ECLIPSES ARE SHORT-LIVED
By P.N.BENJAMIN
THE New Year rings in new hopes and expectations, as if failures and frustrations have been rung out with the year that has just ended. To begin the New Year with forebodings may sound like a pessimist’s pastime. However, we must face it with buoyant self-confidence. And the stout-hearts among us like this writer should not lose hope, though the reality, grim and grinding, beckons the nation to a desperate prospect. The economic hardships alone do not account for the mounting discontent. Much more is involved in the present complex situation.
There is distress all over the country Deep-rooted fatalism, dumb acceptance of misery, a raging sea of poverty, and a few islands of vulgar luxury, inhabited by a few who behave as if nothing has happened. This is India today. And this should disturb every sensitive Indian today. The time is long past when one could pacify one’s conscience by angry outburst or exposure of a few misdeeds. The situation is far more serious, the prospect grimmer.
The cancers that have grown in the vitals of India are so horrendous that whole limbs may decay and die before some sort of curative effort succeeds in the rest of the system. Men of vision, integrity and merit were at the helm of affairs in the early years of this nation. A different set of qualifications has now become necessary to attain and then retain office. Men and women of merit have disappeared from the higher echelons of power.
The welter of crashing values, the miasma of poverty, the insensate outburst of religious fundamentalism and fanaticism, regionalism and casteism: it is chaotic. One is also shocked at the sight of brute force trampling upon the underprivileged, while the elite enjoy all the inevitable accompaniments of permissive morality, addiction to vicarious violence, erotic and narcotic fantasies.
Caught in the immediacy of the present we may be agonizing over these maladies. There is still hope. “There is an ebb and tide in the affairs of man. Things will change”. This may be the darkest hour before the radiant dawn. God has not gone bankrupt. He can make the blind see, the deaf hear and the lame cross the mountain. If past is any pointer to the future, there is indeed hope. There is resilience in our people, which no combination of adversities can kill. Our ideals and principles might appear to be in eclipse. But, eclipses are short-lived.
In an atmosphere surcharged with cynicism on the one hand and despair on the other, we would do well to go out anywhere, amidst the din and bustle of the factories, among the IT professionals or the vast expanses of the fields, in the beehive of busy offices or in the boisterous, crowded campuses – among men, women, the young and the old – you will hear a thousand and one questions why things have gone wrong and what’s the way out of it.
Dedicated men and women, sacrificing comfort and many allurements of the consumerist society are building a new India in the remote villages and hilly regions of this vast land of ours. There abound in this country today men and women of finest moral qualities, experts in their respective fields seeking to advance the frontiers of knowledge and to serve the community by disseminating it to the public. In the prevailing darkness they move about like figures in silhouettes; soon the sun shall arrive and identify them, and among them shall be seen new leaders with a new message of enriched patriotism. A new resolve to make this land of ours a better place to live in. The saga of such endeavours is hardly publicised by the media addicted to the burlesque of present-day politics. But they give us reasons for hope.
The reserves of India are too strong to be contained by the unworthy for too long. Today’s rulers as well as the ones waiting in their wings to be future rulers must necessarily be themselves marginalised sooner or later because they are superficial manifestations of a superficial phenomenon; neither they nor the phenomenon that sustains them have any validity in the general scheme of human progress.
Like wars, seemingly hopeless political cancers help steel a nation’s nerve and accelerate the maturing process. India will then step out of the new into the newer.
P.N.BENJAMIN
501, Indira Residency
Hennur Road
Kalyan Nagar
Bangalore 560 043
Tel. 08025435716
Mob. 09731182308
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Plight of Dalit Christians- a response
From: Fr. Benjamin Chinnappan
USA
Dear sir,
I read your article that you wrote in the Decan Herlad about the the Plight of the Dalit Christians. Although it was two decades ago, the situation has not improved a lot among the dalit Christians. Every word you wrote is very sharp and challenges the conscience of the Indian Catholic Church. I studied in Bangalore at St.Peter's Seminary during 1980-90 but our formation never focussed on the reality of the Indian church. Your article is definitely very powerful to meditate on the passion of our Lord. As you know, most of the bishops, priests and nuns hail from the Upper Caste Community, they do not want to acknowledge their guilt. Due to blind faith, illiteracy and poverty, the dalit Christians could not claim for their equal rights even upto this day. The Catholic church in India cannot put this drama all the time. The show will come to an end.
Father Ben, USA.
29 Dec. 2011
USA
Dear sir,
I read your article that you wrote in the Decan Herlad about the the Plight of the Dalit Christians. Although it was two decades ago, the situation has not improved a lot among the dalit Christians. Every word you wrote is very sharp and challenges the conscience of the Indian Catholic Church. I studied in Bangalore at St.Peter's Seminary during 1980-90 but our formation never focussed on the reality of the Indian church. Your article is definitely very powerful to meditate on the passion of our Lord. As you know, most of the bishops, priests and nuns hail from the Upper Caste Community, they do not want to acknowledge their guilt. Due to blind faith, illiteracy and poverty, the dalit Christians could not claim for their equal rights even upto this day. The Catholic church in India cannot put this drama all the time. The show will come to an end.
Father Ben, USA.
29 Dec. 2011
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Responses to the Christmas Message
RESPONSES TO THE CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Dear PN,
Many thanks for your Christmas Greetings which Veena and I warmly reciprocate.
To be frank, your Christmas message is excellent. It is a gust of fresh air, so badly required in today's Church and our misguided brethren who have mistaken the wood for the trees. It is a very powerful and down to earth message. We have forgotten that Christ came and preached a simple life of love. This has been forgotten in our misplaced "social action" and bigoted behaviour.
Slovenia being an alpine country is cold. We have had some snow. The temperatures are on an average -5 to 10 degrees. However we are enjoying the place.
Regards.
Jayakar (Jerome)
Dear PN,
Thank you very much for your Christmas greetings and the attached message. The message is typical of your secular thinking and so appropriate in the present environment of fundamentalist intolerance. The saddest part is that those who profer homilies are themselves not free from what they are complaining against and that too in a spirit of condescension. And politicians add to the intlerance by their uninformed postures. I cannot help recalling Edmund Burke who famously said,""Those who carry on great public schemes must be proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults and what is worst of all, the presumptuous judgements of the ignorant"
I wish you and your family Christmas greetings and all the best during the coming new yhear.
K.V.Rajagopal
Dear brother,
Thank you for the insights into Christmas, Christ and Christ like personalities. This message will certainly reach the hearts of everyone.
Affly,
A.P.Durai
Dear Benji,
Thank you for forwarding the text of your sermon at the Institute o
World culture . It is well written and my congratulations! I am sure
people who will listen to these words will get a different word. Wish
you all the blessings
achen(Rev. K.C.Abraham)
Dear P N,
Thanks for the most inspiring message. I wish more and more people listen to such messages in these troubled times when life has lost its meaning !
Warm Regards,
Achen
Rev.Dr.M.Mani Chacko, Ph.D( Lond.)
General Secretary
The Bible Society of India
'LOGOS', # 206, Mahatma Gandhi Road
Bangalore- 560 001
Tel : 080 - 4112 4714, 4112 4715, 4151 2580 ( O )
080 - 25599020 ( R )
E. Mail : modayilmanichacko@gmail.com
Dear Benji
Very balanced speech. Good. am happy for you.
Wish you and May the blessings of Christmas.
love
joe & susheela Thomas
Dear Benji,
I am so happy to see you engaged in the good fight keeping values which many people will not be able to understand or appreciate. We are keeping well but with growing restrictions and restricted involvments. i have retired but am kept busy with grand kids and some church related activites.
Take care
Our best wishes and prayers to you , May and others in the family.
George Ninan (Bishop )
.
Benjamin, I read the message with rapt attention(which i usually do with all your text) and heart goes with you to the "so called Christians" who are more concerned about the ritualistic aspect of Christmas rather than feeling the love towards your brothers and sisters, the real spirit meant to be.
Cheers to that, hic..
The Abrahams (SOM)
Dear PN,
Many thanks for your Christmas Greetings which Veena and I warmly reciprocate.
To be frank, your Christmas message is excellent. It is a gust of fresh air, so badly required in today's Church and our misguided brethren who have mistaken the wood for the trees. It is a very powerful and down to earth message. We have forgotten that Christ came and preached a simple life of love. This has been forgotten in our misplaced "social action" and bigoted behaviour.
Slovenia being an alpine country is cold. We have had some snow. The temperatures are on an average -5 to 10 degrees. However we are enjoying the place.
Regards.
Jayakar (Jerome)
Dear PN,
Thank you very much for your Christmas greetings and the attached message. The message is typical of your secular thinking and so appropriate in the present environment of fundamentalist intolerance. The saddest part is that those who profer homilies are themselves not free from what they are complaining against and that too in a spirit of condescension. And politicians add to the intlerance by their uninformed postures. I cannot help recalling Edmund Burke who famously said,""Those who carry on great public schemes must be proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults and what is worst of all, the presumptuous judgements of the ignorant"
I wish you and your family Christmas greetings and all the best during the coming new yhear.
K.V.Rajagopal
Dear brother,
Thank you for the insights into Christmas, Christ and Christ like personalities. This message will certainly reach the hearts of everyone.
Affly,
A.P.Durai
Dear Benji,
Thank you for forwarding the text of your sermon at the Institute o
World culture . It is well written and my congratulations! I am sure
people who will listen to these words will get a different word. Wish
you all the blessings
achen(Rev. K.C.Abraham)
Dear P N,
Thanks for the most inspiring message. I wish more and more people listen to such messages in these troubled times when life has lost its meaning !
Warm Regards,
Achen
Rev.Dr.M.Mani Chacko, Ph.D( Lond.)
General Secretary
The Bible Society of India
'LOGOS', # 206, Mahatma Gandhi Road
Bangalore- 560 001
Tel : 080 - 4112 4714, 4112 4715, 4151 2580 ( O )
080 - 25599020 ( R )
E. Mail : modayilmanichacko@gmail.com
Dear Benji
Very balanced speech. Good. am happy for you.
Wish you and May the blessings of Christmas.
love
joe & susheela Thomas
Dear Benji,
I am so happy to see you engaged in the good fight keeping values which many people will not be able to understand or appreciate. We are keeping well but with growing restrictions and restricted involvments. i have retired but am kept busy with grand kids and some church related activites.
Take care
Our best wishes and prayers to you , May and others in the family.
George Ninan (Bishop )
.
Benjamin, I read the message with rapt attention(which i usually do with all your text) and heart goes with you to the "so called Christians" who are more concerned about the ritualistic aspect of Christmas rather than feeling the love towards your brothers and sisters, the real spirit meant to be.
Cheers to that, hic..
The Abrahams (SOM)
Friday, December 23, 2011
A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
By
P. N. Benjamin
Delivered at the Indian Institute of World Culture, December 24, 2011
“LORD, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is doubt, let me sow faith; where there is despair, let me bring hope; where there is sorrow, let me bring joy; where there is darkness, light. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; not so much to be understood as to understand; not so much to be loved, as to love. For, it is in giving that we receive; in pardoning that we are pardoned; in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
I am a Christian by faith, Hindu by culture, and Indian by citizenship. But, permit me to add a word about my Christian commitment and witness in this troubled times. I have always loved John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, perhaps because its hero remains on the move up to the very end. Even when he is crossing that last river, with Mount Zion actually in sight, he is still assailed by doubts and troubled by the hazards of his journey. I, too, have found no finality in the quest for a sure faith, and do not expect, or even hope to find one. At the same time, I dare to say as I have plodded on the light has shone a little more brightly and steadily for me. To make this light shine before men, as Christ exhorted us, has always seemed to me the highest that any communicator can hope to achieve – even if it amounts to not more than, as it were, striking a match in a dark cavern, which flares up and flickers out. Such, at any rate, is the purpose of this message, undertaken with no expert knowledge, no sudden Damascus Road illumination; representing no more than the efforts of a skeptical mind to grapple with the circumstances of his life and time.
Christmas is the feast of our common humanity. Once a year, for a brief spell, we greet one another as human beings: we shake off the trappings with which we aspire to be more than human, and give up the arrogance of treating others as less than human. The labels of race and language, caste and creed, and class are laid aside.
“Happy Christmas”, we can say to a stranger and add a smile to it – nothing would be out of place. It is as if a gust of goodwill from out of the blue has swooped into our atmosphere and we all take a whiff of it. People are kinder, handclasps are warmer, even the miser opens his purse with a sheepish smile to any one who passes the hat around.
Christmas is also a feast of affirmations – even if only once a year we need to become aware of a set of values, which we tend to ignore in the daily commerce of life. We may grope in darkness but it is good to know that there is a gleam somewhere. Amidst all disenchantment around us we need to affirm our faith – in life, in ourselves, in others and therefore in God. We need to hope – hope against hope until as Shelly says, “Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates”. And we need to love -- to rediscover that universal principle of life.
Bertrand Russell who explained to us why he could never be a Christian slipped back in another context to the core of Christmas message when he said, “The thing I mean, please forgive me for mentioning it, is love. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, and an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty… although you may not find happiness, you will never know the despair of those whose life is aimless and void of purpose”.
Magnificat: A Song of Deliverance
There is more to Christmas than peace and goodwill. The story of the birth of Christ begins with a revelation to a peasant girl that she would be the mother of the Messiah – the Saviour of the world. She would conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. She was so overpowered by the message that she breaks into poetic utterance:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord/ And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour…/He hath showed strength with his arm/He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts/He hath put down the mighty from their seats/And exalted them of low degree/He hath filled the hungry with good things/And the rich he hath sent empty away…”
This Song of Mary is called the Magnificat. Mary sees a vision of a new order of things where the weak and the poor will throw off their shackles. It is a song of liberation for all humankind. It reflects the teachings of the prophets of the Old Testament who denounced the oppressors of the people who would sell the needy for a pair of shoes. The prophets were constantly exhorting the people to “untie the knots of the yoke, and loose the fetters of justice, to set free those who have been crushed”. Mary belonged to this oppressed section of the people.
It might seem strange that in this momentous hour of her life when the angel had cast her in this stupendous role, she should be preoccupied with justice for her people. But one can well imagine that, then as now, this was a burning question. The Jews were under the Roman yoke and longed for the Messiah who would liberate them. Mary’s Song is a song of deliverance not only from foreign domination but the oppressor within the gates.
She did not know then that beginning with the Magnificat the road would end at the cross where she would stand weeping for her son who would show the world an entirely new way. But now it is a cry for justice, liberation from the tyranny of the rich and the exalted. Thus, woven into the message of peace and goodwill is also the lesson that these conditions can only come when there is social justice.
The Church has side-stepped this problem dispensing charity while ignoring the deeper claims of equality. The Song of Mary is a reminder that charity without justice is an insult, and peace only a graveyard where there is no equality.
Yes, the voice of Christmas cries in the wilderness. It is not a call to violent revolution – for violent revolutions always end in tyranny of one kind or another. Christmas calls for a change of heart, a turning away from oneself to one’s neighbour, and therefore to God. We like to imagine that religion is a love affair between man and God, but that affair is possible only when one loves one’s neighbour.
Christmas reminds us that in a creative relationship there is God, man and always his neighbour – only in such a cooperative partnership can we hope for a restructuring of the social fabric, which will be permanent. In short, Christmas comes to remind us that we are all inextricably bound together in this brief sojourn on this troubled planet that either we are ALL saved or we are ALL damned for we are all human, all vulnerable, all in need of one another.
Is Jesus the only Prince of Peace?
Christmas takes Christians to the roots of their faith, the child in a manger. It is a cluster of events – the journey to Bethlehem, the angels and shepherds, the manger, the mother and child and Joseph, even the cattle – these are enduring symbols of Christian faith.
The deeper meaning and enduring significance of Christmas point out that God’s love touches human life in a simple way – in the form of a child in the manger. Faith, in its deepest sense is a personal response to the Mystery of God that touches life but is not confined to it. It is priests and theologians who complicate it through ritual and doctrine. What can be more helpless than a new-born baby? Christmas demands that Christians joyfully accept and nurture the child to grow to maturity within their hearts and in the life of the Church.
Second, Christmas shows God’s concern for the poor and the lowly. The Church seems to have discovered Dalits and women only recently. The wise men from the East had to study the stars for a long time in order to predict the birth of this child. But to the shepherds in the field the message of hope came in a flash through song and light. What can be more lowly, more unhygienic than a manger for a baby to be born? And yet, the mother and baby survived without any complications
Third, Christmas is a community festival. It does not depend on an individual receiving a vision. From the beginning, there is a community of the faithful centered round the child, Joseph and Mary, the shepherds with their lambs, even the cattle in the corner, and later on, the three kings bearing gifts. Christmas emphasizes that the Church is not an institution with a hierarchy and doctrines but a community of believers sharing the love of God and serving the people in the name of the Prince of Peace.
The phrase “Prince of Peace” is too familiar, even too common. Like an overused coin it has lost its currency value. For instance, mass media today often overuse, misuse, even, abuse certain words. Television shapes the form of intellectual discourse. The demand for quick and short answers to serious questions that need time for reflection deprives words of their wealth and dignity. Ambiguity replaces precision.
Peace can be understood in two ways. It can mean peace within the heart, a sign of calmness, tranquility. This is what the Hindus describe as ‘shanthi’ or in Christian vocabulary it is “the peace that passes all understanding”. All religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism, emphasise this inward character -- the depth dimension -- of peace. But there is another way in which the word “peace” is in more urgent demand during these times of conflict. This is peace between communities, peoples and nations. It is the restoration of relationships between “enemies” through forgiveness and reconciliation. It seems to me that the Christmas message in the song of angels refers to this: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men (people) with whom he is pleased (Luke 2: 14). But we must note that in the Christmas message peace within the heart of the individual and peace between communities are closely related.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the only Prince of Peace in history. But, such a claim leads to exclusiveness and arrogance. In a pluralist society like ours different religions may be regarded as different responses to the Mystery of God or Truth or the Ultimate. The question for us today is not which among the many religions is true but what each religion can contribute to the quest for peace.
