h o m e

t h e    c a s t e    s y s t e m

c o n t e n t s

The Caste System or varna-ashrama has been one of the most misrepresented, misinformed, misunderstood, misused and the most maligned aspects of Hinduism. If one wants to understand the truth, the original purpose behind the caste system, one must go to antiquity to study the evolution of the caste system. Caste System, which is said to be the mainstay of the Hindu social order, has no sanction in the Vedas. The ancient culture of India was based upon a system of social diversification according to SPIRITUAL development,  not by birth, but by his karma. This system became hereditary and over the course of many centuries degenerated as a result of exploitation by some priests, and other socio-economic elements of society.

However, as Alain Danielou, son of French aristocracy, author of numerous books on philosophy, religion, history and arts of India, says: "Caste system has enabled Hindu civilization to survive all invasions and to develop without revolutions or important changes, throughout more than four millennia, with a continuity that is unique in history. Caste system may appear rigid to our eyes because for more than a thousand years Hindu society withdrew itself from successive domination by Muslims and Europeans. Yet, the greatest poets and the most venerated saints  such as Sura Dasa, Kabir, Tukaram, Thiruvalluvar and Ram Dasa; came from the humblest class of society."  In the words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, " In spite of the divisions, there is an inner cohesion among the Hindu society from the Himalayas to the Cape Comorin."

Caste system has been exploited against the Hindus, for the last two centuries by the British, Christian Missionaries, Secular historians, Communists, Muslims, Pre and Post-Independence Indian politicians and Journalists for their own ends. One way to discredit any system is to highlight its excesses, and this only adds to the sense of inferiority that many Indians feel about their own culture. Caste system is often portrayed as the ultimate horror, in the media, yet social inequities continue to persist in theoretically Egalitarian Western Societies. The Caste system is judged offensive by the Western norms, yet racial groups have been isolated, crowded into reserves like the American Indians or Australian Aborigines, where they can only atrophy and disappear. 

This chapter is not a justification of the abuse of caste system, rather it is a collection of interesting information. Caste system has enabled Hindu civilization to survive all invasions and made Indian society stronger. Caste system served a purpose, performed certain functions, and met the needs appropriate to the times in history. India's caste norms may once have had a rationale; but the norms are outlived today. Caste system is not stagnant and is undergoing changes under the impact of modernization. Caste system should undergo reforms in the social arena so that unjustified discrimination and abuse is eliminated.

A Comprehensive Look: Pro and Cons of The Caste System
Sociology of groups in Ancient India 
Discrimination in Western societies
Mahatma Gandhi and Louis Dumont  
No Religious Sanction in Hindu Scriptures
Degeneration of the Caste System
Manu Smrti: Not a Religious Book
Exploitation of Caste by Christian Missionaries
The Anglo-Indians, Pondycherians and Harijan/Dalit Converts
Abrahamic Super Caste System
Christian and Poor Countries
Gandhi and Brahmins
Conclusion
Articles

***

The caste system was never a tenet of the Hindu faith. 

"The universe is the outpouring of the majesty of God, the auspicious one, radiant love. Every face you see belongs to Him. He is present in everyone without exception."    - says the  Yajur Veda.

"The Lord (The Divine) is enshrined in the hearts of all."  - says the Isha Upanishad 1 -1.  

The Upanishads which are a pure, lofty, heady distillation of spiritual wisdom which come to us from the very dawn of time tell us:  

"Reality (God) is our real Self, so that each of us is one with the power that created and sustains the universe." 

In Sanskrit, Tat tvam asi,  “You are That.”

"In the depths of meditation, sages (rishis)
Saw within themselves the Lord of Love,
Who dwells in the heart of every creature."

                             - says the  Shvetashvatara Upanishad. 1 - 3.

Lord Krsna expounds the unique philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna.

"I am the Self seated in the heart of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle and the very end of all beings".  

The Bhagavad Gita has influenced great Americans from Henry David Thoreau to J R Oppenheimer.

Listen to The Bhagavad Gita podcast - By Michael Scherer - americanphonic.com.

Watch Scientific verification of Vedic knowledge

***

In Bhagawad Gita, sloka 20, Chapter 10, Lord Krishna says, 

"I am the Self seated in the heart of all creatures. I am the beginning, the middle and the very end of all beings".  All beings have, therefore to be treated alike.

Lord Krishna as saying, in response to the question— "How is Varna (social order) determined?"

"Birth is not the cause, my friend; it is virtues which are the cause of auspiciousness. Even a chandala (lower caste) observing the vow is considered a Brahman by the gods."

“The four fold division of castes’  “was created by me according to the apportionment of qualities and duties.” “Not birth, not sacrament, not learning, make one dvija (twice-born), but righteous conduct alone causes it.” “Be he a Sudra or a member of any other class, says the Lord in the same epic, “he that serves as a raft on a raftless current , or helps to ford the unfordable, deserves respect in everyway.”



A Comprehensive Look: Pro and Cons of The Caste System

Hinduism believes in "Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam" (the world is one family - an ancient Vedic term). 

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Was among India's most fervent nationalists, fighting for Indian independence from British rule. Gandhi was a staunch and devout Hindu and he proclaimed it proudly:

"I am a Hindu because it is Hinduism which makes the world worth living." (source: Young India 1-12-26).

He said that the caste system or varnashrama is "inherent in human nature, and Hinduism has simply made a science of it." 

He defended the "much-maligned Brahman" and entertains " not a shadow of doubt" that "if Brahmanism does not revive, Hinduism will perish".

"Hinduism insists on the brotherhood of not only all mankind but of all that lives." 

(source: Hindu Dharma - M. K. Gandhi p. 7-374 and  Harijan 28-3-1936).

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was the foremost disciple of Ramakrishna and a world spokesperson for Vedanta. India's first spiritual and cultural ambassador to the West, came to represent the religions of India at the World Parliament of Religions, held at Chicago in connection with the World's Fair (Columbian Exposition) of 1893. His Chicago speech is uniquely Vedantic. Jawaharlal Nehru refers to this universal dimension of Vivekananda in his Discovery of India. “Rooted in the past, and full of pride in India’s heritage, Vivekananda was yet modern in his approach to life’s problems, and was a kind of bridge between the past of India and her present.”

He said: 

"Caste is a plan we want to follow- - .There is no country in the world without caste. The plan in India is to make everybody a Brahmin, the Brahmin being the ideal of humanity. Indian caste is better than the caste that prevails which prevails in Europe or America." 

(source: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Kolkata,1985, Vol V, pp 215).

Sir Rustom Pestonji Masani (1876 -   )  a Parsi, distinguished himself when he was elected as the first Indian national to become Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai. Author of Zoroastrianism: the religion of the good life he points out:  

“The seers of the early Vedic period know nothing of caste. Delve as much as one may into the literature of the period, one discovers only classes not castes. …the conception of social segregation and untouchability was repugnant to the genius of the people who sought unity in variety and dissolved variety in unity. Each class was regarded as an integral part of the fabric of society. Each submitted cheerfully to the special functions and duties assigned to it. Even the Sudra appears to have been content with his mission in life; and there were no agitators abroad to sow in the minds of the proletariat the seeds of discontent. There appeared to have been a tacit understanding that different classes of individuals stood at different stages of evolution and that, therefore, the duties, modes of life, and rules of conduct applicable and helpful to each must necessarily differ. The differentiation was, however, regarded only as a means to an end, not an end in itself. It assigned to each individual his due position in the social order; it regulated his relation with other members of the community, and provided means for his orderly development, eliminating possibilities of a clash of interests between master and servant, landlord and tenant, capital and labor, state and subject.”  

"According to Hindu philosophy divine energy manifests itself in different degrees according to the preponderance in each person of one or other of the three gunas, or fundamental qualities, which make up the prakriti or nature, of an individual. These gunas are sattva, rajas and tamas. It follows, therefore, that for his own salvation as well as for social efficiency an individual should be allowed to develop along the lines best suited to his natural endowments and that he on his part should perform the duties assigned to him in accordance with the predominant quality of the strand in his nature. The well-known episode of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita is a typical illustration of this philosophy of life. Dismayed, he refuses to fight; but Lord Krishna, the preacher, prevails upon him to discharge the duty proper to his Kshatriya caste."  

"There is nothing, however, in the whole body of Sanskrit literature to show that the caste system was deliberately devised as a means to attain the coveted end of realizing the divine within man. A remarkable and almost unique feature of Hindu culture is the process of minute analysis and synthesis to which it subjects from time to time the phenomena which leave their impress upon the senses and the mind and the unchangeable soul. Such an exposition has helped succeeding generations to grasp the significance of the philosophic doctrines underlying the social and religious systems of a race excelling in spiritual speculations and metaphysical subtleties."

"According to the Rig Veda hymn, the different classes sprang from the four limbs of the Creator. It was meant to show that the four classes stood in relation to the social organization in the same relation as the different organs of the Primordial Man to his body. Together they had to function to give vitality to the body politic. There was nothing in that account to warrant the assumption, that the order in which the four groups were mentioned, or that the particular limbs specified as their origin, marked their social status."

