<!--QuoteBegin-sankara+Aug 29 2007, 02:46 AM-->QUOTE(sankara @ Aug 29 2007, 02:46 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->South Korea churches to end Afghan missionary work By Jack Kim
Well, it seems like the Taliban have solved the missionary nuisance in the country for the time being. But who knows for how long the missionary-free zone will survive. A mosquito requires only the smallest chink in the door or window to slip in.
[right][snapback]72614[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This is probably bad for India becos these jokers are going to make a beeline to India now, where plenty of heathen souls are available to be saved. And the Taliban experience helps them not to scare easily, so they will be more daring.
The US Senate has a long tradition of opening with Bible prayers, occasionally extending a symbolic courtesy to prayers of other faiths. For the first time in its history a Hindu priest was invited to conduct the opening prayer. Indian-Americans, having contributed immensely to America, naturally felt proud to be afforded equal respect alongside other American religions. But the Hindu prayer was attacked as an "abomination" by hate-filled heckling that resulted from an organized mobilization by civic groups such as the American Family Association attempting, to demonize hinduism as heathen, immoral and dangerously un-American. The President of the Family Research Council mobilized Americans to block the Hindu priest, saying, "There is no historic connection between America and the polytheistic creed of Hinduism." David Barton, one of the scholars informing the attackers, declared that hinduism was "not a religion that has produced great things in the world," citing social conditions in India as proof of its primitiveness.
The denigration of hinduism influences the way Americans relate to Indians. Andrew Rotter, an American historian, in his book on the US foreign policy's tilt against India and towards Pakistan during the Nehru era, cites declassified documents revealing US presidents' and diplomats' suspicions of Hinduism. They regarded "Hindu India" as lacking morality and integrity, and its "grotesque images" reminded them of previous pagan faiths conquered by Christians, such as Native Americans. American ideas about India are intertwined with stereotypes about Hinduism.
There are domestic implications concerning the diaspora as well. The great American meritocracy has enabled us to succeed as individuals, and many Indians see American Jews as a role model. But it took the Jews over half a century of organized lobbying and litigation by organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, to establish their religious identity in public life. The lesson Jews had learnt in the European Holocaust was that their individual success could easily be used against them if their civilizational identity was defamed. Indians also faced hate crimes in New Jersey when the Dotbusters targeted Hindus. Recent rants by Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs generate xenophobia against Indians for "stealing" jobs from "real" ( i.e. white Judeo-Christian) Americans. As Indian-Americans stand out for their individual success, while US economic standards deteriorate, we may one day regret having neglected the projection of a positive civilizational image. Unlike many other ethnic and religious groups, we have not adequately engaged US universities, schools, media and think-tanks deeper than the pop culture layer of cuisine, Bollywood and fashions. On the contrary, many Indian writers have fed the "caste, cows, curry" images of India.
Hindu-Americans need to be educated on the history of American public religion and the "American way" of claiming one's religious identity across the spectrum of liberals and conservatives. In fact, even liberal Americans have always been a very Christian people. Hilary Clinton's devout Christianity has shaped her liberalism. She told New York Times that her Methodist faith has been "a huge part of who I am, and how I have seen the world and what I believe in, and what I have tried to do in my life." She carries a Bible on her campaign travels and confidently quotes from St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and John Wesley, the father of Methodism. Another liberal, Barak Obama, proudly projects his Christianity and delivers many of his key campaign speeches before church congregations. It comes as a surprise to many secular Indians that the very liberal President Jimmy Carter describes himself as a Bible evangelist, and asserts that his Christian faith provided the moral compass to guide his presidency.
Liberalism in America is about egalitarian economic and race policies, and is not a rejection or even a departure from the nation's majority religion, i.e. Christianity. The equivalent scenario would be for India's CPM leaders (the liberal/left equivalent of Obama, Clinton and Carter) to quote Hindu sacred texts and deliver campaign speeches in major Hindu temples. While American labor unions have always been very deeply rooted in Christianity, India's labor unions are encouraged to discard the Hindu identity. Unlike in Europe, American public life has never abandoned its deep rooted Christian foundations. America's separation of state and church affects only formal institutions, and does not imply de-Christianizing the leadership or the national ethos.
