Duke Hires Its First Hindu Chaplain

Duke Hires Its First Hindu Chaplain

 

Usha Rajagopalan

Durham, NC – Duke University has hired its first Hindu chaplain. Usha Rajagopalan, who began her part-time role at Duke Aug. 1, will provide guidance for the Hindu Students Association and represent the group on Duke’s Faith Council and in the university’s Religious Life program.

Rajagopalan is fluent in Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam, and comes to Duke with degrees from Annamalai University in India and the University of Maryland. She has been leading Hindu worship services in the Triangle area and received the 2009 Kathryn H. Wallace Award in Community Service from the Triangle Community Foundation.

“Hinduism, or Sanathana Dharma, is not a religion but a practice, a way of life,” Rajagopalan said. “Deepening understanding of their inner world as they pursue their academic goals allows Hindu students at Duke to receive a holistic education and to practice their Dharma or way of life.”

Duke Chapel Dean Samuel Wells said he welcomes Rajagopalan’s perspective in campus conversations among different faiths.

“I am proud to be part of a campus culture that builds up diverse faiths by bringing them into healthy dialogue and common enterprises with one another,” Wells said. “This is a flowering of our university’s longstanding aspiration to ‘eruditio et religio’ — academic learning and embodied faith.”

Founded in 1998, the Hindu Student Association at Duke organizes scripture studies, Hindu festivals and Hinduism Awareness Week.

The Religious Life program at Duke comprises more than two dozen campus ministries that operate under the oversight of the chapel.

© 2011 Office of News & Communications
615 Chapel Drive, Box 90563, Durham, NC 27708-0563
(919) 684-2823; After-hours phone (for reporters on deadline): (919) 812-6603

Source:  http://today.duke.edu/2011/08/hinduchaplain

 

घायल माता भारतकी तसवीर

घायल माता भारतकी तसवीर

by Sri Hari Om Pawar

 

कोई कलाकरो के सरपर तलवारे लटकाता है

कोई वंदे मात्रम् के गान पर नाक चढाता है

 

कोई हिमालय ताजमहल का सौदा करने लगता है

कोई गंगा यमुना अपने घरमे भरने लगता है

 

कोई तिरंगे झन्डेको फाडे फूके आज़ादी है

कोई गांधीको भी गाली देनेका अपराधी है

 

कोई चाकू भोंक रहा है स्विधान के सीने में

कोई चुगली भेज रहा है मक्का और मदीना मे

… … (I could not figure the words -Skanda)

कोई भारत माताको गायन की गाळी दे जाता है

कोई अपनी संस्कृतिको आग लगाने लगता है

 

कोई बाबा रामदेव पर दाग लगाने लगता है

लेकिन सो गाली होते हि शिशुपाल कट जाते है

 

तुम भी गाली गिनते रहना जोड शिखाने आया हुं

घायल माता भारतकी तसवीर दिखाने आयाहुं

PARTIAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY ATROCITIES

———- Forwarded message ———- From: S. Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@gmail.com> Date: Sun, May 29, 2011 at 11:53 AM Subject: [hc] Partial history of christian missionary atrocities To:

PARTIAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY ATROCITIES

The Christian missionary mindset is generally depicted as that of simple religious folk with a pure desire to peacefully spread their gospel and message of love. In reality, their methods of propagation are often anything but peaceful and usually leave behind a native population stripped of their culture and often decimated. With Christianity failing in the west, the evangelists seek new and greener fields in the poor and uneducated sections of third world countries, backed by huge coffers from the less zealous, who are nonetheless convinced that to bring civilization and religion to the poor natives is a noble cause, even if they don’t want it. Missionaries often intermix military campaigns with missionary campaigns in their fervor to “civilize the heathens,” who are often simple happy natives, whose only crime is that they are not Christians. This mood of conquering the heathens by any means, at any cost, is supported in the Bible:

“Thou shalt save alive nothing that breathest. But thou shalt utterly destroy them…” (Deut 20)

“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” (Luke 19.27)

In the words of one resident of Thailand, “They [Christian missionaries] seemed that they did not show any interest for our culture. Why? They are just eager to build big churches in every village. It seems that they are having two faces; under the title of help they suppress us. To the world, they gained their reputations as benefactors of disappearing tribes. They built their reputations on us for many years. The way they behaved with us seemed as if we did not know about god before they arrived here.”[1]

“Why do missionaries think they are the only ones who can perceive God?”

In fact, most of the civilizations which were overrun by zealous Christians in their conversion fervor, were highly evolved in their moral standards, with complex social structures, high standards of cleanliness and hygiene, decorative art and evolved sciences, and content with their own religion.

The arrival of Christianity actually caused these civilizations to move backwards. In this regard we need only look to Europe, for the Dark Ages of Europe is a time when the Church was in control. The Age of Enlightenment (Renaissance) began when the common people were freed from the tyranny of the Christian church.

Christian missionaries have oppressed many cultures, building churches atop temples, mosques and shrines. For example, the major churches in Rome are built atop pagan temples and many historians say that the Vatican itself is built on the ruins of a Mithra (the Roman Sungod) temple. The major Christian holy days are all taken from the pagan holy days. In fact, it is claimed by many historians and religious scholars that the entirety of Christianity is borrowed from other religions and cultures and is fraudulent — Christ is an amalgamation of a number of personalities existing prior to the [presumed] time of Christ. [ See also: The Borrowing Theory ]

CHRISTIAN JUSTICE SYSTEM

Because Christians believe that Jesus Christ suffered for the sins of others, they use this belief for their own purposes by “letting Christ suffer while they, the Christians, go on committing sin and crime.” That is why the Christians go on slaughtering the Non-Christians, totally worry-free and with a totally clean conscience, because Christ will take care of their sins and crimes, and because they don’t have to face the laws of Karma and Re-incarnation or the veritable consequences of these laws. It does not even occur to an average Christian to ask himself/herself a simple question, that if a person commits a murder and he tells the court that his Father will suffer in his place, will the court accept the substitute to suffer the sentence? An average Christian does not even think that if any court accepted this kind of substitution, then the justice system of the world, as we know it, would be totally destroyed and chaos would ensue.

History is witness to the mass destruction of countless cultures, and the almost complete genocide of entire races at the hands of Christianity. History is now proving that most cultures destroyed by Christianity far outweighed in morals and dignity what they were replaced by.

Since the effects of much missionary work, the cultural traditions of a people being replaced by some form of Christianity, are intentional, this means by definition (according to the United Nations) that genocide is the missionary profession: converting other peoples to Christianity and thus destroying them as an ethnical group, and denying the right of native peoples to exist as what they are, with their own culture, language, and religion. For a variety of reasons a massive depopulation, in other words the death of a large percentage of the native population, follows.[2] And this so-called righteous work continues even today around the world in the name of [Christian] humanitarian work.

The plain and simple truth is that people never give up their religion, any more than they give up their children or their parents…except when they are pressured with use of force or are offered attractive allurements. The Christian Slogan that “Faith in Jesus is the only way to Salvation,” besides being totally false, is also totally ineffective, in gaining converts. Trickery, treachery, bribery, and bayonetry, therefore, has to be used to obtain converts. The Christian Missionaries know this blatant truth and Christianity’s brutal and barbaric record of twenty centuries in winning converts, is a testament to the savage methods of Christianity. [3]

‘ The Christian resolve to find the world evil and ugly, has made the world evil and ugly.’

–    Friedrich Nietzsche

CRUSADES

Many people think that the crusades were holy wars to liberate holy lands from non-Christians. But few are informed that many of the crusades were against other Christian sects, that many of these Crusades were launched for other purposes, such as the drowning of almost 6,000 Protestants by Spanish Catholic troops in the Netherlands in 1568, the sacking of the German city of Magdeburg in the 17th century, slaying 30,000 Protestants, followed by a 30 year war between Catholics and Protestants in which more than 40% of the population (mostly Germans) were decimated.

 

Probably the most revealing event was the capture and pillage of the Orthodox Christian bastion of Constantinople by the members of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, creating an animosity between Catholics and Orthodox Christians which has lasted into the 20th century.

 

In reality, the Crusades were the most ambitious Christian war enterprise and its most conspicuous failure. It was the attempt to force together all the known world and all mankind under the bishop of Rome, the Catholic Pope.

 

The Christian Crusades inspired the most bloodthirsty cruelty, and the greediest vandalism of medieval men. Politically motivated and fanatically aggravated, usurping all land and decimating all peoples who would not surrender to the Vatican. The Crusaders rolled over all who could not withstand their pillage and carnage like bloodthirsty conquerors.

 

By the end of the crusades, most European Christians believed the unfounded blood-libel myths — the rumor that Jews engaged in human sacrifice of Christian children. A long series of Christian persecutions of the Jews continued in Europe and Russia into the 20th century. They laid the foundation for the Nazi Holocaust. [4]

 

WITCH BURNINGS

Of course we have all heard of the Salem Witch Hunts of 1691-1692 and the burning of a number of “witches” alive at the stake by the Puritans. But did you know that the Salem witches were all proven innocent? Of course, this was found out after they were burned. Did you also know that this witch burning, carried out all over the world to the tune of several hundred thousand dead (80% women), was initiated by the Catholic church to rid their dominion of so-called heretics and was directly related to their mandate to re-populate Europe after the Black Death or plagues of the 1300’s, because their serfs were decreased by one third, thereby reducing the Church’s profit by one third, since they owned about 30% of Europe’s lands.[5] The ladies (midwives) were accused of impeding the birth rate — all birth control knowledge was vigorously erased, so much so that 20th century scholars believed birth control was a modern invention. The Inquisitors wrote, “No one is more dangerous and harmful to the Catholic faith than the midwives.”

