Showing posts with label USCIRF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USCIRF. Show all posts

Part 2: John Dayal in Breaking India

This post captures ALL the references to John Dayal in Rajiv Malhotra's path breaking book Breaking India. All the below references are taken from chapter 13 of the book Breaking India. Part 1 of this 2 part blog can be read here.
http://breakingindia.com
Abbreviations not elaborated in the paragraphs
DFN - Dalit Freedom Network
PIFRAS - Policy Institute for Religion and State

Recent DFN Activities In 2005, DFN representatives, along with Kancha Ilaiah, provided testimony to a US government subcommittee on human rights, in which they advocated US interventionist policies against India. The hearing was titled, ‘Equality and Justice for 200 Million Victims of the Caste System’.64 The chairman of the US Commission on Global Human Rights supported DFN’s position, saying, ‘Converts to Christianity and Christian missionaries are particularly targeted, and violence against Christians often goes unpunished’. John Dayal, who has close ties with DFN, hailed this criticism of India as a ‘historic moment’.65

All India Christian Council (AICC) 

Although DFN is based in the US, it is affiliated with the All India Christian Council, which is described as ‘the largest alliance in India of Church bodies and Christian entities’ and a ‘nation-wide alliance of Christian denominations, mission agencies, institutions, federations and Christian lay leaders’.72 It has been affiliated with Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which is led by Baroness Caroline Cox.73 (See Chapter Sixteen for more details on CSW and the baroness.) CSW has facilitated the globalization of the Christian-Dalit axis, such as at the 2001 Durban conference, where it championed a stand against the government of India.74 One of its heroes, John Dayal, has been delivering many testimonies on India’s atrocities and calling on various Western bodies to intervene.75

In 2002, PIFRAS held a South Asia conference, sponsored by United Methodist Board of Church and Society and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA. Other prominent think-tanks (mostly right-wing or evangelism-oriented) also joined in sponsoring, including: Ethics and Public Policy Center, the Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House, the Institute for Religion in Public Policy, and the Apostolic Commission for Ethics and Policy. In the conference, John Dayal contended that minorities could not count on the Indian state to protect them, or to prosecute crimes committed against them. Bruce Robertson urged faith-based nongovernmental organizations (i.e. foreign Christian-sponsored groups) to provide more of the community services that governments are not providing in India. K.P. Singh, who is on the faculty of the University of Washington in Seattle, went unchallenged on his outrageous claim that ‘since India’s independence, about three million Dalit women have been raped and one million Dalits have been killed’.113

A Tehelka investigative report of 2004 showed that massive foreign funding claimed to be for HIV/AIDS programs was being used by Christian groups for evangelism. According to the report, even the official government slogan for AIDS prevention was changed by Christian NGOs. The government policy, ABC for ‘Abstinence, Behavioral change and Condoms’, was modified to replace ‘Condoms’ with ‘Convert/Christ’.114 There are also direct foreign efforts to alter the Indian law. When the Indian government felt that the foreign funds of NGOs needed more transparency, John Dayal, who presides over the All India Christian Council and United Christian Forum for Human Rights, testified against the Indian government at PIFRAS-sponsored hearings and symposiums at Washington. The institute’s press release stated: Mr Dayal has been at the forefront in addressing government allegations that the money received from foreign sources is being used for religious conversions. . . .115

Freedom House 

Freedom House is another powerful institution which relies almost exclusively on the testimonies from Christian-sponsored Dalit activists. These testimonies are highly exaggerated, sensationalized and distorted accounts of Indian political developments. Freedom House has a liberal-sounding entity called ‘Center for Religious Freedom’. However, its report on The Rise of Hindu Extremism (2003) relied heavily on ‘generous contributions’ made by Rev Cedric Prakash as well as ‘significant work’ done by Timothy Shah, Vinay Samuel, and the Director of PIFRAS, John Prabudoss. These persons, as the reader shall see, continue to appear across most of these think-tanks and the commissions and symposiums they conduct. Also involved were John Dayal and Joseph D’souza of the All India Christian Council, and representatives of the Dalit Freedom Network, the Indian Social Institute Human Rights Documentation Center, the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, the All India Federation of Organizations for Democratic Rights, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, and the National Alliance of Women.116 There was no equivalent representation from opposing views, nor any context provided to explain the geopolitical agendas in which these individuals and groups operate. In other words, their heavy conflict of interest was simply buried, and the report’s mostly American readers did not bother to demand transparency.

At first the Indian Catholic Church publicly distanced itself from giving testimony to the commission, with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) describing as ‘unwarranted’ the proposed hearing on religious freedom in India being held in Washington. Father D’souza stated that anti-Christian violence at the hands of Hindu extremists has not crossed the ‘gross human rights violations situation that calls for interference in internal affairs of the nation’.17 But to play both sides strategically, the Indian Church allowed John Dayal, the national vice-president of All India Catholic Union, to attend the hearing in the US and present his compilation of allegations of anti-Christian bias against the Indian government. While Father D’souza defended Indian sovereignty, he supported Dayal’s testimony in his ‘individual capacity and not as a representative of the Church’.18 Such ‘Good Cop / Bad Cop’ gamesmanship is a common strategy that Indian Christians have learned from the West. As we shall see later in this section, this Good Cop posture was temporary, and they acquiesced to the Bad Cops subsequently.

