The Communist Clergy: Africa & Japan (5/5)

The Communist Clergy

5/5

AFRICA & JAPAN

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AFRICA

The missionaries usually equated non-western cultures with degradation, barbarism, ignorance and darkness - Robert Moffat

Robert Moffat was a Scottish missionary known for his efforts to improve local living standards in Africa. His son-in-law was the missionary-explorer David Livingstone (1813–73). This is how theological history would like to remember him. In reality, he took land that belonged to Africans and enslaved them. His son-in-law David Livingstone believed that the missionary work had an important cultural role of leavening the alleged primitiveness of African society with Christian western culture. They both wanted Africans to denounce their culture and adopt western ways, progressively becoming a clerical class.

According to 1990 estimates, 41% of Africa's 550 million people were Christians. The percentage is much higher in countries south of the Sahara. Sub-Saharan Africa is predominantly a Christian continent. The expansion of Christianity in twentieth-century Africa has been so dramatic that it has been called 'the fourth great age of Christian expansion'. 1 in 5 of all Christians is an African.

The missionaries who visited Africa considered the traditional religious beliefs and traditional customs inferior. It had to be done away with before the acceptance of Christianity. They specifically targeted rulers to expand their influence significantly. The missionary pioneer was the imperial pioneer.

Missionaries taught their converts to associate colonialism with Christianity, civilization and the overwhelming superiority of European weapons and warfare. Efforts were focused towards weakening the traditional authority, its values, being and potential, and thus, they supported the colonial process in their evangelization drive. They insisted that their converts to Christianity should also adopt the western cultures as part of their religious life.

John Philip of the London Missionary Society who worked as a missionary in South Africa in 1820 and as superintendent of the London Missionary Society in South Africa until 1850, argued that the source of the problem in Eastern Cape was not the wickedness of the Xhosa, but that both the Boers and British farmers had taken their land. The expulsion and displacement of the amaXhosa from their original ancestral land was a wound that went deeper than the struggle for agricultural land, as the land was associated with the burial places of revered ancestors, and kraals served as temples for sacrifices and other rituals. Sub-Saharan Africa has known diseases and epidemics that plagued the people of this region for centuries before the introduction of medical science. In African thought, good health is regarded as equal to life itself, which is why health is among the highest aspirations of black Africans. Christian missions have introduced western medical, surgical, and public health methods. It is true to say that the African health landscape changed for the better, there was a decline in child and maternal mortality rates, and an increase in the life expectancy of all Africans.

Another level at which the impact of Christianity proved to be detrimental was its undermining of women's roles in religious leadership. The missionaries' preferred a model of the family that was ‘male breadwinner, dependent housekeeping wife and mother, dependent school-going children’. Women were socialised to accept that a woman who took on the masculine role of participation in public life was considered to have renounced the feminine virtues of silence, reticence, modesty and most significantly, chastity.

In South Africa, racial discrimination started in the church itself. In the 19th century, certain Dutch Reformed members' discriminatory behaviour led the Dutch Reformed Church to introduce separate Eucharist services severely compromising African human dignity. This decision was founded on the demeaning misconception, held by some white missionaries and their masters, that Africans were either sub-human or animals.

Missionaries such as W.C. Willoughby claimed infallible superiority of the white race, culture and religion. They claimed to smooth cultural contact between the colonizers and the colonized. Any idea of social and political equality between the Bantu and the Europeans was unthinkable. The modus operandi was to create a servile clerical class. Missionary education was used as a great weapon to confuse people's minds, it reinforced colonialism. It became an instrument to destroy people's cultural values. Missionaries were seen as forming part of the new trading and political network that was spreading from the south. The mission stations were situated close to the local Chief's settlement. They gradually became trade centres, thus building a network of nerve control.

BOTSWANA

Botswana was monotheistic from time immemorial, believing in a single Supreme Being called Modimo, literally meaning the one who is supreme and above. Missionaries forcibly made Tswana religion resemble a morass of bizarre beliefs and practices of a people generally believed to be savages and primitive (the opposite of the missionaries who represented European civilization). John Campbell, the pioneer of Tswana missions, saw the 'great end' of the London Missionary Society to be 'the conversion of the heathen and the promotion of their civilization.' Botswana was subdued by colonialism education and trade. Its impact softened the hearts of Botswana towards Europeans and consequently brought them under their power and influence.

While missionaries were responsible for introducing young people to reading and writing skills, as well as teaching women sewing, baking, hygiene and the nursing of the sick missionary education those educated in missionary schools received a western-styled education which did not aim at preparing them to be political leaders of their country, but at taking up subordinate positions in a colonial system. Access to missionary education was controlled by the missionary bodies themselves. To receive education one had to become a Christian and adopt western values of dress etc. Missionary education, therefore, was first used as an agent of change. It was to destruct and reconstruct African culture, tailored to own needs.