"A person’s worth is determined by his knowledge and capacity and the inherent qualities which mark his conduct in life. “The four fold division of castes’ says the Creator in the Bhagavad Gita, “was created by me according to the apportionment of qualities and duties.” “Not birth, not sacrament, not learning, make one dvija (twice-born), but righteous conduct alone causes it.” “Be he a Sudra or a member of any other class, says the Lord in the same epic, “he that serves as a raft on a raftless current , or helps to ford the unfordable, deserves respect in everyway.”

(source: Legacy of India - edited by G T Garratt - Oxford At the Clarendon Press  p. 132 - 140).

Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (1896-1963) Indian scholar, journalist, historian from Kerala, administrator, diplomat, Minister in Patiala Bikaner and Ambassador to China, Egypt and France. Author of several books, including Asia and Western Dominance, India Through the ages and India and the Indian Ocean. 

He says:

“The fact is that the four-fold caste is merely a theoretical division of society to which tribes, clans and family groups are affiliated. It is a sociological fiction. The earliest available literature gives instances of Brahmins carrying on the professions of medicine, arms and administration."

"In the Jatakas Brahmins are mentioned as traders, hunters and trappers. R P Masani quotes the case of a Kshatriya prince, Kusa, mentioned in one of the Jataka tales, who became an apprentice in turn to a potter, a basket maker, a florist and a cook. Conversely, from even the Vedic days there have been innumerable instances of men born in the lowest rank of caste-society taking to professions which in theory were the monopoly of the other castes. Even the Mauryas royal family came from among the Sudras.”

(source: Hindu Society at cross roads - By K M Panikkar  p. 1 - 17).

P. D. Ouspensky ( ? ) a thoughtful Western writer is of the opinion that "All the most brilliant period of history, without exception, were periods in which the social order approached the caste system." He thinks that the caste system (varna vyavastha) "is a natural division" of society. "Whether people wish it or not, whether they recognize it or not, they are divided into four castes. There are Brahmans, there are Kshatriyas, there are Vaishyas, and there are Shudras. No human legislation, no philosophical intricacies, no pseudo-sciences and no form of terror can abolish this fact. And the normal functioning and development of human societies are possible only if this fact is recognized and acted on."

(source: A New Model of the Universe - By P. D. Ouspensky  p. 447). 

Sir George Birchwood ( ? ) has said:

"So long as the Hindus hold on to the caste system, India will be India; but from the day they break from it, there will be no more India. That glorious peninsula will be degraded to the position of a bitter "East End" of the Anglo-Saxon Empire."

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru. Oxford University Press. 1995. p. 247).

Dr. Subramanium Swamy (1939 -  )  He is also a reputed economist and worked as Assistant Economic Affairs Officer, United Nations Secretariat, New York in 1963. He worked with two Nobel laureates, Simon Kuznets and Paul A. Samuelson for his doctorate in economics at the Harvard University, awarded in 1965. He is the President of the Janata Party and author of the book, Hinduism under Siege. In an interview with a Canadian TV station he has remarked:

"Caste system was originally not designed as mutually antagonistic groupings. It was not even connected to birth. It is one of retrogression that caste has been connected to birth. The sages in their discussions on why caste system should be created had said that there are four sources of power in society – knowledge, wealth, weapons and land and thus all these should not be in any one hands. In fact one should be in the hands of one person. Therefore if you are a pursuer of knowledge, a teacher of knowledge you should have no wealth, weapons or land. Society should give you donations so that you could live – that is how our preachers, sannysis, religious preceptors etc. they lived in society and taught people but donations came from the public. If you were the owner of weapons then you were the King but you could not make policy - for policy you had to go to people of knowledge – same thing with wealth and land."

(source: Dr. Subramanian Swamy interview on Hinduism with CTS TV Canada - By Richard Landou).

Rev. William H Robinson (1955 - ) in his book By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool p. 66 writes:  

“The fortress of caste cannot be taken by external assault. Its wall will only crumble when the garrison within ceases to repair them. The only real discipline that India has maintained is the discipline of caste. If you really could create genuine democracy in India it would destroy caste. If it destroyed caste it would destroy Hinduism and if it destroyed Hinduism it would destroy India , at least the India that has existed for so many thousands of years….Far far better that they should remain good Hindus than become rampant atheists!

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991 p. 69 - 239).  For more refer to the book online - digilib. bu.edu.

Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji ( ? ) of the India Heritage Research Foundation defines:  

"The Caste system as you see it today is not was originally simply a division of labor based on personal, talents tendencies and abilities. It was never supposed to divide people. Rather, it was supposed to unite people so that everyone was simultaneously working to the best of his/her ability for the greater service of all. In the scriptures, when the system of dividing society into four groups was explained, the word used is “Varna.” Varna means “class” not “caste.” Caste is actually “Jati” and it is an incorrect translation of the word “varna.” When the Portuguese colonized parts of India, they mistakenly translated “varna vyavasthaa” as “caste system” and the mistake has stayed since then. 

The varna system was based on a person’s characteristics, temperament and their innate “nature.” The Vedas describe one’s nature as being a mixture of the three gunas – tamas, rajas and sattva. Depending on the relative proportions of each of these gunas, one would be classified as a Brahmin, Kshetriya, Vaishya or Shudra. For example, Brahmins who perform much of the intellectual, creative and spiritual work within a community have a high proportion of sattva and low proportions of tamas and rajas. A kshetriya who is inclined toward political, administrative and military work has a high proportion of rajas, a medium proportion of sattva and a low proportion of tamas. A Vaishya who performs the tasks of businessman, employer and skilled laborer also has a high proportion of rajas but has relatively equal proportions of sattva and tamas, both of which are lower than rajas. Last, a shudra who performs the unskilled labor in society has a high proportion of tamas, a low proportion of sattva and a medium proportion of rajas. 

These gunas are not inherited. They are based on one’s inherent nature and one’s karma. Therefore one’s “varna” was also not supposed to be based on heredity, and in the past it was not. It is only in relatively modern times that the strict, rigid, heredity-based “caste” system has come into existence. There are many examples in the scriptures and in history of people transcending the “class” or “varna” into which they were born. Everyone was free to choose an occupation according to his/her guna and karma. 

Further, according to the scriptures, there is no hierarchy at all inherent in the varna system. All parts are of equal importance and equal worth. A good example is to imagine a human body. The brain which thinks, plans and guides represents the Brahmin caste. The hands and arms which fight, protect and work represent the kshetriya caste. The stomach which serves as the source of energy and “transactions” represents the vaishya caste, and the legs/feet which do the necessary running around in the service of the rest of the body represent the shudra caste. No one can say the brain is better than the legs or that hands are superior to feet. Each is equally important for the overall functioning of the body system. They just serve different roles. " Look at Bhagwan Ram and Bhagwan Krishna. Both show the example of taking their food from even people of the lowest caste and going to the homes of the lower caste people. It is devotion, purity and commitment which make us great or small, not our caste.

(source: The Caste system - By Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji - India Heritage Research Foundation).

M V Nadkarni ( ?) writes:

"It is necessary to demolish the myth that caste system is an intrinsic part of Hinduism. This myth is believed by orthodox elements within Hinduism and also is propagated by elements outside Hinduism with the mischievous intent of proselytising. Even Vedic and classical Hinduism – not only does not support the caste system, but has taken lots of pains to oppose it both in principle and practice, making it obvious that caste system is not an intrinsic part of Hindu canon, philosophy and even practice.

It is only in the dharmashastras (dharma sutras and smritis) that we find support to the caste system, and not in other canon. However, dharmashastras never had the same status as other canon known as shruti (Vedas and Upanishads) and it is laid down that whenever there is a conflict between the shruti and smriti literature, it is the former that prevails. It is Manusmriti, which is particularly supportive of caste system but where it conflicts with Vedas and Upanishads, the latter would prevail. Though Bhagvadgita (Gita) is not regarded as a part of shruti, Gita is highly regarded as sacred and is very much a part of classical Hinduism. As we shall just see even the Gita is against caste system based on birth, and not supportive to it. Thus, to the extent that dharmashastras conflict with shruti and the Gita, the latter prevails. Apasthambha dharmasutra may have supported untouchability, but it seems to be read more by those who like to attack Hinduism with it than by its followers! It is hardly regarded as canon, even if any Hindu has heard of it.  Vedanta philosophy declares that there is divinity in every lecture. Rg Veda emphasises equality of all human beings. It goes to the extent of saying, which sounds quite modern: ‘No one is superior, none inferior. All are brothers marching forward to prosperity’ "

(source: Is Caste System Intrinsic to Hinduism? Demolishing a Myth - By M V Nadkarni - Economic and Political Weekly - November 8' 2003).

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892- 1964) the world-renowned geneticist. In 1922, he joined Cambridge University to take up research in biochemistry. Among his significant contributions is an estimate of the rate of mutation of a human gene. Some of his famous books are The Causes of Evolution, New Paths in Genetics and Biochemistry of Genetics.