2003 

The 2003 report takes a stand against India’s Foreigners Act because it regulates the free flow of US evangelists. An investigative report by an Indian journal Tehelka said: ‘The 2003 US report is a no-nonsense document that conveys the official US policy supporting evangelization. It openly admits that “US officials have continued to engage state officials on the implementation and reversal of anti-conversion laws”’. This US posture echoes John Dayal’s testimony before the Commission that, ‘It is almost impossible for a foreign Christian church worker, preacher or evangelist to come to India unless it is as a tourist’.25 Suddenly, the Catholic Church, which had until then stayed out of such report writing (while allowing its individual activists to participate in their personal capacities), now abruptly changed its stand. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India explicitly expressed unhappiness with the USA’s refusal to designate India as one of the ‘Countries of Particular Concern’ with regard to religious freedom. It openly called for the US to prosecute India for ‘a spate of violence against minority communities’. The Church ‘did not share the US administration’s decision’ that had listed alleged anti-Christian activities but not recommended sanctions against India. The Church wrote to the American Secretary of State, asking that India be placed in the category of ‘egregious religious freedom violators’ along with five others – Burma, China, Iran, North Korea, and Sudan. Such countries would attract punitive action under the US International Religious Freedom Act.26 The good cops in the Indian Catholic Church had given way to the hardliners. The Commission urged US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to take up the matter with India during his negotiations on Islamic terrorism in the south Asian region. In its report, the Commission said that it had met Armitage to discuss placing India on the list of Countries of Particular Concern. Given the delicate situation in the USA’s fight against the Taliban in Pakistan, Armitage told them that USCIRF should not go against India at this time. Expressing unhappiness, All India Christian Council president John Dayal said, ‘We are greatly disappointed’.27 Bishop Sargunam, who was head of the Tamil Nadu Minorities Commission, issued a statement as a press release by the Federation on Indian American Christian Organizations of North America: The US government, which stands for justice and freedom around the world, has been complacent in addressing human rights violations continuing to take place in India. Bishop Ezra Sargunam made this point forcefully in his meetings with officials of the State Department in Washington, DC, yesterday and today. On behalf of the Social Justice Movement of India he submitted a Memorandum highlighting the resurgence of attacks against the religious minorities, Dalits and the Tribal people . . . Bishop Sargunam and P.D. John also met officials at the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and on Capitol Hill . . . Bishop Sargunam expressed his disappointment in the US Administration’s reluctance to address these kinds of continuing serious human rights violations with their Indian counterparts.28 2004 During the 2004 hearings, a four-member delegation of US Congressmen visited India to investigate on behalf of the USCIRF. Its leader, the Christian fundamentalist Joseph Pitts, said that the delegation would report to Congress about ‘the anti-conversion laws, treatment of Dalits and anti-minority violence to be included in the country reports’. Pitts attacked the anti-conversion law calling, it a ‘reversal of human rights in the land of the Mahatma Gandhi’.29 Congressman Steve Chabot compared the situation in Gujarat to that of Rwanda. AICC secretary-general John Dayal said that his delegation of Indian minorities had put concrete demands before the US delegation: ‘One of our demands is that there must be reservations for minorities in the foreign companies that collaborate with India’.30 This mobilized the global Christian lobby to ask for preferences for Indian Christians as employees and in business trade and investment deals at the expense of non-Christians. What is clear is that Indian Christian leaders collaborate with the US right-wing Christians. The Indians are encouraged to dish out atrocity literature to feed into the US system, so that the Americans can use it as a justification for action. In return, these Indians are built up by their American sponsors and paraded as world-class activists and champions of the oppressed.

the rape of nuns, the destruction of churches, the assault on a priest, are ominous signals to Christians of all denominations. . . . How many perpetrators against the Christian community in India have been brought to book? Commissions of inquiry are appointed but very little comes out of them. Action? Seldom! A true picture or a distorted, engineered report? Against this backdrop we are expected to report objectively and dispassionately, to be correct and impartial. It is no wonder that those who try to do their Christian duty are branded as activists. Talking of activists, three days before I left Chennai I met John Dayal, the editor of the midday newspaper, based in Delhi. He has involved himself in the United Christian Council, which is currently involved in telling Christians about various anti-Christian activities around India, activities which, as a journalist, he obviously is privy to. We are due to have our general elections during the month of September and, the information he gave at that meeting was most valuable. I heard him and I also saw the reaction from the six hundred organisations that were represented. . . . Christian media persons like ourselves have to use the power we have to influence. 99


Gegrapha is a facilitator of Christian journalists who ground their professional work in personal faith and use their transnational connections. Stephen David is another strategically placed Gegrapha member who is the principal correspondent on political and current affairs for India Today, the country’s largest news weekly. Such journalists now comprise a rapidly growing group across India’s media, where they can act behind the scenes in framing the news. Yet, the impressions that are created internationally by John Dayal, Jennifer Arul and other high-profile Indian Christian journalists, is that the Indian media is anti-Christian, that Hindus terrorize Christians, and hence, foreign intervention is necessary for justice in India. This is music to the ears of their sponsors, who, naturally, reach for the pocket book.


