'Evil' Hindu Practices

Husky · (This post was last modified: 08-04-2008, 07:53 PM by Husky.)

QUOTE(Swamy G @ Jul 31 2008, 08:18 PM)What happens when we ignore is that those assertions remains unchallenged, and they become the talking points for the cherry-pickers.[right][snapback]85509[/snapback][/right]Countercurrents is not interested in facts/the truth. It's a communist enclave that's only interested in their own agenda. They will smear and fictionalise when they please. To them, facts are only useful if they can be twisted to suit their purpose, otherwise truth is an obstacle to them.
Occasionally countercurrents may even go after their estranged brothers islam and christianism, since their ultimate goal is to create a their communofascist nation rather than a theocracy or dar-ul-islam.

QUOTEFor example in the not-to-be-named place, a question was posed
"do you see any other religion devaluing and denigrating their
fellow human beings more than Hindu religion?"You're not suggesting dialoguing with communistas are you? They will believe their fictions over verifiable facts. Was it the Hindus who imposed the Curse of Ham on Africans, Aborigines, Native Americas and started slavery and genocide? No.
Was it Hinduism that burnt 8 to 9 million women for witchcraft (apparently a significant number of men were burnt for witchcraft too according to historians, but they're not included in that count)? No.
Was it Hinduism that terrorised the Jews for nearly 2 millennia? No.
Was it Hinduism that reimposed the Semitic-Hamitic theology on Rwandans? Or the Japhetic-Hamitic theology (aka the Oryans and Dravidiods) on Indians? No. No.
Was it Hindus that persecuted the Greco-Romans and ended those civilisations? No.

Christoism is the author of all those crimes and far more. Number of victims? 200+ million in the Americas alone, who are now still dispossessed of their own homeland by modern-day christoterrorists.

Did Hinduism declare Jihad against Arabians and wipe out many Arabian and Jewish communities who refused to convert? No.
Did Hinduism genocide and terrorise the Mazdeans of Persia and N Africa? No.
Did Hinduism invade S and E Europe? No.
Did Hinduism enslave Africans, Europeans, Persians to Indians? No.
Did Hinduism steal Serbian homeland? No.
Did Hinduism demote the rights of women which were far better among the traditionalist unconverted Arabians? No.

Islamism is the culprit in all these. Number of victims? At least 90 million in India alone BEFORE our times.

QUOTECountercurrents(?): "do you see any other religion devaluing and denigrating their fellow human beings more than Hindu religion?"Communists are willfuly ignorant. They won't be taught even by facts. One can take it to them, but - like christoislamics - they care only about their goals and will invent lies to get them there. Facts, not being in their interest, will be ignored by them - or rewritten if they can possibly help it. The art of complete self-delusion (in the face of overwhelming facts, what's more) is a singular HALLMARK of christoislamicommunism. It's variously called "faith" and "lying for jehovallah" in christoislamism, lying is merely revolutionary means to revolutionary ends in communism, while their other sibling fascism operates on the same 'principle' phrased as "though people will see through small lies, few would dare to suspect a Big Lie".

Therefore, bearing in mind their propensity to Super-Self-Delusion, when it comes to the terrorist ideologies, I apply Oscar Wilde's "Never tamper with natural ignorance" but replace natural with willful. Save your breath to inform people who don't yet know but who are in charge of their own minds and will therefore be guided by facts and sense. That's unless you happen to have some serious skills in convincing writing/debating and have instant access to verifiable facts to immediately counter every lie and refute every slander. In which case, what are you waiting for? Good luck to you.

09-12-2008, 07:08 AM

All,

In past I remember reading on this forum a discussion on the role of Hindus in bringing about Buddhist decline in India (destroying stupas, slaying monks etc). There are some scholars who have been trying to popularize this theory and its been picked up by 'pro dalit' groups as another stick to beat Hindus with.

I cant seem to find that discussion, I was wondering if the anyone could point to some links/research on the web or to a relevant discussion on the forum.

TIA

09-12-2008, 08:04 AM

thayliv,
"Scholar" peddling that theory was Romila Thapar.
Pro-Dalits can be shown writings of Dr Ambedkar (who converted to Buddhism) where he lays blame squarely on 'mussalmans'. Check Dalit thread or Ambedkar thread, I think there would be some info still in there.

~~Pandyan~~ · 09-12-2008, 08:08 AM

Go on the Koenraad Elst site and look in the articles section for Pushyamitra Sunga.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-15-2008, 07:04 PM by Husky.)

Post 1 of 4

thayilv,
Several things in this long post.

The article Pandyan refers to above is (I think):
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/arti...ushyamitra.html
Another article by Elst that discusses such allegations against Hindu Dharma (for things that islamism actually did to Indian Buddhism) is:
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/arti...shakashmir.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20050207114949/...ad/subjects.htm
This page called "Jihad, the Arab Conquests and the Position of Non-Muslim Subjects" is from Ibn Warraq's site.
After the section on India, this page comes to the fate of Buddhists (both in India and outside) at the hands of islamiterrorism.
QUOTEBUDDHISM AND BUDDHISTS

"Between 1000 and 1200 Buddhism disappeared from India, through the combined effects of its own weaknesses, a revived Hinduism and Mohammedan persecution" Edward Conze [117] "[Buddhism in India] declined after Moslem conquest of Sindh, A.D.Â 712, and finally suppressed by Moslem persecution A.D.1200 " Christmas Humphreys

"It is partly, no doubt, because of the furor islamicus that post-Gupta remains are surprisingly few in Bihar..." J.C.Harle [199]

Qutb ud din Aibak, described as "merciless and fanatical", sent his general, Muhammad Khilji, to the northern state of Bihar to continue the Muslim conquests that began in late 12th century.Â Buddhism was the main religion of Bihar.Â In 1193,the Muslim general, considering them all idolaters, put most of the Buddhist monks to the sword, and a great library was destroyed.Â "The ashes of the Buddhist sanctuaries at Sarnath near Benares still bear witness to the rage of the image-breakers. Many noble monuments of the ancient civilisation of India were irretrievably wrecked in the course of the early Muslim invasions. Those invasions were fatal to the existence of Buddhism as an organized religion in northern India, where its strength resided chiefly in Bihar and certain adjoining territories. The monks who escaped massacre fled, and were scattered over Nepal, Tibet, and the south.."

The Muslim conquests of Central Asia also put an end to its Buddhist art. As early as the 8th century, the monasteries of Kizil were destroyed by the Muslim ruler of Kashgar, and as Benjamin Rowland says, "by the tenth century only the easternmost reaches of Turkestan had escaped the rising tide of Mohammedan conquest.Â "The full tragedy of these devastations is brought out by the words of Rowland: "The ravages of the Mongols, and the mortifying hand of Islam that has caused so many cultures to wither for ever, aided by the process of nature, completely stopped the life of what must for a period of centuries have been one of the regions of the earth most gifted in art and religion."
Romila Thapar is a communist. (Christoislami)communists are known for their compulsive lying. Their lies do not stand up to facts.
Only christoislamaniacs will believe her (and her kind's) dawaganda. After all, only christoislamicommunazis have "faith" (= belief that goes against reason; persistence in believing in things contrary to the truth in spite of becoming acquainted with the facts).

And for further proof that it has always been the terrorist ideology of christo-islami-communism that terrorised Buddhism the world over, one can point to the Great Terrorism's global anti-Buddhism in our own times:
http://www.haindavakeralam.com/HkPage.aspx...EID=5367&SKIN=B
QUOTE1) Ask Buddhists how many Buddhist temples and sacred sites have been smashed by muslims, even in recent times (like the Bamiyan Buddhas and the Swat Buddha very recently in Terrorist state of pakistan, see "Attack on giant Pakistan Buddha" September 2007 in news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6991058.stm which the faithful muslims have since destroyed).
Not to mention how islam beat upon Buddhism historically. See historian Edward Conze, and others -Â http://web.archive.org/web/20050207114949/...ad/subjects.htm

And the faithful Muslims are still beheading Buddhists and Buddhist monks, as seen these years in Thailand. Check the news on Thailand. For instance:
- "Buddhist monks targeted in deadly Thai bomb blast", October 23, 2006 http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail....&d_str=20061023
- "Islamic separatists behead Thai Buddhist", March 7, 2007 (lists several such incidents)
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/islamic-s...3166780133.html
- Asiaâs Islamic extremists add beheadings to their arsenal, Boston Herald/Associated Press, June 1, 2007
"Twenty-five beheadings _ including 10 already this year _ have been reported in southern Thailand since an Islamic-inspired insurgency erupted in 2004"
'"Islamist militants in Southeast Asia are very frustrated that the region is considered the Islamic periphery," Abuza added. "... Militants of the region are actively trying to pull the region into the Islamic core. They want people to understand that their jihad is a part of the global jihad."'

2) Ask Buddhists how many Buddhist temples and sacred sites have been desecrated, vandalised and destroyed by christians.
Look what christians did to Korean Buddhism in the 1980s and late 1990s:
- http://www.buddhapia.com/eng/tedesco/pic1/list.html
- http://www.buddhapia.com/eng/tedesco/2.html "Buddhism under Siege in Korea 1982-1996"
- http://www.buddhapia.com/eng/tedesco/3.html "Buddhism under Siege in Korea - Chronology of Events January 1997-December 1998"

Next to that the Catholic dictator in 1950s Vietnam and his christian regime terrorised Buddhist monks, Buddhist nuns, Buddhist students and the Buddhist populace. Many of whom were tortured and even killed by the faithful followers of ever-genocidal christianity.
From "The Vatican's Holocaust" by Avro Manhattan who was also a BBC commentator:
"Buddhist monks, Buddhist nuns and Buddhist leaders were arrested by the thousand. Pagodas were closed or besieged. Buddhists were tortured by the police.
...
Within a brief period, seven [Buddhist monks] had burned themselves alive in public. Vietnam was put under martial law. Troops now occupied many pagodas and drove out all monks offering resistance. More Buddhist monks and Buddhist nuns were arrested and taken away in lorries, including a large number of wounded. Many were killed." (at http://freetruth.50webs.org/Overview4.htm )

3) Ask Buddhists how many Buddhist temples and sacred sites have been desecrated, and vandalised by communists.
See communist-occupied Tibet, Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, not to mention communist-occupied China.
Mark Hawthorne (for the Taoist Restoration Society) wrote:
"Mao Zedong and his communists who, following a destructive civil war, toppled China's government in 1949 and soon outlawed religion altogether. The following year, the new People's Government suppressed all faiths. Buddhist and Taoist monasteries were destroyed or requisitioned as government buildings. Monks and nuns were imprisoned in labor camps, reducing the clergy from several millions to about 50,000--the same fate to later befall Tibetan Buddhists." (also at http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1999...999-11-12.shtml )
Christoislamicommuni lies against Natural Traditions can last only so long. The truth is on our side. The christoislamicommunazis' compulsive lying (which includes all their pathetic propaganda to hide facts) is their own downfall.

ADDED:
This part is about those who have appointed themselves to speak for 'dalits'. (And, other than christoislamicommunistas and their subversionist media, who uses that word anyway?)

Elst's article "The Politics of the Aryan Invasion Debate"
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/arti...anpolitics.html
QUOTE(2) Dalit neo-Ambedkarism. Dalit, âbrokenâ or âoppressedâ, is a term applied to the former Untouchable castes, sparingly by the late-19th-century reform movement Arya Samaj, and more officially by mid-20th-century Dalit leader Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar and by his followers ever since. Today, the term has eclipsed the Gandhian euphemism Harijan. Ambedkar himself (1917:21) rejected both the AIT and its caste-racialist implication that lower castes sprang from the native race while upper castes were the invadersâ progeny. Yet, his followers (e.g. Theertha 1941, Rajshekar 1987, Biswas 1995), along with his 19th-century precursor, the Christian-educated Jyotirao Phule, took the more conformist road of adapting the AIT and staking their political claims in the name of being âaboriginalsâ deprived of their land, culture and social status by the âAryan invadersâ. Among these neo-Ambedkarites, who claim Ambedkarâs mantle but have turned against him on many points (e.g. favouring conversion to Christianity or Islam, which Ambedkar energetically rejected in favour of native religions, esp. Buddhism), strange international alliances abound, e.g. with Islamic militancy, Evangelical fundamentalism and cranky American Afrocentrism. Many of V.T. Rajshekarâs brochures are transcripts of lectures at Christian institutions, and one wonders if the latter are aware of the more eccentric parts of his work, e.g. he is the only Indian to merit a mention in an authoritative study (Poliakov 1994) of contemporary anti-Semitism. His anti-Brahminism is also moulded after the anti-Semitic model, e.g. just like both capitalist plutocracy and Bolshevism have been blamed on the Jews, Rajshekar (1993) treats both religious Brahminism and Brahmin-led Indian Marxism as two hands of a single Brahmin conspiracy. Note that his anti-Brahmin plea opens with a profession of belief in the AIT: âThe fair-skinned foreigners, the Aryan barbarians, who strayed into India, came into clash with Indiaâs dark-skinned indigenous population â the Untouchablesâ (1993:1). This kind of company ought to worry those who rely on the principle of âguilt by associationâ in their argument against the AIT skeptics. Not surprising that this fraudulent movement is actually a cloak for christoislamicommunazism.

Even the 'oh-so-secular' self-declared 'rationalist' society of India have had to wonder why the christos are behind all the (so often paraded in the media) mass conversions of Hindus 'Dalits' into this temporary stopover which the christos have the gall to call Buddhism (a temporary stopover before the church attempts to harvest their souls):
http://www.rationalistinternational.net/ar...ist_2001/83.htm
QUOTEGod longs for all Hindus!
COVERT OPERATIONS OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH IN INDIA
Sanal Edamaruku
Why does the Evangelical Church secretly sponsor a mass conversion of "untouchable" Hindus to Buddhism?

ADDED:
And here is the christo 'dalit' movement working hand-in-glove with churches to turn the recently-invented christian model called "Dalit Theology" into a pattern to be applied (for conversion purposes) on all the "oppressed" all over the world:
Christoterrorist site:
www.nccidalittaskforce.com/dalit-task-force/drum/consultation/dalit-theology.html

This is a summary/sampler of the plans that world-wide churches have to repeat their various conversion models - models targeted to specific groups - to hijack different movements all over the world into christoterrorist outfits instead:
Christoterrorist site: www.cca.org.hk/blog/cca/2004_07_01_cca.htm
QUOTEHe also mentioned about Asian theologians articulating their contextual theologies like Minjung theology in Korea, Homeland theology in Taiwan, PeopleÃ¯Â¿Â½s theology in the Philippines, Water Buffalo theology in Thailand, Dalit theology in India, and Buraku liberation theology in Japan.Ain't jeebusjehovallah grand. Christoterrorist don't care about anyone. They just want to harvest the unconverted in the world, to become sheep fodder to feed to their non-existent cannibal 'Lamb' jeebus.