He immigrated to India and soon found himself attracted to Hindu culture. Himself a rationalist, Haldane told his colleagues, “I do not think that a Rationalist and Humanist need necessarily break with Hinduism.” He watched with disdain the way the socialist government machinery rooted in sycophancy and corruption, was developing a stranglehold on the budding Indian science. The stranglehold on the progress of India, as Haldane observed was of a socialist government's making and not that of the Dharma. He wrote:

(source: A passage to India - By JBS Haldane 1958 and Science and Indian Culture - By JBS Haldane  1991 p.19 & p.24. For more on J B S Haldane, refer to chapter on Quotes).

(Note: Casteism pales in comparison with 50 million Africans killed in slave boats, 200+ years of slavery with church justification of Africans having no soul, lynchings of young African Americans, decimation of Native Americans with things like disease infected blankets, colonization of Africa, Americas and Asia and sapping their economy totally causing famines and living skeletons, Nazi holocaust of 10 million, burning of witches. Refer to Hinduism Under Threat - protectreligions.org).  

Professor R. Vaidyanathan is Professor of Finance at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore has observed:

"The metropolitan elite and rootless experts have concluded that caste is bad. They have made it so that every Indian is expected to feel guilty at the mention of caste. Internationally, caste is a convenient stick to flay anything Indian, its religions, customs, culture.

But the caste system is undeniably a valuable social capital, which provides a cushion for individuals and families to deal with society and the state. The Western model of atomising every individual to a single element in a right-based system and forcing the individual to have a direct link with the state has destroyed families and erased communities. Every person stands alone, stark naked, with only rights as his imaginary clothes to deal directly with the state.

While attacking the caste system, Indian intellectuals have borrowed the Western right-based concept of reservation, or affirmative action. In doing so, they have overlooked an extraordinary contribution of the caste system, in consolidating business and entrepreneurship in India , particularly in the last fifty years."

M. N.Srinivas, the late great sociologist, said in Collected Essays brought out by the Oxford University Press in 2005, 

“An important feature of social mobility in modern India is the manner in which the successful members of the backward castes work consistently for improving the economic and social condition of their caste fellows. This is due to the sense of identification with one’s own caste, and also a realisation that caste mobility is essential for individual or familial mobility.”

“The caste system is far from a rigid system in which the position of each component caste is fixed for all time. Movement has always been possible, and especially so in the middle regions of the hierarchy. A low caste was able, in a generation or two, to rise to a higher position in the hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism, and by Sanskritizing its ritual and pantheon.” (Srinivas 1952: 127)  

Dr. Koenraad Elst (1959 -) Dutch historian, born in Leuven, Belgium, on 7 August 1959, into a Flemish (i.e. Dutch-speaking Belgian) Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. He is the author of several books including The Saffron Swastika, Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism and Negationism in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam

He has written why Christian missionaries attacked the caste system. 

'The caste system is often portrayed as the ultimate horror. Inborn inequality is indeed unacceptable to us moderns, but this does not preclude that the system has also had its merits.

Caste is perceived as an "exclusion-from," but first of all it is a form of "belonging-to," a natural structure of solidarity. For this reason, Christian and Muslim missionaries found it very difficult to lure Hindus away from their communities. Sometimes castes were collectively converted to Islam, and Pope Gregory XV (1621-23) decreed that the missionaries could tolerate caste distinction among Christian converts; but by and large, caste remained an effective hurdle to the destruction of Hinduism through conversion. That is why the missionaries started attacking the institution of caste and in particular the brahmin caste. This propaganda has bloomed into a full-fledged anti-brahminism, the Indian equivalent of anti-Semitism.

Every caste had a large measure of autonomy, with its own judiciary, duties and privileges, and often its own temples. Inter-caste affairs were settled at the village council by consensus; even the lowest caste had veto power. This autonomy of intermediate levels of society is the antithesis of the totalitarian society in which the individual stands helpless before the all-powerful state. This decentralized structure of civil society and of the Hindu religious commonwealth has been crucial to the survival of Hinduism under Muslim rule. Whereas Buddhism was swept away as soon as its monasteries were destroyed, Hinduism retreated into its caste structure and weathered the storm.

Caste also provided a framework for integrating immigrant communities: Jews, Zoroastrians and Syrian Christians. They were not only tolerated, but assisted in efforts to preserve their distinctive traditions. 

Nineteenth-century Westerners projected the colonial situation and the newest race theories on the caste system: the upper castes were white invaders lording it over the black natives. This outdated view is still repeated ad-nauseam by anti-Hindu authors: now that "idolatry" has lost its force as a term of abuse, "racism" is a welcome innovation to demonize Hinduism. In reality, India is the region where all skin color types met and mingled, and you will find many brahmins as black as Nelson Mandela. Ancient "Aryan" heroes like Rama, Krishna , Draupadi, Ravana (a brahmin) and a number of Vedic seers were explicitly described as being dark-skinned.

Finally, caste society has been the most stable society in history. Indian communists used to sneer that " India has never even had a revolution." Actually, that is no mean achievement.

(source: Why the Christian missionaries attack the institution of caste and in particular the brahmin caste? - By Koenraad Elst).

Gurcharan Das, the strategic consultant, writer and former vice-president and managing director of Proctor & Gamble Worldwide, says in his book, India Unbound, 

“In the nineteenth century, British colonialists used to blame our caste system for everything wrong in India. Now I have a different perspective. Instead of morally judging caste, I seek to understand its impact on competitiveness. I have come to believe that being endowed with commercial castes is a source of advantage in the global economy.”

(source: Caste as social capital: Why have the Gounders, Nadars, the Marwaris and Katchis done so well - By R Vaidyanathan - newsinsight.net).

Gerald Heard (?) American thinker and writer who has studied the Indian social system, has called it "organic democracy", and suggests in his work, Man the Master, that it is the type of democracy the world as a whole needs today. Heard defines "organic democracy" as "the rule of the people who have organized themselves in a living and not a mechanical relationship; where instead of all men being said to be equal, which is a lie, all men are known to be of equal value, could we but find the position in which their potential contribution could be released and their essential growth so pursued." He calls the four varnas by the names "seers" (Brahmins), "politicians (Kshatriyas), "technicians" (vaishyas) and "coherers" (Shudras). "These four classes are distinguished by unmistakable psychological characteristics which suit them to their particular purpose, function and place."  It is this organization that made Indian society stable, efficient and strong. It produced in India great scholars, warriors, administrators, and producers of wealth.

(source: Man, the Master - By Gerald Heard  p. 129).

Rajeev Srinivasan has wisely noted that:

"It has become a conditioned, Pavlovian reflex for Indians to condemn the entire idea of caste unthinkingly. It has become a cliché to rail against caste, but jati and varnam are just a codification of the fact that all humans are not born equal in their endowments: Some are tall, some are fat, some are musically talented, and so on. We cannot escape the ruthless Bell Curve. 

Allegedly egalitarian Communist states, too, have their elites: Rulers' offspring get the plum jobs. Not too many children of Polit Bureau members toil in the gulags of China , or have their organs harvested on demand. In Muslim societies, too, there are obvious hierarchies: Women are defined to be inferior. Among men, Arabs are top of the heap; among Arabs, Prophet Mohammed's tribe is superior. In that tribe, Mohammed's family members are more privileged. The rigidity of caste as we know it is yet another 'contribution' - as are very many of modern India 's ills, such as dowry - of Christian European imperialists. They capriciously decided that the Manusmrti was the rulebook of Indian society, and used their census to arbitrarily assign jatis to varnams. The objective of the imperialists was simple: To divide and rule. Today, their lineal descendants, the Communists, have latched on to the same idea as a way of subverting India .  

The truth of the matter is that jati is an entirely satisfactory construct for most members of a particular jati, so long as there is no overt discrimination against them. It is not as though people are just dying to get into a 'higher' jati. They are content with their existing in-group, even if they belong to a relatively 'low' jati. It is belonging that matters. Finally, caste makes Indian society robust.  

It is a system theory axiom that a centralised, monolithic system is vulnerable to a single-point failure. But a distributed system, which has many smaller, independent, nodes, is far more difficult to destroy. Castes have functioned as these distributed nodes, and thus no attacker could overthrow the system. Caste, in a fundamental way, has been a reason for the longevity of Indian civilisation. Surely, the distortions in this perfectly sensible construct need to be removed, but it is not per se inappropriate.

(source: Nothing wrong with caste: Birth and berth - By Rajeev Srinivasan - dailypioneer.com - Agenda Special section).

***

The caste system has been the most misunderstood, the most vilified subject of Hindu society at the hands of Western scholars and even today by "secular" Indians. The Hindu caste system has often been described as " the most cruel apartheid, imposed by the barbaric white Aryan invaders on the gentle dark-skinned natives."

(Refer to Aryan Invasion Theory Chapter).

The earliest reference to the four classes is in the Purusa Sukta of the Rig Veda, where they are described as having sprung from the body of the creative spirit, from his head, arms, thighs, and feet. This indicates that just as in a human body, the different organs perform different functions so also in human society different people must perform different functions, according to their predominant traits or temperament.

(source: Hinduism: The Eternal Religion - By M. D. Chaturvedi p. 200-201).

'This poetical image is intended to convey the organic character of society." 

Man is not only only himself, but is in solidarity with all of his kind. Man is not an abstract individual. He belongs to a certain social group by virtue of his character, behavior, and function in the community. The four-fold classification is conceived in the interests of world progress. 

