01-19-2007, 05:56 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Ishwar Sharan's rejoinder to Paulo Coelho's paean to Francis Xavier
Who was the "saint" and what were the "good deeds" he performed in India?
In a propaganda coup that would leave a Jesuit missionary strategist breathless, popular author Paulo Coelho has written a romanticized eulogy of the notorious 16th century Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. Coelho is a born-again Catholic who has received a certificate from the Pope and is a candidate for Opus Dei.
Paulo Coelho does not think Indians know their own history or that of the Spanish missionary. He tells us as much in an article called "Francisco of Xavier" published in the Chennai edition of The Deccan Chronicle on 3 November 2006. The Deccan Chronicle accommodates him without thought or concern for the intelligence or feelings of its mostly Hindu readers. Many of these readers are deeply offended by Coelho's praise of a psychopath who today would be put on trial for fomenting religious hatred and crimes against humanity.
The truth, documented, that Francis Xavier was a religious bigot and temple-breaker who believed in forced conversion and invited the Inquisition to Goa to further this evil practice, is not a truth these editors want to know. They prefer Paulo Coelho's truth, seemingly innocuous but very misleading. In his paean to Francis Xavier, Coelho writes:
Francis goes to Rome with Ignatius and asks the Pope to recognise the (Society of Jesus). The Pontiff agrees to meet the students, and in order to stimulate them he gives his consent. Francis--who is deadly afraid of ships and the sea--sets off alone to the Orient, imbued with what he considers to be his mission. In the next ten years he visits Africa, India, Sumatra, the Moluccas and Japan. He learns new languages, visits hospitals, prisons, cities and villages. He writes many letters, but none--absolutely none--makes reference to "tourist" spots in these places. He comments only on the need to bring a word of encouragement and hope to those who are less privileged.
Five hundred years later in the city of Ahmedabad in India, a teacher asks his pupils for a biography of Francis. One of the boys writes: "He was a great architect, because all over the Orient there are schools that he built and that bear his name."
Antonio Falces, who directs one of these colleges, tells me he heard two people chatting: "Francis was Portuguese," said one.
"Of course he wasn't. He was born and buried in Goa," answered the other.
They are both wrong, and they are both right: Francis came from a small village in Navarra, but he was a man of the world, and everybody considered him a part of their own people. Nor was he an architect specialised in building schools, but, as one of his first biographers says, "he was like the sun, which cannot move forward without spreading light and heat wherever it passes."
The "encouragement and hope" that Francis Xavier brought to the "less privileged" people of India, and the "light and heat" that he shed on them, is best described in his own words in a letter he sent to Jesuit headquarters in Rome;
Following the baptisms, the new Christians return to their homes and come back with their wives and families to be in turn prepared for baptism. After all have been baptized, I order that everywhere the temples of the false gods be pulled down and idols broken. I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols by the very people who formerly worshipped them.
Xavier did this after the Hindu Raja of Quilon had given him a large grant to build churches. In another letter he writes:
There are in these parts among the pagans a class of men called Brahmins. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and to whom applies the Psalm which says: "From a unholy race, and wicked and crafty men, deliver me, Lord." If it were not for the Brahmins, we should have all the heathens embracing our faith.
Francis Xavier was the pioneer of anti-Brahmin rhetoric in India. It would be adopted as a major propaganda tool by all Christian denominations operating missions in India, and it became a dominant theme in the speeches and writings of Indian secularists after Independence. A Muslim or Christian defending his faith is a hero or a martyr recognised in the world, but a Hindu doing the same in his own village is reviled as a "wicked and crafty man born of a unholy race." Such is the perversion of Christian and secularist dialectic in the 16th century and today.1
Xavier's violent career in India destroyed families and ancient cultured communities, and alienated the new converts from their society and Gods. It left them without love for their neighbors or a universal ethic to live by. It destroyed their faith. In Christian doctrine, to attack a man's faith is a sin against the Holy Spirit. It is a sin that cannot be forgiven. It is the sin Francis Xavier is guilty of. But Xavier was a Christian missionary and his victims were heathens not human beings, and instead of being condemned he was canonized and made a saint. Such is the perversion of Christian reason and the evil deeds that follow from this reasoning.
Francis Xavier begged his superiors in Rome and Portugal to send the Inquisition to India so that he could continue his mission of forced conversions. He died before the Inquisition could arrive. He could not have the pleasure or satisfaction of watching obstinate Hindus and backsliding converts, their breasts and genitals cut off, burn at the stake in Old Goa. But he did gain a posthumous victory over the hated Brahmin. His bones lie in a silver casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, the church built on the site of an ancient Shiva temple destroyed by the Portuguese.
