Something To Think About - 11

Somethings We Abhor

After Narendra Modi and the BJP thrashed the Congress Party in the Gujarat State elections in December 2007, senior Congress leader and Minister in the UPA government at the centre, Kapil Sibal, gave a statement, "The truth has to be told. We have to fight it up front. Democracy is not about winning or losing a state election. Modi is something that the Congress abhors." (The bold italics mine)


We, the people of India who adopted, enacted and gave to ourselves the constitution of India, have reason to abhor somethings listed below.


We Abhor -- Jawaharlal Nehru. For what?

For creating the Kashmir problem. If only he had left it to Sardar Patel, it would have been resolved right at the beginning. Instead Nehru intervened and the problem has been with us ever since and promises to victimise us to eternity.


We abhor -- Indira Gandhi. For what?

For creating a genie called Bhindranwale who caused so much problem in Punjab and finally consumed her.


We abhor -- Rajiv Gandhi. For what?

For condoning the Anti-Sikh Riots in Delhi in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi (in which about 3000 Sikhs were massacred by mobs of Congress workers) through very sage(!!) remarks that the ground around it will shake when a huge tree falls; and then compounding the sacrilege by inducting into his cabinet of ministers the very same Congress leaders who were accused of leading the mobs.


We abhor -- Sonia Gandhi. For what?

On the one hand she and her Congress Party screamed their heads off, in India and shamelessly all around the world, against Narendra Modi for the post-Godhra riots in which less than 1500 people died (a quarter of them Hindus and policemen even though it is called anti-Muslim riots), thereby tarnishing the image of Modi and Gujarat AND India and causing George W. Bush to deny Modi a visa to visit the USA; on the other hand, she and her Congress Party and their UPA government at the centre are falling at the feet of and licking the boots of the same George W. Bush who (in retaliation for the 3000 or so killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack) is responsible for the deaths of '5000 plus' American soldiers (bulk of whom are blacks and Hispanics) AND about a million Iraqis, in his Iraq misadventure, and dismisses it contemptuously as collateral damage.


We abhor -- Jawaharlal Nehru. For what?

For spawning a breed of 'Left Intellectuals' (Intellectuals?? One has to wonder) and Pseudo-Secularists who have made it their mission in life to distort Indian history by suppressing all the gory atrocities committed by marauding outsiders (Mughal invaders as well as Christian missionary/conversion brigades), and propagating the view that India became civilised only after their advent; and doing their damndest to negate and destroy everything Indian (Hindu culture, Hindu heritage, Hindu traditions, Hindu values), and in fact doing their best to eliminate Hinduism and the Hindus from the face of the earth.


We abhor -- Indira Gandhi. For what?

For introducing fascist tendencies in independent India with her emergency rule in 1975, which has been avidly taken up by her able daughter-in-law Sonia who already had genuine fascist Italian blood in her.


We abhor -- Rajiv Gandhi. For what?

For carrying the Congress Party's divisive minority (read Muslim) appeasement policy to greater heights by negating the Supreme Court's judgement in the Shah Bano case (upholding her right to maintenance by her husband who had divorced her) and passing legislation to please the Muslim fundamentalists.


We abhor -- Sonia Gandhi. For what?

Vidkun Quisling was a Norwegian fascist politician who assisted Hitler's Nazi Germany to conquer his own country. and the term Quisling is used to denote traitors. Now "our own"(?) Italian fascist Sonia Gandhi, who reluctantly became an Indian citizen after her husband Rajiv Gandhi became Prime Minister of India, is a Quisling acting as an agent of the Vatican to destroy Hinduism and make India a "Christian" country. Latest evidence: getting her Congress (UPA) government to issue one-rupee and two-rupee coins carrying Christian images instead of Indian (Hindu) images.


We abhor -- Indira Gandhi. For what?

For releasing 93000 Pakistani prisoners of war after the 1971 war without getting anything in return for it, or solving the Kashmir problem once for all.


We abhor -- Rajiv Gandhi. For what?

For allowing his Law Minister, Bharadwaj if one remembers right, to attack and pass vitriolic comments about the Supreme Court judges (after the Shah Bano judgement) from within the sacred and safe precincts of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha. If he dared to make such comments from outside the Lok Sabha, he would have been hauled up for contempt of court. What a great display of the 'courageous' bully behaviour of the Congressmen!!


We abhor -- Sonia, Manmohan and their followers. For what?

For calling Narendra Modi a 'liar' when they are the liars who do not have the honesty, integrity and grace to admit and acknowledge the development work that has gone into Gujarat and the progress they have achieved. When Manmohan says that whatever Gujarat achieved was only due to funds provided by the central government, does he mean that the centre did not provide similar funds to the other States, or does it mean that the other Chief Ministers did not have the commitment and ability to achieve anything on par with what Modi has achieved?


We abhor -- Indira Gandhi. For what?

For giving rise to the "committed executive" and "committed judiciary", wherein they were all "committed" to protect her interests and NOT national interests.


We abhor -- Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia and their clique. For what?

For doing their damndest to stall the Bofors investigation in every way, including enabling Quattrochi to flee the country.


We abhor -- Sonia Gandhi, her Congress Party, the Commies, the "left intellectuals", the Pseudo-Secularists, the "Rationalists", the West-oriented anti-national English-language Media etc. For what?

For their non-stop divisive political game, with their endless minority appeasement policies. For example: when everyone pitches in to commemmorate Babri Masjid Demolition Day every year, but protest vehemently when the Godhra Train Massacre incident is brought up; when they make loud noises about so-called ethnic cleansing in Gujarat, but do not have the eyes and ears and minds and brains to act against the ethnic cleansing suffered by the Kashmiri Pundits; and many more such things.


We abhor -- Sonia Gandhi. For what?

This Fascist intruder from Italy dares to insult our patriotic nationalist leaders with abusive language, like calling Atal Behari Vajpayee as 'Nikamma' and traitor, and calling Modi as a 'liar' and 'merchant of death' when she herself is much much worse.


Well, the list goes on and on.


If "Modi is something that the Congress abhors", as Kapil Sibal says, then Jawahar Lal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and the whole lot of their Party stalwarts are all THINGS which we have reason to abhor because of their many acts of commission and omission.

Something To Think About - 10

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 5


It seems to be not a bad idea to conclude a serious discussion with a few comments on a rather lighter note. The Fourth and Fifth Commandments of Moses conveniently help us along in that direction.


“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work:
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”

This is how the Fourth Commandment reads.


And the Fifth Commandment says: “Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee.”


In his highly illuminating, entertaining and thought-provoking book “Don’t Know Much About the Bible” (Avon Books, Inc., New York), Kenneth C. Davis points out, “While the sacredness of the Ten Commandments has always been held up as central to American law and virtue, people through the centuries have done a pretty poor job when it comes to obeying them. Even Israel’s greatest national hero, King David, didn’t fare too well when it came to following the commandments. He broke the Sabbath rule at least once – as Jesus also later does – and he murdered, committed adultery, and coveted………… With that in mind, take a closer look at the Ten Commandments and see just how well modern society does in observing this basic, presumably immutable, set of rules.”


It would appear, then, that the Fourth and Fifth Commandments too need to be taken with an appropriate pinch of salt, just as it happens with any other commandment.


In this book Kenneth C. Davis makes a few tongue-in-cheek comments about the Fourth Commandment. Here are a few gems.
** First of all, note it does not say the Lord “hallowed it for NFL football”. Does watching six to eight hours of sports on Sunday count as keeping the Sabbath holy?

** In New York city – long famed as “Sin City” – you still cannot buy a bottle of wine or vodka from a liqour store on Sunday, even though you can buy beer in a grocery store after noon and order a drink in a restaurant. Go figure.

** Of course, Christians have no monopoly on circumventing Sabbath holiness rules. Many observant Jews have long found ways to get around the spirit, if not the letter, of the law. Before the days of modern electrical timers that could turn televisions and other appliances on or off, Jews commonly employed Christians – “sabbath goys” – to perform certain predetermined services, such as turning on their lights.


These light-hearted comments by Kenneth C. Davis certainly show up the considerable amount of hypocrisy involved in the way the commandments are obeyed/disobeyed and followed/violated in practice. However he follows this up by pointing out how Jesus Christ himself openly disobeyed this particular commandment. “He and his disciples were accused by the priests and rabbis of Jerusalem of violating the commandment by ‘laboring’ on the Sabbath. Jesus responded to his Sabbath-day critics in two ways. First, he said the things he was doing on the Sabbath, such as healing the sick, were too important to put off. And Jesus also professed a belief that internal holiness, an inner sense of spirituality, was more important than the ‘show-off’ piety, typified by the Sabbath templegoers who outwardly kept God’s commandments but then behaved badly the rest of the week.”


This is a very telling comment on the ‘Book-ishness’ of the two religions who claim their going by their Books as their major strong point, the Christians with their Bible and the Muslims with their Koran. And they claim that Hinduism does not have “A” Book of that type. How amateurish and how ignorant! As Kenneth C. Davis has brought into sharp focus above, most often people toy with the commandments to suit their personal convenience and commercial interests, while hypocritically accusing others of violating rules even if they do it in a just and righteous cause. And Jesus Christ has only too clearly demonstrated how the spirit of the rule has to be understood, using one’s brain, intelligence, education, knowledge, discretion etc which are God-given assets, and put to good use in rendering service to one’s fellow beings.


“Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee,” is what the Fifth Commandment says. Does it mean that just by ‘honour-ing’ one’s father and mother one will live to a ripe old age of 100 or 150 or 200 years? Does one want it anyway? Does it mean caring for them by providing them with shelter, food and other necessities to keep them comfortable, or catering to their every wish and doing their bidding lifelong? As Kenneth C. Davis points out: “This commandment was aimed at protecting the elderly and sick from being abandoned to the elements once they were no longer productive members of the tribe.” Even though he makes these remarks with reference to the semi-nomadic desert tribes of the Biblical age, isn’t it true of the very materialistic, very commercial, very selfish Western society as it obtains today?


Davis also adds, “Many people doubt that such a commandment demands unqualified acceptance. Does the physically or emotionally abused child have to ‘honor’ an abusive parent? Sadly, an observer of the modern world might conclude that, in an era of increasingly commonplace physical and sexual abuse of children, perhaps a better commandment would be Honor thy children.”


God might have said, “Honour thy father and thy mother”. It is understandable. But the second part of the Commandment seems to be the result of some sort of poetic licence employed by whoever wrote this down, to give free scope for his imagination. Any commandment or injunction or “God’s Word”, as it is called, throws up this query as to what exactly is the wheat portion given out by God and what is the chaff added by various people while handing it down by oral tradition initially and transcribing it into writing later.


This idea of questioning the rationale of a concept and understanding it properly may be novel to the “Book-ish” religions whose leaders demand unquestioning obedience to the Books by the laity while reserving to themselves the right to interpret the rules according to their own convenience. The Vedic religion, on the other hand, has always encouraged people to use their discretion, ask questions and arrive at their own conclusions according to their own understanding. This aspect is brought out clearly in many of the Upanishads wherein spiritual concepts are expounded in the form of discussions between the preceptor and the disciples who are encouraged to think for themselves to get at the truth. Nowhere is it brought out more pointedly than in the Bhagawat Gita, a lesson in the philosophical, spiritual as well as practical aspects of leading one’s day-to-day life, given by Lord Krishna to Arjuna. Almost at the end of a long discourse running into about 700 verses, Krishna tells Arjuna that He has given him all the knowledge He possibly can and it is upto Arjuna now to think over it, reflect on all that has been said and arrive at his own decision and act according to that.


It is in this context that Kenneth C. Davis makes this very sensible and realistic remark, “They should remind modern readers that the Bible was composed a long time ago for a very different group of people. This is where people have to determine what is law appropriate to desert nomads four thousand years ago, and which are universal laws that transcend time and setting”. One may add that even in the case of universal laws which transcend time and setting, the way it is used, the exact scope of its application, may vary with time and the nature of the setting as well as the context of the situation.


In any civilisation, in any type of community, at any era, principles do get distorted as time goes by, vested interests twist the scriptural messages to suit their convenience, and corrupt practices get injected in the society. Many civilisations and many faiths have fallen by the wayside as time goes on. Even though Hinduism, taking off from the ancient Vedic religion, has also stumbled quite often, divine personages, as well as social reformers not considered to be divine personalities, have appeared on the scene from time to time to reinterpret and revalidate the rules appropriate to the prevailing social environment, and give a fresh direction to it and resurrect it.


Isn’t it significant that in Christianity people are referred to as “flock of sheep” and their God is called the Shepherd? Sheep are singularly known for their brainlessness. And that is precisely what the Popes, the Archbishops, the Bishops and the entire church hierarchy want their “flock” to be. From their flock they want brainless, unthinking, unquestioning faith and acceptance of whatever they claim as God’s Word as given in the Bible. In Hinduism too, distortions have occurred over a period of time whereby elders with vested interests, including religious leaders, have appropriated for themselves the right to interpret the scriptures and impose some rigid practices for people to follow. However, the Vedic scriptures encourage people to use their God-given gift called the brain and think for themselves. Take for example just one verse from Rig veda which says: Aa no bhadraah kratavo yantu viswathah. This means: let noble, auspicious, propitious thoughts, intelligence, talents come to us from all directions from all over the universe. In simple, plain language, what it says is: Do not blindly follow any thoughts or practices just because you have been instructed to do so by somebody. Keep your mind open always to receive good ideas from anywhere and use them to improve your own understanding of things, and fashion your life accordingly. What a huge difference between the “flock of sheep” concept of Christianity and the intelligent, thinking, human being, the homo sapiens concept of the Vedic religion!


Without knowing the ABC of Hinduism, or even of their own religion for that matter, the Popes are giving a call for the evangelisation of India and of Far Eastern Asia for the Harvest of Faith Programme for the third millennium. What a pity!
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Something To Think About - 09

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 4

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” This is the third of the Ten Commandments.


The sixth among the Ten Commandments says, “Thou shalt not kill”. This is the King James Version translation. Some other versions such as New Revised Standard Version and Jewish Publication Society give it as, “You shall not murder”. May be there is some validity to this since killing animals for food should not become a problem because of this commandment.


These two commandments should be of some special import to the Christian community since Papacy has been often involved with murder and mayhem, in the name of “the Lord thy God”, throughout history. In fact the last Pope, the one just before (the late) Pope John Paul II, died under mysterious circumstances hardly one month after he took office, and it is widely believed that it was a politically motivated murder caused by palace intrigue. It doesn’t create a very inviting environment for other religionists to convert to your religion, does it, Mr. Pope?


The Crusades, a series of wars over a period of two centuries, between Christians and Muslims, for control over Jerusalem in the name of “the Lord thy God”, resulted in the loss of millions of lives. In more recent times we have the spectacle of the Roman Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Britain fighting for northern Ireland, again with a considerable loss of lives, in the name of “the Lord thy God”. In between, there have been countless other wars, between the Christians and the Muslims, for the Christian God versus the Muslim God, as well as between different factions of Christians, like the Protestants against Roman Catholics involving the Protestant God and Roman Catholic God. Where is the one and only “the Lord thy God” of the First Commandment? And Mr. Pope and other Christians want to impose this War-prone God, or is it these War-prone Gods, on the Hindus and other Asians through conversion.


Isn't it the Catholics from Portugal who showed their "Christ-ian" love by going on a rampage to convert Hindus to Christianity on a mass scale, and murdering thousands of Hindus who resisted this conversion madness? What a tribute to the 3rd and 6th Commandments?


It was the Roman Catholic Irish Republican Army, and not Islamic terrorists, who assassinated Lord Louis Mountbatten. And, of course, Hitler and his loyal Nazi officers and foot-soldiers, as well as Mussolini and his Fascist forces, were all Christians -- Catholics to boot whom the Pope heads -- and they did their best to lighten the load on Mother Earth by eliminating about six million, or is it eight or ten million, Jews from the face of the earth. The Pope of those days, Pius XII, is said to have given a tacit nod of approval, or at best kept his gaze trained in an opposite direction, as some people would like us to believe, when this holocaust was going on in full swing.


Isn’t it the Christian countries of Europe and America, belonging to a thousand different Christian denominations, which inflicted World War I and World War II, in the late-lamented 20th century, on the world, leading to enormous loss of life and property? The then-President Harry Truman of the USA showed his “Christian love” by dropping two atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan towards the fag end of WW-II. It is being debated even today whether it was necessary at all to drop those two bombs. The casualities were only a little less than half a million people, which is of course insignificant compared to the millions of Jews that Hitler disposed of.


Of course the Super-Christian, highly ethical and moral, Presidents of the USA (including JFK and Bill Clinton of sexual-escapades fame, and Richard Nixon of Watergate fame. and currently George W. Bush of Iraq-gate fame) have mastered the art of telling the world that “the Lord thy God” appears in their dreams regularly and tells them that only they are authorised by Him to have nuclear weapons and no one else in the world should possess one, unless specifically permitted by the Americans.


Then we have seen the Americans throw tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of chemical weapons all over Vietnam which destroyed all their forests and vegetation as well as caused severe burn injuries to the people, just because the Vietnamese were going the Communist way and the “Christian” Americans did not agree with the God-less ideology of the Russians. After all the severe destruction caused to the Vietnamese people and property, the "Christ-ian" Americans were bothered only about a piddling few American soldiers who were Missing In Action (MIA) as a result of their own criminal action in Vietnam, and never about the wholesale damage done to the Vietnamese people, their country, and their economy by the American military action. “The Lord thy God” must have been extremely pleased with this supreme display of love and compassion towards their fellow human beings. Obviously the Popes plan to sell this idea of neighbourly love to the Hindus and other Asians and induce them to convert to Christianity. What a Unique Selling Point!


