Quotes: Need a clean man in black robe

“We have to live by examples. We need a clean man in black robe to uphold the independence and integrity of the judiciary,”

Chief Justice S H Kapadia.

 

Quotes: Cricket diplomacy – Afridi style

In my opinion, if I have to tell the truth, they (Indians) will never have hearts like Muslims and Pakistanis. I don’t think they have the large and clean hearts that Allah has given us.

– Pakistan Captain, Shahid Afridi, after his teams’ defeat at World Cup Cricket semifinals by India in 2011

 

 

Quotes: PM says he is not lame duck PM

“Whatever some people may say, that we are a lame duck government, that I am a lame duck Prime Minister, we take our job very seriously. We are here to govern, and to govern effectively. Tackle the problems as they arise and get this country moving forward” – Manmohan Singh, PM, India

 

Quotes: Supreme Court on Conversion

Supreme Court on Conversion 

It is undisputed that there is no justification for interfering in someone’s belief by way of use of force, provocation, conversion, incitement or upon a flawed premise that one religion is better than the other.

 

Muslim leaders on Islam, Nationalism and Secularism

What Muslim Leaders have said

 

(http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx?PAGEID=9071&SKIN=K)

Abul Kalam Azad: Abul Kalam Azad, while addressing his students, said “A country like India, which has once been under Mohammedan rule, must never be given up, and it was incumbent on them to strive to regain their lost control.”

On another occasion, Maulana Azad, who held the responsible position of the president of All India Congress, burst out venomously in an irresponsible manner: “Against the non-Muslim Government, Islam prescribes only sword, protracted battle and the cutting of throats?”

Liaqat Ali Khan: Liaqat Ali Khan was the secretary of the Muslim League. He was the right hand of Jinnah. It was Liaqat Ali, who, during the election campaign in 1946, boasted in Delhi. “The Muslim is a born fighter. He may hesitate to cast a vote for Pakistan, but he would not hesitate to shed his blood.” After the partition, he became the first prime minister of Pakistan. Nature is too strict and stern to spare anybody. Liaqat Ali, who got Pakistan through artificial riots, did not die a natural death. He was assassinated.

H.S. Suhrawardy: Hassan Shahid Suhrawardy was political disciple of Jinnah. He is notoriously known in history as the great killer of Hindus in the Calcutta massacre.  While addressing the Muslim League Legislators’ Convention held in Delhi on April 9, 1946, Suhrawardy declared like Hitler that Pakistan was the Muslims’ latest, but not the last demand, and that if the British rulers entrusted the destiny of India to the Congress, the Muslim League would not allow the Central Government to function even for a day. On another occasion he, in his capacity as chief minister of Bengal, threatened: “If the Congress was entrusted with power at the Centre, I would declare Bengal independent.”

Feroz Khan Noon: Feroz Khan Noon, a fanatic leader of the Muslim League, while addressing the Muslim League legislators’ meeting, said: “The havoc that the Muslims would play, would put to shame what Changez Khan and Halaku did.”

Ghaznafar Ali Khan: Ghaznafar Ali Khan, who was the health minister in the Viceroy’s Interim Government, headed by Pandit Nehru, spoke at Lahore: “If Mohammed-Bin-Kasim and Mahmood Ghaznavi could invade India with armies composed of a few thousands, and yet were able to overpower lakhs of Hindus, God willing a few lakhs of Muslims will yet overwhelm crores of Hindus.” It was he, who openly advised Hindus to embrace Islam to save themselves from the holocaust.

Dr. Ali Mohammed Naqvi: Dr. Ali Mohammed Naqvi was a follower of the Deoband School of Islamic ideology, which totally thwarted the concept of nationalism and democracy. He authored a book, Islam and Nationalism, in which he unequivocally stated: “Nationalism is incompatible with Islam… The concept of a ‘nationalist Muslim’ is as absurd as that of a ‘religious Communist’ or ‘capitalist Marxist’. ….. When the ideology of Islam expands, nationalism is destroyed, and when nationalism grows, Islam is annihilated.”

Hamid Dalwai: Hamid Dalwai, a nationalist Muslim and true son of Hindusthan, rightly reveals the attitude of fanatic Muslims in his book, Muslim Politics in India. He unambiguously states: “In sum, Muslims cannot reconcile themselves with the nationalism of any country, where they are in a minority.”

F.K. Khan Durrani:  In the preface to his book. The Meaning of Pakistan, Mr. Durrani boastfully brags: “There is not an inch of the soil of India which our forefathers did not once purchase with their blood. We cannot be false to the blood of our fathers. India, the whole of it, is therefore our heritage, and it must be reconquered for Islam…. Our ultimate ideal should be the unification of India, spiritually as well as politically under the banner of Islam. The final political salvation of India is not otherwise possible.”

Attaullah Suhrawardy: Attaullah Suhrawardy, a senior leader of the National Conference of Kashmir, and former minister and deputy speaker of Kashmir, unequivocally asserted in his speech in the state legislative council: ‘I am first a Muslim and then an Indian. Islam does not need the support of anyone for its spread. It is spreading on its own. At the time of partition, there were only four and a half crore Muslims in the country. However, in spite of the bloody communal riots in Bhiwandi, Moradabad, Aligarh and other areas, killing thousands of Muslims, the population of Muslims has increased to 14 crores, …..As for the question of conversion of all to Islam, it is the fundamental duty of a Muslim to strive for conversion and any Muslim, who does not remember this duty, does not deserve to be called a Muslim.”

Syed Ali Shah Geelani: Syed Ali Shah Geelani, a leader of Jama’at-i-islami categorically expresses his political ideology: “The politics of socialism and secularism is totally unsound. I do not like any Muslim to adopt socialism and secularism as his political ideal.”

Dr. Mushir-ul-Haq: Dr. Mushir-ul-Haq honestly unfolds the inner psyche of the Muslims of India in his book, Islam in Secular India. He candidly states: “The Muslim community of India also welcomed the idea of a secular state, because they feared the alternative would be a Hindu State. Many of them seem to believe that the state must remain secular, but the Muslims should be saved from secularism.”

Syed Ahmad Hussain: Syed Ahmad Hussain, another leader of Jama’at-i-Islami addressed the Muslims in a mosque in Aurangabad on February 7, 1961: “Shall the Muslims with all their ideology merge into sweeping current of secularism or change the current itself and establish the sovereignty of Islam? That is the serious question which confronts the Mussalmans of India today. Islam has been born to turn the whole world into Islamic. We have to change this secular rule in Bharat and establish Islamic rule in its place. The idea of secular rule is itself a contradiction of Islam. We have, therefore, to slowly work for the establishment of the sovereignty of Islam here.”