 

Pope Innocent VIII’s infamous Witch Bull of 1484, launched several centuries of persecution of so-called witches. Several hundred thousand women, children and men (about 20%) were tortured and burned at the stake or hanged. The Malleus Maleficarum (the Witches Hammer or Handbook of the Inquisitors), available online here as a pdf – http://www.burningcross.net/crusades/malleus-maleficarum.pdf], written by two Dominican monks, was perhaps responsible for more widespread bloodshed than any other publication (Christian or otherwise). The policy of torturing, burning and hanging of supposed heretics has been the church’s policy for centuries, whenever they could get away with it. Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries about a half a million people were executed for witchcraft, most of them women.

PERSECUTIONS OF THE JEWS

There is a long history of the persecution of Jews by Christians, starting with the burning of synagogues in the 4th century, to numerous killings of Jews who would not convert to Christianity, to the extermination of Jewish communities in many European countries, all the way to a number of extermination camps during World War II in Yugoslavia, headed by a Franciscan Friar and run by Catholics, which were the equal of the German kilns of Auschwitz — killing about half a million people alone in this small country[5.5].

 

Hitler Himself justified the extermination of the Jews citing the Bible and Jesus:

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice…. And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people…. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those (the Jews) by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited. “:

(Adolf Hitler, in his speech on 12 April 1922)

 

[Note, “brood of vipers” appears in Matt. 3:7 & 12:34. John 2:15 depicts Jesus driving out the money changers (adders) from the temple. The word “adders” also appears in Psalms 140:3]

 

 

GENOCIDE IN RWANDA

Have you seen the Rwanda movie? Do you know that a substantial number of priests, nuns and even Bishops were indicted and a great many were convicted (by war crimes tribunals) for being directly responsible for the senseless slaughter of thousands of innocent Tutsis? Many clergy turned over those who had taken shelter in their churches to the machetes of the Hutu militia. The hatred and division between the Hutus and Tutsis was propagated by the missionaries as favorable for their objectives of conversion to Christianity.

 

One priest even burned down his own church to kill hundreds of Tutsis who had taken sanctuary there. Two priests were sentenced to death in 1998 for their roles in this genocide and two Benedictine nuns who supplied gasoline for the burning of Tutsi civilians sheltered in their church fled to Belgium where they were later convicted of complicity to murder.

 

“Sister Maria Kisito, who received 12 years, and her Mother Superior, Sister Gertrude, who received 15 years, were convicted of aiding in the slaughter of some 7,000 people who sought refuge at their convent in southern Rwanda. Prosecutors argued that they called in Hutu militiamen to drive people out of the convent knowing they would be killed, and later provided gasoline that militiamen used to set fire to a garage in which about 500 Tutsis had taken refuge.” (Washington Post, June 9, 2001)[6]

 

Of course the Catholic Church has claimed their clergy were acting independently of the church, even though much of the most notable genocide occurred in churches and it is well known that the church’s policy has been for centuries to divide and convert, to sew dissention between ethnic groups and then move in and take advantage of the chaos to offer Christian solace and conversion.

 

In the end nearly one million civilians were butchered.

 

 

TAHITI & THE PACIFIC

We all remember the story of Captain Bligh and the Mutiny on the Bounty. However, hardly anyone knows that the crew mutinied because they were so attracted to the idyllic life on Tahiti — the crew was determined to return to Tahiti and not go to England. Captain Cook himself wrote of “these happy islands and the good people on them. ” Further, he later wrote, “It would have been far better for these poor people never to have known us.”

 

In 1797, the London Missionary Society put its first missionaries on the shores of Tahiti. Fourteen years later they had not made one convert, even though the happy Tahitians provided them with servants galore, built their houses and fed them. Finally the Christians devised an ingenious plan, which ‘converted’ the entire island in one day. According to a letter written home by brethren J. M. Orsmond, one of their own members, they reduced the local chief, Pomare, to an alcoholic and backed him in a war against other island chiefs, supplying him with firearms, to be used against the other islanders clubs. The understanding was that with his victory all would be forced to convert. Then, a reign of terror followed where non-believers were killed. It was declared illegal by the Christians for anyone to decorate themselves with flowers, to sing (other than hymns), to surf or dance. Within 25 years the native culture of Tahiti and the entire Pacific was extinguished.

 

The attempt to make the Tahitians into service growers of sugar cane failed and the good Christian Mr. Orsmond, deciding that “a bountiful nature diminishes men’s natural desire to work,” had all the breadfruit trees cut down. Such practices, as well as diseases (brought from outside), such as syphilis, tuberculosis and smallpox reduced the original population (estimated by Cook at 200,000) to 6,000 after thirty years of missionary rule.

 

Their power base firmly established in Tahiti, the missionaries moved swiftly to the outer islands, using the same techniques. They introduced a local chieftan to the bottle, crowned him king and induced him to carry out the Christian’s work of conquering and converting at sword point.

 

The Polynesians and Melanesian people were also very cultured and intertwined with the processes of creation. They decorated everything with intricate wood carvings and flowers and produced many beautiful things. Yet by 1850 all this was gone, the only remaining vestige of these great cultures were the grass skirts and swaying hips for the tourists. Prior to the Christianization of Polynesia and Hawaii the local dances were mostly performed by men of the priesthood, the Christians turned such dances as the Hula into a sex show for the tourists. The Christian conquest of the Pacific was complete.

 

 

HAWAII

Not only did the missionaries and the Europeans bring the Bible to Hawaii they also brought diseases to the native population. The British explorer Captain James Cook’s visit to Hawaii in 1778 is generally credited with the ‘discovery’ of Hawaii but history reveals that others had been there before. Many missionaries followed.

 

The Hawaiians, like the American Indians, had no idea what private property meant. The missionaries decided the land belonged to them and not the native Hawaiian population. With the help of the American diplomatic representative at Honolulu, the Hawaiian capitol, and the aid of the United States warship Boston, a coup d’etat was implemented. The Boston landed Marines and sailors. The American missionary party formed a provisional Government and endeavored to make a treaty with the United States looking for annexation. Later, when President McKinley came to office the request of the rump Government for annexation was undertaken.

 

The original missionaries to Hawaii ended up large landowners. Although the missionaries were a small handful of the population they ended up with vast land holdings to the exclusion of the native Hawaiians, who had lived there for thousands of years. Put simply, the missionaries stole their land.

 

The missionaries did everything possible to destroy the ethnic Hawaiian culture, from banning all Hawaiian religious practices, walking barefoot, and even banning a faultless sport like surfing. Christians [according to the Hawaiians] are said to have introduced the mosquito into Hawaii in the hopes that this would force the natives to wear more clothes. Only in modern times has pride in Hawaiian art, song, dance and religion been revived.

 

“When the Christians came to these islands they said, take this Bible, close your eyes and pray, so we did; when we opened our eyes all we had was this Bible and the white man had all our Islands.” Hawaiian Kahuna

 

 

COLUMBUS & THE CARIBBEAN ISLANDS

Christopher Columbus, a trader of African slaves, is best known as the ‘so-called’ discoverer of America. In his personal log, Columbus wrote that, his purpose in seeking undiscovered worlds was “to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the heathens.” [Columbus’ Book of Prophecies]

 

On his first voyage Columbus described the natives as follows:

 

“The people of this island and of all other islands which I have found and seen, … all … are so artless and free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts…” But Colombus’ mission was to take the land for Christendom and convert all these peoples to Christianity or exterminate them and replace their culture, hence:

 

In whichever island he touched (on his second voyage) his men killed indiscriminately whatever animals and natives they found, “looting and destroying all they found,” as Columbus’ son Fernando put it. The natives were either killed or enslaved. Columbus commented in this regard, that the natives “ought to be good servants… and would easily be made Christians,” because he saw his affairs as the “fulfillment of prophecies in Isaiah.” To any objections from the natives, Columbus responded with, “…with the help of God, we shall … make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of Their Highness. We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them.” [7]

 

Eyewitnesses recalled, “Once the Indians were in the woods, the next step was to form squadrons and pursue them, and whenever the Spaniards found them, they pitilessly slaughtered everyone like sheep… So they would cut an Indian’s hands and leave them dangling… Some Christians encounter an Indian women, and since the dog they had with them was hungry, they tore the child from the mother’s arms and flung it still living to the dog…” After all, the Indians were only infidels.”

 

Of Columbus’ second voyage, it has been further written: “The Spaniards found pleasure in inventing all kinds of odd cruelties… They built a long gibbet, long enough for the toes to touch the ground to prevent strangling, and hanged thirteen [natives] at a time in honor of Christ Our Savior and the twelve apostles… then, straw was wrapped around their torn bodies and they were burned alive.” [8]

 

In less than a decade after Columbus’ first landing the native population of the island of Hispaniola (Santo Domingo & Haiti)— and thousands and thousands of people — had dropped by a third to a half. Before the next century ended, the populations of Cuba and many other Caribbean islands had been virtually exterminated.

 

 

 

NORTH AMERICA

 

VIRGINIA The Charter for the Virginia Colony stated that its purpose was to bring the Christian religion to those in ignorance of true knowledge of God.