Indian intellectuals have misunderstood America's Christian psyche because the Indian notion of secularism in India is very different to that of the American. Indian secularism requires distancing from the majority religion, i.e. Hinduism, by one or more of the following ways: by espousing a "generic spirituality" without any specific religious identity, by condemning any Hindu identity as a mark of communalism with BJP links, or by explicitly blaming hinduism for all sorts of human rights problems. The equivalent situation would be to blame the Bible for all the US abuses in Guantanamo and in its domestic society, and to de-Christianize America into a sort of generic spirituality. While Hinduism, like all other world religions, does have social problems, it also has internally generated reformations, as well as immense resources to deal with the human condition.
Unraveling this requires understanding Hinduphobia's nexus in the American academy and seminaries. This is the subject of a well-researched eye-opening new book, titled, Invading the Sacred: An analysis of hinduism Studies in America . (See: www.invadingthesacred.com for details.) The book exposes influential scholars who have disparaged the Bhagavad Gita as "a dishonest book"; declared Ganesha's trunk a "limp phallus"; classified the Hindu Devi as the "mother with a penis" and Shiva as "a notorious womanizer" who incites violence in India; pronounced Sri Ramakrishna a pedophile who sexually molested the young Swami Vivekananda; condemned Indian mothers as being less loving of their children than white women; and interpreted the bindi as a drop of menstrual fluid and the "ha" in sacred mantras as a woman's sound during orgasm. To understand the hatred spewed at us by the Senate hecklers one needs to understand the systemic creation and distribution of such one-sided "data" by an army of "scholars" whose mission is to bolster the image of hinduism as a danger to the American way of life.
08-30-2007, 08:08 PM (This post was last modified: 08-30-2007, 08:27 PM by Husky.)
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Aug 28 2007, 09:52 PM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Aug 28 2007, 09:52 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Mother Teresa: In Heaven or Hell?</b> [right][snapback]72590[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->It's all just damage control.
Some prominent christian folks (in media) are turning on Teresa only because her shady side has come into light, and because once the secrets were out, they could not be unsaid. Now they feel they have to distance themselves from Teresa and hence the "she lost her faith"; "she was heretical and did not try to convert" (oh yes she did). Soon to be followed by: "She was not a true christian (catholic)". Oh, yes she was.
Historical saints are allowed to be be no-gooders only because a little inventive history rewriting can make them appear all squeaky-clean, and because 'tradition' has so long held that they were <i>SAINTS</i> (a word that immediately ups their reputation, however poor it may be, and automatically silences those intent on criticising).
But the reality that is Santa Teresa has been documented *now*, in our time. So the faithful masses are seriously embarassed. First they back off slowly, then they'll run away. You'll see. In a few years/decades it will become like Hitler: "He never was christian" -> "She never was christian".
Wouldn't be surprised if they did the usual u-turn and started blaming Hinduism for her christian greed and inhumanity.
But they've beatified her (and canonised too, right, seeing as how she's a Santa now?) and that's something that they can't fudge away.
Whatever the extents of her ebbing-and-flowing faith at various points in her life, her will was still set on living the life of a christian and trying to get back into gawd's good books. Outwardly, she practised the christian life in the hope of feeling it inwardly - lots of christians have gone through this and end up writing books on 'How they regained the faith' (unless they were lying about their doubts). Lots of christian priests too.
Unless and until they finally declare themselves agnostic or atheists, they consider themselves christian. And Teresa never declared herself agnostic, so she was a christian till the end and one striving for it. Her feebling faith just made her feel like a failure. And she was (but for entirely different reasons: a sorry excuse for a human - pretending to care for other people, all while torturing children).
As it is, the damage to her hyped reputation is done. Catholics can hardly continue to go Ra-Ra over the wunder-woman who has been so publicly and totally exposed (the following material was mentioned by G. Subramaniam on some place linked off from IF): http://macintyre.com/content/view/533/105/
<b>The squalid truth behind the legacy of Mother Teresa</b>
by UK reporter Macintyre (who's known for investigative journalism)
Look at this starter bit from the above:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The nun adored by the Vatican ran a network of care homes where cruelty and neglect are routine. Donal MacIntyre gained secret access and witnessed at first hand the <b>suffering of "rescued" orphans</b>
The dormitory held about 30 beds rammed in so close that there was hardly a breath of air between the bare metal frames. Apart from shrines and salutations to "Our Great Mother", the white walls were bare. The torch swept across the faces of children sleeping, screaming, laughing and sobbing, finally resting on the hunched figure of a boy in a white vest. Distressed, he rocked back and forth, his <b>ankle tethered to his cot like a goat in a farmyard</b>. This was the Daya Dan orphanage for children aged six months to 12 years, one of Mother Teresa's flagship homes in Kolkata. It was 7.30 in the evening, and outside the monsoon rains fell unremittingly.