Meanwhile, Ambedkar knew all about islam including what this terrorism had done to Bauddha Dharma in India. Elst quotes Ambedkar here:
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/bo...h/ch10.htm
QUOTEHowever, here too the commonality of Hindu and Buddhist interests in facing Islam is explicit, at least in Dr. Ambedkar?s own writings though less so in those of his present-day followers.Â Whatever criticism of Hinduism Ambedkar may have formulated, his open rejection of both Christianity and Islam (who assiduously courted him in the hope that he would bring the Scheduled Castes into their fold) has endeared him to Hindu activists.Â Ambedkar took a cool and hard look at Islam as a sworn enemy of Hindu society, even while being bitterly critical of the latter.

Dr. Ambedkar was particularly outspoken about the social injustices in Islam, especially in his book Pakistan or the Partition of India (1940).Â According to his biographer Dhananjay Keer, âsome penetrating and caustic paragraphs were deleted, it is said, at the instance of Ambedkarâs close admirersâ for the sake of his own safety; but what remains is still quite radical.21 Dr. Ambedkar also rejected Islam because it had destroyed Buddhism in India and other countries.Â Many present-day Ambedkarites never tire of quoting his one-liner: âThe history of India is nothing but a history of a mortal conflict between Buddhism and Brahmanism.â22 But Dr. Ambedkar has also written: âThere can be no doubt that the fall of Buddhism was due to the invasions of the Muslims.â23

Referring to the Persian word for âidolâ, but, derived from Buddha, Dr. Ambedkar observes: âThus the origin of the word indicates that in the Muslim mind idol worship had come to be identified with the religion of Buddha.Â To the Muslims they were one and the same thing.Â The mission to break idols thus became the mission to destroy Buddhism.Â Islam destroyed Buddhism not only in India but wherever it went.Â Bactria, Parthia, Afghanistan, Gandhara and Chinese Turkestan (â¦) in all these countries Islam destroyed Buddhism.â24

Moreover: âThe Muslim invaders sacked the Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramasila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few.Â They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded.Â The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. A very large number were killed outright by the Muslim commanders.â25

It is useful to quote Dr. Ambedkar as restating these facts, for the secularists work overtime to deny them.Â Thus, Marxist history-rewriter Praful Bidwai claims: âDespotic state power persecuted Buddhists for centuries as brahminical Hinduism held sway in large parts of India.Â Buddhism was all but banished from this land and found refuge in Sri Lanka, Tibet, Myanmar, Thailand and eastwards.â26 In fact, Buddhism went to these lands at a time when it was still flourishing in India, so that at the time of the Muslim invasions, the surviving monks fled to those countries because they knew a Buddhist establishment was already in existence there.

Today, Dalit leaders like Bahujan Samaj Party president Kanshi Ram woo the Muslim community.27 Yet, the pro-Islamic orientation which some of them (most staunchly V.T. Rajshekar in his fortnightly Dalit Voice) want to give to the Ambedkarite movement, is not at all in consonance with Dr. Ambedkarâs own view of Islam.28 Many of Dr. Ambedkarâs observations on Islam would now be branded as âHindu communalistâ by the very people who claim his heritage. in fact, the literature of the RSS Parivar offers no counterpart to Ambedkarâs strong language about Islam: he was more openly anti-Islamic than Savarkar, Golwalkar or any Hindutva stalwart who is regularly accused of being just that.Â From the Hindu Revivalist point of view, Ambedkar, in writing his incisive criticism of Islam, did the homework which the Hindutva ideologues neglected.

The predictable result of the movement having been hijacked by christoislamicommunazism is this. Notice how christianism has always had this effect on normal, decent people:
http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/bo...ah/ch1.htm
QUOTEAs you can verify from any publisherâs book list, Narayan Guru is not very popular among Indian secularists and foreign India-watchers, quite unlike that other Untouchable, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: âtoday, scarcely anyone outside Kerala even knows about Narayan Guruâ, while by contrast, âAmbedkarâs statues outnumber those of Gandhijiâ.46 Narayan Guru upsets the now-dominant Ambedkarite description of Hindu tradition as a den of caste oppression beyond redemption.

Unlike secular people who were insensitive to the spiritual dimension, such as Dr. Ambedkar and Ramaswamy Naicker, âNarayan Guru consistently taught against conversion, he himself took back into the Hindu fold persons from the lower castes who had gone over to other religionsâ.47 And the contrast with Ambedkarâs Dalit movement persists when we study the long-term results: âThe legacy of Narayan Guru is a society elevated, in accord, the lower classes educated and full of dignity and a feeling of self-worth.Â The legacy of Ambedkar is a bunch screaming at everyone, a bunch always demanding and denouncing, a bunch mired in self-pity and hatred, a society at war with itself.â48

47A. Shourie: Worshipping False Gods, p.381. About ?Perivar? Ramaswamy Naicker, see Amulya Ganguli: ?The atheist tradition?, Indian Express, 20-9-1995, and M.D. Gopalakrishnan: Periyar, Father of the Tamil Race.

48A. Shourie: Worshipping False Gods, p.381. The last sentence refers to the foul language, violent ways and infighting among the low-caste parties claiming Ambedkar?s legacy.Â Christian missionaries likewise report that communities converted to Christianity have progressed much more in the last half century than the castes which have followed Dr. Ambedkar into neo-Buddhism or into Dalit activism.
(I disagree with this last. It is christoterrorism that masquerades as the modern Ambedkarite movement - again, it's supposed to serve as a temporary stopover before the people thus caught can be converted into christomania.)

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-13-2008, 10:51 AM by Husky.)

Post 2 of 4

Thayilv,
More. (See the above post as well.)

For the lying christoislamicommunist maniacs who desperately yell that Hindus destroyed Bauddha Dharma in the subcontinent (and then they usher in their cryptochristo recent converts to pseudo-Buddhism to sing in the chorus as 'proof'), here are actual Bauddhas stating the historic facts:
http://jummausa.multiply.com/journal/item/5
By the Bangladeshi CHT-American Buddhist Association (BCABA)
(CHT stands for the Dharmic outpost of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh)
QUOTEMughal period (13th â 1760 A.D):Â

Under this period, the repeat progress of Islam was commenced. Buddhism was disappearing in a hurry lack of royal patronage of the Buddhist king. The Muslim destroyed many monasteries in India as Taxila, Vickramasila, Nalanda, Udantapuri etc. prior to establishment of their rule in Bengal. (They killed many Buddhist monks and started Islamization by force.) They killed many Buddhist monks and carried out force conversion. The same tragedy took place in Bengal as well. They carried out persecution and force conversion to the Buddhist of Bangladesh, destroyed Buddhist temples and some were turned into Mosque. Even today, some Muslim prayer halls in Chittagong are called Buddher Mokkan (lit, Buddhist house or temple). Actually these categories of prayer hall have no any typical sign of Mosque. These are considered to be Buddhist temple established during the Palas rule. Eventually, the victory of Muslims was the main reason for disappearing Buddhism from India, Bengal or Bangladesh. Today, Bangladesh is the third largest Muslims country in the world with 88 percent of 126 million populations.Why should anyone - except the compulsive liars - wonder at this, when the christo-islami-communi terrorism against Bauddha Dharma continues TODAY in the Indian Subcontinent? We can see it happen everyday.

Because Thayilv's post was mainly about islamania's historic destruction of Buddhism in the region, most of the links to follow are on the continuing anti-Bauddha acts of islamania to show that the jihad is still on. But first an example for each of christo and communist terrorism against Buddhism.

http://www.india-forum.com/forums/index.ph...indpost&p=78623
http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.p...pid=225&page=26

COMMUNITERRORISM against Buddhism in Bharatam
QUOTEChinese hostility is manifested in its aggressive action. The situation in Arunachal Pradesh is so serious that a senior army officer had to go public with the startling information that there had been as many as 146 incursions in the first 10 months of 2007. Two Arunachal MPs belonging to BJP took up the issue in right earnest to caution the nation about Chinese intentions. They also lamented that Chinese forces had entered areas under Indian administration to blow off a Buddha statue claiming that it stood in Chinese territory.
CHRISTOTERRORISM against Indian Bauddhas
http://web.archive.org/web/20051216025203/...ug2304/ne1.html
QUOTEAssam Tribune
Guwahati, Monday, August 23, 2004
NORTH EAST
Arunachal Buddhists allege militants harassment
GUWAHATI, Aug 22Â The Buddhist community of the region has expressed deep concern over the rising incidents of harassment and persecution of Buddhist tribals by militants and security forces alike in the remote locations of Arunachal Pradesh. The twin militant outfits, NSCN(IM) and NSCN(K) have demanded annexation of land from the Buddhist and other indigenous faith followers of Rima Putak, Thikhak Putak, Motongsa and Longchong villages in TirapÂ Changlang district in Arunachal Pradesh and issued a decree for their conversion to Christianity. The militant outfits have left the villagers with two optionsÂ embrace Christianity or face capital punishment. With death staring at their face, most of the adult members have fled the villages to escape torture from both sides, resulting in disruption of agricultural activities.

The outlawed organisations have persecuted several villagers for their alleged role in passing vital information to the Assam Rifles. On the other hand, the Army too allegedly harasses the villagers on the pretext of providing food and shelter, but not reporting and keeping tabs on the militantsÂ activities. In a recently held joint Buddhist session of the Purvanchal Buddhist Bhikkhu Sangha and Purvanchal Buddhist Association at Namphakey near Naharkatia in Dibrugarh district of Assam, frontline Buddhist leaders of both the states of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have strongly condemned the heinous atrocities committed by the militants on the peace-loving Buddhists and tribal cult followers and sought the immediate intervention of the Centre and the state to ensure the security of lives and properties of the affected people.

They opined that India being a secular nation with composite culture, every citizen or individual has the inherent right to profess and practice his religion. The leaders said that what is happening in Arunachal Pradesh is a glaring example of violation of human rights. This was stated in a press release.

Continuing ISLAMITERRORISM=Jihad against Bauddha Dharma in Bharatam
Islam's bloodlust is still not satisfied with the mass genocide it had perpetrated on Bauddha Dharma in the past. I'll move onto Bangladesh shortly, but here are a few bits and pieces on Bharatam.

http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/bo...h/ch10.htm
QUOTEThree regions are in focus:
1. Bangladesh, where Muslim settlers backed by the Islamic Government took over the lands of Buddhist and other non-Muslim tribes in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, effectively expelling the natives.Â Some of these fled to India, while others started an armed resistance movement called Shanti Bahini (âpeace squadâ), which agreed to dissolve itself under the terms of a peace treaty concluded with the Bangladesh Government in 1997.

2. Indiaâs Northeast, where Buddhist and other non-Muslim tribes are confronted with Muslim illegal immigrants from Bangladesh; the picture is complicated by resentment among non-Muslim natives against the Buddhist refugees from Bangladesh, especially in Arunachal Pradesh.

3. Ladakh, where a shrinking Buddhist majority feels threatened by a growing and assertive Muslim minority, all the more so because nearby Kargil has witnessed exactly the development which Ladakhis fear: through demographics and conversions (esp. of Buddhist brides married into Muslim families); a small immigrant group of Muslims in the 19th century has by now become the majority, and the Buddhist character of the region is but a memory.18
- http://web.archive.org/web/20070218174316/...2001/8/5_1.html - article from World Tibet Network News about Buddhists of Ladakh in Bharatam terrorised by islamania

- http://koenraadelst.voiceofdharma.com/book...m/appendix.html
Koenraad Elst's article "Using Kafir women in the service of Muslim demography"
QUOTEFor example, after summing up some discriminations imposed by the Muslim state and district authorities on the Buddhists of Kargil (in Jammu & Kashmir), representatives of the Ladakh Buddhist Association complaÂin: "As if this is not enough, there is a deliberate and organised design to convert Kargil's Buddhists to Islam. In the last four years, about 50 girls and married women with children were allured and conÂverted from village Wakha alone. If this continues unchecked, we fear that Buddhists will be wiped out from Kargil in the next two decades or so. Anyone objecting to such allurement and conversions is harassed."[1]

[1]Â Tundup Tsering and Tsewang Nurboo, representing the, Mar-yul TsogÂapa, Kargil: "Ladakh visited", Pioneer, 4/12/1995.Â They suggest: "TherefÂore, to protect the religious and cultural identity of the Ladakhi people, an anti-conversion law must be enacted for Kargil as is presently in force in states like Arunachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh."
The next couple of posts are about how Bangladeshi Bauddhas are still being genocided by the alien 'religion'/terrorist ideology of islamania, in the same way islam genocided Bauddha Dharma in Bharatam in the past.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-13-2008, 04:56 PM by Husky.)

Post 3 of 4

Bauddhas terrorised by islam as ever - Bangladesh case (part 1)
First some background:
- http://www.pbm-cht.org/indigenous_people.html
Info on Chittagong Hill Tracts by the Parbatya Bouddha Mission
- Population stats: In 1981, the Bauddha population in BD was 1%, see quoteblock below. According to wackypedia, it is now 0.7%.
Note how the following Bangladeshi web site admits that islamania - couched under the term "Turkish conquest" below - persecuted and destroyed Buddhism. But typically, the islamaniacs invent a new lie for apologetics purposes: now they'd have us believe that the islamic invaders might have mistaken the Buddhist monasteries for "military fortresses" instead :islamologic - they want us to start thinking that the invading islamaniacs did a pre-emptive strike on the natives out of "self-defense" <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' />
http://bangladesh.wetpaint.com/page/Buddhism
QUOTEBuddhism
Buddhism in various forms appears to have been prevalent at the time of the Turkish conquest in 1202. The invading armies apparently found numerous monasteries, which they destroyed in the belief that they were military fortresses. With the destruction of its centers of learning, Buddhism rapidly disintegrated. In subsequent centuries and up through the 1980s nearly all the remaining Buddhists lived in the region around Chittagong, which had not been entirely conquered until the time of the British Raj. In the Chittagong Hills, Buddhist tribes formed the majority of the population, and their religion appeared to be a mixture of tribal cults and Buddhist doctrines. According to the 1981 census, there were approximately 538,000 Buddhists in Bangladesh, representing less than 1 percent of the population.