The Deccan Chronicle does not publish any of the letters of protest it receives concerning the article. Like its sister publication the Asian Age, the Deccan Chronicle is a Christian-oriented masala newspaper edited by the militant secularists M.J. Akbar, Naazreen Bhura, and Seema Mustafa. They do not tolerate dissent or opinions critical of themselves or their contributors. Their newspapers are a business to make money, not a forum for debate. Facts and figures are extraneous irritants to be ignored, except where the facts and figures can be employed in Hindu-bashing exercises.2 At the same time, M.J. Akbar and Seema Mustafa pontificate loudly and at great length about ethical journalism, free speech, and telling the truth in print however unsavory the truth may be. Both editors are bare-faced hypocrites. Contact them and Paulo Coelho at:
Deccan Chronicle at editor@deccanmail.com and info@deccanmail.com
and
Paulo Coelho at paulocoelho.com
Click on Message for the Author.
Foot Notes
There is a story that the first debate Francis Xavier had with Brahmins took place in the Tiruchendur Murugan Temple on the south coast of Tamil Nadu. He preached and they listened carefully. Then they laughed. They told him that his conception of God was immature and inadequate. God was beyond number and count, neither one nor three-in-one as he claimed. His idea that God had only one incarnation in history was absurd. It placed unacceptable limitations on an all-powerful, all-pervasive God. Xavier left the temple courtyard in defeat, to proselytize the helpless fisherman, and Brahmins became his feared, implacable enemy.
An example of an anti-Hindu exercise is the use of the term "idol" for Hindu images. Technically correct, the word is loaded with negative connotations and is part of the abusive rhetoric of Christian evangelists. The same newspaper on another page uses the neutral term "statues" for Christian images. Clearly, there is editorial bias at work here. In the forty years that I have lived in India, I have never met a Hindu who worships idols. Hindus worship God, and even a simple village woman knows that God is spirit not stone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article quoted "Francisco of Xavier" by Paulo Coelho, English translation {C} James Mulholland, published in the Deccan Chronicle, Chennai edition, 3 November 2006. Article quoted in part only.
References:
Sita Ram Goel in "Francis Xavier: The Man and His Mission", New Delhi, 1985
A.K. Priolkar in "The Goa Inquisition", New Delhi, 1991
G. Schurhammer in "Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times", Rome, 1973-82
K.M. Panikkar in "Malabar and the Portuguese", Bombay, 1929.
http://hamsa.org/coelho.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Who was the "saint" and what were the "good deeds" he performed in India?
In a propaganda coup that would leave a Jesuit missionary strategist breathless, popular author Paulo Coelho has written a romanticized eulogy of the notorious 16th century Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. Coelho is a born-again Catholic who has received a certificate from the Pope and is a candidate for Opus Dei.
Paulo Coelho does not think Indians know their own history or that of the Spanish missionary. He tells us as much in an article called "Francisco of Xavier" published in the Chennai edition of The Deccan Chronicle on 3 November 2006. The Deccan Chronicle accommodates him without thought or concern for the intelligence or feelings of its mostly Hindu readers. Many of these readers are deeply offended by Coelho's praise of a psychopath who today would be put on trial for fomenting religious hatred and crimes against humanity.
The truth, documented, that Francis Xavier was a religious bigot and temple-breaker who believed in forced conversion and invited the Inquisition to Goa to further this evil practice, is not a truth these editors want to know. They prefer Paulo Coelho's truth, seemingly innocuous but very misleading. In his paean to Francis Xavier, Coelho writes:
Francis goes to Rome with Ignatius and asks the Pope to recognise the (Society of Jesus). The Pontiff agrees to meet the students, and in order to stimulate them he gives his consent. Francis--who is deadly afraid of ships and the sea--sets off alone to the Orient, imbued with what he considers to be his mission. In the next ten years he visits Africa, India, Sumatra, the Moluccas and Japan. He learns new languages, visits hospitals, prisons, cities and villages. He writes many letters, but none--absolutely none--makes reference to "tourist" spots in these places. He comments only on the need to bring a word of encouragement and hope to those who are less privileged.
Five hundred years later in the city of Ahmedabad in India, a teacher asks his pupils for a biography of Francis. One of the boys writes: "He was a great architect, because all over the Orient there are schools that he built and that bear his name."
Antonio Falces, who directs one of these colleges, tells me he heard two people chatting: "Francis was Portuguese," said one.
"Of course he wasn't. He was born and buried in Goa," answered the other.
They are both wrong, and they are both right: Francis came from a small village in Navarra, but he was a man of the world, and everybody considered him a part of their own people. Nor was he an architect specialised in building schools, but, as one of his first biographers says, "he was like the sun, which cannot move forward without spreading light and heat wherever it passes."