Earlier in the day, young <b>international volunteers</b> had giggled as one told how a young boy had peed on her while strapped to a bed. I had already been told of an older disturbed woman tied to a tree at another Missionaries of Charity home. At the orphanage, <b>few of the volunteers batted an eyelid at disabled children being tied up. They were too intoxicated with the myth of Mother Teresa</b> and drunk on their own philanthropy to see that such treatment of children was inhumane and degrading.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->No, they were intoxicated with the myth of christian charity and the myth of getting to go to heaven. Christian charity is all show, same as how they bribe poor people to convert - it's a numbers game for them and a way to pool more money from donations. They don't really care.
Bit in red above: the nuns and other international and local christo volunteers are nazis! How unexpected.
But as the above expose cannot be brazenly denied, some strategically placed global sheep have to denounce teresa. (Yes, the situation looks <i>that</i> ugly now, when it's been just a few years on from her glorious rushed halo-coronation.)
Of course, not denunciations in such numbers that doubt will fall on the imaginary divine hand that guides the vatican and its canonising hobby. No. But nevertheless, enough vocal dismissals in the western world - where Teresa can have no comeback after her fall from media grace - to make the 'liberal' catholic and other 'liberal' christian conscience feel comfortable in their religion again. After all, it would hurt their evolved selves to think that others of their worldwide clique still approved of Teresa after the truth was let out...
But even in the west, Teresa's halo needn't droop just yet: there will always be some rabid sycophants who stick by teresa - she can do no wrong for them.
And let's not forget, her very name can still be of use in the heathenish realms: everyone still goes soft on hearing about the nasty nun. I doubt church-going Indian christians will catch on quickly to the True Tales of the Nun, or be ready to let go of one of their flagships even if they found out and realised the horrors were all true.
In any case, as I said, above all <i>there must be ambiguity</i> about the established christian opinion on teresa: can't condemn her too much else the recently-converted might get doubts on christian infallibility and the unconverted in Heathenstan will have reason to poke more fun. But can't let her go scott-free and continue to be universally touted as a holy christian, else the liberal western christians will start entertaining doubts about those who are leading their blind selves...
Never fear, though, the church is good at balancing 2 contradictory, mutually exclusive positions. For example
(1) For a *very* long time, it was "Hell is deadly real" -> pope Angelo Roncalli's time: "hell is not real" -> pope Ratty under his breath "Forget that rather recent heretic 'liberal' Lozer Roncalli." Out loud: "Hell is real again."
(2) For centuries: "Infants that aren't baptised go to hell. Period." -> Ratty: "Who knows. They might. They might not." (Tomorrow when the time is right: back to initial position. Always remember, the most holy church never really budges, but only temporarily and that too unwillingly and only until the Secular Arm starts enforcing church laws again.)
(3) "It's <i>Latin</i> Mass or death to you, you heretic filth" -> "Let us localise/internationalise/popularise the Faith. Rites must be in local lingo. (Ignore that the protestants already did this - after all, you should never admit that you're competing with the direct enemy by acknowledging where they succeeded...) -> Ratty: "Latin rites can come back in." And Ratty says to Renegade Church of Pius the Nth that split because the renegades wanted to stick to Latin-only rites, "Come back! Let's be friends again. Please, I am your pope!"
(4) For centuries: "Every heretic (and heathen, naturally) is going down, down, down into hell!" -> Vatican 2: "There may be a way for non-catholic christians to be saved - it is difficult, but there may be some way or other..." -> Inquisitor Ratty in Dom. Jesus: "Actually, not really, no. It's our way, or the way to the Inferno. (But this becomes clear only if you can understand the purposefully cryptic Dominus Jesus.)"
