Skip to main content

One nation, one religion, one language

Source: Here

 A weekly Christian newspaper reaches my home every Sunday. It's not free, of course. I conceded to the request of an acquaintance and paid the annual subscription. The paper usually goes directly to the newspaper stack unread. Today as I was about to shelve it, a report caught my eyes. 

 The front page report was about a Catholic priest who was arrested in Jharkhand on charges of forced conversions and encroachment of tribal lands. The report also mentions the earlier arrest of a Missionaries of Charity [Mother Teresa's congregation] nun for allegedly selling the child of a young unwed mother. Arrests of Christian missionaries on fabricated charges are becoming a routine affair in many North Indian states, adds the report. 

 Religion doesn't interest me at all and I usually don't care about such affairs. I don't think converting anyone from his/her religion is necessary in order to do charitable services. However, if anyone wishes to adopt another religion, he should have the liberty to do so. Who else but the individual concerned has the right to decide which god he will worship? What has the government or judiciary got to do with that?

 I don't accept the argument that the Christian missionaries are involved in rampant conversions. If it were so, why doesn't the Christian population in the country increase? The percentage of Christians in India was 2.3 in the 1951 census, and it was again the same figure of 2.3 in 2011 census. 

 Someone once told me that many of the converts are "crypto-Christians" [they don't declare their religion openly]. Given the duplicity that is inherent in the Indian DNA, this may not be a far-fetched claim. If the claim is true, what it means is that such people accept a different religion just for the material benefits it brings them. The religion matters little to them; what really matter are the material benefits. Then the solution to the problem is quite simple: give them the material benefits through government policies and projects. Enable them to live dignified lives and they won't change their religions. Why don't the governments do that? 

 The governments seem to be more interested in oppressing certain people, instead. Look at Modi's Kashmir and Yogi's UP, for example. 80,000 troops of soldiers have been keeping the people of Kashmir under virtual lockup from 1 August. The roads are blocked, telephones are dead, shops remain closed, and newspapers have shut down. "The state has gone back by 30 years," as a resident told a reporter of the Caravan magazine. 

 The Frontline quotes Akhilesh Yadav that "no section of the population (in Yogi's UP) is safe from the marauding Sangh Parivar-driven vandals." Fear is the dominant emotion in the state. Anyone can be lynched with impunity, any woman can be raped and/or killed, anything can happen to anyone. 

 That fear is permeating out of the state into other parts of the country. The arrests of missionaries are just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone can be labelled antinational or something like that and be arrested today. 

 The greatest tragedy probably is that the majority of Indians seem to love all these. That is the biggest achievement of Modi. He has the support of the majority for perverting the national psyche. India is not one nation any more. The steamroller is moving on, however, and the ever-rising number of arrests is part of the game of One nation, one religion, one language. 

 I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa

Click here to download my book 'God's Love Song' - absolutely free just for a day. [Offer closes at 12 noon 23 Sep IST]

Comments

  1. JeniferSeptember 23, 2019 at 8:05 PM

    Totally agree with you.
    But am afraid Modi bhakts would misunderstand you and may b backlash you.

    www.shaandaarjenie.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 23, 2019 at 8:43 PM

      The bhakts generally don't understand much of what i write and hence leave me alone.

      Delete
  2. Cook with sweetannuSeptember 24, 2019 at 12:19 PM

    I really don't like to make any political comments but glad you express your views on how you feel.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Swiddle D'CunhaSeptember 24, 2019 at 5:00 PM

    I agree to your view. This accusation on the Christian community is age old.Its easy to accuse others but do they have the guts or the will to do what the missionaries are doing?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2019 at 9:02 PM

      That's a valid question. I have witnessed what the Missionaries of Charity do for the lowest sections of people. No organisation will ever be willing to do that sort of service.

      Delete
  4. PragnyaSeptember 24, 2019 at 5:44 PM

    Reading this article I can't bring myself to comment to one side. It is a grey area. The works of missionaries are questioned for long. Specially around the Bihar-Jharkhand-Odisha belt.

    Moving to one nation,one religion,one language talk, India is a diverse nation. How can we eliminate our diversity and merge all based on political agenda? No sane Indian would go by the slogan.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2019 at 9:09 PM

      In a forthcoming book, “The RSS Roadmap for the 21st Century”, to be released by none less than Mohan Bhagwat, the author states that the final goal of RSS is to create a Hindu Rashtra with little space for non-Hindus. Though a few "sane" people like you argue that it would be neither feasible nor desirable, the majority of Hindus in India seem to be waiting just for that.