 

Historian Edmund S. Morgan compiled the following description from Christian accounts of events occurring in one of the earliest settlements of English Christians, in Roanoke, Virginia in 1580:

 

“Wingina [the local chief] welcomed the visitors, and the Indians gave freely of their supplies to the English, who had lost most of their own when the Tyger [their ship] grounded.” [9]

 

“Indian openness and generosity were met with European stealth and greed. Ritualized Indian warfare, in which few people died in battle, was met with the European belief in devastating holy war. Vast stores of grain and other food supplies that Indian peoples had lain aside became the fuel that [later] drove the Europeans forward.” [10]

 

“Indians who came to the English settlements with food for the British (who seemed never able to feed themselves) were captured, accused of being spies, and executed. Peace treaties were signed with every intention to violate them: when the Indians ‘grow secure uppon the treatie,’ advised the Counsel of State in Virginia, ‘we shall have the better advantage both to surprise them & cutt downe theire Corne.’ ” [11]

 

Arthur Barlowe, one of the first Christians ever to set foot on Virginia soil, described the natives he encountered in 1584 as follows:

 

“…we were entertained with all love and kindness and with as much bounty, …as they could possibly devise. We found the people most gentle loving, and faithfull, void of all guile and treason … a more kind and loving people there cannot be found in the world, as farre as we have hitherto had triall.” [12]

 

Their supposedly Christian treatment of these friendly native Americas was that:

“…we burnt, and spoyled their corne, and Towne, all the people beeing fledde.” [13]

 

 

MIDWEST

Greed drove over a hundred thousand intruders into the area by 1825, few of whom were ever expelled. Though protection from intruders was a guarantee to the Cherokee by treaty, which the State of Georgia and the federal government were supposed to uphold it was never given the slightest honor by white interests. Forts were established to police against intruders but what they did was to harass the Cherokee and provide safety and protection for whites from those who tried to protect their families.

 

The State of Georgia insured no Cherokee would ever receive justice by forbidding the testimony or presence of any Native American in a court of law, period, just like the Nuremberg Laws of 1936 against Jews in Germany. This gave all whites free rein to terrorize, steal and kill any Native person they wanted to. No Cherokee “removed” because they wanted to, it was because the protection they were assured by treaty obligation was never provided.

 

The missionaries who entered Indian country were sent there to “civilize” the native people. They acquired this position by negotiation through treaty and were given vast amounts of land and guaranteed subsidies administered by the federal government out of tribal money. This money never touched the hands of the Cherokee and most often none was left after missionary, Indian agents, superintendents and corrupt tribal government leaders got done with it.

 

In 1832 Congress appropriated $12,000 dollars to begin the fight against smallpox in Indian country, 20 years after they did the same for whites. Significantly, actual vaccination expenditures that first year “for smallpox and certain other things” amounted to only $1,786, as opposed to $5,721 for “missionary improvement” and $9,424 for the “civilization of the Indians.” One year later, in 1833, actual expenditures were down to $721. [14]

 

This is why most Native Americans today who are knowledgeable of their history are pointing out that the United States Government waged genocide against their people. When medicine to heal children and families from a deadly and mortal disease is withheld, that agency which does this crime against humanity is committing genocide.

 

“Civilizing” meant taking children away from their parents at the ages of 5-12 years and forcing them to live without father, mother, sister or brother in missionary schools, if you can imagine that being done to a little child. This practice was not exclusive to the early years of American history but continued up until the mid 1970’s in this country. Children were beaten and given forced labor during their stay in school. Participation was “optional” but missionaries controlled the annuities of food and trust money through their relationship with superintendents and the military. Families that did not surrender their children did not receive food or payments that were supposed to be guaranteed to them.

 

Very young children caught in this situation were brainwashed to treat their parents as savages and barbarians and they suffered terribly under this psychological torture. By this method through several generations, Cherokees, like most Native Americans were stripped of the knowledge of their heritage, religious beliefs and trust of their family supports.

 

This is why it is called a Red Holocaust and fits the United Nations accords for genocide. Any people whose children are taken from them in order to destroy the religious, spiritual, racial and cultural heritage of that people are victims of genocide.

 

The pressure to build a slave based empire on Native Cherokee soil was highly successful. Thomas Jefferson who wrote the removal policy and openly supported genocide of Native Americans declared, “If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or is driven beyond the Mississippi… they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.” [15]

 

Missionary work was very big business. It afforded the building of careers, growth of denominational influence in regions that formed economic bases of support. Churches were established through lucrative payments from Indian funds and lands, which were deeded for use as farms, timber production and for sale in financing further ventures, not the least of which was buying selling and working their slaves. Churches and missionaries were aggressively competing for government contracts among the Native American people all the way up until the 1970’s when Native American Education legislation made it too difficult for the government to sever lands for missionary work without compensation.

 

To give some insight into the abuse of law that the State of Georgia in the early 19th century used to terrorize the Cherokee, the banishment of “intruders” was only enforced against whites, who stood up for the Cherokee by representing their interests. It was also used by whites through the… spoils system to get rid of squatters whose land was coveted by another white. Those whites who took public stands for Native people in the area were thrown out. Worcester was one such missionary. He returned and was thrown into prison for a year for his stand on Cherokee rights.

 

It is especially telling that while almost no Indians voluntarily lived among the colonists, the number of whites who ran off to live with the natives was a problem often remarked upon. Historian James Axtell has concluded that the whites who chose to remain among the natives

 

“…stayed because they found Indian life to possess a strong sense of community, abundant love, and uncommon integrity – values that the European colonists also honored… But Indian life was attractive for other values – for social equality, mobility, adventure, and as two adult converts acknowledged, ‘the most perfect freedom, the ease of living, [and] the absence of those cares and corroding solicitudes which so often prevail with us.’ ” [16]

 

After a century and a half of permanent British settlement in North America, even Benjamin Franklin joined numerous earlier commentators lamenting that

 

“…when an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading them ever to return.

 

[But] when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho’ ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.” [17]

 

Since they were uttered by one of America’s founding fathers, however, the most widely admired of the South’s slaveholding philosophers of freedom, they conveniently have become lost to most historians in their insistent celebration of Jefferson’s wisdom and humanity.” Further references available. [18]

 

 

CALIFORNIA MISSIONS

The book, The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide, edited by Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo [19] (Indian rights activists), spells out the apparent brutality of the California Franciscan missionaries (and their founder Junipero Serra, who was to be made a saint) against the North American Indians; citing numerous contemporary accounts of the brutality and degrading conditions endemic to the mission system in California.

 

Interviews from 1985 with eight scholars (arranged by the Catholic Diocese of Monterey in defense of Serra) actually contain the strongest evidence against the mission system itself. The ethnocentrism of the interviewees and their at times embarrassing lack of knowledge regarding Indian ways, leads to numerous questionable assertions. Serra’s supporters generally acknowledge that the methods employed to convert the Indians would be unthinkable for missionaries to use today.

 

The work of A. L. Kroeber, Sherburne Cook, Robert Heizer (all cited in the text) and others establishes that the arrival of the Europeans was a cultural and demographic catastrophe for the California Indians. Too often it is forgotten that Serra aimed not just to convert the Indians to Catholicism but to eradicate Indian culture as well. It is in this sense that the book’s subtitle. “A Legacy of Genocide” is justified.

 

Many of Serra’s fiercest critics are individuals actively engaged in efforts to heal Indian society by recovering and honoring the traditional ways that bound tribes together for centuries. The attempt to sanctify a man who dedicated his life to the destruction of those ways is, understandably, galling to them.

 

Some accounts shed further light on the missions activities:

[T]he Puritan minister John Robinson had complained to Plymouth’s William Bradford that although a group of massacred Indians no doubt “deserved” to be killed, “Oh, how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you killed any!” [20]

 

And kill them they did… At the mission of Nuestra Sentora de Loreto, reported the Franciscan chronicler Father Francisco Palone, during the first three years of Franciscan rule 76 children and adults were baptized, while 131 were buried… The same held true at others, from the mission of Santa Rosalin¡ de Mulegne, with 48 baptisms and 113 deaths, to the mission of San Ignacio, with 115 baptisms and 293 deaths – all within the same initial three year period.

 

 

MEXICO CITY

Unlike European cities of the late 1400’s, which were filled with squalor and disease (most Europeans never took a bath in their entire life, hence the invention of French perfume) [D.E. Stannard, American Holocaust. Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York/Oxford 1992, pg. 59], Mexico was clean. The twin cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlateloico, know today as Mexico City, maintained high standards: wastes were hauled away by barge and composted for fertilizer, a thousand men swept and washed the streets every day. Refined Aztecs, who bathed daily, found it advisable to hold flowers to their noses when they met Europeans, who made it a point of being filthy. Most of Mexico’s streets were canals and an aquaduct brought drinking water from mountain springs. [21]

 

Hernan Cortez felt that this was by far the most beautiful city on earth, stated: “All of these houses have very large and very good rooms and very pleasing gardens of various sorts of flowers…” [22] The Christian visitors were astonished by the personal cleanliness and hygiene of the colorfully dressed populace, and by their extravagant (to the Christians) use of soaps, deodorants, and breath sweeteners. [23]

 

The Mexicans [Aztecs] were tolerant of other peoples, such as the Otomi, who lived among them. These had their own religion, culture, language… tribal hatreds did not seem to exist within the Mexican body politic.” [24]

 

As a consequence of Columbus’ ‘discovery,’ less than a century after his voyage the city had been sacked by Christians, its buildings and beautiful gardens burnt and devastated. The city’s inhabitants, who before Columbus had known only temporary slavery as a means of judicial correction, were either dead or permanent slaves to a Church-approved colonial feudal government, or directly to a Church which burned at the stake any survivors unwilling to be converted to a religion which even faithful Christians of today could only describe as a hopeless medley of absurd or revolting superstitions – one has only to think of the reliquaries, collections of skulls, bones, teeth, or other remains of so-called saints, enshrined and openly displayed to be worshiped – in any given Christian Church of the time.

