CaribbeanHindu.net - Non-Profit Educational Resource Center

Selected Articles

In this page:

VS Naipauls's Hindu Influence - Sasenarine Persaud
"Early in his career, Naipaul because of his harsh views of India and on Sanatanist Hinduism in Trinidad was often seen as anti- Hindu. While there is no doubt of the British influence and English literary role-models on him at the time, there can be no denying the Hindu influence...."

Historical Wrongs Cannot Be Ignored - Suresh Singh
"I was so depressed by the Muslim-Hindu violence in India that I was willing to pass up the evident inaccuracies, misrepresentations and distortions of Indian history contained in two letters to the Guyana Chronicle of March 07, 2002..."

More Fundamental Issues Are At Stake Than The Temple Itself - Amar Panday
"I wish to respond to your editorial note to the letter captioned " The Babri Masjid was a converted Mandir" by R. Badri. (l6.3.2002) What really disappoints me is its dilettantish and naive understanding of this issue. It is too late to be obscuring this discussion with utopian concepts of peace. The concern of this dispensation should be the significance of justice..."

The Resilience of Hinduism: Back from Slaughter and Persecution - Tej Rao
"Every Hindu must, of necessity, have at least a basic knowledge of our ancient glorious past, our suffering under invaders and colonizers, and of our current state of affairs. We must not forget, for we might be condemned to repeat the pain and punishment our forefathers went through. The Jews have not forgotten the holocaust. They have erected magnificent monuments and museums in homage to their martyrs..." 

Resisting Conversion - Dr. Baytoram Ramharack
"Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world, dating back to 10,000 BC. Today, one in every six persons in this world is a Hindu. It is a tradition that has followed Indians wherever they went when they departed Bharat Mata. For those of us from the Caribbean, this is a fact we cannot ignore because it was the Hindu religion and culture within us that defined us as a people with a distinct tradition and history..."

An Evening With Sudarshan Ji - Churaumanie Bissundyal
"My two brothers, Somdat Mahabir and Upadhyayaji, invited me to a Hindu Jaagaranam Satsang at the American Sevashram Ashram auditorium on July 28, 2001, a Satsang sponsored by the Caribbean Shaakhaa of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh...."

■ VS Naipaul's Hindu Influence
Author: Sasenarine Persaud
Source: Hindu Jaagaranam (A magazine commemorating the visit of Pujya KS Sudarshanji, Chief of the RSS to the Caribbean Hindu Community in New York, July 28, 2001)

Early in his career, Naipaul because of his harsh views of India and on Sanatanist Hinduism in Trinidad was often seen as anti- Hindu. While there is no doubt of the British influence and English literary role-models on him at the time, there can be no denying the Hindu influence. Naipaul was born into a Hindu household where both his parents came from Sanatanist backgrounds, and despite his father's early dabbling with preference for reform Hinduism, i.e. the Arya Samaj, his father too could be describe as Sanatanist. All this is dealt with in A House for Mr. Biswas, regarded as Naipaul's greatest work, and the novel most closely based on his early life, and except for minor alterations, based on the life of his father, the Mohun Biswas of the novel.

A number of critics have dealt with how Naipaul was indebted to his father, Seepersad who published a volume of stories in 1943 and was a journalist for the Trinidad Guardian, not for this novel but for his literary life. Naipaul has himself admitted this in interviews and in the foreword to his father's stories republished in 1976.

In this interview with Antony Boxhill referenced by John Thieme in his book on Naipaul, Naipaul states, "A great deal of my vision of Trinidad has come straight from my father". This is a significant aspect of Naipaul's pronouncement on Hinduism in Trinidad; as important as the fact that he left Trinidad when he was 18; living most of that 18 years in Port-of-Spain - Anand's experiences in Biswas based on this - as a sort of outsider to, and contemptuous of, the Hinduism practiced by his country cousins and relatives.