Well, how can one forget the Born-Again Christian George W. Bush and his Iraq-gate. When a few terrorists from the Middle East Islamic nations managed to hoodwink his own security forces and hijacked some airplanes from his own American airports, and pulverised the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, and killed about 3000 people in that process, up rose GWB and declared, "What the terrorists can do, I can do better", and has now killed not only about 5000 of his own US Army personnel but nearly a million more Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians. One has to wonder whether Jesus Christ is proud of this Born-Again Christian and his brand of conservatives, the Southern Baptists, who are also active in India with their conversion business.


Again going back to Kenneth C. Davis (“Don’t Know Much About the Bible”, Avon Books Inc, New York), this commandment, as Rabbi Joseph Telushkin comments, is also aimed at those who commit sins in “the name of God”. Telushkin writes: “If they ‘carry’ God’s name in promotion of a cause that is evil (e.g., the medieval crusaders who murdered innocent people in the name of God, or members of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan that claim what they do is God’s will), then they violate the Third Commandment”.(Biblical Literacy)


My, My! Isn’t this again a severe indictment of the Catholic Church and its head, the Pope! This Pope and his loyal fellow idolaters, who don’t seem to know anything about God’s commandments, and violate them left, right and centre, are busy planning to spread their form of ungodly religion to India and the rest of Asia, which is only bound to result in conflict and bloodshed. What an appetising prospect!
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Something To Think About - 08

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 3

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:

“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.

“And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.”

This is the second of the Ten Commandments of God. Isn’t there something odd, something creepy about this Commandment? Scholars don’t tire of commenting that this God is a loving God, a compassionate God, a merciful God, a forgiving God. As one scholar put it, “Forgiveness is ultimately the great theme that permeates the Bible. Men sin. God forgives”. (Kenneth C. Davis in his book “Don’t Know Much About the Bible”; Avon Books, Inc., New York). But can one see any semblance of love or forgiveness in this Commandment? If one commits a sin or mistake or whatever, the “children unto the third and fourth generation” will be punished, even though they may be righteous persons in their own rights! Isn’t it what it says? What sort of God is this?

Or, is it possible that God is saying, as an extension of the First Commandment, that if one entertains and indulges in bowing to the images like wine, women, wealth etc, they will end up damaging their family lives to such an extent it will have a deleterious effect for generations to come?

“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” says this commandment. Kenneth C. Davis says in his very illuminating book: “Some Christians, particularly those Protestant denominations that emerged during the Reformation, rejected elaborate church buildings and certain religious practices in favour of a “purer” religion devoid of symbols and statuary – that’s how the “Puritans” got their name. To them, the religious statues and the magnificent cathedrals built to display these artistic works contradicted the commandment and the spirit of Jesus’ teachings.” Jesus Christ added for good measure, according to Matthew 6:5-6, “And when you pray, do not imitate the hypocrites: they love to say their prayers standing up in the synagogues and at the street corners for people to see them. In truth I tell you, they have had their reward. But when you pray, go to your private room, shut yourself in, and so pray to your Father who is in that secret place, and your Father who sees all that is done in secret will reward you.” Obviously what God says is to avoid all ostentation, pomp and show. As Kenneth C. Davis puts it, “One of the clearest themes in the ministry of Jesus is his contempt for outward expressions of empty piety in favour of the importance of inner, spiritual wealth”.

Just look at the specially designed huge altar that was put up in the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi for the Pope’s mass on the 7th November 1999. It had some other props too like an elevator to raise the Pope from ground level to the pulpit, a special loo for him on one side of the dais and so on. Surely it must have cost a pretty penny. Don’t these things count as “graven images” or idols? Isn’t the entire Vatican a great showpiece, a super idol? Isn’t the Pope himself, with his regalia and paraphernalia, a great showpiece, a great idol? What about the huge expensive Basilicas, Cathedrals, Churches, Chapels and so on strewn all over the world? What are they if not idols which “the Lord thy God” frowns on? So, people who do not want to understand and follow their own God’s Commandments plot to entice some other persons to give up their own God and embrace this 'Christian' God. What an ethical thing to do indeed!

The Christians, as well as the Muslims, have the habit of commenting that the Hindus are idol worshippers, and that this is not in conformity with what Christianity and Islam preach. I believe it is Swami Vivekananda who gave an interesting demonstration of what idol worship means. When the Swami was in the USA, a host, brought up in the Christian faith, raised this issue. The Swami just looked around the room they were in, picked up a framed photograph of an elderly gentleman and asked the host as to whose picture it was. The host replied it was his father’s photo. The Swami, without any hesitation, dashed it to the ground, and it lay in a mangled ruin, with glass pieces strewn all around. The host was aghast, and shouted at the Swami why he was behaving like a mad man. The Swami was very cool and replied something like this: “This is the answer to your query. You have seen your father in person, have moved with him closely for a number of years, and you ought to be having his features etched sharply in your memory for ever, so much so you should be able to visualise his features and feel his presence any time you want. But you are unable to do so and you need a prop like a photograph to remember him and feel close to him again as before. This is precisely what idol worship is all about. Nobody has seen God in the physical form and no one knows what He looks like. But when one prays, the human mind naturally looks for something to hang on to. It is impossible for the mind to focus on a blank space or vacuum and pray. It needs a prop which is what the idol provides. When you pray looking at the figure of a God, you are not just looking at the stone or metal it is made of and admiring the skill of the craftsman who made it, but you are imbuing it with the spirit of the God and you make obeisance to that God you see in it.”

It is obviously something like this which “the Lord thy God” means when he speaks out against idol worship. Don’t reduce your Cathedral to a showpiece, making it an item of curiosity in the itinerary of conducted tours where the tourists run all over the place gawking at the figures and stained glass windows, clicking away to glory with their cameras, and go away after making a contribution toward its upkeep. This reduces it to just a dead idol with no semblance of the Divinity or Spirit or Life associated with it. The Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, the celebrated pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York, who has written scores of books on positive thinking, has reported about a practice he used to follow in his Sunday prayers. After the sermon was over, he would invite the congregation to bow their heads and spend a couple of minutes in total silence, when they were asked to feel the presence of God among themselves, and unload their minds of all the burden they were carrying, and leave them in the hands of God to help them with an answer. If this is the way the idol, the Church or Cathedral, is used, then it turns into an abode where God lives and answers your prayers. On the other hand, if it is just a social meeting place to spend a couple of hours on Sundays, it is only a dead idol.

Do the Muslims fare any better on this count? Their mosques are all idols. The Crescent one finds on top of every dome of the mosque is an idol. The great Black Stone in the middle of their Great Mosque in Mecca is nothing but an idol. And they talk deprecatingly of the Hindu practice of idol worship! Isn’t it rather sly on their part to do that?

Far from thinking of the idols as being only in the physical form, here is a different concept presented by Kenneth C. Davis. He says, “In his insightful book, Biblical Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin offers a useful insight on this commandment:

From Judaism’s perspective, idolatry occurs when one holds any value (for instance, nationalism) higher than God. Thus, a person who, on the basis of “my country, right or wrong,” performs acts that God designates as wrong, is an idolater; his behavior makes it clear that he regards his country’s demand to do evil as more binding than God’s demand to do good. Such a person’s claim to worship God – an assertion that was actually made by S.S. officers who worked in concentration camps – is plainly false; the person is an idolater, not a follower of God.”

My goodness! What a mind-blowing definition! Hasn’t he demolished the Pope, the Vatican, the Holy See, the entire Catholic Establishment, and blown them all to smithereens with these few simple words! In the name of the Crusades, how many millions have they killed and how much of property have they destroyed? On the basis of their stand that their interpretation of Jesus Christ’s teachings is the only correct one, and they will not tolerate anybody expressing a dissenting viewpoint, how many persons have they burnt at the stake as heretics? What are the Inquisitions, if not idols, which have caused millions of deaths? For Pope Pius XII, Nazism was an Idol to hold out against Communism; and he blessed, or at the least kept his gaze turned away from, the holocaust which exterminated millions of Jews. The Protestants had already experienced a similar fate way back in the 16th century, even though the casualty figure was much lower. Far from fighting for a reformation in the church, the Protestants found they were struggling for survival against a Catholic church whose cruelty and violence seemed to know no bounds. No wonder that Rabbi Telushkin has blasted the Catholics out of this world by saying that they are idolaters and not followers of God. And the Pope, who heads these idolaters, thinks of Hindus as ‘pagans’ and ‘heathens’ and ‘idol worshippers’ and wants to convert them to his sort of ungodly religion. What Irony!

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Something To Think About - 07

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 2

“I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” So says the first of the Ten Commandments in the Bible.

The normal and most superficial way the Christian church interprets this is that their God, whom they call the Father, is the only God there is on this earth, and the God of the Muslim community, Allah, and the Gods of the Hindus or of any other religious or cultural groupings have no validity whatsoever, and the followers of such religions are “pagans”, “heathens”, “infidels” etc in the eyes of the Christians. Isn’t it interesting that the Muslims also say the same thing, that their Allah is the only God and there is no other god other than Allah? They too refer to non-Muslims as “infidels” or “Kafirs”.