 

 

THE PHILIPPINES

Shortly after the Spanish American war of 1898, the US obtained legal right to the Philippines via the Treaty of Paris. President McKinley stated that “military occupation of the islands is declared to be to protect the people.” For the president, American duty compelled the US to “uplift and civilize and Christianize them [the Philippines], and by God’s grace do the very best we could for them.” The Filipinos had not requested this, but their will was ignored as was their revolutionary government, and new constitution. The Filipino resistance to this American ‘help,’ was met with military might. The US command stated that, “it may be necessary to slaughter one-half of the rebellious Filipinos in order to bring the other half into subjection.”

 

Well over 200,000 Filipinos lost their lives in their struggle against American imperialism. The Methodist church, great champions of this war of ‘divine mission,’ did not distinguish imperialism from the mission of evangelization. James Henry Potts, editor of the Michigan Christian Advocate, was so confident of the righteousness of the cause that the human cost simply did not matter and we must “conquer the rebellious Filipinos and give them the blessings of the best administration possible… Those islands are ours.” Propagandists portrayed the Filipino resistance leaders as not representing the general will of the Filipinos, but were dismayed that they continued to resist. After all, Americans “knew what was best for the Filipinos,” they needed American guidance, but showed “no appreciation of the fact that America had lifted the galling Spanish yoke from their necks…” [replacing it, unfortunately, with their own yoke.]

 

The previous arbitrary cruel treatment of the Filipinos by the Spaniards was repeated by the American oppressors in their new view, as necessary measures to subdue the Filipino rebels. Thus the blame for their violent actions was transferred from the perpetrator of the action to the victim. This became clear when the public learned that U.S. soldiers perpetrated grave acts against mankind, including the brutal torture and execution of prisoners, the burning and looting of Filipino towns and the forced relocation of civilians.

 

Six hundred saloons had sprung up in Manila, which became over one thousand by 1900, (where formerly there were less than ten) and the armies’ abuses were blamed on alcohol. The Detroit Annual Conference of Methodists focused on temperance and overlooked the heinous activities committed by the army.

 

The cries of “God wills it,” were the religious justification for the assertion of political power fused with missionary zeal. Reverend William Oldham declared that “the roar of the (American) cannon was the voice of Almighty God declaring (the Philippines) shall be freed.” It was the mission of the Americans to spread the faith, and like the holy crusaders before, military conquest was the first step in this “holiest of wars.”

 

The eyes of the church were resolutely focused on American Protestant victory against Filipino independence and Catholicism. How far astray these Methodist missionaries had gone, is clearly illustrated by the statement of Editor Potts who proclaimed that the “worst war in the Philippines is yet to come,” since the Protestant missionaries encountered deeply entrenched Catholic beliefs and institutions which were viewed as opposing American principles and systems. Patriotism and Christianity had become indistinguishable and the Filipinos defense was perceived by these Christian invaders as unjustifiable resistance operating under the spell of ‘Satan’s Arts.’

 

 

 

BURMA and THAILAND

Accounts from local residents claim that:

The American Baptist Paul Lewis sterilized more than 20,000 Akha Hill Tribe women in Burma’s Eastern Shan State alone. This was done secretly, and blood was stolen from these women for resale, taken during the sterilization procedure. More than 3,000 of the women died. [25]

 

In Akha traditional culture, five people serve as the government in one village. This multiperson leadership system in villages was eliminated and replaced by single pastors who rule the villages with an iron fist, allowing no dissent or return to the traditional ways. These changes have sewn havoc amongst the locals.

 

“There would be no traditional practices, songs, or dances at all now, possibly something would be allowed at Christmas. The woman who practices the traditional knowledge and medicine for the village was stopped. She was told that it was evil and that she could no longer treat people’s illnesses. In the name of their religious beliefs, and quite in contradiction with the spirit of those beliefs, the missionaries are eradicating Akha culture in village after village. [26]

 

A Thai speaks out on mission activities in Thailand:

“Especially in Thailand, due to the high levels of prostitution, under the name of safeguarding young women, boarding schools for girls sprout up. But then the girls no longer want to marry Akha [non-Christian] men.” [27]

 

“Regarding religion, at the beginning it seemed to be very good. Later, it turned out to be a division among the people. Some became Catholics, some Protestants, some still holding their ancestors offering while others became Buddists. All these, they could not face to one another. The missionaries often cause dissention in the villages without permission of the village leaders.”

 

“Now we want to raise a question, how good is Christianity then? If that is good enough, why there are so many groups, teaching about Jesus and yet fighting one another? First they divided our people now they are dividing our villages and families. We seem to be like a prey for them. Better not to have one of them than having all of them.”

 

 

VIETNAM

Perhaps, you remember seeing the news videos of Buddhists burning themselves with gasoline in the 1960’s? Do you know why they burned themselves? They were protesting the discriminatory treatment and torture by the fanatical Catholic South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem, installed by the U.S. military. With the Vaticans influence, led by Cardinal Spellman, democratic elections were stopped in Vietnam, and Dim installed. This was followed by the ill-fated Vietnam war.

 

Do you think that the government of the U.S.A. stands for democracy in every country? Actually they are only for democracies that elect a government favorable to or are cooperative with U.S. foreign policies. If they are not agreeable with and subordinate to U.S. interests, then covert U.S. forces make arrangements for other leaders, like Mussaraf in Pakistan, like so many leaders in South or Central America or Diem in Vietnam, to take power.

 

 

CHINA

Although most everyone has heard of the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, few know that this rebellion was directly a reaction of the Chinese people to the Christian missionaries who swarmed into the country in order to convert the poor, illiterate, and defenseless Chinese. The rebellion was of course suppressed by the countries that were patronizing the converting missionaries.

 

In October of 2000, over twenty Chinese scholars, experts on history and religion, held a symposium, exposing the crimes committed by the then recently “canonized” foreign missionaries and their followers. Scholars listed a number of facts to illustrate that in modern history the activities of Catholic missionaries were closely linked with the invasion of China by foreign forces.

 

Prof. Dai Yi said, “Lots of foreign missionaries followed the warships of foreign aggressors to China in and after the Opium War, and actually foreign aggression and missionaries’ activities are combined into one. That is, missionaries’ activities were an integral part of invasion, missionaries acted as guides and tools for foreign aggressors and in return, aggressors paved the way for the missionaries’ activities.” It is the foreign missionaries that should answer for the consequences to their actions because their monstrous evils exasperated the Chinese people and eventually fused the outburst of the Yi He Tuan (known as Boxers) Movement.

 

Participants in the symposium pointed out that foreign missionaries executed in certain “religious cases,” such as Auguste Chapdelaine, Franciscus de Capillas and Albericus Crescitelli, had only themselves to blame for still being hated by people today, because they had stopped no evil.

 

The Holy See, disregarding the strong opposition from the Chinese people, “canonized” these infamous missionaries, which reveals the Vatican’s “vicious intention to intervene in China’s internal affairs through religious activities,” the scholars said, pointing out that the “canonization” tramples on the sovereignty of the Chinese Catholic Church, as well as a severe provocation to the 1.2 billion Chinese people.

 

The scholars all voiced their protest over the perverse and vicious deeds of the Vatican, saying that the present China is strong enough to protect its national security and national dignity and any attempt to distort history and humiliate the Chinese people is doomed to failure.

 

The Chinese government’s obvious reaction to such Christian preaching activities over many centuries has been to ban all conversion efforts in China.

 

 

INDIA

 

India’s first major contact with Christianity began when Vasco da Gama, from Portugal, landed with gunboat and priests in 1498… The newcomers were not only merchants but also devout Christians ordered by the Pope: “… to invade, conquer, and subject all the countries which are under rule of the enemies of Christ, Saracens (Moslems who fought against the Christian Crusaders in the middle ages) or Pagan….”

 

Hindus were forced to convert or faced torture and death. Thousands had to flee Goa in order to keep their culture and religious beliefs.

 

The historian Gaspar Correa described what Vasco da Gama did, thus:

 

“When all the Indians had thus been executed, he ordered them to strike upon their teeth with staves and they knocked them down their throats; as they were put on board, heaped on top of each other, mixed up with the blood which streamed from them; and he ordered mats and dry leaves to be spread over them and sails to be set for the shore and the vessels set on fire… ” Before killing and burning the innocent Hindus he had their hands, ears and noses cut off.

 

…”When the Zamorin (head of the Hindu population) sent another Brahmin (Hindu Priest) to Vasco to plead for peace, he had his lips cut off and his ears cut off. The ears of a dog were sewn on him instead and the Brahmin was sent back to Zamorin in that state. The Brahmin… had brought with him three young boys, two of them his sons and the other a nephew. They were hanged from the yardarm and their bodies sent ashore.”

 

Francis Xavier, a Jesuit Priest, came soon after Vasco da Gama, with the firm resolve of uprooting Hinduism from the soil of India and planting Christianity in its place. His sayings and doings have been documented in his numerous biographies. Francis Xavier, wrote back home,

 

“As soon as I arrived in any heathen village, when all are baptized, I order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken to pieces. I can give you no idea of the joy I feel in seeing this done.” The Church had a special way of dealing with converted Hindus who were suspected of not observing Christian rites with appropriate rigour and enthusiasm, or even of covertly practicing their old faith: “…the culprits would be tracked down and burnt alive.”[28]

 

 

Xavier called for an inquisition, recorded by historians as being more horrendous and barbaric than any prior to that. Thousands were tortured mutilated and killed. Thousands had to flee Goa in order to keep their traditional culture and religion.