Naipaul's father in real life was swayed by Arya Samaj missionaries and this bias Naipaul picked up. A closer examination of A House For Mr. Biswas, which is regarded as a novel of Hinduism (by a Naipaul who knew largely second and third hand from his father's reports) shows not only a confusion of and ignorance of Hinduism, but a mockery of the Arya Samaj.

This is done when the Samajist missionary from India, Pankaj Rai, "the purist" is discovered molesting and trying to seduce Misir's, his host's wife. And later when Biswas is building his house he finds out that the same Samajist, Misir, is as unconscionable a money-lender as any on the island, with his eye on the bottom line - profit. It is during this "Aryan phase", while living in his mother-in-law's house, the famed Hanuman house, that Biswas is a thoroughly repulsive person. He does not contribute in any way to the household and yet abuses its occupants: his mother-in-law, sisters-in-law, their husbands, his wife, and he throws away food served him and which he is provided gratis, and spits on his brother-in-law... His Arya Samajist principles have certainly not made him a better person! In fact, it seems to have made him a moral degenerate. Throughout the novel, Biswas is at his worst when he is rebelling against his Sanatanist background, and that of his inlaws. When he does not fight it we see his better side.

In this "Aryan period" too, both Biswas and his creator, Naipaul, equate the aarti ceremony with idol worship - clearly an ignorance of Hinduism. In a novel of almost six hundred pages, of vivid, detailed descriptions even of different varieties of ants in a thunderstorm, Naipaul is unable, in a novel teeming with rituals and pujas, to say what kinds of pujas are being performed, or what kinds of songs are being sung during these pujas, or what kinds of instruments are being used: shortcomings as a novelist, and exposing his ignorance of important aspects of Hinduism as practiced in the West Indies. His vision of the Hinduism he was purporting to write about was that of an observer and an outsider. That he wrote the novel in London and that it was published when he was only 29 may also have some significance.

Yet given his limitations, and that he was writing of Hinduism largely through the biases of his father, what comes through is that Hanuman House served all the occupants well as long as its occupants observed its very complex ethics. The naming of the house as Hanuman House is very significant. In real life the house is the Capiildeos' Lion House in Chaguanas. Hanuman House, then as in the Hanuman of Hinduism, must be seen as a symbol for dharma. And even if unconsciously, what Naipaul was saying here was: if you look after dharma, dharma will look after you. The greatest tragedy of A House for Mr. Biswas, and the greatest character in the novel, despite all the critics (practically all non-Hindus) and Naipaul himself, is Hanuman House and its fall into disuse. An older, more mature Biswas, later in the novel is intuitively aware of this.

In the end there is no doubt that Naipaul and Biswas are Hindus, even defenders of the faith. In Biswas's letter to the Christian Indian Doctor who did not provide a certificate of death for his mother he, "compared the doctor to an angry hero of a Hindu epic, and asked to be forgiven for mentioning the Hindu epic to Indian who had abandoned his religion for a recent superstition (i.e. Christianity, my bold) that was being exported wholesale to savages all over the world..."

Almost 25 years later Naipaul would make, what appeared to be a stunning reversal. In the Epilogue of his autobiographical novel, The Enigma of Arrival (1988), the author is in Trinidad for the cremation rites of his sister. Of this, Josh Getlin wrote in the Los Angeles Times of Wednesday March 15, 1989, "Grief-stricken, he comes to terms with his own mortality and the Hindu rites he once criticized".

Editor’s Note:¹

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born into a Hindu family of Indian ancestry in Trinidad. He was educated at Queen's Royal College in Port-of-Spain and then at the University of Oxford in England. He then became a resident of England, where he worked as a broadcast journalist for a few years before publishing his first novels, The Mystic Masseur (1957), The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), and Miguel Street (1959), all satires of life in Trinidad. V.S. Naipaul, the novelist and essayist, is well-known for his works about the colonial legacy in developing nations and is today considered by many as the best writer of the English Language. Nominated on more than one occasion for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he is yet to win it. According to many literary critics, Naipaul the fearless writer, may never win the Noble may never the win the Nobel Prize because his views are not politically correct for the so-called Nobel Committee!