Syed Shahabuddin: Syed Shahabuddin, MP, the leader of Samata Party, once expressed his venomous views: “Muslims should have ruled India after the departure of the British, and not the Hindus. Population growth helped Muslims to annex a large part of India for creating a separate Islamic State of Pakistan. Such efforts on the part of the Muslims should be continued to gradually convert the rest of India into Dar-ul-Islam (land of the Muslims).”

Syed Abdullah Bukhari: Syed Abdullah Bukahri, the Imam of Jama Masjid Delhi, poured out a poisonous statement in December 1986: “Secularism has no place in Islam. Propagation of Islam is the first duty of Muslim. Muslim youths will propagate Islam with swords in their hands.”

On another occasion in 1987, he openly uttered: “I consider Islam greater than the country. I am first a Muslim, then everything else…. For me there is no meaning to Independence Day (of India)….. I have told Muslims thousands of time and telling them again to burn down bungalows of Muslim ministers of the Congress Party, cut off their legs and throw them away. Islam is first, nation afterwards.”

Azam Khan: Azam Khan, the then MLA of UP Legislative Assembly burst into vile words against the motherland, Bharat Mata, at a public meeting in Kanpur on March 23, 1987: “Is this our motherland? This is a blood-thirsty mother. This is not mother, this is a witch.”

Salahuddin Oweisi: Salahuddin Oweisi, a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, publicly suggested: “There should be a separate Muslim state within each state of India.”

 

In sharp contrast to all this, Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Sringeri, in his interview, said that Muslims are our brothers as our forefathers were common. Hence I wish them prosperity and happiness.

Now if Muslims want to prove that Jehad means peace and terrorism is against Islam, then they will have to show it in their thought and action, instead of mere statements and slogans. This will bring them world wide respect.

 

More Hindu concepts spreadng in America

 Religion is a Western concept; the Indian concept is neither religion nor even Hinduism nor any ‘ism’ – it is Sanatana Dharma, the eternal law of the universe, which cannot be formulated in any rigid and final set of tenets. (Michel Danino, 1956-, French author).

Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people. (Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963, English novelist and essayist).

Any sensible man is unknowingly a Hindu and that the only hope for man lies in the abolition of the erratic, dogmatic, unphilosophical creeds people today call religions (Alain Danielou, 1907-1994, French philosopher)

While Christian evangelists try to ‘buy’ or ‘force’ their religion on Hindu Indians, mostly the poor tribals, taking advantage of their poverty and ignorance,  Hinduism spreads its wings just by virtue of its sheer knowledge, wisdom and spirituality. And it is not restricted to yoga or pranayama anymore.

 

We Are All Hindus Now

 

By Lisa Miller | NEWSWEEK 

Published Aug 15, 2009,  From the magazine issue dated Aug 31, 2009

America is not a Christian nation. We are, it is true, a nation founded by Christians, and according to a 2008 survey, 76 percent of us continue to identify as Christian (still, that’s the lowest percentage in American history). Of course, we are not a Hindu—or Muslim, or Jewish, or Wiccan—nation, either. A million-plus Hindus live in the United States, a fraction of the billion who live on Earth. But recent poll data show that conceptually, at least, we are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways we think about God, our selves, each other, and eternity.

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: “Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names.” A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur’an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that “many religions can lead to eternal life”—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves “spiritual, not religious,” according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for “the divine-deli-cafeteria religion” as “very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You’re not picking and choosing from different religions, because they’re all the same,” he says. “It isn’t about orthodoxy. It’s about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that’s great, too.”

Then there’s the question of what happens when you die. Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the “self,” and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever. Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies. So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. So agnostic are we about the ultimate fates of our bodies that we’re burning them—like Hindus—after death. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975. “I do think the more spiritual role of religion tends to deemphasize some of the more starkly literal interpretations of the Resurrection,” agrees Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. So let us all say “om.

 

Who discovered America?

BHARAT: cradle of human civilization

William Durant (1885-1981): Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.

Sylvain Levi (1863-1935): She (India) has left indelible imprints on one fourth of the human race….from Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization! 

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803): …. mankind’s origins can be traced to India, where the human mind got the first shapes of wisdom and virtue with a simplicity, strength and sublimity which has – frankly spoken – nothing, nothing at all equivalent in our philosophical, cold European world

 Friedrich Majer (1771-1818): It will no longer remain to be doubted that the priests of Egypt and the sages of Greece have drawn directly from the original well of India,

 Romain Rolland (1866-1944): If there is one place on the face of this Earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest day when man began the dream of existence, it is India.

 Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (1694-1774): I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, – astronomy, astrology, metapsychosis,.. It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry…But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins’ science not been long established in Europe…It did not behove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians were civilised and learned, to dispute their antiquity.

 Arnold H Ludwig Heeren (1760-1842): India is the source from which not only the rest of Asia but the whole Western World derived their knowledge and their religion. 

Mark Twain (1835-1910): India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soul. India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most astrictive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only!  

 

When will the people of India start believing in themselves?

When will our history books start telling the truth?

When will Hindus get their dues?

 

 

Ricardo Palleres 

 

It very well may come to pass in the near future that those concerned with truth will wrestle primarily with history rather than science. The obvious reason for this is that, in the words of Dr. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, author of Theology and the World’s Religious History, “Humanity is more important than things. The truth about humanity is of a higher order than the truth about things.”¹

History tells an intriguing tale, one that ultimately may provide the greatest support for a spiritual worldview. But history has also been distorted. An example of this is the “common knowledge” that Columbus discovered America. Some say he didn’t, nor were any other Europeans the first to touch America’s shores. There is good reason to reexamine the history of the world and the Americas in particular. An unbiased look into the development of our planet’s civilizations may help to bring about a change in values, a shift from material values to spiritual ones.

What if Europe was really in darkness in comparison to the Far East and India that Columbus set sail to find? What if the popular idea that the Tibetans and the American Indians have much in common in terms of their spiritual culture is largely a result of another historical scenario? What if Hindus and Hopis, Advaitins and Aztecs, Tibetan monks and Mayans were part of one world culture — a spiritual one?

Perhaps the development of Western civilization and the Protestant ethic, which many of the West are now coming to abhor, have gotten in the way of the spiritual development of humanity. Perhaps many technological developments, while making physical contact with other cultures more possible, have distanced us from one another in a deeper sense.

Another historical scenario: The spiritually sophisticated Asians were the first to set foot on Western shores, and Asia, not Europe, was the seat of culture. The central focus of that culture was genuine spiritual development, not the mere shadow of the same in the form of the politically-motivated Pauline Christianity and later the Protestant ethic, which licensed humankind’s exploitation of nature.