Consider, for example, the life of Gautama the Buddha. About five centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was born, the Buddha preached the message of ahimsa, which is more than just abstention from violent acts. It is a positive attitude of compassion, described as maha karuna citta (great compassionate consciousness) towards all life. The Buddha extended it towards animals as well, long before people started talking about “animal rights”. Therefore our Buddhist friends can rightly claim that for them the Buddha is the “Prince of Peace”.
It is a fact that more wars and tragedies, the use of nuclear bombs, and environmental pollution took place in the last century in countries which professed to follow Christ. However, all of us must be careful not to point accusing fingers at others. Tragedies like communal riots and atrocities against Dalits take place in our country also.
Shallow friendliness for the sake of superficial peace is morally wrong. But the Mystery of Truth or God is infinite and inexhaustible. God’s love is generous and God’s truth infinite. Can any one community of faith claim exclusive monopoly to it? For a true follower of Christ the distinctiveness of the Christian faith does not begin and end with Christmas. As the child grows to maturity his peace-making ministry passes through the garden of Gethsemane to the cross. It is the combination of Bethlehem and Golgotha, the manger and the cross. That is the distinctive marks of Christian faith. Christian brothers and sisters in this country must realize that friends of other faiths have their own distinctive mark and identity.
Mahatma Gandhi was an apostle of peace who devoted his life to bring together Hindus and Muslims. He was assassinated. Remember, Yitzhak Rabin, the late Prime Minister of Israel, was a soldier-turned-peace-maker. He too was killed in the 1990s. Mahatma Gandhi was killed by a Hindu fanatic. Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fanatic. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are much earlier than Christianity. Every religious community has its martyrs for peace. There is no single, exclusive way to peace within the human heart or among nations. Thus, exclusive claims, religious or secular, lead to fanaticism and conflict. In pluralist Indian society, commitment to one’s faith and openness to the faiths of one’s neighbours is the path to peace.
At a time of tension and conflict in the world, including our own country, the distinctive message of Christmas for us is this: that peace is eminently desirable, that peace-making is costly, and that while peace, as the gift of God, the creator of all humanity is singular, the paths to peace are always plural.
There are people of other religions, even secular people, who criticize Christianity as a religion and the Church as an institution, but yet respect and revere Jesus Christ, his life and teachings. Therefore, it was not strange that the title of a booklet written by Swami Ranganathananda of the Ramakrishna Mission on the eve of Christmas 1949 was: “The Christ We Adore”. The Swamiji said then: “Mankind has been offering its heartfelt adoration at the altar of Jesus the Christ for over two millenniums. And even today this child of Mary remains the source of inspiration for millions the world over”.
Christians must learn to adore Christ, obey and follow him because of the message of Christmas, “ the good tidings of great joy”, contained in the song of the angels: Be not be afraid…for unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour which is Christ the Lord (Luke 2: 10-11)
By
P. N. Benjamin
Delivered at the Indian Institute of World Culture, December 24, 2011
“LORD, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is doubt, let me sow faith; where there is despair, let me bring hope; where there is sorrow, let me bring joy; where there is darkness, light. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; not so much to be understood as to understand; not so much to be loved, as to love. For, it is in giving that we receive; in pardoning that we are pardoned; in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
I am a Christian by faith, Hindu by culture, and Indian by citizenship. But, permit me to add a word about my Christian commitment and witness in this troubled times. I have always loved John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, perhaps because its hero remains on the move up to the very end. Even when he is crossing that last river, with Mount Zion actually in sight, he is still assailed by doubts and troubled by the hazards of his journey. I, too, have found no finality in the quest for a sure faith, and do not expect, or even hope to find one. At the same time, I dare to say as I have plodded on the light has shone a little more brightly and steadily for me. To make this light shine before men, as Christ exhorted us, has always seemed to me the highest that any communicator can hope to achieve – even if it amounts to not more than, as it were, striking a match in a dark cavern, which flares up and flickers out. Such, at any rate, is the purpose of this message, undertaken with no expert knowledge, no sudden Damascus Road illumination; representing no more than the efforts of a skeptical mind to grapple with the circumstances of his life and time.
Christmas is the feast of our common humanity. Once a year, for a brief spell, we greet one another as human beings: we shake off the trappings with which we aspire to be more than human, and give up the arrogance of treating others as less than human. The labels of race and language, caste and creed, and class are laid aside.
“Happy Christmas”, we can say to a stranger and add a smile to it – nothing would be out of place. It is as if a gust of goodwill from out of the blue has swooped into our atmosphere and we all take a whiff of it. People are kinder, handclasps are warmer, even the miser opens his purse with a sheepish smile to any one who passes the hat around.
Christmas is also a feast of affirmations – even if only once a year we need to become aware of a set of values, which we tend to ignore in the daily commerce of life. We may grope in darkness but it is good to know that there is a gleam somewhere. Amidst all disenchantment around us we need to affirm our faith – in life, in ourselves, in others and therefore in God. We need to hope – hope against hope until as Shelly says, “Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates”. And we need to love -- to rediscover that universal principle of life.
Bertrand Russell who explained to us why he could never be a Christian slipped back in another context to the core of Christmas message when he said, “The thing I mean, please forgive me for mentioning it, is love. If you feel this, you have a motive for existence, a guide in action, a reason for courage, and an imperative necessity for intellectual honesty… although you may not find happiness, you will never know the despair of those whose life is aimless and void of purpose”.
Magnificat: A Song of Deliverance
There is more to Christmas than peace and goodwill. The story of the birth of Christ begins with a revelation to a peasant girl that she would be the mother of the Messiah – the Saviour of the world. She would conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. She was so overpowered by the message that she breaks into poetic utterance:
“My soul doth magnify the Lord/ And my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour…/He hath showed strength with his arm/He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts/He hath put down the mighty from their seats/And exalted them of low degree/He hath filled the hungry with good things/And the rich he hath sent empty away…”
This Song of Mary is called the Magnificat. Mary sees a vision of a new order of things where the weak and the poor will throw off their shackles. It is a song of liberation for all humankind. It reflects the teachings of the prophets of the Old Testament who denounced the oppressors of the people who would sell the needy for a pair of shoes. The prophets were constantly exhorting the people to “untie the knots of the yoke, and loose the fetters of justice, to set free those who have been crushed”. Mary belonged to this oppressed section of the people.
It might seem strange that in this momentous hour of her life when the angel had cast her in this stupendous role, she should be preoccupied with justice for her people. But one can well imagine that, then as now, this was a burning question. The Jews were under the Roman yoke and longed for the Messiah who would liberate them. Mary’s Song is a song of deliverance not only from foreign domination but the oppressor within the gates.
She did not know then that beginning with the Magnificat the road would end at the cross where she would stand weeping for her son who would show the world an entirely new way. But now it is a cry for justice, liberation from the tyranny of the rich and the exalted. Thus, woven into the message of peace and goodwill is also the lesson that these conditions can only come when there is social justice.
The Church has side-stepped this problem dispensing charity while ignoring the deeper claims of equality. The Song of Mary is a reminder that charity without justice is an insult, and peace only a graveyard where there is no equality.
Yes, the voice of Christmas cries in the wilderness. It is not a call to violent revolution – for violent revolutions always end in tyranny of one kind or another. Christmas calls for a change of heart, a turning away from oneself to one’s neighbour, and therefore to God. We like to imagine that religion is a love affair between man and God, but that affair is possible only when one loves one’s neighbour.
Christmas reminds us that in a creative relationship there is God, man and always his neighbour – only in such a cooperative partnership can we hope for a restructuring of the social fabric, which will be permanent. In short, Christmas comes to remind us that we are all inextricably bound together in this brief sojourn on this troubled planet that either we are ALL saved or we are ALL damned for we are all human, all vulnerable, all in need of one another.
Is Jesus the only Prince of Peace?
Christmas takes Christians to the roots of their faith, the child in a manger. It is a cluster of events – the journey to Bethlehem, the angels and shepherds, the manger, the mother and child and Joseph, even the cattle – these are enduring symbols of Christian faith.
The deeper meaning and enduring significance of Christmas point out that God’s love touches human life in a simple way – in the form of a child in the manger. Faith, in its deepest sense is a personal response to the Mystery of God that touches life but is not confined to it. It is priests and theologians who complicate it through ritual and doctrine. What can be more helpless than a new-born baby? Christmas demands that Christians joyfully accept and nurture the child to grow to maturity within their hearts and in the life of the Church.
Second, Christmas shows God’s concern for the poor and the lowly. The Church seems to have discovered Dalits and women only recently. The wise men from the East had to study the stars for a long time in order to predict the birth of this child. But to the shepherds in the field the message of hope came in a flash through song and light. What can be more lowly, more unhygienic than a manger for a baby to be born? And yet, the mother and baby survived without any complications
Third, Christmas is a community festival. It does not depend on an individual receiving a vision. From the beginning, there is a community of the faithful centered round the child, Joseph and Mary, the shepherds with their lambs, even the cattle in the corner, and later on, the three kings bearing gifts. Christmas emphasizes that the Church is not an institution with a hierarchy and doctrines but a community of believers sharing the love of God and serving the people in the name of the Prince of Peace.
The phrase “Prince of Peace” is too familiar, even too common. Like an overused coin it has lost its currency value. For instance, mass media today often overuse, misuse, even, abuse certain words. Television shapes the form of intellectual discourse. The demand for quick and short answers to serious questions that need time for reflection deprives words of their wealth and dignity. Ambiguity replaces precision.
Peace can be understood in two ways. It can mean peace within the heart, a sign of calmness, tranquility. This is what the Hindus describe as ‘shanthi’ or in Christian vocabulary it is “the peace that passes all understanding”. All religions, particularly Hinduism and Buddhism, emphasise this inward character -- the depth dimension -- of peace. But there is another way in which the word “peace” is in more urgent demand during these times of conflict. This is peace between communities, peoples and nations. It is the restoration of relationships between “enemies” through forgiveness and reconciliation. It seems to me that the Christmas message in the song of angels refers to this: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men (people) with whom he is pleased (Luke 2: 14). But we must note that in the Christmas message peace within the heart of the individual and peace between communities are closely related.
Christians believe that Jesus Christ is the only Prince of Peace in history. But, such a claim leads to exclusiveness and arrogance. In a pluralist society like ours different religions may be regarded as different responses to the Mystery of God or Truth or the Ultimate. The question for us today is not which among the many religions is true but what each religion can contribute to the quest for peace.
Consider, for example, the life of Gautama the Buddha. About five centuries before Jesus of Nazareth was born, the Buddha preached the message of ahimsa, which is more than just abstention from violent acts. It is a positive attitude of compassion, described as maha karuna citta (great compassionate consciousness) towards all life. The Buddha extended it towards animals as well, long before people started talking about “animal rights”. Therefore our Buddhist friends can rightly claim that for them the Buddha is the “Prince of Peace”.
It is a fact that more wars and tragedies, the use of nuclear bombs, and environmental pollution took place in the last century in countries which professed to follow Christ. However, all of us must be careful not to point accusing fingers at others. Tragedies like communal riots and atrocities against Dalits take place in our country also.
Shallow friendliness for the sake of superficial peace is morally wrong. But the Mystery of Truth or God is infinite and inexhaustible. God’s love is generous and God’s truth infinite. Can any one community of faith claim exclusive monopoly to it? For a true follower of Christ the distinctiveness of the Christian faith does not begin and end with Christmas. As the child grows to maturity his peace-making ministry passes through the garden of Gethsemane to the cross. It is the combination of Bethlehem and Golgotha, the manger and the cross. That is the distinctive marks of Christian faith. Christian brothers and sisters in this country must realize that friends of other faiths have their own distinctive mark and identity.
Mahatma Gandhi was an apostle of peace who devoted his life to bring together Hindus and Muslims. He was assassinated. Remember, Yitzhak Rabin, the late Prime Minister of Israel, was a soldier-turned-peace-maker. He too was killed in the 1990s. Mahatma Gandhi was killed by a Hindu fanatic. Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish fanatic. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are much earlier than Christianity. Every religious community has its martyrs for peace. There is no single, exclusive way to peace within the human heart or among nations. Thus, exclusive claims, religious or secular, lead to fanaticism and conflict. In pluralist Indian society, commitment to one’s faith and openness to the faiths of one’s neighbours is the path to peace.
At a time of tension and conflict in the world, including our own country, the distinctive message of Christmas for us is this: that peace is eminently desirable, that peace-making is costly, and that while peace, as the gift of God, the creator of all humanity is singular, the paths to peace are always plural.
There are people of other religions, even secular people, who criticize Christianity as a religion and the Church as an institution, but yet respect and revere Jesus Christ, his life and teachings. Therefore, it was not strange that the title of a booklet written by Swami Ranganathananda of the Ramakrishna Mission on the eve of Christmas 1949 was: “The Christ We Adore”. The Swamiji said then: “Mankind has been offering its heartfelt adoration at the altar of Jesus the Christ for over two millenniums. And even today this child of Mary remains the source of inspiration for millions the world over”.
Christians must learn to adore Christ, obey and follow him because of the message of Christmas, “ the good tidings of great joy”, contained in the song of the angels: Be not be afraid…for unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour which is Christ the Lord (Luke 2: 10-11)
Monday, December 5, 2011
The light at midnight
The light at midnight
By P N BENJAMIN
IT was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present-day Bethlehem that Christ's birth took place nearly 2000 years ago. In the exposition and portrayal of it, literally billions of words, oceans of paint, acres of canvas, mountains of stone and marble have been expended, not to mention, in recent times, miles of film. Is there, then, anything left to say? Yes, there is. Christ and his story continue to attract the minds and imaginations of many.
The story of the birth of Christ begins with a revelation to a peasant girl that she would be the Saviour of the world. She would conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. She was so overpowered by the message that she breaks into poetic utterance: the greatest of all songs of motherhood.
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath/ rejoiced in my God my Saviour.../ For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden/ For, behold, from henceforth all/ generations shall call me blessed./ For he that is mighty hath magnified me,/ and holy is his name.../ He hath showed strength with his arms/ He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts/ He hath put down the mighty from their seats/ And exalted them of low degree/ He hath filled the hungry with good things/ And the rich, he hath sent empty away." This song of Mary is called the Magnificat. Mary sees a vision of a new order of things where the weak and the poor will throw off their shackles. It is a song of liberation for man as well as for woman.
Against oppressors
The song of Mary reflects the teaching of the prophets of the Old Testament. These prophets denounced the oppressors of the people, those who would sell the needy for a pair of shoes. They were constantly exhorting the people "to untie the knots of the yoke, and loose the fetters of justice, to set free those who have been crushed". Mary belonged to this oppressed section of the people.
Joseph, a poor carpenter from Nazareth, who married Mary, likewise understood that the child to be born to her had a special destiny in the world. Every son of every mother is a son of God, but Mary knew that her son was to have a unique relationship with God and a unique role to play in the lives of men. It was to Mary and Joseph that Christ was born in a stable, no other more suitable accommodation being available, or within the means of Mary and Joseph. The essential point about Christ's birth is that it was so poor and so humble. The Son of God was born into the world not as a prince but as a pauper. God was revealed to humankind not in the guise of power or wealth or physical beauty, but of weakness, obscurity and humility.
Each generation of Christians inevitably seeks to fashion its own Christ, from the austere figures carved in wood in the early Middle Ages, through the ebullient Renaissance Christs to the weird efforts of our time to devise a Hipster saviour. Yet, behind all this there is a real man: born, growing up, reaching maturity like other men, turning his mind to what life means rather than to what it provides; trudging through this self-same dust, and sheltering from this self-same sun; lying down at night to sleep and rising in the morning to live another day.
Christ's mission on earth reached far beyond considerations of national independence or servitude — to the roots of power itself and the fearful passion men have to dominate other men. He very humanly chose to begin his ministry in Nazareth where he was known and had grown up. Therefore, in the synagogue, he chose to read the splendid passage found in the Old Testament in which the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he hath annointed me to preach the gospel, to the poor: He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering sight to the blind. To set at liberty them that are bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
All would have been well if Christ had just left matters there. Nothing pleases the congregation more, whether it is in a synagogue, church, temple or mosque, than to be told about preaching deliverance to captives, healing the brokenhearted etc., always being provided nothing is expected of them. But that was not to be.
Much of Christ's life appears to have been devoted to denouncing the Pharisees, the priests.. They were the fundamentalists of his time, the ultra-conservatives who spent their lives enforcing on the public their version of the "word of God", as well as their special regulations of conduct. Jesus was determined to drive puritanism and arid conformity out of men's hearts and to make them learn the habit of love.
Christ turned the world's accepted standards upside down. He affirmed the priority of justice over religion. He criticised the religion of law and priesthood and opposed the commercialisation of sacrifices and the observance of Sabbath. That God manifests himself in human mercy is the most important Christian idea. God does not reside in human-made temples. His presence is in works of human mercy.
Christ's humanity
The deity of Christ is hidden in his humanity. We understand Christ's suffering as the suffering of God. But his life was the life of a real man. The religion of the Cross seems to be capable of being assimilated into other religions. Thus in all areas of life, Christ enters. Religion, ideology, revolutionary instinct, God, son, man, painting, literature and time become the dwelling of the Saviour and testimony to his words. Therefore, the image of Christ as the one who has made the ends of the earth his own is right.
The voice of Christmas cries in the wilderness. It is not a call for violent revolution for violent revolutions always end hi tyranny of one kind or another. Christmas calls for a change of heart, a turning away from oneself to one's neighbour, and therefore to God. Christmas reminds us that in the creative relationship there is God, man and always his neighbour — only in such a co-operative partnership can we hope for a restructuring of the social fabric which is permanent.