In 1990, V.S. Naipaul was knighted by the British Royal family. Currently, India-born filmmaker Ismail Merchant is making a film on an early book, "Mystic Masseur," written by V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul, notoriously unencouraging towards screenplays of his work, reportedly sent Merchant a two-line reply saying, "Dear Ismail, I've heard about your legendary powers of persuasion. You may film 'Mystic Masseur'." 'Mystic Masseur' is the story of Trinidadian teacher Ganesh Ramsumair, who embarks on an ambitious life first as a masseur and then as a famed mystic.

Naipaul's best-known novels include A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), about an Anglicized Indian in a Creole world; In a Free State (1971), which won the Booker Prize, Britain's most prestigious literary award; Guerrillas (1975), about a would-be West Indian revolutionary; and A Bend in the River (1979), which probes the search for identity in a newly independent African nation. More recent novels include The Enigma of Arrival (1987), a semiautobiographical memoir of an aging author, and A Way in the World (1994), an epic series of narratives based on the history of Naipaul's native Trinidad and the European colonization of the Americas. Among his long essays are India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981), and Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted People (1998).

"V.S. Naipaul's Hindu Influence" was written by Sasenarie Persaud in the winter of 1997 for the CaribbeanHindu.com website. Persaud, born into a Hindu family in Guyana, South America, is an award winning author, poet, novelist, critic, and literary theorist. He is the first Canadian and West Indian to win the K.M. Hunter Foundation's emerging artists award for Literature in 1996 administered by the Ontario Arts Council Foundation, and he has been profiled in the Toronto Star. He currently resides in Tampa, Florida. He is the author of six books: Canada Geese and Apple Chatney (1998, Toronto); A Surf of Sparrows’ Songs (1996, Toronto); The Ghost of Bellow’s Man (1992, Leeds); Between the Dash and the Comma (1989, Toronto); Dear Death (1989, Leeds) and several short stories and critical essays; including, "Khevat: Waiting on Yogic Realism" his seminal essay on Yogic Realism – a term he has coined for his "new" school of writing which is based on ancient Indian aesthetics. Regarded by critics as one of the best writers to have emerged from Guyana, Persaud has held fellowships at the University of Miami and his work has appeared in many countries. His much anthologized poem, "Rain Storm" is presently being studied in high schools in the West Indies. Swami Aksharananda in a critical analysis of Persaud’s writing wrote: "…that the author was able to transform…apparent despair…is an indication of his genius and skill as writer, a cultural critic and a visionary."

■ Historical wrongs cannot be ignored
Source: Stabroek News 3/21/02
Author: Suresh Singh

Dear Editor,
I was so depressed by the Muslim-Hindu violence in India that I was willing to pass up the evident inaccuracies, misrepresentations and distortions of Indian history contained in two letters to the Guyana Chronicle of March 07, 2002.

Suffice to say at this stage that a Ram Mandir did exist on the Ayodhya site and it was forcibly demolished to build the Babri Masjid. However, what got me really disappointed was the comment of the Stabroek News to another letter, this time by Mr Badri entitled, "The Babri Masjid was a converted Mandir."

The SN comment, subtly supportive of the Muslim position, states "If incidents in history can always be reopened in an effort to establish who was right or wrong, however long ago it may have been, there will never be peace. At some stage people have to agree to live together, accept the status quo and forget the past."