(source: Eastern Religions and Western Thought - By S. Radhakrishnan  p. 355-357).

Sir Sidney Low (1857-1932) in his book, A Vision of India: with a frontispiece says: 

“There is no doubt that it (caste) is the main cause of the fundamental stability and contentment by which Indian society has been braced for centuries against the shocks of politics and the cataclysms of Nature. It provides every man with his place, his career, his occupations, his circle of friends. It makes him, at the outset, a member of a corporate body; it protects him through life from the canker of social jealousy and unfulfilled aspirations; it ensures him companionship and a sense of community with others in like case with himself. The caste organization is to the Hindu his club, his trade union, his benefit society, his philanthropic society. There are no work houses in India, and none are as yet needed. The obligation to provide for kinsfolk and friends in distress is universally acknowledged; nor can it be questioned that this is due to the recognition of the strength of family ties and of the bonds created by associations and common pursuits which is fostered by the caste principle. An India without caste, as things stand at present, it is not quite easy to imagine.”

(source: Hindu Superiority - Har Bilas Sarda p. 32-33).  

William Robinson, author of By Temple Shrine and Lotus Pool, wrote on p. 66 of his book: 

"The fortress of caste cannot be taken by external assault. Its wall will only crumble when the garrison within ceases to repair them. The only real discipline that India has maintained is the discipline of caste. If you really could create genuine democracy in India it would destroy caste. If it destroyed caste it would destroy Hinduism and if it destroyed Hinduism it would destroy India , at least the India that has existed for so many thousand of years… Far, far better that they remain good Hindus than become rampant atheists!"

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions  - By Suhash Chakravarty  p. 233).

Nirad C. Chaudhari, (1897-1999) prominent Indian author and scholar, who rejected Western culture in an independent India, has defended the caste system on the grounds that the successive waves of migrant tribes or invaders probably made a class society inevitable in India, and that caste still has a useful function:

"The Caste system has only organized the disparities created by historical forces and movements. By doing so, it has done great good by reducing the competition of the diversities, by freezing them within certain limits, and by making each not only legitimate but even moral.....It canalized competitions and helped the coexistence of elements which otherwise would have been at war. It was a social system specially suited to a country like India, which history has made into a warehouse of civilizations, and a couloir and cul-de-sac of diverse people and cultures." He emphasized that if he considered the caste system in any danger - which he does not - he would add, "Please do not pulverize a society which has no other force of cohesion, into amorphous dust."

(source: The Continent of Circe - By Nirad C. Chaudhari  New York: Oxford University Press, 1965  p. 60).

Alain Danielou (1907-1994) author of several books, including History of India and Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation : The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India. writes: 

"It is easy to see that despite all the national and linguistic barriers, even modern Western society is fundamentally, like all societies, a caste system. The problem of Western society derive from the fact that while proclaiming the equality of men, it is entirely graded on a hierarchical system as far as the professions are concerned. Under the pretext of equality, Western lawmakers do not let the various groups cooperate among themselves while keeping their different habits, ethics, and social life. Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Celts, Basques, Albigemsoams, Pygmies, Blacks or Inuits are accorded a relative equality only on condition that they conform to our customs, losing most of their social, national, and religious characteristics and in fact abandoning their own personality." 

Hindu Society is 'caste-ridden' while modern democratic society reveals the presence of 'classes', sociologist explain. They acclaim 'class' and condemn 'caste'. Caste, according to them, has its roots in Hindu (Brahmannical) religion, while 'class' has its roots in economic disparities. 

(source: Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation : The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India - by Alain Danielou  p. 33 - 35).

Caste system provided for positive Social Networking and support

Mark Tully ( ? ) was the BBC correspondent in New Delhi and author of several books including No Full Stops in India and The Heart of India. 

He points out: 

 "The alienation of many young people in the West and the loneliness of the old show the suffering that egalitarianism inflicts on those who do not win, the superficiality of an egalitarianism which in effect means equal opportunities for all to win and then ignores the inevitable losers. For all that, the elite of India have become so spellbound by egalitarianism that they are unable to see any good in the only institution which does provide a sense of identity and dignity to those who are robbed from birth of the opportunity to compete on an equal footing – CASTE. Caste is obnoxious to the egalitarian West, so it is obnoxious to the Indian elite too." 

"The very fact that the institution of caste has survived about 3,000 years is a clear proof of the services which it must have rendered to the Hindu society in different periods of history. It is the caste system that has been largely responsible for the preservation of Hindu religion and culture. The caste brotherhoods, on account of their policy of exclusiveness, did not mix with the foreigners. So the Greeks, Huns or Muslims could not conquer Hindu culture. On the contrary, most of these foreigners were themselves absorbed into the Hindu fold."

(source: No Full Stops in India - By Mark Tully).

"The caste system is based on the sound economic principle of division of labor which ensures efficiency of production. A person from his birth knew what profession he was to follow later on. So from the start, he devoted all his energy to the one profession of his forefathers. It was because of this reason that in every period of Indian history, there was no dearth of highly-skilled workers and scholars. Megasthenes, Hieun Tsang, Alberuni, Ibn Batuta, Babar and even the early Britishers were impressed by the talents and artistic skill of the Indians in every art and craft." 

(source: Ancient India - By V. D. Mahajan p. 166).

Note: Mark Tully has spoken in defense of the caste system and denounced the spread of consumerism in the subcontinent. The BBC pushed him out because of his excessive identification with Indian culture. 

(source: India Inscribed: European and British Writing on India 1600-1800 - By Kate Teltscher introduction page).

Michael Pym wrote : "Caste is the secret of that amazing stability which is characteristic of the Indian social structure. It is the strength of Hinduism. Naturally, it can be abused. The moment a Brahmin treats a sweeper cruelly because he is a sweeper, he departs from his Brahminhood. He becomes a usurper and a social danger. And in due course, he will have to pay for this mistake. Because men are imperfect, and because power is a deadly intoxicant, such abuses may and do occur, but they are not inherent in the institution – they are contrary to its principles, though they may be inherent in the make up of the individual. 

Caste in itself is also a protection for the individual, because it permits group action. The reason why a Hindu dreads being outcaste is analogous to the reason why, in England say, a worker would dread being thrown out of his trade union.

(source: The Power of India - By Michael Pym p. 152- 153).

While Marxists and other anti-Hindu intellectuals calling themselves Secularists never miss an opportunity to denounce it, the fact of the matter is that the Indian civilization survived nearly a thousand year onslaught of Islam. Several other ancient civilizations – like those of Iran (Zorastrian), the Byzantine Empire (Christian) and Central Asia (Buddhist) broke down under the same force over a much shortest period. This shows that they must have lacked a social order capable of protecting their societies. 

The so called ‘egalitarian’ Buddhist society lacked the social organization which enabled the Hindu society to survive. It was the same story in Egypt, Syria, and Turkey which were part of the Christian Byzamtine Empire. They lacked the strength and resilience of the Hindu society and succumbed to the Islamic invasion. 

(source: A Hindu View of the World - By N. S. Rajaram   p. 103 - 104).

Dr. Koenraad Elst (1959 -) Dutch historian, born in Leuven, Belgium, on 7 August 1959, into a Flemish (i.e. Dutch-speaking Belgian) Catholic family. He graduated in Philosophy, Chinese Studies and Indo-Iranian Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven. He is the author of several books including The Saffron Swastika, Decolonising The Hindu Mind - Ideological Development of Hindu Revivalism and Negationism in India: Concealilng the Record of Islam

"The caste system is often portrayed as the ultimate horror. Inborn inequality is indeed unacceptable to us moderns, but this does not preclude that the system has also had its merits.

Caste is perceived as an "exclusion-from," but first of all it is a form of "belonging-to," a natural structure of solidarity. For this reason, Christian and Muslim missionaries found it very difficult to lure Hindus away from their communities.

Sometimes castes were collectively converted to Islam, and Pope Gregory XV (1621-23) decreed that the missionaries could tolerate caste distinction among Christian converts; but by and large, caste remained an effective hurdle to the destruction of Hinduism through conversion. That is why the missionaries started attacking the institution of caste and in particular the Brahmin caste. This propaganda has bloomed into a full-fledged anti-brahminism, the Indian equivalent of anti-Semitism."

(source: Caste -  By Prof Koenraad Elst - hinduismtoday.com).

T M P Mahadevan wrote about the castes:

"The origin of caste is lost in obscurity. It purpose however, seems to have been the same as that of Plato’s division of the State into three classes, castes, or professions, viz. philosophers-rulers, warriors and masses. (see Plato’s Republic) The underlying principle is division of labor. Originally the castes were professional and subsequently became hereditary. The Brahmins were custodians of the spiritual culture of the race. He was friend, philosopher, guide to humanity. The Kshatriya is the guardian of society, its protector and preserver. The Vaisya is the expert in economics. His was the duty of arranging for the production and distribution of wealth. The Sudra was the worker or manual laborer. By his manual labor he places the entire community under a debt of gratitude.  The system was evolved to keep the social fabric in a harmonious condition; but in later years it became a divisive force. The original designers built the edifice of caste on the secure foundations of obligations; the lesser men who came after them produced a caricature on the shifting sands of rights… 

The four classes were not meant to be warring communities but complementary classes. Mahatma Gandhi said: “It is a law of spiritual economics” “It has nothing to do with superiority or inferiority”. And as the system of caste is purely a social adjustment, there is nothing that can stand in the way of its revision and readjustment except a sense of pride and obstinacy and a demand to preserve the status quo on the part of some of its members."