It is funny that such claims are made by the followers of the two youngest religions in this world, Christianity which is just about 2000 years old and Islam which is hardly 1400 years old. Is it any coincidence that both of them had their origins in the same geographical location? Add to it the fact that both of them have a common parent in Judaism, the Jewish religion, which predates Christ by a couple of millennia and is also a monotheistic religion, just like Christianity and Islam.

If the Jewish God, Yahweh, is the only true God as claimed by the Jews, and Christianity’s “Father” is also the only true God as claimed by the Christians, and the Islamic Allah is again the only true God as claimed by the Muslims, which one is well and truly the really Real God? Is it that the Jewish Yahweh became rather senile by the time the “Father” of Christ came around, and hence retired gracefully to give way to the “Father”; and that Allah dethroned the “Father” 600 years later? If that is so, where is the God now who is the “Father” of the Christians, and in whose name the Pope and the other Christians want to convert the Hindus and other Asians?

On the other hand, Hinduism, which has been around for a few millennia before Christ, proclaims loud and clear without any ambiguity that God, or the Absolute Truth (referred to as SAT), is only one, and the learned men call IT by various names, be it Yahweh or Father or Allah or Vishnu or Shiva or whatever (Ekam Sat, Vipraah Bahudhaa Vadanthi). There is no need to speculate whether the “Father” displaced Yahweh, and was in turn thrown out by Allah, since all of them refer to the same single entity which is the Ultimate Truth.

This same Absolute Universal Truth or God, as Brahman, has given ITS Word through a long list of Rishis to the Hindus; and, as Father, given ITS Word through a long list of prophets ending with Christ to the Christians; and, as Allah, given ITS Word through a line of prophets ending with Prophet Mohammed to the Muslims. This saying, Ekam Sat Vipraah Bahudhaa Vadanthi, has another connotation also. It is just as valid for any human being to talk about and describe God and ITS attributes as it is valid for the five blind men to describe the elephant after touching and feeling the different parts of its anotamy. If there are a billion people on earth, God reveals ITself in a billion different ways to them, depending on their own individual experiences. So to claim that “my” God is superior to “your” God, or “my” religion is superior to “your” religion is, on the face of it, fallacious. If that is so, what should one say about the ignorance as well as arrogance involved in converting somebody from one religion to another on the plea that one is superior to the other?

The very first verse of the Isaavaasya Upanishad says, “Isaa-vaasyam idham sarvam yatkincha jagatyaam jagat,” which means that in this dynamic universe, where everything within it is in a constant state of flux, undergoing change every second or microsecond, the only permanent entity is Isa or God who permeates as well as envelopes every single thing in the universe, organic or inorganic, solid, liquid or gaseous, the suns, the moons, the planets, the galaxies, deep space, the men and women, the animals and birds, the mountains and trees and oceans of this world, and just everything. The Vedic religion which is the base for Hinduism, never thought of God as existing and valid only for the small region of this earth constituting India, but as an all-encompassing Supreme Being who created and sustained the entire universe. And their prayers usually end with the invocation, “Sarve Janaah Sukhino Bhavanthu; Lokaas Samasthah Sukhino Bhavanthu,” meaning let all the people in the world – irrespective of who they are and to which part of the world they belong – enjoy a healthy, wealthy, bounteous life. And they complete the invocation with the chant for Peace everywhere – Om Shanthih Shanthih Shanthih.

On the other hand, what does one see of the ONE AND ONLY GOD of the monotheistic Judaic tradition? This GOD seems to exist only for the Israelites, and does not care for the other tribes of the region like the Canaanites, Moabites, Hittites and so on, or for the Egyptians or the Philistines or the Phoenicians or the ever so many other peoples of this world, leave alone the universe. This GOD seems to be more a Super-king or Super-emperor or Super-president of the Israelites than anything worthy of the term GOD. And it is this sort of God which the Pope and his followers want to impose on the Hindus and other Asians by converting them to Christianity! It does sound a bit ludicrous.

Kenneth C. Davis, in his delightful book “Don’t Know Much about the Bible” (Avon Books Inc., New York), puts this in proper perspective. He says: “Interesting. God didn’t say, “I am the only God,” but rather that he is Number One…” in comparison with the creator god El and the storm god Baal, and so on. “We have come to take for granted the idea that Judaism invented the notion of “One God” right from the start. But the original conception of Israel’s Yahweh was the greatest among many; and only over time did Yahweh evolve into the “One God,” meaning the only God…… it does give pause to wonder if the God of an Orthodox Jew is the God of Pat Robertson or Jesse Jackson or the God (Allah) of an Iranian ayatollah.…….. The notion of a single God as the “True God” opens up the gates of intolerance. If people are really expected to hold the Ten Commandments, with its Judeo-Christian God, as an ideal for behavior, what does society do about all the other gods worshipped in a modern, pluralistic world? And then what happens to all those who choose to deny God’s existence? Granting this commandment the authority of “law of the land” clearly places such people in jeopardy of being second-class citizens, or even worse, dispensable……….”

Well, if one accepts the fact that “I am the Lord your God” refers to the one God who is common to the entire population of the world, irrespective of their religious beliefs and faiths, what exactly does this First Commandment mean? “You shall have no other gods,” cannot mean denying acceptance or recognition to Allah or Krishna or Rama whom the other religionists revere. Taken together with the words, “brought thee.......... out of the house of bondage,” does it not mean it is a warning against one falling prey to, and getting under bondage to, the umpteen temptations that abound in this world? Wine, women, wealth, power, pelf and so on have been major objects of worship at any era, and the Lord’s caution is against anybody getting addicted to, and becoming slaves to, any of these temptations which lead one away from the righteous path. Isn’t this precisely what Hinduism has prescribed since ages ago, to guard against kaama, kroda, lobha, moha, mada, matsarya, which translate as desire or lust for sensual enjoyment; anger or wrath; covetousness or greed; delusion or infatuation; intoxication or drunken madness as well as pride and arrogance; and finally envy or spite or malice? For added measure, Jesus Christ proclaims, “No one can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money.”(Matthew 6:24). What God conveys through this Commandment is obviously that, while enjoying material prosperity and comforts including sex, which God has created for us, we should not become addicted to and be slaves of these objects to the extent of forgetting God, but utilise all these blessings as means towards proceeding in the righteous path.

If Mr. Pope and his Christian flock are not aware of this simple explanation of the First Commandment, they have to be pitied for their ignorance. And if, while wallowing in this ignorance, they claim that their God is the only valid God, and carry on with their conversion programme, it would be nothing short of hypocrisy.

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Something To Think About - 06

The Ten Commandments and Religious Conversion - Part 1

When Pope John Paul II visited India in November 1999, he kicked up a big storm by giving a call to his missionary army to embark on an aggressive evangelisation programme in India and other Asian countries. He aggravated this further by again commenting about “Hindu fundamentalists” creating obstacles to this programme with the support of State Governments, claiming it as the inalienable God-given right of the Christians to railroad other religionists into conversion, as if the others do not have any rights of their own. It is interesting to see what their own scriptures say about this. As one scholar says, “If anything is still widely considered sacred today, presumably it is the Ten Commandments”. So that seems to be a good place to look for guidance.

“Thou shalt not commit adultery”.
“Thou shalt not steal”.
‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”.
“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s”.

These are the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth of the Ten Commandments of Moses, said to have been given to him by God as a Covenant which his people are supposed to follow as a grateful thanksgiving to God for bringing them out of their bondage in Egypt in search of their Promised Land. Even though these Commandments were given to the Jews through Moses much before Jesus Christ was born, they are still said to set the standards for the Christians’ own moral and ethical behaviour.

It is worth recalling an after-dinner story which is pertinent in this context. A person knocks on the door of a house, which has a name plate carrying the names of two brothers, Dr. Doe M.D. and Dr. Doe D.D. The medical doctor opens the door and asks the caller, “Which one do you want? My brother is the one who preaches and I am the one who practises”. Doesn’t it show up the problem for what it is? What is the worth of a Church which only preaches what it says Jesus Christ and their Books taught, but does not value them enough to follow those teachings in its own conduct?

“Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

A simple enough injunction. The dictionary meaning of the word ‘Adultery’ reads as, “voluntary sexual intercourse between a married man and a woman not his wife, or between a married woman and a man not her husband”. One can with reasonable assurance say that a person’s relationship with one’s religion is just as close, as personal, as valuable, as sacrosanct as that between the person and his/her spouse. If a person voluntarily gives up one’s religion and gets converted to another, he/she may be accused of committing adultery. But if the Pope and his men and the missionaries of any other Christian denomination convert somebody through whatever means, won’t they be open to the charge of acting as procurers or pimps? Of course this commandment only says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, and does not say, “Thou shalt not induce or force somebody to commit adultery”. That sure makes a fine distinction.

In any case this commandment itself seems to be a great joke. The western world was, in the recent past, rocking with the scandal of Bill Clinton’s infidelity. Ex-President Jimmy Carter is said to have pointed out that some people think the seventh commandment is, “Thou shalt not admit adultery”. After all, when the Bible itself is a treasure-house of adultery, incest and rape, and Popes themselves have shown the way in this direction, what else can one expect!

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.”

