??????? ????| PAKISTAN LEDGER | ???????? ????? | September 4th, 2008 | Moin Ansari | ???? ??????? |














![]()
| RUPEE NEWS | Moin Ansari | September 4th, 2008 | ???? ??????? | ????? ????? | India: 3500-yrs of massacres of Dalit-Sudra Blacks by Arya-Brahmins. The Dalits tired of thousands of years of discrimination turned to Jesus Chris and Christianity to save them from the Hinduvata tyranny imposed on them. However Jesus could not save them in this world. The Hinduists hunted them, hounded them, massacred them, raped them and have perpetuated a genocide on Dalits in general and Christian Dalits in particular. Orissa Christians, largely Dailts, have been heavily persecuted since Christmas of 2007 and now again in August 2008.
A DFN Dalit Education Center (DEC) was burned down on August 24th. The situation was so volatile that Minister of State for Home Sri Prakash Jaiswal and other Congress leaders, who arrived here to visit riot hit areas, were told by the state government that they could not do so and returned to New Delhi.Fifty Thousand Christians Still Hiding In The Forests Of Orissa By Citizen’s Delegation. EU says “India is being ruled by castes, not laws”-Indian state machinery supports License to kill Dalits.
A Citizens Delegation met President Pratibha Patil on Monday morning calling upon her to enforce Article 355 of the Constitution of India on Orissa so that the Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik administration takes adequate measures to protect Christians in the state from Hindutva violence..
The best legal opinion available to the delegation held that while Article 356 calls for imposition of President’s rule when New Delhi takes over reins of power, Article 355 reminds both New Delhi and state governments of their duties to protect States against internal disturbance and should be brought into force now.
The delegation reminded the President that the violence that has continued against Christians in Orissa from 23rd August till today justifies the use of this Article. The violence far exceeds that of Christians 2007, the delegation told the President, reminding her that she had a big role to play at this juncture..
In fact, violence has spilled out of Orissa into neighbouring Madhya Pradesh. In Orissa, It is not confined to Kandhamal but has affected other districts. In Kandhamal, fifty thousand people are hiding in forests or are in a few refugee camps, hiding from murderous gangs seeking to kill them or convert them to Hinduism, Over 4,000 houses have been completely destroyed apart from now close to a hundred small and big churches which have been torched.
The Citizen’s delegation, the first such to meet the President, was led by film maker Mahesh Bhatt and Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind President Maulana Mahmood Madani, MP, National Integration Council member Dr John Dayal, Orissa Archbishop Raphael Cheenath, Delhi Archbishop Vincent Concessao, Maharashtra Government State Minorities Commission vice chairman Dr Abraham Mathai, Jamiat leader Mohd Faruqi, Al India Christian Council regional secretary Rev Madhu Chandra, Delhi Catholic Archdiocese Federation President Adv Jenis Francis and Mumbai’s Catholic Social Forum secretary general Joseph Dias were the other members.
The President gave the delegation a patient hearing and said she would have their demand for Article 355 examined. She said the government had briefed her on steps, which had already been taken. Mr. Bhatt told the President that the State government was in a coma; its police totally complicit in the violence and the Sangh Parivar was running havoc.
Maulana Madani said it was a matter of security of India’s minorities. It was India’s concern for its minorities that had brought it respect internationally, and it was the object of deep concern globally. Archbishop Cheenath, Dr John Dayal and Dr Mathai briefed the President in detail about the Sangh violence in the state which has continued after the murder of the VHP vice President Lakshmanananda Saraswati.
Following are excerpts from the Memorandum Citizen’s Memorandum to the President of India:
September 1, 2008
Shrimati Pratibha Patil
The President of India
Your Excellency,
You are aware of the still continuing carnage against the Christian community, mostly Dalits and Tribals, in the Kandhamal district of Orissa and in several other districts including the state capital of Bhubaneswar since 23rd August 2003 following the killing of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, reportedly by Maoist groups who have been operating in the state for some time. The violence has now spread to some other states, especially Madhya Pradesh.
Nine months after attacks in Kandhamal District on Christians of Dalit, Hill peoples and Tribal ethnicity celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, we are deeply saddened by a repeat of the violence in the month of India’s Independence. The Christmas 2007 attacks claimed the lives of at least four Christians, and we verified the destruction of at least 105 churches and 730 Christian homes. The current spate of violence will exceed these totals as it continues to spread into other districts. Our estimate from Ground Zero is of close to two dozen people dead, one a Hindu girl burnt to death working for a Christian orphanage, a Nun has been gang raped, religious men and women personnel humiliated, beaten, tortured, some close to death, while policemen have looked on, or have been absent. We appeal for the restoration of law and order. But the root cause must also be addressed.
We, the secular civil society community, perceive that the great nation of India is at a tipping point. The groups, which favour a “Hindu Rashtra”, have made Orissa their laboratory, as they earlier did Gujarat. The so-called saffronisation of the state has been the subject of well-documented academic and socio-political studies. We entreat you, as President of the Republic, to enforce the rule of law upon Sangh Parivar organisations which blatantly flaunt their divisive agenda. Specifically, we call upon you to bring the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, and Bajrang Dal under the rule of law.