(source: Outlines of Hinduism - By T M P Mahadevan ISBN 0836457862 p. 69-74).  

When Julius Caesar occupied the Celtic West of Europe, he found that the Druid class was the backbone of this society (the parallel with the Brahmins in the perception of the missionaries is quite exact): therefore, he persecuted the Druids.  

(source: Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society - By Koenraad Elst  p. 100).

Huston Smith (1919 -  ) born in China to Methodist missionaries, a philosopher, most eloquent writer, world-famous religion scholar who practices Hatha Yoga. He has written various books, The World's Religions.  He says:

Men and women that are lining the bathing ghats are all Hindus, but how different they are. But India looked past their bodies into their minds where she found the prolific ness of the infinite exploding like a Roman cantle. 

No other civilization saw, appreciated, and classified so precisely the full spectrum of human personality types…an achievement that has earned for India – the title of the world’s introspective psychologist.

"India identified four such types and once again honored all of them. Likening society to an organism, she pictured Brahmins -  its head, Brahmins are intellectuals, their chief delight in art, ideas, and things of spirit generally. 

Next come the arms and shoulder of society – its administrative  - persons who are talent for getting things done  

Next  personality type – the artisan or craftsmen – the engineer and the farmer – India likens these people to society’s stomach – for they produce and feed us the things on which life depends. 

Finally, manual labor is important too. They are the legs and feet without which society could not run.”

(source: The Mystic's Journey - India and the Infinite: The Soul of a People – By Huston Smith).

The Ploy of Western Propaganda

Linking Caste to Hindu Scriptures and de-linking Racism from the Bible

***

Dr. Koenraad Elst has written:

"Increasingly, Hinduism is identified by the international public with the caste system and nothing but the caste system. The caste system, in turn, is painted in the ugliest colors: as a racist Apartheid system designed to oppress the native population. These notions are eagerly welcomed and amplified by outside forces such as Christian missionary centers, followed by their Islamic counterparts. Till recently, American foreign policy agencies made no secret of their designs on India's unity. When she was US ambassador to the UN, Mrs. Jean Kirkpatrick once said that "the break-up of India is one of the goals of the American foreign policy." Patrick Moynihan, who had held the same job, said more recently, "After the break-up of the Soviet Union, the artificial state India is also bound to break up."

(source: Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar - By Koenraad Elst  Voice of India ASIN 8185990042 p. 59-60). 

For more refer to chapter on Islamic Onslaught and European Imperialism 

Ronald B Inden has pointed out:

"Caste, the Western scholars held, is the type of society characteristic of India, the institution that distinguishes it from the other civilization dominated by caste from the West. The representation of India as a civilization dominated by caste are legion. Caste, considered the essence of Indian civilization, has often been treated as though it were the unchanging agent of the civilization, from the rise of the Indus Valley culture and the arrival of the Aryans down to the present day of regionalism and caste in electoral politics. It is, thus, deeply embedded in Indological discourse. Many of the more recent accounts of caste have dropped the racialist discourse, but they have not broken with the notion that caste is a unique type of society, one that displaces the economically oriented politics of the West. Accounts of caste can and have been used as a foil to build up the West’s image of itself."

(source: Imagining India - By Ronald B Inden  p. 82-83).

"It would lead to a greater respect for India’s culture, and indeed a better understanding of it, if it were recognized that the caste system has never been totally static, that it is adapting itself to today’s changing circumstances and that it has positive as well as negative aspects. The caste system provides security and a community for millions of Indians. It gives them an identity that neither Western Science nor Western thought has yet provided, because caste is not just a matter of being a Brahmin or a Harijan: it is also a kinship system. The system provides a wider support group than a family: a group which has a social life in which all its members participate." 

In the September 1989 issue of Seminar magazine, Madhu Kishwar, one of India leading feminists, wrote, 

"The caste system provides for relatively greater stability and dignity to the individuals than they would have as atomized individuals. This is part explains why the Indian poor retain a strong sense of self-respect. It is that self-respect which the thought-less insistence on egalitarianism destroys." 

(source: No Full Stops in India - By Mark Tully p. 4-8).

Caste system is often perceived to be an integral part of Hindu religion. This erroneous perception arises when people mix the ancient social tradition (caste system) with Hindu religious philosophy. 

According to V. A. Smith, most of the misunderstanding on the subject of caste system has arisen from the persistent mistranslation of Manu's term "Varna" as caste, whereas it should be rendered class or order or by some equivalent term. 

(source: Oxford History of India - By V. A. Smith Oxford Date of Publication: 1958). 

The Genius of India

Guy Sorman (1944 -  ) visiting scholar at Hoover Institution at Stanford and the leader of new liberalism in France, states:

"Westerners tend to be perplexed and scandalized by the caste system but they forget that the aristocracy which ruled over Europe for a thousand years was a caste of sorts. The guilds of the Ancient Regime resembled Indian castes as they had existed initially, each caste corresponding to a particular trade." When it comes to marriage, in Europe as in India, one looks for a partner from among one's immediate social circle. 

Till the Age of Enlightenment, castes were viewed with interest rather than revulsion. Some French travelers even felt that the caste system had a certain social utility. In 1777, when Desvaulx (1745 - 1825) wrote in his book:

"Indians are as attached to their caste as our gentlemen to theirs." 

(source: Les indes florissantes - Robert Laffont 1991). 

Sorman further said: "The authority of the caste is a check on the possible abuse of their power by the princes." There has never been a central authority capable of imposing a single language, religion or way of life on the myriad castes that constitute India. 

It is for this very reason that in the past the Muslim and British conquerors and prozelytisers have had to curtail their ambitions. 

" India, is the only great civilization not to have been devoured by the West." says Guy Sorman. 

Caste system has also made Indians completely immune to the totalitarian temptations. Overturning Western prejudice, Guy Sorman sees in the caste system and polytheism not a curse but the stuff that forearms Indians against absolutism. It is perhaps thanks to castes, however archaic and oppressive they may be, that India, unlike China, has escaped from totalitarianism and the grip of a single state or a single party. It may be said that the endurance of the Brahmins in India has kept her elite intact, whereas in neighboring China the anti-intellectualism of communist peasants has completely wiped out the intelligentsia of that country. It was the Brahmins who, at the time of British colonization, introduced in India the first notions of public health and modern techniques in agriculture and industry. 

Though caste as an ideology is unique to India, the caste spirit, both as a metaphor and social reality, seems widespread. It is the caste system which holds Indians together and has allowed eternal India to endure. Its religious bases was attacked by Islam and Christianity and since the 19th century both Indian and European reformers have not stopped harping on the social ills of the caste system. But nothing, neither socialism nor nationalism nor republican egalitarianism nor any other doctrine of Western origin, has managed to replace it. 

(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman  ('Le Genie de l'Inde') Macmillan India Ltd. 2001. ISBN 0333 93600 0 p. xiii - 56-58).

***

An Englishman getting a pedicure from his Indian servants.

No Ten Commandments in the East of the Suez Canal?

The Tyranny of British Rule: "The British have set themselves up as the master race in India. British rule in India is fascism, there is no dodging that." 

"It is in India, of all places on the earth, that the superiority of the white over the colored races is most strikingly demonstrated." 

Refer to the chapter on European Imperialism. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com

Refer to Think tank alleges British MPs involved in promoting evangelism in India - hinduvoice.co.uk. Refer to The  Genocidal war being waged against Iraq and its people by the Anglo-American imperialists - Iraq Body Count. Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide. Refer to Campus murders of Indian students in US cause for concern. Refer to Hindus want public apology from Pope

Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

Watch Why we fight (2005) documentary - Imperial and technological arrogance of world's Super power: describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial complex and its involvement in the wars led by the United States during the last fifty years, and in particular in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The film alleges that in every decade since World War II, the American public has been told a lie to bring it into war to fuel the military-economic machine, which in turn maintains American dominance in the world.

***

Why The British Hated the Brahmins

According to columnist, Meenakshi Jain: 

"The British were not wrong in their distrust of educated Brahmins in whom they saw a potential threat to their supremacy in India. For instance, in 1879 the Collector of Tanjore in a communication to Sir James Caird, member of the Famine Commission, stated that "there was no class (except Brahmins ) which was so hostile to the English." The predominance of the Brahmins in the freedom movement confirmed the worst British suspicions of the community. Innumerable CID reports of the period commented on Brahmin participation at all levels of the nationalist movement. In the words of an observer, 

"If any community could claim credit for driving the British out of the country, it was the Brahmin community. Seventy per cent of those who were felled by British bullets were Brahmins".

To counter what they perceived, a Brahmanical challenge, the British launched on the one hand a major ideological attack on the Brahmins and, on the other incited non-Brahmin caste Hindus to press for preferential treatment, a ploy that was to prove equally successful vis-à-vis the Muslims.