This theory is found in the Vedic literature of India. The ancient Puranas (literally, histories) and the Mahabharata make mention of the Americas as lands rich with gold and silver. Argentina, which means ‘related to silver,’ is thought to have been named after Arjuna (of silver hue), one of the heroes of that great epic. India’s Puranic histories are, however, questionable to the rationalist. In the minds of the empiricists, they are more akin to myths. Yet myths have meaning, as the late Joseph Campbell has reminded us. The Puranas downplay in particular the mere recording of mundane events. The Puranic view is that even if its histories are only myths (which is not necessarily the case), the lessons to be learned from them are infinitely more valuable than what can be learned from recording the coming and going of humanity. In their view, only those human events that serve to promote transcendental knowledge are worth recording. Although empiricists are justified in dismissing them from their viewpoint, the so-called myths and their followers are also justified in dismissing the empiricist’s insistence that empirical evidence is final.

Granted, India has shown some lacking in her ability to record her story. But that is due to her preoccupation with the transcendent, the suprahistorical, and not to any ineptitude on her part. According to Kana Mitra in her article “Theologizing Through History?” “We [Hindus] tend to forget about history, and the de-emphasis of nama-rupa — name and form [due to transcendent preoccupation] — is one of the reasons for not putting down a name or date in many of our writings. Consequently present-day historians have a difficult time in determining the date and authorship of various works.”²

Fortunately, for dealing with the “I’ll only believe it if I can see it” mentality of the empiricist, there is considerable hard evidence and academic support for the Vedic theory that most people are unaware of. Unbiased consideration of this remarkable evidence may move modern-day rationalists to give serious thought to the more realistic spiritual outlook of “Only if you believe it can you see it.” After all, reality is a living thing and it may reserve the right not to show itself but to those to whom it so chooses. Otherwise, why are we in illusion, or in search of reality? If it is something we can attain by our own prowess, how did we get here (in doubt) in the first place?

 

The meeting (1519) of Hernan Cortes and the Aztec emperor Montezuma II is depicted in this 17th century Spanish painting. (British Embassy, Mexico City). Unfortunately, the American Indians did not survive their cultural exchange with Europe. The Europeans, through book burning and bayonet, successfully “converted” them leaving very little trace of their noble civilization.

Many historians have scrutinized historical evidence to find more insight into the marvelous cultures that populated the American continent before Christopher Columbus was born. Their thirst for research was based on the assumption that the great Mayan, Aztec, and Incan civilizations could not have appeared all of a sudden in the Western world. Rather, they must have received strong influence from ancient Eastern cultures, mainly from India.

Alexander von Humbolt (1769-1859), an eminent European scholar and anthropologist, was one of the first to postulate the Asiatic origin of the Indian civilizations of the Americas.

His and other scholars’ views formed the basis for the “diffusionist” argument, which was opposed by the “isolationist” viewpoint. Diffusionists believe that the world’s civilizations are a result of social contact (civilized man meets uncivilized man). Isolationists believe that civilizations cropped up all over the earth without physical contact with one another.

  

The Aztec Calendar is known as the Aztec Chakra to Hindu Astronomers. (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico.)

 “The doctrine of the world’s ages (Hindu Yugas) was imported into Pre-Columbian America… The Mexican sequence is identical with the Hindus… The essential fact remains that they were derived from a common source… It would be ridiculous to assert that such a strange doctrine was of spontaneous origin in different parts of old and new worlds.” — Mackenzie, Myths of Pre-Columbian America.

It is readily accepted that some twenty thousand years ago primitive Asians crossed the Bering Strait into North America and gradually moved south all the way to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Diffusionists maintained that after this occurred civilized Asiatic people distributed themselves via the Pacific, thereby bringing civilization to the Americas. Isolationists insisted that after the nomadic tribes crossed the Bering Strait, a homogeneous race of “Indians of the Americas” was formed, and the American tribespeople then went about reinventing all culture, duplicating in two thousand years what originally took about six millenniums in the Old World.

Henry Charlton Bastian, author of The Evolution of Life (1907), presented the concept of physicochemical evolution, which gave strength to the isolationists. His theory advocated that the development of civilized man was a result of “a psychic unity of mankind,” rather than social contact. Bastian’s theory of elementargedanke influenced many anthropologists, and today, although the theory is not accepted, it is tacitly acknowledged as far as the conformities between America and Old World civilizations are concerned.³

This pseudo-evolutionist theory leaves much to be desired, and its unspoken acceptance casts doubt on the credibility of the anthropologists. After all, doesn’t it tax our credulity when we are asked to believe that a whole series of complicated techniques like casting by the lost wax method, the alloying of copper and tin, the coloring of gold by chemical processes, weaving, and tie-dyeing and batik were by some miracle invented twice, once in the Old World and again from scratch in the Americas? What mysterious psychological law would have caused Asians and Americans to both use the umbrella as a sign of royalty, to invent the same games, imagine similar cosmologies, and attribute the same colors to the different directions?

No archeologist today would attribute to prehistoric Europeans the independent invention of bronze casting, iron work, the wheel, weaving, pottery, writing, and so many other cultural elements that were derived from the Middle East. Similarly, the industrial developments in Britain were introduced from elsewhere within the European continent, not developed independently. What then would cause one to insist that what was not possible for the Europeans (duplicating culture independently) was possible for the American Indians? Especially when at the same time we are taught that the Europeans were of superior stock!

It was in 1949 that these opposing views met head-on at the Congress of the Americanists held in New York, which was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History. At that time, the diffusionists presented an overwhelming mass of Asiatic-Pacific-American parallels. Nonetheless, much of the diffusionists’ evidence continues to be ignored, and the isolationist view is more widely accepted. The reason for this may be more than empirical evidence or lack of the same. Indeed, it may be the faulty nature of the empirical approach, which depends on one’s imperfect senses and causes one to dismiss facts that do not conform with the prevailing worldview.

The Aryan civilization of India is a logical choice for the beginning of the diffusion of our planet’s civilization. American historian Will Durant, in his book Our Oriental Heritage, described India as the most ancient civilization on earth, and he offered many examples of Indian culture throughout the world. He demonstrated that as early as the ninth century b.c.e. Indians were exploring the sea routes, reaching out and extending their cultural influence to Mesapotamia, Arabia, and Egypt.

Although modern-day historians and anthropologists might prefer to accept Egypt or Babylon as the most ancient civilization, due to various archeological findings, their theories are by no means conclusive. The popular theory in the academic community that the Aryans were an Indo-European stock, who spoke an unknown pre-Sanskrit language and only later invaded India subsequently occupying her, is also considerably lacking in supportive evidence. Indeed, there is very little evidence whatsoever for the postulated Aryan invasion of India. But perhaps it is easier for modern people to accept ancient Egypt and Babylon, whose ancient civilizations have no living representation and thereby do not pose any challenge to the status quo.

