BREAKING UP FAMILIES – PERMITTED AS PER CHRISTIAN BELIEFS !!!???- CASTE & THE MISSIONARY

I am sure all friends will agree with me that the family has got precedence over the individual. It is our experience that we are readily willing to deal with a individual whose whereabouts ie family background are known, whereas we hesitate to deal with individuals whose family background are not known, or if he belongs to a family of disrepute. Thus we give much importance to family. Even in the case of arranged -marriage, family antecedents are carefully gathered. In the Mahabharatha, it is clearly told that a individual may be abandoned for the sake of the family, and a family for the sake of a village, and a village for the sake of the Kingdom. Here also the family is more important than the individual. Thus family constitutes the most elementary unit which gives strength to a caste/community/nation.

And at some point of time in the past, among the members of the Hindu community in Kerala, INDIVIDUALISM took over. It is reflected in the novel Nalukettu (1958) of M.T.Vasudevan Nair, which got Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 1959.Though fictional, could MT have fully assessed the travails of the Karanavar,(family patriarch)  due to British policies & governance ? How did this individualistic tendency come about? Did it creep into the Hindu psyche through the education they received, Western style and mostly run by Church institutions. !!?? If we read Missionary narratives, we see concerted attempts by them to rupture and tear our existing social fabric, by targeting our robust family system. Within and without, individuals were instigated to disregard traditional family & social relationships as well as values, and to disobey and disrespect the family as well as community head/leaders. Agricultural labourers were instigated not to work on Sundays. Such subversive tactics by Missionaries encouraging open rebelliousness against customary heads with the tacit support of the British Govt, ultimately led to the collapse of the joint-family.(One of the main reasons)  We had grown up seeing dysfunctional joint-families, but never cared to unravel how this state of affairs came to be. One beneficiary of this outcome was the Communist Party in Kerala.

Now here we see a Lady Missionary in action while dearly clinging on to the words of Jesus Christ and putting IT into effective use at the same time assuaging her guilty feelings. She is using Christ’s words as a battering ram to break-up families, and also justifying her actions. Though her actions were the means employed at getting converts, she(and people like her) did not fully succeed in it, but was able to spread such negative values making individualism acceptable in society. The result Hindu families became weak and got atomized and caste cohesiveness suffered. Except for the SNDP, whose members are becoming more organized,(and becoming militant) no other community is even reckoned in the politics of Kerala.They have become very weak in all aspects.

Given below is the Missionary justifications, in breaking-up (trying to)  traditional Hindu families.

Missionary Quote : “ The second objection is, "Why break up families by insisting on baptism as a sine quâ non of discipleship?"
And again we answer, Because we believe our Master tells us to. He said, "Baptising them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." (Mathew 29:19) What right have we, His servants, to stop short of full obedience? Did He not know the conditions of high-caste Hindu life in India when He gave this command? Was He ignorant of the breaking up of families which obedience to it would involve? "Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you nay, but rather division." (Luke 12:51) And then come words which we have seen lived out literally in the case of every high-caste convert who has come. "For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." These are truly awful verses; no one knows better than the missionary how awful they are. There are times when we can hardly bear the pain caused by the sight of this division. But are we more tender than the Tender One? Is our sympathy truer than His? Can we look up into His eyes and say, "It costs them too much, Lord; it costs us too much, to fully obey Thee in this"?
But granted the command holds, why should not the baptised convert return home and live there? Because he is not wanted there, as a Christian. Exceptions to this rule are rare (we are speaking of Caste Hindus), and can usually be explained by some extenuating circumstance.

The high-caste woman who said to us, "I cannot live here and break my Caste; if I break it I must go," spoke the truth. Keeping Caste includes within itself the observance of certain customs which by their very nature are idolatrous. Breaking Caste means breaking through these customs; and one who habitually disregarded and disobeyed rules, considered binding and authoritative by all the rest of the household, would not be tolerated in an orthodox Hindu home. It is not a question of persecution or death, or of wanting or not wanting to be there; it is a question of not being wanted there, unless, indeed, she will compromise. Compromise is the one open door back into the old home, and God only knows what it costs when the choice is made and that one door is shut.

This ever-recurring reiteration of the power and the bondage of Caste may seem almost wearisome, but the word, and what lies behind it, is the one great answer to a thousand questions, and so it comes again and again. In Southern India especially, and still more so in this little fraction of it, and in the adjoining kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin, Caste feeling is so strong that sometimes it is said that Caste is the religion of South India. But everywhere all over India it is, to every orthodox Hindu, part of his very self. Get his Caste out of him? Can you? You would have to drain him of his life-blood first.

It is the strength of this Caste spirit which in South India causes it to take the form of a determination to get the convert back……….”
 
All Excerpts From
Carmichael, Amy. “Things as They Are / Mission Work in Southern India.” iBooks. (pages 335-37 of 374)

DEVADASI' S PORTRAYED AS 'TEMPLE PROSTITUTES' BY CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES

DEVADASI's portrayed as TEMPLE PROSTITUTES BY CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES LIKE AMY CARMICHEL

M.S.Subbalakshmi,'s mother was from the DEVADASI
community  !!!!

