Hindu Threat to Christians: Convert or Flee

Source: The New York Times

BOREPANGA, India — The family of Solomon Digal was summoned by neighbors to what serves as a public square in front of the village tea shop.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/world/asia/13india.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

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horrible

Some crazies are more dangerous than other crazies.

Off the top of my head:

- 6 million people, mainly Jews, massacred by Protestant and Catholic Christian Nazis in Europe, 1939-1945

- Estimates as high as 1 million Christian Orthodox Serbs massacred by Catholic Croatia's USTASHI secret police units in WWII, solely due to their religion

- Tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims killed by Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat Christians during the Bosnia War, 1991-1995; also massacres of Serbs by Croats and Croats be Serbs in the same war, all solely due to the other side not being the same Christian faith (or Christian at all) as compared to the aggressor

- A still unknown number of Kosovar Albanian Muslims massacred by Serbs during the period 1990 to 1999 in Kosovo

- Hundreds (probably thousands) of Northern Irish Catholics killed by Northern Irish Protestants, and vice versa, during 'The Troubles,' also solely based on the other side's religion

I'm sure I'm missing a few dozen more...

Many a rabid US fundie will read this story and turn green with envy.

Julie

I can understand. Not right. Not good. But understand.

than the Christians are.

the Christians they hate are former Hindus who were "low caste" and treated like crap so they converted. and the asshole Hindus of the higher caste don't like it as they want to continue treating people like shit.

that you have never ever seen Hindus proselytizing anywhere on this planet.
Sp.

proselytizing would be much better than that. i'm not saying all of them murder people. but that proselytizing would be better than murder.

I think it's a gene thing. If your genes tilt to the right... Well, you get my drift.

be trying to force Christians to "re-convert." Many of the Christians came from the ranks of Hindu untouchables. Some of these Hindus apparently want them to remain in their place.

(I do realize that officially the caste system is no longer recognized. But old habits die hard.)

...arose mostly in the late seventies and early eighties, hand-in-hand with the BJP, with one eye on Khomeinei's Iran as an explicit model.

The long history -- five hundred years in the case of the Roman Catholics in South India, fifteen hundred years in the case of the Nestorian Christians -- of Hindu-Christian co-existence is going to be overthrown for transient political advantage.

Christian vs. Christians, or Hindu vs. Hindus (as opposed to -ity and -ism, which doesn't match)

I often point out the behavior of some Christians doesn't seem very Christian. Thus, when I said, "That doesn't sound very Hindu..." Well, you get my drift.

Ask a Buddhist

Gandhi would be absolutely ashamed of India if he saw this. As a Hindu I'm sickened by this.

HIndus can be and are.

Although Gandhi probably didn't realize that he was getting shot by a hindu. Sadly there is so many hotheaded ignorant religious types there that until India could make education affordable and accessible for everyone there, this type of violence will probably increase for decades to come.

but they just don't want to invest in it. there is so much corruption there, especially with the politicians. of course these politicians want to keep people stupid so they will vote for them , kind of like the Republicans here.

Could not have put that any better

He denounced the caste system and anti-Muslim feelings throughout his career.

What would the Mahatma do?

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ”
:puke:
My parents are Hindus (well kind of...ok not really-they were never very religious) and they think these people should be in jail. This is probably a place where some hard right religious party like the BJP or VHP is in power though and that won't happen.

A fundie is a fundie is a fundie.
Whether they claim to be monotheistic or polytheistic
They're all essentially the same.

It's the 21st century. This shouldn't be happening.

I am one hundred percent against persecuting, or discriminating against anyone for her/his religious beliefs. I have been hurt emotionally by christians, but realize, if I lived in another country where Islam or Hinduism or any other dominant religion was around, I probably would have been discriminated against by those people also. Religious zealotry is the problem. Religious certainty is the problem. When a poorly developed human is fearful he or she will damn others who do not conform to his or her ways. This is part of dealing with animalistic humans. These peoples of the world have not found enough understanding to rise above their prejudices. There is hope, but definitely it is dependent upon the individual to find out things for her or himself. Ignorance is not removed by others, usually, but by the individual. Most ignorant individuals will actually hate you, and attack you, if you try to correct them of their mistakes.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iPymL-hVi6Dx5wNQkEyMi7Q1IUFwD93HT4SG0
India struggles with Hindu attacks on Christians
...
Ramachandra Guha, a historian, sees the trouble — particularly in Karnataka — as a display of political strength by right-wing Hindus.

The violence there, he noted, began just months after the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party that is now India's main opposition group, rose to power in the state government.

"It's a flexing of muscles by the Hindu right-wing," Guha said. The BJP is in the mainstream, he said, but when it won power in Karnataka its followers "at the extreme end of the spectrum felt they could do what they want."
....

...and I've been living here pretty much full-time for the last 2 1/2 years.