JAPAN

Christianity touched Japan in 1549 when Francis Xavier arrived with a group of missionaries in Kyūshū. He had been made in charge of the Goa Jesuit mission back in 1541. The visitors were impressed with Japan. Kyushu became the hotspot for lordly conversion. He returned to Goa two and a half years later to resume missionary duties in Bharat. The first big fish was lord Omura Sumitada (1533-1587) who held territories in northwestern Kyushu. In 1570, Sumitada opened the port of a small fishing village, Nagasaki, to the Jesuits.

The Jesuits found their first most powerful ally in Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), the first of Japan’s great unifiers who began to patronize the Christians for Portuguese guns and cannons. Nobunaga never converted, but he certainly had no love for Buddhist institutions either. He had spent eleven years fighting the ikko-ikki, a type of militant Buddhist group. In January 1597, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a Japanese Daimyō and Japan's second great unifier, had 26 Christians arrested, tortured, mutilated, paraded and executed in Nagasaki by public crucifixion.

In 1614, Tokugawa Ieyasu commanded the missionaries to leave the country at once. Japanese converts were ordered to renounce their faith. Anti-Christian measures became harsher under the third Tokugawa shogun, Iemitsu, who took power in 1623. The last straw was the Shimabara Rebellion of 1638, a Kyushu peasants protest marching under the Christian banner. It brought a blood-soaked end to the 'Christian century'.

The main driving force behind Christian proselytization in 16th-century Japan was the Jesuit trade. Economic activities brought huge profits to Daimyō (feudal lords) but also involved the missionaries in the supply of weapons. The missionaries were political figures with important economic and military influence. They rapidly developed a powerful faction that was impossible to ignore and grew extremely intolerant of Japan’s existing religions.

The unyielding Jesuits even tried adopting local customs. They limited their meat consumption but they couldn’t be persuaded to bathe daily as the Japanese did. There were generally hostile relationships between them and the Buddhist clergy. They often accused Buddhist monks of being lazy and sodomites. The Buddhists thought the Europeans were spreading lies.

The Meiji reformation in 1868 bred a new Japan. Its forward march into Westernization, modernization and “civilization” could hardly exclude Christianity, though it could not put many dents. Japanese chose to stay true to their roots out of respect for ancestors. This was a result of the loyalty which was weaved in Japanese society. They do not care whether God exists or not. No wonder Xavier and his Japanese hosts misunderstood each other.

The Communist Clergy: North America (4/5)

The Communist Clergy

4/5

NORTH AMERICA

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Christian missionaries promoted strategies to transform Native American communities in the Great Plains of North America. Missionary contact with Great Plains tribes increased during the nineteenth century. Organized in 1810, the interdenominational American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) led the way among Protestant missionary organizations.

In 1819, Congress established a "civilization fund," appropriating $10,000 annually to support assimilation programs for Native Americans. Missionaries exerted little influence over tribal members during early interactions. Christian ministers often lived on the hospitality of tribal leaders. Nineteenth-century missionaries arrived in the Great Plains with little experience in intercultural relations. Religious emissaries were drawn from Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Mormon, Episcopal, Quaker, and other denominations. Many had extensive educational backgrounds by nineteenth-century standards. In the plains, they endured harsh weather, epidemics, limited support, and cultural isolation. They proved incapable, however, of recognizing the vitality of Native American societies. Instead, their culturally tainted vision saw tribal members as "lazy," "childlike," and "corrupt" members of "offensive" cultural traditions. Some missionaries disagreed on whether they should first promote Christianity or "civilization" within tribal communities. None questioned the premise of advocating both.

Missionaries found no single assimilation formula that would work for all Native Americans. The effectiveness of programs varied even within divisions of the same tribe. In the 1830s, Jesuits recognized a failed mission to the Potawatomis in Council Bluffs, Iowa, at the same time that they recorded success with Potawatomis at Sugar Creek, Kansas.

Missionaries did not always practice truly Christian behaviour. President Ulysses Grant's "Peace Policy" (1869) restricted reservations to a single Christian denomination, reinforcing denominational competition for tribal support. Self-serving actions often came at the expense of tribal interests. During the 1860s, Baptists colluded with federal agents to defraud Ottawas of thousands of acres of their east-central Kansas land under the guise of creating an Indian university.

Why did tribal members seek relationships with missionaries? Some recognized the spiritual power of Christian emissaries. The Blackfoot, for instance, described eminent Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet as "the man who talks to the Great Spirit." Others saw missionaries of different denominations as potential allies, capable of supporting them against unpopular federal agents and assimilation programs. After their removal to Kansas in the 1820s, Ohio Shawnees sided with Baptist missionaries while relatives from Missouri cultivated the support of Methodists. On the Lakotas' Pine Ridge Reservation in the 1880s, American Horse's people generally turned to Episcopalians while Red Cloud's folk allied with Jesuit Catholics. In this way, missionary support reinforced preexistent tribal divisions.

Over time, Native Americans across the Great Plains incorporated Christian traditions into their tribal identities. Missionaries erred, however, in their estimation that they could replace tribal traditions with Christianity. On the Omaha Reservation in Nebraska, prominent La Flesche family members claimed elements of Presbyterian tradition that did not clash with their tribal identities. Some contemporary Native Americans choose to blend tribal traditions with Christianity by praying to Jesus in a sweat lodge and the Great Spirit in churches. Other Native Americans see no need for religious exclusivity. They distinctly practice tribal, Christian, and Native American Church traditions throughout their lives. Many contemporary tribal members still essentially ignore Christian traditions.