 

It is recorded that between 600 and 1,000 Hindu temples and shrines were destroyed, but many consider these numbers to be on the conservative side. [29]

 

Many types of brutal torture were employed by the Inquisitors, such as mutilation of body parts, fire torture and drownings. The details of this torture are too ghastly and horrid to contemplate for any sane human being.

 

”Children were flogged and slowly dismembered in front of their parents whose eyelids had been sliced off to make sure they missed nothing. Extremities were amputated carefully, so that a person could remain conscious even when all that remained was a torso and a head.”[30]

 

The archbishop of Evora, in Portugal, eventually wrote, “If everywhere the Inquisition was an infamous court, the infamy, however base, however vile, however corrupt and determined by worldly interests, it was never more so than in Goa. [31]

 

No body knows the exact number of Goans subjected to these diabolical tortures; low estimates put the number in the tens of thousands, high estimates are in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even more. The abominations of these inquisitions continued from 1560 until a brief respite was given in 1774, but four years later, the inquisition was introduced again and it continued un-interruptedly until 1812 — the inquisition in Goa wend on for over two-hundred and fifty years. At that point in time, in the year of 1812, the British put pressure on the Portuguese to put an end to the terror of the Inquisition and the presence of British troops in Goa enforced the British desire.[32]

 

Dr. Trasta Breganka Kunha, a Catholic citizen of Goa writes, “Inspite of all the mutilations and concealment of history, it remains an undoubted fact that religious conversion of Goans is due to methods of force adopted by the Portuguese to establish their rule. As a result of this violence the character of our people was destroyed. The propagation of Christian sect in Goa came about not by religious preaching but through the methods of violence and pressure. If any evidence is needed for this fact, we can obtain it through law books, orders and reports of the local rulers of that time and also from the most dependable documents of the Christian sect itself.”[33]

 

A proposed celebration for the 500 year anniversary of Vasco de Gama’s arrival in India was fiercly proposed and successfully stopped, bringing together a surprising alliance of Hindus, Muslims, left wing campaigners and environmentalists.

 

The Gaur-Sarasvata Brahmins were one such sect who had to flee at the hands of the invading fanatics. Now their sect is situated in the state of Karnataka. Leaving everything behind and starting from scratch they are now a very well to do and prosperous community. Their temples rival any in the world. Still practicing their ancient Vedic religion, the Gaur-Sarasvata Brahmins are recognized for their dignity, honesty and contributions to society. This soundly nullifies the idea propagated by the Christian zealots that Hindu religion is heathen and pagan.

 

Frances Xavier is commonly known as ‘St. Francis Xavier,’ ‘the Patron Saint of the East.’ He is still worshipped, prayed to and honored as the pure representative of Jesus Christ and his gospel by Christians all over the world. There are innumerable hospitals, schools, and other institutions in India named after him. Even today the archdiocese of Goa boasts,

 

“The glorious chapter of the expansion of the Catholic Church in the east can be said to have begun after the European ‘discovery’ of the sea route to India in 1498. This helped the coming of the European fathers to these lands, one of them being St. Francis Xavier, the great Apostle of the East and Patron of the Missions. Goa is privileged to have been the starting point of his Church work labours and the place where his sacred remains are preserved. Goa was called the “Rome of the East” due to the central role it played in evangelization of the east.” [34]

 

India today is ruled by a secular government modeled after the western democracies. What many Indians do not understand is that the idea of secular government, first seen in the United States of America, was a reaction to the theocratic tyrannies that pervaded the Dark Ages of Europe all the way to the founding of the American nation. Separation of religion and government were an effort to ward off and prevent any Christian theocracy from taking control in modern times.

 

Now the Christian tactics have changed, but their underlying premise that ‘Christianity is the only true religion’ nullifies all their attempts of portraying themselves as tolerant and loving. The reality is that Christianity has not changed its theology, it has only changed its techniques of conversion. Christian evangelists are now using vast amounts of wealth (billions of US dollars) to spread their propaganda. Mission activity in India comes in the guise of helping the downtrodden, sick and helpless. In reality the aim is the same — to convert all to Christianity and in the wake destroy all the cultures and religions that lie in the way. There is no need to abuse, attack, or condemn the Non-Christian religions. The plain truth is the Christian Missionaries work with usage of lies, falsehood, and hypocrisy. The social improvement facade is only a camouflage or disguise for conversion work.

 

Why should the Christian Missionaries want to collect converts? Because it is in the nature of the religions of exclusivity (Islam and Christianity) to try to make every one like them in terms of religion. They have no use, whatsoever, for pluralism or respect for other religions; in fact what they have is pure contempt for other religions. Further, this exclusivity attachment and attitude comes straight from the horse’s mouth i.e. from their scriptures. For instance, in the Bible Matthew 28:19-20, Mark 16:15-16, and Luke 24:46-47 every Christian is commanded to make converts and it is the duty of every Christian to uphold these commands of the Bible.

 

A glance at their activities in India clearly reveals that the Christian Missionaries denigrate and demonize the Hindus every single day. Hinduism is equated with Devil Worship and Hindus are described as Heathens, as workers for the Devil, and as lost souls who are headed straight to hell.

 

Now-a-days, in most civilized countries, open and outright utterance of ignoble and unflattering slurs and put downs on the basis of race, religion, creed, or other affiliation is not tolerated because it has been legislated as illegal. But in Pseudo-Secular India, Hindus can be freely insulted, abused, degraded and dragged into mud, by the Christian Missionaries with impunity, without any fear of lawsuit. They freely broadcast their Hate-Hindu, vile and vituperative propaganda into Indian villages and cities.

 

Because the preacher of Christianity single-mindedly believes his loathing gospels of hate, seeing them as divine commands from his religion, he utters venom and vindictiveness against the Hindu with zeal and with [in their estimation] a clear conscience.

 

Nearly every single day, rhetoric similar to the words below confirm the reality that Christianity, while posing as a religion of love, peace and tolerance is anything but that.

 

“These Hindu Heathens have their idols and their superstitions, their idol-bearing temples and shrines where they conduct their noisy foolish rituals and ceremonies. They generate a lot of evil. They are totally ignorant that Jesus Christ came to overcome death. There is a great need to propagate the Christian Gospel amongst them.”

Only now is India beginning to realize what the Christian Mission activity is really all about. This is evidenced in states like Nagaland, Mizoram, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and in other areas in Northeast India. As soon as Christians become a majority in a given area, they sow the venom of hatred and strife, turning family member against family member, villager against villager and instigate their Christian followers to ask for self-determination and a Christian Homeland. This is virtually the same technique that the Moslems continue to use with success.

As soon as a convert is made, they are greatly encouraged to vehemently and publicly denigrate their previous culture, traditions and everything related to it. This greatly disrupts the entire community and its normal social and economic activities.

Militant Christians in several of these Northeastern Indian provinces have been forcing non-Christian residents to either convert to Christianity or face capital punishment. With death staring at their face, most of the adult members have fled the villages to escape torture, resulting in disruption of agricultural activities. Buddhist leaders of both the states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have strongly condemned the heinous carnage committed by the militants on the peace-loving Buddhists and tribal cult followers.

Because Hindus now know what the Christians are up to, it is time to take some serious steps to counter the Christian propaganda and instill pride in Indians across the nation for their glorious past and distinguished Vedic heritage.

 

For Additional Information on the Goan Inquisition, please visit: The Portuguese Invasion of Goa Details of the Goan Inquisition Hindu Genocide in Goa

CONCLUSION

Christians have always portrayed non-Christian civilizations as backwards, underdeveloped, superstitious, and barbaric. What really underlies all of their criticism is that these cultures do not accept Jesus, the Bible and their western way of life. This is what, in the Christians’ opinion, deems these cultures as needing their help, when in fact the their fervor to destroy any theistic conception other than Christianity or any temple other than a church shows that they are really the ones who are showing the qualities of barbarians.

Today, many are uninformed and believe that mission excesses only took place in prior times and today’s preaching works are a ‘good thing.’ But as long as the basic premises and theology that underly all the abuses that took place in the past are not corrected, the result of mission activities will remain the same: Genocide and destruction of all that lies in its way, replacing it with the ‘superior religion and culture’ that most missionaries believe they are delivering.

In retrospect, these various ethnic cultures were far better off before the introduction of Christianity, as it had nothing better to offer them. In reality, these cultures were decimated, their histories were erased, their cultural traditions eradicated, their former religions destroyed and they were left more unhappy than before the arrival of Christianity.

There have been many revisions in the teachings of Jesus Christ since it first took hold some 2,000 years ago. But until the xenophobic and iconoclastic teachings of the Bible are corrected, mission activity will yield the same catastrophic results. As taught in the Bible, ‘we can know a tree by its fruit,’ these evangelists need to adopt a more pluralistic theology, recognizing the divinity in other religions and the contributions of other cultures and further recognize that theirs is not the only path to salvation. Suffice it to say, until these things have been corrected, that to label such endeavors for Christ as good works or pious activity is wrong.

 

Otherwise, in this modern age, those deemed with good intelligence, who are advanced in philosophy and science, have no other choice than to condemn these preaching activities worldwide, which seek to destroy ethnic cultures. Mission activities need to be monitored and the conversion agenda needs to be reconsidered.