<i>Numbers (5) to (infinito)</i>: same old story. Church's position is half-way here, half-way there - never quite compromising, certainly never committing. After all, the catholic church is famous for their Purgatory story. But in today's cases, it's the roman church that is purchasing indulgences to buy its way out of the Limbo it put itself in...
(Indulgences: the ingenius invention of the holy roman church to make even more piles of cash. They sold indulgences to the poor gullible people, promising that their dear departed grannies would now spend a shorter time in purgatory. Purgatory/Limbo was the half-way house: not heaven, not hell. It was still pretty miserable from the descriptions I remember.
Indulgences couldn't help anyone out of Hell though, only out of Limbo - the church wasn't willing to relinquish the Super Stick of Hell just yet...
Indulgences were among the last straws to finally set some christians off to Protesting.)
This guy "european" has been flaming and baiting hindus for some time now.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->tell me were in the bible it justifyâs slavery, fake book and cult i think hinduism is more likely to be fake and a cult i mean how in the world do you guys believe in worshipping animals and trees.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->hindus outlasted greeks and romans in what way tell me because greeks and romans stopped believing in false gods that you consider it their down fall and while hindus continue to believe in 333 million gods you consdier that great<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->its ok to attack inocent christians who speak about the bible and spread the word of jesus yet you hindus get angry about something like what happened in the US senate, you ppl should be kicked out of america and europe.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Woman 'cured' by Mother Teresa lives in poverty </b>
by Diptendu Dutta
DANOGRAM, India (AFP) - An Indian woman whose claimed miracle cure from cancer led to Mother Teresa being thrust toward sainthood has accused Catholic nuns of abandoning her to a life of misery.
The angry comments came as the Missionaries of Charity, the order founded by the Albanian-born nun in the eastern Indian metropolis of Kolkata in 1950, prepared to mark Wednesday's 10th anniversary of the heroine's death.
"I will not go to any church," 40-year-old Manica Besra told AFP, squatting on the floor of her thatched and mud house in Danogram village, 500 kilometres (310 miles) from the eastern city of Kolkata, where Mother Teresa worked.
"I will remember Mother Teresa on her death anniversary at home with my children and husband," she added.
It was Besra's alleged miracle cure from a "lumpy" tumour on September 6, 1998 -- a year after the nun's death -- that led to the Vatican clearing the way for Mother Teresa's beatification in October 2003.
Usually, the journey from death to beatification to sainthood takes decades if not centuries in the Catholic Church, which has 1.1 billion followers worldwide.
"My hut was frequented by nuns of the Missionaries of Charity before the beatification of Mother Teresa," Besra said.
"They made of lot of promises to me and assured me of financial help for my livelihood and my children's education," she claimed, adding that she was also escorted to the Vatican for the beatification ceremony.
"After that, they forgot me," said Besra, tears welling up in her eyes.
With the small piece of family land mortgaged to a village money lender years ago, Besra said she is struggling to survive.
"I am now living in penury. My husband is sick. My children have stopped going to school as I have no money. I have to work in the fields to feed my husband and five children," said Besra, clad in a torn yellow sari.
When she has no work, her children -- four sons and a daughter -- go to bed hungry.
But despite her impoverished situation, Besra's faith in Mother Teresa -- who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 -- is unshaken.
Even in her present need, "I find peace when I close my eyes and think of her. I often see her in my dreams," Besra said.
At Mother House in Kolkata -- the global headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity -- preparations were in full swing to commemorate the Catholic nun's death.
"A special mass on memory of Mother will be held beside her tomb in the chapel on the first floor of the Mother House in the morning," said Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor.
"Mother House will remain open throughout the day to enable the people pay homage to Mother," she said, adding that thousands of people were expected.
I'm willing to bet that even that so-called tumor (if at all it was diagnosed correctly) was 'healed' by medical intervention and NOT by Theresa's powers. Not long ago, villagers with flu were 'healed' by christian missionaries by simple antibiotics being paraded as jesus's blessings. Considering that the majority of our poor are totally uneducated, and have no clue of diseases nor basic understanding of the human body, it is very easy to deceive them with 'miraculous' cures. The christian missionaries have long used the poor's ignorance and blind trust to their advantage.
09-05-2007, 11:10 PM (This post was last modified: 09-05-2007, 11:12 PM by Shambhu.)