Sadly, anti-Christian sentiment has been on the rise, but seems to be strongest in very specific places, especially where poverty is highest. I truly don't mean to belittle the problem, but it almost seems like a fad, not at all unlike the way some Fundamentalist groups in the US suddenly decide they're "under threat". The recent spate of violence though was triggered after the death of a Hindu spiritual leader; official reports say it was Maoists (yes, really), but for some reason many believe instead it was Christians who did it.

However, for over 15 years now Orissa has been a place where the Christians have been under a lot of pressure, especially at certain times of the year. This really isn't news, not for Orissa state. There's also tension near Goa, on the west coast. Both of these places were, in the last century, heavily influenced by Christian missionaries.

What is news is that the violence has spread to about a half dozen other locations, including some (such as Bangalore) which were previously thought to be very tolerant.

The complaint is the same: The majority Hindu population feels threatened by Christian evangelicalism and proselytizing. The claim is that Christians are bribing Hindus through catechismal schools and social service. In other words, they've developed a kind of persecution complex, and feel that Hinduism is threatened by predatory Christian conversions. So they do it back, burning down Churches and forcing Indian Christians to renounce their faith.

What's important to remember is the nature of Indian culture and the importance of family obligations and traditions. Here, they truly do believe that if you are born to a Hindu family, you are honor-bound to be a faithful Hindu your whole life. Same if you're born into a Muslim family. You are your ancestry. To them, the whole idea of conversion, of not following the faith of your fathers and mothers, is morally repugnant. So many, especially in areas not greatly influenced by internationalism and foreign cultures, believe the Indian culture itself must be defended from invading ideas.

And then turns to violence, which of course is wrong. But they do it. I'm seeing the same kind of "hate the other" feelings being ginned up by the McCain/Palin campaign.

When a people are poor, when they have little hope, they look for someone nearby -- someone different than themselves -- to blame for their troubles. Sounds rather familiar, doesn't it?

The major difference between India and here in the US is the extent to which the flames of this hatred are fanned - and the extent to which such crimes are prosecuted, and the laws are enforced.

Here we see Palin doing some of it, but we don't see the violence as India, but of course we don't see the poverty as well. It's more difficult for politicians to rile up people quite that same way. India is insanely complex and the multitude of religious groups is mind boggling. Keep in mind that this baggage goes back hundreds of years (and in the case of casteism and whatnot - possibly a few thousand).

What's clear is that the government, both local and national is doing little to stop this violence. India has many laws on the books against ethnic/religious/caste persecution but little is obviously enforced due to corrupting influences. Hopefully the national government will start to crack down on what's happening.

Religion - which arose to give hope where there was fear, succor where there was sorrow, power where there was powerlessness, answers to questions unanswerable - was quickly seen as the best way subjugating and ruling, of separating US from THEM.

Yes, from 'that one' over there.

"A curse on him who is lax in doing the LORD's work! A curse on him who keeps his sword from bloodshed!"
(God: Jeremiah 48:1)

Allegedly taken by Pope Gregory VII as his motto.

Sadly, he did not pick a different voice from the Lord:

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
(God: Galatians, 6:7)

And he (Greg, not God) died in exile. I believe the he later was promoted to Saint.

Again, Greg, not God. God has shown that He is no Saint; no more than any True Believer of any religion.

Christians have sown the wind ...

Intolerance is inherent in...humans. Including you, blaming victims.

Many people do not seem to realize that religious intolerance is common in many places in the world - not only places that some in the United States would like to bomb.

And religious tolerance is a relatively new idea in most of the western world.

I don't agree with everything that Karl Marx said, but in this case, it might be closer to the truth than we (collectively) want to accept.

Like I told my father, who was a fundie paster for years before he passed away... "It's not God I have an issue with... it's his fan club".

I think the opiate of religion has been effectively and efficiently replaced by the opiate of I-pods, DVDs, and computer games. Seems to me that many more more people turn on, tune out, and level up farm more hours a day than lean on religion these days... :shrug:

They're just so goddam cute!

:wtf:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/muslim-children-gassed-at_b_130076.html

Friday, September 26th ended a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West -- the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail -- were distributed by mail in Ohio. The same day, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to -- Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.

I read the story as reported by the Dayton Daily News, but this was after I had received an email written by a friend of some of the victims of these American terrorists. The matter of fact news report in the Dayton paper didn't come close to conveying the horrific impact of this unthinkable act like the email I had just read, so I asked the email's author for permission to share what they had written. The author was with one of the families from the mosque -- a mother and two of the small children who were in the room that was gassed -- the day after the attack occurred.

Her and her witch-doctor religious guru -- that's what they want to do in the US.

A fundie is a fundie is a fundie.

It's a new story today?!?!??

:shrug:

After CENTURIES of Christians doing this exact same thing to other cultures and religions, it's a little hard for me to feel very sympathetic.

hindu nationalism/fundamentalism is on the rise in india.

nothing good comes of religious fundamentalism

also these christians were downtrodded hindu's, who only converted because they were the untouchable caste.

the history is complicated, and the future doesnt look so good

the poor are mad and the politicians are steering them into this divisive hatred. instead of doing anything to ameliorate poverty or wealth disparity