Christian Missionary Role In India - 5

[acharya]

I happened to be browsing a website called <http://www.christianaggression.org/>
www.ChristianAggression.org, presumably run by right wing Hindu groups, and saw
a sensational news item under the link:

<http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1117399556

http://www.christianaggression.org/item_di...S&id=1117399556,
which read:

Missionary School Admits Converting Hindu Children with Free Meals

Posted May 29, 2005 St James Plaindealer News By Paul Murray, News Editor

about a talk by pastor Nirmala (Peters) Reinschmidt, who had just returned from
Chennai, India. I read the full report and realized to my horror (but not to my
surprise!) that the headline bore no resemblance whatsoever to the substance of
the report, which was actually talking about how poor children are attracted to
schools by free meals (which, by the way, is a major strategy adopted by the
government to encourage school attendance--in fact, there is now a policy
consideration for making Mid-day meals program a national priority). Then I went
to the Plaindelaer News web site and noticed that they had titled the report as
'Christianity in India under pressure,' which more correctly summarized pastor
Nirmala's statement that parents in India often send their children to Christian
schools, but "this does not mean that either the parents or their children
convert from Hinduism to Christianity." (Actually, if there was anything
offensive [to me personally] in the report, it was pastor Nirmala's contention
that Hindus feel that they must struggle to get to heaven in comparison with
Christian beliefs!)

So, here is another example of right wing Hindutva groups blatantly distorting
news reports in the hope that an average reader is unlikely to go beyond the
headlines to check out the source links. I remember [another Hindutva site]
employing similar tactics during the Gujarat pogroms, when one of the news items
on its web site blared something like 'x more Hindus killed in Gujarat,' [this
was a couple of weeks after Godhra] when the actual news link they indicated
reported another incident of more Muslims being killed! [in rural Gujarat]

Raju Rajagopal