Missionary practices changed in tone during the twentieth century. By the 1920s some Christian denominations grew more tolerant of certain tribal traditions. Following World War II, urban ministries arose to work with tribal members drawn to cities for economic and educational opportunities. The later decades of the century witnessed declining ministerial staff and revived interest in Native American communities, leading to increased missionary alliances. Ironically, many contemporary clergies grow increasingly involved in tribal rituals, to the point of suggesting potential Christian "conversion" to Native American traditions.

The Communist Clergy: South America (3/5)

The Communist Clergy

3/5

SOUTH AMERICA

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South America is home to nearly half of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, but there had never been a South American pope until Pope Francis. He won because the Vatican had been anxious about the dramatic decline of Catholicism across the region in the last decade. Mexican journalist Diego Cevallos has noted that what the Vatican had once seen as a “continent of hope,” is now thought of as a “continent of concern.” According to Brazil’s 2010 census, 65% of the population is Catholic, down from over 90% in 1970. Similarly, between 2000-2010, the percentage of Mexicans that identify as Catholic dropped from 88% to <83%, the largest fall recorded to date. If these trends persist, by 2025 about 50% of all South Americans will be Catholic, down from approximately 70% today. Such a decline would offset any gains the church might make in its new continent of hope, Africa.

The history of South America is important to understand the 'Liberation Sympathy' of Christian churches. The pioneering missions in South America were led by Catholic Jesuits. John Crow, Professor Emeritus of Spanish at the University of California, Los Angeles, held in his book ‘The Epic of Latin America’ that the Jesuits were inspired by St. Thomas More’s Utopia, and chose the jungles of the New World in which to fulfil More’s prophesy.

After Portugal won independence from Spain in 1640, Philip IV granted the Jesuits’ request to arm the Indians of South America. Jesuits formed a formidable fighting force comprising of Native Indians against the Portuguese. Without this force, great parts of Uruguay, Bolivia and Paraguay might even now belong to Brazil. In 1754 the Paraguayan Fathers revolted against a Spanish-Portuguese boundary treaty. In Peru, Jesuits were accused of terrorizing Indians and depriving them of land, wages, women, children and personal freedom. Militant radicalism had grown gradually. The Bourbons also cited widespread smuggling, graft, cheating and general lawlessness. Jesuits were expelled in 1767 as a part of foreign and domestic administrative reform under the Bourbons. As an official explanation, the monarchy cited the need to “bring local Jesuit power to an end and assert royal power in their stead.” In 1767, there were barely 2200 Jesuits in all of Spanish America, 'taking care' of 7,00,000 Native Indians.

The removal of the Jesuit influence brought on a series of local uprisings. The revolt at Asuncion grew into the Antequera revolution. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Jesuits began to defend their Indian charges and their rights against the authority of Spain. Finally, after the rupture with landowners, Pope Clement XIV dissolved the order in 1773. Without the Jesuits, dissatisfaction over military recruitment, ever-increasing taxes and the Indians’ hatred for their Spanish magistrates came to the surface. John Gunther stated that the Catholic Church grew rich and decadent in America. Paraguay became practically a Jesuit colony.

In Chile, in 1856, violent controversy erupted over the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts. In Argentina, Catholic Action became associated with nationalism, anti-communism, social reform and even became linked with Italian Fascism. The Church was slow to respond to the industrialized world. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII addressed the Church to the industrialized world. He deplored laissez-faire capitalism, materialism, and the atheistic aspects of socialism.

A Brazilian Catholic theologian, Hugo Assman, held that the Christians were searching for substance rather than a structure in religion. The Church made “positive acts of witness” as processes of the liberation of the laity. Christ became “true” because he laid down his life for his people and committed a positive act. Christian participation in the struggle for liberation became a major act of faith. God stopped existing in fixed institutions. The theology of revolution attempted to define the revolutions to come. The revolutionary theologian started using theology to provide concrete ideas and strategies of revolutions.

Karl Schmitt wrote in ‘The Roman Catholic Church in Modern Latin America’ how the period from 1830 to the present has been characterized by Church-state conflict. Clericals wanted the continuation of special rights. Anticlericals supported free, secular, universal education. Anticlericals wanted the abolition of Church courts. In liberation theology, the biblical motif of Exodus is mentioned frequently concerning the process of liberation in South America. The theology of liberation is linked to the process of conscientization, a jarring of moral wrong into awareness, hence the revolutionary zeal.

BRAZIL

In 1991, a group of missionaries from New Tribes Mission UK were expelled by the Brazilian governmental protection agency for isolated and recently contacted tribes - National Indian Foundation (FUNAI). New Tribes Mission UK (NTM) had been successful in establishing contact with an isolated indigenous tribe of Zo’é people. New Tribes Mission has since changed its name to Ethnos360 (E360). Far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro is overseeing a new push to spread Christianity among Brazil’s indigenous people. UN special rapporteur termed his zeal 'genocidal'. Ricardo Dias worked as a missionary for NTM between 1997-2007 where he pledged to convert every last “unreached people group” on earth.