In his book “Don’t Know Much About the Bible” (Avon Books, Inc, New York) Kenneth C. Davis points out: “Even if taken in the widest sense of ‘lying’, the false-witness commandment still has some gray areas. Certainly the people who concealed Anne Frank and her family in their attic to protect them from the Nazis ‘lied’ to the Gestapo. But most would agree that in breaking the commandment, they had done nothing wrong. On the contrary, to have told the truth would have been the real crime against God.” More than just uttering a falsehood, the moral and ethical aspects of the issue come into question.

Spreading falsehoods about Hinduism and other religions, just to recruit people into Christianity through conversion, also falls into this same category of crime against God, does it not? The Pope’s complaint against the Governments of the various Indian States for “withdrawing state support for those in the Scheduled Castes who have chosen Christianity” puts it in perspective. Did the Christian missionaries not lie to the Scheduled Castes, in the first place, that after conversion, they will all be just like any other Christian, like, say, George W. Bush and Tony Blair and Bill Gates, and that they will not face any type of discrimination - social or economical or any other? When Christianity has promised them Heaven on Earth in this lifetime, why should they ask for any preferential treatment? Why don’t the Churches live up to their promise?

Apart from breaking the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”, they break many other injunctions too. “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make will you be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you behold the mote that is in your brother’s eye, and not consider the beam in your own? You hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of your own eye; and then you will see clearly to cast out the mote from your brother’s eye”.(Matthew 7:1-5) “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 7:12)

“Thou shalt not steal”.

Very simple indeed! And one that places the late Pope, John Paul II, in a very comical position too! The Pope, who is so full of concern for human dignity and religious freedom where conversion of Hindus and other religionists to Christianity is concerned, is reported to have used rather undignified, intolerant, unparliamentary words against the Protestants, his own fellow-Christians, in the Latin American countries, describing them as “wolves” poaching on his flock of Roman Catholics. What a simple soul this Pope was; innocent and childlike! He does not like the Protestants, who are also Christians, “stealing” members from his club of Catholics to the Protestant club, but wants the absolute and unfettered right and freedom to steal, without any interference, any person from Hinduism or any other eastern religion.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s”.

What a comprehensive set of commands! God left out items like TV, fridge, air conditioner, dish washer, music systems, computers, laptops, VCD, DVD, motor cars and so on, as He was sure Moses would not understand what they meant at that time a few millennia ago.

It is not just that “Thou shalt not steal”. You shall not ever even think of, or aspire to, grabbing or possessing something, anything, that belongs to someone else. Kenneth C. Davis, in his book “Don’t Know Much About the Bible” (Avon Books, Inc), puts across a fine interpretation.

"The American Heritage Dictionary says that to covet is 'to feel blameworthy desire for that which is another’s' or 'to wish for longingly'. This commandment is somewhat unique in that it sees sin in thought as opposed to a specific action.

"The problem with the tenth commandment is that most modern consumer economies and the entire advertising industry are built on ‘coveting’. The whole purpose of TV and magazine commercials or billboards is to get us to “wish for longingly” - to covet that Mercedes or that cigarette. So does that make us all sinners? Rabbi Telushkin offers this wisdom: “It is not wrong to want more than you have. What is wrong is to want it at your neighbour’s expense. There is no evil in desiring a Jaguar, only in wanting the one belonging to the person next door”.

Does it not apply with equal force against inducing your neighbour to give up one of his/her valued possessions, his/her religion, and get converted to Christianity or Islam or whatever? In fact this commandment opposes the very thought of your wanting to convert your neighbour. If the Pope, the Vatican establishment, the various Christian denominations, are really “Christian”, how can they ever think of invading the privacy of the Hindus or any other religionists and try to convert them?

Of course this applies with equal vigour in the Intellectual Properties domain too, where Western “Christian” commercial interests vandalise the Eastern Traditional Knowledge Systems by patenting them for their own pecuniary benefits. Does the Born Again Christian George W. Bush know anything about this sort of piracy and terrorism?

This set of four commandments is dealt with beautifully in a short passage in the very first verse of the Isaavaasya Upanishad. It says, “Maa Grdhaha Kasyasvit Dhanam”. Do not grab, with vulture-like greed, anybody else’s wealth. Short, sweet, crisp, pithy.

Dhanam or wealth does not refer only to material possessions but includes concepts and intangibles like honour, dignity, self-worth, self-respect and anything else of value to a person. While stealing may primarily deal with material possessions, adultery (and rape and any sexual assault), bearing false witness and coveting one’s neighbour’s possessions are assaults in the conceptual and intangible areas, and are equally, or even more, traumatic to any person. The sense of values one has acquired, through the religious concepts he/she has imbibed since birth, also fall into this category of wealth, and these commandments oppose any assault on this too and specifically prohibit any conversion activity being carried out by the Christians.

Are the Pope and the Bishops and their foot-soldiers aware that these Vedas and Upanishads, carrying all these glorious concepts, have been around for a few millennia before Jesus Christ was even conceived? And that whatever Moses and Jesus Christ have given out by way of their teachings are only a restatement of whatever was already floating around elsewhere? It is a pity that these people who are ignorant of these simple truths are trying to evangelise, which is a euphemism for conversion of the Hindus and other Asians.
* * * * *

Something To Think About - 05

Athithi Devo Bhava

It looks like the topic of religious conversion, particularly conversion of Hindus to Christianity, will not come to an end any day soon. I might as well add my bit to this delightful debate.

When the Pope John Paul II’s visit to India (November 1999) was announced, it was known that his visit was primarily to sign and issue the document based on the Asian Bishop’s Synod held in Rome in 1998. Essentially it meant giving a call for more vigorous evangelisation effort in Asia aimed at recruiting Asian people in large numbers into the Christian fold. Not unnaturally it evoked considerable protest from Hindu organisations against such conversion programmes and demands for Papal apology for the atrocities commited against Hindus in Goa, a few centuries ago, when the Christian missionaries resorted to aggressive conversion. Of course the entire Christian establishment was up in arms against any such demands, and they were ably supported by the “liberal”, “intellectual”, “secular” anti-Hindu personalities who claim to still belong to the Hindu fold. Starting with the late Alan De Lastic, the then Archbishop of Delhi and President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India, all and sundry church dignitaries began reminding the Hindus that the Pope is coming as a guest to India, and it is India’s tradition to receive guests with honour and courtesy, and they should not resort to any such protests “which will tarnish the image of the country”. Some of them even went to the extent of learning and quoting some jargon like “Athithi Devo Bhava” which means “treat guests like God”. On the one hand, one may feel gratified that they are trying to understand something of India’s traditions, but on the other hand, it is rather like the Devil quoting the scriptures.

There are just a couple of things wrong with their usage of this “Athithi Devo Bhava” in relation to the Pope’s visit. In this connection, Acharya Giriraj Kishore, vice-president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, referred to the Pope as a dacoit.(Asian Age, 30 Oct 1999). One should certainly protest against such a term being used to describe the Pope, since it insults the Indian dacoits who do have a certain code of conduct, and tarnishes their image. An incident, which used to make the rounds extensively quite a while ago, will go to illustrate this aspect. A gang of dacoits planned to raid the house of a wealthy person, but the house-owner came to know of this plan. Instead of panicking, he made his counter move with an intelligent strategy. When the gang arrived late in the night, expecting the household to be deep in slumber, they found the house shrouded in darkness, and made their entry after breaking open the main door. As soon as they were all in, they were taken by surprise when all the lights were switched on, and they found the large hall laid out neatly with dinner places set for the entire gang to have dinner. The house owner approached the leader of the gang and invited them all to have dinner, which they could not refuse. After enjoying the sumptuous dinner, the gang leader announced that it was against their ethics to rob a house after partaking of their food, and offered their protection to the family against attacks from other gangs too. Dacoity as such is bad and unlawful, but such is the ethical standards which even the Indian dacoits were said to have set for themselves. THEY are fit to be called Athithis. But what do the Pope, the Archbishop Alan De Lastic and the thousands of their conversion specialists going by the name of missionaries do? They enjoy all the hospitality of our nation which is not only tolerant toward all religions but accepts the validity of the “Truth” as expounded in all religions, and then exploit this hospitality and tolerance by resorting to converting our people from their native religion to Christianity. Can they ever come under the term Athithi? Can a Trojan horse ever be an Athithi?

There is another aspect which makes this injunction “Athithi Devo Bhava” inappropriate for use in connection with the Pope’s visit. This phrase forms the last part of a set which says, “Mathru Devo Bhava; Pithru Devo Bhava; Acharya Devo Bhava; Athithi Devo Bhava,” which means “Think of your mother as God; Think of your father as God; Think of your teacher as God; Think of the guest as God.” When you think of your mother, father and the teacher as God, it automatically means that you hold in high esteem, almost with a divine reverence, the values you have imbibed from them, which are certainly steeped in the religion into which they themselves have grown all their lives. Now when the Pope and the Archbishop and their cronies come to you and tell you that whatever your mother, father and teachers have taught you is all rubbish, and ask you to dump your mother, father and teachers along with their values into the trash can and go over to their side and accept Jesus Christ as the only saviour, the “Athithi Devo Bhava” also automatically stands trashed. Why should anybody hold this part alone as valid and treat these conversion devils as honourable guests? Isn’t it hypocrisy on the part of the Pope and his army of converters to make a big deal about “Athithi Devo Bhava” while trashing the other parts, namely “Mathru Devo Bhava; Pithru Devo Bhava; Acharya Devo Bhava”?