By P N BENJAMIN
IT was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present-day Bethlehem that Christ's birth took place nearly 2000 years ago. In the exposition and portrayal of it, literally billions of words, oceans of paint, acres of canvas, mountains of stone and marble have been expended, not to mention, in recent times, miles of film. Is there, then, anything left to say? Yes, there is. Christ and his story continue to attract the minds and imaginations of many.
The story of the birth of Christ begins with a revelation to a peasant girl that she would be the Saviour of the world. She would conceive by the Holy Spirit and give birth to the Son of God. She was so overpowered by the message that she breaks into poetic utterance: the greatest of all songs of motherhood.
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath/ rejoiced in my God my Saviour.../ For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden/ For, behold, from henceforth all/ generations shall call me blessed./ For he that is mighty hath magnified me,/ and holy is his name.../ He hath showed strength with his arms/ He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts/ He hath put down the mighty from their seats/ And exalted them of low degree/ He hath filled the hungry with good things/ And the rich, he hath sent empty away." This song of Mary is called the Magnificat. Mary sees a vision of a new order of things where the weak and the poor will throw off their shackles. It is a song of liberation for man as well as for woman.
Against oppressors
The song of Mary reflects the teaching of the prophets of the Old Testament. These prophets denounced the oppressors of the people, those who would sell the needy for a pair of shoes. They were constantly exhorting the people "to untie the knots of the yoke, and loose the fetters of justice, to set free those who have been crushed". Mary belonged to this oppressed section of the people.
Joseph, a poor carpenter from Nazareth, who married Mary, likewise understood that the child to be born to her had a special destiny in the world. Every son of every mother is a son of God, but Mary knew that her son was to have a unique relationship with God and a unique role to play in the lives of men. It was to Mary and Joseph that Christ was born in a stable, no other more suitable accommodation being available, or within the means of Mary and Joseph. The essential point about Christ's birth is that it was so poor and so humble. The Son of God was born into the world not as a prince but as a pauper. God was revealed to humankind not in the guise of power or wealth or physical beauty, but of weakness, obscurity and humility.
Each generation of Christians inevitably seeks to fashion its own Christ, from the austere figures carved in wood in the early Middle Ages, through the ebullient Renaissance Christs to the weird efforts of our time to devise a Hipster saviour. Yet, behind all this there is a real man: born, growing up, reaching maturity like other men, turning his mind to what life means rather than to what it provides; trudging through this self-same dust, and sheltering from this self-same sun; lying down at night to sleep and rising in the morning to live another day.
Christ's mission on earth reached far beyond considerations of national independence or servitude — to the roots of power itself and the fearful passion men have to dominate other men. He very humanly chose to begin his ministry in Nazareth where he was known and had grown up. Therefore, in the synagogue, he chose to read the splendid passage found in the Old Testament in which the Prophet Isaiah proclaims: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he hath annointed me to preach the gospel, to the poor: He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering sight to the blind. To set at liberty them that are bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord."
All would have been well if Christ had just left matters there. Nothing pleases the congregation more, whether it is in a synagogue, church, temple or mosque, than to be told about preaching deliverance to captives, healing the brokenhearted etc., always being provided nothing is expected of them. But that was not to be.
Much of Christ's life appears to have been devoted to denouncing the Pharisees, the priests.. They were the fundamentalists of his time, the ultra-conservatives who spent their lives enforcing on the public their version of the "word of God", as well as their special regulations of conduct. Jesus was determined to drive puritanism and arid conformity out of men's hearts and to make them learn the habit of love.
Christ turned the world's accepted standards upside down. He affirmed the priority of justice over religion. He criticised the religion of law and priesthood and opposed the commercialisation of sacrifices and the observance of Sabbath. That God manifests himself in human mercy is the most important Christian idea. God does not reside in human-made temples. His presence is in works of human mercy.
Christ's humanity
The deity of Christ is hidden in his humanity. We understand Christ's suffering as the suffering of God. But his life was the life of a real man. The religion of the Cross seems to be capable of being assimilated into other religions. Thus in all areas of life, Christ enters. Religion, ideology, revolutionary instinct, God, son, man, painting, literature and time become the dwelling of the Saviour and testimony to his words. Therefore, the image of Christ as the one who has made the ends of the earth his own is right.
The voice of Christmas cries in the wilderness. It is not a call for violent revolution for violent revolutions always end hi tyranny of one kind or another. Christmas calls for a change of heart, a turning away from oneself to one's neighbour, and therefore to God. Christmas reminds us that in the creative relationship there is God, man and always his neighbour — only in such a co-operative partnership can we hope for a restructuring of the social fabric which is permanent.
Dalit Christians' plight
I have often found it useful to revisit what one said in the past, to analyse the relevance today. In this context, I firmly believe that the following article I wrote in an edit-page article in Deccan Herald on 15 September 1990 is worthy of your consideration today. Particularly when it was written at a time when the Christian lobby, especially the Dalit warriors, was not as hysterical as it is today.
I would suggest that the present-day Christian leaders should read what was written more than twenty years ago, and realise how little their rhetoric has changed. And, more importantly, their rhetoric of the past has been responded to, but they live in a make-believe world that there is no response.
The discrimination within the Church
By P.N.BENJAMIN
(Deccan Herald, 15 Sept. 1990)
OUT of the 20 million Christians in India, over 16 "million are of Scheduled Caste background. The vast majority of the Harijan Christians are poor, landless labourers and unemployed or underemployed urban slum-dwellers.
Their problems concerning land, housing, health, education and employment are as acute and grievous as those of their fellow-Harijans, or even worse. The Christians of Harijan origin suffer from the same social, economic and educational handicaps as in their Hindu and Sikh counterparts.
Conversions have neither offered a way of escape from the bondage of caste nor have they fostered the social transformation of the Harijan Christians. They still live under the same conditions of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.
Unlike the other converts, the Harijan Christians are "twice alienated," both by the Government and the Church: on the one hand, they are denied, as Christians, the rights and benefits availed of by their fellow Harijans, and on the other, as Harijans, they are dominated and persecuted by the upper castes within the Church. The Harijan Christians, (apart from a small group of their elite) suffer grave economic disparities, demoralising social discrimination and cruel denial of political privileges.
To a religion that has always prided itself on the advocacy of complete equality of all human beings, irrespective of caste, colour or race, the charge of discrimination within its own family is galling. And the charge has been made in several quarters. Strangely enough, the Church has won its adherents in the country on the strength of its teaching about the dignity of all human beings and its rejection of distinctions based on birth, colour and race. Now it finds itself charged with failures on this very score.
To the untouchables, the oppressed and those victimised in a socially stratified society, Christianity once brought a message of hope. The reason it has lost its appeal Is not that it has ceased to preach equality, but it has lost its nerve to practise it. It has compromised its own teaching.
MANY FORMS
In Indian Christian communities caste discrimination takes many forms. There are some churches built for separate groups. These places of worship even today retain their caste identity. Another example of casteist practice is allotting separate places in church. Usually, the Christians of Scheduled Caste origin occupy the rear of the church. A glaring instance of caste distinction is found among the dead. The dead of the Harijan communities are buried in separate cemeteries or separate parts of the cemeteries.
A report by Bishop Arokiasamy of the Madurai Diocese to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India meeting at Shillong last year says: Christians of Scheduled Caste origin are "not allowed to assist the priest or read scriptural passages during mass and not allowed to enter the sanctuary. They are denied participation in the church choir; when sacraments are being administered, the Harijan Christians have to receive them after the upper caste Christians. In death, they are allotted their own cemeteries ,, or a corner of the main cemetery, with a wall separating the section in some...In certain dioceses of central and south Kerala, the church hierarchy ignores the very existence of Pulayas because they are Harijans.
"Interdining is sacrilege, while intermarriage is unheard of. No caste Christian enters the home of a Harijan T Christian. During marriages in upper caste settlements Harijan Christians are given food outside the house, in little wicker baskets..:Caste Christians never attend weddings in Harijan colonies... Harijan Christian marriage and funeral processions are banned from passing through the streets where upper caste Christians live".
Could there be a more eloquent indictment of the Church's hypocrisy? Having so clearly failed to eradicate the caste system from its own sanctum sanctorum, the Christian leaders, bishops, priests and nuns, have today united to demand reservations for Harijan Christians. It is intriguing. It is un-Christian, to say the least.
It is interesting that the continued discrimination by Christians against people of their own faith, as set forth in the Kaka Kalekar Report and other studies, is now being advanced by Christian spokesmen as an argument for recognising the "Scheduled Castes" among Christians.
It has not escaped notice that while Christian spokesmen plead for the same preferential treatment to Christians of Scheduled Caste origin as is being given to those who stay in the Hindu or Sikh faiths, in the matter of recruitment to the public services, Christian establishments that have many jobs under their control, have not been known for their keenness to recruit Christians of Scheduled Caste origin for such jobs. (This, I must add, does not, however, exonerate the State from the charge of discrimination and of a lapse from strict adherence to secularism).
NEGLECTED
"There is total neglect of converts, both for appointments in the Christian institutions as well as for admission to their colleges. Just to quote an example, in the prestigious CMS College, Kottayam, Kerala, the present staff strength is 170. Out of that only two are from converted Christians. The proportion is more or less the same in the institutions of other church denominations also. The paradox is that the church leadership, which is not prepared to include Dalit Christians in any of their lists, is asking the government to do that. This exposes the politics of the church hierarchy". (Economic & Political Weekly, Dec. 3, 1988: M.J. Joseph: Class, Caste and Church).
The un-Christian treatment meted out to the Harijan Christians in the Indian Church hierarchy reminds one of the story of the Negro who, visiting a place in one of the southern States of1 the US went to a church on a Sunday. When the Black man was spotted he' was promptly thrown out by the White congregation. He walked off from the church, in tears over what! had happened. He had not proceeded-very far when he saw God walking? towards him. The Lord stopped and asked him why he was weeping. The Black told the Lord that he had gone to the church and been thrown out. The Lord comforted him, and said, "Don't take it to heart too much, my son; I have myself been trying to get into that church, and have so far failed".
To speak of the Harijan Christians and ask the government to uphold fairness and justice as enshrined in the Constitution is adding insult to injury. When a Harijan becomes a Christian he should be given a minimum chance of escaping from the "outcaste" status. He should be allowed to merge with the rest of the Christian community and the church should make it possible for him to start afresh. If Christians cannot treat "outcastes converts" as part of their fellowship it is better to leave them alone. Christ himself said: "You encompass sea and land to make one convert and then you make him twice the son of hell as you are".
Christian leaders have sinned more than others in perpetuating social injustice. A Church which champions the cause of the Dalit Christians can no longer go on claiming privileges or keep begging for benefits from the State. Its fearless stand for justice to| the converted Christians will let it no! longer remain silent about the discrimination within the Church, which is a matter of shame to its members and an embarrassment to its friends.
Its call for equal distribution of national resources will be heeded when its own resources, running into several thousands of crore of rupees, are reallocated and used for the poor and the downtrodden in the Church itself — yes, for the Harijan Christians.
Edit-page article in Deccan Herald, 15 Sept. 1990
I would suggest that the present-day Christian leaders should read what was written more than twenty years ago, and realise how little their rhetoric has changed. And, more importantly, their rhetoric of the past has been responded to, but they live in a make-believe world that there is no response.
The discrimination within the Church
By P.N.BENJAMIN
(Deccan Herald, 15 Sept. 1990)
OUT of the 20 million Christians in India, over 16 "million are of Scheduled Caste background. The vast majority of the Harijan Christians are poor, landless labourers and unemployed or underemployed urban slum-dwellers.
Their problems concerning land, housing, health, education and employment are as acute and grievous as those of their fellow-Harijans, or even worse. The Christians of Harijan origin suffer from the same social, economic and educational handicaps as in their Hindu and Sikh counterparts.
Conversions have neither offered a way of escape from the bondage of caste nor have they fostered the social transformation of the Harijan Christians. They still live under the same conditions of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.
Unlike the other converts, the Harijan Christians are "twice alienated," both by the Government and the Church: on the one hand, they are denied, as Christians, the rights and benefits availed of by their fellow Harijans, and on the other, as Harijans, they are dominated and persecuted by the upper castes within the Church. The Harijan Christians, (apart from a small group of their elite) suffer grave economic disparities, demoralising social discrimination and cruel denial of political privileges.
To a religion that has always prided itself on the advocacy of complete equality of all human beings, irrespective of caste, colour or race, the charge of discrimination within its own family is galling. And the charge has been made in several quarters. Strangely enough, the Church has won its adherents in the country on the strength of its teaching about the dignity of all human beings and its rejection of distinctions based on birth, colour and race. Now it finds itself charged with failures on this very score.
To the untouchables, the oppressed and those victimised in a socially stratified society, Christianity once brought a message of hope. The reason it has lost its appeal Is not that it has ceased to preach equality, but it has lost its nerve to practise it. It has compromised its own teaching.
MANY FORMS
In Indian Christian communities caste discrimination takes many forms. There are some churches built for separate groups. These places of worship even today retain their caste identity. Another example of casteist practice is allotting separate places in church. Usually, the Christians of Scheduled Caste origin occupy the rear of the church. A glaring instance of caste distinction is found among the dead. The dead of the Harijan communities are buried in separate cemeteries or separate parts of the cemeteries.
A report by Bishop Arokiasamy of the Madurai Diocese to the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India meeting at Shillong last year says: Christians of Scheduled Caste origin are "not allowed to assist the priest or read scriptural passages during mass and not allowed to enter the sanctuary. They are denied participation in the church choir; when sacraments are being administered, the Harijan Christians have to receive them after the upper caste Christians. In death, they are allotted their own cemeteries ,, or a corner of the main cemetery, with a wall separating the section in some...In certain dioceses of central and south Kerala, the church hierarchy ignores the very existence of Pulayas because they are Harijans.
"Interdining is sacrilege, while intermarriage is unheard of. No caste Christian enters the home of a Harijan T Christian. During marriages in upper caste settlements Harijan Christians are given food outside the house, in little wicker baskets..:Caste Christians never attend weddings in Harijan colonies... Harijan Christian marriage and funeral processions are banned from passing through the streets where upper caste Christians live".
Could there be a more eloquent indictment of the Church's hypocrisy? Having so clearly failed to eradicate the caste system from its own sanctum sanctorum, the Christian leaders, bishops, priests and nuns, have today united to demand reservations for Harijan Christians. It is intriguing. It is un-Christian, to say the least.
It is interesting that the continued discrimination by Christians against people of their own faith, as set forth in the Kaka Kalekar Report and other studies, is now being advanced by Christian spokesmen as an argument for recognising the "Scheduled Castes" among Christians.
It has not escaped notice that while Christian spokesmen plead for the same preferential treatment to Christians of Scheduled Caste origin as is being given to those who stay in the Hindu or Sikh faiths, in the matter of recruitment to the public services, Christian establishments that have many jobs under their control, have not been known for their keenness to recruit Christians of Scheduled Caste origin for such jobs. (This, I must add, does not, however, exonerate the State from the charge of discrimination and of a lapse from strict adherence to secularism).
NEGLECTED
"There is total neglect of converts, both for appointments in the Christian institutions as well as for admission to their colleges. Just to quote an example, in the prestigious CMS College, Kottayam, Kerala, the present staff strength is 170. Out of that only two are from converted Christians. The proportion is more or less the same in the institutions of other church denominations also. The paradox is that the church leadership, which is not prepared to include Dalit Christians in any of their lists, is asking the government to do that. This exposes the politics of the church hierarchy". (Economic & Political Weekly, Dec. 3, 1988: M.J. Joseph: Class, Caste and Church).
The un-Christian treatment meted out to the Harijan Christians in the Indian Church hierarchy reminds one of the story of the Negro who, visiting a place in one of the southern States of1 the US went to a church on a Sunday. When the Black man was spotted he' was promptly thrown out by the White congregation. He walked off from the church, in tears over what! had happened. He had not proceeded-very far when he saw God walking? towards him. The Lord stopped and asked him why he was weeping. The Black told the Lord that he had gone to the church and been thrown out. The Lord comforted him, and said, "Don't take it to heart too much, my son; I have myself been trying to get into that church, and have so far failed".
To speak of the Harijan Christians and ask the government to uphold fairness and justice as enshrined in the Constitution is adding insult to injury. When a Harijan becomes a Christian he should be given a minimum chance of escaping from the "outcaste" status. He should be allowed to merge with the rest of the Christian community and the church should make it possible for him to start afresh. If Christians cannot treat "outcastes converts" as part of their fellowship it is better to leave them alone. Christ himself said: "You encompass sea and land to make one convert and then you make him twice the son of hell as you are".
Christian leaders have sinned more than others in perpetuating social injustice. A Church which champions the cause of the Dalit Christians can no longer go on claiming privileges or keep begging for benefits from the State. Its fearless stand for justice to| the converted Christians will let it no! longer remain silent about the discrimination within the Church, which is a matter of shame to its members and an embarrassment to its friends.
Its call for equal distribution of national resources will be heeded when its own resources, running into several thousands of crore of rupees, are reallocated and used for the poor and the downtrodden in the Church itself — yes, for the Harijan Christians.
Edit-page article in Deccan Herald, 15 Sept. 1990
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Freedom of Religion Bill 197 & Christians
Freedom of Religion Bill and Christians
By P.N. BENJAMIN
(Deccan Herald, 27 March 1979)
Freedom of Religion Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22, 1978, seeks "to forbid conversions from one religion to another by the use of force or inducement or deceit or by any fraudulent means."
This Bill is in no way "against genuine conversions done with free consent and will." It Is meant to curb abuses, especially prevalent in the conversions of Adivasis and Harijans.
The Bill has provoked strong protests among some Christian leaders who are accusing it of being against the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Constitution. Representatives of the Karnataka Christians Combined Action Committee recently called on the Governor and submitted a memorandum protesting against the Bill. They also "urged the Government to extend the privileges given to Scheduled Castes to Christians of Scheduled Caste origin." (D.H. March 21).