Today, Dias has access to detailed information on 107 isolated tribes, including monitoring and location studies of “voluntarily isolated” tribes. Some of these tribes managed to evade missionaries until now, but their paradise was lost long ago. Christian missionaries need “martyr” for the greater good, and somehow that is okay too. The recent case of missionary John Allen Chau who was killed by a Sentinelese arrow neatly illustrates the path of radicalization. People who are delusional behind divine mandates can easily justify cruel means to genocidal ends. There’s little that tempers such zeal.

As recently as in 2018, a missionary-evangelist Manoel de Oliveira was handed a 3-year prison sentence for enslaving Zo’é people of Amazon at his cashew nut plantation. The reader must never lose sight of the two ironies that lie herein - the deliberate use of the word 'Indian' for indigenous people as in the name FUNAI, and the vast difference between the sentences of 58 years and 3 years given to the two criminals. Missionaries are helped by colonial laws. Tribal genocide is an inescapable Christian colonial legacy. Our turbulent history haunts us still.

E360 is a militant missionary group of 'Rapture believing' Christians who think returning Jerusalem to the Jewish people is a key to 'the second coming of Christ'. This belief is a key driver of both evangelical support for Israel and attempts to missionize uncontacted peoples. It calls for “finishing the task” of relentlessly shoving Goebbelsian gospel in gullible throats. E360 has appealed for donations to buy a helicopter to evangelise isolated indigenous groups in western Brazil near the Peruvian border. They require the chopper to reach the Javari Valley, “the darkest, densest, hardest-to-reach place in all of South America", which is home to the highest concentration of uncontacted tribal groups in the world.

The Communist Clergy: Liberation Theology (2/5)

The Communist Clergy

2/5

Liberation Theology

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“The theologians are becoming Communists and the Communists are becoming theologians” – Cuban dictator Fidel Castro



The Second Episcopal
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the Second Vatican Council or Vatican II, addressed relations between the Catholic Church and the modern world. It is this Council where a section of the traditionally traditionalist Christian clergy officially started moving to the Left in the political spectrum by adopting socialism, some going as far as to adopting ''radical'' views. These Leftist Bishops soon met at Medellín, Colombia in Second Episcopal Conference of Latin America in the year 1968. They issued the manifesto of a church committed to a much-needed, long-delayed "social transformation" of Latin America.


The Medellin document spoke of 'External Neocolonialism', alluding mostly to the USA, hence they called it externality. Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalisation and cultural imperialism to influence a developing country. The document spoke of the countries which produce raw materials, particularly the ones dependent on singular major export (like Ethiopia-Coffee beans), always remain poor, while the industrialized countries enrich themselves by robbing them. The language was political, bordering on revolutionary, and very far left from what the Vatican's position.


What is Liberation Theology?
Britannica defines Liberation theology as a religious movement arising in late 20th-century Roman Catholicism and centred in Latin America. It sought to apply religious faith by aiding the poor and oppressed through involvement in political and civic affairs. Liberation Theology revolves around - poverty, dependency, exploitation, conscientization, and revolution.



Father Segundo, an Uruguayan liberation theologian went as far as to claim that socialism constitutes the highest real value, at the ''theological crux", reducing the Gospel to ''no value at all.'' Liberation theologians claim all four Gospels are equally communist. Defenders of liberation theology maintain that most libertarian clergymen are neither atheist nor materialist, and they are generally careful to avoid or to modify concepts of class hatred, violence and ''class struggle.'' They claim they are merely raising the awareness of the structural causes of poverty and their faith commitment leads them to use the insights from Marxist critiques of society.



How does the Vatican feel about it?
A Peruvian theologian and Dominican priest named Gustavo Gutiérrez was the founder of a progressive movement within the Catholic church, known as Liberation Theology. There were suspicions that Gutiérrez was being investigated for Marxism by Pope John Paul II’s doctrinal czar Joseph Ratzinger, who would go on to become Pope Benedict. The current Pope Francis (First Latin American pontiff and a Liberation Theologian) did a striking salsa move towards the Left. He brought the Far-Left political tenets of Liberation Theology to the fore, particularly by his pronouncements against the blight of poverty and the dangers of capitalism.



The Vatican is the chief guardian of the Catholic faith. Taking a political position by super-institutions like the Vatican will result in the defeat of the democratic institutional checks and balances. The presiding Pope during the Second Episcopal Conference in Medellín was John Paul II. He was a secular man in private despite being a traditionalist authoritarian Pope in office. He strictly maintained that religion must transcend politics, thus he opposed Liberation Theology vehemently. Many Leftist Bishops claimed that they would not reduce everything to revolutionary praxis to no avail until 2015, until Pope Francis.