Here's a summary for intro, before moving on to a site specifically on the plight of the CHT Bauddhas.
http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/LJWalker30916.htm
BANGLADESH and PAKISTAN - the destruction of Buddhism and Hinduism
Lee Jay Walker Dip BA MA
QUOTEmillions of Muslim migrants were moved into the Chittagong Hill Tracts and the mainly tribal Buddhists (some tribals are Christian, Hindu or follow traditional beliefs) became embroiled in a civil war. Islamic radicals also moved into this region and many Buddhist priests were killed, including some being beheaded. At the same time hundreds of Buddhist temples were destroyed and the Bangladesh army took part in many massacres, and some Buddhist women were gang-raped by both Islamic zealots and the Bangladesh army.
In time the mainly Buddhist tribals were overwhelmed by the armed forces of Bangladesh and Muslim migration. Their situation, however, went unnoticed in the West and Islamic nations obviously remained silent. To make matters worse, the mainly Buddhist tribes had no nation supporting them and no major world leader to draw attention to their plight. Given this, the government of Bangladesh continued with their policy of persecuting Buddhists while Muslim migration Islamized the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

MUST READ SITE on the ongoing islamic jihad against Buddhism in Bangladesh:
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/jumma/religion.html
Religious Persecution in the CHT

As you can see, it's exactly the same old islamaniac tactics against Bauddha Dharma. Conversion, (gang) rape, violence/persecution, temple destruction - AKA Islam.
Some excerpts
QUOTE[photo description:] This monk was injured by the Bangladesh Army. The Bangladesh Army attacked his village and temple during the Matiranga, Panchari massacres on 30 April - 1 May 1986, they destroyed the temple, Buddha images and Buddhist texts. This monk like many others had to seek refuge in Tripura, India.And more:
QUOTEAn account by one of the monks now in Tripura described in detail an incident in 1986 which took place in Panchari where a group of hill people were attacked because they were not Muslims.
"Before this happened, one day 13 of us went to market. I was not a monk then. The Bangladesh Rifles (paramilitary force) and settlers caught us and out of 13, nine were killed and four of us escaped. The reason was that we were not Muslims; they wanted us to be Muslims to take Islam. It was in the market itself and some of the people were also caught up from around. Among the people whom they caught was my wife. They cut her with daos (machette) - some of the marks on her neck are still there. She is in Karbook (refugee camp in Tripura). This took place in the market itself on market day, Wednesday. The others ran away. They also tried to cut me with daos on the neck. Luckily my shirt collar was thick and I escaped from being killed. As they killed the others they shouted: 'Oh Chakmas, will you not become Muslims? If you refuse we will kill you now'."

A Buddhist monk from the temple at Kalanal described to the Amnesty International the persistent harassment of the Jumma villagers by the military personnel and the settlers:
"For many months now soldiers have been regularly visiting us and slaughtering cows in our shrine.... They always said that if we did not agree to this (conversion to Islam) they will come one day and kill us.""On the morning of 1 May they carried out their threat by escorting a group of two to three hundred settlers, some of whom were dressed in the uniform of home guards, to our village and began their depredations by attacking Buddha Vihar (the temple). Most of us were, however, able to flee but soldiers pounced on Purnananda Bhikku (one of the monks) and after beating him with rifle butts handed him over to the Muslims who threw him into the shrine which was by now on fire. He died. Later when I met more people from my village they said that two young girls of the village had been raped mercilessly by troops and Muslims and then killed with bayonets."

Another woman described her experience that happened in March/April 1989 to the CHT Commission as following:
"Some soldiers came to our house and woke us up and poured cold wate on our heads. I had two daughters. The soldiers tried to take my daughters, they were 9 and 11 years old. They hit me on the head with lathi (bamboo stick). My head was bleeding. My daughters were crying As my head was bleeding heavily, the soldiers gave me some medicine Then they asked me whether I would become a Muslim. I said: 'No, I'd rather die.' Then they said: Will you be able to stand naked before us and also 'If you give us your daughters, we will release you.' They beat me then and left."

Desecration is invariably accompanied by violent attacks against worshippers. The following case was told by a Marma monk describing an event in Pablakhali, Dighinala in 1985:
"On that day first the settlers and the army surrounded the temple. I was caught and my hands were tied with rope as were my legs. Water was poured through my nostrils. I was kicked with boots and my leg was cut. People came into the temple and caught all the girls. They took the girls a little way from the temple. I heard the cries of the girls - maybe they were raped but I did not see it with my own eyes. After a few days I met one of the girls but as a monk I have some restrictions and could not ask her what had happened. The army performed desecration in the temples. They go in with boots on and throw away food in the temple. Every day before 12 o'clock we offer food to Lord Buddha. The Muslims say: 'then why does not stone eat it'? The army uses guns to break plates. Once I was about to offer food to the Buddha and the Muslims entered and said 'let's see if stone can eat', then they said 'stone can't eat' and they took the plate from my hands and threw it on the floor. They bring animals into the temple and slaughter them: goats and cows. Buddhist people never kill animals so you cannot worship in the temple after that has happened. I have witnessed it. At Pablakhali in 1985, before the attack, about 35-50 army personnel entered the monastery with 100-150 settlers remaining outside. They cooked inside the temple and burnt wood on the dirt floor and brought wood in. They killed the animals outside the temple but within the boundary of the temple. They did this to crush Buddhism and establish Islam. There was no other reason for this."

The second incident took place in Mani Gram, Khagrachari in 1986 and was also described by a Marma monk:
"I was in Mani Gram Buddhist temple. On 12 June, 1986 we tried to celebrate a function in the temple. All of a sudden some troops came and said: 'Hey, what are you doing?' We replied: 'We are going to wash our God'. The soldiers said: 'You cannot wash God because this is a Muslim state. You cannot worship the Lord Buddha, you have to abandon this religion and become Muslim.' We refused to do so. Then the soldiers caught us and tied our hands and started to pour water on our heads. I was the only monk there, the others were villagers numbering around 20. All of us were tied in pairs and the soldiers starting pouring water and when they were not satisfied by pouring water they started kicking us with their boots. The water was not just water, but it was mixed with green chilies. When we were tied up they stood with bayonets over us so we would not struggle. My skin started burning and most of us were injured as I was. I had cuts and sores on my legs. We were tied up in afternoon and they started to burn the house of the village which we could see. We were tied up from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, a total of eight hours. The soldiers untied us. At about 5 o'clock they set fire to the temple and we went into hiding in the jungles. The settlers were not with the soldiers when they tied us up, but were there when the village was burnt. There is a river called Chengi. After coming to the river we went hiding into the deep jungle. After four days trekking all through the jungle. I reached the border of Tripura (India) and Karbook camp. In that lot we were around 450 people. Before 12th June there was no other incident. The only reason for the attack was religion. If we became Muslim we could stay safe. I know one Marma who was my friend called Uchmang. He was threatened that if he did not become a Muslim he would be harmed with his relatives. He was forcibly converted. He came from a different village, Mahalchari in Khagrachari District."

A Marma monk in Tripura explained how the military authorities control religious ceremonies in the Chittagong Hill Tracts:
"Religious functions need a permit from the authorities, for example, the Purnima full moon celebrations and several Purnima functions numbering about six in a year. We need permits for other functions too. Many people come to these functions. For a funeral ceremony no permit is necessary, but seven days later, the seventh day ritual after cremation needs permission from the authorities. When someone becomes a monk you need such a permit. To celebrate functions you have to collect money and so permission is needed. The permit is for both money collection and the ceremony. The army officers give the permit. It was always army officers who give it. There is no cost for the permit. I used to go for the permit and was never refused but it was a lot of trouble, waiting to meet the officer etc."

Chitmarang is the most sacred shrine of Buddhism in the CHT. Although it is in an area which is predominantly Marma, thousands of Chakmas traditionally traveled there annually to pay their respect to the ancient image of the Buddha in the old temple. For several years because of constant checks by the military, it has been impossible for Buddhists to reach Chitmarang temple. Chitmarang no longer functions in this capacity. The army have to give permission which is granted only to the lucky few or to those who can afford to bribe the army.
(The last two paras show the dhimmitude enforced in dar-ul-islam. That is, when they're not massacred outright, they have to go through a lot of hassle to practise their way of life.)
This is what islam does. This is all islam does. There is no other islam.
And this islamic jihad (murder, gang rape, violence) is the only reason anyone in the subcontinent ever converted to the disgusting, repulsive ideology of islam.

The links on the side of the above website show that there is also a page for each of the usual islamania:
Bangladeshi Settlers, Armed Resistance, Massacres, Genocide, Rapes & Abductions, Jumma Refugees

And then this page from the same BD Buddhist site shows more about how the history of islamic terrorism repeats:
http://www.angelfire.com/ab/jumma/religion/rlgcase.htm
Destruction and Desecration of Places of Worship
Contains a whole timeline of recent islamic destruction of Bauddha temples in BD, starting with
QUOTEOn 8 May 1986, The Bangladesh Army motivated by religious fanaticism attacked "Navajyoti Buddhist Vihara" (Navajyoti Buddhist Temple) at Lalyaghona Village in Baghaichari Upazilla (sub district), destroyed and desecrated the temple by breaking down one of the images. It's part of the systematic pattern of the Bangladesh military's attack against the religious minorities of the country. Religious fundamentalism and intolerance to the religious minorities are on the rise in Bangladesh in general and military in particular.

Another timeline on the islamic anti-Bauddha persecution is in the section Bangladesh period (1971-till now) of the CHT site linked to at the start of the previous post http://jummausa.multiply.com/journal/item/5

The Romilla Thapars and the cryptochristo converts can stand on their head and still the facts of history won't go away.

Some more links in next post.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-13-2008, 05:15 PM by Husky.)

Post 4 of 4

Bauddhas terrorised by islam as ever - Bangladesh case (part 2)
Some other links on islamism (=terrorism) against Buddhism in Bangladesh

1. http://paritosh-chakma.blogspot.com/2008/0...ested-land.html
A Buddhist BD blogger's page. Has some more recent news.
QUOTEBangladesh: Buddhist Monk arrested, land grabbing continues
New Delhi, 18 Jan 2008
In the military-controlled Bangladesh, the religious persecution is growing bigger and subtler every day. It is not to say that persecution of the minorities did not exist earlier. It very much existed. But then, the emergency was imposed a year ago, on 11 January 2007, to deal with fundamentalism and corruption.
2. http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/20...2-09.shtml
QUOTEFebruary 2000
BUDDHISM
The Other Victims
Have the Chakmas averted extinction?
Six hundred thousand indigenous people inhabit the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of Bangladesh, a region of 5,000 square miles which borders Burma and northeastern India. As Buddhists, and racially and linguistically separate from the Bengalis, these people, mostly Chakmas, had every expectation of being included with India at the time of partition. But that did not happen, and they soon found themselves faced with an unwanted invasion of Bengali settlers from the rest of the country. The percentage of Chakmas in the CHT was 98 percent in 1947; by 1981 it had declined to just 59 percent. Armed resistance developed among the Chakmas, backed by India, and the Bangladesh army was sent to suppress it. This resulted in widespread massacres of tribals in 1981, rape, destruction of temples and homes.

In 1992, 17 US Congressmen complained to the Government of Bangladesh about the on-going attacks. "According to reliable reports," they stated, "on April 10, 1992, the town of Longong in the CHT was surrounded by Bengali settlers accompanied by paramilitary forces. The inhabitants of the town were then systematically murdered. Estimates from Amnesty International and human rights organizations in Bangladesh range up to 600 or more. Eyewitnesses report that the entire village was burned to the ground. Reports of torture, rape and extrajudicial execution have been common for years."

As a result, tens of thousands of Chakmas fled into India. Fifty thousand went to Tripura. Twenty thousand fled to the Arakan Hills in Burma where they permanently settled, another 70,000 are in the nearby Indian state of Arunachal Pardesh, where they face opposition to their presence.

In 1996 and 1997, the government of Sheik Hasina signed treaties with the Chakma, allowing them to have their own identity, and some autonomy, in exchange for an end to the resistance movement. However, the opposition party of Begum Khalida Zia is against the treaty, and if they come to power, may reverse it. A few of the Chakmas have since returned to Bangladesh.They should have been included in Bharatam. We should take back Dharmic land and people. Islamaniac Bangladesh only genocides them, and islam ultimately turns all land into wasteland (for example, Afghanistan and Persia used to be far more lush).

3. This one shows the just-mentioned islamaniac Begum Khalida Zia and the BD ummah in action:
www.lankaweb.com/news/items02/140802-3.html - an appeal signed by various Buddhist orgs (including Japanese) to end the jihad in BD
QUOTEOPPRESSION OF BUDDHISTS IN BANGLADESH!
Internationally known Buddhist Monk Gnyan Gyoti Mahasthabir was hacked to death at a Buddhist monastery-orphanage in Hingala, under the Raozan Police Station in the District of Chittagong, Bangladesh, on April 21, 2002 in the village.

According to media reports, he was brutally murdered by Islamic extremists associated with Member of Parliament Mr. Salah Uddin Kader Choudhury, who is an adviser to the Prime Minister, Begum Khaldeda Zia, the leader of the ruling Islamic Hardliners.
4. http://www.asianews.it/index.php?art=6124&l=en&size=
QUOTE05/10/2006 10:34
BANGLADESH
Bengali (islamaniac)s loot and destroy two indigenous villages in the Chittagong Hills tractsGang rape, murder and the other islamiterrorisms against Bauddhas. Anyone still wondering what happened to Nalanda university and the Bauddhas of India in the past, can see the events unfolding again today:
QUOTEWhat happened?
The recent crisis began when a group of 50 Bengali settlers entered the eight-acre property of Ammesu Moghini, 45, on the morning of April 2 in order to cut down trees to build houses for themselves. Mr Ammesu tried to stop them but the men sent their women armed with sickles, hoes and sticks to chase him away. A few Bengali youths present at the scene stood by watching the attack before stopping the women and leaving. This points to certain premeditation in the attack.
The next day tens of youth came to Ammesu's home and started throwing stones against it. When he went out with his daughters Krojaima Marma, 15, and Tuimrashang Marma, 16, to stop the young men and ask for explanations, he was threatened.
"Leave this place; otherwise we'll kill you," some of the men shouted. Others, after entering the house and ransacking it, dragged the two teenage girls away taking them to the house of an accomplice named Hasina. Here Ammesu's daughters were tortured, beaten, stripped, gang raped, left unconscious and robbed of their neck chain and earrings.
When the girls' mother went looking for them, she, too, was abducted, tied, beaten, robbed like her daughters and left unconscious. As if the family did not have enough troubles, the woman's elder sister, 49-year-old Abaikroin Moghini, who heard her cries as she was going to the nearby pagoda, went looking for her. Her attempts to untie her sister came to naught because the Bengali thugs came back again and hit her repeatedly.
The same fate befell Sumona Mahatero, a courageous Buddhist monk, founder and manager of a hostel for poor children, who rushed to the site of the assault. As he tried to untie the women, he was taken by the throat, beaten and dragged into the street.
For Mahatero, he was the thugs' real target. His fault was that he had tried to stand up against those who victimised locals and instead tried to improve their lives. Because of him, outside thugs have not been able to seize the land they want.
The thugs also went on a rampage in the villages of Saupru Karbari and Noapara as well as the Buddhist hostel. They seriously wounded many local, defenceless indigenous residents, killing one. Many of the victims suffered deep cuts to the head. Mahatero's hostel was not spared the thugs' fury. In just one day, the work of a lifetime was gone; the place where 70 boys and girls lived and studied was a shell of what it was.
Without any outside help, using bamboo and wood, the monk had built a temple, a school, a hostel and a kitchen. He provided books to read and write, pens, chairs, tables and blackboards for the pupils. He was even able to get a colour TV for their entertainment.