But India is alive and kicking. Prominent traces of ancient Vedic civilization can still be found today not only in India but outside her borders as well. The life science of ayurveda, yoga and meditation, and Sanskrit texts translated into modern languages are all prominent examples. If we recognize ancient India as a civilized spiritual giant, we will have to reckon with her modern-day representations. It is altogether possible that the Vedic theory, if thoroughly researched, poses a threat to many of the concepts of modern civilization and the current worldview, as can be seen by the fact that the Vedic literature and spiritual ideology loomed as the greatest threat to the British in their imperialistic conquest of India.

The Aryans’ footprints are found throughout neighboring Southeast Asia. They were skilled navigators and pioneers of many cultural developments. According to several sources, these Aryans ruled in Java, Bali, Sumatra, Borneo, Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Annan, Burma, and Thailand until the fourteenth century. Even today, the kings of Thailand bear the title Rama after the Indian Ramraja (the perfect kingdom said to have been governed by the incarnation of Godhead Ramachandra). And the story of Ramayana is depicted on the palace walls in Bangkok.

Cambodia, the ancient Kamboja, boasts the largest temple complex in the world, named Ankor, from the Sanskrit language meaning “the capital city.” It was built in the ninth century c.e. in honor of the Hindu god Vishnu. The complex extends over an area more than twice the size of Manhattan and took thirty-seven years to complete. Its physical and spiritual grandeur is found elsewhere only in ancient Greece, Egypt, and among the Mayan and Aztec civilizations. Cambodia’s principle river is today called Me Kong, which some scholars say is derived from India’s Ma Ganga (Mother Ganges).

Vietnam, once called Champa, figures prominently as a stepping-stone in the story of India’s cultural expansion to the Americas. Furthermore, the Hindu state of Java was founded by the king of Kalinga (Orissa) in the first century c.e. Java is said to be the ancient Yava-Dveepa mentioned in the Ramayana and other Sanskrit texts. The Indonesian national flag flies the symbol of Garuda, the bird carrier of Vishnu. Garuda is also the national symbol of that country.

In 1949, two scholars, Gordon Ekholm and Chaman Lal, systematically compared the Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and North American Indian civilizations with the Hindu-oriented countries of Southeast Asia and with India herself. According to them, the emigrant cultures of India took with them India’s system of time measurement, local gods, and customs. Ekholm and Lal found signs of Aryan civilization throughout the Americas in art (lotus flowers with knotted stems and half-dragon/half-fish motifs found commonly in paintings and carvings), architecture, calendars, astronomy, religious symbols, and even games such as our Parcheesi and Mexican patolli, which have their origins in India’s pachisi.

Both the Hindus and the Americans used similar items in their worship rituals. They both maintained the concept of four yuga cycles, or cosmological seasons, extending over thousands of years, and conceived of twelve constellations with reference to the Sun as indicated by the Incan sun calendar. Royal insignias, systems of government, and practice of religious dance and temple worship all showed remarkable similarities, pointing strongly to the idea that the Americas were strongly influenced by the Aryans.

 

The temples of India (pict. 1-2) are built according to the ancient Vedic architectural science. There are striking similarities between Mayan temples and those in India. Pict. 3-4: Two Mayan temples from Palenque, Mexico and Central America.

Another scholar, Ramon Mena, author of Mexican Archeology, called the Nahuatl, Zapoteca, and Mayan languages “of Hindu origin.“ He went on to say, “A deep mystery enfolds the tribes that inhabited the state of Chiapas in the district named Palenque. . . . Their writing, and the anthropological type, as well as their personal adornments . . . their system and style of construction clearly indicate the remotest antiquity. . . . [they] all speak of India and the Orient.”⁴

Still another scholar, Ambassador Poindexter, in his two-volume 1930s treatise The Arya-Incas, called the Mayan civilization “unquestionably Hindu.”      

The Aztec culture in particular shows a striking resemblance to that of India. Aztecs divided their society into four divisions of both labor and spiritual status, as did the Hindus. In India, this system of government was known as varnashrama, or the division of society based on body types and mental dispositions resulting from past karma. As in Indian civilization, the Aztecs maintained a God-centered government in which people were employed in accordance with their natural karmic tendencies. The results of the labor of all the priests, administrators, mercantilists, and laborers were for the glorification of Godhead, who in turn was thought to provide for humankind.

Aztec boys were sent to school at the age of five, at which time they were put under the care of a priest and trained in various duties of temple life. The Aztec system of education bears a striking resemblance to the Indian system of gurukula, in which boys were sent to the care of a guru for spiritual and practical education. The Mayans and Incas had a similar approach to education, which was mainly a training for priestly service. Fanny Bandelier’s translation of Sahagun’s History of Ancient Mexico describes that the intellectually inclined boys were trained as “ministers to the idols.”

Girls were educated in the domestic arts at home and did not mingle with young boys. Even as late as the 1930s, there was no courtship between Mexican Indian girls and boys, as is still the case in village life in India today. From conception to education, marriage, death, cremation, and even the observance of the sati rite, there are overwhelming parallels between Indian society and the Americas. Further evidence of cultural ties between the East and West is found in the statues of American gods who show a striking resemblance to the Hindu deities of Hanuman, Shiva, Indra, Vishnu and others. Such statues have been found throughout the Americas, and many of them can be seen today in museums in Central America.

The Mexican Indians and the Incas of Peru were primarily vegetarians. They were of high moral character and hospitable and generous as a habit. They practiced astrology, and mental telepathy was common among them. It was perhaps their peace-loving disposition that, like the Hindus, allowed them to be ruled by Europeans. Unfortunately, the American Indians did not survive their cultural exchange with Europe. The Europeans, through book burning and bayonet, successfully “converted” them, leaving very little trace of their noble civilization.

And what about Europe?  When merchants sailing from India brought delicious spices, aromatic perfumes, incense, fine silk, precious stones set in delicate and rare jewelry, complex craftsmanship of ivory, and many other goods never seen before by Europeans, the riches and mystique of that land captivated them. The stories told by many navigators about that land of wonder, where the palaces were built of varieties of marble rather than rush stone, decorated with beautiful sculptures and wooden inlay, made the Queen of Spain so covetous that she provided Christopher Columbus with all necessities for his famous journey. Columbus had heard of India’s riches through the writings of Marco Polo. Polo had written that India “was the richest and noblest country of the world.”⁵

Europe, after Guttenburg’s invention of the printing press, wasted no time in announcing the discovery of the New World. It was at this time that European historians began to present to the rest of the world that their land was the center of culture and civilization.