The Christian leaders seem to forget that the supreme body of the Catholic Church in Rome, the Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, itself has condemned conversion by force and allurement in the very same terms used by the Bill. Besides, the Freedom of Religion Bill will be equally applicable to all the religious communities, since it forbids forced conversion from one religion to another; so there is no valid reason why Christian leaders alone should agitate against it.
A section of the Christian Church has always wrongly emphasised conversion as the primary aim of the Christian mission, totally misunderstanding Christ's commission. In India some churches were more influenced by this misconceived idea. In the last decade, the issue attracted wide attention within and outside the Church.
At this point, one can ask whether mere conversion will any way help the Church in fulfilling the Christian duty in a society. Many will answer in negative. As long as the economic and social conditions remain unchanged, the Church's mission also will fail.
Christians have sinned more than others .in perpetuating social injustice. Therefore, to speak of the Harijan Christians and ask the Government to uphold fairness and justice is to add insult to injury. It smacks of hypocrisy.
PRESTIGIOUS
Christians run prestigious schools for the children of the affluent and even accept rich donations for admission to these Institutions. In many of these schools the authorities do not admit the children of Harijan Christians on the pretext that they cannot help their wards in their home work as they do not have "English education.' Through such schools, the class structure Is perpetuated and Christians are very much flattered by the fact that children of ' highly placed Hindu officials and businessmen seek admission in their institutions.
The Christian Church has no dearth of money and organisation. As Mr. Joachim Alva the former M.P., once said, "Christ was the son of a carpenter, with fishermen as his apostles but his Church now is ah empire!." In the last 30 years vast sums of money have come from abroad into the coffers of the Church in India. One would like to know how much of this has been spent on the welfare of Harijan Christians. The Church has done nothing substantially to wipe the" tears out of these unfortunate ones.
On the other hand, this money from abroad has been mainly used to build lavish structures in big cities and on administrative personnel who appropriate the lion's share for themselves and their satellites. Huge hospitals have been built in cities and medical aid there is beyond the means- of the poor and needy. Excepting the ones run by Mother Teresa, almost all other Christian hospitals are unapproachable to the poor.
Caste-consciousness is still prevalent in the Christian community. The caste-complex still persisting among Christians only shows that they are not yet sufficiently redeemed as they profess to be. When the higher ideals and aspirations of the Christian path are understood and when, their mentors, both clergy and the laity, inculcate true Christian spirit among its members, the community can get rid of all negative phases of casteism and transform it as an ideal and casteless society.
MINIMUM CHANCE
When a Harijan becomes Christian he should be given a minimum chance of escaping from the 'outcasts' status. He should merge with the rest of the Christian community and the Church must make it possible for him to start afresh. If Christians cannot treat outcaste converts as part of their fellowship it is better to leave them alone. Christ himself said: "You encompass sea sad land to make one convert and then you make him twice the son of hell as you are."
For many of the Harijan Christians their conversion to Christianity means nothing but substitution of social discrimination within the Churches for discrimination within the Hindu system.
As for democratic and constitutional rights, let the Church first establish true democracy within its own institutions. It is well known that power and money in the Christian organisations are held by cliques who perpetuate their positions through constant manipulation of membership of committees. If any one has the courage to raise a dissenting voice he will find himself out by the end of the year.
All this is not to say that Christians should not raise their voice against injustice and intolerance, but a parochial approach is not the way. They should not try to bargain both ways to be Christians and at the same time grab the advantages available to the Scheduled Classes. They can as well choose to go back to the Hindu faith.
Educational and employment! opportunities and concessions should be made available to the poor and economically underprivileged and should not be based on caste or creed. Th» Government should bring in legislation urgently on an all-India basis towards this end. That would be a revolutionary step indeed which would go a long way towards abolition of caste and social inequality.
Christian leaders must stop "being dazzled by their own words and ensure instead that the distance is closed between what they preach and what they practise. They must take the beams out of their own eyes before pointing out the mote in others' eyes. Like charity, fight against social evils must begin at home. Otherwise, they would be told, "Physician, I heal thyself!." The Christian leaders must present themselves as men of real Christian vision, like Martin Luther King Jr., and charisma, like Mahatma Gandhi, and lead the people against injustice and oppression.
Those who describe the Freedom of Religion Bill as a blow to Christianity forget that the minorities in independent India, especially the Christians, have been enjoying more rights both in law and substance than ever before and they are much better off as citizens of a democratic country than those in the so-called citadels of democracy in the West.
It is a fact that the Catholics in India enjoy more privileges and better rights than their Catholic counterparts in the United States of America and Britain, both allegedly Christian. But the Christian leaders in India who cry wolf against the Bill close their eyes to this fact when they shout "threat to minority rights."
While it is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities, it is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves through artificial means and vested interests.
By P.N. BENJAMIN
(Deccan Herald, 27 March 1979)
Freedom of Religion Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22, 1978, seeks "to forbid conversions from one religion to another by the use of force or inducement or deceit or by any fraudulent means."
This Bill is in no way "against genuine conversions done with free consent and will." It Is meant to curb abuses, especially prevalent in the conversions of Adivasis and Harijans.
The Bill has provoked strong protests among some Christian leaders who are accusing it of being against the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Constitution. Representatives of the Karnataka Christians Combined Action Committee recently called on the Governor and submitted a memorandum protesting against the Bill. They also "urged the Government to extend the privileges given to Scheduled Castes to Christians of Scheduled Caste origin." (D.H. March 21).
The Christian leaders seem to forget that the supreme body of the Catholic Church in Rome, the Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, itself has condemned conversion by force and allurement in the very same terms used by the Bill. Besides, the Freedom of Religion Bill will be equally applicable to all the religious communities, since it forbids forced conversion from one religion to another; so there is no valid reason why Christian leaders alone should agitate against it.
A section of the Christian Church has always wrongly emphasised conversion as the primary aim of the Christian mission, totally misunderstanding Christ's commission. In India some churches were more influenced by this misconceived idea. In the last decade, the issue attracted wide attention within and outside the Church.
At this point, one can ask whether mere conversion will any way help the Church in fulfilling the Christian duty in a society. Many will answer in negative. As long as the economic and social conditions remain unchanged, the Church's mission also will fail.
Christians have sinned more than others .in perpetuating social injustice. Therefore, to speak of the Harijan Christians and ask the Government to uphold fairness and justice is to add insult to injury. It smacks of hypocrisy.
PRESTIGIOUS
Christians run prestigious schools for the children of the affluent and even accept rich donations for admission to these Institutions. In many of these schools the authorities do not admit the children of Harijan Christians on the pretext that they cannot help their wards in their home work as they do not have "English education.' Through such schools, the class structure Is perpetuated and Christians are very much flattered by the fact that children of ' highly placed Hindu officials and businessmen seek admission in their institutions.
The Christian Church has no dearth of money and organisation. As Mr. Joachim Alva the former M.P., once said, "Christ was the son of a carpenter, with fishermen as his apostles but his Church now is ah empire!." In the last 30 years vast sums of money have come from abroad into the coffers of the Church in India. One would like to know how much of this has been spent on the welfare of Harijan Christians. The Church has done nothing substantially to wipe the" tears out of these unfortunate ones.
On the other hand, this money from abroad has been mainly used to build lavish structures in big cities and on administrative personnel who appropriate the lion's share for themselves and their satellites. Huge hospitals have been built in cities and medical aid there is beyond the means- of the poor and needy. Excepting the ones run by Mother Teresa, almost all other Christian hospitals are unapproachable to the poor.
Caste-consciousness is still prevalent in the Christian community. The caste-complex still persisting among Christians only shows that they are not yet sufficiently redeemed as they profess to be. When the higher ideals and aspirations of the Christian path are understood and when, their mentors, both clergy and the laity, inculcate true Christian spirit among its members, the community can get rid of all negative phases of casteism and transform it as an ideal and casteless society.
MINIMUM CHANCE
When a Harijan becomes Christian he should be given a minimum chance of escaping from the 'outcasts' status. He should merge with the rest of the Christian community and the Church must make it possible for him to start afresh. If Christians cannot treat outcaste converts as part of their fellowship it is better to leave them alone. Christ himself said: "You encompass sea sad land to make one convert and then you make him twice the son of hell as you are."
For many of the Harijan Christians their conversion to Christianity means nothing but substitution of social discrimination within the Churches for discrimination within the Hindu system.
As for democratic and constitutional rights, let the Church first establish true democracy within its own institutions. It is well known that power and money in the Christian organisations are held by cliques who perpetuate their positions through constant manipulation of membership of committees. If any one has the courage to raise a dissenting voice he will find himself out by the end of the year.
All this is not to say that Christians should not raise their voice against injustice and intolerance, but a parochial approach is not the way. They should not try to bargain both ways to be Christians and at the same time grab the advantages available to the Scheduled Classes. They can as well choose to go back to the Hindu faith.
Educational and employment! opportunities and concessions should be made available to the poor and economically underprivileged and should not be based on caste or creed. Th» Government should bring in legislation urgently on an all-India basis towards this end. That would be a revolutionary step indeed which would go a long way towards abolition of caste and social inequality.
Christian leaders must stop "being dazzled by their own words and ensure instead that the distance is closed between what they preach and what they practise. They must take the beams out of their own eyes before pointing out the mote in others' eyes. Like charity, fight against social evils must begin at home. Otherwise, they would be told, "Physician, I heal thyself!." The Christian leaders must present themselves as men of real Christian vision, like Martin Luther King Jr., and charisma, like Mahatma Gandhi, and lead the people against injustice and oppression.
Those who describe the Freedom of Religion Bill as a blow to Christianity forget that the minorities in independent India, especially the Christians, have been enjoying more rights both in law and substance than ever before and they are much better off as citizens of a democratic country than those in the so-called citadels of democracy in the West.
It is a fact that the Catholics in India enjoy more privileges and better rights than their Catholic counterparts in the United States of America and Britain, both allegedly Christian. But the Christian leaders in India who cry wolf against the Bill close their eyes to this fact when they shout "threat to minority rights."
While it is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities, it is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves through artificial means and vested interests.
Freedom of Religion Bill 1978
From my files
Freedom of Religion Bill and Christians
By P.N. BENJAMIN
(Deccan Herald, 27 March 1979)
Freedom of Religion Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22, 1978, seeks "to forbid conversions from one religion to another by the use of force or inducement or deceit or by any fraudulent means."
This Bill is in no way "against genuine conversions done with free consent and will." It Is meant to curb abuses, especially prevalent in the conversions of Adivasis and Harijans.
The Bill has provoked strong protests among some Christian leaders who are accusing it of being against the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Constitution. Representatives of the Karnataka Christians Combined Action Committee recently called on the Governor and submitted a memorandum protesting against the Bill. They also "urged the Government to extend the privileges given to Scheduled Castes to Christians of Scheduled Caste origin." (D.H. March 21).
The Christian leaders seem to forget that the supreme body of the Catholic Church in Rome, the Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, itself has condemned conversion by force and allurement in the very same terms used by the Bill. Besides, the Freedom of Religion Bill will be equally applicable to all the religious communities, since it forbids forced conversion from one religion to another; so there is no valid reason why Christian leaders alone should agitate against it.
A section of the Christian Church has always wrongly emphasised conversion as the primary aim of the Christian mission, totally misunderstanding Christ's commission. In India some churches were more influenced by this misconceived idea. In the last decade, the issue attracted wide attention within and outside the Church.
At this point, one can ask whether mere conversion will any way help the Church in fulfilling the Christian duty in a society. Many will answer in negative. As long as the economic and social conditions remain unchanged, the Church's mission also will fail.
Christians have sinned more than others .in perpetuating social injustice. Therefore, to speak of the Harijan Christians and ask the Government to uphold fairness and justice is to add insult to injury. It smacks of hypocrisy.
PRESTIGIOUS
Christians run prestigious schools for the children of the affluent and even accept rich donations for admission to these Institutions. In many of these schools the authorities do not admit the children of Harijan Christians on the pretext that they cannot help their wards in their home work as they do not have "English education.' Through such schools, the class structure Is perpetuated and Christians are very much flattered by the fact that children of ' highly placed Hindu officials and businessmen seek admission in their institutions.
The Christian Church has no dearth of money and organisation. As Mr. Joachim Alva the former M.P., once said, "Christ was the son of a carpenter, with fishermen as his apostles but his Church now is ah empire!." In the last 30 years vast sums of money have come from abroad into the coffers of the Church in India. One would like to know how much of this has been spent on the welfare of Harijan Christians. The Church has done nothing substantially to wipe the" tears out of these unfortunate ones.
On the other hand, this money from abroad has been mainly used to build lavish structures in big cities and on administrative personnel who appropriate the lion's share for themselves and their satellites. Huge hospitals have been built in cities and medical aid there is beyond the means- of the poor and needy. Excepting the ones run by Mother Teresa, almost all other Christian hospitals are unapproachable to the poor.
Caste-consciousness is still prevalent in the Christian community. The caste-complex still persisting among Christians only shows that they are not yet sufficiently redeemed as they profess to be. When the higher ideals and aspirations of the Christian path are understood and when, their mentors, both clergy and the laity, inculcate true Christian spirit among its members, the community can get rid of all negative phases of casteism and transform it as an ideal and casteless society.
MINIMUM CHANCE
When a Harijan becomes Christian he should be given a minimum chance of escaping from the 'outcasts' status. He should merge with the rest of the Christian community and the Church must make it possible for him to start afresh. If Christians cannot treat outcaste converts as part of their fellowship it is better to leave them alone. Christ himself said: "You encompass sea sad land to make one convert and then you make him twice the son of hell as you are."
For many of the Harijan Christians their conversion to Christianity means nothing but substitution of social discrimination within the Churches for discrimination within the Hindu system.
As for democratic and constitutional rights, let the Church first establish true democracy within its own institutions. It is well known that power and money in the Christian organisations are held by cliques who perpetuate their positions through constant manipulation of membership of committees. If any one has the courage to raise a dissenting voice he will find himself out by the end of the year.
All this is not to say that Christians should not raise their voice against injustice and intolerance, but a parochial approach is not the way. They should not try to bargain both ways to be Christians and at the same time grab the advantages available to the Scheduled Classes. They can as well choose to go back to the Hindu faith.
Educational and employment! opportunities and concessions should be made available to the poor and economically underprivileged and should not be based on caste or creed. Th» Government should bring in legislation urgently on an all-India basis towards this end. That would be a revolutionary step indeed which would go a long way towards abolition of caste and social inequality.
Christian leaders must stop "being dazzled by their own words and ensure instead that the distance is closed between what they preach and what they practise. They must take the beams out of their own eyes before pointing out the mote in others' eyes. Like charity, fight against social evils must begin at home. Otherwise, they would be told, "Physician, I heal thyself!." The Christian leaders must present themselves as men of real Christian vision, like Martin Luther King Jr., and charisma, like Mahatma Gandhi, and lead the people against injustice and oppression.
Those who describe the Freedom of Religion Bill as a blow to Christianity forget that the minorities in independent India, especially the Christians, have been enjoying more rights both in law and substance than ever before and they are much better off as citizens of a democratic country than those in the so-called citadels of democracy in the West.
It is a fact that the Catholics in India enjoy more privileges and better rights than their Catholic counterparts in the United States of America and Britain, both allegedly Christian. But the Christian leaders in India who cry wolf against the Bill close their eyes to this fact when they shout "threat to minority rights."
While it is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities, it is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves through artificial means and vested interests.
Freedom of Religion Bill and Christians
By P.N. BENJAMIN
(Deccan Herald, 27 March 1979)
Freedom of Religion Bill, introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22, 1978, seeks "to forbid conversions from one religion to another by the use of force or inducement or deceit or by any fraudulent means."
This Bill is in no way "against genuine conversions done with free consent and will." It Is meant to curb abuses, especially prevalent in the conversions of Adivasis and Harijans.
The Bill has provoked strong protests among some Christian leaders who are accusing it of being against the freedom of conscience guaranteed by the Constitution. Representatives of the Karnataka Christians Combined Action Committee recently called on the Governor and submitted a memorandum protesting against the Bill. They also "urged the Government to extend the privileges given to Scheduled Castes to Christians of Scheduled Caste origin." (D.H. March 21).
The Christian leaders seem to forget that the supreme body of the Catholic Church in Rome, the Ecumenical Council, Vatican II, itself has condemned conversion by force and allurement in the very same terms used by the Bill. Besides, the Freedom of Religion Bill will be equally applicable to all the religious communities, since it forbids forced conversion from one religion to another; so there is no valid reason why Christian leaders alone should agitate against it.
A section of the Christian Church has always wrongly emphasised conversion as the primary aim of the Christian mission, totally misunderstanding Christ's commission. In India some churches were more influenced by this misconceived idea. In the last decade, the issue attracted wide attention within and outside the Church.
At this point, one can ask whether mere conversion will any way help the Church in fulfilling the Christian duty in a society. Many will answer in negative. As long as the economic and social conditions remain unchanged, the Church's mission also will fail.
Christians have sinned more than others .in perpetuating social injustice. Therefore, to speak of the Harijan Christians and ask the Government to uphold fairness and justice is to add insult to injury. It smacks of hypocrisy.
PRESTIGIOUS
Christians run prestigious schools for the children of the affluent and even accept rich donations for admission to these Institutions. In many of these schools the authorities do not admit the children of Harijan Christians on the pretext that they cannot help their wards in their home work as they do not have "English education.' Through such schools, the class structure Is perpetuated and Christians are very much flattered by the fact that children of ' highly placed Hindu officials and businessmen seek admission in their institutions.
The Christian Church has no dearth of money and organisation. As Mr. Joachim Alva the former M.P., once said, "Christ was the son of a carpenter, with fishermen as his apostles but his Church now is ah empire!." In the last 30 years vast sums of money have come from abroad into the coffers of the Church in India. One would like to know how much of this has been spent on the welfare of Harijan Christians. The Church has done nothing substantially to wipe the" tears out of these unfortunate ones.