The Fifth Commandment of Moses says, “Honour thy father and thy mother …………” Doesn’t this sound somewhat like “Mathru Devo Bhava; Pithru Devo Bhava”? It is said Jesus Christ spent quite a few years in India and absorbed a lot of ideas from Hindu Dharma which he later included as part of his teachings. May be Moses too had a similar initiation and translated the Hindu thoughts in his Ten Commandments, which reflect Hindu concepts by and large, except for the first couple of Commandments.

While appreciating the effort of the Pope, the Archbishop and their army of conversion professionals to pickup some catch-words like “Athithi Devo Bhava”, one is certainly entitled to ask whether they have made any effort to learn and understand what their own Bible teaches. It is worth taking a look at some of these Biblical statements.

“Thou shalt not steal,” says the 8th Commandment of Moses. It seems to be a pretty simple instruction which can be easily understood by even the unlettered. But the Pope and his conversion army of highly educated persons do not seem to know that enticing people away from other religions into their Christian fold falls in the category of stealing. Isn’t it hypocritical on the part of the Pope and the Archbishop and others to talk about “Athithi Devo Bhava” when they are not able to understand a much simpler statement “Thou shalt not steal”? One cannot believe that the Pope did not know this, because only just a while earlier he had complained bitterly about the Protestant “wolves” who were poaching on his Catholic flock. Doesn’t it make his hypocrisy a much more heinous sin? Add to this another famous Biblical quotation “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” and where does it take these dignitaries? Have the Pope and the Archbishop and their coterie heard of this statement? One wonders whether to classify them as ignorant louts who do not know what their own religion is talking about, or to place them in the highest category of hypocrites?

The 9th Commandment of Moses says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” Do the Pope and the Archbishop and their conversion brigade think of this when they talk ill of Hinduism and other religions, referring to them as paganism and heathenism, in their effort to “steal” their folks to Christianity? Or do they just conveniently ignore such commandments as minor irritants which should not come in the way of their conversion business? But they don’t fight shy of using slogans like “Athithi Devo Bhava” out of context to demand that Hindus should welcome the Pope to India, knowing full well that he came with the specific purpose of initiating anti-Hindu subversion activity. What hypocrites!

Take a look at the 10th Commandment, which says “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.” Can anything be more comprehensive than this! In the days of Moses, these were the only possessions he could think of as normally held by anybody; house, wife, manservant, maidservant, ox and ass. If he were a Nostradamus, he would probably have added the TV, fridge, car, computer, microwave and other current day possessions. But Moses has not left anything to chance. He has provided a blanket, global coverage by saying “nor anything that is thy neighbour’s”. That means thou shalt not covet to wean away thy neighbours from their loyalty and reverence to their own religion. Do the Pope, the Archbishop and their army know anything about what their own religion teaches?

In subsequent posts we will go further into what the Ten Commandments imply about the business of religious conversion.

Something To Think About - 04

Richest Muslim Entrepreneurs of the World.

In his article on How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India, Yaroslav Tromifov (Wall Street Journal, September 11, 2007; Page A1) provides the following table which gives a list of the world's richest Muslim entrepreneurs.

















It makes for some very interesting reading.


According to Wikipedia, the countries with the largest Muslim populations are:
Indonesia - 207 million, Pakistan - 160 million, India - 151 million, Bangla Desh - 135 million, Egypt - 75 million, Turkey - 70 million, Nigeria - 67 million, Iran - 64 million.


Isn't it interesting and significant that out of these 8 countries only India finds a place in the WSJ table of Muslim multi-billionaires given above? In fact India not only finds a place but tops the list. Not a single Muslim country with 50-million-plus Muslim population has a place in this table. Strangely, Russia with about 20 million Muslims fills the second and sixth places out of eight. Only Saudi Arabia (27 million), UAE (3 million) and Kuwait (2 million) fill the remaining 5 places. How about France (4.4 million), Germany (3.2 million), USA (3 million), UK (1.6 million), Netherlands, Spain and Italy (with just short of 1 million Muslims each)? Advanced countries? Developed countries? Secular nations? Equal-opportunity countries? Why not a single one of them with a Muslim multi-billionaire in the table above?


Way back in Februay 13, 1994, The Times of India published an article Secular Success of Muslim Business. (http://www.swaminomics.org/articles/19940213_muslimbusiness.htm). The very first paragraph reads as follows: "Many readers heard of Cipla, the pharmaceutical company, when its share price recently hit Rs 35, 000, making it the priciest stock in India. But relatively few readers know that Cipla is owned by a Muslim, Mr. Yusuf Hamied. It is good that Cipla is viewed in secular rather than communal terms. But it is also important to scotch notions that discrimination against Muslims in India makes it impossible for them to succeed in business. An increasing number of Muslim entrepreneurs are rising towards the top of the business ladder."


Then it goes on to list a few of those Muslim entrepreneurs -- of course Wipro of Azim Premjee followed by East-West Airlines, the biggest air taxi operator, run by the Wahid family; Wockhardt, a fast-growing drug company about to make a Euro issue, run by the Khorakiwalas, better known for owning the Akbarally store in Bombay; The Al-Kabeer group run by the Allana family. There are controversies and communal tension every time it sets up a slaughterhouse. But it is by no means confined to meat. It is one of the five top export houses (exports exceed Rs 300 crore), and has in some years been the second biggest coffee exporter; Himalaya Drug, run by the Malans, is the biggest producer and exporter of ayurvedic drugs; Patel Roadways is one of the-top transport companies; Lokhandwala, who has lent his name to a gigantic Bombay" colony, is one of India's biggest builders.


The article ends with the words: "I think it important to publicise the outstanding success of the Premjis, Khorakiwalas and Hamieds. Above all I think we need to publicise the success of Himalaya Drug in becoming the top ayurvedic producer and exporter, a classic example of secular commerce crossing religious lines. For Muslims, this is a symbol of hope. For secular Hindus it is a matter of pride."


To repeat a statement from the above report, just as a reiteration, "it is also important to scotch notions that discrimination against Muslims in India makes it impossible for them to succeed in business". Azim Premji also has made this point in his interview. While India's Muslim groups complain about facing daily discrimination, Mr. Premji says the only time he has been singled out because of his Muslim heritage wasn't in India but at a U.S. airport shortly after 9/11. In doing business in India, he maintains, "I don't think being a Muslim or being a non-Muslim has been an advantage or disadvantage. It's just been based on the merits of the opportunities."


Isn't it a fact that India has provided an environment for anybody to thrive, irrespective of caste, creed, race, religion, or whatever? It is something to think about.


Let us see some other aspects in subsequent post(s).

Something to Think About - 03

Police, Police - The Same Everywhere.

"Haneef terrorism charges dropped", says a BBC News report of Friday, the 27th July 2007. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6918569.stm) It goes on to say, "An Indian doctor has been freed from custody in Australia after charges linked to the failed bomb attacks in the UK were dropped ............ The charge was withdrawn on Friday after Australia's chief prosecutor admitted "a mistake has been made". ......... The case against Dr Haneef came under question after prosecution evidence presented in a previous hearing was disputed. Prosecutors had claimed that the doctor's SIM card had been found in the burning car that crashed into Glasgow international airport on 30 June. But it later emerged the card had actually been found in a flat in Liverpool, some 300km (185 miles) from Glasgow, where his cousin lived."

The Indian Police establishment must be enjoying this piece of news thoroughly. After all they are often at the receiving end of stinging criticism, not only at the hands of Western 'holier-than-thou' commentators, but also of western-oriented, and probably western-funded, English language media in India, about their incompetence and ham-handed handling of cases. This, in spite of many highly publicised success stories like: the conviction of British operator, Peter Bleach, for gun-running; the investigations in the match fixing scandal involving Hansie Cronje and others which shocked the cricketing world; the successful, though highly delayed, convictions of the perpetrators of the 1993 Mumbai blasts; and so on.

On the flip side there are occasions when the police and other investigative and enforcement agencies have exhibited unethical, unprofessional, illegal, inhumane behaviour. The notorious Bhagalpur Blindings incident in which the police blinded 31 undertrial/convicted prisoners by throwing acid in their faces is just one such example. But it would appear that most such incidents are due to the frustration the police personnel experience because of frequent political intervention in their activities. It is a very common experience in India that when the police arrest some goondas (thugs, antisocial elements), their prosecution is obstructed by political bosses whose patronage the goondas enjoy. When, over a period of time, the policemen who do their job conscientiously and professionally, and justifiably expect appreciation for their good work, get the stick instead for daring to lay their hands on some blue-eyed boys of the ruling party, it is no wonder they reach a condition called 'temporary insanity' and behave like a bull in a China shop.

