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[1] Tuesday, March 11, 2008 The Berean Call INDIA: HINDU EXTREMISTS ASSAULT NEW CHRISTIAN LEADER Doctor had given legal help to believers beaten in Balaghat, Madhya Pradesh. BALAGHAT, India, March 3 (Compass Direct News) – Following a Hindu extremist attack on five Christians meeting in a home here on February 22, the Madhya Pradesh town of Balaghat witnessed another assault last Wednesday (February 27) when the newly elected president of the Balaghat Christian Association was beaten for providing legal help to the previous victims. Members of the Hindu extremist Bajrang Dal allegedly targeted Dr. Robin Singh, a medical doctor and Christian leader, because he had provided legal and administrative help to Tom George, Sunil Lal and others who had been dragged from a Lent meeting and beaten with bamboo poles, sticks, rods and other weapons. The attack on Dr. Singh appeared to be calculated to give him nonvisible internal injuries so that a stronger police case may not be formed against them, as the 10 to 12 Hindu extremists did not use any sharp weapons. They struck him with their fists and wooden sticks, as well as kicked him, to deftly give him internal injuries. http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php? page=news&length=short&lang=en&idelement=5265 ------------ [2] PAKISTANI CHRISTIAN HANGED TO DEATH DESPITE APPEAL Source: BosNewsLife A Christian man was hanged to death at 6 a. m. local time today (Wednesday, March 12) after being convicted of killing a Muslim boy in what rights groups described as an unfair trial. Zahid Masih, who was in his 20s, was executed at the Central Jail in the city of Multan in Pakistan’s Punjab province despite appeals for clemency. His frail mother and other relatives were seen crying inconsolably outside the jail when they received Masih’s human remains, two hours after the execution took place. Up until Masih’s execution, his defense team, church groups and human rights organizations urged Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and other authorities to grant him clemency, or at least a postponement of the death sentence until after Easter. Masih’s lawyer, Prince Rehan Iftikhar, said he had personally “filed a mercy appeal to the president and other high-ups via an especially arranged telephone call.” He said that during court proceedings “Zahid Masih was not given any chance to defend himself,” adding that “Pakistan’s government has treated him like a dog. No one heard our voice for mercy.” ----------------- [3] From: lakshmeekanth Vrindavan <lakshmeekanth@yahoo.com Date: Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:06 am Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] Women's Day Special from the BJP!!! l Dear Rebbecca, All these, including the beauty contests are a kind of rape and prostitution. I am not justifying any of it. India had them or not bad is bad and we must say that very loud and clear. All those bad are to be removed from society. I will support removal of all these, rape, prostitution and beauty contest. For me all are using others for ones own benefit and all of them are wrong. I am against all of these, not just one. There is nothing wrong in traveling little back if it can do good. When wrong things are copied we can make our remarks. That is freedom of speech. It is not the first time that people laugh at people who say good things. Let them laugh. Not just BJP or congress or any other political party, every body should try to take actions to prevent such things. What I am saying is that we don't have to laugh at them for saying good things. Just appreciate it. Because BJP said it, don't make it out to be bad. They are also human beings. They also have feelings. rkurian@bgl.vsnl.net.in wrote: Please don't tell me that men's urges and base instincts are aroused only by women who follow the western culture! It is surprising that intelligent men like you actually believe that! It is so silly to believe that in the pure Indian culture and tradition, men have never used women for their gratification or for their own benefit! Beauty contests are not the original sin that was committed by men using women.. Much before that became fashionable, India has had prostitution, rape etc. If we want to go back to the "purity" of Indian culture, we may have to travel a long distance into the past. Even then I wonder if we can escape vulgarity and taking advantage of women. There is no need to blame western culture for all that happens around us. I don't particularly approve of many things that happen around me, but all the Indians that copy anything new from all over the world, are using their minds to make the choices. Nobody can ban that or keep blaming the west, that is all.. The BJP can definitely say what it likes but people who indulge in those practices are not going to do anything about it except laugh it off! What trick are you referring to? the BJP should do something about murders of girls like the British girl Scarlett in Goa. The BJP can also go after the rapists who don't necessarily go after contestants of beauty pageants but women who are students, who are working.. women who are going about living their daily lives without bothering anyone. What about them? What does the party or the leaders have to say about all the thousands and millions of rapists who have not been brought to justice? Don't they count? Why should the western culture and influence be blamed for that? Let us be fair.. Rebecca. --------- [4] Supreme Court and the SCs Tuesday March 11 2008 08:19 IST P RADHAKRISHNAN THE observations by the Supreme Court on whether the Christians would admit that they practise caste system and the Dalits among them face social discrimination, and the query since when the Muslims have started following the caste system seem to convey its perception of social deprivations in terms of religious texts, and its confusion between text and context. To place the debate in perspective there are six issues to be discussed here. One, as the emergence of Dalits among the Hindus is often attributed to Manu’s misdeeds through his now infamous injunctions, and the SC Hindus are the lower segment of the Hindus, the Christian and Muslim demands raise the question whether there are corresponding segments among them. The answer is ‘yes’ for at least three reasons: (a) There is a world of difference between religion as ideology and religion as praxis; and change of religion by itself does not change the social reality through which religion expresses itself. Stated differently, the social disabilities of several centuries do not vanish by a mere change of religion; more so, when the converts do not live in a society of their own religion, but live in the society of the dominant religion which they have left. It is precisely for this