Q - Why is Liberation Theology wrong?
A crucial condition for genuine liberation is that no one group of men gains all power over politics, economics, morals and culture. The hard-earned separation of systems serves a purpose, it provides liberation. As the world proves more often than not, theological states are far from liberty. It is also wrong because -

(1.) Liberation Theology is divisively political. It is centred around socialism perched on the slippery slope called Marxism. The logical fallacy of slippery slope says that what one generation accepts provisionally hardens into icy dogmas for a next-generation brought upon nothing else.
(2.) It has no theory of wealth creation. Nothing is said about creating new wealth, about invention, about entrepreneurship. Government is the possessor of the red tape.
(3.) It supports the abolition of private property. This notion recurs as the crucial theme of virtually all liberation theologians. Most tend to have a naive faith in socialism, despite scores of socialist experiment failures around the world since 1945.
(4.) Most Liberation Theologians are so intent upon revolution against the injustice that they give no thought to the shape of the institutions of political economy they intend to put in place after the revolution.
(5.) Liberation theology gains its excitement from flirting with Marxist thought and speech, and from its hostility to the dominance of the geographical global North.


Q - How does Bharat affect Liberation Theology?
Liberation Theology encounters two solid cultural problems here in India.

1. India has long emphasized personal, familial piety, but not much social action or public responsibility. Majority of Bharat worships family values. A large section believes that the idea of an ideal society resembles the Ramayana's Ramrajya. Bharat possesses a better organised Liberation Theology theory with some millennia under its belt. We call it the Avatar concept and it is one of those universal theories which know no barriers, even in a red-taped society like Bharat.
2. The poor in Bharat are strangely both the most oppressed and the most religious. Happily, it is still the poor who think of Gods more frequently. Sadly, poverty makes Bharat vulnerable, which allows missionaries to operate with impunity. This is where Bharat must bring laws to check External Neo-colonialism led by missionaries.
   

The Communist Clergy: India (1/5)

The Communist Clergy

1/5

India

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Swami Vivekanand recounted at Parliament of Religions in Chicago -

“I remember, as a boy, hearing a Christian missionary preach to a crowd in India. Among other sweet things he was telling them was that if he gave a blow to their idol with his stick, what could it do?

One of the hearers sharply answered, “If I abuse your God, what can He do?”

“You would be punished,” said the preacher, “when you die.”

“So my idol will punish you when you die,” retorted the Hindu.”

It is funny that God would require Christian missionaries to go on expeditions trying to civilise lands that have birthed and sustained many major, more complex religions than Christianity. Missionaries love poor as much as they love thanksgiving turkeys. At present, tribals are simmering. We see the signs in Pathalgadis and Palghars. One of the major reason behind this simmer is the rise in the church led Marxist militancy. It is a venom slipped with the ORS but God watches everybody. God knows how missionaries function as arms of the Christian colonialism, mostly powered by money, racism and poverty led vulnerabilities. God knows how godmen are fickle, turning the divine lordly compassion into senseless hate upon facing simple logical fallacies.

This blog is divided in five parts, each detailing church behaviour in different geographies with different sets of natives. Somehow they all follow similar patterns. Readers can follow this sequence -

(1/5) India

(2/5) Liberation Theology

(3/5) South America

(4/5) North America

(5/5) Africa & Japan

In my opinion, missionaries should research the concepts of Anubhuti, Avatar, Ashram, Moksha and Samadhi before they slander Hinduism. The word ashram itself comes from the Sanskrit root Srama, which means ‘making an effort towards liberation’. It also means total pursuit, full dedication, ‘tireless striving stretching its arms towards perfection’. It is only when they have understood these concepts well, that they can begin to see the fallacy of their missions.

God can hear missionaries calling non-coreligionists ‘uncivilised’ and kill worthy, for a simple refusal to accept supremacy. While polytheistic religions find abandoning of rituals alarming, monotheists are alarmed by something as puny as ego. But there is not much one can do about zealots, they have the temerity to call other people 'savages' after flooding them with opium in China, enslaving them in Africa and genociding them in Bengal. Zealot and militant missionaries can not be reasoned with. Any attempt to parley is a sheer waste of time. I feel the Japanese were correct in dealing with missionaries. By the end of this series, there is a tiny possibility the reader may agree with me.

On 16th April, three people were lynched by a tribal mob in Gadchinchli village of Dahanu taluka in Palghar district, Maharashtra. The murder is on tape, and the policemen look visibly scared. Three days before this incident, a couple of on-duty doctors were attacked and held hostage in a nearby hamlet, Kasa. Upon research, I found a storm brewing. Bharat is a miracle democracy. It remains the only instance of a smooth transfer of powers between two democracies, from an unwritten constitution to a written one. Bharat's colonial experience, however, is living proof of how democratic systems based on colonial laws are doomed to sow seeds of discontents. For example, Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRI), formalized in 1992 by the 73rd amendment to the Indian Constitution was based on the recommendations of the LM Singhvi Committee (1986). The idea was to establish village republics. Such mini-republics would have meant greater devolution of governmental powers but they would have also lead to further accretion of power in hands of the few, the privilege loop would have kept turning. Privilege in rural India is a network of village heads who rule by custom or consent. Today, the Gram Sabhas are slipping under the influence of militant Marxist, NGO or theological groups. The unfettered power to profess under Article 25 of our Constitution is an abuse of constitutional guarantees. Radical Marxist missionaries have long left the realm of God to tread on revolutionary roads. In ecclesiastical parley, it is called 'Liberation Theology'. The current Pope is a promoter of this shiny new radical concept.