In cancer there is something called "spontaneous remission". Name pretty much explains it all. Just disappears.
So if the missionaries peddle their lies and promises to enuf cancer patients, kabhi na kabhi to matka lagega. (That is called having Faith, no?)..
The plant food Miracle Gro does more miracles in a day than Xtainity has done ever since that over-enlightened bunch of tubelights cooked up that story about Jesus the "Messiah"..
Midterm Polls in the air : Sonia-Karat begins licking Muslims & Christian shoes
9/5/2007 5:22:47 AM HK
NEW DELHI: Expecting of a mid-term elections sooner rather than later, the UPA government led by Sonia-Karat is working hard day and night to get reservation benefits for Muslims and Christians in the country. There is also plan to bring a sub-quota for Muslims within the existing 27 per cent OBC quota and to include Christian and Muslim Dalits in the Scheduled Castes List.
Sources form Congress camp said the government is planning to issue an Executive Order immediately to provide sub-quota for Muslims brothers in the country.
<b>
UPA government is also working out ways to include Muslim and Christian Dalits in the SC List â a matter which is at present in the Supreme Court. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order 1950 originally restricted the SC list to Hindus but was later opened to Sikhs and Buddhists; it still excludes Muslims and Christians from its purview.</b>
Earlier the UPA announced a string of measures for minority welfare in Parliament in the wake of the Justice Rajendra Sachar committeeâs recommendations.
09-09-2007, 08:28 PM (This post was last modified: 09-09-2007, 08:30 PM by Husky.)
<!--QuoteBegin-sankara+Sep 5 2007, 03:02 PM-->QUOTE(sankara @ Sep 5 2007, 03:02 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->I'm willing to bet that even that so-called tumor (if at all it was diagnosed correctly) was 'healed' by medical intervention and NOT by Theresa's powers.
[right][snapback]72799[/snapback][/right]<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->And you are right of course.
Time magazine (linked from http://freetruth.50webs.org/C1.htm#MotherTeresa ): What's Mother Teresa Got to Do with It?
Here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...,364433,00.html
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Monday, Oct. 14, 2002
<b>What's Mother Teresa Got to Do with It?</b>
Domestic bliss has fled the household of Seiku Murmu and his wife Monica Besra?and it's all Mother Teresa's fault. Monica is a celebrity in the small village of Dangram, 460 miles northeast of Calcutta, because she is the beneficiary of what many Catholics believe is the first posthumous miracle of Mother Teresa, founder of the Missionaries of Charity. On Sept. 5, 1998, the first anniversary of the nun's death, Monica was suffering abdominal pain caused, she believed, by a tumor. But the purported tumor vanished when Monica applied a medallion with an image of the late Albanian nun to the site of her pain. In August 2001, Monica's miracle was supplied to the Vatican as part of the fast-tracking of Mother Teresa's canonization. Two weeks ago, the Vatican recognized the 1998 miracle, beginning the process of Mother Teresa's beatification, a major step toward sainthood.
<b>All this irritates Monica's husband Seiku. "It is much ado about nothing," he says. "My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle."</b> He is peeved at his wife's fame, in part because the press is constantly at his doorstep. "I want to stop this jamboree, people coming with cameras every few hours or so." He concedes that the locket is part of the story of Monica's ordeal but says <b>no one should suppose there was a cause-and-effect relationship between it and the cure. "My wife did feel less pain one night when she used the locket, but her pain had been coming and going. Then she went to the doctors, and they cured her."</b> Monica still believes in the miracle but admits that she did go to see doctors at the state-run Balurghat Hospital. "I took the medicines they gave me, but," she insists, "the locket gave me complete relief from the pain."
<b>Dr. Tarun Kumar Biswas and Dr. Ranjan Mustafi, who treated Monica over several months, say their patient indeed had a lump in her abdomen, but it was not a full-grown tumor. "She responded to our treatment steadily," says Mustafi.</b> <b>Monica's medical records contain sonograms, prescriptions and physicians' notes that could conceivably help prove whether science or the icon worked the cure. But the records are missing. Monica says Sister Betta of the Missionaries of Charity took them away two years ago.</b> "It's all with her," says Monica. A call to Sister Betta, who has been reassigned to another post of the Charity, produced a "no comment." <b>Balurghat Hospital officials say the Catholic order has been pressuring them to say Monica's cure was miraculous.</b> Calls to the office of Sister Nirmala, Mother Teresa's successor as head of the order, produced no comment as well.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Oh holy lying church. Praise be! And to keep the lie, steal the records and intimidate the hospital. It's a miracle! Praise the holy spook!
