kerala are encroached upon and destroyed by Christians and Muslims. In both cases the media is proudly silent.
- In India, we even have mosques towering over the holiest of Hindu places, like Haridwar. Would Christians tolerate a Hindu temple or a mosque being built on the holiest of their places – the Vatican (or even in the vicinity of it)? Would Muslims tolerate a large Hindu temple in Mecca? Why doesn’t the media show this as example of the Hindu’s unparalleled tolerance
- In India, a Hindu majority country, books that Muslims consider offensive are banned. My opinion is, if you don’t like the book, don’t buy it, don’t impose your belief on others. For example, Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses is banned in India. Not to mention if Muslims, are in denial, if they don’t read books like The Trouble with Islam Today (written by a Muslim), how will one undergo a renaissance (at the very least to keep up with modernity).
- In Chennai, police officers barged into an exhibition and confiscated (without a court issued warrant) paintings that were on display depicting the atrocities of the Moghal Emperor, Arungazeb, because it was offensive to Muslims. This action is beyond just censorship. It is a sort of thing you’d expect if you were living under the Taliban, not in India.
- See also 10008 Lamps. Christians holding 100 candle vigils frequently gets news coverage (not only in print media, but on news channels), but Hindus lighting 10,008 lamps for world peace hardly gets much mention. No TV coverage, and gets basic mention only in the local edition of one national newspaper (The Hindu). So what sort of signal does this send? that only Christian culture cares about world peace, and other cultures don’t?
Civil War
It is well understood in biological evolution that change occurs sharply at intervals separated by long periods of apparent stagnation, leading to the concept of punctuated equilibrium.
- Daniel Dennett
As stated earlier, missionary aggression has caused internal conflicts in many nations between the missionary/transplanted fundamentalist mono-culture and the more tolerant and diverse native culture.
Increasingly, one might view these conflicts and tensions as a civil war. Almost every nation across the globe has had some sort of civil war or the other to resolve their differences. Civil wars arise to resolve stigmas arising from striking differences in ideologies, and can happen even in well established democracies. In India’s case it is about “freedom of expression” (Hindus) versus “my way or the highway” (radical Christianity/Islam).
India has not had a civil war to resolve differences in conflicting ideologies, at least not a civil war in the typical sense of the word. The difference is that in India, this is happening in punctuated intervals, over time, and with a great deal of tolerance.
In contrast, it might be interesting to compare this to the American Civil War – a full blown civil war that was fought primarily over principles, moral and constitutional, at the end of which 13 secessionist states surrendered to fall under a common national code. It pays to remember that the American Civil War was fought in 300 battles, over 4 years, with close to 600,000 lives lost.
Compared with that, India’s evolution by punctuated equilibrium, is a far better choice (if it was a choice). All of humankind is still evolving. But while most societies have gone through civil wars and revolutions in the name of progress, India chooses to take the higher path, the slow and punctuated path of evolution.
As fraught with tension and flareups as it may be, I believe it will start to exponentially go down as India’s education and economic prosperity go up. The former enlightens (and makes people question things), and the later has no room for instability.
Why Target Hindus?
Hindus are a very spiritual people. Their belief in God (in whatever form) is not through a religion. It is not by any religious injunction that they pray or meditate, but because of a direct affinity for God that permeates their daily lives. To Hindus, no God is more or less just because of their name or physical attributes. This can be easily exploited by missionaries. If someone tells a Hindu some stories of miracles performed by their prophet, the Hindu will accept it without any suspicion of any ulterior motives. They will not be aware that the other person is part of a multi-billion dollar missionary industry.
Christianity and Islam are missionary/evangelical religions. Any religion that is not based on genuine spirituality, critical thinking, and diversity of expression [of one's love for God] is bound to die if it is not aggressively propagated. That is why they evangelize.
Christianity and Islam are sharpened by over 1,000 years of marketing experience, having also had almost the entire population of the globe to practice on. Radical Christians and Muslims automatically inherit this. They learn various strategies ranging from how to select their targets (the innocent, the poor, the needy) and different ways of appealing to them, including different ways trying to induce FUD in targets belief, as well as spiritual extortion.
As an example of extortion exploiting innocence: a group of Christians might come and pray for a Hindu who has been afflicted with a disease, with the condition that if the disease is cured, he/she should convert to Christianity (not to mention to convert only to that particular evangelical breed of Christianity). Makes you wonder what sort of God (or religion) it is, that uses extortion (of one persons health) as a means of converting people. It’s like a mafia, saying, I will heal you only if you convert. If there is only one God, then it shouldn’t matter in what form you choose to worship God, so why convert?
To put this in better perspective, why don’t Christians in India try do the same with Muslims? Because in the first place, Islam is not that open-minded or pluralistic enough to look at other faiths transparently (as if one of their own). If Christians went and prayed for the well being of Muslim, and if the Muslim gets well, he won’t go to Christianity. Instead he’ll go and pray to Allah, thanking him for sending these Christians to pray for him. Similarly, the Christian will pray to Mother Mary, thanking her for sending these Muslims to pray for him. The more fundamentalist and fanatical a religion is, the harder it is to sway them and convert them. The more open-minded, and pluralistic a religion is, the more easier it is to convert them.
Is it Really a Threat?
If the question is whether Missionary Aggression will destroy Hinduism, I believe it is a clear and solid “no”. No more different than that I doubt whether democracy or freedom of speech can be destroyed in the USA. A the very worst it will be pulled in different directions by various interest groups and lobbies, and has the potential to take stranglehold on democratic ideals by abusing it.
This can be seen by the interference of Christian Right in the USA in regards to Creationism over Darwin, or the censoring of the Big Bang Theory, or the protest of introducing the science of yoga in schools, or objection of homosexuals as equal citizens (and not long ago womens suffrage and abolition of slavery were also very opposed by radical Christianity).
I like what China did, they simply booted about a hundred missionaries out of the country in one fell swoop. But, eh, the price of freedom and democracy, we can’t do that – unless the majority wakes up and calls for that (not necessarily boot out, but to enforce stringent laws against missionary activity).
It is important to bear in mind, that one should not ban conversions all together. If a person wants to convert for whatever reason (say due to any sense of discrimination or disenfranchisement in his current faith, or even for monetary benefits promised by the other faith), then nothing should prevent them from doing so. It is only conversions from or as result of missionary activity by inherently radicalised religions that should be banned. Radical religions are a threat to any nation and most of the missionary activities are by radicalised religions, which are fundamentalist, not pluralistic, and intolerant of expressions of love for God in any other way other than their way.