Very often the enforcement agencies also gear up their behaviour to be in tune with what they think their masters expect of them, and would approve of. If the American soldiers exhibited some unacceptable behaviour in the Abu Ghraib episode in Iraq, it is mainly because of the environment, the mindset created by the ruling junta in the United States of America. Unfortunately the rulers, the politicians, who are the real perpetrators of these misdeeds, get away scot-free and it is only the small fry who are left to face the music.

That seems to be the case in this Dr. Haneef episode too. Another report by Nick Bryant of BBC News the same day, "Why the Haneef case disintegrated", says: "Clive Porritt, the prosecuting lawyer, delivered his most compelling nugget of evidence: that the mobile phone SIM card which Dr Haneef was alleged to have given to his second cousin in Britain was found in the burning Jeep rammed into Glasgow airport. ...... The case against Dr Haneef disintegrated because that proved to be false information. The SIM card was discovered not in Glasgow but in Liverpool. ............ There were other problems and inconsistencies. The police claimed he offered no explanation of why he tried to leave Brisbane on a one-way ticket to India. A transcript of his first police interview, leaked to the press by his defence team, showed he did: he wanted to see his wife, who had just given birth to their child." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6919399.stm)

Police certainly go overboard in submitting false information, and suppressing/manufacturing evidence which will help them get a conviction on terrorism charges. That will surely bring them into the good books of Howard and Bush and Cheney and Blair in the present environment of 'war against terror'. But when the case blows up in their face, whose face gets blackened?

Here is how John Howard, Australia's Prime Minister has reacted to the situation. In his report Nick Bryant says: "On a visit to Bali, where Australians have twice been the victims of attacks, Mr Howard sought to distance himself from the debacle at home."

Quoting Howard he says: "Bearing in mind that the detention of the man was undertaken by the police and not at the request or direction or encouragement of the government, and that the case was prepared by the director of [public] prosecutions, I think that the right thing now is for those two men to explain the process and explain the reasons."

Of course Howard and his Australian government had nothing to do with this case! What hypocrisy!! But how come Kevin Andrews, the immigration minister, decided to cancel Haneef's visa and keep him detained under immigration laws in the first place? That too "when the magistrate at that hearing in Brisbane, Jacqui Payne, had decided to grant the 27-year-old Indian doctor conditional bail". Obviously the left hand of Howard's government does not know what the right hand is doing.

The BBC report goes on to say: "That immediately gave the case a political edge, with critics of the government claiming Dr Haneef had been caught up in the turbulent undertow of an election year. ...... With the John Howard government lagging way behind in the polls, as it has done for the past six months, Mr Andrews was accused of political opportunism: of trying to burnish the government's anti-terror credentials and focusing attention on national security, an issue which polls repeatedly show favours Mr Howard."

Anything goes in the name of election. And anything goes in the name of anti-terrorism too. When Bush and Cheney and their Neocon gang can cause the death of close to one million Iraqi civilians and label it as collateral damage, when they can declare that the Geneva Convention is null and void as far as USA is concerned, when they can defy the world in carrying on with their unlawful detention centres in Guantanamo Bay and other unspecified locations elsewhere, what matters this little bit of aberration on the part of Howard? After all hypocrisy is the name of the game.

Something for us all to think about, about the calibre of the people we elect.

Something To Think About - 02

Are the Natives of the Americas Savages?

This is in effect a sequel to my earlier post, necessitated by some interesting comments from someone who has identified himself/herself as only Anonymous. I believe that this person has made the comments with serious intent and not in a flippant, facetious manner. But he/she apparently belongs to the Roman Catholic Church and finds it difficult to stomach the thought that the Catholic Church or the Pope can ever be capable of any wrong-doing. To be sure this person represents millions and millions of people who are followers of the Christian faith and belong to the western world, and have grown up with the thought that theirs is a civilised society of culture and refinement, whose leaders, spiritual, social and political, are engaged in providing compassionate, philanthropic, humanitarian services, in the true tradition of Jesus Christ, to the rest of the world, populated by uncivilised brutes and savages with no religion, who need to be converted to Christianity. If only they make an effort to know something of the real world!

Mr/Ms Anonymous says, "The brutality of the pre-Christian Indian cultures was, everyone agrees (!!), horrifying — human sacrifices, brutal slavery, mass killings, etc. No wonder the Indians converted so readily when they were told of Christ. Pope Benedict was right." The ‘Indians’ refers to natives of the Americas.

It’s a pity that in this 21st century when the internet and the world wide web (WWW) are flush with tremendous amount of authoritative information on all subjects under the sun, people do not make any effort to get to the truth of the matter.

I can't do better than reproduce some excerpts from this piece, "A Spanish Friar Indicts the Conquistadors for the Massacre of Indians, 1542" (From Bishop Las Casas. An Historical and True Account of the Cruel Massacre and Slaughter of 20,000,000 of People in the West Indies by the Spaniards, [1542]. [Translated from the French edition. New York, J. B. Publishers, 1898. Originally published 1620.]) (http://historicaldocuments.com/SpanishFriarIndictstheConquistadores.htm)

"In the year 1492 the West Indies were discovered, and in the following year they were visited by the Spaniards. The islands were inhabited by an infinite multitude of people who were without fraud, without subtlety or malice, and faithful and obedient to their Princes. ………….. To this quiet and peace loving people, the Spaniards came like tigers, wolves, and lions, enraged with hunger. ………….. At Hispanola, where the Spaniards first landed, they took captive their women and children to serve them as slaves; but not satisfied with this, they commenced to assault the highest and mightiest among them, and when the natives attempted to retaliate, the Spaniards started on their campaign of devilish cruelty and slaughter, sparing neither women nor children. ……... They often laid wagers as to who was the most dexterous in cleaving a man's skull open, cutting him in the middle, or taking an arm or leg off in a single blow. The treatment accorded women, and the indignities their bodies suffered, cannot be related. ....... ...... In the year 1511, they landed in Cuba, a fertile country, filled with a comely and intelligent people. Here, too, their lust for gold and thirst for blood devastated the island, putting more than 800,000 people to the sword. ........ Among the many enormities committed by the Spaniards in Cuba, the following deserves notice: A certain Nobleman or Prince presented to the Spaniards, on their arrival, 15,000 crowns. They, perceiving that he must necessarily posess vast treasure, tied him to a stake, and stretching his legs apart, built a fire under them, offering him his liberty if he would give them more. Unable to bear the torture he sent for more, but notwithstanding this, they began to torment him again, increasing the fire so that the marrow dropped from the soles of his feet and he expired....... In the year 1522 a band of Spanish adventurers went to the Island of Nicaragua, a country fertile beyond comparison, inhabited by a docile and industrious people. It was here that the natives suffered the most severely, as their island did not posess mountains into which they could flee from their conquerors. The Spaniards seizing upon all the products of the country and driving the men from the usual sowing and harvesting, famine followed quickly, from which none could escape. So that from sheer necessity, the natives became cannibals. I saw one woman in such dire extremity that she killed and ate her suckling infant. ………… There is no language, no art or science, that can avail to recite the abominable and bloody actions committed by these human monsters. Neither is it possible to exaggerate their detestable deeds."

When Mr/Ms Anonymous says, "The brutality of the pre-Christian Indian cultures was, everyone agrees, horrifying — human sacrifices, brutal slavery, mass killings, etc.”, how much does that statement correspond to the truth? One has to wonder who the savages are - the original inhabitants, the natives, or the so-called 'civilized', 'Christian', marauders from Europe.

He/She has quoted: "No wonder the Indians converted so readily when they were told of Christ. Pope Benedict was right." Sorry, Anonymous, it was not the natives, wrongly referred to as Indians, who needed to be converted to Christianity. It was the 'Christians' from Spain, Portugal and other European countries who needed to be told about Christ. And Pope Benedict was nowhere near being right. He was far far away from the truth.

Anonymous has begun his/her comments with the query: "Would you care to cite any evidence that the Catholic Church engaged in forced conversions or had anything whatsoever to do with any alleged “genocide” in Latin America? Lefties make this baseless claim based on this:
http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/analysis/details.php?content=2004-02-26"

Let us take a look at what others say about this, starting with the Goa Inquisition in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=ARTICLES&id=1111142225
Details of the Goa Inquisition Posted March 18, 2005 Christian historian, Dr. T. R. de Souza

"The Goan inquisition is regarded by all contemporary portrayals as the most violent inquisition ever executed by the Portuguese Catholic Church. It lasted from 1560 to 1812........... So harsh and notorious was the inquisition in Goa, that word of its brutality and horrors reached Lisbon but nothing was done to stop this notoriety and escalating barbarity and it continued for two hundred more years. Nobody knows the exact number of Goans subjected to these diabolical tortures, but perhaps it runs into hundreds of thousands, may be even more. ........... Dr. Trasta Breganka Kunha, a Catholic citizen of Goa writes, "Inspite of all the mutilations and concealment of history, it remains an undoubted fact that religious conversion of Goans is due to methods of force adopted by the Portuguese to establish their rule. As a result of this violence the character of our people was destroyed. The propagation of Christian sect in Goa came about not by religious preaching but through the methods of violence and pressure." “

"Historians consider the Goa Inquisition the most merciless and cruel ever" Excerpts from interview with Richard Zimler, author of Guardian of the Dawn, by Lindsay Pereira of Rediff.com (14 SEP 2005) (http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/sep/14inter1.htm)

Q. “Portugal, today, is still a country deeply steeped in a Catholic tradition. Do you think people are aware of the Inquisition and what it meant back then? Would they look at this as a re-opening of old wounds?” A. “No, few people here know anything about the Inquisition. Many of them would rather not examine what their ancestors did, both in Portugal and its colonies. But others are very curious about what they didn't learn in school about their own history. Yes, in a sense I am opening old wounds. But I think it's important to do that. I think that we need to face the bad things we do -- both individually and as a society. …………… ........... Guardian of the Dawn has been a Number One bestseller here, for instance. A great many readers tell me I have opened a door to a part of their history they know nothing about. I'm proud of that.”