Evangelization, says: Never before has this kind of information on India been so carefully surveyed, prepared, well published and distributed. . . . We do not believe it is accidental. God is allowing us to ‘spy out the land’ that we might go in and claim both it and its inhabitants for Him.104 John Dayal resonates with Luis Bush and wants all Indian proselytizers to study such population databases: Dayal suggests that all those seeking consecration or ordination from a Christian institution must be made to read and pass a simple examination based on the contents of at least the first volume, the Preface, of the multi-series book, ‘People of India’, published on behalf of the Anthropological Survey of India by Seagull Books.105

The complete bibliography referred to in the above paragraphs can also be found below.

Bibliography 

64. (US Commission Global Human Rights, 2005) 

65. (asianews.it, 2006) 

72. (AICC, 1998:2010)

73. (indianchristians.in, 2001) 

74. (CSW, 2001, 14) 

75. See the section on US Commission on International Religious Freedom for AICC/John Dayal testimonies against India.

113. (News Media, 23 July 2002)

114. (Shashikumar. VK, 2004)

115. (John. PD, 2002)

116. (Marshall, 2003)

17. the father-son Robertsons are from (Hinduism Today Archives, 1995)

18. (Hinduism Today Archives 1995)

25. The official bio of its international president, Dr Joseph D’Souza, states that he ‘lives in India and operates out of London and Denver.’ Jospeh D’Souza runs US-based Dalit Freedom Network (DFN). Significantly, he is also featured on the webpage of Gospel of Asia as the executuve director of Operation Mobilization in India. (See (GFA, 1996:2009)) DFN’s other directors include: Peter Dance (India Director-OM USA, Operation Mobilization, Tyrone,GA), Melody Divine, J.D. (Former Judiciary Counsel and Foreign Policy Advisor, Rep. Trent Franks, Rep-AZ Denver), Bob Beltz (advisor to the chairman, The Anschutz Corporation, Denver), Richard Sweeney (chief operating officer, Dalit Freedom Network, Greenwood Village), Gene Kissinger (chairman of the Board Interim President and CEO, DFN Outreach Pastor, Cherry Hills Community Church Highlands Ranch), Cliff Young (lead singer, Caedmon’s Call Houston, TX ), Ken Heulitt (VP and chief financial officer, Moody Bible Institute, Chicago), Kumar Swamy (South India Regional Director, OM India Bengaluru, Karnataka India).

26. (Fahlbusch, Bromiley and Barrett, 1999, 642) 

27. (www.omusa.org 2002)

28. (Cademon’s Call, 2004)

29. (DFN, 2003:2010)

30. (www.ccu.edu)

99. (www.rightwingwatch.org, 2008)

104. (Sharlett, 2008, 260-72). These pages offer a revealing portrait of Senator Brownback.

105. (Towns, 2 Augyst 2001, 18 March 2003)

Reproduced from the Kindle version of the book Breaking India with permission from the author.

RMF Summary: Week of August 15 - 21, 2011

August 16
John Dayal (featured in BI) targets Rs 3,500 crores of GOI funds for
A Crore of Christian Youth may Get Good Education at Government Expense if the Church Wakes Up More than Rupees 3,500 crores to be had in scholarships and...


August 19
Is Sonia Gandhi co-President of a pro-Kashmir separatist organizatio
Rajiv comments: I have blocked posts that divert from the thesis of the book being discussed. Hence, the common chatter on all sorts of issues, scandals and personalities get...
....Here is what was sent to me:
There is a forum of which Sonia Gandhi is co-president: http://nancho.net/fdlap/
It supports actively the separation of Kashmir and ' invite your assistance to expose other movements which desperately require public attention and support':  http://nancho.net/fdlap/fdlalert.html

It is financed by (among others) Soros Foundation and Olaf Palme International Center,. : http://truthgun.com/2011/08/16/did-you-know-look-who-george-soros-is-funding/
Ganesh shares:
"..I think this pdf file of a 15 point programme tells a lot on how to ensure breaking India based on minorities and majority. Look at the impetus of points 3,4,5 and 6.

Here's an ad that appeared to this effect. .."

August 19
New Website and Report Citing Breaking India
Abhimanyu reports on the "forum of Inquilabi Leftists": ... Hinduism is spiritual fascism. Ramayana is a book of colonizers. Hinduism is a religion of violence where the killers have become Gods. NRIs (non-Resident Indians) are slaves of corporate America that are motivated by issues of exploitation and oppression of 'desis' and others in the US. The Forum of Inqualabi Leftists (FOIL) and its affiliates subscribe to the above views on Hinduism, India and the Hindu diaspora..."