Western colonial concepts don’t fit India well. The whole paranoia around Secularism is hyped. Frankly, crusaders and conquistadors need not teach secularism to a civilisation that has been polytheistic all along. It is only the Monotheists who require such childish underlined statements. Such attacks have come since time immemorial. Hindus tolerated it all out of decency. A global pandemic is testing this decency as I write this blog. Fortunately, lands east of the Radcliffe Line chose to stay loyal to ancestors. As far back as in 1954, MA Ayyangar correctly identified that “cultural aggression is more disastrous than armed aggression." In July 1956, C. Rajagopalachari was speaking out against proselytisation. Prime Minister JL Nehru wrote to the president of the Christian Council in India, "The question of foreign missionaries in India is not considered by us for Christianity but for foreigners coming to India.”

The Niyogi Committee Report had put it succinctly, "Evangelisation in India appeared to be part of a uniform world policy to revive Christendom, to re-establish Western supremacy and was not prompted by spiritual motives. The objective was to disrupt the solidarity of the non-Christian societies, with danger to the security of the State. Enormous sums of foreign money flow into the country, and it is out of such funds that the Lutherans and other proselytising agencies were able to secure nearly four thousand converts. Missions are in some places used to serve extra-religious ends. As conversion muddles the convert’s sense of solidarity with his society there is a danger of his loyalty to his country being undermined. Vile propaganda against the religion of the majority is being systematically and deliberately carried out to create an apprehension of breach of public peace. There has been an appreciable increase in the American personnel of missionary organisations in India. This increase is due to the deliberate policy of the International Missionary Council to (exploit) opportunities opened in newly independent countries by mass evangelism through the press radio and television."

Q - How does the Marxist-Church-NGO nexus work?

We take recent cases of two distinctively different tribal regions situated at two diametrically different directions in Bharat.

(1.) Dahanu taluka, Palghar, Maharashtra: The Kashtakari Sanghatana is a Liberation Theological Missionary in the shape of an NGO, founded by a Marxist zealot Peter D'Mello and his two associates named Nicholas Cordazo and Sushila D'Souza in the tribal belt of Dahanu region of district Thane, Maharashtra. The Liberation Theology activists blended the catholic techniques with Marxist economic philosophy to give a new direction for their movement in favour of the poor, also they believe in the second coming of Jesus.

In early 1976, Peter D'Mello organised a ten-day youth festival of tribal youths at Ashagad in Dahanu taluka 'to make them conscious of their rights and responsibilities and prepare them for organising struggles against their exploitation.' He also wanted to promote literacy and adult education on the lines advocated by Paulo Faire, a Marxist revolutionary educationalist from Brazil. Paulo Friere was a radical catholic leader who believed that literacy has a potential role in empowering the marginalised groups to engage in political action aimed at resisting the inequalities in society. He preached a philosophy that taught the oppressed classes the political and economic contradictions in the society which created the existing exploitative system and empowered them to challenge and fight against the oppressive system.

Kashtakari Sangathan chose Dahanu Taluka as a tactical decision just like Naxalbari district was chosen in 1967. Reasons were twofold -

1. The dominant tribal group are Warlis who constitute about 60% of the tribal population in the area. Other tribal groups present in the area are Katkaris, Konkanas, Mahadeo Kolis, Vanjaris, Dhodis and Dubalis. The terrain is mostly plain with vast forest areas in the interior region, offering protection just like Naxalbari's proximity to Jungle stretches of Darjeeling.
   
2. The Dahanu-Jawhar tribal belt in the district Thane has been a communist stronghold since 1945 because of the good work done first by communist leader Shamrao Parulekar and later by his wife Smt. Godavari Parulekar after his untimely death. In 1964 when the communist party split into CPI and CPM, Godavari Parulekar along with her supporters sided with the CPM and since then the area remains a citadel of the CPM.

The Sanghatan's missionary zeal was incited by the decision of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) which allowed missionaries to get involved in radical movements by organising rural poor, and which had led to the emergence of Christian action groups in South American Countries. The Kashtakari Sangathan has grown increasingly intolerant since its inception. The Sanghatana began maintaining that Adivasis had a separate ethnic identity with their separate gods, religious customs, etc. and they needed to maintain the same, the Sanghatana cautioned them against getting misguided by Hinduism. It began holding kangaroo courts to deliver instant justice to Adivasis who were victims of cheating by shopkeepers, money lenders, etc. The accused were not only fined by such courts but also forced to apologise to the victims.