In the attempt to rewrite Indian history, Brahmins began to be portrayed as oppressors and tyrants who willfully kept down the rest of the populace. Their role in the development of Indian society was deliberately slighted. In ancient times, for example, Brahmins played a major part in the spread of new methods of cultivation (especially the use of the plough and manure) in backward and aboriginal areas. The Krsi-parasara, compiled during this period, is testimony to their contribution in this field. Apart from misrepresenting the Indian past, the British actively encouraged anti-Brahmin sentiments. 

Apart from misrepresenting the Indian past, the British actively encouraged anti-Brahmin sentiments.  

A number of scholars have commented on their involvement in the anti-Brahmin movement in South India. As a result of their machinations non-Brahmins turned on the Brahmins with a ferocity that has few parallels in Indian history. This was all the more surprising in that for centuries Brahmins and non-Brahmins had been active partners and collaborators in the task of political and social management. 

(source: The Plight of Brahmins - By Meenakshi Jain The Indian Express, Tuesday, September 18, 1990). 

Refer to The Indian Jews - By Jakob De Roover - Outlookindia.com June 20, 2008.

Author S. Balagangadhara writes: 

"The Brahmins were identified as the ‘clergy’ or the priests of Hinduism. An explicit hostility towards the heathen priesthood was not helped by the inability of the messengers of God’s word to convert Brahmins to Christianity. In Brahmins, they came across a literate group, which was able to read, write, do arithmetic, conduct ‘theological’ discussions, etc. During the first hundred years or so, this group was the only source of information about India as far as the missionaries were concerned. Schooled to perform many administrative tasks, the Brahmins were mostly the only ones well-versed in the European languages – enough to communicate with the Europeans. In short, they appeared both to be the intellectual group and the most influential social layer in the Indian social organization. Conversion of the heathens of India, as the missions painfully discovered, did not depend so much on winning the allegiance of the prince or the king as it did on converting the Brahmins.   

This attack was born out of the inability of Christianity to gain a serious foothold in the Indian society. The ‘red race’ was primitive – it could be decimated; the ‘blacks’ were backward – they could be enslaved; the ‘yellow’ and the ‘brown’ were inferior – they could be colonized. But how to convert them? One would persecute resistance and opposition. How to respond to indifference? The attitude of these heathens towards Christianity, it is this: indifference.  "

(source: The Heathen in His Blindness...: Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion - By S. Balagangadhara p.  82 -149). For more refer to chapter on First Indologists and European Imperialism).

Sesha Samarajiwa ( ? ) from Sri Lanka is interested examining foreign religious agents’ role as Fifth Columnists of neocolonialism/neoimperialism. He has written:

"Evangelists belong to a long line of pests from the West who have come and keep coming like locusts to colonize our souls and cannibalize our cultures.

The latest incursions are merely a continuation of the 500-year-old sorry saga of Asia, Africa and South America , which began with the arrival of the Portuguese and the Spaniards. Some have never recovered from the machinations of their priests and the savagery of their conquistadors. The baton of imperialism has passed from the Europeans to the Americans. That is not to say that the rest of the West has dropped out. They have not. They are very much in the game. It’s just that the Americans are in the lead, the new Romans on the rampage. 

We know well how the Europeans won the West. They won it through mass genocide of the native populations in North and South America . In South America , hundreds and thousands of natives who resisted conversion were garroted. There is a poignant painting depicting such conversions. It shows armored Spanish soldiers garroting native priests, while a Spanish priest holds up a large cross. More terrified natives await their turn. On the side, another Spanish priest feeds stacks of ancient gold-leaf books of the Mayans into a fire. On the face of the Mayan priests, a look of utter sadness mixed with resignation.

In places like India and Sri Lanka , they were no better. They too faced abject horrors. In his book, Christianity's scramble for India , Navaratna Rajaram says that “the Christian Missionary is neither a Christian nor a missionary. In fact, he is a racist and a white supremacist in priestly guise.” Their Buffalo Bills and their Wild Bills, their Custers and their Cortezes, and the long line of predators and priests made sure that the sorry remainder of once-proud nations would remain so, while they ruled the roost in lands drenched with native blood. Many weaker cultures succumbed to the relentless onslaught from the West. They either slaughtered those who resisted or they sowed the seeds of abjection and their eventual self-destruction. Even today, we see the pathetic dregs of once-noble nations staggering around native reservations and barrios in North and South America, in Australia , in Canada , in New Zealand . They have lost their spirit. They have lost their will to live. They seem embarrassed to be alive. They are self-destructing. At best, they are performing monkeys titillating whites with a thirst for the exotic. These are abject peoples, vanishing tribes. Now, not satisfied with ruling their large chunk of raided real estate, they are hell-bent on extending their hegemony over the whole world. They howl in protest when the natives resist. Human misery is happy hunting grounds for these spiritual cartels. They strike when their targets are at their weakest or bomb them to submission to make sure they are at their weakest. Thus softened up, they are susceptible to inducements and brainwashing. They are canny. To ‘convert’ people, you must first make them despise and reject what had sustained their people for millennia. So they vilify their faith or convince them it is a spent force or dark superstition. In so doing, they make us spit on our heritage."

(source: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing - By Sesha Samarajiwa - Asian Tribune October 9, 2007).

According to Shyam Sashtri, the words, Brahmins, Kshatryas, Vaisyas and Sudras were names of classes rather than castes during the pre-historic period. According to H. G. Rawlinson, caste is a  Portuguese word meaning purity of race. 

But ultimately if one wants to understand the truth, the original purpose behind the caste system, one must go to antiquity to study the evolution of the caste system. When the Vedas refer to the four-fold division of society, they use the Sanskrit word varna meaning "class," not the word jati meaning "caste". The word varna was mistakenly translated by the Portuguese during their period of colonial establishment in India. Four orders of society were recognized based upon the four main goals of human beings and established society accordingly. These four orders of society were called "varna", which has two meanings; first it means "color" and second it means a "veil". As color it does NOT refer to the color of the skin of people, but to the qualities (gunas) or energies of human nature. It is true that the Caste system did degenerate with passage of time.

This mix-up is quite significant because the Varna system of the Vedas was designed to achieve division of labor and help society operate efficiently. 

Dagmar Grafin Bernstorff, (author of 'Das Kastensystem im Wandel' Indien in Deutschland 1990 p 29-51) based on convincing evidence, suggests that varna originally did not refer to skin color but designed the four directions identified by white, black, red, yellow according to which the participants were arranged during the Vedic yajna.

(source: A Survey of Hinduism - By Klaus K. Klostermaier p. 334)

Alain Danielou writes: " The Hindu lawgivers felt that no advanced society could exist without the recognition of certain facts, such as professional organizations; relations between the various occupations needed to maintain the economic, political, and social stability of the state; and the problems arising from the various degrees of development among peoples and individuals, their various aptitudes, and the drawbacks of intermarriage. It should not be forgotten that the so-called equality in aptitude of the sundry human races takes only the capacities of the most aggressive races into account, and not of those that are unable to adapt to modern conditions, such as the Pygmies, the Australian aborigines, the Munda populations of India, and many other groups. Their systematic genocide still continues today, since their existence upsets all ideas of so-called equality of aptitude, values, and aspirations among the various races. For the Hindus, the caste system is not a man-made invention to justify slavery but the recognition of the Creator's will, the codification of a state of fact, an attempt to harmonize human society in accordance with the general scheme of creation." 

He predicts:

"Far from guiding the world toward an ideal future for human society, democratic ideas are probably no more than a brief period of romantic politics, which will lead the world into great turmoil. The social and political ideologies of the modern West will probably appear as childish and absurd to our descendants as they seem irresponsible and incoherent to traditionalist Hindus today."

(source: Virtue, Success, Pleasure, & Liberation : The Four Aims of Life in the Tradition of Ancient India - by Alain Danielou - p. 33 - 43).

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) most original philosopher of modern India.  He wrote: 

"Caste was originally an arrangement for the distribution of functions in society, just as much as class in Europe, but the principle on which this distribution was based was peculiar to India. A Brahmin was a Brahmin not by mere birth, but because he discharged the duty of preserving the spiritual and intellectual elevation of the race, and he had to cultivate the spiritual temperament and acquire the spiritual training which alone would qualify him for the task. The Kshatryia was Kshatryia not merely because he was the son of warriors and princes, but because he discharged the duty of protecting the country and preserving the high courage and manhood of action, and he had to cultivate the princely temperament and acquire the strong and lofty Samurai training which alone fitted him for his duties. So it was for the Vaishya whose function was to amass wealth for the race and the Shudra who discharged the humbler duties of service without which the other castes could not perform their share of labor for the common, good". 

(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo Publisher: Mira Aditi (ISBN 2-902776-32-2  p 26). 

Many Indian sages have even gone even further than Sri Aurobindo, arguing that in the occult relation India had with the Universal Force, each one was born in the caste CORRESPONDING to his or her spiritual evolution. There are accidents, misfits, errors, they say, but the system seems to have worked pretty well until modern times when it got perverted by the vagaries of materialism and western influence. 