In other words, the status quo must be maintained on the principle of time/history despite the glaring injustices being perpetuated. Bravo SN! Now let us hear you forthrightly and forcefully condemn the following, which all have historical roots:

(1) Africans (including Afro-Guyanese) should cease all references to the abominable system of slavery and calls for reparations. Moreover, Afro-Guyanese should consequently give up the Emancipation Day holiday on August 01, since this reminds them of those unfortunate days;
(2) Jews should stop referring to the Jewish exodus and holocaust, and calls for reparations also;
(3) American Indians, throughout the entire Americas and including our own Guyanese Amerindians, should forget about the dispossession of their land and cease all demands for ancestral lands;
(4) Japan should stop demanding the return of the three Pacific Islands seized by the Russians during the second world war;
(5) South Africans should erase all references to the degrading system of Apartheid, and all efforts at reallocating ill-gotten white-owned lands should henceforth cease;
(6) All efforts to reunite Cyprus should be discontinued;
(7) East Timor should immediately give up all demands to Independence; etc.

In our own case the SN should call on the Guyana Government to publicly give up all claims to that part of Ankoko seized by Venezuela.

But more specific to Muslims, let us see SN unequivocally call on that community/religion to stop demanding that:
(1) India gives up Kashmir;
(2) Israel gives up/internationalises Jerusalem and returns all occupied Arab lands seized during the Yom Kippur war;
(3) Chechnya be granted Independence from Russia;
(4) Israel returns all occupied Palestinian lands;
(5) Muslim Kosovo Albanians sgould immediately give up all aspiration for independence; etc., etc., etc.
How is it that other groups will be allowed to pursue historical "wrongs" (right or not) but the Hindus must give up what the world knows is theirs? This in itself is a form of religious discrimination. The Hindus must always be giving while others must always get their "pound of flesh".

Yours faithfully,
Suresh Singh

■ More fundamental issues are at stake than the temple itself

Author: Amar Panday
Source: Stabroek News, Tuesday March 19, 2002

Dear Editor,
I wish to respond to your editorial note to the letter captioned " The Babri Masjid was a converted Mandir" by R. Badri. (l6.3.2002) What really disappoints me is its dilettantish and naive understanding of this issue. It is too late to be obscuring this discussion with utopian concepts of peace. The concern of this dispensation should be the significance of justice. Upon careful examination and analysis, it is conspicuous that the dispute is not so much about the right of possession to the ancient site known as Ramajanmabhumi as it is over the version of history that is sought to be imposed on the people of India.

It is a serious contraction of the scope and meaning of the Ayodhya episode of December 6, 1992 to treat it as a dispute over a piece of land, and brick and mortar; the dispute really is part of a struggle being waged by an ancient people to recover their own history from the clutches of imperial interests. It is therefore a serious error to treat the demolition of the Babri Masjid as a mere retribution for the temple destructions by Islamic vandals going back a thousand years. That would place the Islamic vandals and the kar sevaks on the same moral plane which I see as a historic error for what the kar sevaks were trying to recover was not merely the disputed structure built over their sacred site, but the true history of their land. In this regard, I am with V.S. Naipaul in seeing the demolition as a symbol of rising historical awareness on the part of the Hindus. Hindus have recognized that the Babri Masjid was never intended as a place of worship; it was a symbol pure and simple of the victory of Islamic imperialism over the Hindu Civilization. In her deposition before the Liberhans Commission inquiring into this issue, Smt Umashri Bharati made a pertinent observation; she said, "The Babri Masjid was a symbol of slavery".

Islamic View of History
In spite of the enormous volume of writing that has appeared on Ayodhya, a central theme that runs through the dispute has not been sufficiently highlighted; this theme is the effort to impose the Islamic view of history not only on the Ayodhya dispute, but also on all of Indian history. The Islamic view holds that the history of any place begins with its Muslim takeover, and nothing that took place before the takeover is of any account. According to this version, the demolition of the Babri Masjid is a crime, but the destruction of previous temples at the site (or anywhere else) is of no account. It is this version of history that has been imposed on countries conquered by Islam countries like Arabia, Iran and Afghanistan. It is this version that Islamic warriors sought to impose on India also for several centuries but failed. (But this is the version taught at Islamic institutions in India, like the madrasahs and even the Aligarh Muslim University.) The Indian Muslim leaders and their allies calling themselves 'Secularists' are fighting to see this version prevail, while the Hindus are fighting to preserve their own history and tradition. Ayodhya is a symbol of this struggle for history. The key fact to note is that the events of December 6, 1992 do not stand alone; they are part of the history of the struggle being waged between exclusivism and pluralism going back a thousand years. The stakes in this for the people of India are enormous. We ignore it only at our peril.