One of the book reviews in today's The Hindu (05/08/2014) is about "NAUTCH-GIRLS'. The degraded version of their performance in modern- times is in the Dance-bars of Mumbai.

Excerpts from the review " The book traces the social downfall of the courtesans who were once patronised by royalty and enjoyed considerable influence. Their decline began in the colonial era during which the census identified them in negative ways, classifying them as prostitutes. Then came laws meant to protect British officers from venereal disease. This included laws providing for relocating courtesans outside the city’s borders. The Criminal Tribes Act which targeted nomadic tribes, also worked against them.

Yet the categorisation of “nautch” as a social evil continued even after Independence with the performers targeted by obscenity regulations and laws against soliciting and trafficking. The loss of princely courts also threw many traditional performers into destitution and prostitution. At the same time, classical dance forms saw the purge of hereditary dancers and increasingly became the preserve of upper caste “respectable women.” Link http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-bookreview/dancing-on-the-fringes-the-shadowy-world-of-courtesans/article6281901.ece

Similar description about Devadasis's is given in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devadasi. But Amy Carmichel described this religio-cultural aspect of Hindus in vulgar terms. She 

denounced this practice as "TEMPLE PROSTITUTION" through

which the priests made money.              Chapter XXIV "Married to the God" of her book, 'Things as They Are', refers obliquely to this. But this is made explicit on Christian websites.
Refer to the folllowing Christian Website from UK one of many such sites relating to Amy Carmichel http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/index.php/heroes-of-faith/ .

"CASTE, like the BRANCH ROOTS of the BANYAN TREE ARE THE PRIDE & JOY OF INDIANS" - AMY CARMICHAEL

Amy Wilson Carmichael,  the Protestant Christian Missionary  calls out to God, to DESTROY and take-away, the Pride and Joy experienced by millions of  Indians. The following paragraphs  are excerpts from her book. Similar WESTERN CHRISTIAN  hubris, modern world experienced in Iraq, Afghanistan etc etc.

Contrary to Modern-View, CASTE was a joyous institution !!!!!


Excerpt "All trees have roots. To tear up a full-grown tree by the roots, and transplant it bodily, is never a simple process. But in India we have a tree with a double system of roots. The banyan tree drops roots from its boughs. (bough = a main branch of a tree). These bough roots in time run as deep underground as the original root. And the tap root (tap root = a primary(main) root that grows vertically downward and gives off small lateral roots) and its runners, and the branch roots and theirs, get knotted and knit into each other, till the whole forms one solid mass of roots, thousands

of yards of a tangle of roots, sinuous and strong. Conceive the uprooting of such a tree, like the famous one of North India, for instance, which sheltered an army of seven thousand men. You cannot conceive it; it could not be done, the earthward hold is so strong.

The old in India are like these trees; they are doubly, inextricably rooted. There is the usual great tap root common to all human trees in all lands—faith in the creed of the race; there are the usual running roots too—devotion to family and home. All these hold the soul down.
 

But in India we have more—we have the branch-rooted system of Caste; Caste so intricate, so precise, that no Western lives who has traced it through its ramifications back to the bough from which it dropped in the olden days.

This Caste, then, these holding laws, which most would rather die than break, are like the branch roots of the banyan tree with their infinite strength of grip. But the strangest thing to us is this: the people love to have it so; they do not regard themselves as held, these roots are their pride and joy. Take a child of four or five, ask it a question concerning its Caste, and you will see how that baby tree has begun to drop branch rootlets down. Sixty years afterwards look again, and every rootlet has grown a tree, each again sending rootlets down; and so the system spreads.

But we look up from the banyan tree. God! what are these roots to Thee? These Caste-root systems are nothing to Thee! India is not too hard for Thee! O God, come!"

Excerpt  From Chapter VIII, Chapter Name : Roots, Pages 113 & 
 114 of 374 pages,

Carmichael, Amy. “Things as They Are / Mission Work in Southern India.” iBooks. 

This Book Freely available as e-book.

 Amy Wilson Carmichael was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur, Tamil  Nadu

 

BRAHMINS - PEOPLE TO BE DISTRUSTED AND HATED !!!

Strident portrayal were resorted to by Christian Missionaries of Brahmins, as a people not to be trusted or taken into confidence. Missionaries tried hard to mislead the people of India that Brahmins

posed the real obstacle , in the path towards "progress" of other communities. The following picture is from missionary literature. The detailed caption of the picture is self explanatory.(Enlarged caption (alone) provided below the picture with caption )

Imagine, a priest from a temple in India going to England for the sole purpose of converting the Christians there to Hindus. Further imagine, him writing in similar calumnious terms against the Nobles, Lords , Bishops and other socially outstanding men there, with their photographs.- Thus you will realize what sort of men had plagued our land posing as MEN of GOD, doing God's Work.

If the men at the apex of a society are made the objects of hatred, so that society dismisses and side-lines them, not heeding their words of wisdom, such a society is surely on the path towards destruction !!!!!

The above photograph with captions taken from the following book:-