This thread below had a lot of discussion, including comments by Vijaya Rajiva, N. S. Rajaram, and several others. It is worth reading this thread in its entirety.
August 19
Selling out to the establishment has its rewards
Rajiv Malhotra shares a HuffPost link and comments:
"Anju Bhargava, the self appointed "Hindu American leader" whose misrepresentation of the community is examined in chapter 15 of Breaking India, has climbed her personal career ever since she played the role of "complicit Hindu" in the US government appointed inter-religious council. (This council, during her one-year term, passed resolutions and recommendations to the federal government that expand the faith-based initiative grants (i.e. mostly to Judeo-Christian groups) in almost every branch of the government, and overseas as well. This means more infiltration by evangelists into various federal agencies, done legally and as a mandate of the government policy...

Breaking India shows how President Clinton succumbed to this pressure from the Christian Right at a time when he was vulnerable and needed their support. His Religious Freedom Act led to setting up of the USCIRF....

... I pleaded without success for Anju to take a principled stand by going on the formal record to state her opposition to the latest initiative. She refused, citing her personal goals in Washington circles. I admit that she was pained having to take a weak stance, but cited personal career factors...

...After a well-orchestrated media blitz, Anju has climbed to being listed as one of the top ten women in world religions today - the only Hindu on it. (See article above.) Wow! Congratulations, Anju, you finally made it into the big league. But I cannot help remark that you sold your soul somewhere along the way."

August 21
Tamil book on War Criminals released
Chennai, India: “Por Kutravali” (meaning ‘War Criminal”)- a book in Tamil language, based on the  UN panel report on Lankan War crimes, published by Manitham Publishers (Chennai)  has come out in the market this week. A Tamil translation of the entire report is printed and about 240 pages of 328 are dedicated to the UN report.  The book’s preface has been written by prominent Tamilians... 

RMF Summary: Week of July 4 - 10, 2011


This first thread involved a lot of discussion, so we will try to summarize this in a separate thread.
July 4
Need advice on how to dialog with an elite who has converted
Now, guys, here is an elite Hindu, educated at leading Management institutes, who has been converted Willing to dialog with me Can we provide arguments to make...

July 4
USCIRF 2011 Annual Report
USCIRF US Commission for International Religious Freedom ANNUAL REPORT FOR 2011 This will come as no great revelation to Rajiv and others in the know, 

July 4
Book Read : The History of Hindus : The Saga of Defeats???
Rajiv Malhotra:
I was at the Indian Institute of World Culture last week to request them to own a copy of 'Breaking India', which they accepted gracefully and have promised to buy one when they order for the next set of books.

I also happened to come across a book titled 'The History of Hindus : The Saga of Defeats'. The author is Dr. Surendra Kumar Sharma, a M.A. (Hindi), Ph. D. (Punjab), M. A. (Sanskrit), Ph. D. (America). Though it seemed that the book was eloquently titled, the veiled hatred in the name lead me to read the book. Whatever the author's credentials, the book is a 'hoi polloi' of Indian history and a antagonistic view of Hindus. 

The author mentions that the "Hindu religion needs a critical re-evaluation from none else but its own adherents. This will bring about reforms in Hindu society which can be done only by Hindus themselves", but the book is a riff-raff, cataloging defeats in wars, maligning Hindu leaders, Hindu society and traditions. The book has 7 chapters and the gist of each is below.
In the first chapter, the writer blames the Hindu religion for all the defeats of Hindus at war...."

Geeta investigates:
"...And most alarming was a Swami Dayanand Saraswati University site where someone says Dr. Surendra Sharma a well respected prof is not the same as the author of Manusmriti, and says we know both these men,  but doesn't reveal this man's identity.

And then his name appears on an "Islamic Literature site also.

It appears he is a fraud with no credentials, and writing to malign the history of India.

It would certainly require more sleuth savvy than I possess to dig out the real identity of this person" 


July 5
Conversions targetting indiian americans
I was there in national mall washingon dc for watching fireworks today. There were a group of evangekists targetting indians and giving them cds in indian...

July 5
Christians now appropriate Dwajastampa
See the picture. http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HKPage.aspx?PageID=14184&SKIN=C A new flag mast has been erected at the National Shrine of Saint Thomas,...
 
July 6 
Padmanabh Temple Wealth
Food for thought: If the just discovered Padmanabh Hindu Temple of Kerala has a wealth of over Rs. 10,000,000,000,000, imagine the wealth of one time richest..

July 6
Re: Taj Mahal vaults
Leaving P.N. Oak aside, Dr. S.R. Rao who used to be Superintending Archaeologist, Agra Circle has examined the locked room of the Taj. (There are no vaults.) ..

July7
Myth of Sameness
Dear Sir, I wanted to share that a few years back, Dr. Frank Morales (Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya) published an essay which I think echo many of your views...

Rajiv's response:
I know Frank since the 1990s. He interacted with me on this subject after I posted my Sulekha article, "Myth of Hindu sameness". Please see.

... Over the next few years the [IISc] talk was repeated in many places and Sulekha asked to publish it. Please see:
History-Centrism is a term I have coined and developed a whole framework in which the difference can be seen to be NOT RECONCILABLE with adhyatma-vidya.