A Note on Terminology: 'Secularism'
Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru assumed control of India following its partition in 1947, the keyword of modern Indian political parlance has been 'secularism'. This in itself strikes one as odd, for no one including Nehru had bothered to raise the issue of secularism to prevent the partition of India on the basis of religion; that was the time when arguments based on secularism were really relevant not after conceding the division of India. Nonetheless, it is important to clearly understand how the word is used and misused in Indian political and intellectual circles. Secular literally means 'wordly' or 'unrelated to religion'. Historically, secularism evolved in Europe as an antidote to theocracy, in breaking the power of the Church over the affairs of the state. In the Indian political parlance, the word 'Secularism' is often claimed to mean equality of all religions a usage that cannot be justified either on linguistic or historical grounds. In practice it has been used by Leftist politicians and academics (including Nehru), now joined by right wing Islamic leaders, to shelter purely theocratic institutions like religious laws and Islamic legal code. In India, both the Marxists and Muslim leaders (Christians also) often refer to their exclusivist ideologies as 'Secular'. Thus, in the Indian context, one would not be far wrong to interpret 'Secular' to mean anti Hindu. It has become little more than a euphemism used by anti Hindu forces to describe themselves. These call themselves the 'Secular Forces'.

Thus, for all practical purposes, secularism in India has meant the practice of sheltering exclusivist and theocratic practices that stand in opposition to the pluralistic traditions of Hinduism. 'Secularists' (always with a capital 'S') are those that subscribe to this viewpoint. These are part of the so called 'Secular Forces' - a nexus of anti Hindu interest groups, notably Leftist academics and right wing Islamicists including the clergy. This is often called 'Nehruvian Secularism' by its critics. Many educated Indians still believe that there are some doubts about the historical question; many honestly believe that no temple was ever destroyed by Babar because he was tolerant towards the Hindus. This view, while a tribute to the effectiveness of negationist propaganda, is not a true representation of facts. Here is what Babar wrote "Hindustan is a place of little charm, the one nice aspect of Hindustan is it is a large country with lots of gold and money". How about his tolerance? here again is Babar speaking "Chanderi had been in Hindu rule for some years and held by Sanga's highest ranking Meidini Rao, with four or five thousands infidels, but in 934[1527 28], through the grace of Allah, I took it by force within a ghari or two, massacred the infidels [Hindus], and brought it into the bosom of Islam.

In reality, there can no doubt about either the existence or the destruction of a Rama temple by Babar at Rama Janmabhumi. What 'controversy' there is a modern concoction, the result of a massive disinformation campaign by 'Secularist' scholars, politicians and a large segment of the English language press. What is more important is that this happens to be part of a larger agenda of denying altogether the destruction of any Hindu temples by Muslim rulers a step towards whitewashing the record of Islam in India.

Destruction of history is the goal of every imperialism. The Secularists see India's indigenous Hindu Civilization as the dark force whose entire history should be blackened beyond redemption and ultimately effaced, to be replaced by its own Age of Secular Light. The first step is to coin a derogatory term for it 'Hindu Communalism' (or Kaffir Communalism). They see India as an impure land plagued by pluralistic Hinduism that awaits Secularist cleansing. This is the Secularist version of the Islamic concept of Dar ul Harb and Dar ul Islam.

