British evangelicals: 'The worst caste' says top Hindu

Our report on the Hindu Forum's analysis of caste, alleging covert evangelisation of Untouchables by British MPs, is going in the paper tonight. But in the meantime, a reader has sent me some interesting comments about Christianity, apparently made by the Hindu Council's Anil Bhanot. Someone using that name and designation has certainly made them on a Google Hindu forum, which I've joined in order to check them out. Besides describing evangelicals as the 'worst' caste of Christianity, the Anil Bhanot on the forum, who has Hindu Council in his signature, also says the Second Commandment - the prohibition on 'graven images' - is the work of the Devil, not of God.

Anil Bhanot is one of the leading Hindus in the area of interfaith relations and often speaks at state functions such as the Commonwealth Day Observance at Westminster Abbey. He is also a member of the Faith Community Consultative Council, which is about building good relations between faith communities in Britain. He has not yet responded to my query about this. He writes regularly for the Guardian and New Statesman, where a recent article discussed the swastika symbol as a sign of wisdom. Recently he wrote to Christian leaders in the UK, urging them to root out and stand against intolerance and religious dogma.

Here is some of what appears under his name on the Google forum:

When you condemn the caste system blindly you are an Abrahamic slave.

'When the predatory religions invaded the "divine" land of India over the last millennia and destroyed the very fabric of that golden society and plundered the land of most of its resources they left its people generally poor. It is this abject poverty of the last few centuries that sent the Dalits into a slum which became difficult to climb out of. The fact is that it was not. It was a glorious system. Manu Samriti says that we are borne Shudras and by Karma we become whatever caste we are.  Do not forget this when you condemn the caste system. Condemn the Islamic and Christian slavery imposed on us which destroyed us to the point that we became their "yes" men and inferior and subservient. When you condemn the caste system blindly you are an Abrahmic slave  - and to that person I say, I have no time for you, you disgust me and you are the one who is "Ghar ka Bhedi Lanka Dhaye" and I will even get Dalits I know to give you a good thrashing. Well I may be being a bit emotional but I do get fed up with Hindus singing the tune of the predatory religions.
PS. In various meeting I go to I also keep hearing the phrase, "Holy Land", i.e, Israel. I have now started to use the term "Divine Land" in reference to India. I hope some of you will do the same. Don't argue, Just do it.
Written by Anil Bhanot, General Secretary, Hindu Council UK on June 8, 2007, Googlegroup: United Hindu Groups,  Thread:‘When Caste was not a bad word’

Converting vulnerable Hindus through slimy tactics.

Describing Christian missionaries as invaders and non-Indian faiths as predatory

Describing faiths that do not originate in India as suitable for demons, or rakshas in Sanskrit/Hindi.

'Indeed their [Abrahami] religions caste Mankind to "eternal" Hell after one "finite" life if  Man fails to worship their vindictive and jealous God.'
 

Describing the Second Commandment as inserted by the ‘Abrahamic Devil’
'As I have said I am fed up with what I believe to be a divisive movement [referring to the Arya Samaj Hindu group that opposes worship if images] by those who worship their own intellect and not Vedas. They promote the Abrahmic commandment no. 2 which I assert was put there by the Abrahmic Devil and not God - history bears a testament to that as we have seen so much bloodshed as from the inception of that commandment by Moses.'

Describing Evangelical Christians as the ‘worst caste’ of Christianity

'The Caste of the Evangelist Missionary Christians at the moment is the one the world fears. The Hindu castes in the UK are quite  benevolent to each other, I suspect the way they were in India before the
Colonials drained all the resources out of India and left them to be over protective within themselves.That will sort it self out as India recovers as an economic power. In Christianity (as in Islam) there are many castes and some of them killed each other (In Islam they still do). But the worst one in Christianity which still exists is the one of Evangelical Christians.'
Written by Anil Bhanot, General Secretary, Hindu Council UK on Nov 16, Googlegroup: United Hindu Groups,  Thread:‘Hindu scriptures do not sanction Caste system’

Describing that the formation of Christianity has left the world ‘poorer’ because Christians seek to find an ‘enemy’

'I have studied Christianity properly and have witnessed in real life that Christians do not follow the message of love from Jesus Christ but get too embroiled in their understanding of Christianity which does in my opinion makes their purpose to find enemies.