No justice for the victims
People with broken arms and legs, head wounds and back injuries ended up in hospital. But even here they did not fare well. There received inadequate medical care and insufficient treatment. Many patients, fearing for the life, fled.
On top of all this, charges were laid against indigenous people, distorting the facts, putting the blame for the incidents on the victims themselves.
Police so far has refused to accept the rape charges made by the four women. It also failed to have the women undergo a medical check to verify their claims. The women were also not offered any medical treatment. Pretexts have delayed proceedings.
As far as it can be ascertained, no commission of inquiry has been set up. The Bengali thugs were arrested but then released one by one. Similarly, the government has not compensated the victims in any shape or form.
The villages that were attacked and neighbouring villages now live in fear. Families that fled have still not gone home for lack of security. Pupils attending the hostel have also not returned and it is doubtful whether they ever will. Currently, some 201 indigenous families have been left homeless and are sheltering in a state school. Others have had to live in the open. But even there they are harassed by the police which wants to chase them away.
5. Couple of articles
- http://www.jpnuk.org.uk/news/oct2005/01d...cities.htm
ATROCITIES AGAINST BUDDHISTS IN THE CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS
By P J Chakma, Dec 2005
- http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?...34,0,0,1,0
Religious persecution in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh
by CHT. P. Chakma, Secretary of World Jumma Buddhist's Council, HWHRF, January 11, 2008

6. Much MORE info plus links on the BD Baudda terrorised by islamism: Info collected by Vishal Agarwal

7. http://www.cwis.org/fwdp/Eurasia/cht_cris.txt
QUOTEAn appeal to save the Chakma and other tribes of the Chittagong Hill Tracts from the total annihilation by the Bangladesh Government.
(i.e. an appeal to save Indian Bauddhas from the ongoing islamic jihad, to use the correct phrase)

Christoislamicommunism is just SICK.
The psecular lying and apologetics for christoislamicommunism is the same as holocaust denial.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-15-2008, 06:53 PM by Husky.)

Post 5 on this topic.

Returning to the topic of christoterrorism and communism trying to destroy Buddhism.

The following says what Hindus knew intuitively all along: that in Asia, christoterrorism can't get a foothold until they first wipe out the Dharmic character using communism. Even communism doesn't work on us, because our minds are not attuned to the alien notion of "faith".

http://kwelos.tripod.com/marxism.htm
(Several words/sentences in the original article are links.)
QUOTEBuddhism and Marxism: persecutions in Tibet, USSR, Mongolia, Cambodia/Kampuchea - and the evangelical aftermath.

Marxism originated as a nineteenth century form of materialism (to its adherents it was known as dialectical materialism),Â Â which unfortunately persisted too long into the 20th century.Â

The adjective 'dialectical' doesn't just refer to the fact that Marxists tended to talk in a jargon which was unintelligible to speakers of the standard version of the language. 'Dialectical' derives from a Greek word meaning 'debate' or 'discussion' - although such activities were notably rare under Marxist governments.

Marxism was intolerant of other belief systems, especially religions, which it regarded as the 'opium of the masses'.Â In Marxist countries most religions were suppressed to a greater or lesser extent, Buddhism being a particular object of persecution. The reason for this is fairly clear, for unlike the other belief-systems that Marxism encountered, Buddhism was the only one which offered a rational, logically coherent philosophy, and thus presented a real ideological threat to the Marxist materialist worldview.

Marxism could only hang on to power in a totalitarian state where it controlled all information.Â Â It disintegrated in Eastern Europe and the USSR during the late 1980's, as the increased personal use of phones, PCs and photocopiers undermined its information monopoly.Â Â

Tibet
Marxism still exists in a confused and degenerate form as Chinese communism, and both Chinese dissidents andÂ the Buddhist people of Chinese-occupied Tibet continue to suffer severe repression for their beliefs.

In Tibet over a million people have been murdered since the occupation began in 1959.Â Atrocities continue unabated - torture, summary execution and imprisonment without trial are still commonplace. There is an official policy of genocide - enforced sterilisations and abortions are being carried out in ever increasing numbers on Tibetan women. Almost all Tibet's monasteries have been reduced to ruins (see links to pictures on Tibet page)Â and their libraries of ancient books destroyed.
(Communism behaves like christoislamism - which are famed for genocide and sterilisation programmes - because it is exactly the same as christoislamism.)

Russia
It is not generally known in the West, but the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire had a substantial number of Buddhists who practised in the Tibetan tradition.Â These people were allowedÂ religious freedom by the Tsarist government and established temples and monasteries, chiefly in Central Asia and Siberia. In the 1920's, as Joseph Stalin consolidated his power, most of the temples and monasteries were destroyed, and many the Soviet Buddhists were executed or worked to death in the notorious Gulags.Â Pockets of believers survived in the remote regions of Buryatia, the Kalmyck Republic and Tuva. A strong revival is now underway, as the number of Russian Buddhist websites testifies (see Russia for links).

Mongolia
At the beginning of the twentieth century Mongolia was a predominantly Buddhist country practising in the Tibetan Gelug tradition, but the usual relentless persecution started soon after the communists took over. Fortunately, Marxism dissappeared from Mongolia at about the same time as it collapsed in the USSR and Eastern Europe. The new climate ofÂ freedom allowed religious observance, but the Buddhist tradition had been seriously weakened with only a very few old monks having survived.Â Attempts are currently being made to re-establish the Dharma with Tibetan assistance, but there is severe competition from well-funded US evangelists to fill the spiritual vacuum left by the demise ofÂ Marxism.

Cambodia - Kampuchea
At one time a peaceful and prosperous Buddhist country, Kampuchea (formerly known as Cambodia) has been ravaged communism in the late 20th century.Â Pol Pot, the Marxist leader of the Khmer Rouge, inflicted suffering and destruction on his own country which is comparable to that inflicted byÂ Mao Tse Tung on Tibet. Out of a population of around eight million, one million people were tortured and worked to death in the 1970's.Â Prime targets for torture and execution were anyone who was literate or might be suspected of thinking unauthorised thoughts.Â The entire Buddhist sangha was eliminated.Â Â Pol Pot is probably the ultimate exponent ofÂ Marxism, in that he actually turned the Orwellian nightmare into reality.Â Â

Cambodia today is free from Marxism, but it has still not recovered from Pol Pot's reign of terror. It is a country which has had its spiritual and cultural heritage destroyed.Â Foreign meme-pedlars such as Bible-belt evangelists have jumped into the cultural and spiritual vacuum - they have realised that if they get in quickly they may be able to establish themselves before the Kampuchean national psyche has time to heal itself.

Cultural imperialism and dumbing down the natives
In some Central and Southern Asian countries indigenous spiritual traditions have been severely weakened by decades of persecution. Pushy evangelical missionaries are taking advantage of their superior funding to market their belief-systems with high pressure salesmanship. Compared with the subtlety of Buddhism, the stuff they peddle is is usually fundamentalist,Â intolerant, shallow and philosophically irrational.

Conclusion
Marxist dialectical materialism has gone from the Western World, and will no doubt do likewise from China as information technology becomes more widespread. But the damage it has done to the Central and Southern Asian religious traditions and cultures will be long-lasting and perhaps permanent. By destroying indigenous spiritual traditions, Marxism has destroyed the immune system ofÂ eastern cultures and opened them up to parasitism by the most gross and strident western memes. (<- This bit then links to a christoterrorist site to show how christianism is the parasite being referred to.)

- Sean Robsville
That red section title "Cultural imperialism and dumbing down the natives" above explains the situation very well. Notice how communism dumbs down spiritual civilisations by genocide, destruction and religio-cultural eradication, so that the dumbed down victims will be more amenable to christoism as they no longer have any civilisational memory (or they're left with only a distorted civilisational memory thanks to communazi brainwashing) which could otherwise have helped repatriate them into their beliefs.
Next to their common ideological leanings, this is why christoterrorism is supporting communazism in Nepal, Burma and Bhutan. And why it is scratching the backs of communazis in India too (politics, media, history-tampering/mis-education).
The christo LTTE and christo-instigated movement of crypto DMK are similarly destructive christo-class viruses just like communism, that are used to pervert/destroy proper civilisational memory to replace it with self-loathing (turning people against their own religio-culture) or for hijacking and effacing their true identities under pseudo-secular masks - all in order to make room for christoterrorism.

In the first instance where the author calls christianism a "meme" in the above article, he links to his meme/mind-virus page. Note how christianism and islam are correctly identified as parasitic mindviruses by traditionalists and the exchristians in the west once these victims break free from the terrorism's irrational hold upon their persons. This is a recurring pattern. It's like people who at last wake from a fever-dream to returned health. What this shows is that people can be recovered from zombie-ism once they learn the truth and open their eyes to it.

http://kwelos.tripod.com/memes.htm
Religions of Fear and Hate - Memes and Malevolent Mind Viruses
QUOTETo establish itself in the mind of its host it will use some or all of the following mechanisms:

[1] Promise heaven for belief. This may involve frustrating the host's normal sexual urges andÂ redirecting them into sexual fantasies of the hereafter.

[2] Threaten eternal punishment in hell for disbelief.

[3] Boost the believers' egos by telling them they are 'chosen' or superior to believers in false memes.

[4] Disable the faculties of disbelief ('immune response') by claiming that faith is superior to reason.

[5] Establish itself as the One True Meme, usually by some sort of holy book containing a circular self-referential argument such as:

X is the one true meme. We know X is the one true meme because The Source of Universal Truth has approved X. We know The Source of Universal Truth has approved X,Â because X contains statements which say so. We know what X says is true because X is the one true meme.

Once it has parasitised the mind of its host, a meme needs to propagate itself. A successful meme will contain instructions for some or all of the following:

[6] Holy war - convert or kill all unbelievers.

[7]Â Intimidation and terrorism - threaten and discriminate against unbelievers.

[8]Â Enforced social isolation or even death to apostates. (An apostate is a host which has cured itself of a meme-infection. It is especially dangerous to the meme because it might pass on meme-resistance to others).

[9]Â Fecundism - encourage true believers to breed faster than believers in false memes.

[10]Â Censorship - prevent rival memes from reaching potential hosts (a theological doctrine known as 'Error has no rights') and forbid rational analysis of the meme itself.

[11]Â Disinformation - spread lies about rival memes. The above page then goes on to prove why Buddhism is not a mind-virus, but christoterrorism is. The above is a good summary of why christoislamicommuniterrorism is a dangerous ideology, and why it is an insult every time some self-declared 'secular' lists Natural Traditions alongside the terrorisms.

Same site - Russia page. Once again mentions christoterrorism preying on a Buddhism left vulnerable after communazism:
http://kwelos.tripod.com/russia.htm
QUOTERebuilding Buddhism in Russia

It is not generally known in the West, but the pre-revolutionary Russian Empire had a substantial number of Buddhists who practised in the Tibetan tradition.Â In 1741, Empress Elizabeth issued a decree recognising Buddhism, alongside Orthodox Christianity, as an officially sactioned religion in Russia..

For 180 years Russian Buddhists were allowedÂ religious freedom by the Tsarist government.Â Â They established temples and monasteries, chiefly in Central Asia and in Siberia in the Lake Baikal area. But this policy of tolerance changed drastically after the communist revolution.

In Marxist countries most religions were suppressed to a greater or lesser extent, but in RussiaÂ Buddhism was a particular object of persecution. The reason for this is clear, for unlike the other belief-systems that Marxism encountered in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Buddhism was the only one which offered a rational, logically coherent philosophy which presented a real ideological threat to the Marxist materialist worldview. (See Marxism). In fact, the future Buddhist Prime Minister of MongoliaÂ - Nambariin Enkhbayar -Â first became interested in Buddhism when, as a student, he was subjected to anti-Buddhist indoctrination by his Soviet Communist 'educators'.

In the 1920's, as Joseph Stalin consolidated his power, most of the temples and monasteries were destroyed, and many Soviet Buddhists were executed or worked to death in the notorious Gulags.Â Pockets survived in the remote regions of Buryatia, Kalmyck Republic and Tuva. With the restoration of religious freedom, Buddhism is now being re-established in these areas, though as in Mongolia the process is under threat from lavishly-funded American Christian evangelists who are targeting Kalycks, Buriats and Tuvinians as 'unreached peoples'. Hopefully this blatant cultural imperialism and meme-peddling will not succeed in destroying these vulnerable indigenous cultures.

In addition, new Buddhist centres are being established outside the traditionally Buddhist areas in cities such as Moscow, St Petersburg, Obninsk, Nizhni-Novgorod, Petrozavodsk and Varonesh.

- Sean Robsville
http://kwelos.tripod.com/mongolia.htm
QUOTERebuilding Buddhism in Mongolia - the threat from Christian evangelism.

Buddhism was all but obliterated in Mongolia for sixty years, the worst persecutions being carried out during the late 1930's by the Stalinist dictator Khorloin Choibalsan, when tens ofÂ thousands of lamas, monks,Â and ordinary believers were executed or worked to death by forced labour.Â The vast majority ofÂ Mongolia's monasteries and temples were destroyed.

When communism collapsed in the early 1990's, freedom of belief was again allowed. However Buddhism had been seriously weakened and the spiritual vacuum was rapidly filled by various foreign interests, most notably US fundamentalist Bible-thumpers. These pushy evagelists deployed, and still continue to deploy, lavish funding together with high powered salesmanship to propagate their memes.

The missionaries are, for the most part, blatant cultural imperialists andÂ typically use deception and subterfuge to undermine traditional Mongolian culture. They accuse Buddhism of being responsible for backwardness, and attribute the West's technological and scientific pre-eminence to its Christian traditions. (whereas anyone familiar with European history will be aware that it was only when the Church lost its iron grip on freedom of expression that scientific progress became possible - see obscurantism).Â Â Although Christian evangelists are willing to jump on board the western scientific bandwagon when preaching in Buddhist countries, they soon reveal their antiscientific mindset when back on their Bible-belt home ground - see evolution.
(Note how the lying christoterrorists use the same arguments in India: "your Hinduism made India poor". No, it was the christoislamiacs like the islamic invaders, and the christocolonials that sucked our immense wealth dry.)

Many meme-pedlars also set themselves up as teachers of English, and use their propagandist tracts as educational materials.

The situation has recently become more hopeful with the election of Nambariin Enkhbayar as Prime Minister in July 2000.Â According the the Buddhist magazine Tricycle (Winter 2000 edition, page 17)Â Mr Enkhbayar is a devout Buddhist.Â Â While pledging to continue to uphold religious tolerance and democracy, he is also very keen to support and strengthen his country's traditional cultures.

