RATIONALIST INTERNATIONAL

Bulletin # 43  (27 July 2000)

 

 

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Sanal Edamaruku, President of Rationalist International can be contacted at: Edamaruku@rationalistinternational.net

 

 

IN THIS ISSUE:  ARE CHRISTIANS REALLY PERSECUTED IN INDIA?   INDIA: UNIVERSITY COURSES FOR HINDU RITUALS AND ASTROLOGY !   NEW HONORARY ASSOCIATES OF RATIONALIST INTERNATIONAL  ISLAMIC DRESS CODE FOR FOOT BALLERS  IRANIAN REFORMIST  LEADER BACK FROM JAIL  PHILIPPINES: MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISTS KILL CHRISTIAN CIVILIANS  JAPAN: AUM CULT  LEADERS SENTENCED TO DEATH  UDANDA: TOTAL NUMBER OF CULT MASSACRE VICTIMS 780

 

 

 

ARE CHRISTIANS REALLY PERSECUTED IN INDIA?

 

The veracity of the tales of the Christian persecution in India has become a cause of dispute among different Christian churches in India.

Sometime back it was left to the Indian Rationalists to set the record straight regarding the alleged persecution of Christians in India. We presented our considered view in articles and interviews (and in more than one issue of this bulletin) that most of the cases which hit national and international headlines were either misleading like the famous case of one raped Christian nun among thousands of women and children in India, who become rape victims without any public notice, or they are concocted and faked. In many highlighted cases the media would give a small correction after some days, that, for example, not only the murder victim was a Christian, but also the murderers -which make them simple criminal cases without any communal relevance.

The National Minority Commission of India under the chairmanship of Justice Mohammed Shamim has meantime systematically investigated reported cases of Christian persecution. The commission's Christian member John Joseph  spoke to Sanal Edamaruku about the results and gave information about the background of the international campaign.

"The recent wide-spread campaign in the West that the Christians are persecuted in India is nothing short of colorful lies, half-truths or highly exaggerated stories unleashed by Indian Christian NGOs and missionary groups to mobilize Christian donor agencies to open their wallets," said John Joseph in the exclusive interview which appeared in Kerala Sabdam, a widely circulated news weekly of Kerala,  where a considerable Christian population lives. It triggered a series of public reactions. Several Christian groups and leaders who do not make a living from the financial support from western donor agencies came out openly against the campaign of the Christian NGOs. Christian persecution in India is a favorite theme for many western churches including the Roman Catholic Church, which invest huge sums of money and efforts in India for promoting religious conversions.

John Joseph argued that out of the huge number of crimes happening in India, a large country of a billion population, systematically cases are picked up in which  a Christian priest or church are involved. They are isolated from their background and presented as stories of persecution, by vested interests. Those cases are to be handled by the police and the law and order machinery of the government. Presenting such isolated cases as Christian persecution is not in the interest of even Christians. The inflow of money from the West to the Christian organizations has increased considerably since the beginning of this campaign.

With the systematic campaign of the churches, missionary groups and Christian NGOs about persecution of Christians in India, the Christian community is under the grip of fear and suspicion. John Joseph also expressed apprehensions that a section of the Christians motivated by the stories of "persecution" may resort to militancy. There are reports from some areas that efforts are already on to form Christian militant outfits with  financial and technical assistance from outside the country. Missionary groups promoting militancy  are cunningly planning to bag dollars showing martyrs. Bloodshed may be a sad outcome of this development, he warned.

John Joseph, Christian representative in the three-member National Minority Commission, is a devout Christian and son of one of the founders of the Pentecostal movement in India.

Meantime the metropolitan (equivalent to archbishop) of the Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church, Joseph Mar Gregorios, also spoke to Sanal Edamaruku in an exclusive interview and asserted that he did not believe that Christians are persecuted in India. The Jacobite Syrian church has nearly two million members in India and is one of the oldest churches in India. It has a long tradition of friendly co-existence and mutual support with Hindus. The Catholic church, seeing the United Christian Front in the persecution question  cracking and breaking, reacted sharply to the public position taken by the Jacobite Syrian bishop. The official spokesperson of the Catholic church, in an angry statement, ridiculed the Jacobite Syrian church as a sect and fringe group with limited following.

There is resistance at several parts of India against the aggressive conversion drive of evangelical groups and the Catholic church. There are also isolated cases of violent response from local communities against the Christian groups using poverty and unemployment to influence conversion. Recently there was a series of minor bomb blasts, which damaged some churches in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka states. Police inquiries revealed that a Muslim cult having connections in Pakistan has been behind these blasts. There are allegations that Pakistan, in order to weaken India and to tarnish its image internationally, is behind these bomb blasts. There are also reports about public demonstrations in Pakistan alleging that Christians are persecuted in India.

 

INDIA: UNIVERSITY COURSES FOR HINDU RITUALS AND ASTROLOGY !

Sanal Edamaruku, Secretary General of Indian Rationalist Association, sharply criticized the proposal  of the chairman of University Grants Commission (UGC) of India to start professional courses for Hindu ceremonial rituals and superstitious pseudo-sciences like astrology in universities. "The proposal is ridiculous and demands condemnation," he said in a press statement released at New Delhi and demanded that the proposal  be immediately withdrawn and the UGC chairman sacked. "Universities are meant for developing the faculties of knowledge and wisdom, and scientific outlook shall be their foundation. The plan to train students to perform primitive ceremonies and rituals and to teach astrology with the public funds available to the UGC amounts to crime against Indian society. It is against all genuine interests of Indian educational system" - said Edamaruku. "The chairman of the UGC has proved with this move that he is not qualified for the position that he holds. It shall be in the interest of Indian university education that the chairman of the UGC is removed from his office", asserted Edamaruku.