 

Footnotes

——————————————————————————–

[1] Akha Chronicles, Book 1: Maesai, Chapter 20: Missions. Available online: http://www.akha.org/upload/akhachronicles/chapter20missionaries.htm

[2] Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) article 2 as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: “Killing members of the group; Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide

[3] S. P. Attri, Conversion Aggression, http://conversionagenda.blogspot.com/2004/01/conversion-aggression.html

[4] Chris tian apology for the Crusades: The Reconciliation Walk. http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_cru1.htm

[5] C.M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution, London 1981, pg. 55ff.

[5.5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ustasha , http://www.priestsofdarkness.com/gold.html , http://www.holocaustrevealed.org/_domain/holocaustrevealed.org/Yugoslavia/Yugoslavia-Croatia.htm .

[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42755-2001Jun8?language=printer

[7] Excerpt of the Requerimiento.

[8] D.E.Stannard, American Holocaust. Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York/Oxford 1992, pg. 72.

[9] E.S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, New York 1975, pg. 39.

[10] D.E. Stannard, American Holocaust, Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York/Oxford 1992. Pg. 106

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, Pg. 227.

[13] Ibid.

[14] ed. Stuewe, Paul K., KANSAS REVISITED: HISTORICAL IMAGES AND PERSPECTIVES, article by Unrau, William, The Depopulation of the Kansas Indians”)

[15] Footnote source to Jefferson: The source of the statement is indeed Thomas Jefferson dating from 1807 when addressing his Secretary of War regarding any Indians who resisted American expansion into their lands.

David Stannard in American Holocaust, The Conquest of the New World, Oxford Press 1992, page 120 expands further, “These were not offhand remarks, for five years later, in 1812, Jefferson again concluded that white Americans were obliged to drive the ‘backward’ Indians ‘with the beasts of the forests into the Stony Mountains’ and one year later still, he added that the American government had no other choice before it than ‘to pursue (the Indians) to extermination, or drive them to new seats beyond our reach.’ Indeed, Jefferson’s writings on Indians are filled with the straightforward assertion that the natives are to be given a simple choice — to be extirpate(d) from the earth’ or to remove themselves out of the American’s way.’ Had these same words been enunciate by a German leader in 1939 and directed at European Jews, they would be engraved in modern memory.

[16] J. Axtell, The Invasion Within, New York 1985, pg. 327.

[17] Ibid, pg. 303.

[18] Drinnon, Facing West, pp. 96, 98, 116; Ronald T. Takaki, Iron Cages: Race and Culture in 19th Century America (New York: Alfred A. Knof, 1979), pp.61-65.

[19] The Missions of California: A Legacy of Genocide, edited by Rupert Costo and Jeannette Henry Costo, San Francisco: Indian Historian Press, 1987.

[20] Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, pg. 374f.

[21] R. Wright, Stolen Continents. The Indian Story, London 1992, pp. 20-21.

[22] D.E. Stannard, American Holocaust. Columbus and the conquest of the New World, New York/Oxford 1992, pg. 5.

[23] B.R. Ortiz de Montellano, Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition, New Brunswick 1990, pg. 127f.

[24] H. Thomas, Conquest. Montezuma, Cortés, and the Fall of Old Mexico, New York 1993, pg. 19.

[25] Akha Chronicles, Book 1: Maesai, Chapter 20: Missions. Available online: http://www.akha.org/upload/akhachronicles/chapter20missionaries.htm

[26] Ibid.

[27] The Akha Heritage Foundation, http://www.eco-action.org/mission/akha1.html, http://www.akha.org/

[28] Paul William Roberts, Empire of the Soul, Some Journeys in India (Riverhead Books, New York)

[29] History of Hindu Chris tian Encounters, Sita Ram Goel, South Asia Books (July 1990), ISBN 9990049173.

[30] Ibid.

[31] The Empire of the Soul by Paul William Roberts (Harper Collins, 1999)

[32] Ibid.

[33] The Portuguese Invasion, http://www.indpride.com/portuguese%20invasion.html

[34] The Archdiocese Of Goa and Daman, http://www.archgoadaman.org/Dioceses/index.htm

<http://www.archgoadaman.org/Dioceses/index.htm>Source: Mirror site http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com/2007/12/partial-history-of-christian-missionary.html

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Computers Rig Elections

Computers Rig Elections

Satya D to electiontransp., stop-corruptio.

 

We request Dr. Quraishi and other commissionersw at ECI to look at this video at US Courthouse of a software programmer on how easy to rig EVMs and how he was asked by US Congresman to rig it.   Given the corruption in India, should EVM’s to be considered at all in India?    What we could use is double verification such as paper counting as well as optical scanner.   We should consider counting both in every constituency.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1thcO_olHas&feature=youtu.be

This video has 245,000 + hits.

Regards,
Satya

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: S. Kalyanaraman <kalyan97@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 9:21 PM
Subject: Scrap unconstitutional Indian EVMs. Programmer under oath admits computers rig elections.
To:

http://bharatkalyan97.blogspot.com/2011/08/scrap-unconstitutional-indian-evms.html

 

12 min. video

 

SUNDAY, AUGUST 21, 2011

Scrap unconstitutional Indian EVMs.

Programmer under oath admits computers rig elections

The situation is worse in the case of Indian EVMs which are NOT indigenously made. The microprocessor and the embedded program are made by foreign companies. Elections in India have been compromised with unconstitutional use of EVMs.

Kalyanaraman

Uploaded by 91177info on Apr 18, 2011

Software programmer says US elections are rigged and that US Representatives tried to pay him to rig their election vote counts.

 

Islaam against Peace

Islaam against Peace

This clearly shows that Islaam has no interest in living with peace with any kafirs in any country.

All the Muslims of India subcontinent are the decendents of the Hindus who were forced to accept Islaam. Those Hindus who refused were slaughtered.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bukhari-calls-stir-anti-Islam-tells-Muslims-to-stay-away/articleshow/9690525.cms

 

NEW DELHI: Syed Ahmed Bukhari, Shahi Imam of Delhi’s Jama Masjid, has called upon Muslims to stay away from the Anna movement saying his war cry – Vande Mataram and Bharat Mata Ki Jai – are against Islam. 

“Islam does not condone the worship of the nation or land. It does not even condone worship of the mother who nurtures a child in her womb. How can Muslims then join his stir with a war cry that is against the basic tenets of Islam. I have advised them to stay away,” Bukhari told TOI. 

Bukhari, who is not perceived to be close to the Congress, may have inadvertently voiced the very concerns that Congress leaders have been expressing off the record about how Anna’s stir has isolated Muslims though none of them had ventured to make a public statement on this. The call has also reignited the centuries old debate of Vande Mataram being anti-Muslim. 

Even though Team Anna includes lawyers like Prashant and Shanti Bhushan who have taken up cudgels against Narendra Modi for his alleged role in the Gujarat riots, the Shahi Imam, one of the tallest Muslim religious leader, is critical of the movement because he feels that communalism and not corruption is the bane of the country. “If Anna had included communalism in his agenda, I would have been more convinced of his intentions,” he said. 

While questioning where Anna is getting funds to organize such a massive rally, Bukhari has accused Anna of indulging in politics at the behest of the RSS and the BJP.

Identity of a Nation

Mohan Gupta to S.Poshakwala9
show details 9:38 PM (12 hours ago)

 

Identity of a Nation

 

In one of his interview Dr. Subramanian Swamy said that in near future, Pakistan may break up. Then the interviewer asked him on what basis he thought Pakistan may break up. Dr. Subramanian Swamy reply was that since independence Pakistan has not given any identity to itself.

 

Bhaarat is an ancient nation and has identity as a Hindu Nation. But the congress party has neither acknowledged the Hindu identity of Bhaarat nor has spread this identity of Bhaarat in the world. Congress does not promote Hindu culture, Hindu traditions, Hindu festivals and Bhaaratiya languages like Sanskrit and Hindi.

Congress party and congress government do not propagate the development of a Hindu mindset.

            DNA has proved that the blood of all Bhaaratiyas may be Muslims, Christians and may belong to any other non- Hindu religion, but the blood of all Bhaaratiyas is same and the forefathers of all of them were all Hindus.

 

In his article How to wipe out Islamic terror, Dr. Subramanian Swamy has reminded all non Hindus that their forefathers were Hindus and Bhaarat is a Hindu nation and the non Hindus are also part of the Hindu nation. Swamy has said that Indian Muslims must either proudly accept and acknowledge their Hindu ancestors and legacy or be disenfranchised. To many that feels like hateful, communal prejudice.


In his article “Analysis: How to wipe out Islamic terror” he says –

* The terrorist blast in Mumbai on July 13, 2011, requires decisive soul-searching by the Hindus of India. Hindus cannot accept to be killed in this halal fashion, continuously bleeding every day.

* In one sense, I do not blame the Muslim fanatics for targeting Hindus. I blame Hindus who have taken their individuality permitted in Sanatan Dharma to the

extreme

* If half the Hindus voted together, rising above caste and language, a genuine Hindu party would have a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the assemblies.

* If one Hindu dies merely because he or she was a Hindu, then a bit of every Hindu also dies. This is an essential mental attitude, a necessary part of a virat (committed) Hindu.

* The second lesson for combating terrorism is that we must never capitulate or concede any demand, as we did in 1989 (freeing five terrorists in exchange for Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s daughter Rubaiya) and in 1999, freeing three terrorists after the hijack of Indian Airlines flight IC-814.

 

* The third lesson is that whatever and however small the terrorist incident, the nation must retaliate massively.