....In case someone has serious time, then after reading the above two articles, they should also read:
http://rajivmalhotra.sulekha.com/blog/post/2005/07/geopolitics-and-sanskrit-phob\
ia.htm


... Ironically, most of my best readers and the ones with the most thoughtful intellectual responses on this issue are Judeo-Christian theologians.



July 7
Islamic soft power and slow conversion
Ganesh shares: 
Just came across this news posted in MSN. India. It's a 3 page report of how revamped courses, nominal fees and job opportunities are luring many a Hindu's..

July 8
Taj Mahal's vaults
Michel Danino comments on the "vaults" of Taj:
Dear Srinivasanji,

I am sorry that many Hindus still swear by PN Oak - this is shooting ourselves in the foot. His Taj Mahal research was no better than his "Roman Empire = founded by Rama" and "Jerusalem = Yadu Shala" theories. The Taj Mahal conspiracy theory can be thrown out on three simple grounds:


1) An architectural style never exists for a single building, and no Hindu temple has a style comparable to the Taj although thousands of them have been studies by architecture and art experts.


2) We have many treatises of Hindu architecture - Manasara and Mayamata are two I have read carefully - and none refers to a style remotely like the Taj's.


3) There is such a thing as Islamic architecture and the Taj shares some of its classical features, as do other Mughal monuments (such as Humanun's tomb).


There will be nothing in the Taj Mahal's vault except old brooms, empty paint pots and plenty of bat droppings. Let PN Oak rest in peace but let his followers wake up to common sense and stop the self-inflicted harm. 

Mishra wonders: "...Islamic architectures on top of Hindu temple foundations?"

Seshadri suggests:
"...misleading to name architecture and other art forms as Islamic - a rigidly organized belief system. This kind of naming is erroneous. Something like Persian or Arabic are some geographical reference makes objective sense to put things in proper.."
" 

Ramachandra asks:
"..Dear Michel Danino
While broadly agree with you, the existance of a massive temple in Agra and looting of it by the emperor is a recorded one.  Aurangazeb demolished a great temple at Agra and looted its valuables..."

Carpentier responds:
"Arab and Persian Turkic architecture does generally reflect and express Islamic cosmology. There are various treatises (Okada et al.) on the Taj's symbolic relation with Quranic and Hadith principles and notions about the Throne of God and the Garden of Jannat. It is so clear that the Taj belongs to the Irano-Turkic school of architecture..."
Vishal feels the dates don't match in a prior claim:
"According to this URL, the temple was looted towards the end of the reign of Shah Jehan and beginning of Aurangzeb's reign. This rules out the site of Taj Mahal because the tomb's construction was started more than 15 years before Aurangzeb's reign (and therefore, not exactly 'towards the end of Shah Jehan's reign')."


Sameer comments:
"Just because PN Oak is not credible, we need not throw out the baby with the bathwater. A good analysis of the evidence is given here:

 "The Question of the Taj Mahal" (Itihas Patrika, vol 5, pp. 98-111, 1985) by P. S. Bhat and A. L. Athavale" 


M.Danino responds to Ramachandra:
"... Demolishing a temple is one thing and a well established Islamic practice. Oak's theory has nothing to do with this - the whole Taj Mahal as you see it today (minus perhaps the surface decorations) is a Hindu structure in this thesis. This is grossly absurd, yet thousands of Hindus have been hyptonized by it. That is all I meant. .."

read the original thread for the entire discussion.

July 8
A Dutch parliament motion and Dalit Solidarity Network
The Dutch parliament recently passed a motion against what they call caste discrimination in South Asian countries like India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh. ...

July 9
{Breaking India} Inventing the Aryan Race
Excerpted with permission from Malhotra, Rajiv and Aravindan Neelakandan, "Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines," Amaryllis...

July 10
Global Nexus: Up to 70 million Indian Christians today, growth accel
Important to note what the Western Christian authorities are saying, in congratulating themselves. Charity as conversion strategy, Jesus healing... ...

July 10
Teaching Bhagawad Gita in school is against Secular ideology.
BJP government in Karnataka had recently announced publicly that Bhagavad Gita would be taught in schools. ...


 

RMF Summary: Week of May 16 - 22, 2011

May 16

Premendra - Comparing caste in India and Europe
Rajiv Malhotra provides a link: CASTE SYSTEM IN EUROPE (by Priyadarshi)

May 16
Numerous criticisms posted against Outlook review - at their web site
Rajiv Malhotra responds to skewed Outlook review of BI:
I went through the comments posted at the review site and the majority are direct in criticizing the review and reviewer. Below are a few samples of this:
...
My Comment on the Outlook book review
I am sharing a long response I just posted to Gita Ramaswamy's review on Outlook India. If the moderators don't delete it, you will see it as Comment # 47...

May 17
Shame on you Gita Ramaswamy and Shame on Outlook!
Dear Editor, As an Indian settled in the USA for a few decades I used to look up to the articles from Outlook as a way of keeping up with India. I had also...