I don't wish to be drawn into an argument and have stated my experience which is not academic and therefore no debate is required - it is my experience.

Further for your purpose I am not against the spirituality of any religion and Jesus contributed to world's spirituality but I am afraid those who created Christianity after some 300 years of his death have left the world poor for it.'

Comments

[Jenny]

Simran, the cold, hard facts are that cruelty, exploitation and oppression are human traits. You can't blame Christianity for them, they have been present in all races, ethnic origins, and India has not been some divine place, even prior to it's days of empire. What you are doing is rationalizing dire poverty and slavery.

India is now a tremendously wealthy country, with more billionaires than any other, yet it still rigorously demands the slave based caste system. It uses it's religious beliefs to excuse oppression, by claiming that the poorest deserve to suffer, because in a previous incarnation they did something to deserve it. Amazing that India's power elite never want it to be discussed that if they truly believed in karma, they wouldn't be acting in ways that would bring about a subsequent life of poverty and degredation for themselves. Sorry, but you don't hold the higher ground, you just find the plain truth incovenient! You can't paint it up with gaudy colors and cheap plating. There is nothing divine or noble in the hypocrisies and corruption of India.

[Simran Sharma]

Dear Nersen

I have no idea who the 'we' refers to in your post - where you say "thank god we do not pray to bits of painted wood."

Last week I was in Barcelona and I saw thousands of devout Christians bowing down and praying to bits of painted wood in the form of Jesus and Mary. I also saw a film where thousands of Muslims were bowing down to a piece of rock and some of them do it five times a day too. As do many Jews who kiss a wall which has had all its paint torn off just because it happens to be an ancient temple. Imagery is there in most religions, and people bow and pray to all kinds of things. Unfortuntaley, you sit on a high pedestal and think that you (the 'we') are better because you bow and pray to something that just looks a bit different.

You also say "thank God we have no caste system which consigns millions of hindus to lifelong inferiority to others through the accidents of birth.....".

I say, "Thank God, we (Hindus) do not have an imperialist system that consigned millions of American Indians, Australian aborigines, and South American native Indians to sure death, and wiped out most of their civlisation on the pretext that one's own religion (Christianity in this sense) is superior to everything else, and that imposing the Christian faith was more important than the lives and rights of millions of these original inhabitants of land."

While you and others may discuss the intolerance of Islamic radicals, I wonder why you forget the gory past of Christianity starting from the Crusades, the Inquisition to Imperialism.

But I guess it serves your narrow purpose to feel warm and good about oneself and condemn others.

[Rick Beekman]

Mr. M Mukherjee;

I read your Excellent post. I must agree with the historical evidence you presented.

The Catholic Church for One..Did a lot of damage to relations with other cultures down through the tunnel of time. They are the ones who started the Inqusistion..and The Crusades...And untold Murders of Untold numbers who disagreed with them. This is Historical fact. Also you were correct about the RCC bringing Pagan beleifs such as "Christmas" and "The Spring Festival" (Easter) and Veneration/Devotion/Worship of Worthless Idols By switching the devotion from pagan Gods/Goddesses to "Christian" figures. There are many other churches as well who in the past stood behind slavery from Bible misinterpretation etc etc.
0The God I Love and serve has nothing to do with all I have presented here. Please don't hate Christianity in it's true and pure form sir. Lord Bless You.