Quick justice delivered a positive impact on the shopkeepers' attitude to the Adivasis and helped the Sanghatana in expanding its influence, coming to a confrontation with CPM. In 1980 Lok Sabha elections, CPM and Sanghatana workers agreed to a truce. It was a quid pro quo transaction which turned heavily in favour of Kashtakari Sanghatana. It wanted to befriend the CPM. For CPM, it was just an opportunistic alliance to get some additional votes, For Kashtakari Sanghatana, it was an opportunity to get recognition and acceptability among local Adivasis.

Peter D'Mello adopted a Hindu name, Pradip Prabhu. He started attacking Hindus in the area. The Kashtakari Sanghatan started attacking members of the Mahanubhav Panth or the Malkaris, a very conservative Vaishnav sect. About 1500 Adivasi families in some of the villages in Dahanu taluka located near Maharashtra-Gujarat border are followers of this sect. They are called Malkaris because of the tulsi bead necklace (Vaishnav mala) they wear. The followers of this sect are strictly vegetarian and don't consume alcohol. They don't even take food or water from the households of non-vegetarians.

There had been multiple attacks on Malkaris by Peter D'Mello since 1998. He claims the Sangathan is opposing the Malkaris have insulted ancient tribal Gods and cultural traditions by adopting new Gods. In reality, the animosity is a result of the fact that Malkharis cannot easily be converted to Christianity.

Somebody should have long stopped Peter D'Mello the militant Marxist Liberation Theologian missionary and asked who gave him the right to attack a group violently on behalf of another. His monopoly of violence in Dahanu Taluka and Kashtakari Sanghathan's authority to hold people's court could not have possibly claimed divinity in a secular democracy.

Peter D'Mello's Kastakari Sangathan joined hands with another missionary, Thomas Kocheri, a Liberation Theology evangelist to scuttle of Vadhavan Port project in Thane district. CPI (Maoist), CPI-ML (Kanu Sanyal), CPI-ML (Janashakti) and CPI-ML (New Democracy) have already accepted liberation theology as an international Marxist movement and have absorbed many of the Liberation Theology activists as their cadres. All these left extremist outfits are also linked with CPM Maoist group of Nepal. Peter D'Mello, a missionary has emerged as an ideologue of the Naxalite movement in the country. For instance, his campaign demanding 'Forest Panchayat' and Self Rule for tribal areas in the country with all administrative powers for forest dwellers have now been adopted by CPI (Maoist) as their main goal.

(2.) North-East India: The Church in Manipur is hardly 70 years old. The first missionaries were Italian missionaries of the Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB). When the Indian government asked foreigners to quit, missionaries from south India, particularly from Kerala state, came and established the Church. The Catholic Church arrived in Manipur 40 years later and then came the Protestants who are largely Southern American Baptists and Presbyterians who was Liberation Theologians. Against any attack on Christian interest, they are all united but relations turn sour when it comes to evangelization or what is called sheep-stealing. The density of churches in North-East has led Manipur to evolve a system of village-based Churches.

The Catholic Church cannot enter where there is already a Protestant Church, it disturbs ecumenical relations. The story of the Exodus experience in The mission of Miriam and the midwives (Puah and Shiphrah) in Exodus 1:15-21 is touted throughout North-East as an example of God’s mission for the deliverance of the weaker sections of people from the physical struggle in society. Naga churches expanded their mission involvement to socio-economic reforms.

Two factors influenced the church to take this step -

1. It was one of the after-effects of the revival movement. The ‘revived’ churches began to think of reforming society.
   
2. Development of tribal theology was inspired by the global Liberation Theology movement and gave ‘tremendous emphasis to liberate all kinds of oppression.

Today, there are nearly 10 lakh Christians, loyal to the 18 churches of North-East India. The entire population of North-East is 24 lakhs. Church leaders claim their numbers are increasing every year. The major concentrations are among the Khasi and Garo tribes of Meghalaya, the various ethnic groups in Nagaland and the Mizos of Mizoram. The Baptist Church claims the largest denomination in the northeast. It is concentrated in Nagaland and parts of Assam and Meghalaya. The Presbyterians are strong in Mizoram and among the Khasis of Meghalaya. The Catholic Church came to the north-east region about 100 years ago. Today, the Seven Sisters have 15 dioceses, and about 50% of them have native bishops.

There are smaller, local sects like the Church of God, which was formed at the beginning of this century by a former member of the Khasi Presbyterian Church. It has a membership of about 15,000 and emphasizes the need for moral and spiritual change. Khasis are much affected by Liberation Theology. Other denominations include the Unitarians, the All Saints Church, which is affiliated with the Anglican Church, and the Seventh-day Adventists.

In the 1960s, the Indian Government threw foreign missionaries out of North-East because they were troubling local politics and the promoting growth of separatist movements. Leftists put pressure on the Government by alleging that mission workers had links with Western intelligence agencies. Anthropologists and administrators criticized the church among the hill tribes of the northeast, alleging that missionaries had disrupted traditions and brought alcoholism, corruption and debt to the region. Unlike other parts of Bharat, Christians are a religious majority in the states of Meghalaya and Nagaland and the territory of Mizoram. Economic power is retained by Hindu traders which leads to frequent xenophobic hostilities.