May 17
Fw: [RISA-L LIST] Fw: Dalit
Koenraad Elst posts:  
Dear listfolk, Since the Religion In South Asia list is secret, I have deleted the names of the people whom I quote and reply to in the post reproduced below: ..
...
From (a famous religious studies profesor):
> Not to take sides in this discussion about the acceptability of the term "Dalit," but it should be noted that scholars in India have begun to use "Dalit" as a shorthand for Untouchables/Scheduled Castes of all sorts.<
From (another famous religious studies profesor):

>The reason I generally opt for "Dalit" rather than "Harijan," is precisely because I feel it has shed a lot of the political connotations it once had.  This is because the "Dalit" has come to be widely used by those who have no affiliation with Ambedkarite politics---for example, it seems to be the preferred term in India's English language media, as well as among scholars.  Like a lot of terms that were originally coined with some political intent (e.g. "gender," "African American") it has gradually shed these connotations as its usage has been mainstreamed.<
... Do read Rajiv Malhotra & Aravindan Neelakandan’s book *Breaking India*, about the machinations behind the Dalitist and Dravidianist discourse. Many of you have applauded Edward’s Said’s thesis on “Orientalism”, promoting distrust of the ulterior motives of Orientalist scholarship. This new book does the same job, only better and more pertinent to our own work. Whereas Said’s work focused on Islamic Studies, dealt with the past and was riddled with factual errors, Malhotra and Neelakandan’s work is thoroughly documented, fully up-to-date and focuses on Indian Studies. It traces the political entanglements of the trend-setting scholarship on India’s ethnic, religious and caste divisions....

May 17
Breaking India started with Gandhi
Koenraad Elst, a member of this group, reviewed this book - it says here that Gandhi could have very well been the root cause of Christian incursion into modern day India. That he was partial to its theology is well known,...

May 18
Gautam Sen's letter to Outlook
Dear Editor, Book reviewers are free to express their opinions and prejudices though a modicum of acknowledgement when they are doing so would be appropriate....

May 18

'Breaking India' - Continuity
N. S. Rajaram posts: The notorious USCIRF is being systematically and strategically encouraged by the 'Indian' American Christians...

May 19
"Breaking India" book review by Rina Mukerji in d-sector.org
The unholy mission is on
By Rina Mukherji



India has been under attack for more than a millennium. The wicked attempts to destroy its civilization and denigrate the beliefs of the natives continue unabated despite the nation achieving political independence from the Europeans after the painful partition.


0
More and more researchers have begun to expose the evil intentions of the west
For decades, texts and tomes published in the West have been bombarding us with theories that India is primarily made up of distinct `Aryan' and `Dravidian' racial strains, with the `tribals' and `dalits' comprising the other distinct groups.
A lie, oft repeated, often comes to be accepted as the truth.
strategy. And there is no dearth of educated Indians who are willing to advance this anti-India agenda in return for little material comforts and recognition....

May 19
Why India is a Nation
The author of this article [Sankrant Sanu] also points out lot of points which Rajiv has pointed out in his book. ...

May 19
Breaking India has a whole chapter on USCIRF
Many folks have been recently circulating emails complaining about USCIRF. These are sporadic, short-lived flareups once in a while on this. Like all emotional...

May 19
This thread elicited a lot of responses and has been covered in the previous week's summary. To make a long story short, Outlooks appears to have published a poor quality polemic by Gita Ramaswamy as a "book review", while also rejecting the submission by Vijaya Rajiva, upsetting a lot of BI readers.
Outlook rejects Dr. Vijay Rajiva's book review and publishes a nasty
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?271815 This is not surprising but unprofessional - what else is new?

May 19
In which the question: Who is Gita Ramaswamy appears to be answered, thereby perhaps revealing why her book "review" turned out the way it did.
Gita Ramaswamy-Ashoka Fellow - What is ASHOKA-Take a look
Ram Sidhaye investigates: 
Gita Ramaswamy is Fellow at Ashoka. What is ASHOKA organization? The name Ashoka is deceptive. It is not an Indian organization. Take a look at Leadership Team, Senior Leadership, Board of Directors and Partners.
Leadership Team
Bill Drayton, C.E.O. and Founder ...

May 20

Shri Ram Sidaye
Ram Sidaye's research into Gita Ramaswamy's background and association with Ashoka is important. It reinforces chapter 15 in the book Breaking India. ...
 

May 20
Dr. Shrinivas Tilak's rejoinder to Outlook
This has been posted by Shrinivas Tilak on Sulekha. Review of Breaking India by Gita Ramaswamy: a response by Dr Shrinivas Tilak* When I first heard of...

May 21
Yankee Hindus
Dear friends, I am yet to read ‘Breaking India.”. But I have read ‘Castes of the Mind’ by Prof.Nicholas Dirks of Columbia University, and know about...

RMF Summary: Week of March 22-28, 2011

March 22
Another example for chpt 8 - Kalai Kaviri
[Chpt 8 discusses numerous ways by which inculturation is being used to dupe naive Hindus into slipping into Christianity without knowing it. The appropriation of Hindu bharatnatyam dance to propagate Christianity is given as one example. Below is another.]