On the other hand, this money from abroad has been mainly used to build lavish structures in big cities and on administrative personnel who appropriate the lion's share for themselves and their satellites. Huge hospitals have been built in cities and medical aid there is beyond the means- of the poor and needy. Excepting the ones run by Mother Teresa, almost all other Christian hospitals are unapproachable to the poor.
Caste-consciousness is still prevalent in the Christian community. The caste-complex still persisting among Christians only shows that they are not yet sufficiently redeemed as they profess to be. When the higher ideals and aspirations of the Christian path are understood and when, their mentors, both clergy and the laity, inculcate true Christian spirit among its members, the community can get rid of all negative phases of casteism and transform it as an ideal and casteless society.
MINIMUM CHANCE
When a Harijan becomes Christian he should be given a minimum chance of escaping from the 'outcasts' status. He should merge with the rest of the Christian community and the Church must make it possible for him to start afresh. If Christians cannot treat outcaste converts as part of their fellowship it is better to leave them alone. Christ himself said: "You encompass sea sad land to make one convert and then you make him twice the son of hell as you are."
For many of the Harijan Christians their conversion to Christianity means nothing but substitution of social discrimination within the Churches for discrimination within the Hindu system.
As for democratic and constitutional rights, let the Church first establish true democracy within its own institutions. It is well known that power and money in the Christian organisations are held by cliques who perpetuate their positions through constant manipulation of membership of committees. If any one has the courage to raise a dissenting voice he will find himself out by the end of the year.
All this is not to say that Christians should not raise their voice against injustice and intolerance, but a parochial approach is not the way. They should not try to bargain both ways to be Christians and at the same time grab the advantages available to the Scheduled Classes. They can as well choose to go back to the Hindu faith.
Educational and employment! opportunities and concessions should be made available to the poor and economically underprivileged and should not be based on caste or creed. Th» Government should bring in legislation urgently on an all-India basis towards this end. That would be a revolutionary step indeed which would go a long way towards abolition of caste and social inequality.
Christian leaders must stop "being dazzled by their own words and ensure instead that the distance is closed between what they preach and what they practise. They must take the beams out of their own eyes before pointing out the mote in others' eyes. Like charity, fight against social evils must begin at home. Otherwise, they would be told, "Physician, I heal thyself!." The Christian leaders must present themselves as men of real Christian vision, like Martin Luther King Jr., and charisma, like Mahatma Gandhi, and lead the people against injustice and oppression.
Those who describe the Freedom of Religion Bill as a blow to Christianity forget that the minorities in independent India, especially the Christians, have been enjoying more rights both in law and substance than ever before and they are much better off as citizens of a democratic country than those in the so-called citadels of democracy in the West.
It is a fact that the Catholics in India enjoy more privileges and better rights than their Catholic counterparts in the United States of America and Britain, both allegedly Christian. But the Christian leaders in India who cry wolf against the Bill close their eyes to this fact when they shout "threat to minority rights."
While it is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities, it is equally wrong for the minorities to perpetuate themselves through artificial means and vested interests.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Communal Riots
STOP THE "RIOT ENTERPRENURS" IN THEIR TRACKS
P.N.BENJAMIN
On March 7, 2006, twenty persons were killed and 125 injured in twin bomb blasts in the Holy City of Varanasi. But, life returned to normal in the city quickly basically because of the remarkable restraint and control of the people of Varanasi shown in such a provocative situation. Even to this day the city presents a model of communal harmony. How did it happen?
In a show of solidarity, all sections, cutting across religious and social affiliations, observed a bandh and took out peace marches. In a spontaneous move, Benares Hindu University (BHU) students marched to the Sankat Mochan temple, where a deadly blast occurred. They reiterated their resolve to fight terrorism. Hindu and Muslim women joined hands and took out marches for communal harmony through the busy streets. So did many other organisations. They carried placards and raised slogans of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christian unity and brotherhood.
Hundreds of BHU students and volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) participated in blood donation camps. There was no shortage of blood in the hospitals where the people injured in the blasts are being treated.
Abdul Batin Nomani, Mufti-e-Banaras, a respected cleric, issued appeals for maintaining peace and communal harmony. He appealed to all sections of the people and political leaders to "refrain from making our city the boxing arena for settling political scores and deriving political mileage from such tragic incidents. Hindus and Muslims here are dependent on each other. Both communities have lived in perfect harmony and enjoyed cordial relations. If weavers are Muslims, traders are Hindus. Their economic bonds are very strong and they share a remarkable trust. This fabric should not be harmed by anyone."
Similar sentiments were expressed by Sankat Mochan Temple Foundation's chief priest, Veerbhadra Mishra, who lamented the loss of lives in the terror attack. He said such attacks would change the security scenario, and even religious places would be turned into police strongholds, restricting the free movement of devotees.
Indeed, a miracle occurred in Varanasi. It once again proved Ashutosh Varshney’s deceptively simple thesis that "the greater the patterns of inter-communal civic engagement in a city, the lower the likelihood of violent conflicts and communal riots." (Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life). For example, "the Hindus of Varanasi would not attack the Muslim artisans who make the masks and effigies for the annual Ram Lila, even if an irresponsible and bigoted politician egged them on to do so."
In many parts of India, Hindus and Muslims engage with each other in strong associational forms of civic life, from political parties and non-religious movements for social justice or land reform, to trade unions and business groups. In some places, caste is a more important divider than religion. Such networks of civic engagements bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. These networks may take the form of associational interaction or they be everyday forms of engagement. Both forms, if inter-communal, promote peace but the capacity of associational forms to withstand events is substantially higher. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including politicians, who would polarise Hindus and Muslims along communal lines.
Varshney's central insight is invaluable, and its buttressing with an impressive array of facts and figures from over seven years of research means that it is solidly grounded. Varshney has no illusions about how communal riots are instigated and manipulated: whatever the proximate trigger for violence, there is always a politician with an axe to grind, pulling the strings, inflaming passions, exploiting the victims for purely political ends. But the chances for success of such politicians (the breed of "riot-entrepreneurs") would be remarkably lower if there is vigorous and communally-integrated civic life, not just through everyday casual contact but through formal associations that consolidate the mutual engagement of the two communities.
.
Communal harmony is easier extolled in seminar halls than achieved on the ground. Terrorism and fundamentalism are the twin threats to communal harmony. Spunk and harmony may not foil terrorism, but they do foil the design to divide and disrupt. One hopes that politicians, in their zeal to obtain votes do not revive communal vengeance, which has done so much harm to communal harmony and peace in the country. Hindu-Muslim civic engagement should be an urgent priority for the politicians and policemen who make public policy and in whose hands lie the safety of our fellow citizens the next when a riot is instigated
P.N.BENJAMIN
On March 7, 2006, twenty persons were killed and 125 injured in twin bomb blasts in the Holy City of Varanasi. But, life returned to normal in the city quickly basically because of the remarkable restraint and control of the people of Varanasi shown in such a provocative situation. Even to this day the city presents a model of communal harmony. How did it happen?
In a show of solidarity, all sections, cutting across religious and social affiliations, observed a bandh and took out peace marches. In a spontaneous move, Benares Hindu University (BHU) students marched to the Sankat Mochan temple, where a deadly blast occurred. They reiterated their resolve to fight terrorism. Hindu and Muslim women joined hands and took out marches for communal harmony through the busy streets. So did many other organisations. They carried placards and raised slogans of Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Christian unity and brotherhood.
Hundreds of BHU students and volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) participated in blood donation camps. There was no shortage of blood in the hospitals where the people injured in the blasts are being treated.
Abdul Batin Nomani, Mufti-e-Banaras, a respected cleric, issued appeals for maintaining peace and communal harmony. He appealed to all sections of the people and political leaders to "refrain from making our city the boxing arena for settling political scores and deriving political mileage from such tragic incidents. Hindus and Muslims here are dependent on each other. Both communities have lived in perfect harmony and enjoyed cordial relations. If weavers are Muslims, traders are Hindus. Their economic bonds are very strong and they share a remarkable trust. This fabric should not be harmed by anyone."
Similar sentiments were expressed by Sankat Mochan Temple Foundation's chief priest, Veerbhadra Mishra, who lamented the loss of lives in the terror attack. He said such attacks would change the security scenario, and even religious places would be turned into police strongholds, restricting the free movement of devotees.
Indeed, a miracle occurred in Varanasi. It once again proved Ashutosh Varshney’s deceptively simple thesis that "the greater the patterns of inter-communal civic engagement in a city, the lower the likelihood of violent conflicts and communal riots." (Ethnic Conflict & Civic Life). For example, "the Hindus of Varanasi would not attack the Muslim artisans who make the masks and effigies for the annual Ram Lila, even if an irresponsible and bigoted politician egged them on to do so."
In many parts of India, Hindus and Muslims engage with each other in strong associational forms of civic life, from political parties and non-religious movements for social justice or land reform, to trade unions and business groups. In some places, caste is a more important divider than religion. Such networks of civic engagements bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. These networks may take the form of associational interaction or they be everyday forms of engagement. Both forms, if inter-communal, promote peace but the capacity of associational forms to withstand events is substantially higher. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including politicians, who would polarise Hindus and Muslims along communal lines.
Varshney's central insight is invaluable, and its buttressing with an impressive array of facts and figures from over seven years of research means that it is solidly grounded. Varshney has no illusions about how communal riots are instigated and manipulated: whatever the proximate trigger for violence, there is always a politician with an axe to grind, pulling the strings, inflaming passions, exploiting the victims for purely political ends. But the chances for success of such politicians (the breed of "riot-entrepreneurs") would be remarkably lower if there is vigorous and communally-integrated civic life, not just through everyday casual contact but through formal associations that consolidate the mutual engagement of the two communities.
.
Communal harmony is easier extolled in seminar halls than achieved on the ground. Terrorism and fundamentalism are the twin threats to communal harmony. Spunk and harmony may not foil terrorism, but they do foil the design to divide and disrupt. One hopes that politicians, in their zeal to obtain votes do not revive communal vengeance, which has done so much harm to communal harmony and peace in the country. Hindu-Muslim civic engagement should be an urgent priority for the politicians and policemen who make public policy and in whose hands lie the safety of our fellow citizens the next when a riot is instigated
THE LAST SUPPER
The Last Supper: An eduring episode
By P.N.Benjamin
An enduring episode in the annals of Christian art and history is the 'Last Supper' of Jesus Christ. Hours before his fateful trial for treason, Jesus Christ had hosted his disciples a Passover meal in an upper room in Jerusalem. This was the final meal he had prior to his crucifixion. He knew that his hour was drawing near.
However, before partaking of the food, Jesus rose from the table, took off his outer garments and tied a towel around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin, and insisted washing the feet of his twelve disciples sitting around him. He was thereby showing them once more that every act of true humility is a sort of grace whereby the soul grows as the will, or ego, diminishes. Intrigued and bashful at the same time, one of them exclaimed: 'You, Lord, washing my feet?' The Great One answered: “At present you do not understand what I am doing, but one day you will.'
After washing their feet, he put on his garment and sat down again. Addressing them he said: 'do you understand what I have done for you? You call me Master and L
ord, and rightly so, because that is what I am. If I then, your lord and master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. I have set you an example: you are to do as I have done for you.'
Yes, the Great Christ himself knelt on the hard floor, and with his graceful hands, cleansed the feet of each and every of his disciple. This inspiring parable gives us a significant insight into Christ's humility and the essentiality of his message:
"He who wants to be great must become the smallest of all." (Mark 9.35). Thus, he showed his disciples how to escape from the little dark cells our egos make. Whosoever would be great in this world, he was always telling them, is small; and whoever, through his sense of God’s greatness, realizes his own smallness, becomes spiritually great.
P.N.BENJAMIN
501 Indira Residency
167 Hennur Road
Bangalore 560 043
Mob. 9731182308
By P.N.Benjamin
An enduring episode in the annals of Christian art and history is the 'Last Supper' of Jesus Christ. Hours before his fateful trial for treason, Jesus Christ had hosted his disciples a Passover meal in an upper room in Jerusalem. This was the final meal he had prior to his crucifixion. He knew that his hour was drawing near.
However, before partaking of the food, Jesus rose from the table, took off his outer garments and tied a towel around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin, and insisted washing the feet of his twelve disciples sitting around him. He was thereby showing them once more that every act of true humility is a sort of grace whereby the soul grows as the will, or ego, diminishes. Intrigued and bashful at the same time, one of them exclaimed: 'You, Lord, washing my feet?' The Great One answered: “At present you do not understand what I am doing, but one day you will.'
After washing their feet, he put on his garment and sat down again. Addressing them he said: 'do you understand what I have done for you? You call me Master and L
ord, and rightly so, because that is what I am. If I then, your lord and master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. I have set you an example: you are to do as I have done for you.'
Yes, the Great Christ himself knelt on the hard floor, and with his graceful hands, cleansed the feet of each and every of his disciple. This inspiring parable gives us a significant insight into Christ's humility and the essentiality of his message:
"He who wants to be great must become the smallest of all." (Mark 9.35). Thus, he showed his disciples how to escape from the little dark cells our egos make. Whosoever would be great in this world, he was always telling them, is small; and whoever, through his sense of God’s greatness, realizes his own smallness, becomes spiritually great.
P.N.BENJAMIN
501 Indira Residency
167 Hennur Road
Bangalore 560 043
Mob. 9731182308
Serenity Prayer
The Serenity Prayer
by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
by Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
SPEAK UP...
SPEAK UP
Speak: your lips are free Speak: your tongue is still yours Speak: this lissome body is yours Speak: this life is yours Speak: so that the truth can prevail ….
The secular brigade, which works itself up into just the right kind of outrage after every such carnage, could do with soul-searching on these allied issues.
But can we afford to forget the Delhi riots? Can we afford to forget the way the government in power allowed the killings to continue for days on end? Can we afford to forget the way people were roasted alive or butchered by armed gangs that walked the streets of Delhi openly and defiantly, unafraid of forces of law and order? Or, were they protected, aided and abetted by these same forces? Is there any hope that we can ever solve this problem of communal and caste violence? I don’t think so. Unless we have the will to do so. And not unless we can use every moral weapon in our armoury to make our governments more accountable, our law enforcing agencies more responsible.
Slogans and pretexts have been the secret arms of a callous elite, which has rarely been seriously concerned about the welfare of those over whom it lords. It is this callousness we must fight. Otherwise, many more Delhi will keep occurring. (Haven’t they already occurred during the last 21 years – Gujarat and Marad, for example?) Many, many more people will be killed on the pretext of religion, caste, and community. The violence will grow all around us, while its perpetrators walk the streets as free men, their chests puffed out, and their heads held high.
It is time for us to be ashamed of our silence. It is also time for us to be angry. Angry with the men who commit such heinous crimes. And also with those who stand by and watch them. Watch them maim, murder, loot, burn, destroy. Only our anger may scare them. Only our anger may force the authorities to act. To see that such terrible things are not allowed to happen, again and again.
Time has no discriminatory qualities. It heals even those wounds, which should not be healed. The tears of victims may have dried up with time, even though the residual hurt must have remained. At any rate Sikhs are a phlegmatic enough community that, has taken several hurts and prejudices in its stride. But this particular hurt is too hard to live down.
Even if all the earthly courts or commissions of inquiry were to find these monsters not guilty of any crime and set them free, we can be assured, now and always, that the heavenly court will brand them forever with the curse of God. In case they are still alive, we can be sure, theirs is a life so-called that is a million times worse than death. "There is a higher court than the courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts"( Mahatma Gandhi).
Speak: your lips are free Speak: your tongue is still yours Speak: this lissome body is yours Speak: this life is yours Speak: so that the truth can prevail ….
The secular brigade, which works itself up into just the right kind of outrage after every such carnage, could do with soul-searching on these allied issues.
But can we afford to forget the Delhi riots? Can we afford to forget the way the government in power allowed the killings to continue for days on end? Can we afford to forget the way people were roasted alive or butchered by armed gangs that walked the streets of Delhi openly and defiantly, unafraid of forces of law and order? Or, were they protected, aided and abetted by these same forces? Is there any hope that we can ever solve this problem of communal and caste violence? I don’t think so. Unless we have the will to do so. And not unless we can use every moral weapon in our armoury to make our governments more accountable, our law enforcing agencies more responsible.
Slogans and pretexts have been the secret arms of a callous elite, which has rarely been seriously concerned about the welfare of those over whom it lords. It is this callousness we must fight. Otherwise, many more Delhi will keep occurring. (Haven’t they already occurred during the last 21 years – Gujarat and Marad, for example?) Many, many more people will be killed on the pretext of religion, caste, and community. The violence will grow all around us, while its perpetrators walk the streets as free men, their chests puffed out, and their heads held high.
It is time for us to be ashamed of our silence. It is also time for us to be angry. Angry with the men who commit such heinous crimes. And also with those who stand by and watch them. Watch them maim, murder, loot, burn, destroy. Only our anger may scare them. Only our anger may force the authorities to act. To see that such terrible things are not allowed to happen, again and again.
Time has no discriminatory qualities. It heals even those wounds, which should not be healed. The tears of victims may have dried up with time, even though the residual hurt must have remained. At any rate Sikhs are a phlegmatic enough community that, has taken several hurts and prejudices in its stride. But this particular hurt is too hard to live down.
Even if all the earthly courts or commissions of inquiry were to find these monsters not guilty of any crime and set them free, we can be assured, now and always, that the heavenly court will brand them forever with the curse of God. In case they are still alive, we can be sure, theirs is a life so-called that is a million times worse than death. "There is a higher court than the courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts"( Mahatma Gandhi).