The "encouragement and hope" that Francis Xavier brought to the "less privileged" people of India, and the "light and heat" that he shed on them, is best described in his own words in a letter he sent to Jesuit headquarters in Rome;
Following the baptisms, the new Christians return to their homes and come back with their wives and families to be in turn prepared for baptism. After all have been baptized, I order that everywhere the temples of the false gods be pulled down and idols broken. I know not how to describe in words the joy I feel before the spectacle of pulling down and destroying the idols by the very people who formerly worshipped them.
Xavier did this after the Hindu Raja of Quilon had given him a large grant to build churches. In another letter he writes:
There are in these parts among the pagans a class of men called Brahmins. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and to whom applies the Psalm which says: "From a unholy race, and wicked and crafty men, deliver me, Lord." If it were not for the Brahmins, we should have all the heathens embracing our faith.
Francis Xavier was the pioneer of anti-Brahmin rhetoric in India. It would be adopted as a major propaganda tool by all Christian denominations operating missions in India, and it became a dominant theme in the speeches and writings of Indian secularists after Independence. A Muslim or Christian defending his faith is a hero or a martyr recognised in the world, but a Hindu doing the same in his own village is reviled as a "wicked and crafty man born of a unholy race." Such is the perversion of Christian and secularist dialectic in the 16th century and today.1
Xavier's violent career in India destroyed families and ancient cultured communities, and alienated the new converts from their society and Gods. It left them without love for their neighbors or a universal ethic to live by. It destroyed their faith. In Christian doctrine, to attack a man's faith is a sin against the Holy Spirit. It is a sin that cannot be forgiven. It is the sin Francis Xavier is guilty of. But Xavier was a Christian missionary and his victims were heathens not human beings, and instead of being condemned he was canonized and made a saint. Such is the perversion of Christian reason and the evil deeds that follow from this reasoning.
Francis Xavier begged his superiors in Rome and Portugal to send the Inquisition to India so that he could continue his mission of forced conversions. He died before the Inquisition could arrive. He could not have the pleasure or satisfaction of watching obstinate Hindus and backsliding converts, their breasts and genitals cut off, burn at the stake in Old Goa. But he did gain a posthumous victory over the hated Brahmin. His bones lie in a silver casket in the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Old Goa, the church built on the site of an ancient Shiva temple destroyed by the Portuguese.
The Deccan Chronicle does not publish any of the letters of protest it receives concerning the article. Like its sister publication the Asian Age, the Deccan Chronicle is a Christian-oriented masala newspaper edited by the militant secularists M.J. Akbar, Naazreen Bhura, and Seema Mustafa. They do not tolerate dissent or opinions critical of themselves or their contributors. Their newspapers are a business to make money, not a forum for debate. Facts and figures are extraneous irritants to be ignored, except where the facts and figures can be employed in Hindu-bashing exercises.2 At the same time, M.J. Akbar and Seema Mustafa pontificate loudly and at great length about ethical journalism, free speech, and telling the truth in print however unsavory the truth may be. Both editors are bare-faced hypocrites. Contact them and Paulo Coelho at:
Deccan Chronicle at editor@deccanmail.com and info@deccanmail.com
and
Paulo Coelho at paulocoelho.com
Click on Message for the Author.
Foot Notes
There is a story that the first debate Francis Xavier had with Brahmins took place in the Tiruchendur Murugan Temple on the south coast of Tamil Nadu. He preached and they listened carefully. Then they laughed. They told him that his conception of God was immature and inadequate. God was beyond number and count, neither one nor three-in-one as he claimed. His idea that God had only one incarnation in history was absurd. It placed unacceptable limitations on an all-powerful, all-pervasive God. Xavier left the temple courtyard in defeat, to proselytize the helpless fisherman, and Brahmins became his feared, implacable enemy.
An example of an anti-Hindu exercise is the use of the term "idol" for Hindu images. Technically correct, the word is loaded with negative connotations and is part of the abusive rhetoric of Christian evangelists. The same newspaper on another page uses the neutral term "statues" for Christian images. Clearly, there is editorial bias at work here. In the forty years that I have lived in India, I have never met a Hindu who worships idols. Hindus worship God, and even a simple village woman knows that God is spirit not stone.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article quoted "Francisco of Xavier" by Paulo Coelho, English translation {C} James Mulholland, published in the Deccan Chronicle, Chennai edition, 3 November 2006. Article quoted in part only.
References:
Sita Ram Goel in "Francis Xavier: The Man and His Mission", New Delhi, 1985
A.K. Priolkar in "The Goa Inquisition", New Delhi, 1991
G. Schurhammer in "Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times", Rome, 1973-82
K.M. Panikkar in "Malabar and the Portuguese", Bombay, 1929.
http://hamsa.org/coelho.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->