Varna vyavastha means a social organization based on free choice of vocations in accordance with one’s vocational aptitudes determined by heredity and vocational training. Its purposed is not to divide people into castes or classes, as it is generally supposed to be, but to integrate the society into a whole by giving each type of individual a suitable vocational place in it. It aims at efficiency, satisfaction, and co-operation. Modern society in the West is in a chaotic condition. There is a great struggle for existence, power and wealth and superiority. All people seek for one and the same thing, wealth, and power. The ancient Indians who planned society on the basis of varna understood human nature better and planned a pattern of society in which there would be less chaos, less struggle and less dissatisfaction. They found out that all people fall naturally, into four types. Each of pleasures, and distinctive ways of living and dressing etc. 

(source: Indian Culture - Its Spiritual, Moral and Social Aspects - By Suniti Kumar Chatterji, Bhikhan Lal Atreya and Alain Danielou p. 30-31).

According to Sir S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was one of the most profound philosophers of this century:

"Caste divisions are based on individual temperament, (Sattvadguji brahmanah syat ksatriyastu rajodhikah tamodhiko bhaved vaisyo gunasamyattu sudrata.)which is not immutable. In the beginning there was only one caste. We were all Brahmins (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad I. 4. 11-5; Many I. 31. Cp. Also Mahabharata, XII. 188: na visesosti varnanam sarvam Brahman idam jagat brahmana purvasrstam hi karmabhir varnatam gatam.) or all Sudras. A smriti text says that one is born a Sudra, and through purification he becomes a Brahmin. (Janmana jayate sudrah samskarair dvija ucyate.) 

Brahminhood in not an order, but a temperament. Anyone can have it, though many born in the Brahmin caste may be without it. It is independent of sex or calling, birth or breeding. Everyone has a right to Brahminhood, the state where inward grace and outward beauty fuse.  

People were divided into different castes according to social needs and individual action. The Brahmins are the priests. They should have neither property nor executive power. They are the seers and conscience of the society. The Kshatriyas are the administrators, whose principle is reverence for all life. The Vaishyas are the traders and craftsmen, men of technical ability who aim at efficiency. The Sudras are the routine workers, the proletariat, who carry out instructions and contribute only a fraction. The caste scheme is meant to apply to all mankind. In the Mahabharata we are told that the Yavanas (Greeks), the Kiratas, the Daradas (Dards), the Chinas (the Chinese), the Sakas (Scythians), the Pahlavas (Parthians) and several other non-Hindu peoples, belonged to one or the other of the four classes. The foreign tribes were absorbed into the Hindu society. The sort of social adjustment, by which foreigners were admitted into the Hindu fold, has taken place from very early times. The great empire-builders, the Nandas, the Mauryas and the Guptas, were according to low-born.  

In special cases individuals and groups changed their social class. Visvamitra, Ajamidha and Puramidha were admitted to the status of the Brahmin class, and even composed Vedic hymns. Yaska, in his Nirukta, tells us that of two brothers, Santanu and Devapi, one becomes a Ksatriya king and the other a Brahmin priest. Kavasa, the son of the slave girl Ilusa, was ordained as a Brahmin priest. Janaka, a ksatriya by birth, attained the rank of a Brahmin by virtue of his ripe wisdom and saintly character. The Bhagavata tells of the elevation of the ksatriya clan named Dhastru to brahminhood. Even a Sudra, if you do good, you become a Brahmin. (ebhistu karmabhir devi subhair acaritais tatha sudro brahmanatam yati, vaisyah ksatriyatam vrajet.) 

We are Brahmin not on account of birth or the performance of rites, not by study or family, but on account of our behavior. (na yonir napisamskaro nasrutam na ca santatih karanani dvijatvasya vrttam eva tu karanam.) ( sarvoyam brahmano loke vrttenaca vidhiyate vrttisthitasu sudropi brahmanatva, mouaccjato – Anusasanaparva.  

Even if we are born Sudras. By good conduct we can raise ourselves to the highest status. (sudrayonau hi jatasya sadgunan upastisthatah vaisyatvam labhate brahmam ksatriyattvam tathaiva ca arjave vartamanasya brahmanyam abhijayate – Aranyaparva. ) 

Patanjali refers to Brahmin kings, and Manu to Sudra rulers. There were Brahmin soldiers in the time of Alexander, as there are today. Shankara held the view that members of all castes can read the sastras. Hindu acaryas denounced the spirit of caste separatism. Vajrasucikopanisad holds that many who were born of non-brahmin women had risen to the rank of Brahmin saints.

Even The Hindu Mahasabha resolved: “Whereas the caste system based on birth as at present existing is manifestly contrary to universal truth and morals: whereas it is the very antithesis of the fundamental spirit of the Hindu religion: whereas it flouts the elementary rights of human equality…this all India Hindu Mahasabha declares its uncompromising opposition to the system and calls upon the Hindu society to put a speedy end to it.”

(source: Religion and Society – By S. Radhakrishnan ASIN 8172231636 p. 129-133).

R P Masani has observed: 

"Caste riven though the population was, these groups may be likened to the fingers of one's hand, perpetually separated, yet perpetually co-operating."

(source: Our Heritage and Its Significance - By Shripad Rama Sharma p.93).

Sri Aurobindo, while praising the original caste system, does not spare it in its later stages: "it is the nature of human institutions to degenerate; there is no doubt that the institution of caste degenerated. It ceased to be determined by spiritual qualifications which, once essential, have now come to be subordinate and even immaterial and is determined by the purely material tests of occupation and birth... By this change it has set itself against the fundamental tendency of Hinduism which is to insist on the spiritual and subordinate the material and thus lost most of its meaning. the spirit of caste arrogance, exclusiveness and superiority came to dominate it instead of the spirit of duty, and the change weakened the nation and helped to reduce us to our present condition..." 

(source: India's Rebirth - By Sri Aurobindo Publisher: Mira Aditi (ISBN 2-902776-32-2  p 27). 

The Varna scheme is a multi-dimensional, omnibus scheme of social organization. According to Sri Aurobindo, it is "at once spiritual, psychic, ethical and economic order.." 

(source: The Human Cycle - By Sri Aurobindo p. 166).

Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan one of the most profound philosophers of this century, writes: 

"The institution of caste illustrates the spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind with its faith in the collaboration of races and the co-operation of cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the outcome of intolerance and trust. Though it may now have degenerated into an instrument of oppression and intolerance, though it tends to perpetuate inequality and develop the spirit of exclusiveness, these unfortunate effects are not the central motives of the caste system." "The system of caste insists that the law of social life should not be cold and cruel competition, but harmony and co-operation. Society is not a field of rivalry among individuals. The castes are not allowed to compete with one another."

"Civilization is not the suppression of races less capable of or less advanced in culture by people of higher understanding. God does not give us the right to destroy or enslave the weak and the unfit. One race may not be as clever or as strong as another, yet the highest idealism requires that we should give equality of opportunity even to unequal groups." 

" The trail of man is dotted with the graves of countless communities and races which reached an untimely end. But is there any justification for this violation of human life? Have we any idea of what the world loses when one racial culture is extinguished?

Indiscriminate racial amalgamation was not encouraged by the Hindu thinkers. In dealing with the problem of the conflict of the different racial groups, Hinduism adopted the only safe course of democracy, viz., that each racial group should be allowed to develop the best in it without impeding the progress of others. Caste, on its racial side, is the affirmation of the infinite diversity of human groups.  In spite of the divisions, there is an inner cohesion among the Hindu society from the Himalayas to the Cape Comorin." 

(source: The Hindu View of Life - By Sir. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan p. 73-77. Material in this book was originally delivered in the form of lectures, the Upton Lectures, in 1926, at Manchester College, Oxford).

Dharampal (1922 - 2006) a Gandhian and author of several books including The Beautiful Tree and Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth century.

He wrote extensively of the damage the British Raj inflicted on India and Indians:

"The conquered in their view, had ultimately to disappear, if not wholly physically, at least as a culture and civilization. In Australia, and New Zealand practically all the local inhabitants were wiped out soon enough; in North America near complete elimination happened, over 300-400 years, and in Ireland only partially. The indigenous population of the Americas had been estimated at 112 to 140 millions in 1492. 

In India a large number perished by British brutality and deliberate creation of famines, violation of persons bodies and dignity; in Palnad in Andhra, half of the population was said to be have perished every ten years, during several decades after the subjugation of the areas by Britain. It seems as if the intellectuals and leaders of Britain hated India, and felt outraged that in spite of all their brutalities, smashing of Indian institutions, high extortions, and tortures, men made famines and expropriation of Indian resources to the British state, and thus the all round breakdown of Indian society, the Indians on the whole, could not be wiped out that easily. "

(source: Despoliation and Defaming of India – By Dharampal published by Bharat Peetham, Wardha Other India Press, Goa  p. 1 - 17). For more refer to The Unity of India - By Dileep Karanth - svabhinava.org). 

Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

And Sermons from the West?

Jakob De Roover is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation (FWO) at the Research Centre Vergelijkende Cultuurwetenschap, Ghent University , Belgium . He has written:

"Recently, the European Parliament hosted a meeting on “caste discrimination in South Asia ”. At the meeting, participants stated that “ India is being ruled by castes not by laws” and that they demanded justice, because there “is one incredible India and one untouchable India .” 