I recognize that much of what I have written will make for unpalatable reading for many Muslims. But history is history, whether we like it or not. In this regard, one can learn a valuable lesson by looking at European history. The record of Christianity in Europe and the Americas is no less blood soaked than the record of Islam in India. But there are no 'Crusade Negationists' or 'Inquisition Negationists' in Europe comparable to the Jihad Negationists in India. The French have not preserved Nazi monuments at Versailles and are we to hold that the call for reparation for the squalor of slavery is retrograde and inimical to peace? No power on earth will be able to stop what is happening at Ayodhya. The age of effeminate Hindu weeping is over, this is the dawning of the era of muscles of iron and nerves of steel, no longer will there a yielding to unmanliness and no one will be able to quell the arise of Arjuna{ India}.

Yours faithfully
Amar Panday.

■ The Resilience of Hinduism: Back from Slaughter and Persecution
Author: Tej Rao
Source: Hindu Jaagaranam (A magazine commemorating the visit of Pujyaneeya KS Sudarshanji, Chief of the RSS to the Caribbean Hindu Community in New York, July 28, 2001)

Every Hindu must, of necessity, have at least a basic knowledge of our ancient glorious past, our suffering under invaders and colonizers, and of our current state of affairs. We must not forget, for we might be condemned to repeat the pain and punishment our forefathers went through. The Jews have not forgotten the holocaust. They have erected magnificent monuments and museums in homage to their martyrs and their beloved lost ones, and against persecution and senseless human destruction. They have also discovered strength in unity. Why must we Hindus be any different? Almost every high school kid knows about slavery and the holocaust. How many Hindu kids know about the pogrom of Hindus?

Since the beginning of human history, many powerful civilizations have come and gone. Some, like the Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian made lofty achievements in the fields of building and architecture, the arts, agriculture, and astronomy; but not without the conquest and subjugation of other nations and their peoples. Some excelled in this field of military conquest and human destruction, the most notorious of them all being the Moguls or Mongols, bands of Muslim invaders who wreaked bloody havoc on India and the Hindu people. All these so-called civilizations reached their zenith and then gradually descended into extinction.

In the annals of history, there is no holocaust of comparable magnitude to that perpetrated on Hindus by the armies of Islam. The massacre of the six million Jews by the Nazis, the million and a half of Armenians by the Turks, the one million Tibetans by the Chinese communists, and the millions more of South American natives by the Spanish conquistadors all seem trivial compared to the systematic slaughter of Hindus at the hands of the sword wielding Mongols for over five centuries. It boggles the mind to figure out how Hinduism has survived to this day and continues to rise again like the mythical phoenix out of the ashes against formidable odds such as Muslim aggression from Pakistan and Bangladesh, communism, and the Christian missionary menace.

Mahmud of Ghazni, Timur, Babur, Sher Khan, Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb were elevated to the ranks of great art patrons and benevolent rulers by European historians. To the Muslims, they were magnificent conquerors and messengers of Islam. To the vanquished, their very names chilled the spines, rattled the knees and curdled the blood; such was the extent of the terror and destruction they unleashed. They ruled with a ruthlessness unparalleled anywhere in the world. Timur, for example, massacred 100,000 Hindus in a single day, and on many other occasions. Every Sultan tried to outdo the other, raising his own personal pyramid of Hindu skulls, sometimes literally. Wave after wave of the savages razed to the ground thousands of Hindu temples and magnificent palaces, and on those very spots, on those sacred places where temples once stood, they built mosques. Millions of Hindu women were raped and killed while others were taken away as concubines. Children were carried away as slaves and converted to Islam - the forefathers of today's Indian Muslims.

