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By: V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.
February 13, 2007
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In December 2006, the secular, non-saffron zed, non-communal,
non-obscurantist, non-superstitious Himachal Pradesh Government has passed
a legislation banning forced religious conversions. The Congress-led
government in the State passed the legislation during its four-day winter
session held at the newly constructed Vidhan Sabha (State Legislature) in
Dharamshala on Friday. Kaul Singh, Law Minister, Himachal Pradesh, said,
that "according to the bill if someone was forced to change his religion
without his consent, then he could come back to his own religion within a
month". He has also added that under the bill, persons who had forced or
induced someone to change his/her religion then he/she would liable for
punishment.
This bold action of Himachal Pradesh Government founded on pragmatic and
crusty non-Congress common sense rooted in the soil of India dating back
to the dawn of history has to be welcomed by all the true patriots in the
land who subscribe to the ardent nationalism of Mahapurushas like Swami
Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo Gosh, Sri Bipin Chandra Pal, Deshbandhu
Chittaranjan Das, Lala Lajpat Rai, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, Shyama
Prasad Mukherjee and Sri Guruji Golwalkar.
In recent months, five states ruled by BJP or its allies have introduced
or strengthened anti-conversion laws, which they say will protect India's
religious identity and foster communal harmony. But this is the first time
such a law has been passed in a government ruled by Congress Party. Under
some of the new laws, anyone planning to leave the Hindu fold must obtain
certificates from officials and affidavits from courts saying they were
converting out of free will and not by inducements given by the Church and
its agencies.
The ugly, barbarous and indecent incidents in a Christian School in Omalur
in Salem District has brought into sharp public focus the nature and the
extent of child abuse that is taking place in many of these minority
institutions under the protection of minority laws. In this context, the
brilliant letter of VOLTAIRE (1694-1778) to Frederick the Great in 1767
comes to my mind. In this letter, Voltaire, one of the architects of the
French Revolution of 1789, wrote these brilliant words: "Christianity is
the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever
infected the world- - -Where is the prince sufficiently educated to know
that for seventeen hundred years the Christian sect has done nothing but
harm?" I would like to remind all the Dravadian rationalists in Tamilnadu
that Voltaire was by no means a superstitious Iyer or Iyengar from
Tamilnadu and his permanent place in history can never get effaced or
obliterated by any knee-jerk pseudo secular notification of comic pseudo
secular Governments in India - be it New Delhi, or Chandigarh or Mumbai or
Chennai. In his "Philosophical Dictionary", Voltaire gave a time-defying
verdict: "Pagan religion shed very little blood, while ours flooded the
earth with it. Christianity has deluged the earth with blood for the sake
of sophisms".
About the atrocities committed by the Roman Catholic Church in Goa in the
16th, 17th and 18th centuries, Voltaire in his "FRAGMENTS OF INDIA'S
HISTORY" observed: "Goa is sadly famous for its INQUISITION, which is
contrary to humanity as much as to commerce. The Portuguese monks deluded
us into believing that the Indian populace was worshipping the Devil,
while it is THEY who served him".
To quote the rapier-thrust words of Voltaire once again in his famous
"Essay on Customs": "Christianity's divine teacher, living in humility and
peace, preached forgiveness of insults; but his holy and gentle religion
has become through our madness, the most intolerant of all, and the most
barbaric".
When the Roman Catholic Church in France made a slanderous attack on Lord
Bolingbroke in the 1760s, Voltaire defended him with these biting words:
"Christianity lit the torches that reduced our cities of ashes, and
furbished the swords that for so long covered our countryside with the
corpses of our ancestors".