* Terrorist masterminds have political goals and a method in their madness. An effective strategy to deter terrorism is to defeat those political goals and to rubbish them by counter-terrorist action

* Remove Article 370 and resettle ex-servicemen in the valley. Create Panun Kashmir for the Hindu Pandit community. Look for or create an opportunity to take over PoK. If Pakistan continues to back terrorists, assist the Baluchis and Sindhis to get their independence.

* Remove the masjid in Kashi Vishwanath temple and the 300 masjids at other temple sites.

* Implement the uniform civil code, make learning of Sanskrit and singing of Vande Mataram mandatory, and declare India a Hindu Rashtra in which non-Hindus can vote only if they proudly acknowledge that their ancestors were Hindus.

* Enact a national law prohibiting conversion from Hinduism to any other religion. Re-conversion will not be banned.

* Propagate the development of a Hindu mindset.

* If the Jews could be transformed from lambs walking meekly to the gas chambers to fiery lions in just 10 years, it should not be difficult for Hindus in much better circumstances (after all we are 83% of India), to do so in five years.

* Guru Gobind Singh showed us how just five fearless persons under spiritual guidance can transform a society.

Fiery but largely a secret wish of most Hindus and also an increasing wish too. The following has been the twitter messages in support (best of them

——————-

If Dr. Swamy is a bigot, how come as he said in his own words, ‘his brother-in-law is Jewish, his son-in-law Muslim, his sister-in-law Christian and his wife Parsi’, One of his two daughters is married to an Indian Muslim with whom he has closest relations, how can he possibly be a bigot against Indian Muslims. India is the biggest victim of terrorism and since 2004, most of the terrorism is home grown.

 

There is much going on in India beneath the surface against Hindus and Hinduism, who are resilient, but not as aggressive as the Christians, Muslims and the
self-negative Hindus who have fallen into the anti-Hindu self-negative trap because of one reason or another (like inferiority complex, nepotism, sycophancy, vote bank, money lure, politicking fun, selfishness etc).

These are serious matters, and, not just hypothetical or theoretical. Western money, power, influence is on the side of the Christians, and, they want to use the Muslims to do half their job. The Muslims are aided by Middle Eastern powers and Pakistan. Pak army and isi are in league with England, USA and china and are rooting for themselves, and their glory, using Taliban etc. Taliban is brainwashed by Islam, and spreading terror everywhere, including pak and afghan. Europe and UK want to use the pretext of terrorism to enter countries and twist their arms, manufacture conflicts,  get admiration and gratitude for themselves, so that they can keep dominating the world stage which they have done since colonial days.

So, dr swamy has given vent to the feelings of Hindus to counteract the aggressiveness of non-Hindus on Hindus, who have now been forced to defend
themselves.

The non-Hindu reaction shows that they expect Hindus to be tolerant, graceful, and magnanimous, treat others with equality and respect, but when they behave aggressively against Hindus, they expect Hindus to bend over backwards and let them have their way. It is one-way from their point of view, they are higher and Hindus are lower.

Non-Hindus in India must have respect for Hindus, temples, Hinduism, and, understand that it is only because of Hinduism that foreigners have not been
able to create another Africa out of it or wipe out Indian culture, people, and civilization as happened in North America. That’s the essence of dr swamy’s
message.

Most common Indian Christians and Muslims are like any average common Indian or Hindu citizen, but those who were in power and influence positions have not been able to understand this and work co-operatively and meaningfully with them, and with Hindus. The foreign hands are fanning the conflicts and problems.

This “secular” language of politics, used in anti-Hindu way has come to India from the English language. Otherwise, Hinduism is the only truly secular religion that exists today.

Even the “science establishment” is non secular because they want to do away with religion altogether, having adopted Darwin’s evolution theory as their
only salvation. It is self-aggrandizement and ego, money, power, influence that is coming in the way of real pursuit of truth or scientific spirit and methodology.

Finally, dr swamy has also been a victim of psychological manipulation and targeting by the system in USA and in India. His academic career did not take off in USA nor in India, or he would be a big tenured professor or Nobel laureate. His political career was also scuttled; otherwise he would have become a bigger leader in India, because of his capability, charm and skills. This has happened to many others also, in academia, in politics, everywhere. in my view, there has been an anti-Brahmin, anti-Hindu, anti-India targeted program in place driven by uk and Europe, supported by behind-the-scenes elements in usa and Israel, to keep India down, to stop it from rising high on the global stage.

Let us wait and see what happens. Of course, all we can do is just our bit,  and, our share, like every other person. What we do and how we do it can have an impact or influence on others.

 

Subramanian Swamy says he is not hateful of Muslims and Christians at all. It is first of all factually correct that Muslims of India have DNA wise the same DNA as us. And therefore there is nothing wrong with them acknowledging that their ancestors are Hindus. If they say Hindus are not their ancestors, then who could be their ancestors? Now after all we created Pakistan for those Muslims who didn’t consider themselves separate and are not ready to live with their Hindu brothers.

In a recent article in DNA Subramanian Swamy has said that Indian Muslims must either proudly accept and acknowledge their Hindu ancestors and legacy or be disenfranchised. To many that feels like hateful, communal prejudice. Doctor Swamy a former Law Minister is a Harvard professor. He is at the forefront of the campaign to bring the 2G accused to justice as Criminal Police and Corrupt Politicians are dominating Bhaarat Country since Independence.

 

Why Britain Is Burning

Why Britain Is Burning

By Rakesh Krishnan Simha, August 2011 [ rakeshmail@gmail.com]

Source: http://www.esamskriti.com/

Chapter : 1Britain’s descent into chaos is a pointer to the fate awaiting people in Western countries if their governments strip down the welfare state that has sustained two generations of prosperity.

“My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift. I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need. I offer the advice with a heavy heart. Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift.”

These are the words of Anglican priest Tim Jones, the vicar of London’s St James Anglican Church, to his congregation two days before Christmas 2009. (No, Jones is not a liberal or an anarchist by any means. A staunch pillar of Britain’s establishment, he once launched a tirade against yoga, calling it a Hindu contrivance and therefore, against his concept of God.)

So what made this most English of British subjects, a representative of the Christian church no less, offer an exception to the 8th commandment? Simple – desperation. As Jones noted, “The life of the poor in modern Britain is a constant struggle….a constant effort to achieve the impossible. For many at the bottom of our social ladder, lawful, honest life can sometimes seem to be an apparent impossibility.”

Unequal society After decades of Thatcherism and Tony Blair’s crony capitalism, the wheels are coming off the United Kingdom. According to a Wall Street Journal report, approximately 20 percent of the UK’s population lives in poverty. Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper commented that “intergenerational poverty, rare in most countries today, is a factor in a notable British subculture.”

That, however, is only half the picture. The increasing frequency of riots across the country is a stark reminder that Britain remains one of the most unequal societies in the world.

In 2009 the Alan Milburn Report revealed an uncomfortable truth – the previous twelve years had seen a widening gap between rich and poor and a decline in social mobility, and that children from the poorer social groups now have less chance of getting into the elite universities and the top professions than children born in 1958.

The report also showed that the 7 percent of the population who go to private schools (oddly called public schools) not only still dominate British society, but their dominance is increasing. They produce 75 percent of Britain’s judges, 70 percent of finance directors, 45 percent of top civil servants and 32 percent of MPs. Commented The Guardian newspaper: “Behind its modern veneer, British society is determined by who you know, and who your parents are.”

In Britain today, there are 70 applicants for every vacancy. In a country where nexus rules, it is the kids who are not well connected who hurt must. Upper class parents, with their school and university contacts, can more easily get jobs and internships for their children.

Perhaps the only thing Karl Marx – who incidentally crafted his discredited theories in Britain – got right is that the most difficult thing a person can do is to break free from his class. In Britain, where your accent gives away your social standing, gentrification, or the improvement in social standing, has become nearly impossible for the permanent underclass.

Riots are inevitable in a country where the recession threatens to produce a generation of young people who have been trying and failing to get jobs, and have lost the will to work. And it’s likely to get worse; the Centre for Cities, a British think tank, projects that by late 2011, youth unemployment will nearly triple.

Political disconnect Britain hasn’t had a popular leader in decades. After the smarmy Tony Blair, Prime Minister David Cameron came to power after considerable horse trading following a fractured electoral verdict. Britain is therefore governed by a party which does not command the support of a majority of voters. The disconnect between the elites and the rest can be measured by the fact that both Cameron and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, were holidaying abroad and returned only after the country had endured three days of rioting.

Labour leader Ed Miliband stirred things up a bit by catering to the simmering class envy in the country. He taunted Cameron about his days as a member of the Bullingdon Club, “a raucous dining club for gilded toffs at Oxford with a track record of raucous, glass-breaking, food-throwing bad behaviour.”

Cuts that hurt While the old men jaw, the young men riot, spurred by the massive cuts in government spending, the hike in tuition fees, and the stopping of the measly $50 (approx) student stipend, especially at a time when the UK’s leading corporations have indulged in massive tax avoidance.

Much as the British elites would like to paint the rioters as unionised thugs or welfare hoons, the reality is they represent the struggling middle class too. As the Guardian reported, “The young, the poor, and disadvantaged will feel the cuts chill first, especially in the most deprived neighbourhoods and regions. But the healthy and wealthy will not be immune from the erosion of public space and collective provision, whether through the closure of public toilets, swimming pools, arts galleries, museums and orchestras, or the sacking of the park rangers that keeps public green space clean and safe.