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Seiku grumbles, "This miracle is a hoax."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Poor Seiku. Poor Monica. Not the first and not the last to be taken in by the miraculous 'truths' of christianism.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Are you âsecularâ Mr. P.C. George?</b>
9/10/2007 7:52:59 AMÂ HK
KOTTAYAM : P.C. George, leader of Kerala Congress (Secular) claims himself as a real secular & social activist in Kerala politics but no securalism for his own family. When it comes to his sonâs future, he has changed his mindset and made condition with Parvathi, daughter of well known actor Jagathi Sreekumar to convert Christianity before the marriage with his son Shoon George. There were suggestions from various sources to leave this issue with Parvathi and let her take her own decision. But P.C George was not in a position to listen and stand his decision that she must convert to Christianity openly before the marriage.
Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishan, Minister N.K. Premachandran, M.A Baby, Mathew T. Thomas and Opposition leader Umman Chandi, KPCC President Ramesh Chnnithala were among the prominent âsecularâ leaders attended the function
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hilarious how these new invented religions ask people to say a sentence, sign something, or do some anatomical disfiguration to "convert"!! <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo-->
What exactly are they trying to "convert" people to? To their own brand of exclusivity? This is "God" and that isn't? Hah! Reminds me of what happened when I accidentally pulled out my Blockbuster card and handed it to the checkout clerk at a Hollywood Video store. Guy glared at me. "Do you know what we do with those? We chop them up and burn them!".
I mean, puh-leez!
People seriously need to look beyond these new and improved "religions" which "created" humans 6000 yrs ago or something. And get this: they fight amongst themselves about whose was the real messenger to bring you these lies. Goddammit! A sea of imbeciles! <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Anti-Hindu Nationalist Campaign Targets Indian American Organization
By May Chow
AsianWeek Staff Writer
Cisco Systems, one of several IT companies in the United States that contributed funds to the Indian Development and Relief Fund (IDRF), announced last week that it will suspend donations to the organization following a report which alleged that IDRF had links to a Hindu nationalist group, and that more than 80 percent of the funds it raised went to non-government organizations affiliated with other hate groups responsible for violence in India.
Sun Microsystems has also said that it will curb its contributions pending a reply from the United States Internal Revenue Service regarding IDRF. Other companies listed as donors by the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (SFH) include AOL Time Warner and Hewlett Packard.
Started after the Gujarat riots last spring, SFH is a coalition of South Asians in India, the United States and Europe who are working toward peace in India.
A Resurrected Movement
A Nov. 20 report, titled A Foreign Exchange of Hate, co-published by the French-based South Asia Citizens Web (SACW) and the Indian-based Sabrang Communications, shows connections between IDRF and the Sangh Parivar. The Sangh is a term used for a network of Hindu nationalist groups, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the National Voluntary Service.
The Hindu Nationalist Movement, once banned and shunned for its connections to the man who killed Mahatma Gandhi, has been resurrected in present-day India. The National Voluntary Service, the movementâs parent organization, was founded in 1925 on the platform of opposing German and Italian fascists.
He added that many corporations hand over large amounts of cash as matching funds to the IDRF, one of the more well-known Indian charities in the United States.
After the Gujarat riots â which began in February of this year after 58 people were killed when a train car full of Hindus returning from the holy place Ayodhya was set on fire â claimed the lives of thousands of civilians, most of whom were Muslims, many national and international human rights commissions pointed fingers at the Hindu supremacist movement, Hindutva. Hindutva has been accused of carrying out violent actions against minority and disenfranchised groups in India.
According to the A Foreign Exchange of Hate report, there is substantial evidence showing connections between Hindutva groups and charity organizations in the United States.