 

The proposal to open departments for astrology and karam kand (Hindu ceremonial rituals) in universities has been discussed at a meeting of the UGC and the UGC chairman announced on 24th July that it would introduce courses for them in universities soon. "Vedic astrology is getting very popular abroad", he suggested,  "and this was a golden opportunity to export Indian culture and create well paid jobs abroad."

Edamaruku, reacting sharply to the UGC proposal said that the digging up of the degenerated elements of the Indian heritage and to present Hindu ceremonial rituals and astrology as Indian culture would present India primitive in the eyes of the world. Science and technology are opening up new horizons and a new civilization is in the making all over the world. The efforts shall be to cope up with the challenges of the New World and to promote scientific temper. Indian universities are starving for funds and diverting resources that are badly required for scientific education to train Hindu ritual celebrants and priests is irresponsible and not tenable for a pluralist secular society. Edamaruku called upon the universities and academicians to take up the matter seriously to stop the move of the University Grants Commission.

 

 NEW HONORARY ASSOCIATES OF RATIONALIST INTERNATIONAL

Since the last issue of the Rationalist International Bulletin, two more world-renowned rationalists have joined Rationalist International as Honorary Associates. They are (alphabetically)  Helena Cronin (UK) and Lavanam (India). The Honorary Associates who joined earlier are: Katsuaki Asai (Japan), Prof. Colin Blakemore (UK), Prof. Vern Bullough (USA), Dr Bill Cooke (New Zealand), Prof. Richard Dawkins (UK), Joseph Edamaruku (India), Jim Herrick (UK), Christopher Hitchens (USA), Prof. Paul Kurtz (USA), Taslima Nasreen (Bangladesh), Steinar Nilsen (Norway), Prof. Jean-Claude Pecker (France), James Randi (USA), Dr Jyoti Shankar (meanwhile deceased) (USA), Prof. Harry Stopes-Roe (UK), Prof. Rob Tielman (Netherlands), Jane Wynne Willson (UK) and Prof. Lewis Wolpert (UK).

 

ISLAMIC DRESS CODE FOR FOOT BALLERS

A team of young Pakistani football players from the border town of Chaman, on a recent visit to Afghanistan for a friendship match, have been arrested on a playground in Kandahar by Taliban’s religious police. Before sending them back to Pakistan, their heads were forcefully shaven as a punishment for violating the Islamic dresscode: the players were wearing shorts.

 

 

IRANIAN REFORMIST  LEADER BACK FROM JAIL

The Iranian reformist movement got one of its prominent intellectual leaders back. Mohsen Kadivar, close confident of President Mohammad Khatami and one of the fathers of the movement, has been released from jail on 17th July after serving an 18-month jail term for political and religious dissent. He was convicted in August 1998 by the Special Court for clergy, which is independent from Iran’s judiciary and in the hands of hard-liners which enjoy the trust of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The conviction of Mohsen Kadivar in 1998 had sparked student protest in Teheran and other cities. The legality of the Special Court for clergy was openly challenged in liberal newspapers. While in jail, Kadivar remained a hero of the movement, his name was frequently invoked in demonstrations. In the parliamentary elections in February this year, in which the reformists got majority, Mohsen Kadivar’s sister Jamileh gathered the second highest number of votes, obviously due to her proximity to her jailed brother.

 

 

PHILIPPINES: MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISTS KILL CHRISTIAN CIVILIANS

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which is fighting for an independent Muslim state in the south of the Catholic dominated Philippines, has according to army reports killed 21 Christian civilians in the town of Bumbaran on the island Mindanao. A troop of 100 armed rebels had seized 29 persons, among them a pregnant woman, and kept them as their prisoners in a mosque in Bumbaran, later they shot them dead. Eight people escaped. The Muslim rebels denied the report and blamed the army for the killings.

 

 

JAPAN: AUM CULT  LEADERS SENTENCED TO DEATH

Two leaders of the Japan AUM Shinrikyo or Supreme Truth cult have been sentenced to death for their role in the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo underground, which killed 12 people and injured thousands. Another cult member had already been sentenced to death one month before. The convicted cult leaders admitted that they had been spreading the nerve gas Sarin by carrying it in plastic bags into trains and puncturing these bags with umbrellas to release the gas. They refuted, however, personal responsibility for the deed, claiming that their minds had been controlled by cult supreme leader Shoko Asahara who masterminded the attacks.

The AUM cult had predicted the end of the world. When the prediction did not come true, they tried to take things in their hands and contribute to its realization with mass murder. Besides the gas attacks they planned to manufacture automatic rifles for their members.

 

 

UDANDA: TOTAL NUMBER OF CULT MASSACRE VICTIMS 780

The Ugandan police has completed the investigations about the doomsday cult massacre and mass suicide in March this year. The final number of victims has risen to 780.

In March, hundreds of members of the so-called Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, had been burned alive in a church in Kanungu in western Uganda. After this event, the police discovered several graves throughout the country which contained corpses of recently killed people. All traces led to the cult leaders, who are believed to have murdered more than 400 of their followers, when they realized that their predictions that the world would end at the beginning of the years 2000 did not come true. The last grave with 55 corpses was discovered in a house in Kampala at the end of April, which had been rented by one of the cult leaders.