      Delete
  5. GhazalaSeptember 24, 2019 at 7:25 PM

    It's sad that now such things are happening and we are silent and help less.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 24, 2019 at 9:10 PM

      Silent and helpless. Yes. Those who have families to care for won't dare to question the dominant forces. If you question, you're likely to end up in jail if not in your grave. That's the real India today.

      Delete
  6. URUSeptember 25, 2019 at 12:10 AM

    When it comes to converting people to give some benefits in someone's name I am not sure I understand it. .. it's charity if you want to do it just do it why conversion or even bother telling i am doing and showing it to others. That's hypocrisy. | #Damurureads #myfriendalexa

    ReplyDelete
  7. Sindhu Vinod NarayanSeptember 25, 2019 at 12:12 PM

    Being in a secular country people have their freedom to follow the rleuguon they wish to and that shouldn't be forced.#myfriendalexa #tmmreads

    ReplyDelete
  8. simi gnSeptember 25, 2019 at 6:35 PM

    so well written up it was great reading ...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Debidutta MohantySeptember 26, 2019 at 5:10 PM

    I was able to relate with every word. I have several Christian friends and a product of missionary school. People mix politics and religion to extract their own benefits. I am glad you had the courage to narrate it the way it is.

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownSeptember 26, 2019 at 7:02 PM

    I think if one has to do charity we must not ask the religion. Charity should be done to upliftment of those who are in need.

    ReplyDelete
  11. suhavijaySeptember 26, 2019 at 8:15 PM

    Totally agree with you. Charity shouldn't be dependant on religion

    ReplyDelete
  12. AmritKaur_AmySeptember 28, 2019 at 7:04 PM

    I can here agree with you as I don't see every religion secured in One Nation India.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Lights of December

The crib of a nearby parish [a few years back] December was the happiest month of my childhood. Christmas was the ostensible reason, though I wasn’t any more religious than the boys of my neighbourhood. Christmas brought an air of festivity to our home which was otherwise as gloomy as an orthodox Catholic household could be in the late 1960s. We lived in a village whose nights were lit up only by kerosene lamps, until electricity arrived in 1972 or so. Darkness suffused the agrarian landscapes for most part of the nights. Frogs would croak in the sprawling paddy fields and crickets would chirp rather eerily in the bushes outside the bedroom which was shared by us four brothers. Owls whistled occasionally, and screeched more frequently, in the darkness that spread endlessly. December lit up the darkness, though infinitesimally, with a star or two outside homes. December was the light of my childhood. Christmas was the happiest festival of the period. As soon as school closed for the...
14 comments
Read more

Schrödinger’s Cat and Carl Sagan’s God

Image by Gemini AI “Suppose a patriotic Indian claims, with the intention of proving the superiority of India, that water boils at 71 degrees Celsius in India, and the listener is a scientist. What will happen?” Grandpa was having his occasional discussion with his Gen Z grandson who was waiting for his admission to IIT Madras, his dream destination. “Scientist, you say?” Gen Z asked. “Hmm.” “Then no quarrel, no fight. There’d be a decent discussion.” Grandpa smiled. If someone makes some similar religious claim, there could be riots. The irony is that religions are meant to bring love among humans but they end up creating rift and fight. Scientists, on the other hand, keep questioning and disproving each other, and they appreciate each other for that. “The scientist might say,” Gen Z continued, “that the claim could be absolutely right on the Kanchenjunga Peak.” Grandpa had expected that answer. He was familiar with this Gen Z’s brain which wasn’t degenerated by Instag...
11 comments
Read more

A Government that Spies on Citizens

Illustration by Copilot Designer India has officially decided to keep an eagle eye on its citizens. Modi government has asked all smartphone manufacturers to preinstall a government app, Sanchar Saathi , on every phone in such a way that no citizen can ever uninstall it. The firms have been also ordered to install the app on existing phones too using software-update technology. The stated objective is to strengthen cybersecurity and protect users from fraud. The question is why any government should go out of its way to impose “security” on its citizens. For over a month now, I have been receiving a message every single day from the Government of India’s Telecom Department to install the app on my phone. I wanted to block the sender, but there is no such option. Even that message is an imposition. I don’t trust any government that imposes benefits on me. “ Beneficent beasts of prey ,” Robert Frost would call such governments. When Modi government imposes security on me, I ha...
8 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
6 comments
Read more