[Mr. M. Mukherjee]

The legacy of the Church requires no elaboration and the bloody episodes of its past include the crusades and the Inquisition which was exported to Goa. Its overt support of slavery is well known and although Wilberforce is extolled as a saviour for slaves, they were liberated only if they converted to Christianity. Hindu “Idolaters” have never accounted for this scale of barbarity. Slavery is unheard of in Hindu society and indeed Hinduism is far more tolerant towards its own people and more importantly towards other religions, than certain Abrahamic faiths. Hinduism never advocated that a person repay by relinquishing the faith of their ancestors.

The Hindu Faith does not pray on vulnerable innocents with a loaf of bread in one hand and a warrant for their soul in the other. Perhaps to its universal non-confrontational nature, the Hindu Faith was practised from Iran to the Java peninsula, before Christ.

Christianity was brought to India by the apostle St. Thomas a few decades after Christ’s ascension and is stilled practised, whereas much of Europe was slow to adopt the faith and until many centuries after. Even then, the Church compromised its position by continuing to allow Pagan rituals such as Saturnalia to prevail, simply reinventing it as Christmas.

The hollow pretext of missionaries only wishing to liberate the “oppressed” is ludicrous. The analysis linked above demonstrates how the “Dalit” converts are still discriminated against by fellow Christians and forfeit the lucrative reserved placements given to the scheduled castes by the Indian Government (up to 50% of all government jobs). This is why many of the Christian converts have reverted to Hinduism. It is also interesting to note that throughout their time in India, the British never attempted to destroy the caste system when they had many opportunities to do. Surprisingly, they subsequently enshrined the caste system into the legislature.

The facts are as simple as sinister!

India was stripped of her resources for many centuries and its citizens duped into believing that they were inferior to the Europeans and their religion barbaric. This resulted in vast financial rewards for the colonists and missionaries were happy to “harvest” new souls. Just as the true nature of the war in Iraq has now become known, so too have the antics of the Church and its emissaries been revealed. In 1784, the famous Indologist Sir William Jones wrote the following letter to Sir Warren Hastings, Governor General of India, which sums up the whole story:

“As to the general extension of our pure faith in Hindoostan there are at present many sad obstacles to it... We may assure ourselves, that Hindoos will never be converted by any mission from the church of Rome, or from any other church; and the only human mode, perhaps, of causing so great a revolution, will be to translate into Sanscrit... such chapters of the Prophets, particularly of ISAIAH, as are indisputably evangelical, together with one of the gospels, and a plain prefatory discourse, containing full evidence of the very distant ages, in which the predictions themselves, and the history of the Divine Person (Jesus) is predicted, were severally made public and then quietly to disperse the work among the well-educated natives." (Quoted from Asiatic Researches Vol. 1. Published 1979, pages 234-235. First published 1788)

Some of the descendants of these “well-educated natives” referred to by Sir William Jones in his letter mentioned above are now aware of the scandalous activities of the colonial overlords, such as the perversion and interpolation of sacred Hindu scriptures and will challenge these issues. It is better that we all speak the truth and abandon the ancient Anglican ethos ‘per fidem decipere’-deceive through trust.

Such frustrated comments are inevitable and simply a delayed response by ‘enlightened’ and understandably irritated Hindus to the shenanigans of the Church and the colonialists, whose ancestors will inevitably be held accountable for the ‘sins of their fathers.’ Ms. Gledhill’s incessant vilification of the Hindu Faith comes as no surprise therefore, as a descendant of such colonial oppressors in India.

[nersen]

well - thank God we have no caste system which consigns millions of hindus to lifelong inferiority to others through the accidents of birth.....and thank God we do not bow down and pray to bits of painted wood.....

[Selina Anunciation]

Dear Mr Bhanot

You made me laugh. You call yourself a leader, one who makes public pronouncements about interfaith harmony. Then, when you thought you were in a safe private setting like Googlegroups (which is not, really), you let yourself go and let all your real prejudices, biases and bigotted views about the Abrahmic traditions be revealed. When these thoughts were found out and exposed by Dear Ruth, and quite rightly so, because it is a matter of public interest, what do you do? You whine and you moan and you complain and you groan and you waffle and wheeze - not for a moment can you consider that what you did was wrong, can you? A sure sign that you are not really fit for leading.