In comparison to Indian society, however, the Europeans were rather crude. The ominous age of the Inquisition, with its persecution and fanaticism, the use of mechanical devices to insure the “chastity” of its women, the exploitation of the serfs, and self-destructive habits, such as indiscriminate eating and alcoholism within the higher classes, are all evidence of this. The original Palace of Versailles in Paris, although certainly a unique architectural creation requiring genius, was built without a single bathroom. Louis XIV and his court are said to have evacuated behind curtains, cleaning themselves with the same. The king was in the habit of substituting soap with Indian perfume and waited until his thirty-fifth birthday before he took his first complete bath.

When Europe was still uncivilized, Indian culture, as well as American culture, was highly advanced. When Europeans were still cave dwellers and nomads wandering from place to place subsisting through hunting, some American peoples were plowing fields and baking bread and dressing in cotton, the seeds for which came from India. The subtlety of Indian society, both eastern and western, marks its superiority to Europe. It was a subtlety of spiritual outlook that Europeans failed to appreciate.

  

The Dresden Codex, one of the few Mayan hieroglyphic manuscripts that survived the book-burnings by Spanish invaders, documents astronomical calculations of the planed Venus. Large numbers of codices were compiled by the Mayan priests to record religious rites and astronomical facts. (Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden, East Germany.)

The industrial revolution of Europe was prompted by India’s cotton, which competed with European wool. Later when the popularity of cotton products imported from India increased, the Europeans began to manufacture cotton in mills. Thus it was even an Indian resource that prompted Europe’s claim to fame — the beginning of modern technology.

Several ancient cultures of the Americas were more spiritually attuned than the Europeans. They also lived with great regard for nature. Many people today are searching out the spirituality of the Americas, a spirituality that was lacking in Europe and is now lacking throughout the world. The Christ’s teachings were most certainly tainted with misunderstanding of that great savior’s message of love. And he too is said to have been influenced by India’s spirituality. His appearance in the world for that matter is mentioned in India’s Bavishya Purana long before the virgin birth took place.

The theory that India, Mother India, is the earthly source of spirituality can be to some extent supported by the fact that India is still today the most religious country in the world, with a theology that dates back to antiquity. The idea that she is the source of civilization as well, although supporting evidence is available, will ultimately require that modern man reevaluate what constitutes civilization before it gains wider acceptance.

 

Notes

1. Wilfred Cantwell Smith,”Theology of the World’s Religious History,” Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. (1987) p.69.

2. Kana Mitra, “Theologizing Through History?” Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. (1987), p.82.

3. Dr. Robert Heine Geldern, “Challenge to Isolationists,” Hindu America, Chaman Lal, Zodiac Press, New Delhi, (1940) Introduction p.vii.

4. Ibid., p. 14.    

5. Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo (The Venitian), revised from Marsden’s translation and edited with introduction by Manuel Komroff, Livright Pub, (1956) p.201.

 

Further References

William Mccgillivray, The Travells and Research of Alexander von Humbolt, Harper Bros. N.Y. (1872).

Henry Charles Bastian, The Evolution of Life. E.P. Dutton & Co. N.Y. (1907).

Gordon Ekholm, Excavations At Sinaloa, American Museum of Natural History, N.Y. (1942).

Gordon Ekholm, Excavations at Lampico and Panuco in the Hausteca, American Museum of Natural History N.Y. (1944).

 

Christian God’s moments of lies for India

The article below gives an idea of the motive, the propanda, the resources and the means of evangelical activities that is going on in India with subtle but firm approval of those who are at the helm of this country. Though my religion, more aptly described as Dharma, which is beyond the concept of the soul traders, teaches me not to derogate other’s God, I think this article should have been more correctly named as “CHRISTIAN GOD’S MOMENTS OF LIES FOR INDIA”. After independence, India, regrettably by some, chose not to be a Hindu nation. It is now a Hindu majority nation, the last bastion that the Abrahmanic religions swear everyday to break. Hindu India has survived the invading Muslim carnage and British devastation but this time it is the indigenous people, converted or otherwise, who have vowed to uproot the Hindu-ness of India. Hindus and India has to decide whether they would agree with Pope Benedict XVI, as he said during his  Brazil trip in 2007, “the Roman Catholic Church purified indigenous people of the Americas…… Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas….. They had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were “silently longing” for Christianity, seeking Christ without realizing it….”

I would just like to add some quotes that describes Christianity

• Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. –Voltaire (French Philosopher, 1694-1778)
• Of all the systems of religion that were ever invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. – Thomas Paine (American Statesman, 1737-1809)
• Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity…….Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man.  – Thomas Jefferson (American Statesman, 1743-1826)
• During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. – Mark Twain (American Writer, 1835-1910).
• If I had the power and could legislate, I should stop all proselytizing . – Mahatma K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
• The greatest evil in the world today is the Christian religion. – H.G. Wells (1866-1946), British author
• During the past few centuries the most belligerent, the most aggressive, the most rapacious, the most power-drunk section of humanity has been precisely, the Christian Western world. During these centuries western Christendom had invaded all other continents; its armies followed by priests and merchants have subjugated, robbed or pillaged most of the non-Christians. Native Americans, African, Australian, Asiatic populations have been subjugated to this peculiar brand of Christian “love” which has generally manifested itself in pitiless destruction, enslavement, coercion, destruction of the cultural values, institutions, the way of life of the victims and the spread of alcoholism, venereal disease, commercial cynicism and the like. – Pitrim Sorokin (1889-1968), Harvard University sociologist
• Christianity is the enemy of liberty and of civilization. It has kept mankind in chains. – Ferdinand August Bebel (1840-1913), German socialist leader
• Christianity has been distinguished from other religions by its greater readiness for persecution….. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. – Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) British philosopher
• I believe the spreading of Catholicism to be the most horrible means of political and social degredation left in the world. – Charles Dickens (1812-1870), British author
• The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church. – Ferdinand Magellan (1480-1521), Portuguese explorer.
• It is no accident that the symbol of a bishop is a crook, and the sign of an archbishop is a double-cross – Gregory Dix (1901-1952), British Benedictine monk

 

God’s Moment for India

J. Lee Grady

Christianity is growing rapidly in the world’s largest Hindu nation.  ‘Charisma’ looks at how the Holy Spirit is changing lives in India. 

Feb. 2, 2009 — Last year on a hot, humid evening in Warangal, a city in southern India, about 8,000 locals gathered in a giant sports field while what seemed like 100,000 insects buzzed in the night sky. Most of the people were Hindus, but this did not stop them from visiting a Christian event hosted by a local evangelist, Harry Gomes, who is based further south in the city of Coimbatore. 