Moral Degradation
MORAL & IDEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF POLITICS
By P.N.BENJAMIN
THOUGHTFUL and sensitive Indians have been expressing their deep concern over many disquieting tendencies and developments on the political scene.Today public debate on basic issues of political ideologies and principles, development and transformation, has fast receded into background and non-issues have assumed exaggerated significance. It is time that the healthy elements of Indian polity to raise the moral question of Indian politics today. They must stand outside the murky waters of politics and uphold the principles of morality in political life. They must also heed to the rising dissatisfaction of the large mass of nameless, ordinary men and women who are shocked by the immoral and unprincipled politics, which has emerged in the country.
The substitution of issues with non-issues reflects sharply the loss of ideological moorings of the political elite. This loss has contributed considerably towards political disorientation and the resurgence of factionalism based on petty passions and interests. Conflicts arise not over ideas and policies but over trivial issues.
To be concerned about the moral question is one thing and to be able to understand identify the deeper causes of the moral crisis and to find a way out of it is quite another. If the mere preaching of social and political morality was enough to create such a morality, India, having no dearth of sermonisers and preachers, could have solved the moral problem long ago. It may sound irrelevant but it is nevertheless true that the key to the moral question lies outside the moral sphere.
The cause for the drying up of the springs of moral energy lies in the inability of the present political elite to offer a morally electrifying goal to the country. The struggle for freedom gave a moral shake-up to the moribund Indian society in the pre-independence period. It became a moral force because it was not just a struggle for seizure of power by the nationalist elite from foreign hands, but was also the one for a "New Society". Politics can be revitalised as a moral force only if it becomes once again the instrument of the struggle for a new society.
The moral crisis of today can neither be understood nor resolved if it is only interpreted in the vulgar and narrow sense of moral lapses and aberrations of individuals. The struggle for power arouses the basest instincts if it is pursued in isolation of or in opposition to the struggle for a new society. In other words, as Gandhi so aptly summed up: "Power ennobles when it is a means of serving higher ideals. It degenerates when it becomes an end in itself or only a means of fulfilling smaller interests".
Gandhi contributed most to the uplifting of a demoralised nation from a state of passive submission to foreign rule to becoming heroic fighters against tyranny and injustice. He was a moral force because he created the consciousness of great oppression and injustice within the Indian society against the have-nots and the Dalits. It is therefore not his private ideas of moral life which made him a figure of historical significance but his contribution to the basic causes relating to India’s emergence as a new nation and a new society.
It is necessary to be free from the prison of many backward and obscurantist notions of morality if the moral energy of the people is to be released for the great challenges of building a new society. The concept of the "moral" itself has to be redefined in the light of new challenges facing the nation. In the ultimate analysis morality is not above but subordinate to the basic requirements of man’s social existence on a long-term basis. It has to be related to the dynamics of social existence.
Gandhi linked politics with philosophy in terms of such categories that derived from Indian traditions as were intelligible even to the illiterate masses of the country. After Independence, there occurred a decisive shift from ‘politics as social philosophy’ (i.e. politics as expression of evolving social consciousness of the people), to ‘politics as technique’ ( ie. politics as the art and science of acquiring and manipulating the levers of state power). This shift was a sequel to the transition from the era of national struggle to that of running the nation state.
The emergence of politics as a technique and as image-building of political leaders and manipulation of the people’s mind through the mass media has also led to modernising the coercive apparatus of the state on the model provided by advanced nations. Thus, the triumph of politics as a technique resulted in the erosion of the philosophical basis inherited from Gandhi.
The question of further development of the philosophical basis in the light of new challenges has never been put in the centre stage. It is no wonder that in the absence of a social philosophy, politics has put an exaggerated emphasis on skill rather than on motivation and commitment as the basic qualification of men and women supposed to build the new India of Gandhi’s dreams.
The weak moral consciousness of the Indian polity has its roots in the process of recruitment. In fact recruitment into politics does not involve an initiation into definite social philosophy and a code of conduct. The inner life of most political parties and their members is denuded of any interest in the question of social philosophy.
The process of building the new society must begin urgently. Its ideology and values must be brought into the centre of Indian politics. And, here individuals with unshakeable faith in the possibilities of moral reconstruction of Indian politics have an important role to play.
"One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety nine who have interests". This statement of John Stuart Mill is relevant to the Indian situation today when most men and women dominating the Indian scene have only interests but very few have beliefs. It is the men and women with convictions who hold the key to the future. The struggle for a new society – a new India –calls both for clear definition of the new society and new men and women who can become the agents for the creation of that new society.
P.N.BENJAMIN
Apt. 501, Indira Residency
167 Hennur Road
Kalyan Nagar
Bangalore 560 043
e-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com
By P.N.BENJAMIN
THOUGHTFUL and sensitive Indians have been expressing their deep concern over many disquieting tendencies and developments on the political scene.Today public debate on basic issues of political ideologies and principles, development and transformation, has fast receded into background and non-issues have assumed exaggerated significance. It is time that the healthy elements of Indian polity to raise the moral question of Indian politics today. They must stand outside the murky waters of politics and uphold the principles of morality in political life. They must also heed to the rising dissatisfaction of the large mass of nameless, ordinary men and women who are shocked by the immoral and unprincipled politics, which has emerged in the country.
The substitution of issues with non-issues reflects sharply the loss of ideological moorings of the political elite. This loss has contributed considerably towards political disorientation and the resurgence of factionalism based on petty passions and interests. Conflicts arise not over ideas and policies but over trivial issues.
To be concerned about the moral question is one thing and to be able to understand identify the deeper causes of the moral crisis and to find a way out of it is quite another. If the mere preaching of social and political morality was enough to create such a morality, India, having no dearth of sermonisers and preachers, could have solved the moral problem long ago. It may sound irrelevant but it is nevertheless true that the key to the moral question lies outside the moral sphere.
The cause for the drying up of the springs of moral energy lies in the inability of the present political elite to offer a morally electrifying goal to the country. The struggle for freedom gave a moral shake-up to the moribund Indian society in the pre-independence period. It became a moral force because it was not just a struggle for seizure of power by the nationalist elite from foreign hands, but was also the one for a "New Society". Politics can be revitalised as a moral force only if it becomes once again the instrument of the struggle for a new society.
The moral crisis of today can neither be understood nor resolved if it is only interpreted in the vulgar and narrow sense of moral lapses and aberrations of individuals. The struggle for power arouses the basest instincts if it is pursued in isolation of or in opposition to the struggle for a new society. In other words, as Gandhi so aptly summed up: "Power ennobles when it is a means of serving higher ideals. It degenerates when it becomes an end in itself or only a means of fulfilling smaller interests".
Gandhi contributed most to the uplifting of a demoralised nation from a state of passive submission to foreign rule to becoming heroic fighters against tyranny and injustice. He was a moral force because he created the consciousness of great oppression and injustice within the Indian society against the have-nots and the Dalits. It is therefore not his private ideas of moral life which made him a figure of historical significance but his contribution to the basic causes relating to India’s emergence as a new nation and a new society.
It is necessary to be free from the prison of many backward and obscurantist notions of morality if the moral energy of the people is to be released for the great challenges of building a new society. The concept of the "moral" itself has to be redefined in the light of new challenges facing the nation. In the ultimate analysis morality is not above but subordinate to the basic requirements of man’s social existence on a long-term basis. It has to be related to the dynamics of social existence.
Gandhi linked politics with philosophy in terms of such categories that derived from Indian traditions as were intelligible even to the illiterate masses of the country. After Independence, there occurred a decisive shift from ‘politics as social philosophy’ (i.e. politics as expression of evolving social consciousness of the people), to ‘politics as technique’ ( ie. politics as the art and science of acquiring and manipulating the levers of state power). This shift was a sequel to the transition from the era of national struggle to that of running the nation state.
The emergence of politics as a technique and as image-building of political leaders and manipulation of the people’s mind through the mass media has also led to modernising the coercive apparatus of the state on the model provided by advanced nations. Thus, the triumph of politics as a technique resulted in the erosion of the philosophical basis inherited from Gandhi.
The question of further development of the philosophical basis in the light of new challenges has never been put in the centre stage. It is no wonder that in the absence of a social philosophy, politics has put an exaggerated emphasis on skill rather than on motivation and commitment as the basic qualification of men and women supposed to build the new India of Gandhi’s dreams.
The weak moral consciousness of the Indian polity has its roots in the process of recruitment. In fact recruitment into politics does not involve an initiation into definite social philosophy and a code of conduct. The inner life of most political parties and their members is denuded of any interest in the question of social philosophy.
The process of building the new society must begin urgently. Its ideology and values must be brought into the centre of Indian politics. And, here individuals with unshakeable faith in the possibilities of moral reconstruction of Indian politics have an important role to play.
"One person with a belief is a social power equal to ninety nine who have interests". This statement of John Stuart Mill is relevant to the Indian situation today when most men and women dominating the Indian scene have only interests but very few have beliefs. It is the men and women with convictions who hold the key to the future. The struggle for a new society – a new India –calls both for clear definition of the new society and new men and women who can become the agents for the creation of that new society.
P.N.BENJAMIN
Apt. 501, Indira Residency
167 Hennur Road
Kalyan Nagar
Bangalore 560 043
e-mail: benjaminpn@hotmail.com
The Challenge of the Child
RESPOND TO THE CHALLENGE OF THE CHILD
P.N.BENJAMIN
The character and quality of a nation is determined by how its children are fed and educated for tomorrow. Free India must learn a lesson from that India-hater, Winston Churchill, who, in his country’s gravest hour, still insisted: “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies”. We as a nation are so busy with adult agenda of personal relevance that milk for the infant and nutrition for the expectant mother, both below the bread line, must wait till it is too late. We have time only to quarrel about corruption – that perennial pragmatism of politician.
The harrowing tale of our neglected children is too tearful for words. They are the most deprived part of humanity, ill-fed and ill-clad, with little literacy and negligible chances of a decent life. They are victims of vices and moral lapses, of broken homes and juvenile crimes. We need militant laws to compel the State to nurture the neglected millions crowding in our towns and cities to pick food from garbage cans, sleep nude in the open and live like stray animals in the streets. Beggary Abolition Act gives Indian children stones, not bread! Asked Jesus: What man is there of you, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?” There are many of that species in the present-day India.
Rights begin with viable life in the womb. So we must protect the child in the womb, legitimate or illegitimate. Every baby is innocent. Bernard Shaw was once asked: “Do you believe in Immaculate Conception?” He replied: “I believe every conception is immaculate”. There is now a UN Declaration against branding children illegitimate. But our system of inheritance and maintenance, despite our ancient and hallowed illegitimate greats, is discriminatory, in most personal laws, against the illegitimate child
Every month almost one lakh Indian children die as a direct result of malnutrition. As even greater number die due to infectious diseases which, could have been cured but for the lowered resistance of the malnourished children. A whole spectrum of sorrows remains to be exposed, a whole saga of blood, toils, sweat and tears remains to be lived down. Until then, there is only one criminal – the society.
The first task of social justice is to save the throw-away babies who today grow up in the world of beggars and vagrants and crippled crooks, and are often pushed into crime by a society which is the criminal number one.
Our founding fathers, dreaming of a brave new Bharat and its tryst with destiny, laid down the great testament of the Constitution where the value vision for future generations was projected. Deep concern for the material and moral welfare of the juvenalia of India is underscored and social injustice anathematised. Universal primary education is assured. Freedom from labour during tender age is mandated. Special care for children’s health and growth is a first charge
Let me not be misunderstood as being negative. We have positive gains on the credit side. Our national policy on the mother and child has been spelt out in the Fundamental Law, Articles 15(3), 24, 39(e) and 45, sum up this policy. More importantly, in the backward milieu of our country, the very affirmation of equal access and non-discrimination on account of sexes and castes is a Magna Carta for the child, female and backward but innocent and sinned against. For, most parents
are destitutes and down-and-outs, unlettered and under-nourished, and their babies are the most numerous.
The Children’s Hour is with us. But the law must take militant haste to sensitise itself and speak up. The ‘miles to go’ syndrome must be overcome. The Indian State should secure ‘a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of national life.’ But our environment is such that expectation darkens into anxiety, anxiety into dread and dread into despair.
Mother and Child go together and the economic march to a non-exploitative society is impossible without economic welfare for the mother and investment in the infant. Nobel laureate Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda wrote in 1945: “We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but the worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer “tomorrow”. His name is “Today”.
Let us respond to the challenge of the child to inaugurate justice to the young – Today, not Tomorrow.
The child should become the nation’s central interest and child welfare should no longer be treated as an administrative decoration but love and labour for the lovely gifts of God – our supreme asset.
P.N.BENJAMIN
501 Indira Residency
167 Hennur Road
Adjacent to Reliance Fresh
Bangalore 560 043
Cell: 9731182308
P.N.BENJAMIN
The character and quality of a nation is determined by how its children are fed and educated for tomorrow. Free India must learn a lesson from that India-hater, Winston Churchill, who, in his country’s gravest hour, still insisted: “There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies”. We as a nation are so busy with adult agenda of personal relevance that milk for the infant and nutrition for the expectant mother, both below the bread line, must wait till it is too late. We have time only to quarrel about corruption – that perennial pragmatism of politician.
The harrowing tale of our neglected children is too tearful for words. They are the most deprived part of humanity, ill-fed and ill-clad, with little literacy and negligible chances of a decent life. They are victims of vices and moral lapses, of broken homes and juvenile crimes. We need militant laws to compel the State to nurture the neglected millions crowding in our towns and cities to pick food from garbage cans, sleep nude in the open and live like stray animals in the streets. Beggary Abolition Act gives Indian children stones, not bread! Asked Jesus: What man is there of you, if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?” There are many of that species in the present-day India.
Rights begin with viable life in the womb. So we must protect the child in the womb, legitimate or illegitimate. Every baby is innocent. Bernard Shaw was once asked: “Do you believe in Immaculate Conception?” He replied: “I believe every conception is immaculate”. There is now a UN Declaration against branding children illegitimate. But our system of inheritance and maintenance, despite our ancient and hallowed illegitimate greats, is discriminatory, in most personal laws, against the illegitimate child
Every month almost one lakh Indian children die as a direct result of malnutrition. As even greater number die due to infectious diseases which, could have been cured but for the lowered resistance of the malnourished children. A whole spectrum of sorrows remains to be exposed, a whole saga of blood, toils, sweat and tears remains to be lived down. Until then, there is only one criminal – the society.
The first task of social justice is to save the throw-away babies who today grow up in the world of beggars and vagrants and crippled crooks, and are often pushed into crime by a society which is the criminal number one.
Our founding fathers, dreaming of a brave new Bharat and its tryst with destiny, laid down the great testament of the Constitution where the value vision for future generations was projected. Deep concern for the material and moral welfare of the juvenalia of India is underscored and social injustice anathematised. Universal primary education is assured. Freedom from labour during tender age is mandated. Special care for children’s health and growth is a first charge
Let me not be misunderstood as being negative. We have positive gains on the credit side. Our national policy on the mother and child has been spelt out in the Fundamental Law, Articles 15(3), 24, 39(e) and 45, sum up this policy. More importantly, in the backward milieu of our country, the very affirmation of equal access and non-discrimination on account of sexes and castes is a Magna Carta for the child, female and backward but innocent and sinned against. For, most parents
are destitutes and down-and-outs, unlettered and under-nourished, and their babies are the most numerous.
The Children’s Hour is with us. But the law must take militant haste to sensitise itself and speak up. The ‘miles to go’ syndrome must be overcome. The Indian State should secure ‘a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of national life.’ But our environment is such that expectation darkens into anxiety, anxiety into dread and dread into despair.
Mother and Child go together and the economic march to a non-exploitative society is impossible without economic welfare for the mother and investment in the infant. Nobel laureate Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda wrote in 1945: “We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but the worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the fountain of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed. To him we cannot answer “tomorrow”. His name is “Today”.
Let us respond to the challenge of the child to inaugurate justice to the young – Today, not Tomorrow.
The child should become the nation’s central interest and child welfare should no longer be treated as an administrative decoration but love and labour for the lovely gifts of God – our supreme asset.
P.N.BENJAMIN
501 Indira Residency
167 Hennur Road
Adjacent to Reliance Fresh
Bangalore 560 043
Cell: 9731182308
Monday, October 31, 2011
Khandamal violence 2008. an open letter to John Dayal
Kandhamal Violence
Mr PN Benjamin's appeal from Bangalore: Restore peace in Kandhamal
Dear All,
Greetings.
The democratic process can only solve any controversial problem like Kandhamal. People across the religions and communities are trying hard to bring peace in the disturbed area.
Interestingly, the Christian community is also divided on conversion and other similar issues. One section of the minority is saying that the Hindu fundamentalists like VHP is responsible for the violence in Kandhamal.
Whereas, the other section of Christian community is saying: Let us first set our house in order ; work for peace and amity. Mr PN Benjamin, head of Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD), falls in this categoy. I have received a mail from him with the title: An open letter to Mr John Dayal on Orissa inquiry. Mr Benjamin can be reached at benjaminpn@hotmail.com .
Mr Benjamin's appeal to bring peace in Orissa is important.
Regards,
Sai Prasan
An open letter to John Dayal October 2008
Dear Mr. John Dayal
Why bother about your security? You and I are Christians. And we have His assurance: Fear not, when I am with you. However, is your life more precious to you than the 'Christian' cause you are fighting for? Haven't nearly sixty Christians, according to you died in Orissa for fighting your cause? Haven't they been pawns in the hands of Christian jehadis like you?
Thanks for the offer to hold my hand and take care of my taxi fare from Bhuvaneswar. But, I am a retired bank employee, existing on a pittance as pension. So, please find a good Christian to take care of my medical needs, travel, board and lodge.
I need regular supply of the following medicines; Plendil-5mg , Lodoze 5 mg twice daily, Ramace 5mg, (morning –evening), Natrilik SR- one daily andClonotril,5mg in the night. These are for my BP. Then, human insulin Lille (30/70) 40 units in the morning and 15 in the night, Tab.Glucobay-50mg, morning and night, Riomet500GF, one in the morning for diabetes. These are the medicines I take every day. Hope you'll be kind enough to stock them for me, not forgetting an ice bag (small) to keep the insulin cool.
