namaste shri Sangom and others.
As usual you seek to blame Hinduism for not providing food, clothes and shelter to the
aam aadmi, although it is the prerogative of the state and central Governments. shrI Iyengaar has well made the point that it is the street-smartness of the Christian missionaries rather than the strength or weakness of either of the religions that prompts converion among the
aam aadmi.
Conversion takes many forms and involves not just the
aam aadmi. The latest trends involve upper class/caste Hindus, specially brahmins, the Hindu students stuyding in the USA (campus evangelism), taking advantage of their religious indifference and worldy ambitions. Today we see their inculturation methods and the desi Bible, but even in 2008, Ravi Zacharias, the famous apologist wrote a series called 'Great Conversations' which involve talks between Jesus and other religious deities (KRiShNa for us), in a bid to present an imaginative approach to attract the Hindu educated.
I wrote a parody on Zacharias' series, soon after, which is as follows:
Jesus talks to Krishna
Now this book after the Desi (Indianized) Bible. Shows that the evangelists are active in deceitfully ingenious ways!
How do you go about designing a pocket book with an evangelical intent that could try to retain the existing Christians in their dwindling faith and might also be used as an evangelical tool?
The recipe for a small book intended for mass appeal is as simple as that for cooking
uppumA or kichaDi. Take a converted Hindu for the lead human character. He should be a brahmin these days, because the dalits convert easily and have no knowledge about Hinduism, the castes falling under the
kShatria and vysya varNa won't convert easily since their Hindu faith is more emotional, whereas the IT-savvy, business-minded brahmins of these days have practically no religious practice though they might traditionally know more about their religion. They also tend to question their time-reverred religious practices, so that comes in handy as a ploy for conversion. Remember, this brahmin convert should have an out-of-the-world experience of Jesus coming to him all of a sudden and in the jolt that takes place he throws away all the shackles of his rituals and falls for the love of Christ.
In this way, Ravi Zacharias has used his leading brahmin character Subramaniam to initially mouth his knowledge about Hindus and Hinduism. Ravi says that the story of Subramaniam is a real one, but you can easily call the bluff from the incidents he presents as leading to Subra's conversion:
• Subramaniam was named only on the eleventh day after he was born. His mother was not allowed to attend the ceremony because she was considered unclean for thirty days from the delivery of her child. Added to that was the practice that his father could not touch the baby until the 11th day as the baby was considered impure. Such discrimination hurt even the 11-day old baby, who began to sense that something was wrong with their faith!
• The practice of a child being given no name until the 11th day since birth and the mother's absence at the naming ceremony seems 'chavinistic' to Richard, Subra's friend, who is touring India and studying the Hindus.
• Subramaniam attained his 'second birth' at the elaborate Upanayanam ceremony, which sounds like "an Indian version of a bar mitzvah" to Richard. Subra is also presented as feeling that his having to recite daily for the rest of his life, the "liturgical spell, ... whispered by the priest to my father, who whispered it into my right ear" at the Upanayanam ceremony as a religious burden that he cast away when he started questioning their practices.
• The Upanayanam also took away the custom of women dining together with men in the family, so his mother could not sit with him at a meal, and this affected the boy...
• Thus Subra started questioning the practices of his Brahmin elders, got no answers, left the home, went to a cave, sat with a silent ascetic there and meditated. When no answers came to him, the ascetic wrote a few brief words and told Subra that he must leave the latter and would find the answers he was seeking "elsewhere".
Convenient and ingenious eh? If you are an author of such a piece, you can surely rub your hands in satisfaction at this point! The brahmin boy cannot on self-meditate the
praNava mantra given to him, the ascetic in the cave could not help him and only some other faith can: more convenient and ingenious since the sage himself is telling the boy that the answers were "elsewhere"!
• Weeks later, Subra comes back to the cave still seeking spiritual illumination, hears a voice--not the Swami's--from inside the cave. The voice is "clear and calm, breathtaking and true" and speaks only two words: "Follow me." Thus came Jesus to Subra!