Mr Enkhbayar is a former Marxist, who first became interested in Buddhism when subjected to anti-Buddhist indoctrination by his Soviet Communist 'educators'. He converted to Buddhism and created a cross-party Buddhist forum within the Mongolian parliament. He has also represented the Buddhist faith at the World Faiths and Development Dialogues in London.

Just like islamic jihad, christoterrorism and communazism (which Romilla Thapar and other Indian history rewriters adhere to) has long been trying to kill Buddhism all over Asia.
Their lies to whitewash history fool no one - except the compulsive liars who have 'faith'. Need to remember that murderers always try to frame others for their crimes in order to get away scott-free and mingle once again in society. Christoislamicommunazism is that murderer:
- that is why it needs dawaganda (history-writing, sob-stories of persecution).
- that is why it has no sense of guilt or remorse, let alone feeling the need to own up to the genocides and religio-cultural destructions that it commits.

09-13-2008, 08:54 PM

Thanks all for all the info you've given me.

Regarding the post about Buddhism in Bangladesh, We know that at the time of independance the Chittagong Hill Tracts were predominantly Buddhists.

If the demographics are still in favour of the Buddhists, we should work to detach that piece from Bangladesh.

This tract of land could be invaluable to India because it will provide access to the Indian Ocean, which in turn could boost trade, and increase our ability to shore up our army in the NE.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 09-13-2008, 09:51 PM by Husky.)

QUOTE(thayilv @ Sep 13 2008, 08:54 PM)This tract of land could be invaluable to India because it will provide access to the Indian Ocean, which in turn could boost trade, and increase our ability to shore up our army in the NE.
[right][snapback]87955[/snapback][/right]And it would be even more invaluable if we could keep the Dharmic population safe and intact in their CHT, instead of allowing more of our kind (Dharmics) to be tormented by terrorism and reduced to extinction.

Bodhi · 10-13-2008, 08:09 PM

Woman performs sati in Chhattisgarh 
Sunday, 12 October , 2008, 15:00

Raipur: A 71-year-old woman in a Chhattisgarh village jumped on her husband's funeral pyre and committed suicide, creating a sensation as hundreds thronged to view the place of the alleged 'sati', a banned Hindu custom, police said on Sunday. The incident took place late on Saturday evening in Chechar village, in the interiors of Raipur district, some 125 km from Raipur.

Police were informed about the alleged 'sati' late on Saturday night and filed a First Information Report on Sunday after visiting the spot. "Lalmati Verma, 71, who belonged to Chechar village, jumped on her husband's funeral pyre after all the villagers had left the site," police said.

Lalmati had come for the funeral of her husband Shivnandan Verma, 80, dressed in a new sari. The villagers had decided to leave when the body of her husband was almost burnt, but his wife jumped on the pyre. She was reduced to ashes soon," Police added.

He refused to say whether she was provoked by anyone in her family or villagers to commit the act. Her husband had died of natural causes. The woman belonged to the Kurmi caste, categorized under the Other Backward Classes (OBC). Police said: "The woman had three sons but was living separately with her husband in a corner of an old house. Her sons had no idea of their mother's plan, according to preliminary police investigations."

The incident has created a sensation in the farmer-dominated village, which has a population of about 1,000. A majority of the people thronged the site, some 20 km from the village, where Lalmati chose to end her life.

http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=14775044

TOI says:

QUOTERAIPUR: In a shocking throwback to medieval times, an elderly woman committed 'sati' by jumping into her 80-year-old husband's funeral pyre at Checher in Kasdol block of Chhattisgarh's Raipur district late on Saturday evening.

Police cordoned off the area after a large number of people gathered on the spot to offer prayers to 'sati mata'. People from nearby villages kept arriving at the crematorium throughout the day on Sunday.

Lalmati Verma, 75, killed herself after mourners had left the cremation site. Raipur (rural) ASP Prashant Thakur confirmed the incident. "Disturbed by her husband Shivnandan Verma's death, Lalmati had expressed desire to commit 'sati', but her family didn't take it seriously," he said.

The family said after lighting the pyre, the mourners went for a bath as per a local custom and when they returned Lalmati was missing. "As the family didn't find Lalmati home when they returned, they rushed to the cremation ground where they found her burning in the pyre," Thakur said.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/R...how/3587874.cms

Bharatvarsh · (This post was last modified: 10-14-2008, 03:18 AM by Bharatvarsh.)

"In a shocking throwback to medieval times"

Ya but its not medieval to clip off little kids dicks without their consent apparently.

Or how about animal slaughter by the brutally painful "halal" way, i guess thats fully "modern".

I am against anything by force, in that case its murder but anyone who wants to committ suicide or voluntarily give up their own life, there should be no gov't interference in that case.

At least in this case she made the choice (unless she was forced into it which then becomes murder) but what choice does the kid have?

Apparently many "feminists" think its ok to abort fetuses with the arguement that its a womans body and she should be free to do whatever she wants to do. But this logic breaksdown when its female fetuses being aborted selectively (then they want a ban on sex selective abortion) or when its prostitution (they don't want other women to sell their own body) or sati (which becomes medieval and the "civilized" crowds burden).

If you want to be "liberal" then go the whole distance (though in this case the self proclaimed "liberal" position of many is an infringement on others rights), this is why I can't stand the vast majority of hypocrites in India who go under the "liberal" label. I have more respect for a total libertarian who thinks the gov't should have the most minimal interference in peoples lives than these two faced hypocrites in the Indian media and the elite circles.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 10-14-2008, 06:15 PM by Husky.)

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Oct 14 2008, 02:58 AM)"In a shocking throwback to medieval times"[right][snapback]89120[/snapback][/right]"Medieval times" does not merely refer to a specific period in time but also denotes a specific place: christoEurope. In christo Europe the christos burnt their women in medieval times.
So what "throwback to medieval times" are they talking about here? <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /> How in the universe is there any relation with the instance of a Hindu woman in Bharatam committing sati (=voluntary death by fire). A world of difference between the two. Only cryptos would make it their express point to not 'notice' the ravine of unrelatedness separating the two situations.

http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2d.htm
QUOTEIn the name of Christ, Christian potentates sat with their women and children and watched helpless Christians burn.
Great vicars of Christ sat and gloated while Christians bound to stakes shrieked amid slow flames purposely kept at a distance.
They screamed as their flesh seared and crackled: "In the name of the sweet Jesus whom I worship, bring the fire closer". But their appeals were mocked. Not once, not twice, but tens of thousands of times.
-- Why I Quit Going To Church, historian Rupert HughesQUOTEMost victims pleaded for death sooner or later, but pious ones were further tormented by visions of the hellfire that awaited them, dying with lies on their lips. A housewife named Rebecca Lemp sent letters from prison to her husband and six children, showing radical alterations in her attitude before and after torture. At first she was confident:

Â Â My dearly beloved Husband, be not troubled. Were I to be charged by thousands of accusations, I am innocent, else may all the demons in hell come and tear me to pieces. Were they to pulverize me, cut me in a thousand pieces, I could not confess anything. Therefore do not be alarmed; before my conscience and before my soul I am innocent. Will I be tortured-I don't believe it, since I am not guilty of anything.

After she had been tortured five times, and had confessed every enormity her tormentors suggested to her, Rebecca wrote again to her husband:

Â Â O thou, the chosen of my heart, must I be parted from thee, though entirely innocent? If so, may God be followed throughout eternity by my reproaches. They force one and make one confess; they have so tortured me. ... Husband, send me something that I may die, or I must expire under the torture. ... Send me something, else may I peril even my soul.

-- The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara WalkerQUOTETorture
Although being burnt to death certainly is a form of torture, it was not long before other methods were applied.
Â Â <div class='quotetop'>QUOTEThe power of the Inquisition was established and enlarged by a series of papal bulls. [Link] http://www.quest.za.net/pages/readonline...er8EB.htmlQUOTEIn 1245, the Pope gave Inquisitors the right to absolve their assistants of any acts of violence which they might commit in the fulfillment of their duties.

Â Â Following church traditions, Inquisitor Franciso Pena declared in 1578 that:

Â Â Â Â We must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others.

Link http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/chri...inquisition.htmIn 1252, Pope Innocent IV sanctioned the use of torture in the extraction of confessions of heresy during the Inquisition by issuing the bull Ad extirpanda "to be exterminated". This ordered all secular rulers to arrest and execute non-Catholic Christians. (Of course, Protestantism did not yet exist at this time, only other "heresies".)

QUOTE"When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podesta or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them."
Â Â -- Papal bull, Ad extirpanda
QUOTETorture of suspects was authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252, and thus inquisition chambers were turned into places of abject horror.
Â Â ...Torture was not finally removed as a legal option for church officials until 1917 when the Codex Juris Canonici was put into effect.Link http://atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/chri...inquisition.htm</div>
QUOTEThe inquisitors, gorged with their inhumanity, developed a degree of callousness rarely rivalled in the annals of civilisation.
Many of the inquisitors were sadists. Many were libidinous monsters. They took such women as they wanted, on trumped-up charges of heresy, and kept them for the rest of their days as mistresses.
-- The History of Torture, by George Ryley Scott
QUOTEThus, when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808, the French found that the Inquisition there was still in full swing:
Â Â When the French troops captured the city of Aragon (Spain), Lieutenant-General M de Legal ordered the doors of the Inquisition to be opened, and the prisoners, numbering some 400, to be released.
Â Â Among these were 60 beautiful young women who appeared to form a seraglio for the three principal inquisitors.
Â Â -- The History of Torture, by George Ryley ScottNow tell me, why are my sensibilities supposed to be shocked/offended when an elderly Hindu woman - possibly out of love for husband and her ancestors, following her old way of life and perhaps even with a personal sense of duty - chooses to burn herself on her husband's pyre? How would that bother me?
Besides, people could have NO sensibilities left to shock after a cursory glance over European history when it was under the absolute grip of christoism (next post).

Husky · (This post was last modified: 10-16-2008, 05:07 PM by Husky.)

Continued from previous.

Still from http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2d.htm#FutureInquisition
QUOTECatholics and Protestants

Â Â There were late-Renaissance witch-hunts in Protestant countries, which had no formal connection with the Inquisition but certainly took their impetus from it.

Â Â The chronicler of TrÃ¨ves (an electoral state of the Holy Roman Empire, also included the jurisdiction of neighbouring Lorraine, France, and Luxembourg) reported that in the year 1586, the entire female population of two villages was wiped out by the inquisitors, except for only two women left alive. Two other villages were destroyed and erased from the map. A hundred and thirty-three persons were burned in a single day at Quedlinburg, Germany, in 1589, out of a town of 12,000. Henri Boguet said Germany in 1590 was "almost entirely occupied with building fires (for witches); and Switzerland has been compelled to wipe-out many of her villages on their account. Travellers in Lorraine may see thousands and thousands of the stakes to which witches are bound."

Â Â In 1524, one thousand witches died at Como, Italy. Strasbourg, France, burned five thousand in a period of 20 years. The Senate of Savoy, a duchy lying between Italy and France, condemned 800 witches at one time. One writer of the times stated that over thirty thousand were executed in the 15th century. Nicholas Remy (1530?-1612), wrote that he personally sentenced 900 witches in 15 years and in one year alone forced sixteen witches to suicide. A Bishop claimed 600 witches in 10 years; a bishop of Nancy, France, claimed 800 lives in 16 years; a bishop of WÃ¼rzburg, Germany, claimed over 1900 in 5 years. Five hundred were executed within three months at Geneva, Switzerland, and 400 were executed in a single day at Toulouse, France. The city of TrÃ¨ves burned 7,000 witches. The Lutheran prelate Benedict Carpzov (1595-1666), who claimed to have read the Bible 53 times, sentenced 20,000 devil-worshippers to death. Even relatively permissive England killed 30,000 witches between 1542 and 1736. The slaughter went on throughout Europe for nearly five centuries.
Â Â Mass burnings on the Iberian Peninsula were known as autos-de-fÃ©; acts of faith. They were held once a month on the average, usually on a Sunday or holiday so all could attend; to stay away was thought suspicious. Sometimes the spectators were invited to participate, as in the diversion genially known as "shaving the new Christians." This meant setting fire to the hair or beards of those waiting their turn at the stake. Wholesale burnings in Germany are suggested by the observation of a visitor to the town of Wolfenbuttel, Germany, in 1590: there were so many stakes to burn the witches that the place of execution resembled a small forest. The executioner of Neisse in Silesia (Central Europe) invented an oven in which he roasted to death forty-two women and young girls in one year. Within nine years he had roasted over a thousand persons, including children two to four years old.

Link http://www.quest.za.net/pages/readonline...er8EB.htmlAnd people wonder 'how in the world the christonazis could burn Jews, Roma and Serbs including children in ovens...' The hypocrisy! The whole of christian history is riddled with christians committing these kinds of inhuman massacres - against Jews and other inconvertibles and against their own ('heretics'). The christonazis were merely being the faithful christians of the first half of the 20th century.
This sort of thing is what christians are *good* at: torture and genocide across all continents. It's christianism's "cultural bequest" to mankind.

DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING 2 QUOTEBLOCKS if you value your sanity (but the McCabe quoteblock at the end of this post can be read without losing one's composure). IF can point any future christoterrorist trolls to these:

The Catholic terrorism that preceded the blockquote above:
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2d.htm again
QUOTEBesides having issued the witchcraft bull, Pope Innocent VIII also launched a sustained and brutal attack on the heretical sect of Waldensians:

"In one village they cruelly tormented 150 women and children, after the men were fled; beheading the women, and dashed out the brains of the children.

Â Â In the towns of Villaro and Bobio, most of those that refused to go to mass, who were over fifteen years of age, they crucified with their heads downwards; and the great number of those under that age were strangled.

Â Â Mutilations of every possible form preceded the coup de grace; in many cases, no final blow was given, the maimed victims being left to die of starvation or bleed to death.

Â Â Isaiah Garcino was literally minced; Mary Raymondet had the flesh sliced from her bones piece by piece until she died in frightful agony.

Â Â Giovanni Pelanchion was tied by one leg to the tail of a mule and dragged through the streets of Lucerne, the mob pelting at his body with stones.

Â Â Ann Charbonierre was transfixed upon a stake and left to die slowly.

Â Â Others were suspended from trees and beams with iron hooks piercing their abdomens.

Â Â Holes were bored in Bartholomew Frasche's heels, ropes were passed through the open wounds, and in this way he was dragged to the dungeon where he died.

Â Â A favourite torture was to place small bags of gunpowder in the mouths of the victims and then set fire to them.

Â Â Daniel Rambaut had his fingers and toes amputated in sections, one joint being cut off each day, in an effort to induce him to embrace the Roman faith.

Â Â Burning at the stake, drowning and suffocation were common methods of execution.