Yet they could not shatter the spirit of the Hindus. Whereas in other parts of Asia and Europe where the conquered nations readily opted for Islam rather than death, the Hindus stoically resisted the Muslim invaders. The Muslim conquests were for the Hindus a pure struggle between life and death. Indian culture or Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) could not be destroyed. Hinduism was too deeply ingrained in her people's soul. So profound was their Dharma, their unshakable faith in the philosophy of their Shastras, their unswerving devotion to God, that they never gave up the resistance. An infinite supply of men and women in Saffron clothes (Rishis and Swamis), Hindu saints and sages, always came up to stem the tide of suffering. They never stopped spreading the message of Sanatana Dharma, never stopped reminding Hindus that fighting back when Sanatana Dharma is threatened is not just a necessity but our bounden duty. In our revered Bhagavada Gita, Arjuna took a serious scolding from Lord Krishna for being soft on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. The Rajputs, the Marathas and the Sikhs are among the mightiest defenders of Hinduism. Fearless Hindu queens fought valiantly at the forefront of the battles: Rani Durgawati, Rani Padmini and Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi were among the bravest. Chandragupta Maurya, Asokha, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Guru Govind Singh and countless Hindu lions sacrificed their lives to uphold Dharma and to protect our great culture.

Today, the reincarnated souls of those long dead Mongol terrorists still carry on as Islamic Fundamentalists and continue to aspire to transform Mother India into their "Dar-ul-Islam" or house of Islam. They still see us Hindus as kafirs and infidels who must accept their one true God or die. Indian Muslims of today have forgotten that they were once peaceful, loving Hindus forcibly converted to a religion they hated. These lost children of Bharat have bitten the hand that fed them and have cursed the Mother that weaned them.

Hindu suffering did not begin with the Mongol invasions nor did it end with them. There were Macedonians and Arabs before them. As the Mongol empire began to weaken, another set of invaders came to take their place: the Europeans. From 1498 with the arrival of the Portuguese Vasco Da Gama to 1947 when Governor General Mountbatten packed up the Union Jack, Hindus endured aggressive Christian missionary activities together with the Muslim threat. Just like the Arabs and Mongols before them, the Europeans took advantage of Indian hospitality. They betrayed the trust of a peaceful people and set about to conquer and colonize them.

Under the Portuguese, Jesuit Christians violently forced Hindus to convert to Christianity. Many "heretics" were burnt alive for refusing. The French and Dutch were less interested in conversion but the British made up for them pretty well. While the British were sucking up the sweet of the Indian soil, enriching their royal coffers, their Christian missionaries were busily converting Hindus. They concocted the theory of the Aryan Invasion to divide the Indian people. They pitted Aryans against Dravidians (their own concoctions), caste against caste, and Hindus against Muslims to make missionary work, among other interests, easier. They demonized our religious texts and our deities. They also carried out their massacres - the Jallianwala Bagh and the Amritsar massacres will always be remembered. In more modern times, it was the British who created Pakistan and Bangladesh (1947) that gave India three bitter wars. Not a single Hindu temple must be standing now in Pakistan. Millions of Hindus have fled the organized terror in these two nations of Musulmans. What nation, what culture can survive such destructive power?

Christianity seems to thrive on people's misfortune - poverty, famine and natural disasters. Heavily funded by the church and powerful western nations, their missionaries would descend on the hapless people in these problem areas bearing gifts: trinkets, food items, used clothes and basic education in exchange for their religious belief. Refusal to convert would mean losing these goodies. The ultimate purpose of Christian charity is to make converts. In 1858, the South Indian Missionary Conference set forth its goal: "The object of all missionary labour should not be primarily the civilisation, but the evangelization of the heathen...schools may be regarded as converting agencies and their value estimated by the number who are led to renounce idolatry and make an open profession of Christianity". Nothing much has changed to this day. Christians still see us as pagans with too many Gods and that theirs is the one true God we should accept to be saved. Saved from what? We ask. Our great enlightened Swamis such as Adishankara, Rama Tirtha, Ramakrishna, Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada, Dayananda, Vivekananda, and Chinmayananda must have gone to hell! Even Mahatma Gandhi might be rolling in the eternal fire according to the Christian scheme of things. Punishment for not being Christians!!