U.S. Connections Denied
âWhat this untrustworthy report refers to as âevidenceâ is nothing but insinuations and repeat insinuations based on unsubstantiated news reports and selective contents taken from other websites,â said Mukund Kute, IDRF East Coast media coordinator. âIt is a poor attempt to prove IDRFâs guilt by association with so-called Sangh Parivar.â
IDRF has been under fire from SFH and other groups for diverting funds aimed at providing relief for natural disaster victims and funneling them to finance RSS activity and propaganda. In June, Robert Hathaway, director of the Asia Progam for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., asked the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to look into an inquiry on fundraising activity in the United States by groups implicated in the riots of Gujarat.
IDRF was established in 1978 by a Maryland couple, Vinod and Sarla Prakash. Prakash is a former member of RSS, but said that RSS doesnât accept foreign contributions. He also told an Indian magazine, âIDRF has given absolutely no money to the RSS [and IDRF] only deal[s] with NGOs involved in relief and rehabilitation.â
The report states that of the 77 IDRF affiliate organizations, 52 can be clearly associated with the Sangh Parivar. IDRF does not orchestrate campaigns of violence, but its funding of these organizations enables the spread of the ideology and practice of Hindutva, according to the report. The report also documents that 82 percent of IDRFâs funds go to Sangh organizations.
IDRF contends that it is a non-political and non-religious organization which âdoes not subscribe to any religious, political or sectarian agenda.â Vijay Pallod, regional vice president of IDRF in Maryland asserts that the NGOs which IDRF supports cater to people of all faiths.
Pallod said the allegations that IDRF deceived its donors are false. He claims SFH has a political agenda.
âLeftist organizations and people such as Biju Mathew, who have not done anything constructive in the past are behind such controversies,â Pallod said. âSomehow, the good work IDRF and our NGOs do in India must be affecting them badly. That is why there are these allegations.â
Kute believes the SFH has a potential agenda against the Sangh and the Hindu community of India. âThat is itself a sectarian behavior on their part. These figures are based on selective use of the IDRFâs disbursement data and liberal application of the Sangh label on most NGOs. IDRF does not consider âquestioning other organizationsâ funding as its mission,â he said.
Pallod said IDRF focuses on five key areas: education, healthcare, women, children and tribal welfare. He added that IDRF supports India-based government approved NGOs with the donations.
âI couldnât sleep at night after I read the report, it just broke my heart,â Pallod said. âHow can somebody blame us like that?â
Communal Indoctrination
But Angana Chatterji, a professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a member of SFH, said IDRF aids the Hindutva movement in its mission.
âIts projects are a front for communal indoctrination and political mobilization,â she contended. âSuch activity produces the very conditions for social violence that are detrimental to Indiaâs national interest. Religious freedoms endorse the right to proselytize and convert, but do not permit the use of religions or culture to cultivate hate and violence. IDRF must be stopped from building momentum for future hate crimes.â
Shalini Gera, another SFH member and author of an online petition to the National Human Rights Committee condemning the Gujarat Riots, said SFH is launching an educational campaign to try and reach out to the South Asian American community to educate them about IDRF and how they might be unknowingly funding the Hindutva movement in India.
âIt is our hope that people here who donate for causes in India take more responsibility for finding out how their money is used in India,â Gera said. âThere are a number of very deserving NGOs doing much-needed developmental work in India. We believe that by diverting funds to itself at the pretext of doing development and relief work, IDRF is siphoning away funds that could have gone to other genuine developmental charities.â
Gera said that SFH does not wish to shut down IDRF, but rather, is objecting to IDRFâs support of the Sangh Parivar.
âShould the IDRF decide tomorrow to sever its links with the Sangh Parivar in India and in the United States and support genuine NGOs, we would have no problem in supporting it,â Gera said.
Media coordinator Kute said that IDRFâs association with or funding of any NGO is limited to specifically supported projects that meet IDRFâs mission of humanitarian service and are consistent with U.S. and Indian laws and regulations.
âIDRF has never denied association with those NGOs, whether or not they are Sangh affiliated, that have received funding from IDRF,â he said.
A list of all of the NGOs which IDRF has helped, along with information on the kind of work they do, is provided on their website, including those which SFH labeled as having Sangh ties.
âNone of the NGOs [weâve] supported so far have been banned by any government or been found guilty of any crimes like spreading hate or inciting violence,â Kute said.
Pallod insists that something good has come out of this controversy: IDRF is coming into light and more people can look into the organization and see that itâs a charitable one with no connections or endorsements to violent movements in India.