As the dark-faced crowd gathered, billowing saris sparked a riot of turquoise, pink, saffron, green, aqua and red. The women in these flowing garments reclined on a huge piece of yellow fabric that covered half a football field. Men sat in white plastic chairs or stood near the edges of the field, where towering floodlights bathed the scene in a harsh glow. 

Gomes, who has sponsored more than 200 outdoor evangelistic crusades in India since he began his ministry in 1996,  was seated on the stage with his head bowed, oblivious to the noises from the audience or the blaring music coming from a praise team standing next to him. Accompanied by a drum machine and synthesizer, four women from Gomes’ Bible college sang Indian choruses in Telugu-one of 29 major languages spoken in India today. 

After a litany of announcements and more songs, an Indian minister in a black suit announced it was time for Gomes to preach. The restless crowd settled down while the dark clouds grew menacing. The bugs provided a strange soundtrack, crackling and sizzling as they hit chairs, sound equipment and light bulbs. 

A small rug was rolled out on the stage, and Gomes knelt on it, clutching his Bible in one hand and a microphone in the other. In his deep, resonating voice-obviously created for preaching-he began his brief sermon, all in perfect Telugu. (Gomes also speaks Hindi, Tamil and other Indian languages.) 

After the sermon the action began. Still kneeling, Gomes began to recite a list of sicknesses and ailments. Arthritis. Tumors. Blindness. Heart problems. Skin disorders. People in the crowd began to stand. To the left of the giant stage, a woman-obviously demonized-began to scream. Two members of Gomes’ ministry team ran to help her.

Gomes kept his eyes shut throughout his 15-minute prayer for the sick. He does not lay hands on people in his meetings but simply prays that Jesus Christ will reveal Himself to the Hindus, Sikhs or Muslims who come to hear him. 

“It is Jesus who does the healing,” he told Charisma. “We only need to believe and pray.” 

So far, about 12.4 million Indians have come to Christ in Gomes’ meetings, but that is a small number compared to the total who have embraced Christianity in India in recent years. This nation of more than 1 billion people is on the verge of a spiritual upheaval. 

 

New Testament Miracles 

For Gomes and other church leaders Charisma interviewed, miracles are fueling much of the church growth in India. 

Just ask Meshek Manepally, 46, a shop owner from a town in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. In late 2007, while attending one of Gomes’ events in Pratipadu, he collapsed and began foaming at the mouth. His family had no idea what was wrong with him, but they panicked when he stopped breathing. His skin turned darker and his body became stiff. 

Manepally’s son, Varaprasad, loaded his father in a three-wheel car to take him to a hospital. But while the family waited to maneuver the vehicle out of the crowd, Gomes’ staff alerted him to the problem. He walked over to the car, crawled inside and prayed for the man. 

Within a few minutes, Manepally was revived, and his son committed his life to Jesus after witnessing the miracle. 

Said Manepally: “They told me, ‘You were dead but now you are alive!’ ” His wife, Laxmi, said people in their village who heard about the resurrection spread the news. “For 10 days they came to see him. They treated him like Lazarus in the Bible,” she says. “They told us, ‘Your God is the true God.’ ” 

Evangelist V.A. Thampy and his wife, Mariamma, witnessed a similar miracle 10 years ago in another village in Andhra Pradesh. A Christian woman named Maria had died, and locals would not give her a proper burial because her family had no money. She had been dead two days, and ants were crawling all over her corpse. 

“She was ice cold,” Mariamma says. “But after we prayed for her she came back to life. She still has the scars from the ant bites on her body. But she travels with me now, telling the story of what she saw in heaven while she was dead.” 

The Thampys, who lead an evangelistic ministry called New India Church of God, say signs and wonders have triggered thousands of conversions since they began their work in the southern state of Kerala in the late 1960s. Despite waves of persecution from Hindus and traditional Orthodox Christians, they have planted more than 2,000 churches in 23 Indian states and seven other countries. 

“One hundred percent of Indian people are sick and possessed by demons,” says V.A., who started his ministry by preaching from a coconut tree. “When we preach the gospel, they are instantly healed.”

 “Most Indian gurus are possessed by demons,” Mariamma adds. “When we pray for them the demon manifests and comes out. We have many former gurus in our churches today, including one who was deaf and dumb and was healed.”

Similar outpourings of miracles have occurred in Punjab, in far northern India near the Pakistani border. Pastor John Howell, 62, has planted hundreds of churches in villages there-often after an instance of healing. In one town near Firozpur, south of Amritsar, about 50 curious Hindus attended a church service held outside the tiny home of an 18-year-old woman who was healed a week earlier of an incurable heart condition. 

“After she was healed, her parents threw away their Hindu idols,” Howell says. “Now everyone in this village is visiting the church to see her.” That church, planted in 2006, grew to 75 members after the first week-in a region where Hindus enforce strict laws about food, sacred cows and proper worship. 

Miracles are not always welcome in India. On more than one occasion, Hindu radicals insisted that Gomes prove his healing power. Witches and Hindu priests also have opposed him. 

In one town religious fanatics registered a case against him, claiming that he was practicing medicine without a license. “But on the very first day of the crusade,” Gomes says, “the Lord healed many crippled people and they started walking. The police who witnessed this ended up asking for prayer.”

 

A Legacy of Persecution 

It’s no surprise that India is a dangerous place to preach the gospel. (Many historians say the apostle Thomas was either lanced or stoned by angry locals after he landed in Kodungallur, in the state of Kerala, in the first century.) The Pakistani terrorists who bombed hotels in Mumbai in November 2008, killing 173, reminded the world that religious and political tensions are seething under the façade of India’s booming economy and technological progress. 

The Mumbai incident captured headlines around the world. But the media paid little attention to the religious violence that erupted in late 2007, and again in the summer of 2008, in Orissa, an economically depressed state in the north central region where Christianity has been growing rapidly. 

One of the most widely publicized incidents of martyrdom in recent history occurred in Orissa. Australian missionary Graham Staines, who worked with Indian lepers, was murdered there in 1999 with his two young boys. Crazed Hindu militants set Staines’ vehicle on fire and burned the three alive. 

Hindu mobs, energized by the radical Bharatiya Janata political party, went on more rampages last year-burning churches, leveling homes, raping nuns, and, in some cases, cutting Christians to pieces with machetes or burning them alive. As many as 118 died in the recent Orissa attacks, and local government officials were slow to quell the unrest. The violence spread to other states, including Karnataka and even Kerala, which has India’s largest Christian population. 

John Dayal, an Indian activist who founded the All India Christian Council, says what happened in Orissa is part of a 50-year hate campaign waged by nationalistic Hindus who draw inspiration from the Nazis of Germany. They believe India is a Hindu country, and they will go to any means necessary to defend the Hindu caste system-which keeps poor people locked at the bottom of society.