Thereafter it's easy. Any Tom-Dick-Harry preacher would seem a messenger of Jesus to Subra, so Subra meets a man walking on the road who tells him the 'strange and beautiful' story of a babe born in a straw manger and that the babe was the incarnation of the true God and had come to connect them to the true Supreme Being!
Note the words that Ravi uses: "incarnation of the true God" and "the true Supreme Being". Only shows that the missionary preachers are not themselves sure of their own conceptions of God.
• Thereafter, Subra takes Richard to Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna, they both make fun of some of the Hindu practices, climate, culture and living conditions, a monkey snatches away Richard's sun goggles (thank Jesus that Ravi did not view the monkey as a messenger of Hanuman), and so on and so forth...
...and the first chapter ends with Subra sighting Jesus and Krishna in a secluded pasture as he sits there to take rest and closes his eyes. Subra eavesdrops the conversation that takes place between Jesus and Krishna and narrates it back to Richard later for Ravi's book.
This book is part of the series
Great Conversations by Ravi Zacharias. Earlier Jesus talked to Buddha--wonder if Ravi is trying to convert even the Gods, but let me not give ideas to this ingenious preacher!
Tailpeace
The excerpt from the first chapter of the book is given at:
Book Excerpt: New Birth or Rebirth? by Ravi Zacharias
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KRShNa talks to Jesus
Going by the approach and purpose of Ravi, it should not be too difficult for those who has read the book to refute his ideas coming through the mouth of Krishna.
We can perhaps imitate Ravi and write a tailpeace to the Jesus-Krishna chat:
Krishna (continuing their earlier chat): Jesus, you consider yourself historical? Is there enough proof for the dogged researchers there on the earth?
Jesus: I am historical in the same way as you are, Krishna. What is there left of your history in India?
Krishna: My historical evidences are lying underground a mosque in Mathura and underwater in Dvaraka in Gujarat and are also closely linked with the places of Mahabharata that are there today in India. I shall bring them up when mankind is ready for them. Whereas in your case even the few evidences considered unassailable at one time are giving way to the rigours of modern religious and scientific scrutiny.
Jesus: Yes, that's the saddest part of it. My preachers are still as dumb as the sheep I led. They want to have all the pastures instead of trying to retain what they have. And like them they congregate and bleat away the gospels, as the audience keeps dwindling.
Krishna: But then I thought your Gospels are strong enough to impart faith?
Jesus: My Apostles have made a mess of my teachings! When they are not consistent in their narrations, how can today's intelligent folowers have faith in them? Whereas in your Gita, it is only You and Your words throughout. I made a mistake: I should have recorded my teachings in my lifetime and published them.
Krishna: Don't be disheartened, Jesus, people just love you! Your flock is swelling among the Orientals.
Jesus: You played all the roles in your drama of life, and people love you in every role that you played. I could only play the role of the saviour and was not even hero of the drama until my death.
Krishna: That depends on the civilization and people around you, Jesus.
Jesus: You're right as usual. You led great people besides the cows you tended and gave great truths in great depths, whereas I led only the dumb sheep--literally as well as figuratively--and could only talk to them in the language they would understand.
And they went on to talk about the future of mankind, switching over to a divine language that no eavesdropper could understand...
*****
These stories have all the same stereotype, time-worn, sick formula: devout Hindus giving/encouraged to give cock and bull stories to justify their conversion. I did not read the entire story, stopped at this spot, where I can find the 'fallacy' of the Christian arguments:
Rabi says earlier that his mother was devoted to her husband and understood his Self-Realization efforts, so her asking her son to seek 'another god' is unconvincing!
With the one-life-one-heaven-one-hell concept, Christianity is ignorant of the subtler sheaths of a human soul where it lives after the physical body falls. Good and evil are only filmy karmic manifestations that seek to hide the Self, which at the core is one with Brahman. An individual who has even a slight intellectual understanding of this truth will not complain about the good and evil in the world and say that Brahman can't be both good and evil, so he must be separate as the Creator. Here is an appropriate quote for the converted Christians:
"Some are born ignorant, some achieve ignorance and some have ignorance thrust upon 'em." (Modification of Shakespeare's words in
Twelfth Night).
*****
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