reason that there has been indigenisation of the religion of the converts. Consequently, the Christian and Muslim reality in India is not the same as in other countries, and it is meaningless to apply to it textual ideals of equal brotherhood and so on. In this context it is important to recall the observations of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, in his ‘Annihilation of Caste’, that caste being primarily the breath of the Hindus, “the Hindus have fouled the air all over and everybody is infected, Sikh, Muslim, and Christian.” (b) Far from being proselytism, that is, making of individual converts who at conversion are abstracted from their social and cultural context, conversions in India have been migration from one religion to another; or conversion of individuals and whole groups without detaching them from their social context. (c) The Catholic tradition of accommodation. When Robert de Nobili established the mission in Madurai in 1606, he set himself up as a Christian sanyasi, separating from most contacts with low-caste Christians and conforming to high caste patterns of behaviour in food, dress, etc. His initial converts were from the high castes, including Brahmins, and he allowed them to maintain most of their customs. They were not required or encouraged to break caste by associating with the mainly Paravar Christian congregation or with foreign Christians. “By becoming a Christian”, he wrote, “One does not renounce his caste, nobility, or usages. The idea that Christianity interfered with them has been impressed upon the people by the devil, and is the great obstacle to Christianity.” Thus, de Nobili’s converts were allowed to retain their tuft (kudumi), sacred thread, customary bathing and food rules, and all the regulations governing social intercourse. It was therefore possible for them to remain Christians within Hindu society. In spite of papal decrees of 1734 and 1744 denouncing untouchability as alien to Christianity, and widespread criticism of the Jesuits who were identified with this policy of accommodation, it became generally accepted among Catholics that caste was a civil institution, which could be used for evangelistic purposes and maintained with only minor modifications within the Church. A major outcome of this has been the social reality of Dalit Christians, caste-based segregation of the converts within the church, and caste discrimination both among the clergy and the laity. Two, the issues raised by the court are not new; they were debated by the colonial administration in the context of Hindu converts to Christianity. To draw upon a part of this debate, in the context of representations to the Madras government on securing to Indian Christian pupils of backward origin the concessions admissible to the backward classes under the Madras Educational Rule, in 1924 the Director of Public Instruction wrote: Christianity is a religion while Panchamas (present SCs) … form a social class with a definite place in the caste system of the Hindus and it is not possible for any single individual to profess two different religions, Christianity and Hinduism at one and the same time and furthermore Christianity does not accept any caste. So that logically a person may be a Christian in which case he cannot accept any caste system, and is not a member of a backward class or he may be a Hindu Panchama or Adi Dravida in which case, he may be a member of a backward class. But he cannot be at one and the same time both, Christian and Hindu (Panchama), both non-backward and backward. Responding to the DPI’s argument the Education Secretary contended that conversion by itself does not automatically and materially alter the economic condition of the classes or remove their educational backwardness. Three, though the SC list first appeared in a specific colonial context as part of the Government of India Act 1935, under pressures from the Depressed Classes and the prolonged campaign of their leader Dr. Ambedkar, and the groups included in the list were only Hindu Untouchables, what was the purpose of creating the SC list as part of the Constitution? It was not for abolition of untouchability, that too among the Hindus alone; the provision for that was in the fundamental rights under Article 17, which refers to only untouchability and its practice in any form without reference to religion. If the SC list was for social amelioration of the groups included in it, it is only legitimate for Christians and Muslims to demand that the groups similarly placed among them as the Hindu SCs are also enumerated and included in the list. Failure to do so will perpetrate the Hindu tilt of the state in implementing a major provision of a secular Constitution. Four, though the Government of India asked the Ranganath Mishra Commission on religious and linguistic minorities to examine the demand of Christians and Muslims, and the commission recommended delinking SC status from religion by an amendment to the Constitution (SCs) Order, 1950, and inclusion of Dalits among Christians and Muslims in the SC list, the refusal of the government to make the report public makes its bona fides suspect. Five, though the National Commission for Scheduled Castes has endorsed the recommendation of the Mishra Commission, its rider that inclusion of Dalit Christians and Muslims in the SC list should not encroach upon the benefits of those accessing reservations is questionable. Once the Dalit Christians and Muslims are included in the SC list they should be part of the same list, eligible for the entire package of affirmative action including political representation as now available to the SCs. Six, if Christians and Muslims did not recognise Dalits among them and demand the same treatment to them as to the Hindu Dalits till recently, it is the state that needs to be blamed. Had the state paid adequate attention to the SCs immediately after the Constitution came into force and continued it systematically, say for ten years, affirmative action as envisaged in the Constitution would have come to an end long ago. By its political chicanery and pussyfooting, as R H Tawney rightly stated in his classic work Equality, the state has only prolonged its indulgence in “inducing a thousand donkeys... to sweat by the prospect of a carrot that could be eaten by one.” That indulgence has proved to be an irreversible and costly perversion of the very idea of welfarism. The writer is Professor of Sociology, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai ------------- |
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| << March12, 2008 - [India Thinkers Net] Attack on CPM office ,Lankan Christians ,Deoband convention etc |
March15, 2008 - [India Thinkers Net]Pakistan hanging ,India in Nepal ,RSS murders in Kerala >> |
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