In this context, I would be failing in my public duty as a free lance
journalist if I do not invite the kind attention of our readers to a
historic and landmark judgment recently passed in USA by a Federal Judge
in Louisville. In his historic decision, he refused to dismiss a lawsuit
against the Vatican that alleges a cover-up to protect priests who
molested American children. Louisville Attorney William Mc Murry has
declared: "This is the first and only case which has as its sole objective
holding the Vatican financially accountable for all of the childhood
sexual abuses committed in the US." It has to be noted that the attorney
had filed the suit in 2004 on behalf of three men who alleged abuse dating
as far back as 1928. If this verdict finally stands, it could open the
door for attorneys to take depositions of Vatican officials -including
Pope Benedict XVI ? obtain copies of church records and documents and
ultimately determine what prompted all of the bishops to keep quiet, hide
these pedophiles and refuse to report child abusers. Attorney William Mc
Murry has hailed this judgment as "truly great and historic". It has also
been reported that McMurry is requesting injunctions requiring the Vatican
to "cease its violations of the internationally recognized human rights of
children and to report all allegations of childhood sexual abuse in the
United States and that he is asking a federal judge to supervise the
Vatican's conduct for 10 years". McMurry is seeking to have the Vatican
suit certified as a class-action case, saying he believes there are at
least several thousand victims nationwide. McMurry said that is important
because the Pope Benedict XVI was a Bishop on a commission that dealt with
priests accused of sexual abuse. McMurry finally concluded that "The Pope
knows where all the bones are buried".
David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by
Priests, said: "The ruling is a step towards the truth. This is part of a
slow but clear trend by judges everywhere to hold wrongdoers responsible
for child sex crimes, even if they wear clerical garb."
Sexual abuse of innocent women and children in many of the Institutions
run by Vatican round the world have been brought to the broad Sunlight of
public notice everywhere. Belinda Martinez of Minnesota, U.S.A. sent an
open letter to the Pope on 19 April, 2002 in which, among other things,
she alleged as follows: "I am one of the vast numbers of Catholics who
have been sexually abused by a priest. I am appalled at every news article
or story I hear; yet at the same time, I know it will mark an increased
intensity in the healing of the victim involved. I am hoping that the Holy
Roman Catholic Church can be an instrument of the healing as well. SO FAR
IT HAS NOT. Please ask that your Cardinals release the names of priests,
formerly or presently accused of being involved in criminal sexual acts,
so that the sin of secrecy does not continue. There are still so many
undisclosed perpetrators of terrible deeds. We have lost human lives to
suicide, mental illness and over medicated adult lives in the name of your
secrecy." Please do not become complacent on this issue. There is too much
work to do. We have shown only a small portion of the ugliness. There are
victims suffering great grief as a result of abuse by nuns as well. So
much more light needs to be shed. It is not okay to concentrate on what
you can retain of your reputation, dignity, assets, authority, or respect,
if you first do not make monumental efforts to restore those very same
things to the innocents from whom they were stolen".
She has further said in her letter: "I pray for victims who try to
maintain membership in a worship community that does not understand how
bittersweet the rituals have become as a result of their abuse. I pray for
your ordained ministers who have been left to fix the mess that has been
publicly ignored for far too long. I pray for journalists who provide
disproportionate trial coverage, causing a naive public to further abuse
the victim. I pray for a Church that has not valued fifty percent of its
constituents-females. Mostly I pray, because I know I am still beard by
the God who made me, even though it would benefit the world to listen."
One of my well-meaning Christian friends asked me as to why so much of
child abuse and women abuse takes place in the Institutions run by the
Church. I invited his attention to the razor-sharp comment of Bertrand
Russel (1872-1970) in his book Marriage and Morals: "The Christian view
that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the
passages from St Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse,
even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes
against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as morbid
aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has mad
Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental
disorders and unwholesome views of life". Now Bertrand Russel has to be
defend himself in Heaven against the outbursts of pseudo-secularists like
Medha Patkar, Aruna Roy, Arundati Roy and others, all known authorities on
the 100 PERper cent purity of Christianity and 100 per cent impurity of
half-savage Hinduism!
V Sundaram, IAS, Retd.
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