Â Â Sara Rastignole des Vignes, for refusing to repeat Jesus Maria, had a sickle thrust into the lower part of her abdomen.
Â Â Another young woman, Martha Constantine, was raped then killed by cutting off her breasts ..."
Â Â -- The History of Torture, by George Ryley Scott
QUOTESome of the cruelties inflicted on victims of the Third Inquisition under Pope Paul III:

"Â Â A Protestant schoolmaster, Ferdmando, for teaching the principles of his faith to his pupils, was first tortured and then burnt.

Â Â Another Protestant, named John Leon, and some Spaniards of the same faith, on endeavouring to escape to England, were captured by agents of the Inquisition, tortured, starved, and finally burnt.

Â Â For refusing to take the veil and turn nun, a young lady was condemned to the flames.

Â Â Christopher Losada, an eminent physician of his day, for professing the tenets of Protestantism, was racked and burnt.

Â Â A monk of the monastery of St Isidore, Seville, who turned Protestant, was tortured and burnt.

Â Â A Protestant writing master of Toledo, who had decorated the walls of a room in his house with a reproduction of the ten commandments in full, in his own handwriting, was burnt at the stake at Valladolid.

Â Â [Tomas de Leon, was racked] until his left arm was broken.

Â Â Another victim, Engracia Rodriguez, at sixty years of age, had one arm broken and a toe torn off in a device called a balestilla.

Â Â Maria de Coceicao, a young lady from Lisbon, was racked three times before being publicly whipped and banished from her town.

Â Â Antonia Lopez of Valladolid, was tortured for three hours until his arm was completely crippled. [Antonia] tried to commit suicide by strangling himself and died in prison within a month.
Â Â [The Seville noblewoman, Jane Bohorquia, was arrested and imprisoned] for conversing with a friend about the Protestant religion.
Â Â ...She was pregnant at the time, but immediately after the birth of the child, and while still in a lamentably weak state, she was racked with such severity that the flesh was cut through to the very bones and blood gushed from her mouth.
Â Â [She died a week later.]
Â Â "Jane Bohorquia was found dead in prison," said the official Inquisition report, after which, upon reviewing her prosecution, the Inquisition discovered that she was innocent. "Be it therefore known, that no further prosecutions shall be carried on against her, and that her effects, which were confiscated, shall be given to her heirs at law."
Â Â [The heirs at law, according to Pope Innocent III's Corpus juris, were the Church's own treasurers.]"
Â Â -- History of Torture, by George Ryley Scott

http://freetruth.50webs.org/A2d.htm#FutureInquisition
Joseph McCabe - who used to be a Franciscan monk (IIRC "Father Anthony" was his name in that position) before his deconversion - knows the holy church more intimately than Hindus, so no point arguing with him on this:
QUOTEÂ Â ...about the end of the last century, when the new generation of apologists were busy with their glosses on the past and their pretty appeals for universal tolerance, a new manual of Church Law, specially authorized by [Pope] Leo XIII, written by a Papal professor, printed in a Papal press, was published. It was in Latin; and probably few Catholics in America will fail to be astonished to learn that the author states, and proves at great length, that the Church claims and has "the right of the sword" over heretics, and only the perversity of our age prevents it from exercising that right!
Â Â More recent manuals of Church Law have the same beautiful thesis. It is today the law of the Roman Church. Remember it when you read these subtle Jesuits and eloquent Paulists and unctuous bishops on the "blunders" of the past and the right and duty of toleration today, The Inquisition (the Holy Office) exists. The law exists. And you and I may thank this age of skepticism that we keep our blood in our veins.
Â Â -- The Story Of Religious Controversy, by Joseph McCabe

dhu · (This post was last modified: 10-14-2008, 11:38 PM by dhu.)

Ban against Suicide is a monotheist moral product. Same was implemented against Japanese hara kiri in the post war era. In fact, there is a famous japanese author who committed hara kiri as an act of protest against the banishment and relegation of japanese culture by the west.

~~Pandyan~~ · 10-15-2008, 12:37 AM

Yes, his name was Yukio Mishima.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukio_Mishi...al_suicide

Husky · (This post was last modified: 10-17-2008, 03:10 AM by Husky.)

QUOTEWoman performs sati in ChhattisgarhQUOTEthere is a famous japanese author who committed hara kiri as an act of protest against the banishment and relegation of japanese culture by the west.I for one am glad that there were and still are heathens who refuse to be constrained by christo-psecular manipulations and continue to do their thing despite the terrorists' opposition.
Christoislamism is naturally opposed to heathens' suicide because it wants heathens to live in order to murder them - you know, blood sacrifice and all. Otherwise, who can they offer to their non-existent cannibal gawd to feed on? Suicide is unchristian/unislamic, murder is pre-eminently christoislamic (posts 54, 55 ^).

QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Oct 14 2008, 02:58 AM)Apparently many "feminists" think its ok to abort fetuses with the arguement that its a womans body and she should be free to do whatever she wants to do. But this logic breaksdown when its female fetuses being aborted selectively (then they want a ban on sex selective abortion) or when its prostitution (they don't want other women to sell their own body) or sati (which becomes medieval and the "civilized" crowds burden).[right][snapback]89120[/snapback][/right]I've not followed fembots' Opinion (not my fault: until recently, every time I've come across feminist vocalisations, my mind just went vacant <- a nice feeling BTW, everyone should try it).

Everyone has their own views on abortion, prostitution and the rest.
I've always been of the opinion that abortion should be lawful. Mainly because
1. it is medically or otherwise necessary in some cases, and because
2. shady back alley/black market tactics can be lethal and - since people are going to do it anyway - the govt may as well make sure there aren't any messy complications.
Though I wouldn't want to encourage abortion to become a lighthearted decision or for it to therefore be engaged in wantonly, I can certainly see how it may be considered necessary in some situations and for that reason the law should allow for it and therefore such laws have my support.

As for male/female prostitution, I'm not going to talk about the economics of it ("supply/demand") - I was never good at economics.

If rich socialites in India or wherever find the profession to be their thing - I couldn't care less what they get their kicks out of. Especially not when their clientele is in another country.

Where I'm staying, according to a current-events show, female prostitution can pay up to 5000 in local currency a month or was it a week even (in some major cities). Either way, that's a lot of change. Some think it worth the risk/discomfort/shady people they have to deal with. People can make up their own minds, since in this case it's a matter of their choosing after all.
While the fembot reason ("don't want other women to sell their own body") can't interest anyone, what bothers me is that there is a vast population of women in the business who actually would have liked to have had a choice. But life just wasn't that kind to them. Two documentaries I watched some years back come to mind, either both were on Vietnam or one was on Thailand. One of them was on methods for spreading AIDS awareness among prostitutes (in Vietnam I think). I don't know at which point I'll be conflating the two documentaries - it's been a while since I saw either and they've merged a lot in my mind:
They interviewed a lot of women as a group, trying to teach them ways of persuading their sleazy customers (often the alien tourist variety) to use condoms. As afraid as these young women were of AIDS, they'd found the paying characters rather too reluctant to do the humane thing and were afraid of losing out on the opportunity to make their wages if they insisted on precautions. What was so sad was that some of them were supporting their Bauddha families consisting of old grandparents and younger siblings, either because their parents were dead or because the parents weren't earning anywhere near enough to keep the family afloat. I remember that at least one goodytwoshoes young woman hadn't been able to tell her grandparents exactly what she did for a living to make the money that kept the household going and paid their medical bills.

None of those interviewed wanted to be in this. When the women were asked whether they'd rather be married, they giggled and some admitted to still having dreams. :half-smile In any case, they deserve a wonderful future. They were wonderful, beautiful, very kind-hearted. They ought to marry Vietnam's/Thailand's many handsome kind men and have many Bauddha children. There should be more people like them. But what can ya do. Nothing makes sense. While I daily get what I want, better people seem to have pulled the short straw in life. It's an inverted world.

What one would *like*, is for such people - who don't choose to be in the business but are reduced to it by unfortunate circumstance - to be spared economic desperation and have the opportunity to lead the lives they want. Am not against prostitution, and not against poor people trying to make ends meet in the few ways available to them, but I think the way to change their lot is for more opportunities in education and a better overall employment situation. That way they have many avenues open to them and won't have to be in something they don't really want to be in. And then, only the twatty rich socialites such as Zebedee would be left in this profession of their choice, either dealing with the sort of losers who can't otherwise get anyone or having to do with adulterers who apparently have *really* low standards of infidelity. Either way, it's people asking or paying money for something that ought to be free <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' /> But then - like I said - I was never good at economics.

Bodhi · (This post was last modified: 03-02-2009, 06:39 PM by Bodhi.)

Husky, excellent! thanks for the translation -- very useful contribution!

some suggestions:

"State Prime Minister" -> Chief Minister
"Girilal Jain, who passed away in 1933" -> 1993
Pls consider consolidating your insertions as consolidated footnotes, and give anchors in main text.
==

Two words in current political agitation tools in India derive their origins from old traditions. Few people stop to notice their etymological and conceptual origins:

Hartaal (strike): comes from hara-tAlikA, the name of the stage-by-stage process of extreme agitation undertaken by umA that forced the supreme ascetic to marry her.

anshan (hunger strike): anashana refers to that stage of the systematic process of extreme upavAsa/prAyashchita-vidhAna, when its user stops all eating.

Husky · (This post was last modified: 03-11-2009, 03:05 PM by Husky.)

Sorry, had meant to cross-post the following into another thread, not shift it <img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='blink.gif' />

The following makes serious use of these posts.

Sati and other suicide
by Dr. Koenraad Elst
Original: "Sati en andere zelfdoding"

(In the September 2000 issue of Hinduism Today the meritorious journalist and leading feminist Madhu Kishwar criticizes the law that prohibits the religious glorification of widow self-immolation or Sati. According to her, this is an encroachment on freedom of religion that prepares the way for other forms of limiting freedom. On account of her opinion-piece I have unearthed the text below from my work, which appeared in India, the paper of the Belgian-Indian friendship-society Shanti Darshan, in 1994. The article in the version presented has been completed on Makar Sankranti day 14 January 1995, the 25th anniversary of Jan Pallach's suicide in Prague. A few new additions are italicised. Apologies for the messy transcription.)

Today there is much talk of multi-cultural co-existence. It remains to be seen whether people are ready for that. Because another culture, that is not so much another way of eating or dressing, but another system of fundamental values, another stance on the fundamental parameters of life, e.g. on individual liberty, of the womanâs status, of death. When we are confronted with another stance on death, then the xenophobic reflexes of non-understanding and judgement immediately rear their heads.

An excellent example is what has already recently been written about Sati, the self-immolation of widows on the pyres of their husbands. Now here is a custom that is really alien to our culture. Whoever wants multi-culturalism shall therefore welcome this and wave away all foolish prejudices against it. Isnât it so?

The central prejudice in this case is that only a few in the Western culture-sphere are prepared to believe that this deed is voluntary. On the contrary, people want to desperately reduce this practice to something that is better-known in our cultural pattern: murder.

Do note, âWestern culture-sphereâ does not so much refer to the geographical West. The English-speaking elite in India is far more fanatical in her hostility toward and determined incomprehension for the traditional Indian culture than the British ever were. The student is after all more fanatical than the master. Nowadays one can defend all possible colonial prejudices in a very learned manner using modern Indian sources as authority for argument.

The case of Rup Kanwar

A good example are the reports about the last sensational Sati, the self-immolation of Rup Kanwar in Deorala, Rajasthan, in 1987. The English-language paper India Today stated that hundreds of bystanders had seen how Rup Kanwar worthily fulfilled her rituals, climbed the pyre and, singing, underwent the death-by-fire. This hundred-fold testimony was unfortunate for a newspaper that crusades against the âobscurantismâ of âhuman dishonouringâ practices like Sati which, after all, cannot possibly be anything other than a disguised form of murder. What does the paper of the modern Indian, that chooses empirical observance over blind belief, do with an unwelcome hundredfold empirical testimony? This: âThey probably saw what they wanted to see.â Okay, there was a unanimous testimony from hundreds of eyewitnesses, but that doesnât count, because those backward villagers âprobably saw what they wanted to seeâ.

Not only does this clincher show the boundless contempt of the urban westernised Indian for the turbanned villagers of Deorala. It especially proves the prejudiced character of the âSati is murderâ message that the English-language press would like to give its readers in connection with Rup Kanwarâs self-immolation.

The newspapers, to their own dissatisfaction, had to report that the surroundings of Rup Kanwar confirmed that she had acted of her own accord, against the village elders' attempts at dissuading. However, the papers continued undiminished with inventing alternate scenarios. That the in-laws would have been bothered by the fact that the dowry had been chased away by it, whereas the dowry to Rup Kanwarâs family had to be paid back because Rup and her husband didnât have any children yet: thatâs why they would have forced her to the Sati. That [scenario] would then be a variant on the dowry murders which rather occur quite often in precisely the westernised environments.

Dowry Murders

At this point, let us make a clear distinction between the self-immolation of widows, and the kitchen fires that are often orchestrated (thousands a year, in India as well as in Pakistan) to murder brides if the dowry (dahej) that they bring along is less than expected or demanded. Traditionally, a dowry was a gift of personal items, especially jewels, given to the bride: while her brothers remained in the parental home and took over the family business or family lands, the bride got to take her share in the inheritance with her in the form of shiny movable goods. In any case, it was not a gift of the brideâs family to the bridegroom and his family, whereas such is indeed the case in less traditional circles today.

This practice only originated in the 13th century, and then only among the martial Rajput caste (coincidentally the same where, since ages prior to it, Sati also occurs the most). Among other castes it never involved more than a nominal gift, and it is only in the 19th century that the dahej has taken on scandalous proportions and become a real social problem, starting with the most anglicised environments, such as the Parsees and the Sindhi Banias (merchants). The first dowry victims that made it into the newspapers were young girls who committed suicide to safeguard their fathers from the impending dowry-bankruptcy.

Nowadays, the giving of enormous presents to the groomâs family is a rather common custom, which finds entry even in the lowest classes and which reduces families with many daughters to beggary. Particularly in modern households, marriage is the golden occasion for a young man is the golden occasion to reel in all kinds of luxurious goods in one go. Which is why it is there [in such households] that the dowry has started becoming a reason for bride-murder. To suppose that bride-murder is an evil of the traditional society that "still continues" to occur often, is completely wrong. On the contrary, it is a typical example of how an innocent custom of the native people has become a poison through contact with our consumer-culture.

Rup Kanwar: what we donât know

The allegation that Rup Kanwar would supposedly have been forced into Sati has remained unproven. The journalists who with fanfare had asserted that they had seen through the conspiracy and had found witnesses for the murder-scenario, were absent at the trial or appeared emptyhanded.

