Not India's First Woman Saint

The indomitable Francois Gautier produces another excellent article -

http://indiaview.wordpress.com/
Francois Gautier, PioneerIndian media went into a tizzy while covering the canonisation of Sister Alphonsa, an obscure nun, to prove its secular credentials! Indian journalists forget that this country has had other women saints too.As a Frenchman, I was coached right from childhood that logic, what we in France call cartesianism, is the greatest gift given to man and that one should use one's reason to tread in life. Thus, I taught to my students in a Bangalore school of journalism, the SSCMS, that the first tool of a good reporter is to go by his or her own judgement on the ground, with the help of one's first-hand experience — and not go by second hand information: What your parents thought, what you have read in the newspapers, what your caste, religion, culture pushes you into…Yet in India, logic does not seem to apply to most of the media, especially when it is anything related to Hindus and Hinduism. One cannot, for instance, equate Muslim terrorists who blow up innocent civilians in market places all over India to angry ordinary Hindus who attack churches without killing anybody. We know that most of these communal incidents often involve persons of the same caste — Dalits and tribals — some of them converted to Christianity and some not.However reprehensible was the destruction of the Babri Masjid, no Muslim was killed in the process. Compare that with the 'vengeance' bombings of 1993 in Mumbai, which killed hundreds of innocent people, mostly Hindus. Yet Indian and Western journalists keep equating the two, or even showing the Babri Masjid destruction as the most horrible act of the two.How can you compare the Sangh Parivar with the Indian Mujahideen, a deadly terrorist organisation? How can you label Mr Narendra Modi a mass killer when actually it was ordinary middle class, or even Dalit Hindus, who went out into the streets in fury when 56 innocent people, many of them women and children, were burnt in a train?How can you lobby for the lifting of the ban on SIMI, an organisation which is suspected of having planted bombs in many Indian cities, killing hundreds of innocent people, while advocating a ban on the Bajrang Dal, which attacked some churches after an 84-year-old swami and his followers were brutally murdered?There is no logic in journalism in this country when it applies itself to minorities. Christians are supposedly only two per cent of the population in India, but look how last Sunday many major television channels showed live the canonisation ceremony of Sister Alphonsa, an obscure nun from Kerala and see how Union Minister Oscar Fernandes led an entire Indian delegation to the Vatican along with the Indian Ambassador. It would be impossible in England, for instance, which may have a two per cent Hindu minority, to have live coverage of a major Hindu ceremony, like the anointment of a new Shankaracharya. What were the 24×7 news channels, which seem to have deliberately chosen to highlight this non-event, trying to prove? That they are secular? Is this secularism?The headline of the story "India gets its first woman saint", run by many newspapers, both Indian and Western, is very misleading.For India has never been short of saints. The woman sage from over 3,000 years ago, Maithreyi, Andal, the Tamil saint from early in the first Millennium CE and Akkamahadevi, the 15th century saint from modern-day Karnataka, are but a few examples of women saints in India. What many publications failed to mention in the story is that this is the first woman Christian saint — not the first Indian woman saint. This statement is ok, when it comes, for instance, from the BBC, which always looks at India through the Christian prism (BBC ran a few months back an untrue and slanderous documentary on Auroville), but when it comes to the Indian media, it only shows the grave lack of grounding in Indian culture and history of most Indian journalists. As a result, they suffer from an inferiority complex.This inferiority complex, as expressed by television's live coverage of the canonisation of Sister Alphonsa, is a legacy of the British, who strove to show themselves as superior and Indian culture as inferior (and inheritor of the 'White Aryans', a totally false theory). Is it not time to institute schools of journalism, both private and public, where not only logic will be taught, but where students shall be made aware of Indian history and of the greatness of Indian culture, so that when they go out to report, they will use their own judgement and become Indian journalists, with a little bit of feeling, pride and love for their own country?

Kandhamal and Bengaluru

http://expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?title=Kandhamal+and+Bengaluru&artid=jMz3AgcPT6o=&SectionID=d16Fdk4iJhE=&MainSectionID=HuSUEmcGnyc=&SEO=Kandhamal+arson&SectionName=aVlZZy44Xq0bJKAA84nwcg==

Incisive analysis by Gurumurthy.

"No major clash between the Kandhas and the Panas was reported before the missionaries entered Kandhamal. The Christian population in Kandhamal which was some two per cent in 1961 and six per cent in 1971, rose to 27 per cent in 2001.These numbers speak volumes. Yet, now the missionaries, media and the seculars shout from house tops that only after VHP and Bajrang Dal have entered the scene, there are clashes and the minorities are being butchered."

Christians have to be the biggest whiners in the world. By that I mean believing Christians and not all people from the West, for they are 2 different types. Christians did the witch hunt in Europe wiping off the native religions of the people, crusades , the inquisition against the native american population both in South and North America, Portugese Inquisition in Goa, now they are causing probleems in various parts of Indias North-East and other parts of India. And Despite all this they claim to be persecuted no matter where they are. This attitude stems from the fact that the existence of Christianity is dependant on the context of oppression, real or imaginary, akin to Communism that needs a class-conflict to survive agains real or imaginary.

Maoists kill Hindus to please Christians

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Maoists+see+%E2%80%98Red%E2%80%99+over+religion+?&artid=XlaToXkfSLQ=&SectionID=mvKkT3vj5ZA=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=nUFeEOBkuKw=&SEO=

Maoists see ‘Red’ over religion ?
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Siba Mohanty
First Published : 19 Oct 2008 08:04:00 AM IST
Last Updated : 19 Oct 2008 01:20:27 PM IST
BHUBANESWAR: For far too long, Left wing extremists have wilfully avoided giving a religious tinge to their ideology. But their recent advances into the realm, calling war against ‘Hindu fascist forces’ and claiming the killing of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati may just have exposed them to vulnerabilities of taking sides with (or against) a faith.
Intelligence reports suggest the operation has begun to take toll on the organisation

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An excellent article in Express Buzz (http://www.expressbuzz.com) by Siba Mohanty. This brings out the Christian -Maoist nexus that exists in Orissa with the sole purpose of killing/harassing hindus. A strange situation exists in Orissa. Everywhere in the world, Maoism and Christianity has not co-existed as they are in-compatible. Only in India are a large number os Maoist supporters Christians. Maoism is only the camoflouge under which these people call continue converting innocent tribals under the shadaow of the gun. This is following the trend that has been set by Christians all over the world ranging from South America, Europe, and Africa and closer home in Goa where conversions were preceded by mass killings of the non-christians.