Reply to Mr.Faqi Hussain
Reader comment on item: Musharraf's Historic Speech

Submitted by a [keen] student of islam (India), Sep 28, 2005 at 10:52

If Mr.Faqi Hussain really believes what he wrote, he needs to study the missionary and his motives far more closely and objectively. "Service" is a cunning front for the real agenda of proselytization and subsequent denationalization. I state what both Gandhi and Ambedkar felt about this.

Paul McKenna had this to write about Gandhi's view:

"Indeed, Christian missionary efforts seemed to amount to a Europeanization and a denationalization of India. Gandhi saw little in the Christian missionary project that impressed him. And when he spoke to missionary groups (as he often did) he did not hesitate to tell them so. ‘Unfortunately, for the last 150 years, Christianity in India has been inextricably mixed up with British rule. It appears to us as synonymous with materialistic civilization and imperialist exploitation... Its contribution, therefore, has been largely of a negative character.' "
[http://www.scarboromissions.ca/Scarboro_missions_magazine/Issues/1996/April/gandhi_christian_mission.html]

Gandhi is also on record to have stated: "The great educational and curative institutions of Christian missions I also count amongst indirect results, because they have been established, not for their own sakes, but as an aid to proselytizing." [http://hvk.org:8088/specialrepo/mkg/]

And this is what a biographer of Ambedkar wrote: "Further, being a nationalist to the core of his heart conversion to Islam and Christianity for Ambedkar, would have meant denationalization of the scheduled caste people and contrary to national interest." [Ambedkar - http://www.buddhismtoday.com/english/world/figure/002-ambedkar.htm]

How many non-"Hindu-Right-Wing" web pages would Mr.Hussain like me to cite to show that evangelization - not alleviation of human misery - was the primary intention behind most tsunami relief work undertaken by missionary organizations? It is true that "missionaries go where the need is", but that "need" is always defined by hard calculation of prospective evangelization, not by the nature or extent of the calamity. Human misery does not move missions (Mother Teresa would not have denied sanitized conditions and pain killers to her dying inmates if it did). The possibility of gaining converts does. Humanitarian work of missions is a medium for the sole agenda of mass proselytization, and indigence resulting from misery its mainstay. And that's what's wrong with evangelism. It might be interesting to find out, on this backdrop, how many of these so-called "God's workers" went to New Orleans (where scope for conversion is zero) in the aftermath of the Katrina devastation. Despite all those skeletons that have begun issuing with increasing frequency from its closets, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity still commands illogical and unreasonable respect of many gullible persons. Perhaps Mr. Hussain might be able to tell us how many millions of dollars, out of the enormous material wealth Agnes had amassed and now stashed away in banks all over the world, were spent on Katrina relief work.

Tampering with national stability, unity and integrity, and undermining the rightful cultural heritage of victim populations (the "unreached" as they are sanctimoniously called) is an unforgivable offence meriting the severest censure. If the Manmohan Singhs can't take steps to fight it, the Dara Singhs are going to. A commercial enterprise might be pardoned for doing similar things because its declared aim is profit maximization. But the shocking aspect of Christian missions is that they are allowed the gumption to prosecute their abysmally non-spiritual skullduggery IN THE NAME OF GOD!

Mr. Hussain needs to delve with some honesty under the subtle camouflage of missionary subterfuge to realize how severely this kind of "service" is undermining the Indian nation. The entire North East of India is now not only Christian, but also a hive of secessionist activity precisely for that reason. That much for most "missionary service" and "goodness"!

He mentions the missionary, proselytizing nature of Christianity as if it enjoys grateful universal sanction! Truth cannot be subject to exclusive possession of any single individual, group, doctrine or nation. It is universal. Moreover, it is both verifiable and demonstrable, like the laws of nature and the behaviour of the material world. Mixing hydrogen and oxygen WILL - and EVERYTIME - always give only water. But you cannot say with even a semblance of conviction that you WILL go to heaven IF and ONLY IF you surrender to Christ, much less that you WILL go to hell if you don't. But this, or something like this, is what ALL proselytizing religions claim. God, heaven, hell, salvation are, all of them, perfectly hypothetical concepts that may never be proved. They are matters of INDIVIDUAL belief, or "faith", and cannot justly be imposed universally upon mankind as truth. Thus, the foundation and entire superstructure of missionary proselytization is illogical, unsound and wholly wrong. If there is anything like "sin", these religions are guilty of it! Fraudulently claiming veracity for patently unsound postulations and forcing them down the throats of hapless victims is the very epitome of knavery of the most despicable kind.

Proselytization isn't the same as change in conviction. The one is motivated by material considerations, the other by sublime ones. If there are instances in the West of conversion to the indigenous Indic view (there is nothing called the "Hindu religion", by the way), it is most certainly and without exception of the second kind. Proselytization is performed with armies of SOLDIERS AND PREACHERS, backed by enormous funds and adequate state support. Change in conviction is brought about by TEACHERS with very modest means, no state support and usually acting alone. That is the big difference. Because Hindu "religion" is happily free from the clutches of a single book and a single prophet, there is no question of inducing someone to convert to it, either by distributing literature or otherwise. And to regard yoga, meditation and vegetarianism as "symptoms" of Hindu proselytization is ludicrous at best! No one in his right mind goes out and vandalizes a perfectly non-provocative initiative that is actually known to have even tangibly improved the lives of those willing to try out its prescriptions.

I am not perturbed by the names Mr. Hussain calls me because he obviously does so out of ignorance or incorrect information. But I certainly feel sad that there are many people like him, even in our enlightened times, who are so completely brainwashed into trusting missionary mendacity that they venture to even enthusiastically defend it in the face of truth!

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