Catholic Ashrams: Sanyasins Or Swindlers
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PRICE: $6.50 (Hard Cover)
AUTHOR:Sita Ram Goel
PUBLISHER: Voice of India, New Delhi
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REVIEWER(S): The Author
“It is a remarkable fact,” writes Fr. Bede, “that the Church has been present in India for over fifteen hundred years and has had for the most part everything in its favor, and yet in all this time hardly two in a hundred of the people has been converted to the christian faith. The position is, indeed, worse even than this figure would suggest, as the vast majority of Christians are concentrated in a very few samll areas and in the greater part of India the mass of people remains today untouched except in a very general way by the christian faith. It is necessary to go even further than this and to say that for the immense majority of the Indian people Christianity still appears as a foreign religion imported from the West and the soul of India remains obstinately attached to its ancient religion. It is simply not a matter of ignorance. This may have been true in the past, but in recent times there has been a remarkable revival of Hinduism, which is more or less consciously opposed to Christianity, and the educated Hindu regards his religion as definitely superior to Christianity.”
The state of things described by Fr. Bede would have caused no concern to a normal human mind. There is nothing obstinate about Hindus remaining attached to their ancient religion which has given them a large number of saints, sages and spiritual giants, and enriched them with an incomparable wealth of art, architecture, music and literature. There is nothing wrong with Hindus who find their own religion more satisfying than an alien faith brought in by imperialist invaders. Moreover, Christianity has yet to prove that it has something better to offer in terms of spiritual seeking or vision and attainment. But the missionary mind, unfortunately has never been a normal human mind. It has always suffered from the hallucination that it has a monopoly on truth and that it has a divine command to strive for the salvation of every soul. That alone can explain why the mission in India, instead of dismantling itself, is making determined efforts to regroup and return for yet another assault on Hinduism.
The mission strategists are now making Christianity drop its alien attire and get clothed in Hindu cultural forms. Christianity is being presented as an indigenous faith. Christian theology is being conveyed through categories of Hindu philosophy; Christian worship is being conducted in the manner and with the materials of Hindu puja; Christian sacraments sound like Hindu samskaras; Christian Churches copy the architecture of Hindu temples; Christian hymns are being set to Hindu music; Christian themes and personalities are being presented in styles of Hindu painting; Christian missionaries dress and live like Hindu sannyasins; Christian mission stations look like Hindu ashrams. And so on, all aspects of Christian thought, organization and activity are being disguised in Hindu forms. The fulfilment will be when converts to Christianity proclaim with complete confidence that they are Hindu Christians.
