US-funded NGOs spreading disaffection
US-funded NGOs spreading disaffection
By Sandhya Jain
The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data on the number of major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste Hindus.
Under the guise of human rights and freedom of religion, America has for some time been promoting certain activists from weaker sections, who regularly report to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, about India’s internal affairs. Now, American academics are synergizing their work with the political concerns of their government, seeking to aggravate and exploit differences in Hindu society.
The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data of a number of major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste Hindus, then it would know very well that it is the OBCs who oppose the entry of SCs/STs in temples. This kind of study by an outside agency is dangerously divisive, and a combative Hindu intellectual has countered that Indian intellectuals should in turn ask how many American churches attended by White people have Black priests.
In any case, since the Hindu tradition is not centralized in the manner that denominational churches are, it is unlikely that any such statistics would be available in Hindu society, and the concerned academics would certainly know this. They would also be aware that there are several gurus and paramparas in India today that are training SCs/STs as priests, should they desire to be priests. What is interesting to note, however, is that SC/ST desire to have temples with Brahmin priests, because they feel confident that they know the proper way to conduct pujas!
Another question is how many formerly lower caste Hindu leaders have a significant following among the other castes. Politically, Smt Mayawati is way ahead of all leaders in Uttar Pradesh, and in Bihar, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan has a certain following. In the spiritual tradition, one of the most important leaders is Ma Amritanandamayi, a woman from the fisherman caste, whose most loyal devotees belong to the upper castes. Thus, the tradition of overlooking the caste of a realized saint is very much alive in India. But I can’t think of a single significant Black politician in the United States who would be cultivated by White people; not even the late Martin Luther King, or a Hispanic or Native American spiritual leader with a White Anglo Saxon following.
Becoming more overtly political, the American scholars want to know how many SCs/STs figure on the VHP’s governing board. Here I think the more pertinent question would be how many such persons figure in the Congress Working Committee, especially as that party flourished for decades on SCs/STs support, and is today headed by a White European Catholic, whose Government is committed to such token affirmative action. Even more pertinently, since the Church has long evangelized most of the African continent, how many Black cardinals are there in the Vatican, and how many bishops in the Baptist, Adventist, Methodist and other churches?
The American scholars wonder why former weaker sections form separate sects of their own rather than with other castes; and whether they prefer to call themselves Dalits or Harijans in order to gain the respect of caste Hindus. It is obvious that the questions are more political than academic, and such studies are intended to promote the agendas of successive American administrations in interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.
Hindu society does not have sects; by definition, sects are splinter groups within monotheistic religions. I do not know if American Blacks are a separate sect or not, but it is a fact that covert discrimination even today compels them to have separate churches, and this apparently applies to other ethnic minorities in that country. Moreover, those minorities do not get respect by calling themselves Christian, but they get a political value by calling themselves Black, Hispanic, Korean, Chinese and seeking safety in numbers. Hindu society is a concentric circle of jatis, which are cohesive social groups claiming descent from a common ancestor, or some other common affinity. Thus, SCs/STs that adopted the Sikh faith constituted themselves into the Ramgarhia community, to distinguish themselves from their former Hindu brethren. Proliferation and distinction go hand in hand in India, and do not lead to disintegration or division.
In this context, it is worth mentioning that just as the dominant White Christians have failed to assimilate other groups on an equal basis in their own societies, despite converting them to their faith, so also in India the church has failed to uplift the weaker sections despite luring them away from Hindu society on the pretext of granting them social equality and economic mobility. The church has inflicted grievous injuries upon its constituents from weaker sections, forcing them to build separate churches or to sit in segregated areas of the church, take their dead to separate cemeteries, take holy water and communion separately.
Christian activists of weaker sections estimate that church institutions and Christian NGOs together receive approximately Rs. 2,500 crore of foreign aid annually, but there is no intra-community transparency regarding the utilization of these funds. Christian bodies earn huge incomes from elite schools, colleges and hospitals managed by them, as also from massive commercial properties they own in major cities. Yet weaker sections which comprise the bulk of the community get no share of its enormous wealth.
It is a travesty of justice that the church is now shifting the burden of its responsibility to the Indian Government and demanding reservation benefits for the weaker section Christians. The latter were misled away from the Hindu fold and then betrayed by denying them a just share in the church’s colossal resources.
According to Census 2001, there are 24.20 million Christians in India, more than half of whom belong to the weaker section of South India. Yet power in the Indian church is jealously guarded by priests belonging to upper castes. The 200-member Catholic Bishops Conference of India will never disclose the number of bishops or cardinals from weaker sections, possibly because there are none. The UPA government has done the rich Christian educational institutions a favour by exempting minority institutions from the burden of reservation quotas that have been (and are being) extended elsewhere, so they are literally without accountability to their poorer brethren.
By Sandhya Jain
The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data on the number of major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste Hindus.