Kalai Kaviri was founded by a Jesuit priest by name Fr. S.M. George in 1977 at Tiruchirappalli in the Southern part of India...

... no Christian family came forward to support him as dance was considered profane....

... Kalai Kaviri brought out ‘Yesu Kaaviyam’ the poetical life history of the Jesus Christ written by the famous Tamil film lyricist Kannadasan...

... many tourists from various countries, Catholic fraternity in particular started showing interest in Kalai Kaviri visiting the institution. With such rapid growth, Kalai Kaviri inaugurated the full-time Bharathanatyam diploma course ...

... Inspired by the art forms fostered in the Hindu temples, Kalai Kaviri choreographed Indian classical and semi-classical dances on liturgical themes and presented them during the masses. Such performances were acclaimed to by the Christian community the world over as something unique and the first of its kind....

... In 1999, Kalai Kaviri introduced Post-graduate degree courses in Bharathanatyam and music...

Rakesh asks:
"Frankly, what is wrong with this? Afterall, Rukmini Arundale, had to recuperate Bharata Natyam from a Devadasi art form which was looked down upon, and make it respectable for most Hindus.

In fact Hindus should appropriate western art forms to propogate their culture. Imagine providing an intellectual back bone to the traditional African and Latin American faiths by incorporating the Peruvian Inca Sun God as Surya Narayana and Krishna and Kali as the Black Pride Divinities. It is better to make Hinduism an inclusive, global faith..." 

Response to Rakesh's post:
[Inclusiveness is not the same thin as appropriation for the sake of deception.] Inclusiveness is sharing the same platform with another idea or culture with equal diginity. What Kalai Kaviri is doing is not what Rukmini Arundale did.

Inclusivism is not appropriating other culture and practices.
Interpreting the Peruvian and African gods and godesses as Hindu gods and goddess would be appropriation. However, researching about similarities and differences is a different matter altogether.

[What is being criticized is INCULTURATION which is a very defined Church strategy to assimilate "portions" of the target culture in order to make Christianity more easily accepted. It is their entry strategy. This is not what genuine inclusiveness means. When Ravana came dressed like a sadhu, he was not practicing inclusiveness.]]


Another commentator states:
"Christian inculturation camouflages and conceals its real tentions and does not come with benign intentions."


March 22
Look at who is coming to educate Indians!!
ARTICLE IN INDIAN EXPRESS After Beijing, University of Chicago plans centre in Delhi A prestigious university, with a well-established academic reputation for...

March 23
Varna and Caste (jati): What Vedic Literature says - article
Vedic Literature Says Caste by Birth is Unjust
By Stephen Knapp (Sri Nandanandana dasa)
            ...We all know that the Vedic system of Varnashrama has been mentioned in the Vedic literature in many places. But it seems that many people still don't understand how it was meant to be implemented. It is not because of Varnashrama, but because of this misunderstanding of what it really is that has caused so many of India's social problems. This article contains many quotes from Vedic shastra to clarify what the Varnashrama or caste system is actually supposed to be...

March 24
USCIRF Reports an Analysis (Chapter 15)
Aravindan Neelakandan: Chapter 15 of 'Breaking India' deals with the US Government's direct involvement in Indian society and polity. The book shows how the US Commission on International Religious Freedom is one such tool for intervention.(Pages 271 to 283)

The book shows how every one in the commission has been handpicked to serve the agenda of US political interests. They are also people with strong global evangelical ambitions. For example its past commissioners include Eliot Abrams, undersecretary of state for President Ronald Reagan and notorious for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair. Another key commissioner of USCIRF Richard Land was named by TIME magazine as one of the twenty five most influential evangelicals in America...

A. Neelakandan then responded to a question from a commentator:
//In the first part, you will notice a question referring to the "brahmanical" system of "enforcing" varna. Is that historically true? That is, did brahmins actively "enforce" varna, or did they just strictly "observe" it?//

Yesterday a well known Marxist writer interviewed me for his blog on 'Breaking India'. If you know Tamil please go through the audio interview. The interview
precisely touches upon this question. [Here is the mp3 version of the Tamil interview].

http://marudhang.blogspot.com/2011/03/blog-post_21.html

Varna system could not have been enforced by any particular community. Those communities that wielded political, financial powers along with those who were considered the authorities of Dharma should have created this over a long period of time and with enormous regional variations. It was a social contract at its best and it had its ills and merits.
March 24
Re: N.S. Rajaram's column on human rights hypocrisy
The following column on 'Human rights Madness' appeared in the latest issue of Newsgram.

March 24
Re: Who educates Indian MP's - guess ?-- who is to blame?
 N. S. Rajaram: Why blame them? They are just filing the vacuum left by Hindu 'thinkers' or 'non-thinkers'.

For over a decade myself and others have been urging the Sangh organizations to set up some bona fide think tanks devoted to education, economics and especially national security. They need to be staffed by outside scholars of proven track record.

But what do they do? They coin some Sanskrit term like Bauddhik Sangh, Itihasa Samiti, Vedic mathematics, etc and put people with no qualifications beyond Sangh association.