“The violence in August and September 2008 has been the worst in our 2,000-year history in India,” Dayal says. “More than 50,000 [Christians] were homeless and more than 30,000 were hiding in forests, chased like animals by fanatics who were forcing them to become Hindus or die.” 

Why the harsh violence? Indian church planter P.G. Vargis told missionary journalist John Lindner in August that the attacks against Christians were retaliatory strikes-aimed at wiping out the churches in Orissa because of extraordinary growth in recent years. Vargis said that when his ministry, the Indian Evangelical Team (IET), first went to Orissa there were hardly any evangelical churches there. 

“Today it is difficult to travel 50 miles in this part of Orissa without encountering an IET church,” Vargis says. “As of 2007, we had planted more than 1,000 pioneer churches in Orissa.” 

Other church leaders confirmed that the number of Christians has grown exponentially in Orissa, and they accuse the Indian government of hiding statistics. “Orissa was once completely unreached, but today as many as 28 percent of the people are Christians,” one pastor told Charisma. 

Jeet, a 29-year-old pastor, knows what it means to be persecuted for his faith. He grew up in Orissa’s capital, Bhubaneshwar, but his parents kicked him out of his home at age 17 when they realized he would no longer make sacrifices to a Hindu snake god. He finally admitted that he had converted to Christ through the influence of a friend. 

Jeet’s father told him he could return home when he was ready to renounce Jesus. The young man has not been home in 14 years. He started a church in a nearby village, and he has a goal of evangelizing the 56 unreached tribes in the region. He has been threatened numerous times by Hindu mobs. 

Says Jeet: “They tell me, ‘There is no need to preach Jesus here! We are all Hindus!’ And I tell them, ‘It is the commandment of Jesus Christ that I preach to all people!’ ” 

Larry Derstine, an American who has ministered with his wife in north India since 1989 (and was forced to evacuate in September because of the Orissa violence), said almost all Christians he knows there have been persecuted. It is simply the price they pay to follow Jesus. 

“They are resilient,” he says of these brave believers. “They are crushed, but they bounce back. We give them just a little bit of training and they go a long way.” 

Dismantling the Caste System Christianity is unraveling a foundational tenet of Indian culture-the idea that people are categorized by caste. Hinduism teaches that there are four castes-Brahmins (priests), Kshtriyas (rulers), Vaishyas (merchants) and Shudras (laborers)-and that below these people are the Dalits, also known as the “untouchables.” 

Today the gospel is extremely attractive to these 360 million Dalits, who for centuries have been denied social privileges, including access to water. The poorest of the poor, they have been told they are less valuable than animals. Although discrimination based on caste has been officially outlawed in India, most Dalits still lack educational and economic opportunities.

Radical Hindus want to keep Dalits in their place to preserve traditional social order. But in recent years, hundreds of thousands of Dalits have found Christ-and in the gospel they discovered the self-empowerment, personal liberty and human dignity that Hinduism denied them. As the Dalit Christian movement grew, radical Hindus tried to prevent conversions. 

Indian missions strategist Joseph D’Souza, director of Operation Mobilization in Hyderabad, says the amazing trend of Dalit evangelism is single-handedly transforming his nation. “The Dalit struggle for freedom is gaining strength, and their oppressors do not want them to go free,” D’Souza says. “India will soon go through a massive spiritual change, and this will match what God is doing in China.” 

D’Souza also directs the Dalit Freedom Network, which has raised global awareness of Dalit oppression. He says church growth among Dalits is not only upsetting upper-caste Hindu extremists but also some Christians in the south of India who are “caste infected.” Some Christians, he says, “do not see that the gospel and caste cannot go together.”

Throughout India today, growing Pentecostal and charismatic churches are trumpeting the biblical idea that all people are created equal. It’s a radical concept in this ancient land shaped by caste values. 

“In Christ there is no Brahmin or Dalit, literate or illiterate, no rich or poor,” says Shekhar Kallianpur, pastor of the New Life Fellowship in Mumbai. A former Hindu Brahmin himself, he was converted to Christ 30 years ago and is a thorn in the side of Hindu extremists. 

Says Kallianpur: “A Dalit’s decision to follow Christ brings the kingdom value that there is no Greek or Jew, Brahmin or Shudra, black or white, but we are all one in Christ. This powerful transformation, spread through word of mouth, has become a major movement in our nation.” 

Paul Thangiah is pastor of the 15,000-member Full Gospel Assembly of God Church in Bengaluru (Bangalore), India’s third most populous city. He compares the caste system to the problem of racial prejudice in the United States and believes the Indian church is overcoming it. 

“Caste has strong and deep roots in the very being of India,” Thangiah says. “But Pentecostal churches in India, under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, do not support or encourage the caste system. The gospel transforms people from different castes into one caste.”

 

A Bright Future 

Secular economists and politicians agree that India is doing more than just producing Bollywood films and taking technology jobs outsourced from the United States. Its upwardly mobile population, entrepreneurial spirit and democratic ideals could turn it into the world’s next superpower. 

And while many of the world’s developed countries have negative birth rates, India is one of the youngest nations on the planet-with 47 percent of the population under age 20. That’s what prompted Indian-American evangelist Sujo John, 34, to launch an ambitious church-planting strategy that will, beginning this year, target youth in the major urban centers of India, including Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai and Calcutta. 

“These young Indians will be very dominant in world affairs,” says John, a native of Calcutta. “They really don’t hold to their parents’ faith. They are saying, ‘We have tried everything and we are empty.’ Soon I believe there will be an army of Indian young people who will go to the ends of the earth with the gospel.” 

Pastor Kallianpur agrees. “We have a prophetic word over this nation that India will be a platform for the glory of the Lord to the nations,” he says. “Hinduism was born here. Buddhism was born here. Sikhism was born here. Jainism was born here. New Age was born here. All these religions went to the nations. Now the time has come that India will proclaim the message of the Ageless One to the nations.” 

D’Souza believes India will demonstrate “the full transformational power of the gospel” in coming years, particularly as the struggle for Dalit freedom gains strength. He says that there are four “waves of the Spirit” that the Indian church is riding: (1) the wave of proclamation (aggressive evangelism); (2) the wave of compassion; (3) the wave of signs and wonders; and (4) the wave of social justice. 

Churches and ministries that embrace this four-pronged gospel “are the ones that are growing in India,” D’Souza says. “Those that try to box God in their own world are not growing.” 

Perhaps D’Souza and other Indian leaders will eventually bring their message to the American church. One thing is certain: Indians make up one-sixth of the world’s population, and they are a force to be reckoned with. Before it is all over, the spiritual explosion happening on the other side of the world will affect us all.