In regards to the IT companies rescinding their donations, Pallod said he hopes the corporations will see that the facts are on IDRFâs side.
âWe are very confident that they will change their decision once they get the facts,â he said. âIDRFâs credibility will remain high because of our choice of sincere and honest NGOs that do great humanitarian work among poor people of India. IDRF will continue to be the charity of choice for the [South Asian American] community.â
09-11-2007, 02:19 PM (This post was last modified: 09-11-2007, 02:37 PM by Husky.)
#115 above:
Interesting how the US even controls how tax-paying Indian origin (read Hindu) citizens of the US spend their money, especially charity money.
All the while not controlling anyone else's expenditure.
So it's all okay what the faith-based initiatives of christian terrorista W Bush do. And the US christian funding into Nagaland terrorism is all okay too. And the funds for islamic terrorism emanating from islamics in the US also passes under the temporarily-blinded radar.
But oh-no! Is that someone giving funds to Hindu charities that set up Hindu schools, which happen to have the unacceptable side effects that poorer kids don't get forced into christianised institutions and their parents don't turn into rice-converts? Well, such charities must be banned! I know how, let's say they're connected to Hindu terrorist groups. What's that? There aren't any? What about the LTTE? What? That's a christian outfit that's chosen a misleading image on purpose? Well then, there's nothing for it but to accuse every significantly sized Hindu grouping - whether they be volunteers, or any nominally Indian nationalist political party - of being a 'Hindu terrorist' organisation. Accusations are not enough, must create the myth that they are in fact as slandered. Hence, write a lot of garbage about them, pass it back to the US govt. Let their 'think tanks' compare these Hindu orgs with AQ and voila - got them in the list of undesirables.
Now the final and most important step: accuse unrelated Hindu charities of being related to these newly labelled 'Hindu terrorist' groups. And then spread that rumour around until it comes back to the Capitol, and then pretend to be surprised before banning them.
Yet LTTE has long been gathering funds in Australia, practically openly. All they need to do now to completely declare themselves is to label the box where the donations are received with: "We force Hindu children into our terrorist army and we blow up their temples and we also blow up Buddhists and their stuff. But don't worry, churches remain untouched." So that's all fine - it's in a christian cause and all.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A Nov. 20 report, titled A Foreign Exchange of Hate, co-published by the French-based South Asia Citizens Web (SACW) and the Indian-based Sabrang Communications,<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I see that the American orgs boycotting IDRF have no problem with the credentials of SACW though. SACW is openly communist (besides having a lot of moolah which they channel into the usual communist-terrorist acts).
Don't know about Sabrang, but most of these 'activist' orgs from India tend to be the psecular kind (communist, christian or islamic) anyway.
There you go. No say either on what the US govt decides to spend the tax-moolah on (which is terrorism), nor on what it decides its taxpayers should *not* spend their money on (real charity).
Different matter entirely. Just curious why software companies are donating to <i>any</i> religious charity at all. Wouldn't it be easier on their part to give their extra money to Bill Gates' worthy plan to eliminate tuberculosis in Africa and elsewhere. At least Gates is an atheist and so they won't need to check that he won't be using his money to "convert people to Microsoft" or whatever. (In case anyone was fearing that...) But, predictably, christians don't like him and call him the devil - after all, he's not used his money and efforts to win anyone for christ *and* he is stealing away people whom missionaries have mentally claimed as sheep for christ's repast.
09-11-2007, 05:54 PM (This post was last modified: 09-11-2007, 05:56 PM by Shambhu.)
These anti IDRF people are angry at their lies getting exposed by the day. The US (let us support Pakistan so that it can bomb us better next time) and the psecs ("Brother, spare a tear for the Taliban"), true to form, are as stupid as ever, and keep funding hate in India, all the while coming up with cute names like "Stop Funding Hate". If the RSS is "hate", who is "love"? The commies like the anti IDRF crowd, who crucify Hindus even for doing yoga?
Indians will remember. That is all we need to do. <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin-Viren+Sep 11 2007, 07:42 PM-->QUOTE(Viren @ Sep 11 2007, 07:42 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Acharya: Can you provide URL for the IDRF article? It's important.
[right][snapback]72984[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This was published in 2002 and Hindujagrati website recycled in July 2007 and Acharya recycled in Sept 2007.
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->