As Orissa authorities have repeatedly said there was ample circumstantial evidence of Maoist involvement in the killing of VHP leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati and four others on August 23rd. Additionally, someone who identified himself as Azad, a leader of Maoist outfit, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army claim responsibility for the killing as Times of India carries the news on August 30 referring to an interview with a leading Oriya daily on August 29.1 Yet Praveen Togadia, VHP general secretary, told an international journalist on August 27, “It is clear that the church killed the Swami.”2 Gouri Prasad Rath, Orissa state VHP secretary, said, “This attack is the handiwork of the Christians.”3 Subhash Chavan, national co-convener of the Bajrang Dal, said, “The police are trying to hide the truth by blaming the Maoists.”4 An unnamed RSS spokesperson said, “This is an attack by the agents of Christian missionaries, whose attempts at forcible conversions the Swamiji countered.”5 RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav told CNN IBN on Tuesday night6 that Christians were behind the murders. Perhaps based on a media report7, Madhav The final word lay with RSS supreme Kupahalli Sudershan who in a Press Statement faxed to the Media called the late VHP vice President a martyr for “stopping Christians from carrying on coversions.” These types of irresponsible statements must be met with the full force of the law. They are all culpable for penal action under IPC 295A for the crime of creating enmity between communities and religions. This would benefit not only Orissa, but the nation. We sincerely wish Swami Saraswati was not murdered and he still might be alive if the state government had followed the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities. The NCM urged the authorities to examine the speeches of Swami Lakshmanananda to determine whether they amount to incitement to violence.8 9 We are confident that, if this had been done, the swami would have been jailed and protected from coming to any harm.
Your Excellency, the violence in Orissa continues without adequate police forces to stop mobs which break curfew and harm innocent civilians, chasing our fellow countrymen and women like animals in the forests where they have taken refuge since August 24. Today the irresponsible leaders of hardliner Hindu nationalist groups are damaging our great democracy and secularism of the nation. We request you to order the Union Government and the State Administration to take legal action against the irresponsible organisations which called the bundh on Monday, Aug. 25, 2008 and have passively watched their members wreak havoc. They must, of course, fully investigate the murder of the VHP vice President. This is to request you to use your powers as President of India, and the tremendous force of your good offices, to impress on the Central Government to rush adequate Union forces, including contingents of the Armed Forces if required, to restore law and order and governance in the Kandhamal region
The consequences of any further delay, we the secular civil society fear, may be catastrophic for the small Christian community in the State in particular, for peace in Orissa in general, and for the fair name of India as a secular country. http://www.countercurrents.org/cd010908.htm





It is only when a follower of Jesus Christ separates himself or herself from the acquiescence of those who call themselves Christians, from such who have no knowledge of who Christ was and is, that he or she suffers a series of persecution meet for his witness. In the Gospel of Matthews Chapter 5 Verse 11 and 12, we find these smoulderingly destructive and life-giving words of our Master, telling us very clearly that it is only when we suffer for His sake that we are blessed and not otherwise. Destructive, because they do surely call for total abnegation of Self and life-giving because of receiving into our hearts and lives the very characteristics of Christ Jesus.
The question that I would like us to ponder over is, whether the persecution being carried out in Orissa and Karnataka have anything to do with being persecuted for the sake of Christ, and whether as a result all who have lost their houses, belongings and have even been killed or maimed been blessed as result. Blessing is to have the character of Christ instilled within our lives. It has nothing much to do with cars, big Church halls, flashy clothes and designer watches. Ephesians 1: 3 is blatantly clear about what ‘blessing’ can be at any time.
I do not know if we have more followers of Jesus, the Man of sorrow, acquainted with grief ready to intermingle with the downtrodden and outcaste of the land, or whether we have more Christians crowding Churches because they like to be part of a gimmick, fad and a movement which has more roots in populous publicity. There are of course more Christians anywhere in this globe than Disciples. The West with their convenience stores and convenience marriages have no inkling about ‘Commitment’. People get married because of convenience and not so much for commitment. The commitment drama is the one enacted with the wedding vows, the wedded Man and Wife Kiss and the signing of the Marriage Registry. The reason why we go around converting people is because we have no Lord or Guru to obey or follow ourselves. We therefore make clones of ourselves and there bask in the elation of our own ego. Jesus becomes merely an utility Christ catering meekly and submissively to all our demands and wants, waiting tables, healing us when sick, saving us when dying in sin and providing us all things at all times – a magician and a mere miracle worker who we use, rather than He using us!!!
Christ Jesus nowhere in the Bible tells us to go places and convert people to Christianity, or to fill up Church halls and get people to change their names from a Babulal to a Billy. He tells His disciples very clearly that they must go to the ends of the earth making disciples. Disciples are those who follow and obey and do not play the drum beats of materialism but are more self-willed slaves of the One they call Master. This is a complete Indian concept and very few of the westerners even though Christian understand or relate to this mindset. Many of them even label that as ‘heathenism’.
My point here is that too many people are being converted to Christianity and therefore they are fighting for a lifestyle that is not prescribed by the Bible, but more into being clones of the western donors. This is not biblical or even spiritual. Too many people crowded inside a Church hall, screaming and shouting, praying and singing does not necessarily make them Disciples, but just overtly sentimental members of a community. There is nothing called Christianity in the Bible and none of the early Apostles practiced it. They merely followed Christ and in the book of Acts they were first called ‘Christians’ not by themselves but by those who noticed them, jeered them and mocked them. So if we are proud to be called Christians we must ask ourselves this one question; are we relishing our new identity because it affiliates us with the moneyed West, or are we relishing it because we follow a crucified Master being crucified ourselves?