A wake-up call for Hindus the world over

Religious Extremism in Russia, Krishna temple in Moscow

By: V.Sundaram, IAS
January 02, 2006
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When Russia was in the iron grip of communism behind an iron curtain, KGB started its massive persecution campaigns against the first followers of ISKCON in the late 1970s. For their belief, around hundred of the first Russian ISKCON devotees were thrown into prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. They underwent tremendous sufferings and torture, but kept their strong, unflinching faith in Lord Krishna and His words in Bhagavad Gita. One of them, Sarkis Ohanjanyan was only 21 when he was put in prison. His only `guilt` was that he believed in God, chanted the Hare Krishna Mahamantra and refused to eat meat. One-and-a-half years later, he died in the winter of 1986 in a labour camp on account of malnutrition and tuberculosis. More...

Thanks to the vision and statesmanship of Gorbachov, the Russia of Lenin and Stalin & Co was consigned to the dustbin of history.

The beginning of the 1990s saw the birth of a new Russia. The Moscow government gave the ISKCON devotees a ruined building unsuitable for inhabitation and commercial usage on rent in Moscow. In a short time, labouring with love for Lord Krishna, devotees turned that building into the first Hindu temple in Russia. Shortly thereafter, without assigning reasons, the Moscow government took the building back and destroyed it. Again many followers of Hinduism in Russia were deprived of a place of worship. Hundreds of churches, cathedrals, mosques, synagogues are there, but not a single temple in that city of 10 million people. After many years of struggle and sacrifice by the devotees of Lord Krishna, the Mayor of Moscow on 21 January 2004 came forward and signed the order to give the land for the construction of a new ISKCON temple in a very prominent location in Moscow.

Unfortunately, in true Russian style marked by ferocious abrasiveness, on 7 October 2005, the Mayor of Moscow Yuriy Luzhkov suddenly cancelled the land order. This knee-jerk reaction of the Mayor of Moscow was in quick response to a request in writing from the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church.

In a recent letter to the Mayor of Moscow, the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church has described Lord Krishna as `an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God, and a livid lascivious youth`. The Archbishop has further requested the Mayor to ban the construction of the proposed Krishna temple in Moscow saying it would otherwise become `an idolatrous disgrace erected for the glory of wicked and malicious `God` Krishna.` He has concluded: `Construction of the temple (a satanic obscenity destined to be built right in the heart of the Orthodox Christian country of Russia) to Krishna offends our religious feelings and insults the thousand-year-old religious culture of Russia where the overwhelming majority of people, Christians and Muslims including, consider Krishna an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God.

`What the Archbishop is ranting against cannot be viewed as a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. It is clear for all of us to see that he wants Russia and the whole world to go back to the days of the infamous St. Bartholomew`s Day Massacre in France on 24 August, 1572 - a day on which one of the most horrifying holocausts in history took place. We have to substitute ISKCON in Russia today to the Protestants in France in 1572 and the Archbishop of Russian Orthodox Church today to the Roman Catholic Pope in the Rome of 1572.

India has thousands of churches and mosques. Can there not be even a single temple in Russia? Why is the Russian Orthodox Christian Society so hateful towards Indian culture? Religious intolerance in Russia is shocking and persecution of Hindus continues even in the 21st century. Shame on `secular` Indian government wedded to the `secularly sacred` (non-saffron!!) cause of upholding humane(!) Islam and compassionate(!) Christianity at the cost of obdurate Hinduism ! What a national disgrace that it should have ignored the persecution of Hindus in Moscow, Russia. For the UPA government, Hindus, though a religious majority are only a `political minority`. By a process of perverted pseudo-secular logic for the Congress party Muslims and Christians, though a religious minority, are an overriding `political majority`.

My civilized reaction (notwithstanding my status as an unknown heathen!!) to the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church would be as follows:

Thomas Jefferson (by no means an unknown heathen like myself), one of the founding fathers of the American Republic wrote:

`Your own reason is the only oracle given to you by Heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ (including) those which a Council of Ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be pseudo-evangelists.` `Because those pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those Ecclesiastics`.

Thomas Jefferson had ignorant, pompous, small-minded, self-styled and arrogant clerics like the Russian Archbishop in view when he penned the above lines on behalf of all mankind.

`We must get rid of that Christ, we must get rid of that Christ!` So spoke one of the wisest, one of the most loveable of men, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thomas Carlyle said, `If I had my way, the world would hear a pretty stern command `Exit Christ`.

Since Emerson and Carlyle spoke, a revolution has taken place in the thoughts of men. The more enlightened of them, are now rid of Christ. From their minds he has made his exit. In this context, the words of professor Goldwin Smith become relevant: `The mighty and supreme Jesus, who was to transfigure all humanity by his divine wit and grace, this Jesus has flown`.

The supernatural Christ of the New Testament, the God of orthodox Christianity is dead. But priest craft lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead God to frighten and enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars and miseries than any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it.

Trying to figure out who Jesus really was is like trying to figure out what a thousand-piece puzzle looks like with only a handful of pieces to work with. One of the first scholars to attempt this impossible feat was German theologian Hermann Samuel Reimarus who lived during the 18th century. His searching led him to conclude that Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary whose failed attempt to overthrow the Roman government led to his execution instead. After his crucifixion, Reimarus suggested Jesus` followers manufactured the gospels to promote their own agendas.

Strauss, in his Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835), which is one of the masterpieces of Free thought Literature, endeavoured to prove that Jesus Christ was a historical myth. This work was written for the scholar and not for the general reader. Strauss, incidentally, was fired from his university position for his opinions and was hounded by conservative theologians until his death in 1875.

Earnest Renan`s Life of Jesus was written in Palestine. In its abridged form, it had an immense circulation in the whole of Europe in the latter half of the 19th century. Earnest Renan, like Martin Luther in Germany in the 16th century, exposed the frauds and evils perpetrated in the churches invoking the name of Jesus Christ for the exclusive privilege and material advancement of crafty and wicked priest craft.

No one can dispute the fact that in the name of Jesus Christ and Christianity more human beings have been murdered, tortured, maimed, denigrated, discriminated against, humiliated, hated and scorned than for any other reason in the totality of the history of mankind.

To quote the appropriate words of John E. Rosenburg: `The noblest types of manhood like Bruno, Spinoza, Thomas Paine and Ingersoll have been slandered, anathematised and slain by Christians, while the Gods, the heroes, the patriarchs, the prophets and the priests of the Bible have been presented as the highest models of moral excellence`. These Bible heroes have only practised dissimulation and hallowed falsehood.

Who was Christ? He was called `The Divine Teacher`. Yes. But the great English poet Shelly thought otherwise:

     He led the crowd, he taught them justice, truth and peace,
     In semblance; but he lit within their souls
     The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword
     He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
     Of truth and freedom his malignant soul.

I don`t have to agree with Shelly. I am quoting him only to let the Archbishop of the Russian Orthodox Church know that Shelly was no heathen or worshipper of Lord Krishna. At any rate the ISKCON movement did not exist in his time!

V.Sundaram, IAS

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