This, in spite of the fact that (as Mark Tully observes in the Sati chapter of his impressive book No Full Stops in India) the police could most definitely have put pressure on the villagers to testify for the (Sati-demonising) sentence that the government wished for. Which is why the in-laws, who were summoned to the judge by the government, were acquittedâa sentence against which the government has given a notice of appeal of which nothing further has been heard.

Still, those that had maintained their belief in the murder-scenario might have been right. Firstly, there were witnesses that declared that Rup Kanwar changed her mind once the flames soaked her body and wanted to jump off the pyre, but was pushed back onto it. But perhaps they too saw âonly what they wanted to seeâ? Besides, the occurrence of panic while carrying out a difficult decision would still not alter the voluntary nature of that decision. Secondly, it was asserted that Rup Kanwar was visibly drugged when she climbed onto the pyre. This claim was unverifiable due to the nature of the case. But the fact that the cremation, according to some, had taken place uncommonly soon (however: a cremation always takes place before the first following sunset), and that Rup Kanwarâs parents were not timely informed, threw even more suspicion on the in-laws. On the other hand, Rup Kanwarâs father has declared to be certain that his daughter acted entirely voluntarily. He has even appeared with Rupâs father-in-law in several public forums in India to testify about this. That does not prevent the English-speaking press from systematically referring to the case as âthe murder of Rup Kanwarâ.

From this distance we do not want to judge the true facts of the Rup Kanwar case. Most people in Deorala, and most Rajputs, have steadily remained believing in the authenticity of this Sati and in the innocence of Rup Kanwarâs in-laws. The anti-Sati expressions due to the press, the government and some judges are discarded by them as a smear-campaign by prejudiced city-dwellers who do not wish to understand anything of the heroic Rajput-code.

Irrespective of the true facts of Rup Kanwarâs Sati, it must be said that the suspicion of prejudice among the westernised circles is completely correct. Because in both cases, murder or voluntary suicide, the English-speaking elite in India will nevertheless maintain that it could only have been murder. With this it sinks its own credibility. Its potentially correct diagnosis that Rup Kanwar was murdered, was sincerely rejected by many (among others in the Hindi and Marathi press) because the action-committees, politicians and members of the press involved declared with that same absolute certainty that Sati is always and by definition involuntaryâand that is manifestly untrue. If they had restricted themselves to the facts of this case, then they might have been able to convince; now that they wanted to couple this with a general (and as we shall see, untenable) dogma, their judgement of this one case was seen in the light of their general position, and thus rejected.

The anti-Sati law

The self-immolation of Rup Kanwar was the cause of the new anti-Sati measures on the part of politics. Even in 1987, the Parliament adopted the âCommission of Sati (Prevention) Billâ. This draconian law deals out the death penalty or life imprisonment to whoever aids a Sati in one way or another. This includes: talking a woman into believing that Sati is of any merit or has any heavenly reward, preventing her from withdrawing from the Sati or hindering her rescue, taking part in the procession that brings the woman to the pyre or to even be present in any capacity at the Sati or its related ceremony. In case an action is brought out against this, the burden of proof lies with the accused. The woman who attempts Sati can herself get a prison sentence for up to one year, depending on the degree to which it was voluntary, and taking into consideration all the social and psychological factors.
In addition, this law forbids and punishes all practices that could be considered as âglorification of Satiâ. Ceremonies for remembrance of a Sati and the building of Sati temples are forbidden, and the government is even authorised to break down existing Sati temples. The tens of existing Sati temples in Rajasthan quickly converted themselves into âShakti templesâ (shakti is the female force, and is a relatively applicable term, because Sati is seen as a great display of this specific female force). Still, their popularity and the income from them have been heavily curtailed.

This law has not provoked a storm of protest: few will want to put out their necks for something as controversial as the right to commit or commemorate Sati. Still, the law could be annulled, because it has been challenged at the Supreme Court as unconstitutional.

An oft-heard objection concerns the prohibition of religious ceremonies and temple construction and the threat of breaking temples down: this would be an apparent desecration of religious freedom. The constitution does say that the practice of religious freedom can be limited by considerations of morality, hygiene and public order. But it is an apparent absurdity that mausoleums of massmurderers like Aurangzeb and traitors like Muinuddin Chishti (who functioned as a spy for Mohammed Ghori) can still operate as places of pilgrimage, whereas temples for the âloyal suicidesâ of Sati women should be forbidden. If people fear that the glorification of these women shall lead to unwanted imitation, then what about for example the glorification of monsters like Stalin and Mao in countless publications of the communist party?

We can find other objections in the most important challenge (without outcome) to this law at the Supreme Court, the one by Jivan Kulkarni, a historian from Bombay [and a veteran of the war against China in 1962; in the meantime deceased, from cancer]. He says that he too is against the self-immolation of widows, but that the law implies a whole lot more than the discouraging of Sati. His position is that, firstly, the law in its terminology assumes that Sati is âthe burning of a widowâ, not a self-immolation but a burning carried out by others, i.e. a murder. Well, neither the written mentions of Sati, nor the eyewitness accounts drawn up by unbiased witnesses in tempore non suspecto ['in times above suspicion'] (especially British colonials), leave any doubt that in principle and usually also in practice itâs about voluntary self-immolation.

Secondly, seen as how the ban on Sati by the British was established in 1829 not as a ban on a particular form of murder (superfluous, because of its inclusion in the general ban on murder), but as a ban on suicide, namely from the christian taboo on suicide, itâs a violation of religious freedom, in the sense that suicide counts as an accepted and frequently as a particularly honourable practice in Indian traditions.

Origin

People sometimes say that widow-burning was brought into India in a later migration from Central Asia, that of the Shakas or Scythians, in the middle or end of the first millenium B.C.E. These Scythian tribes are then supposed to have been the ancestors of the martial Rajput caste in Rajasthan, the caste to which Rup Kanwar and the most famous Satis belonged. This to me seems to be an attempt to push away from oneself a difficult to defend custom. Of the Scythians, it is indeed known that they sent widows to their death with their husband, as well as servants and horses with their master â whether burnt with them or buried with them. From archaeological excavations in Southern Russia it appears that widows were already climbing the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands in the fourth millennium before our chronology, in the so-called Kurgan-culture, an apparantly proto-Scythian and definitely Indo-European culture.

[The connection with India should however not be sought in the Scythian invasion of the 1st century B.C.E., but in the much older common Indo-European roots, because the custom also occurred among the Celtic and Germanic people. So we hear in the Edda, in the book Sigurdarkvida, that Brunhilde stabs herself after the death of Siegfried in order to be buried with him; in addition she first has her slaves killed and she also invites free servants to voluntarily die with her. So she doesnât climb the funeral pyre, but nevertheless follows her husband into death. Also among the Celts did this custom occur in large scale. Great power and wisdom are ascribed to a woman about to commit Sati, which is why for e.g. Brunhilde predicts the future at the last moment for next of kin.

Bernard Sergent (Les Indo-EuropÃ©ens, Payot, 1995, p.223), observes a connection between Sati and the status of a woman. In spite of feminist claims that this custom once again proves the male contempt for woman, it in fact occurred the least in those Indo-European societies where the woman was most disparaged in both practice as well as mythology, like the Greek [society]. A woman who does not have much honour to maintain, wonât accompany one to the pyre; itâs precisely the proud and relatively emancipated Celtic and Germanic women who did this.]

See quoteblock at end concerning the above

In India, besides the Rajputs, the martial Marathas and Sikhs also knew this custom, though to a lesser extent. Other castes did not know this practice at all or specifically disapproved of it, in particular the Brahmanas (although they too practised Sati in British Bengal, in particular after the modernisation of the law of succession). In most duty-prescribing books (400 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.?), Manu and Yajnavalkya among others, there is no mention of widow-burning at all. Only the Vishnu Dharmashastra gives the widow the choice between celibacy and self-immolation.

Suicide, not murder

That in principle itâs about self-immolation and not murder is apparent from many British testimonies. For that matter, these are in agreement that this practice only occurred among a few higher castes. They keep stressing that those present continually tried to make the woman give up on her resolve, and that there wasnât a single stigma associated with forsaking this resolution, unless it only happened after the ceremony had started (which might perhaps have been the case with Rup Kanwar).

In Bengal at the start of the 19th century, several cases have been mentioned where the Sati was under pressure by the in-laws. A part of the cause was the British reforms of the law of succession, which suddenly made it worthwhile for the in-laws to not be left with a surviving daughter-in-law. This was therefore an aberration, partly induced by colonisation, of the general practice where Sati was completely voluntary. For that matter, itâs significant that such women did not become the object of worship, as opposed to the many non-suspect Sati women in Rajasthan.

The mentions of Sati in mythological, judicial and historical texts of the Hindus are without exception concerned with voluntary self-immolation. The name actually cames from Sati, the beloved of Shiva, who sets herself on fire in protest against the unjust treatment of her lover by her father; this story therefore has noting to do with widow-burning. It is quite possible that this might be a later-constructed myth to explain the name, and that the practice of Sati is much older. Sati actually means âgoodâ or âloyal [woman]â, from sat/sant, âtrue, goodâ. The most famous mention is that of Madri, the favourite wife of Pandu, the father of the five Pandavas from the Mahabharata epic: she climbed Panduâs pyre, while the other wife, Kunti, declined the honour. The Greek author Diodorus Siculus tells of how in 316 B.C.E. the Indian commander of a hired army is killed in action in Iran, upon which his two spouses argue about the privilege of becoming the Sati.

Countless examples are known from the Middle Ages. The Arabian writer Albiruni writes that widows were treated badly and thatâs why they chose self-immolation. Marco Polo, on the other hand, states that they did this âout of love for their husbandâ. A special case is the jauhar, the collective Sati of Rajput women when a city besieged by Muslims no longer had a chance to be saved: the men did a desperate sally in order to die heroically, and the women were kept out of the hands of the enemy by the firedeath. Much more recent examples are the voluntary immolation of Shivajiâs wife Putalabai (1680), of Madhavarao Peshwaâs wife Ramabai, and of the wives of Ranjit Singh, Maharaja of the Sikh realm, in 1839.

Of more import for the biased westerner is rather, that also the unsuspectable British shared the opinion that the widows involved carried out their Sati voluntarily. Before the British rule banned this practice in 1829 on Lord Bentinckâs initiative, it had a report drawn up with the significant title: âThe Report on Hindu Widows and Voluntary Immolationsâ. H.T. Colebrooke, H.H. Wilson, Jonathan Duncan and other British authorities advised against a legal ban on Sati, because this ritual does not occur under duress/coercion. A few citations from the assessments collected in this report, and also from other British testimonies, deserve to be heard.

Lord Mountstuart Elphinstone wrote in his History of India: âOn occasion it has been said that the relatives encourage the widow to immolate herself to obtain her possessionsâ¦ People can however be sure that the relatives usually beg the widow not go through with it, and to this end also call in the intervention of friends and figures of authority. If she is of high rank, even the monarch will come to console her and to advise her against it.â

Lieutenant-colonel John Briggs in a letter stated: âWhoever has witnessed the self-immolation of Hindu widows, and of their attitude/bearing towards this as I have seen them, will find it hard to free themselves of the idea that these devoted women have reached the highest grade of faith. The justness of the law that robs them of their only religious solaceâ¦ is therefore at the very least doubtful.â When Lord Bentinck in 1829 issued the ban on Sati, it was under rather general opposition from his (British) subordinates.

Lord Holwel, lieutenant-governor of Bengal, wrote: âIf we viewed these women in the correct light, then we would think more openly about them, and admit that they act out of heroic as well as rational and pious principlesâ.

As evidence for the involuntary nature of Sati, people constantly refer to the mention of a forced immolation in F. Bernierâs Travels in the Moghul Empire, a travel report from the pre-colonial time. Pointing to this, professor Prabha Dixit said, short after the self-immolation of Rup Kanwar, that âSati is never a voluntary deedâ and âalways took place under brazen pressureâ. Well, the same Bernier, who stayed in India from 1656 to 1668, writes in the same book: âMostly it was the practice that Sati was carried out voluntarily.â

He mentions several voluntary self-immolations, and gives among others this description: âwhen I left Surat for Persia, I witnessed the devotion and firedeath of another widow. Several English and Dutch [people] were present. The woman was middle-aged and not at all ugly. With my limited ability for expression, I do not expect to convey a complete idea of the brash courage or fear-inducing liveliness on the womanâs countenance, of her sure tread, of her freedom from all disturbance, with which she spoke and let herself be washed, of the look of confidence or rather indifference that she gave us; of her easy air, free of doubt, of her distinguished bearing, without any embarrassment, when she searched her seating place, which consisted of thick dry milletstraw mixed with small wood, and when she went to sit on the pyre, placed the head of her deceased husband on her lap, took a torch, and with her own hands set it on fire from the insideâ¦â

Contemporaries of Bernier, like Nicholas Withington, William Hawkins, Edward Terry and others, have left behind a few more eyewitness accounts, and they confirm that it practically always concerned voluntary self-immolation.

General Sleeman described in his Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official (1844) the self-immolation of the widow of a rich landlord: âI must do the family the justice to say that they all exerted themselves to dissuade the widow from her purpose, and had she lived she would assuredly have been cherished and honoured as the first female member of the whole house. There is no people in the world among whom parents are more loved, honoured, and obeyed than among the Hindoos; and the grandmother is always more honoured than the mother.â

A more recent example: in september 1991 in Adig (western U.P.) a certain Lakshmi, about 35 years old and mother of five, announced that she wanted to follow her lately deceased husband Mangatu Singh on the pyre. Her in-laws prevented this, made the police guard her, and cremated the body of her husband. But a few days after, two policemen who carried out the watch in front of her door, noticed that there was fire in her room. Apparently she had succeeded in smuggling in some inflammatory materials, and had set fire to herself. Her daughter poured water over her and she was brought to the clinical hospital with 70% burn wounds, where she passed away hours later. At her formal cremation days later, the police was required to prevent a revering crowd.

We may conclude that Sati in the great majority of the cases was a voluntary deed. One can only understand Sati if they give up the prejudice that people can only be coerced into self-immolation, and if one comes to see the completely different views on loyalty to marriage and death. Sati is the extreme consequence of the idea that the woman is gifted with a magical power, and of the belief in reincarnation. Hindu women undergo all kinds of ascetisms for the welfare of their husband, or to be together again in another life, e.g. fasting on the eleventh day of both halves of the moon cycle; Sati is the ultimate ascetism. The belief in reincarnation makes of death just a step on a much longer path, and of suicide something much less dramatic than a selfdestruction, [itâs] sooner the discarding of a not-as-yet worn out dress.

In christianism, there existed for a long time the reverence of martyrs. They too were people who voluntarily chose death, e.g. as an alternative to giving up their faith. They too were people who were convinced that with death all was not over, that their self-chosen death was not a complete selfdestruction. The modern abhorrence for practices like Sati comes from the materialistic idea that death is the absolute end, an idea that also explains the modern taboo on death. For any who believes that he is in reality eternal, the view of death changes completely, and there is not that fear and loathing for the end.