Looks like you have no faith in the good old Bible and the power of Jesus, our Defender and Saviour! There's no mention about it in your reply. That's why you're more concerned about your personal safety.
You refer only good old Gandhi and say you cannot be compared with him. No wonder. I respect your honesty because Gandhi never bore false witness against anyone, though he was not a Christian. But, the John Dayal, I know of dishes that out (falsehood) profusely especially when he goes to the US and appears before USCIRF and his Christian evangelist friends there who ostensibly bank-roll his activities both in the US and in India.
"There are no Christian assailants" in the Orissa incident"? That is quite a stretch when everyone who is familiar with the tribals in Orissa knows that many Maoists are converts to Christianity. Besides, to claim that there are no Christian assailants...that is another instance of bearing false witness when an 80 year old Hindu mendicant and his four associates were killed by assailants whose Christian identity is cleverly camouflaged under the guile of their being Maoists. There are Maoists who are not atheists, but still go to their respective places of worship.
Incidentally, I understand from my friends in the US, that whenever you go there and appear before the USCIRF, all the secular Indian Christians there hang their heads in shame for the presence of such a man in the US who does not seem to have an iota of national pride or is willing to credit India's 2000 plus years of history with Hinduism that has tolerated the fundamentalist preaching of the mis-quided Mullahs and the ilk of Benny Hinn (Bunny Henn?) types.
I need some clarifications. The inquiry Commission has invited you to Bhubaneshwar and not to Kandanmhal. Orissa State government to probe Dec 2007 appointed Justice Panigrahi Commission anti-Christian violence. You first boycotted it as he was not a sitting judge and then asked for extension of time. You had placed your demands before the commission before the killing of Swami Lakhmanand. Some disconnect somewhere?
Be that as it may, there can be a funeral in Bhubeneshwar for a Christian priest killed in the aftermath of the murder of Swami Laksmananda. And 3000 people can attend it. But John Dayal says that he cannot come to Bhubeneshwar to give evidence to the commission set up to inquire into many aspects surrounding the issues in Kandhamal, because he fears for his safety.
It is not only the Christian priests and bishops who are out to demonise Hindu organisations. Various laity leaders like you, who see an opportunity to make money, egg them on. It is unfortunate the John Dayals of India like the Taliban want to "Christianize" Asia because they still toe the line of the late John Paul II's Ecclesia in Asia
However, May God bless you abundantly to spread continuously hatred like butter on hot bread. In the meantime, I accept your invitation/offer/challenge to visit Orissa along with you to spread the message of peace and amity, provided you take care of the above mentioned requirements. Please do bring along with you the Bibles you promised. May be a hymnbook tooto help us sing the old-weird-colonial song: Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war…."
PN Benjamin
Oct. 2008
Mr PN Benjamin's appeal from Bangalore: Restore peace in Kandhamal
Dear All,
Greetings.
The democratic process can only solve any controversial problem like Kandhamal. People across the religions and communities are trying hard to bring peace in the disturbed area.
Interestingly, the Christian community is also divided on conversion and other similar issues. One section of the minority is saying that the Hindu fundamentalists like VHP is responsible for the violence in Kandhamal.
Whereas, the other section of Christian community is saying: Let us first set our house in order ; work for peace and amity. Mr PN Benjamin, head of Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD), falls in this categoy. I have received a mail from him with the title: An open letter to Mr John Dayal on Orissa inquiry. Mr Benjamin can be reached at benjaminpn@hotmail.com .
Mr Benjamin's appeal to bring peace in Orissa is important.
Regards,
Sai Prasan
An open letter to John Dayal October 2008
Dear Mr. John Dayal
Why bother about your security? You and I are Christians. And we have His assurance: Fear not, when I am with you. However, is your life more precious to you than the 'Christian' cause you are fighting for? Haven't nearly sixty Christians, according to you died in Orissa for fighting your cause? Haven't they been pawns in the hands of Christian jehadis like you?
Thanks for the offer to hold my hand and take care of my taxi fare from Bhuvaneswar. But, I am a retired bank employee, existing on a pittance as pension. So, please find a good Christian to take care of my medical needs, travel, board and lodge.
I need regular supply of the following medicines; Plendil-5mg , Lodoze 5 mg twice daily, Ramace 5mg, (morning –evening), Natrilik SR- one daily andClonotril,5mg in the night. These are for my BP. Then, human insulin Lille (30/70) 40 units in the morning and 15 in the night, Tab.Glucobay-50mg, morning and night, Riomet500GF, one in the morning for diabetes. These are the medicines I take every day. Hope you'll be kind enough to stock them for me, not forgetting an ice bag (small) to keep the insulin cool.
Looks like you have no faith in the good old Bible and the power of Jesus, our Defender and Saviour! There's no mention about it in your reply. That's why you're more concerned about your personal safety.
You refer only good old Gandhi and say you cannot be compared with him. No wonder. I respect your honesty because Gandhi never bore false witness against anyone, though he was not a Christian. But, the John Dayal, I know of dishes that out (falsehood) profusely especially when he goes to the US and appears before USCIRF and his Christian evangelist friends there who ostensibly bank-roll his activities both in the US and in India.
"There are no Christian assailants" in the Orissa incident"? That is quite a stretch when everyone who is familiar with the tribals in Orissa knows that many Maoists are converts to Christianity. Besides, to claim that there are no Christian assailants...that is another instance of bearing false witness when an 80 year old Hindu mendicant and his four associates were killed by assailants whose Christian identity is cleverly camouflaged under the guile of their being Maoists. There are Maoists who are not atheists, but still go to their respective places of worship.
Incidentally, I understand from my friends in the US, that whenever you go there and appear before the USCIRF, all the secular Indian Christians there hang their heads in shame for the presence of such a man in the US who does not seem to have an iota of national pride or is willing to credit India's 2000 plus years of history with Hinduism that has tolerated the fundamentalist preaching of the mis-quided Mullahs and the ilk of Benny Hinn (Bunny Henn?) types.
I need some clarifications. The inquiry Commission has invited you to Bhubaneshwar and not to Kandanmhal. Orissa State government to probe Dec 2007 appointed Justice Panigrahi Commission anti-Christian violence. You first boycotted it as he was not a sitting judge and then asked for extension of time. You had placed your demands before the commission before the killing of Swami Lakhmanand. Some disconnect somewhere?
Be that as it may, there can be a funeral in Bhubeneshwar for a Christian priest killed in the aftermath of the murder of Swami Laksmananda. And 3000 people can attend it. But John Dayal says that he cannot come to Bhubeneshwar to give evidence to the commission set up to inquire into many aspects surrounding the issues in Kandhamal, because he fears for his safety.
It is not only the Christian priests and bishops who are out to demonise Hindu organisations. Various laity leaders like you, who see an opportunity to make money, egg them on. It is unfortunate the John Dayals of India like the Taliban want to "Christianize" Asia because they still toe the line of the late John Paul II's Ecclesia in Asia
However, May God bless you abundantly to spread continuously hatred like butter on hot bread. In the meantime, I accept your invitation/offer/challenge to visit Orissa along with you to spread the message of peace and amity, provided you take care of the above mentioned requirements. Please do bring along with you the Bibles you promised. May be a hymnbook tooto help us sing the old-weird-colonial song: Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war…."
PN Benjamin
Oct. 2008
Friday, October 7, 2011
CASTEISM: WHY SHOULD IT GO AWAY?
"Why should caste system go away?"
Most Hindus agree that caste must go away and say that it is slowly going away.
"What language do the African Americans speak? And what did their ancestors speak 500 years ago?" "Swahili? Hausa?" "Do the African Americans worship the animist deities of their ancestors? Do they wed and bury per their ancestral customs?" The answer, "No."
One can replace African Americans with any immigrant group: The Dutch, the Germans, the French or the Latinos. What Americans proudly advertise as the melting pot actually imposed the language, culture, religion and customs of the dominant ethnic group on all others. On the other hand, visit even a small village in India with just 300 families. The chances are that this population would be made up of 10 different castes and each of them retains its distinct religious, wedding, funerary, culinary and dialectic features. This is because, as a truly pluralistic society, the Hindu India allowed each ethnic group, regardless of how numerically small it was, to retain its identity."
So, Caste is a result of this spirit of freedom and pluralism. It is something to be proud of. by the Hindus. On the other hand, the so-called melting pot is actually a result of cultural, and often physical, extermination of diverse identities by one intolerant and powerful group.
Like every other man made institution, caste too has been misused. Then, so has been every other man made institution like democracy or secularism. It was a democratically elected Hitler who exterminated 6 million Jews, Gypsies and mentally retarded patients. It was a democratically elected Jefferson who fixed the worth of every African-American child at $ 22.50 and proposed to forcibly snatch them away from their parents and ship them back to Africa after ensuring that the adult African American population does not procreate any further. It was a democratically elected Roosevelt who declared that the extermination at the hands of the Whites was the best thing that happened to the Native Americans. Stalin and Mao were secular but they mercilessly sent millions to death camps.
"Is anyone demanding that democracy or secularism be abandoned because of a Jefferson, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin or Mao? Why should caste be abandoned just because it was misused? Hindus have systematically addressed caste inequities over the last 100 years or so. If we assume that we rid our society of all discriminations in the next 30 years, members of every caste, be it Brahmin, Kayastha, Maratha or Paraiyah could proudly say that they follow the millennia old religion, customs and dialects of their forefathers. Suppose the Christian West similarly resolves racial discriminations, could an African American, Dutch American or Latino make similar assertion?"
In the casteless Christian West, the minorities have been forced to abandon their identities and instead have been made to imitate the dominant group in every aspect of life such as religion, language, wedding and funeral customs. Nathan Katz points out how Hindu pluralism, of which caste is an integral part, actually preserved minority customs. Katz, while discussing how the Jewish people flourished for centuries amidst the Hindus "A crucial distinction between India and the rest of the Diaspora, however, is that in India acculturation is not paid for in the currency of assimilation. By acculturation I mean fitting comfortably into a society while retaining one's own identity, whereas by assimilation I mean that the loss of that identity is a perceived condition for acceptance.
The study of Indian Jewish communities demonstrates that in Indian culture an immigrant group gains status precisely by maintaining its own identity. Such is the experience not only of India's Jews, but also of local Christians, Zoroastrians, and recently, Tibetan Buddhists. This striking feature of Indian civilization is reflected by each of these immigrant groups.
Would this preservation have been possible without the spirit of pluralism, which was ensured by the caste system? Are the Hindus going to repeat the missionary propaganda and deny the strengths of their own civilization or are they going to understand the institution of caste dispassionately? The missionaries know that the institution of caste must be obliterated if the Hindu society were to be weakened and converted. A Hindu should critically analyze his traditions instead of uncritically absorbing propaganda.
"The genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has survived so long, is that it does not stand up and fight. It changes and adapts and modernizes and absorbs–that is the scientific and proper way of going about it. I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this millennium, because it can adapt itself to cha nge."
Mark Tully
__._,_.___
Most Hindus agree that caste must go away and say that it is slowly going away.
"What language do the African Americans speak? And what did their ancestors speak 500 years ago?" "Swahili? Hausa?" "Do the African Americans worship the animist deities of their ancestors? Do they wed and bury per their ancestral customs?" The answer, "No."
One can replace African Americans with any immigrant group: The Dutch, the Germans, the French or the Latinos. What Americans proudly advertise as the melting pot actually imposed the language, culture, religion and customs of the dominant ethnic group on all others. On the other hand, visit even a small village in India with just 300 families. The chances are that this population would be made up of 10 different castes and each of them retains its distinct religious, wedding, funerary, culinary and dialectic features. This is because, as a truly pluralistic society, the Hindu India allowed each ethnic group, regardless of how numerically small it was, to retain its identity."
So, Caste is a result of this spirit of freedom and pluralism. It is something to be proud of. by the Hindus. On the other hand, the so-called melting pot is actually a result of cultural, and often physical, extermination of diverse identities by one intolerant and powerful group.
Like every other man made institution, caste too has been misused. Then, so has been every other man made institution like democracy or secularism. It was a democratically elected Hitler who exterminated 6 million Jews, Gypsies and mentally retarded patients. It was a democratically elected Jefferson who fixed the worth of every African-American child at $ 22.50 and proposed to forcibly snatch them away from their parents and ship them back to Africa after ensuring that the adult African American population does not procreate any further. It was a democratically elected Roosevelt who declared that the extermination at the hands of the Whites was the best thing that happened to the Native Americans. Stalin and Mao were secular but they mercilessly sent millions to death camps.
"Is anyone demanding that democracy or secularism be abandoned because of a Jefferson, Roosevelt, Hitler, Stalin or Mao? Why should caste be abandoned just because it was misused? Hindus have systematically addressed caste inequities over the last 100 years or so. If we assume that we rid our society of all discriminations in the next 30 years, members of every caste, be it Brahmin, Kayastha, Maratha or Paraiyah could proudly say that they follow the millennia old religion, customs and dialects of their forefathers. Suppose the Christian West similarly resolves racial discriminations, could an African American, Dutch American or Latino make similar assertion?"
In the casteless Christian West, the minorities have been forced to abandon their identities and instead have been made to imitate the dominant group in every aspect of life such as religion, language, wedding and funeral customs. Nathan Katz points out how Hindu pluralism, of which caste is an integral part, actually preserved minority customs. Katz, while discussing how the Jewish people flourished for centuries amidst the Hindus "A crucial distinction between India and the rest of the Diaspora, however, is that in India acculturation is not paid for in the currency of assimilation. By acculturation I mean fitting comfortably into a society while retaining one's own identity, whereas by assimilation I mean that the loss of that identity is a perceived condition for acceptance.
The study of Indian Jewish communities demonstrates that in Indian culture an immigrant group gains status precisely by maintaining its own identity. Such is the experience not only of India's Jews, but also of local Christians, Zoroastrians, and recently, Tibetan Buddhists. This striking feature of Indian civilization is reflected by each of these immigrant groups.
Would this preservation have been possible without the spirit of pluralism, which was ensured by the caste system? Are the Hindus going to repeat the missionary propaganda and deny the strengths of their own civilization or are they going to understand the institution of caste dispassionately? The missionaries know that the institution of caste must be obliterated if the Hindu society were to be weakened and converted. A Hindu should critically analyze his traditions instead of uncritically absorbing propaganda.
"The genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has survived so long, is that it does not stand up and fight. It changes and adapts and modernizes and absorbs–that is the scientific and proper way of going about it. I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this millennium, because it can adapt itself to cha nge."
Mark Tully
__._,_.___
Sunday, October 2, 2011
10th Samartha Memorial Lecture postponed
PRESS RELEASE 01 Oct. 2011
Rev. Dr. Stanley Samartha Memorial Lecture
The 10th Stanley Samartha Memorial Lecture due to be held in October 2011 stands postponed to January 2012 due to unavoidable circumstances. The date, time and name of the speaker will be announced in due course.
Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) is a low profile organization formed in 2001, by a small group of Hindus, Muslims and Christians in Bangalore, to promote inter-faith amity in line with our native wisdom of promoting inclusiveness for preserving India's religious diversity. BIRD organizes seminars, consultations, panel discussions and dialogues and an annual lecture series in memory of Rev. Dr Stanley Samartha, the first Director of the Inter-Faith Dialogue Programme of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. It is the signature event of BIRD’s inter-faith activities undertaken in the cosmopolitan city of Bangalore. It has organized nine such lectures so far.
Sir Mark Tully, former BBC’s India chief delivered the ninth Samartha Memorial lecture on 7 October 2010 while Mr. Arun Shourie, MP, and celebrated journalist and author, delivered the eighth Lecture in October 2009 . He spoke on “Rethinking Religions”.
The seventh lecture was delivered by Mr. M.J. Akbar, well known journalist and author, presently editor of India Today. The theme was: “The Power of Religion vs. the Religion of Power”.
Other speakers who delivered the lectures in the past were: Justice K.T. Thomas, former Judge of Supreme Court of India (2007), Dr. Hans Ucko, director of inter-faith dialogue division at the World Council of Churches (2006), Mar Thoma Metropolitan Bishop Philipose Mar Chrysostom (2005), Prof. M.V. Nadkarni, former Vice Chancellor(2004), Dr. C.T.Kurien, economist and Director Emeritus of Madras Inst. of Dev. Studies (2003) and Mr. Francois Gautier, author and former political correspondent of Le Fegura (2001). They spoke respectively on: “The Right to Convert & the Indian Constitution”, “Towards and Ethical Code of Conduct”, “Courage for Dialogue”, “Religion in the 21st Century: A Perspective of Hope”, “Communal Harmony- A Societal Perspective” and “The Need for Inter-Religious Dialogue’
P.N. BENJAMIN
Coordinator-BIRD
Rev. Dr. Stanley Samartha Memorial Lecture
The 10th Stanley Samartha Memorial Lecture due to be held in October 2011 stands postponed to January 2012 due to unavoidable circumstances. The date, time and name of the speaker will be announced in due course.
Bangalore Initiative for Religious Dialogue (BIRD) is a low profile organization formed in 2001, by a small group of Hindus, Muslims and Christians in Bangalore, to promote inter-faith amity in line with our native wisdom of promoting inclusiveness for preserving India's religious diversity. BIRD organizes seminars, consultations, panel discussions and dialogues and an annual lecture series in memory of Rev. Dr Stanley Samartha, the first Director of the Inter-Faith Dialogue Programme of the World Council of Churches, Geneva. It is the signature event of BIRD’s inter-faith activities undertaken in the cosmopolitan city of Bangalore. It has organized nine such lectures so far.
Sir Mark Tully, former BBC’s India chief delivered the ninth Samartha Memorial lecture on 7 October 2010 while Mr. Arun Shourie, MP, and celebrated journalist and author, delivered the eighth Lecture in October 2009 . He spoke on “Rethinking Religions”.