Q - How powerful is this nexus exactly?

• Peter D'Mello used to deliver lectures on Tribals and their problems at L.B.S. National Academy of Administration for IAS probationers as a guest lecturer since the early 1980s. He has always been very close to all Directors and most of the faculty members of Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) since last three decades as also with many senior IAS officers and other bureaucrats in the country.

• On July 26, the Assam Christian Forum, convened an emergency meeting to express anxiety over the haste shown in the 'imposition of an unstudied and unreflected education policy on the people of India'. "Not a single word about the significant contributions of Christian missionaries in providing and making quality education accessible to the maximum number of people has been mentioned in the entire voluminous draft New Education Policy (NEP) 2019. The development has shocked the entire Christian community. We, in the Northeast, have reasons enough to suspect that there is an inherent design in the NEP to spell doom the contributions of missionaries towards education”, the spokesperson of Assam Christian Forum rued to the press.

The forum was miffed that National Education Policy 2019 had not mollycoddled the contribution of Christian evangelist missionary ego. This meeting was attended by leaders from the Catholic Church, Church of North India, Council of Baptist Churches of North East India, Presbyterian Church of India, Lutheran Church, and the EFI among others. I believe the forum must use a copy of the Niyogi Committee Report (1956) On Christian Missionary Activities. The report recommended that Indian churches be made economically independent from foreign churches. The report also recommended that missionaries be administered a pledge that they will “confine their evangelistic activities within the limits of public order, morality, and health.”

A pandemical cost on life

A large section of aware people knows that gods and force majeure work in mysterious ways. India is reeling under a global economic slowdown and facing a national health threat at the same time. IMF has declared a global recession. Global lockdown is unavoidable despite the costs. I talked to friends living in four different cities. I am afraid they painted four different gloomy pictures. This tiny sample size helped me gauge the four human touchstones in a global pandemic.

Birth

A friend who hails originally from Gorakhpur settled down in Thailand after college. His family had business interests which got him interested. He got married, and the couple was blessed with a baby last year. The friend rued how he has not kissed his kid in three months because the baby's immunity was not strong enough yet. The doctor had advised him to keep a distance. He spoke of how Thailand was respecting the lockdown. He says Thai people understand they are in extra-ordinary times. Companies have stopped giving salaries. People are getting stipends out of social security, but they are not bitter towards the employer. The friend is a young father, and the stipends don't suffice. Babies take investments, and his business is slow. His father is loaning him out for now. The friend says both employers and employees understand this is a force majeure emergency and they have come together to co-operate reasonably.

Marriage

A party-loving UP based sailor friend was scheduled to marry in March end. He had already called me a hundred times. He took a leave to come home for the wedding after a long stint at sea. His barat was estimated to be a thousand-strong. Everybody was expecting the usual big happy Indian wedding. Our mutual friends were excited because the wedding was in a village far from the cities. As the date approached cities were shut, borders were sealed and tickets got cancelled automatically. The barat ended up fitting in three cars. They could cross borders only by permission of the DM. Despite my hesitance to call him initially, when I did call him we laughed about old times. It cheered him for a while before he grew sad. He observed how his life's greatest party had turned into a damp squib.

Life

A Bihar based friend was born on the 3rd of April. I called to wish him found him indifferent from frustration. His marble shop is shut. The business had progressively slowed in past months, but the rentals remained constant. He complained there was nothing celebratory. He had spent the day at home playing Ludo with the staff. I asked if he visited a mandir to which reminded that mandirs were closed. He told me he was whiling time on the phone as there was nothing to do. He told me how people forgot to follow social distancing during evenings. Own home has begun to feel like a prison for an extrovert like him. His only respite is evening strolls meant for fetching groceries. His worry for shop rentals grows as days pass. He knows the government will not assist him. He is on his own.

Death

Another UP based college friend's grandfather was in ill-health for a couple of years. His health deteriorated recently so the friend flew home around mid-March. The lockdown began on 25th March. His grandfather passed away soon after. The friend was aloof in our phonecall. I could only imagine his grief. My grandparents are very old, so I dread such conversations. He told me how tough it proved to arrange for a basic pyre. They are a prominent and gentle farming family who remain attached to their lands. Nobody could come from their village. They could not go back to their village to perform some rituals. He was also scheduled to get engaged in May and slated to get married in November. Now he is thinking of postponing it. The bride's family has too many old people so they can not risk travel or gatherings. The grieving groom's regret of how nobody could come to attend the funeral rites of his grandfather combined, with his confusion over the postponement of his marriage seems too much to handle when stepped in his shoes.

We are feeling a range of emotions. We are tired sitting at our homes. The Chinese flu had caught us all off-guard, our plans went down the drain and we are left feeling high and dry. It is important for us to remember in times like these that we are not running on hedonic treadmills. It is important for us to remember that sitting at home should not be tough. If not anything else, this period can be used to re-discover yourself. It is important to remember that to feel helpless is okay, to feel hopeless is not. The show must go on.