Right to suicide

That the British forbade the practice of Sati, was not a measure against murder, but against suicide. As was and is known, suicide is forbidden in christianism; in some countries there was even the death penalty for attempts at suicide. In India however, people have always judged it differently.

In this way, it is well-known that old Jain monks, once they felt their time had come, just refused to feed themselves still, and thus fasted themselves to death. From this tradition Mahatma Gandhi derived his tactic of âfasting unto deathâ to force others to yield. As a matter of fact, heâs never used this tactic against people of whom it was known that they would not yield anyway, like M.A. Jinnah. His political opponent Swatantryavir Savarkar (1883-1966) had nothing but aversion for Gandhiâs âaffectationâ with his dramatic plays of a fast-unto-death that always ended with a glass of fruit juice and acquiescence to Gandhiâs wishes anyway. He thought that such ascetic stunts didnât have a place in politics. But he did recognise the value of the self-chosen death: when he himself was old and ill, he carried out a real fast-unto-death.

After Mahatma Gandhi, the âfast-unto-deathâ as a political pressure device has become greatly trivialised. The most common everyday report in an Indian newspaper is that yet again someone has started a fast-unto-death to force the authorities to do this or that. The inevitable end to such actions within a few days is often not even mentioned: after all, everyone knows that it ends this way. It was out of frustration, due to the slight attention given to their initial âfast-unto-deathâ, that students in 1990 set themselves on fire to add power to their protest against prime minister V.P. Singhâs caste-reservation plan.

A fast-unto-death with a political goal that was actually carried out was that of Potti Sri Ramulu for the formation of a state corresponding to the Telugu language region in 1952. Before Independence, the Congress party had promised to redraw the map of India according to language boundaries, and to give the large language-communities their own linguistically homogeneous state. Prime Minister Nehru however was against this, and the promise remained unfulfilled. Potti Sri Ramulu went on a hunger strike against this. The government ignored him, but he kept going and died. The government could no longer cope against the wave of sympathy with the cause of the hutatma (self-sacrificer), and the state boundaries were redrawn. The Telugu language-group got its own state, Andhra Pradesh (1953). This suicider is still honoured at official occasions and with portraits in official buildings of the Andhra state.

At the death of M.G. Ramachandran, filmstar and Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, about thirty of his fans attempted suicide in a showy and dramatic manner. The ones that did not succeed with their intention received 5000 rupees as support from the state government, the next of kin of those that did succeed received 10,000 rupees: so whoever commits Sati without calling it as such, is rewarded. Such a suicide of followers is in itself not a new occurrence either: at the death of the Sikh Guru Hargovind (17th century) a number of (male) students followed him into death. Jaya Lalitha, the lover of M.G. Ramachandran and now [=1994] Chief Minister herself, declared later that she had been close to committing Sati in order to have died with her great love. Immediately, anti-Sati activists (like Swami Agnivesh, the Hindu equivalent of our âleftist pastorsâ) demanded her arrest on the grounds of a brandnew legislation against the committing or glorification of Sati. Whoever commits Sati informally is rewarded, but whoever does so formally or speaks about it even, would be punished for it.

Another legitimate ground for suicide in the Hindu tradition is quite universal: just like a minister resigns as a consequence of his political responsibility in some scandal or another, in the same way people can take their lives to thus clean up their own guilt in a catastrophic development. In this way, king Jayapala of Kabul took his own life in 1001 when he had not been capable of protecting his people against the muslim invaders. He made a pyre, climbed it and set fire to it himself.

A few recent cases of elderly ascetics who went to meet death by refusing food, are Vinoba Bhave and Badri Prasad Maharaj. Vinoba, the famous follower of Mahatma Gandhi, began a fast-unto-death in 1982. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi went to visit him to get him to give up on his resolve, but she could only establish that the old man was not to be convinced.

When people asked Indira whether his fasting could not be stopped against his will, she said: âThis is after all what he wants.â Indian Express-columnist Arvind Kala, spokesperson for the westernised elite, pleads for the prevention of all suicide, and writes about Vinoba, pointing to article 390 of the Penal Code: âIn actual fact, he was transgressing the law of the land in full view of the public.â

In reality, Vinoba followed in the footsteps of many of the thousands of ascetics who since times immemorial have gone the same way, and about whom the Indian population has never pronounced a negative judgement; if the law forbids him this, then this law is in conflict with the views of the population. This law illustrates how the Indian legal system is not philosophically neutral (âsecularâ), but is, on the contrary, a powerful instrument of westernisation, just as it was meant to be by the constitution-legislators Ambedkar and Nehru.

Badri Prasad Maharaj was an aged monk of the extremely ascetic Jaina tradition. In 1987 he fasted to death. Among those present at this fasting was Girilal Jain, who passed away in 1993, who as head editor of the Times of India on account of Rup Kanwars self-immolation had become fiercely opposed to Sati.

In short, in the Indian culture there is no stigma attached to certain types of suicide, not today either. However it is there in the Indian law, as became apparent in a grotesque way in June 1991. After the murder of Rajiv Gandhi (the suicide action of a female christian Lanka Tamil militant) the heavies of the Congress party wanted to take revenge, like they had done after the murder on the Mahatma in 1948 against the Brahmanas, and after the death of Indira in 1984 against the Sikhs. This time it was not such a clearcut group that could be attacked, so the aggression of the Congress in the state Andhra Pradesh just focussed itself on the rival parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the regional Telugu Desam Party. The actions were much less serious than what had been done against the Sikhs in 1984, however it was still serious enough for the leader of the TDP, the filmstar/director and ex-Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao, to react. He began a âfast-unto-deathâ at a public place, to demand from the Congress state government an official investigation into these allegations. The demand was conceded, after which Rama Rao ended his six-day-long fasting. Because the state government wanted at all costs to prevent that the popular Rama Rao would die during an anti-Congress fast, the police had meanwhile taken him and brought him to a hospital, where he could, if necessary, be fed through a tube. What's noteworthy about this is however that the police filed a complaint at the court against Rama Rao on grounds of article 390, which declares attempts of suicide as a punishable fact.

This law was put in question before the Bombay High Court, that in 1986 decided that an Indian citizen did constitutionally have the right to suicide (a decision against which an appeal was made once again, exactly because it undermines the anti-Sati policy). But apparently people still hold that man is not allowed to have a say about his own life, a christian viewpoint that has already been abandoned in the legislation of many Western countries. Another court of justice, that of Andhra Pradesh, decided in April 1987 that the law which makes suicide punishable, is consitutional: âThe right to life does not imply the right to die.â

Judge Hon. K. Amareshwari accounted for this pronouncement by pointing to the following implication: âIf the attempt to suicide is not punishable, then anyone who helps or incites others to suicide, could go free.â This line of argument is not entirely sound, because the legislator could very well pronounce different judgements for attempt at suicide and inciting to suicide. The Canadian law does not punish suicide, but incitement to it is 14 years imprisonment. The Indian law at least differentiates quantitatively: thereâs a 1 year prison sentence for attempted suicide, 10 years for inciting to it.

Another argument for the ban on suicide is that an honoured suicide or one that is surrounded by publicity might incite imitation. Suicide is therefore implicitly always âincitement to suicideâ. Arvind Kala sums it up: âThe death of Vinoba formed the incitement to a copycat-suicide when a year later an old Gandhian, named Patwardhan, starved himself to death in the house of his daughter. When Badri Prasad Maharaj passed away after 50 days of fasting, his example was immediately followed by a female Jain ascetic. At the self-immolation of students in protest against the caste-reservation plan of V.P. Singh, every self-immolation created the atmosphere for the next one. The government therefore was very much in the right to interfere in N.T. Rama Raoâs fast. God forbid, if heâd died, his emotional fans might have followed his example in a moment of shock.â

It is nevertheless misplaced to put the emotional deed of the students (not unknown in Europe either, see Jan Pallach in Prague 1968) on the same line with old ascetics who deem their time to have come. The Hindu morality gives no uniform rules, but distinguishes on a case by case basis. From the Hindu perspective, ascetics (a status that people can take on at any moment) have the fullest right to opt for death, and they inevitably do this in imitation of others: not just of Vinoba and Beni Prasad, but also of the many thousands before them. Emotional suicide on the other hand, on own initiative or in imitation, is plainly comdemnable, on grounds of the Vedic text: âPeople should not leave this world before they have completed the time measured out.â Point of discussion is whether this text is also directed at Sati.

Judgement of Sati

Around 1800, about thirty years before the British administrator Lord Bentinck issued a ban on Sati in Bengal, the Hindu governments in some princely states had already issued orders to discourage Sati, in particular the Maratha government in Sawantwadi and the Brahmana government in Pune. With this, they concretised the anti-Sati policy of the Maratha queen Ahalyabai who passed away in 1795. Even within the Hindu tradition there has been, at least since Medhatithiâs commentary on the Manu Smriti (900 C.E.?), always a stream that rejected Sati. The Shakta or Tantra stream was very explicit in this. The Mahanirvana Tantra says: âThe woman who in her delusion climbs the pyre of her husband, shall go to hell.â (This sentence itself has however made the philologists suspect that this text was written or was completed around 1800, when Sati had become a hot point of discussion.)

The reason for rejecting the Sati is mainly that a woman, in the middle of the crisis which her husbandâs passing after all represents, hardly has a dayâs time to think over such a grave decision. A monk who, in his old day, decides to refuse food has had a whole life of developing a stance of equanimity and non-attachment. His decision does not happen hastily or under emotional pressure.

Besides, there is an element of inevitability in his going to meet death: his candle is already going out, so he is only going along with the stream, even though in facing death he keeps his dignity. The decision of an aged monk is actually just a choice between dying of illness, disability and helplessness, and dying via self-inflicted starvation. A Sati woman on the other hand does have a real choice between life and death: that is why her suicide is more violent, going against the stream of the natural will to life. But that is also exactly whatâs heroic about it.

It is completely logical that Sati was not general practice on one hand, and yet on the other was still completely accepted in the case of the martial castes, especially the Rajputs. With the lower castes, a widow could in every respect remarry, among the Brahmanas continuing to live on alone as a female ascetic conformed with the ascetic caste-ethos, but with the martial castes it was passion and heroism that counted as pre-eminently honourable. That Sati was considered as the appointed way for some and not for others, conformed with the Hindu pluralism, that posits that everyone has their own duty or code of honour (swadharma), corresponding to the their own natural capacity (swabhava).

In the modern West, that same respect for everyoneâs âown wayâ grows more and more, including the freedom to command oneâs own life. People speak openly about âthe right to die worthilyâ. There is no longer a moral consensus that sentences suicide, only a rejection of the scenarios where complete voluntariness (which implies that people have considered it well and realise what theyâre doing) is not guaranteed. Even without blowing new life into Sati as a practice, people can from within the modern culture bring up a more honest recognition of the historic truth about Sati, and even a level of appreciation for what must indeed have been a heroic deed.

End

About the Bernard Sergent bit:
QUOTEThe following two items are to show that the idea of Sati is rather more universal than uniquely "Indo-European" as claimed by Bernard Sergent above.

1. The following is from The Legend That Was âSatiâ by S. K. Ahuja

(Note: ^ this article appears to be from Jan 1970 according to the page linking to it and goes over several things that Elst also covers above, such as the Greek Diodorus Siculus' mention of Sati, the Mahanirvana Tantra's stance on Sati, and a number of other things).

"Most ancient societies the world over were, at one time or the other, swayed by the custom of widow-burning, or more rarely burying, but after reaching a certain point of zenith, it seems to have faded out into total disuse through an organised social effort or a happy conjunction of natural forces. One possible reason for its early discontinuance in those societies could be the complete absence of religious sanction behind the convention which denied its opportunity and expediency of entrenchment. The custom was observed in one form or the other by Chinese, Greeks, Egyptians, Slavs, Scandinavians. Germans, Teutons, Gauls and Hermites. In fact, it could be said that at some time or the other on the entire human race the shadow of this rite was cast in varying degrees. In some cases only funeral offerings were made which included generous gifts of slaves who were slaughtered without the slightest compunction. Royal mummies of Egypt were entombed in the company of numerous slaves for rendering assistance in the afterdeath life."
(Never heard of the "Hermites" before.)

2. The Chinese example: China (like Egypt) is not considered "Indo-European" and yet its royalty knew a practice that is actually more similar to the Germanic suicide ritual than Indian Sati is. Therefore, Sati in India can well be independent from any "Indo-European" practices pertaining to ritualised collective suicide.

Extract from 'The Giant Book of Facts', Octopus Books, 1987, London, p.248:

"Who was the 'First Emperor'?
He was Cheng Ying, who adopted the title of Shih Huang-ti (meaning the 'First Emperor') when he became ruler of the whole of China in 221 BC.
Shi-Hunag-ti was by no means the first emperor of China, but he was probably the first really powerful one. He reorganized the country's economy, standardizing its coinage and its weights and measures, which helped to speed up trade and so make people more prosperous.

Standardization
One reform that helped trade perhaps more than any other measure was the regulating of the width of carts and wagons. The soft ground of the roads wore into deep ruts, which exactly fitted the carts of each region. With standardization, goods no longer had to be off-loaded from one cart on to another when they reached a frontier between one state and another.

Terracotta regime
When the 'First Emperor' died he was buried in great state. Earlier rulers of China went to their graves accompanied by a large entourage of courtiers, wives and servants (who either voluntarily committed suicide or were put to death). In an ingenious way, Shih Huang-ti went as close as he dared to reviving this ancient custom.
He, too, was buried with a huge retinueâan army of 6,000 soldiers. But these soldiers were modelled lifesize in terracotta, a kind of pottery. Each one has an individual face; they were not mass-prodiced.
The huge tomb which contains the remains of the emperor and his model army was found in 1974, and is still being excavated."

1. About the sentence: "It is quite possible that this (Shiva-Sati narrative) might be a later-constructed myth to explain the name".

And it might just as well be that whichever Hindu first thought of referring thus to the practise of Hindu widows immolating themselves might have considered that they were doing this out of a devotional loyalty to their husbands, and was reminded of how Sati is devoted to Shiva and hence referred to it with the Amman's name.

2. About the paragraph starting with: "In christianism, there existed for a long time the reverence of martyrs. They too were people who voluntarily chose death, e.g. as an alternative to giving up their faith.... "

Many a christian martyr did not exist. In particular, the stories of them choosing death as opposed to giving up their faith tend to be fable. Consider pope Marcellinus, venerated as saint and martyr: history knows he never died for his faith - so he's not a martyr, AND history knows he apostasised - so he can't be a *christian saint*. Other examples abound, see Joseph McCabe. See http://freetruth.50webs.org/Appendix5.htm and http://freetruth.50webs.org/B3b.htm

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