The seventh lecture was delivered by Mr. M.J. Akbar, well known journalist and author, presently editor of India Today. The theme was: “The Power of Religion vs. the Religion of Power”.
Other speakers who delivered the lectures in the past were: Justice K.T. Thomas, former Judge of Supreme Court of India (2007), Dr. Hans Ucko, director of inter-faith dialogue division at the World Council of Churches (2006), Mar Thoma Metropolitan Bishop Philipose Mar Chrysostom (2005), Prof. M.V. Nadkarni, former Vice Chancellor(2004), Dr. C.T.Kurien, economist and Director Emeritus of Madras Inst. of Dev. Studies (2003) and Mr. Francois Gautier, author and former political correspondent of Le Fegura (2001). They spoke respectively on: “The Right to Convert & the Indian Constitution”, “Towards and Ethical Code of Conduct”, “Courage for Dialogue”, “Religion in the 21st Century: A Perspective of Hope”, “Communal Harmony- A Societal Perspective” and “The Need for Inter-Religious Dialogue’
P.N. BENJAMIN
Coordinator-BIRD
Sir Mark Tully on Indian Politics
Mark Tully on Indian Politics
I was surprised when the Congress party gave me a Padma Shri – I am the only foreign journalist to ever get it. For, in my forty years of political reporting in India, I have always been a vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty. Someone even called me recently: “a vitriolic British journalist, who in his old age chose to live back in the land he never approved”.
It started with Operation Blue Star. I was one of the few western correspondents who criticized Indira. As I have said since then numerous times, the attack on the Golden Temple and the atrocities that followed the army operations, produced in all sections of the Sikhs a sense of outrage that is hard today to alleviate. I believed then that the large majority of Hindu India, even if politically hostile to Indira Gandhi, openly identified with – and exulted in – her will to overwhelmingly humble a recalcitrant minority.
As everybody knows, Indira Gandhi helped my fame grow even more, by wanting to imprison me during the Emergency she clamped and finally throwing me out of India for a short while. But the result was that the whole of India tuned in, then and thereafter, to my radio’s broadcasts, ‘The Voice of India’, to hear what they thought was ‘accurate’ coverage of events.
When Rajiv Gandhi came to power, I first believed that he was sincerely trying to change the political system, but he quickly gave-up when the old guard would not budge. I criticized him for his foolish adventure in Sri Lanka, although I felt sorry for him when he was blown to pieces by Dhanu, the Tamil Tiger. It is in Kashmir, though that I fought most viciously against his Govt and subsequent Congress ones for its human right abuses on the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley. The Congress Governments tried indeed several times to censor me and the army even took prisoner my Kashmiri stringer, whom I had to rescue by the skin of his teeth. I am also proud that I was the first one to point out then, that the Indian Government had at that time no proof of the Pakistani involvement in the freedom movement in Kashmir. Thus I always made it a point to start my broadcasts by proclaiming that « the Indian Government accuses Pakistan of fostering terrorism», or that “elections are being held in Indian-controlled Kashmir”…
As I was so popular, all the other foreign journalists used the same parlance to cover Kashmir and they always spoke of the plight of the Muslims, never of the 400.000 Hindus, who after all were chased out of their ancestral land by sheer terror (I also kept mum about it).
As for Sonia Gandhi, I did not mind her, when she was Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, but after his death, I watched with dismay as she started stamping her authority on the Congress, which made me say in a series of broadcasts on the Nehru Dynasty: “It’s sad that the Indian National Congress should be completely dependent on one family; the total surrender of a national party to one person is deplorable. You have to ask the question: what claims does Sonia Gandhi have to justify her candidature for prime-ministership? Running a country is far more complicated than running a company. Apprenticeship is required in any profession — more so in politics”. I heard that Sonia Gandhi was unhappy about this broadcast.
Then, after President APJ Abdul Kalam called her to the Raj Bhavan and told her what some of us already knew, namely that for a long time, she had kept both her Italian and Indian passports, which disqualified her to become the Prime Minister of India, she nevertheless became the Supreme leader of India behind the scenes. It is then that I exclaimed: “the moribund and leaderless Congress party has latched onto Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian by birth and Roman Catholic by baptism”. She never forgave me for that. Yet, today I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be written, the period over which she presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single person, a non Indian and a Christian like me. Truth will also come out about her being the main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G, which she uses to buy votes, as the Wikileaks have just shown.
Finally, I am sometimes flabbergasted at the fact that Indians –Hindus, sorry, as most of this country’s intelligentsia is Hindu – seem to love me so much, considering the fact that in my heydays, I considerably ran down the 850 million Hindus of this country, one billion worldwide. I have repented today: I do profoundly believe that India needs to be able to say with pride, “Yes, our civilization has a Hindu base to it.”
The genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has survived so long, is that it does not stand up and fight. It changes and adapts and modernizes and absorbs–that is the scientific and proper way of going about it. I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this millennium, because it can adapt itself to cha nge.
I was surprised when the Congress party gave me a Padma Shri – I am the only foreign journalist to ever get it. For, in my forty years of political reporting in India, I have always been a vocal critic of the Nehru dynasty. Someone even called me recently: “a vitriolic British journalist, who in his old age chose to live back in the land he never approved”.
It started with Operation Blue Star. I was one of the few western correspondents who criticized Indira. As I have said since then numerous times, the attack on the Golden Temple and the atrocities that followed the army operations, produced in all sections of the Sikhs a sense of outrage that is hard today to alleviate. I believed then that the large majority of Hindu India, even if politically hostile to Indira Gandhi, openly identified with – and exulted in – her will to overwhelmingly humble a recalcitrant minority.
As everybody knows, Indira Gandhi helped my fame grow even more, by wanting to imprison me during the Emergency she clamped and finally throwing me out of India for a short while. But the result was that the whole of India tuned in, then and thereafter, to my radio’s broadcasts, ‘The Voice of India’, to hear what they thought was ‘accurate’ coverage of events.
When Rajiv Gandhi came to power, I first believed that he was sincerely trying to change the political system, but he quickly gave-up when the old guard would not budge. I criticized him for his foolish adventure in Sri Lanka, although I felt sorry for him when he was blown to pieces by Dhanu, the Tamil Tiger. It is in Kashmir, though that I fought most viciously against his Govt and subsequent Congress ones for its human right abuses on the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley. The Congress Governments tried indeed several times to censor me and the army even took prisoner my Kashmiri stringer, whom I had to rescue by the skin of his teeth. I am also proud that I was the first one to point out then, that the Indian Government had at that time no proof of the Pakistani involvement in the freedom movement in Kashmir. Thus I always made it a point to start my broadcasts by proclaiming that « the Indian Government accuses Pakistan of fostering terrorism», or that “elections are being held in Indian-controlled Kashmir”…
As I was so popular, all the other foreign journalists used the same parlance to cover Kashmir and they always spoke of the plight of the Muslims, never of the 400.000 Hindus, who after all were chased out of their ancestral land by sheer terror (I also kept mum about it).
As for Sonia Gandhi, I did not mind her, when she was Rajiv Gandhi’s wife, but after his death, I watched with dismay as she started stamping her authority on the Congress, which made me say in a series of broadcasts on the Nehru Dynasty: “It’s sad that the Indian National Congress should be completely dependent on one family; the total surrender of a national party to one person is deplorable. You have to ask the question: what claims does Sonia Gandhi have to justify her candidature for prime-ministership? Running a country is far more complicated than running a company. Apprenticeship is required in any profession — more so in politics”. I heard that Sonia Gandhi was unhappy about this broadcast.
Then, after President APJ Abdul Kalam called her to the Raj Bhavan and told her what some of us already knew, namely that for a long time, she had kept both her Italian and Indian passports, which disqualified her to become the Prime Minister of India, she nevertheless became the Supreme leader of India behind the scenes. It is then that I exclaimed: “the moribund and leaderless Congress party has latched onto Sonia Gandhi, who is Italian by birth and Roman Catholic by baptism”. She never forgave me for that. Yet, today I can say without the shadow of a doubt that when history will be written, the period over which she presided, both over the Congress and India, will be seen as an era of darkness, of immense corruption and of a democracy verging towards autocracy, if not disguised dictatorship, in the hands of a single person, a non Indian and a Christian like me. Truth will also come out about her being the main recipient for kickbacks from Bofors to 2G, which she uses to buy votes, as the Wikileaks have just shown.
Finally, I am sometimes flabbergasted at the fact that Indians –Hindus, sorry, as most of this country’s intelligentsia is Hindu – seem to love me so much, considering the fact that in my heydays, I considerably ran down the 850 million Hindus of this country, one billion worldwide. I have repented today: I do profoundly believe that India needs to be able to say with pride, “Yes, our civilization has a Hindu base to it.”
The genius of Hinduism, the very reason it has survived so long, is that it does not stand up and fight. It changes and adapts and modernizes and absorbs–that is the scientific and proper way of going about it. I believe that Hinduism may actually prove to be the religion of this millennium, because it can adapt itself to cha nge.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Justice K.T.Thomas & RSS
KT THOMAS ON RSS
Complete Text of the Speech Delivered by Justice K T Thomas, on the Occasion of Guru Pooja at Kochi
The remarks made by Supreme Court Judge K T Thomas on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have been both commendable on account of its genuineness and content of truth. But political leaders like Ramesh Chennithala, President of Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee has been quick enough to spring the much expected objection, as part of their usual quota of tailor made slander. Here is the complete text of the Presidential address made by Justice K T Thomas, delivered on the occasion of Guru Pooja, at Kochi
Respected Mohanji Bhagwat, other respected men on the dais and respected members of the audience,
I was wobbling in my mind as to whether I should speak in the language in which the proceedings were being conducted thus far or in a language in which my speech would be understood by our honorable guest. I have chosen the latter. Because, if I speak in English, in a State like Kerala where the literacy rate is so high, the audience will be able to follow and our honorable guest will also be able to follow.
I deem it as a real honor and privilege that I am invited to preside over this highly venerated function, Guru Pooja. You know from my name that I am a Christian. I was born in that and I practice that religion. I am a Church-going Christian. But my advantage is that I learnt many things about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. I developed an admiration for this disciplined core of this country as early as 1979 when I was posted as Additional District Judge of Calicut. The Principal District Judge was Mr. A.R.Sreenivasan. Anyone who knew him will agree that his honesty was hundred percent, his integrity was transparent, his scholarship was unparalleled and his commitment to the country was unquestionable. Above all, the discipline he followed in his life was also very admirable. On his retirement, I took over as the Principal District Judge. But immediately Mr. A.R.Sreenivasan became a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. We used to communicate and converse many things. That occasion gave me the advantage of jettisoning many things which the smearing and simmering propaganda made by interested persons outside about the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Such notions could be eliminated from my mind. I became a real admirer of this organization.
I regard many things on the objectivity point of view. Prejudice is a weakness of human being. Human being is not prepared to accept a thing without objectivity. When objectivity is applied, the smearing propaganda earlier that RSS is responsible for the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, appears to be unjust and uncharitable. I learnt more about it. Of course, the mere fact that the assassin happened to be once upon a time a member of the organization cannot make the disciplined organization responsible for the murder of the Father of the Nation. Had it been so, can you say that the entire Sikh community of India is responsible for the murder of Indira Gandhi? Can it be said that merely because Jesus Christ was crucified by Roman soldiers at the orders of a Roman Judge, that the whole Roman people at that time committed the murder of Jesus Christ?
There should be objectivity in approaching these things. And I, therefore, went and read the judgment of Justice Khosla in the Mahatma Gandhi assassination case and I found that the learned judge of Punjab High Court has completely exonerated Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as not having anything to do with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. I say that this smearing campaign must end in this country. Otherwise it will really be unjust on the part of anyone. With this approach, I have seen this organization from a distance. I happen to travel with the predecessor of our honorable guest today. Mr.Sudarsanji was with me in the train from Chennai up to my home town station. We could communicate many things that time. It is amazing to learn about his great scholarship and how he insisted on a simple living. And I found out that this is a hallmark of the members of this organization. Simple living and high thinking. And thereafter, I want to tell you, that for every Christmas he used to send me a Christmas greeting card which contains a quotation from the Gospel of the Bible and a precept from Bhagavad Gita. I used to reciprocate in the same way as he did.
For me, it gave me an opportunity to learn more and more about this organization. And the best test in my life about this organization is during the dark months of Emergency when Indira Gandhi declared Constitution suspended – on the major portion – and when the whole country became benumbed before the whip swished by Indira Gandhi. The only non-political organization which worked fearlessly in the subterranean sector was the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with the result that this country that is Bharat could be liberated from the pangs of a dictator. We owe very much to this organization for sacrificing many lives and many of the pleasures in life for regaining what our leaders had gained for this country, namely, the fundamental rights of this country.
Now I am disturbed in seeing that for the sake of vote banks, the security of the nation is compromised in many regards. Article 19 of the Constitution is a catalogue of freedoms for the Indian people. But every such freedom is restricted to one thing – that is reasonable restriction of a common factor – that is the security of the State. The Constitution makers were very insistent that primordiality should be given to the security of the State because we have to live in the State. When I come across with many official activities – governmental and political – where the security of the State is given less prominence than the vote bank, I am really disturbed. That is a matter in which the country should stand unanimously and uniformly and with a strident voice declare that we will not tolerate such a policy to be followed.
The propaganda that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is anti-minority is a baseless propaganda. After all, what is a minority? I have realized that according to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, whatever religion you belong to, you must be a full patriot. Your faith is immaterial. Whichever faith you follow, only insistence for you is that you shall not have any extra-territorial loyalties. I also realize that no one is entitled to tell somebody that ‘my’ religion is better than ‘your’ religion and therefore abandon ‘your’ religion and join ‘my’ religion. No person who has any knowledge of the fundamentals of his own religion can say that. The basic precept of one’s own religion is that the other religion is not only equally important but multiplicity of religions sometimes is a gift of God to mankind because all religions have got weaknesses. And in order to replenish the weakness of one religion some benefits are given to the other religion. It is a country where a composite culture has been created; where faith is immaterial but your loyalty, your commitment and your patriotism is most important.
I have a different concept about minority. I use to speak out this aspect on many platforms for which I had received more brickbats than flowers. Who is a minority in this country? – Only that section which has got minus features. Minority is discernable from Article 29 of the Constitution where any section of India can be a minority. It can be based on culture, script, language, etc. Any section which is suffering from any disadvantage can be a minority provided they are numerically less. Faith – wise minority recognized in Article 30 is only for one limited purpose. That is for conducting educational institutions without the steamroller-majority rolling over them. If a person is able to read Article 29 first, as a student of Constitution I will tell you, it does not envisage a minority based on religion or faith. When it comes to Article 30, this word religion is meant only with regard to the educational institutions.
I was a member of the 11 Judges’ bench of the Supreme Court first, which could not complete the argument in TMA Pai case. The point of view which emerged among the majority of judges at that time was that the education which is envisaged in Article 30 should only be secular education and not professional education. When we put this to Mr. Fali S Nariman, the great lawyer became angry and he said that it is an aspect which has been concluded long, long ago and the word education will cover anything even beyond, much beyond secular education. Unfortunately our bench could not complete the arguments and hearings and the judgment could not be delivered. Many years later, after my retirement, an 11 member bench was formed and there also Fali S Nariman addressed arguments and finally the verdict came accepting that education in Article 30 means education at any level.
I am mentioning this for another purpose. That great lawyer who really is the author of this concept of the plenary meaning of the education has written an autobiography wherein he confessed that “today I intensely regret having adopted that attitude towards education.” The whole disaster in this country in the field of education is on account of pioneering that aspect in this country which the Supreme Court accepted unfortunately. I wanted to mention this in some august place. I have chosen this assembly for bringing to notice that the education in Article 30, even according to the great lawyer who once pioneered this argument, is that it should be limited to the secular education. So, that is the only area where religion has something to say about minority. Otherwise, in a big country like India, minority should have nothing to do with faith. Faith could be changed by anybody. That was exactly what happened when a medical college was started by one Palaniappa Gownder in Tamil Nadu. Later when he found that because of some new legislation he will get more benefits, he converted in to Christianity and became Deivasahayam and he is continuing the medical college now. Anyone can change religion like that.
You are making a law based on a faith! In a secular nation, in a secular republic like ours, that shall not happen. In a secular republic, religion shall not be your identity but your being an Indian shall be your identity.
That is what precisely Zakir Hussain, when he became the Rashtrapathi of India, said. He was congratulated by TVR Shenoy, the journalist. Zakir Hussain was a great scholar. He was a Vice Chancellor. When TVR Shenoy approached him and told him “Rashtrapathiji, I congratulate you because it is a great victory of secularism in India.” Zakir Hussain asked him in what way it is a victory of secularism. Shenoy said that a Muslim became the President of India is a great victory of secularism. Zakir Hussain looked at him and smiled. TVR Shenoy asked “Why Rashtrapathiji, you are smiling at me?” He answered – “Shenoy, I smiled hearing your notion about secularism.” He said, and mark the next sentence – “Secularism will be achieved in India only on that day when you do not know my religion!”
My dear friends, take it from me – secularism has nothing to do with religion in this country. You should not know my religion in the same way I shall not bother about your religion. That is your faith. And whatever way you acquire it or develop it – it is your private matter. This is something very much I learnt during my travel with Sudarsanji from Chennai to Kottayam. He insisted on that. He told me that – “Sir, you can be a pious Christian” I asked him in what way he knows that I am a pious Christian. “That is a different matter”- He said. “But we are only insisting that whatever be your faith, your primary commitment must be to this nation, to this country.” On that matter I very much admire – I am a great admirer of this organization.
The discipline exhibited everywhere – and even today – the manner in which the flowers were offered to the Dhwaj gave me the real impression that discipline has given real impetus to your working and performance. Discipline is needed for a nation and discipline is fundamental to the growth of a nation. Whichever nation has grown, you can see discipline is inculcated in the citizens. I think, on that matter, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh is a model to me also.
Written by: India Portal on August 11, 2011.
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