Indians who were shipped as indentured laborers to work in the sugar colonies met the same fate. Like hungry-bellied lions following the migrating herds, the missionaries never missed an opportunity to badger them. The same old tricks are being used today. Right now in the island of Wakenaam in Guyana, for example, evangelical Christians pay up to fifty dollars a head for converts. Christian prayers are still enforced in the public schools. Hindus in Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname, Fiji, Mauritius, in fact all over the world, can relate the same experiences. Swami Vivekananda made it clear at the Parliament of Religions In Chicago: "If we Hindus dig out all the dirt from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and throw it in your faces, it will be but a speck compared to what the missionaries have done to our religion and culture". He could never be more precise.

Mother India has an enormous heart. Regardless of her suffering, she has opened her arms to all and sundry who have been persecuted in other parts of the world: Jews, Parsis, Ahmadiya Muslims, Shia Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians. Which country in the world can boast of such a diversity of races, religions and ethnic groups? Which religion in the world, but Hinduism, can boast of such tolerance? Nowhere in the world is there such unity in diversity. Hindus should welcome back to the fold any Christian or Muslim desiring to reconvert, after all, said Swami Aksharanandaji of Guyana "the core of Indianness is Hinduness".

But in times like these when evil forces threaten to destroy the righteous, we Hindus must unite and defend ourselves at all costs. We must not be concerned only with material things and allow the spirit to degenerate. We must never be fooled into believing that non-violence means non-resistance. Those mistakes have been made before with grave consequences; we paid the price in blood. It is just not true that the name of Sanatana Dharma alone will protect us because it roughly translates to 'Eternal Religion or Eternal Code of Conduct', as some of our wishy washy Hindu leaders would have us believe. The Mahabharata and the Ramayana, our most dear epics, tell of the battles between the Devas and the Asuric forces, of good against evil. Our Gods are depicted with mighty weapons, more fearsome than today's missiles. It is time to open our eyes and look right back at our tormentors and stop them once and for all .

Once again " uttishthata jagrata prapya varan nibhodhata ksurasya dhara nishita duratyaya durgam pathas-tat kavayo vadanti"...Arise, awake, having reached the wise, become enlightened, for the path is as sharp as a razor's edge, difficult to tread - thus say the wise. Kathopanishad.

Victory to Mother India and Sanatana Dharma! Bharat Mata ki Jai! Sanatana Dharma ki Jai!

■ AN EVENING WITH SUDARSHANJI

My two brothers, Somdat Mahabir and Upadhyayaji, invited me to a Hindu Jaagaranam Satsang at the American Sevashram Ashram auditorium on July 28, 2001, a Satsang sponsored by the Caribbean Shaakhaa of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh. These two brothers were overwhelmingly courteous, insuperably humble, with a cordiality that was too much for my adamancy. Therefore, not knowing what this Satsang was about, just to please courtesies, I decided to attend, caring less of the sleep I would lose, since I work at night during the weekends.

Attending the Jaagaranam Satsang, many pleasant memories came back to me. A bahenji with her two charming little daughters were in the lead of a choir, singing a touching song with enthralling lyrics: there was no accompaniment of musical instruments, no noise, no distraction. There was only the pure beauty of voice and words. This, I remember, was the way our Vyaasjis on the singhhaasan used to conduct their lectures long ago, where Vedic and Puraanic texts were explained with great scholarship, and thousands attended, both young and old, the atmosphere was education and learning. Today, there is a new trend. Our preachers pay less attention to the exposition of the Vedas and Puraanas and spend the bulk of their time singing filmi tunes on the singhaasan with terrible noise from musical instruments. Sometimes one does not know the difference between a yajna and a concert, between a preacher and a Bollywood film star. The excuse for transforming the singhaasan into a disco ambience is that it is attractive to the young people, and that reading without music and noise would drive the young people away from Hindu Dharma.