Sangh organizations have saddled themselves with the debilitating dogma tha answers are to be found by going back to an imaginary Vedic past. This
revivalist attitude hangs like an albtross around the necks (and brains) of Sangh thinkers, and they are sinking deeper into the morass.

So why blame the Ford Foundation if they are filling the vacuum left by Hindu 'bauddhiks'?

March 25
Dark side of giving: The rise of philanthro-capitalism
This article was forwarded by my friend Prashanth Vaidyaraj. It notes from the economic stand point the truth of how philanthropic money is being used to not...

March 25
Wickileaks: US Ambassador monitored Dalit tensions secretly
Please note that this is ""This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available...

March 26
Christians launch political party in Tamil Nadu

Varna and jati (caste)
we have already covered lengthy and useful debates on this topic and this thread continues the analysis. Here is the link to the previous discussion.
Vijaya Rajiva: Comment on Dr. Elst's observation that Jati and Hinduism have been associated for at least two thousand years:

Jati has been wrongly translated as 'caste' since the Portuguese did so based on their erroneous theory of different races existing in India. There were a variety of ethnicities in ancient India, but not different races.

Jati arose out of the shrenis (guilds) out of economic necessity, the need for specialisation for producing the goods for both trade and domestic consumption. It is generally assumed that shrenis did not exist in the early Vedic period, although some scholars seem to think that there were the beginnings of shrenis in that time frame.

Certainly by the post Vedic period they existed and the loose social formations of the period became crystallised into Jatis...

Dr. Aravindan Neelakandan responded to Vijaya Rajiva. I've carried more detailed excerpts since Dr. Neelakandan cited a short story of Isaac Asimov as a reference in his response :)

 
 //I disagree with your implicit statement that Jati and Hinduism are actually intertwined. In that regard you and Dr.Elst seem to be in agreement!//

No. Exactly opposite is the case. Perhaps the following statement of mine has been misunderstood: //So Jaathi is as inherently intertwined with Hinduism as much as birth-based institutions of Europe are inherently intertwined with Christian theology.//

Now the birth-based multi-layered institutions of pre-modern Europe were supported by Christian theologians and law-makers. This does not make Christianity, in the eyes of modern scholars, a supporter of this system. However with Hinduism different yard sticks are used. An essentialist argument
is put forth to say that Hinduism is intertwined with Jaathi. This is simply not the complete picture and is a distorted picture of history. In this connection,
with regard to the evolution of untouchability, one of the best insights on the subject is in an unexpected realm. I suggest the science fiction short story
"Strikebreaker," by Isaac Asimov, in "Anthropology Through Science Fiction", (Ed. Carol Mason, Martin Harry Green- berg, and Patricia Warrick, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1974)Unfortunately I lost my copy of this wonderful collection.:( In the related discussion, Asimov states that caste system evolves
in a society with limited resources and limited mobility...
...Veracity of this speculation by the good doctor of science fiction, can be further validated by the fact that pre-Modern Europe also had defiled trades and ritual notions of purity and untouchability. It is not just an accident that not many works or literature can be found on this subject in the Western curriculum. The one rare book I came across in this regard is "Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany" by Kathy Stuart
(Cambridge University Press 2006)...
[I found a free and legal archived pdf link to Kathy Stuart's work here]

... So we need not justify or label Jaathi as an uniquely Indic phenomenon. But what one finds unique as an Indian is this: There is not a single instance of mass movement in Christendom that spoke for these voiceless people of dishonorable trades.

... So caste system can evolve anywhere given the appropriate social conditions. In India it became rigid with colonial resource drain. In Europe it withered away with enormous inflow of capital and resources ...

... I also think those who want to somehow preserve the Jaathi and project it in a positive light often fail to see the dark alchemy that this system is undergoing
in India....

 ... Here let me again quote 'Breaking India' which deals more objectively the situation and the pros and cons of Jaathi. This is from Chapter 5 of the book and is under the sub-heading "Building on Max Muller's work":
Prior to colonialism, the jati-varna system in India had little, if anything, to do with race, ethnicity, or genetics. It was better understood as a set of distinctions based on traditional or inherited social status derived from work roles...

... Max Müller, who was largely responsible for entrenching the racial framework for studying jati, had his own evangelical motive. In his view, caste: which has hitherto proved an impediment to conversion of the Hindus, may in future became one of the most powerful engines for the conversion...

 ... Today Jaathi has become an important and effective tool for community evangelism. So those who bat for it should take this worrying aspect into consideration.

[there were some followup responses, but for brevity, we will stop here. Readers can click the RMF link and read the discussion in its entirety]

March 28
Princeton Univ, March 31: My debate with prominent Indian Christian
Rajiv Malhotra: On March 31, Princeton Univ will hold a discussion/debate on my book, "Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines."
The response to my talk will be given by the Rev. Dr. Nehemiah Thompson. He is the Pastor at Wesley United Methodist Church, as well as General Secretary, National Association of Asian American Christians in the USA. He is a well-known leader for Dalit activism before the UN, US Government in Washington, Indian Embassy, and media. 
March