---

J. Lee Grady is the editor of Charisma. He conducted interviews for this article during visits to the Indian states of Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Bihar. 

 

Why is India secular?

India is not a secular nation because Indian Muslims want it to be secular. India is a secular nation because Indian Hindus want it to be secular.

 

 M J Akbar

 

Some quotes on Hindu-Muslim Unity

Some quotes on Hindu-Muslim unity

Rabindranath Tagore

A very important factor which is making it almost impossible for Hindu-Muslim unity to become an accomplished fact is that the Muslims cannot confine their patriotism to any one country. I had frankly asked many Muslims whether, in the event of any Mohammedan power invading India, they would stand side by side with their Hindu neighbours to defend their common motherland, I was not satisfied with the reply I got from them.

 Rabindranath Tagore

We want to draw a veil over our past to appease the Muslims…. We have done it for a long time. It is time to lift the veil….

 Lala Lajpat Rai

I have devoted most of my time during the last six months to the study of Muslim History and Muslim Law and I am inclined to think that Hindu-Muslim unity is neither possible not practicable… I do honestly and sincerely believe in the necessity and desirability of Hindi-Muslim unity. I am also fully prepared to trust the Muslim leaders, but what about the injunctions of the Koran and Hadis. The leaders cannot override them.

 Sarat Chandra Chatterji

If we go by the lessons of history we have to accept that the goal of the Hindu-Muslim unity is a mirage. When Muslims first entered India, they looted the country, destroyed the temples, broke the idols, raped the women and heaped innumerable indignities on the people of this country. Today it appears that such noxious behavior has entered the bone marrow of Muslims. Unity can be achieved among equals…. I am of the view that Hindu-Muslim unity, which could not be achieved during the last thousand years, will not materialize during the ensuing thousand years.

 Annie Besant

The inner Muslim feeling of hatred against ‘unbelievers’ has spring up naked and unashamed…. We have seen, revived, as guide in practical politics, the old Muslim religion of the sword…. In thinking of an independent India, the menace of Mohammedan rule has to be considered.

 Sri Aurobindo

I am sorry they are making a fetish of this Hindu-Muslim unity. It is no use ignoring facts; some day the Hindus may have to fight the Muslim and they must prepare for it. Hindu–Muslim unity should not mean the subjection of the Hindus. Every time the mildness of the Hindu has given way. The best solution would be to allow the Hindus to organize themselves and the Hindu-Muslim unity would take care of itself, it would automatically solve the problem.

Sri Aurobindo

You can live amicably with a religion whose principle is toleration. But how is it possible to live with a religion whose principle is ‘I will not tolerate’? You cannot build unity on such basis. Perhaps the only way of making the Mohammedans harmless is to make them lose their faith in their religion.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar

To talk about Hindu-Muslim unity from a thousand platforms or to give it blazoning headlines is to perpetrate an illusion whose cloudily structure dissolves itself at the exchange of brickbats and desecration of tombs and temples….Nothing I could say can so well show the futility of Hindu-Muslim unity. Hindu-Muslim unity up to now was at least in sight although it was like a mirage. Today it is out of sight and also out of mind.

Dr.B.R. Ambedkar

The brotherhood of Islam is not the universal brotherhood of man. It is brotherhood of Muslims for Muslims only. There is a fraternity but its benefit is confined to those within that corporation. For those who are outside the corporation, there is nothing but contempt and enmity.

Ram Swarup

Religious harmony is a desirable thing. But it takes two to play the game. Unfortunately such a sentiment holds a low position in Islamic theology.

 Shiv Prasad Roy

Pakistan and Bangladesh are their fixed deposits. Those are Islamic states. No one else can lay claim on them. India is a joint account. Plunder it as much as you please.

 Francois Gautier

This is a profession of faith of a Muslim: ‘I certify that there is no God than Allah, of whom Mohammed is the only prophet’, which means in effect: After and before Mohammed, there is nobody else…’Thus the whole religion of Islam is based on negation: nobody but us, no other religion but ours’. And if you disagree, you shall die. This puts a serious limitation to tolerance and from this strong belief sprang all the horrors of the Muslim invasion of India.

 Francois Gautier

Let it be said right away: the massacres perpetrated by Muslims in India are unparalleled in history, bigger than the holocaust of the Jews by the Nazis; or the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks; more extensive even than the slaughter of the South American native populations by the invading Spanish and Portuguese.

 Will Durant

The Mohammedan conquest of India was probably the bloodiest story in history.

 Alain Danielou

From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of  murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions

 Rizwan Salim

Their minds filled with venom against the idol-worshippers of Hindustan, the Muslims destroyed a large number of ancient Hindu temples. This is a historical fact, mentioned by Muslim chronicles and others of the time.

 Rizwan Salim

Savages at a very low level of civilization and no culture worth the name, from Arabia and west Asia, began entering India from the early century onwards. Islamic invaders demolished countless Hindu temples, shattered uncountable sculpture and idols, plundered innumerable palaces and forts of Hindu kings, killed vast numbers of Hindu men and carried off Hindu women..….. But many Indians do not seem to recognize that the alien Muslim marauders destroyed the historical evolution of the earth’s most mentally advanced civilization, the most richly imaginative culture, and the most vigorously creative society.

 Irfan Husain

The Muslim heroes who figure larger than life in our history books committed some dreadful crimes. Mahmud of Ghazni, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, Balban, Mohammed bin Qasim, and Sultan Mohammad Tughlak, all have blood-stained hands that the passage of years has not cleansed. Indeed, the presence of Muslim historians on their various campaigns has ensured that the memory of their deeds will live long after they were buried…..Seen through Hindu eyes, the Muslim invasion of their homeland was an unmitigated disaster.

 Dr. Younis Shaikh

….eighty million were slaughtered and millions of women were raped…..it was standard practice for Islamic warlords like Ghori and Ghazni to unleash the mass rape and enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women after the slaughter of all males.

A large percentage of Muslims in South Asia today are the progeny of forcible conversions and systematic rape campaigns by marauding Muslim invaders. 

 Koenraad Elst

..the number of victims of the persecutions of Hindus by Muslims is easily of the same order of magnitude as that of the Nazi extermination policy, though no one has yet made the effort of tabulating the reported massacres and proposing a reasonable estimate of how many millions exactly must have died in the course of the Islamic campaign against Hinduism (such research is taboo). On top of these there is a similar number of abductions and deportations to harems and slave-markets, as well as centuries of political oppression and cultural destruction……

 Dr K D Prithipal

Muslims will only live as an oppressive majority and a turbulent minority.

 Sardar Ballavbhai Patel

A nationalist Muslim is only a contradiction in terms