Under the guise of human rights and freedom of religion, America has for some time been promoting certain activists from weaker sections, who regularly report to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, about India’s internal affairs. Now, American academics are synergizing their work with the political concerns of their government, seeking to aggravate and exploit differences in Hindu society.
The American Academy for Religion (AAR) has sought data of a number of major Hindu temples in India that are patronized by caste Hindus and have ex-untouchable priests. This is doubly mischievous because if AAR means OBCs when it talks of ‘caste Hindus’ as opposed to upper caste Hindus, then it would know very well that it is the OBCs who oppose the entry of SCs/STs in temples. This kind of study by an outside agency is dangerously divisive, and a combative Hindu intellectual has countered that Indian intellectuals should in turn ask how many American churches attended by White people have Black priests.
In any case, since the Hindu tradition is not centralized in the manner that denominational churches are, it is unlikely that any such statistics would be available in Hindu society, and the concerned academics would certainly know this. They would also be aware that there are several gurus and paramparas in India today that are training SCs/STs as priests, should they desire to be priests. What is interesting to note, however, is that SC/ST desire to have temples with Brahmin priests, because they feel confident that they know the proper way to conduct pujas!
Another question is how many formerly lower caste Hindu leaders have a significant following among the other castes. Politically, Smt Mayawati is way ahead of all leaders in Uttar Pradesh, and in Bihar, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan has a certain following. In the spiritual tradition, one of the most important leaders is Ma Amritanandamayi, a woman from the fisherman caste, whose most loyal devotees belong to the upper castes. Thus, the tradition of overlooking the caste of a realized saint is very much alive in India. But I can’t think of a single significant Black politician in the United States who would be cultivated by White people; not even the late Martin Luther King, or a Hispanic or Native American spiritual leader with a White Anglo Saxon following.
Becoming more overtly political, the American scholars want to know how many SCs/STs figure on the VHP’s governing board. Here I think the more pertinent question would be how many such persons figure in the Congress Working Committee, especially as that party flourished for decades on SCs/STs support, and is today headed by a White European Catholic, whose Government is committed to such token affirmative action. Even more pertinently, since the Church has long evangelized most of the African continent, how many Black cardinals are there in the Vatican, and how many bishops in the Baptist, Adventist, Methodist and other churches?
The American scholars wonder why former weaker sections form separate sects of their own rather than with other castes; and whether they prefer to call themselves Dalits or Harijans in order to gain the respect of caste Hindus. It is obvious that the questions are more political than academic, and such studies are intended to promote the agendas of successive American administrations in interfering in the internal affairs of other countries.
Hindu society does not have sects; by definition, sects are splinter groups within monotheistic religions. I do not know if American Blacks are a separate sect or not, but it is a fact that covert discrimination even today compels them to have separate churches, and this apparently applies to other ethnic minorities in that country. Moreover, those minorities do not get respect by calling themselves Christian, but they get a political value by calling themselves Black, Hispanic, Korean, Chinese and seeking safety in numbers. Hindu society is a concentric circle of jatis, which are cohesive social groups claiming descent from a common ancestor, or some other common affinity. Thus, SCs/STs that adopted the Sikh faith constituted themselves into the Ramgarhia community, to distinguish themselves from their former Hindu brethren. Proliferation and distinction go hand in hand in India, and do not lead to disintegration or division.
In this context, it is worth mentioning that just as the dominant White Christians have failed to assimilate other groups on an equal basis in their own societies, despite converting them to their faith, so also in India the church has failed to uplift the weaker sections despite luring them away from Hindu society on the pretext of granting them social equality and economic mobility. The church has inflicted grievous injuries upon its constituents from weaker sections, forcing them to build separate churches or to sit in segregated areas of the church, take their dead to separate cemeteries, take holy water and communion separately.
Christian activists of weaker sections estimate that church institutions and Christian NGOs together receive approximately Rs. 2,500 crore of foreign aid annually, but there is no intra-community transparency regarding the utilization of these funds. Christian bodies earn huge incomes from elite schools, colleges and hospitals managed by them, as also from massive commercial properties they own in major cities. Yet weaker sections which comprise the bulk of the community get no share of its enormous wealth.
It is a travesty of justice that the church is now shifting the burden of its responsibility to the Indian Government and demanding reservation benefits for the weaker section Christians. The latter were misled away from the Hindu fold and then betrayed by denying them a just share in the church’s colossal resources.
According to Census 2001, there are 24.20 million Christians in India, more than half of whom belong to the weaker section of South India. Yet power in the Indian church is jealously guarded by priests belonging to upper castes. The 200-member Catholic Bishops Conference of India will never disclose the number of bishops or cardinals from weaker sections, possibly because there are none. The UPA government has done the rich Christian educational institutions a favour by exempting minority institutions from the burden of reservation quotas that have been (and are being) extended elsewhere, so they are literally without accountability to their poorer brethren.
posted by Inquiring Mind at 11:53 PM
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