“Grants will dry up, contracts will end, a third of charities will shut down, A&E and maternity units will start closing as waiting lists rise. Thousands more young people will join nearly a million already unemployed.”

Cuts to housing will see thousands end up sleeping on park benches and pavements.

Corruption and immigration Add corruption to that potent mix. The collusion of the police force with scumbag journalists is common knowledge to the outside world; less well known is corruption in the Mother of Parliaments. Britain’s MPs have used their various allowances to pay supermarket and video rental bills, or to buy houses while in fact staying with relatives, and in one bizarre case to have the moat cleaned at a private castle. Such scandals have severely undermined public faith in politics and politicians.

And of course there is the elephant in the room – a steady influx of immigrants, including uncountable illegals, that threatens to rip apart the country’s multicultural society. A large number of immigrants comprise Muslims who are notorious for ripping off Britain’s welfare system. Few are willing to assimilate but instead many have been known to join the jihad against the state that feeds them. The fallout of such unbridled immigration has resulted in the rise of the fascist right that now has two members in the European Parliament.

Sinking economy The cuts are perhaps inevitable. For, the recession has shrunk Britain’s GDP by over 5 percent. The ratings agencies are threatening to lower its AAA credit status, a move that could lead to a flight of capital. Ominously, Britain has a budget deficit that rivals that of Greece, and its national debt is soaring unsustainably.

Isn’t it hard to believe that this is the country preparing to host the 2012 Summer Olympics? It is debatable if Britain, which harbours many hardcore Islamic radicals and home-grown Muslim terrorists, is fully equipped to handle this new threat of civilian disrupters. The Games will also place additional financial burden on a country that can’t pay for basic public services!

Needed: New work culture At any rate, instead of playing sports Britain needs to get back to work. Its work culture – or rather the lack of it – has been parodied in the comic book “Asterix in Britain” in which Julius Caesar conquers the country by attacking only at tea-time and on weekends. Ratan Tata, the CEO of India’s Tata Group, has recently lamented about the work culture in Britain where the weekend starts after lunch on Friday. Tata acquired and turned round Britain’s Corus Steel, Land Rover and Jaguar, and it’s safe to assume that his British employees weren’t allowed to go home at midday.

For, the British must realise they are not competing with debt defaulting European cousins, but with powerhouses like China and India that have high growth rates inspite of not so good economic governance. The country’s position as a financial hub relies significantly on the back of foreign direct investment, much of it from Indians and Chinese. That tap may shut if the triple-A rating goes.

As their cities burn, for millions of Britons it must feel like the end of an era. But if they don’t turn around their country quickly, it could also be the beginning of another – irrelevance.

About the author: Rakesh Krishnan Simha is a New Zealand-based writer. He has previously worked with Business World, India Today, Hindustan Times, and was News Editor with the Financial Express.

 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

 

 

Hindu Americans Come of Age

Philip Goldberg

Interfaith Minister, author of ‘American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West’

Hindu Americans Come of Age

Posted: 8/8/11 07:58 AM ET

Last weekend I attended a conference in Washington sponsored by Hindu American Seva Charities (HASC), a non-profit established by Anju Bhargava, a formidable business executive and a member of President Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The conference was titled Enlivening Dharmic Seva: Impacting Change in America and Abroad. With a few exceptions, such as me, the 200 or so participants were Hindu Americans of Indian descent. There were keynote speakers, including former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford and White House staffers, and panels of experts expounding on a variety of themes. Mostly, it was about young people: American born Hindus, ranging from middle schoolers to recent college grads, with a passion for seva, a Sanskrit term best translated as selfless service.

The most surprising part of the weekend for me was the tribute to Hindus serving in the armed forces. These were not civilian software engineers at the Pentagon; they were warriors who had joined our volunteer military. I don’t know why this should have surprised me. After all, patriots from every new ethnic and religious group have done the same throughout the nation’s history. Perhaps seeing their proud faces atop snappy dress uniforms instead of kurtas or Nehru jackets shocked me into the recognition of their Americanness. The articulate strength and dedication of people like Lieutenant Colonel Ravi Chaudhary and Captain Pratima Dharm, the nation’s first Hindu military chaplain, was as moving as it was eye-opening.

The most inspiring part of the conference was the eighty or so Hindu American youngsters, whose intelligence, poise and determination made me feel hopeful for the future, despite the fact that, just down the road, the so-called adults who run the U.S. government were jeopardizing that future with their debt ceiling lunacy. I found myself wishing I could replace the Congressional leadership with those youngsters, who were bursting with creative ideas for making the world a better place. Footage of their confident speeches should be shown to anyone who doubts that America’s uniqueness is largely attributable to the continuous flow of energetic immigrants.

While in many ways the advent of Hindu Americans recapitulates the familiar immigrant story, it is also uniquely significant. Unlike Judaism, Catholicism and Islam, all newcomers to America at one time, Hinduism is not a variation on the Abrahamic tradition that arose in the Middle East and is rooted in biblical history and theology. It shares with other religions similar ethical principles, but it also represents a fundamentally different world-view. Beneath its colorful and much misunderstood iconography and rituals is a rational, pragmatic and uniquely pluralistic foundation centered on individual choice, inner spiritual development and union with the ultimate reality that goes by many names.

I consider this India’s great gift to the West. Others, of course, find it threatening. Some of the youth at the HASC conference told disheartening stories of ostracism, harassment and crude attempts at conversion by Christian classmates. This is as disturbing as it is difficult for teenagers to handle, and one hopes that corrective measures will be taken. At the same time, this too shall pass. After all, not that long ago many Americans thought Jews had horns and drank the blood of Christian babies on Passover. If Hindu youngsters avail themselves of their tradition’s own treasures, they will be able to respect the proselytizers’ religious convictions while at the same time cultivating inner peace and the capacity for skillful action through yogic practices. Over time, I’d predict that the ostracizers and would-be converters are more likely to be influenced by their Hindu counterparts than vice versa.

As I’ve documented in my book, American Veda, the core principles and practices of the Vedic heritage from which modern Hinduism derives have been seeping into the soil of America for over 200 years. The transmission has occurred through books, gurus and yoga masters, artists and musicians, scientists and scholars, and now it continues in subtle, mostly unintentional ways as Americans of Indian descent mingle with others in classrooms, workplaces and social settings.

No guru has ever asked a Westerner to convert to Hinduism, and neither would a Hindu friend or coworker; the very concept of conversion is anathema to Hindus. But ideas disseminate through friendly human interaction, and the result is often twofold: 1) misconceptions (e.g., that Hinduism is polytheistic or inherently caste-oriented) get cleared up, and 2) new ideas about spirituality, the self and the sacred get conveyed. As evidenced by the enormous interest in yoga and meditation, a large number of Americans have found the Indian model of inside-out spirituality to be quite compatible with modern life. Many have reoriented their own spiritual outlooks and practices accordingly, claiming it has made them deeper Christians, Jews or secular self-improvers.

So get ready for the next generation of Hindu Americans. We’re already familiar with Indian names in prominent places: Sanjay Gupta, Deepak Chopra, filmmaker Mira Nair, novelists like Anita Desai, PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi and too many Silicon Valley engineers and entrepreneurs to mention. Your doctor or lawyer might be of Indian descent. Now, accent-free, well-educated and thoroughly American Hindus will, like Jews and Catholics and Muslims before them, come to occupy a wide variety of professions, form a broad range of friendships and associations, intermarry and otherwise assimilate. As I jokingly tell my Hindu friends, one day they’ll even have their own Jackie Robinson/Hank Greenberg/Roberto Clemente moment, when a ballplayer named Patel or Bannerji or Coomaraswamy jogs onto the field of a Major League All-Star Game. I say we greet them all with a rousing Namaste.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-goldberg/hindu-americans_b_918930.html

 

DNA components confirmed to come from space

DNA components confirmed to come from space

Posted on August 9, 2011 – 04:29 by Emma Woollacott

The building blocks of DNA have been arriving here from meteorites in greater quantity than previously thought, lending weight to the idea that the seeds of life on Earth originated in space.

While certain components of DNA were first found in meteorites in the 1960s, scientists weren’t able to rule out the possibility that they originated from terrestrial contamination.

But a new analysis of a dozen meteorites has found that they contain the amino acids adenine and guanine – components of DNA nucleobases – as well as other molecules that are highly unlikely to have originated on Earth.

In two of the meteorites studied, the team found for the first time trace amounts of three molecules related to nucleobases that are almost never found in terrestrial life.

These nucleobase-related molecules, called nucleobase analogs, form the first strong evidence that the compounds in the meteorites came from space.

“You would not expect to see these nucleobase analogs if contamination from terrestrial life was the source, because they’re not used in biology,” says NASA astrobiologist Michael Callahan.

“However, if asteroids are behaving like chemical ‘factories’ cranking out prebiotic material, you would expect them to produce many variants of nucleobases, not just the biological ones, because of the wide variety of ingredients and conditions in each asteroid.”

This conclusion’s corroborated by a comparison of the meteorites with the Antarctic ice in which they were found.

Not only were the amounts of nucleobases found in the ice much lower than in the meteorites, none of the nucleobase analogs were detected in the ice sample. Similarly, a soil sample collected near one of the non-Antarctic meteorite’s landing sites also lacked the nucleobase analog molecules found in the meteorite.

The nucleobases appear to have been built within the meteorites through a non-biological process. Indeed, the team was able to replicate this in the lab through chemical reactions containing hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, and water.

“For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space,” says Callahan.

Source: http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/57764-dna-components-confirmed-to-come-from-space