Q. “Re-examining the Inquisition seems apt, more so at a time like this when religious fanaticism is changing the world in ways unknown to us. What do you, as an author, believe we ought to take away from a study of it?” A. “I couldn't agree with you more, and that is one of the reasons I wrote Guardian of the Dawn. Put simply, I think we all need to be alert to the intolerance in our societies and in ourselves. We ought to maintain government and religion completely separate -- such a separation is the only guarantee we have of freedom of expression. We ought to learn from the ancient Asian tradition, which is to respect the religious beliefs of others and not impose our own Gods on them.”

Let us see how the Catholic Church behaved in the rest of the world in the same time period.

During the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), in three days from August 24, 1572 Catholic forces massacred about 25,000 Protestants. Known as the St. Bartholomew Massacre, "this was the single most bloody and systematic extermination of non-combatants in European history until World War II." After this, "Protestants no longer viewed Catholicism as a misguided church, but as the force of the devil itself. No longer were Protestants fighting for a reformed church, but they suddenly saw themselves fighting for survival against a Catholic church whose cruelty and violence seemed to know no bounds." (http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REFORM/) "In March, 1562, an army led by the Duke of Guise (Catholic) attacked a Protestant church service at Vassy in the province of Champagne and slaughtered everybody they could get their hands on: men, women, and children—all of whom were unarmed. Thus began the French Wars of Religion which were to last for almost forty years and destroy thousands of innocent lives." (25000 in three days. One has to wonder how many were killed in the 40 years).

Again, Duke of Alba, sent by Philip, the King of Spain, a staunch Catholic, to quell the growth of Protestantism in the Netherlands, "imposed a tribunal, the Council of Troubles, to question and sentence heretics (Protestants). The Dutch called this council the "Council of Blood," for it managed to publicly execute thousands of people before Alba was forced from the Netherlands."

Further, in the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648, between Catholic and Protestant forces, primarily in Germany but joined by other countries too, "The sheer amount of casualties and human destruction made this war the most calamitious and disastrous war of European history before the nineteenth century."

These massacres were all the result of the Catholic Church’s campaign to put down the Protestants whom they labelled as heretics. The Catholic Church had arrogated to itself the right of deciding dogmatically what was orthodox doctrine, and declared any other interpretation of the doctrine as heresy, and anybody who dared to put up a different concept as a heretic. If this was the level of their hatred for people of their own Christian faith who had a different view of what Jesus Christ said, their level of intolerance and arrogance was much more virulent against the Hindus of India, the natives of the Americas and others whom the Catholics labelled as pagans and heathens,and whom they murdered or converted. While the Western world looked the other way when the millions of ‘pagans’ and ‘heathens’ in India and the Americas were slaughtered, they suddenly woke up and took notice when six million Jews were massacred by Hitler and his Nazis with the tacit blessing of Pope Pius XII.

When the ‘heretics’ finally survived the onslaughts of the Catholics and established a place for themselves under the sun, they, the Protestants, Baptists and all other brands of Christians, too, in turn, have behaved in the same intolerant, arrogant way as the Catholics, and have engaged in conversion of people from other religions. Why? Haven’t they learnt anything, from their own experiences, about tolerance for and acceptance of other thoughts and ideas?

When Mr/Ms Anonymous says, "The brutality of the pre-Christian Indian cultures was, everyone agrees, horrifying — human sacrifices, brutal slavery, mass killings, etc.”, against such massive evidence of barbaric, brutal, savage behaviour of ‘civilized’, ‘CHRISTIAN’ folks from Europe, it leads one to wonder whether it is naivete or innocence or ignorance.

However, the purpose of this discussion is not so much about whether the Europeans were more savage than the native Americans, or whether the Christians are more savage than the Muslims or the so-called pagans, but to highlight some fundamental aspects of life, of which religion is just one component.

The Bible says God made man in His own image. Then the Bible goes on to say that God took out one rib from Adam and fashioned the woman, Eve, out of that. Does it mean woman is not made in the image of God just as the man? Does it mean God loves man more and loves woman less, allowing the idea to develop that woman is inferior and subservient to man? Is it not an insult to God to suggest that He, who created the earth, the oceans, all the animals, the birds, the fishes, and the man, could not create woman also in the same way, but made her out of a body part of the man? In fact it is the woman who is made truly in the image of God in the sense of the spirit of God such as love, compassion, ability to create life and so on. Is it not arrogance on the part of men, more so men who have come in the tradition of Jesus Christ, to treat women as inferiors?

So, God made man in His own image. Does this term ‘man’ stand for just one person, called Adam, as the Bible says, or is it a collective term which denotes a pair of man and woman in every single country or region in the world, who subsequently populated the entire world? Is there a white skinned God who created the white people populating the European and American countries, a brown skinned God who created the brown skinned people of the Indian sub-continent, a dark skinned God who created the ‘blacks’ of Africa, a pint-sized God who created the pigmies of Africa, a yellow skinned God who created the yellow tinted Mongoloid people and so on? When man with his limited mental and intellectual capacity can create so many different models and brands of cars such as Ford, Buick, Chevrolet, Austin, Rolls Royce, Peugeot, Daimler-Benz, Skoda, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Ferrari, Audi, Citroen, and many many more, is it difficult to understand and accept the simple fact that the one God (who is the same for everyone), in His own infinite wisdom and love of variety and diversity, has created all the different types of people in His own image, and endowed them all with the same type of feelings and emotions, skills and abilities? “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” is what Jesus said. And he added, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Is that the way the European ‘Christ-ians’(??) have behaved with the Aborigines of Australia, the Maoris of New Zealand, the natives of the Americas, the ‘blacks’ of Africa and any other local populace of the countries they colonized? While the American natives received the Europeans with a smile, with love and kindness, the inhuman monsters from Spain, Portugal, England and France repaid all that loving welcome with barbaric, brutal, savage attacks. It is immaterial which brand of Christ-ianity they professed, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Baptist, Presbyterian, whatever, they were all equally horrid. The love, the compassion, the peace which Jesus Christ stood for, were conspicuous by their absence. Is this not primarily because of the lack of love, lack of respect, lack of tolerance, lack of acceptance of people who seem different from them, even though they are also made in the image of the same God, the one and only God who is the same for all?

The Christians say there is only one God, the Muslims and the Jews also say the same thing, and the Hindus too say there is only one God. Then what is the problem? Just a qualitative difference between what the Hindus say and what the others say.

The Vedic scriptures which govern the Hindus say that there is only one God, the Supreme Being, but the learned people call IT by various names. So the Hindus recognise and accept that God can be denoted by not only the Hindu names like Rama, Krishna, Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa and so on, but also as the Father of the Christians, as Allah of the Muslims, as Yahweh of the Jews, as Ahura Mazda of the Zoroastrians (Parsees), and by any other name as well. It is because of this basic acceptance that all religious thoughts are equally valid that Jews as well as the Parsees found ready asylum in India when they had to flee their own countries, without any persecution by the Hindus. So it has never been in the ethos of the Hindus to force Hinduism down the throats of anybody.

On the other hand it has been the style of the Christians to refuse to accept as valid anything other than their own faith, so much so they label them as pagans, heathens and so on, and develop the urge to convert them to Christianity by force or eliminate them. Isn’t it a shame that this is all that they have learnt from Jesus Christ in whose name they call themselves Christ-ians? Jesus Christ was an embodiment of love, compassion, mercy, gentleness, peace. How far removed from Jesus Christ and His teachings are these Christ-ians!

Respect for and acceptance of the fact that the one and only God has created everyone in this world in His own image and all are entitled to their place on this earth on an equal footing without negative impact from others, and respect for and acceptance of the fact that the one and only God has revealed Himself not only to the prophets who gave birth to Christianity but also to other prophets, sages, rishis, elders etc whose teachings brought forth the other religious faiths in the world all of which should be treated by everybody as equally valid, are two primary requirements for people to live in amity and peace in this world. As Richard Zimler said, “We ought to learn from the ancient Asian tradition, which is to respect the religious beliefs of others and not impose our own Gods on them.”

Just think about it.