[Rick Beekman]

George;
I don't serve a "Hateful God" No more then you may not have a "Hateful Boss" or live with a "Hateful Wife"
If you break rules and guidelines in any situation then there is a Consequence to face for your choices.

(A) If you show up daily One Or two hours late at work..Eventually you will most likely be given a Termination Notice (Unless you are self-Employed)
If you are married; and say you stay out late everynight and never call or inform your wife or worse be having an "affair" Eventually most woman will pack up and leave etc. What's the differerence with God George?
He has guidelines for all humanity..you keep literally "Thumb your Nose" at him and his guidelines you will pay the price. Everybody runs around and thinks in their Finite little minds that they can treat God anyway they wish and he's supposed to just Shrug his shoulders and forget about it...Don't believe it....

[George Parr]

Rick, the latent anger or potential violence apparently inherent in the God you describe is only eclisped by his desire for glory then? Or are you just big on fear and trembling?

[Rick Beekman]

Mr. Mark;
No Sir My God Is Jesus Christ. He Hates Sin But Loves The Sinner. That's Why he went to Calvary and shed his innocent sinless blood for we worthless humans.

For doing this it made possible every human on this planet can have a chance to be saved. All it takes is (1) Humility and an admission That we are sinners and need his Grace & Mercy to save us. (2) Be willing and obedient to the guidelines he set forth in the New testament and taught by his chosen Original Apostles. (3) Be willing to stop being a sinner. Do all that and you will have a loving savior who watch over and protect you as a Father protects his Children.

If not willing to do that..then you are at the "Mercy" of Satan your "Spiritual Advisor" and may I also say..."The father of all liars" (John 8 v 44). Choose which one you would rather serve..and dodge the wrath of God.

[Fr Mark]

Rick Beekman: your God seems to be entirely about hate, doesn't He?

[Rick Beekman]

Ruth;
I was thinking if this Gentlemen wants To Debate The Second Commandment And cannot get a Church In The Uk to handle this...Count me in. God will get all the Glory out of this I can Assure you. E-Mail him tell him you have a Volunteer for this Discussion.

[Rick Beekman]

Ruth;
So what is this about? The gentlemen who refuses to believe the Second Commandment regarding Graven images?

I have plenty of other scriptures to show him that support the fact God hates these things...

[Alistair]

One is inclined to question the point of all the money the Government flings at interfaith forums. If it is to address such issues as this and promote tolerance and understanding, clearly it is money wasted, if all that happens is that religious leaders still end up shouting "my god is better than your god" at each other, and preaching different messages to different audiences.

Sad.

[Ruth Gledhill]

ps: I told Anil that he should be more careful on forums, even sign-in only ones, chastised him for failing to respond to my emails warning him what I was about to do and also advised him that calling the Second Commandment the work of the devil was going a bit too far, which I think it was, even in liberal, multi-cultural Britain. Anil has emailed me this response from his seat on an aeroplane just before it takes off:
'I am sitting in the plane but please post my last email there as I can't. I did not get any of your emails. Anyway my feelings for the
commadment no. 2 are the main thing and I can't accept it. I have been
asking for a debate but the church keeps silent. Even the false
allegation by Taunton ministers I have asked for a meeting through
ehrc and they have done nothing. So can you see my frustration. I am
british and yet even dclg ministers treat me as a foreigner. This is
the reality that I am experiencing. And as a British Hindu.'

So I have to say now, he has a point, doesn't he?

[Ruth Gledhill]

Anil Bhanot has contacted me from his iphone and has asked me to post this on his behalf as he cannot post it himself.
Anil says: 'This seems very unfair that a private debate should be made public like this by ruth gledhill. These things are said in a context and sometimes I have to use stronger language to our own groups who may not fully appreciate what in my view may be a bigger picture for instance on caste the uk lobbys legislation which will further divide our hindu community here. On the point of evangelical conversion of other god loving people I do condemn it - I am not hindutva or whatever but am a British Hindu who sees the injustice by missionary conversion. I see the prejudice inflicted on our children when for instance the Taunton church minister rejected keep fit yoga on the grounds that it is associated to a "False" philosophy meaning Hinduism. Whilst I think Jesus was divine message has been corrupted for material power and regarding the Abraham commandment 2 I am afraid even Jesus kept quiet among those deeply religious people and I am sorry if I am upsetting today's people by claiming that god is not jealous and such a commandment cannot be the work of a loving god whose love is unconditional.

Ruth, I am sad that you too have shown prejudice since you did not clear this with me and I shall be grateful if you could post all of this also and also my wish is that all relgions respect each other that if we compete we should do so for the good of humanity not score points against each other. Evangelicalism to do good is different from destroying other faiths.'

[Oliver Nicholson]

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Mrs. Alexander actually asserts the equality of all before God, their creator. The sloppy omission of the comma originally present after 'them' in the third line, provides comfort for those who wish mischievously to misrepresent her views.

[Oliver Nicholson]

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high and lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Mrs. Alexander actually asserts the equality of all before God, their creator. The sloppy omission of the comma originally present after 'them' in the third line, provides comfort for those who wish mischievously to misrepresent her views.

[Alistair]

The main news from India this week is that the leader of the Shiv Sena has apparently called for Hindu suicide squads to be readied to counter the growth of Islam, and Islamic suicide bombers. Many Indian and Hindu newspapers carry the story, and the welcome news that the remark has been swiftly denounced. Try this:

http://www.hindu.com/2008/06/19/stories/2008061961311300.htm

"In a controversial editorial in the Sena's mouthpiece 'Saamna', the party leader Bal Thackeray said "The threat of Islamic terror in India is rising. It is time to counter the same with Hindu terror. Hindu suicide squads should be readied to ensure existence of Hindu society and to protect the nation."

The story makes a bit of bitching about Christian evangelists look a tad tame!

[Jeremy]

Well, this sort of thing is hardly a surprise in 'vibrantly multi-cultural' Britain.
Nowadays it's quite OK for indigenous British culture to be insulted.

[e skelton]

"The Rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate". Since when did Christianity stop being the apologist for the aristocratic order in Europe from Portugal to the Urals? European egalitarianism has its roots in the rejection of Christianity by enlightenment thinkers.
Mind you,rejecting 'Abrahamism' is only a preliminary to progress. Bhanot won't make any real gains unless he strangles the last Rajah with the entrails of the last Brahmin (apologies to the Jacobins).

[kathleen]

i think that when we have any war it's always motivated by greed. there are a handfull of people that are "powerful " and think that they know it all.

[Gashwin]

The perspectives Bhanot allegeldy espouses are not that distinct from various right-wing Hindu ideologues who promote the "Hindutva" ideology in India and in the diaspora.

Whatever one thinks about conversion (propagating one's faith, as long as no fraud or force is involved, is a guaranteed part of religious freedom under the Indian Constitution), it seems that most Hindutva ideologues are blind to the realities of caste and caste-oppression

In the Feb. 2005 issue of the Jesuit weekly America, a visiting American Jesuit writes about his experiences of caste in India.

And if being critical of casteism is "Abrahamic slavery" it is no surprise that Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, who helped write independent India's Constitution, and who was himself a Dalit, is routinely ignored, downplayed, or villified by the Hindutva brigade. His views on religion are instructive, and I quoted a memorable passage on my blog. Ambedkar ultimately settled on Buddhism as the preferred religion for himself and Dalits.

Hardly Abrahamic slavery.

[kiarie]

I can bet my last dollar that the world war 3 will be religiously motivated