First, the dominant conception of the caste system has emerged from the accounts by Christian missionaries, travelers and colonial administrators. Rather than being neutral, these accounts were shaped by a Christian framework. That is, the religion of European visitors to India had informed them beforehand that they would find false religion and devil worship there, and that false religion always manifested itself in social evils. Especially the Protestants rebuked the “evil priests” of Hinduism for imposing the laws of caste in the name of religion. They told the Indians that conversion to Protestantism was a conversion to equality. Thus, Indian souls were to be saved from damnation and caste discrimination.

Second, this Christian account of “the Hindu religion” and its “caste system” informed colonial policies in British India . Building on the theological framework, scholars now wrote “scientific” treatises on Hindu superstition and caste discrimination. The Christian mission found its secular counterpart in the idea of the civilising mission, which told the West that it had to rescue the natives from the clutches of superstition and caste. One no longer promoted religious conversion, but the colonial educational system harped on “the horrors of Hindu society.”

Fourth, the “Dalit” movement of today is the product of these colonial movements. The notion of “Dalits” makes sense only within the colonial account of India , which had postulated the existence of one single group of “outcastes” or “untouchables” that was supposedly exploited by the upper castes. In reality, it concerns a variety of caste groups, with no criteria to unite them besides the claim that they are all “downtrodden.” Indeed, many of these groups are poor and discriminated against by other caste groups. However, their socio-economic interests have been hijacked by some of their western-educated elite members. In the name of the downtrodden, these elites establish NGOs and then travel from conference to conference and country to country in order to reveal the plight of the “Dalits” to eager western audiences and secure funding from donor agencies.

Indians as Inferior Race?  Racism in British India.

No Ten Commandments in the East of the Suez Canal?

Lord Mayo (1822 - 1872) declared, "We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race in India."

(Note: The legacy of Western civilization to the world - Dark Ages, Crusades, The Inquisition, Witch Hunt, Slavery, Colonization of Africa, Asia, America and Australia, Imperialism, World Wars, Holocaust, Bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Conversion and destruction of Native cultures to Christianity, Drugs, School shootings in American schools, Gun violence, Racism, Clergy sex Abuse, Viagra spamming American Capitalism, quest for individualism, Iraq war …. ). 

(image source: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj - By David Gilmour). 

For more refer to chapters on Aryan Invasion Theory and European Imperialism. Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide Refer to Think tank alleges British MPs involved in promoting evangelism in India - hinduvoice.co.uk.

***

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

In 1452 Pope Nicholas V authorized Portugese to abduct blacks from Africa and force them into slavery. Dum Diversas, a bull authorising the Portuguese to reduce any non-Christians to the status of slaves, was issued by Papal authorities. All black people were depicted as the descendants of biblical Cain who killed righteous Abel and was later banished by thier father to Africa. This invented legend gave Christians needed theological justification to abduct and enslave blacks. Bible is full of verses supporting slavery.

(source: religioustolerance.org).

Koenraad Elst has written:

The number of Africans killed in the age of the slave trade and colonial conquest is estimated at 50 million or more. It has been said that Europeans found the Holocaust so gruesome because the things which they had considered acceptable in the case of the black “savages” had now been committed on white Europeans. In the conquests of America and Africa, the same psychology was at work as in Auschwitz: the inferior races had to make way (or Lebensraum, “living space”) for the superior race. In some cases the massacre was “functional”, the result of an unplanned escalation. In others, the massacre was entirely “intentional” and pre-planned.

(source: Negationism in India - By Koenraad Elst  p. 6).

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) Poet, author, philosopher, Nobel prize laureate, says in his Nationalism: 

"Her (India's) caste system is the true outcome of the spirit of tolerance. For India has all along been trying experiments in evolving a social unity within which all the different peoples could be held together, while fully enjoying the freedom of their own differences. The tie has been as loose as possible, yet at close as the circumstances permitted. This has produced something like a United States of a social federation, whose common name is Hinduism!"

(source: Hindu Culture and The Modern Age - By Dewan Bahadur K.S. Ramaswami Shastri - Annamalai University 1956 p.113).

Author Beatrice Pitney Lamb has pointed out:

"Clearly the Indian way of assimilating foreigners - by allowing them to pursue their own customs within some niche of the caste system - has led to greater variety and tolerance within the country than exists in the United States, where immigrants have been assimilated through a school program emphasizing 100 per cent Americanization - and hence, implicitly, the rejection of inherited cultural roots."

(source: India: A World in Transition - By Beatrice Pitney Lamb p. 363).

Koenraad Elst points out: " The Buddha never said: “Down with the Brahmins! Break Brahmin tyranny! On the contrary,  he taught about how to be a true Brahmin, as against having the outer attributes but not the inner qualities of the Brahmin. Many of his disciples were Brahmins. The myth of Buddhist social revolution against Brahmin tyranny can be disproven on many counts with the Buddha’s own words.”

(source: Ayodhya and After - By Koenraad Elst - Voice of India - Issues Before Hindu Society  SKU: INBK2650  p.141).

Rajiv Malhotra  ( ? )  has observed: "Caste systems in India evolved, just as they have done in the US, as a labor group by the kind of work. This is why each of India's castes corresponds to a category of labor, much like the modern guild of American workers of a given profession, with its own procedures for membership and strategies to compete with outsiders. In India, this segmentation got perpetuated because training was done through work apprenticeship under one's parents, thereby turning family lineages into specialized labor.

Perhaps, ancient rulers found it easier to negotiate with a given category of labor collectively, much like the British created the landowner class (zamindars) in India as a more efficient way to maximize the collection of taxes. Most law firms in the US are owned by Jewish families; most motels are owned by Gujaratis from India; and this kind of list goes on. Communities evolve towards centers of skill, excellence, and specialized assets. Bush and Gore are both political dynasties." A key difference is that in India, caste became explicitly codified, whereas in America social structure by ethnicity or family lineage remains uncodified and subliminal. But what is commonly not pointed out today is that India's smritis (codified rules) pertaining to many topics including caste, were meant to be specific to a given time, place and cultural context and not intended as universal 'commandments' for all people at all times. 

"The Hindu identity is still largely outcast in America or subverted in many instances. Media, education and public images of Hinduism are often dominated by negative stereotypes."

(source:  Is There an American Caste System? - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com). Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

Market fundamentalism and India's rootless Elites  

Sandhya Jain (  ?  ) author of Adi Deo Arya Devata. A Panoramic View of Tribal-Hindu Cultural Interface and eminent columnist in the mainstream English Media of India, and one who has written eloquently about Hinduism, says:

"The American Model of Governance is a failure. The system which allowed Presidents to induct private sector cronies into the highest echelons of government gave de facto control of the economy, polity, and even foreign policy, to Corporates rather than professionals with accountability. Over time, this eroded all institutions through de facto privatisation of all activities, to the point that even Intelligence gathering has been out-sourced! American government today is truly a headless torso.

The Wall Street hustlers are everywhere. India ’s rootless elite is increasingly enamoured of the American model – oblivious of its obvious failures – precisely because it wishes to enjoy the benefits of untrammelled power without responsibility.

The rest of us will revel in the validation of the Hindu varna system as a hierarchy of values relevant to all ages – brains on top (brahmin), state power on the side (kshatriya), wealth-generators in the middle (vaishya) and the rest of the people all around (shudra). In Hindu India, wealth served the society and the state; a system where wealth subordinates society and state is Asuric, immoral, and destructive of all human values."

(source: End free market fundamentalism - By Sandhya Jain - vijayvaani.com).

Top of Page

But finally, have the people who dismiss caste as an Aryan imposition on the Dravidians, or as an inhuman and nazi system, ever attempted to understand its original purpose and genius? Is it really worse than the huge Class differences and racism you can see nowadays in Europe and America? The West can boast no advantage here, no effectual superiority. Street-sweepers are rarely invited to lunch with middle-class families, yet virtuous Europeans are often heard decrying caste injustice and the odious Brahmin who will not share his meal with the butcher or allow the sweeper or the tanner to draw water from his well. 

The Imperial British and their Uncomfortable Claims:  

Alexis Charles Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was one of the greatest political thinkers, most prescient commentators on American society, had observed that the English in India behaved as if they too were members of a caste. According to Guy Sorman: "He might well have concluded that the notion of caste was universal and not specific to India." 

(source: The Genius of India - By Guy Sorman  ('Le Genie de l'Inde') p. x).

Though the Imperial British scoffed at the debased caste system, and talked about the downtrodden Hindoos, yet in India and they themselves continued assiduously to cultivate a detachment from the Indians.

"A British establishment in India was situated outside the old walled town. It was generally divided into two parts, the civil lines and the cantonment. The former was spaciously arranged with lots of green between the bungalows inhabited by the sahiblogs and the latter was organized on severe military lines. By and large the British community in India lived its own life, ran its own shops and newspapers, entertained itself at exclusive halls and concerts, admired or criticized itself on Chowringhee Road and Connaught Circus, congratulated itself at the official receptions at the government houses and the viceregal palace, exalted itself at the Imperial Orchestra played Rule Brittania on the Mall at Simla or titillated itself down memory lane as a certain Mr. Cunningham performed Othello at the Gaiety Theatre. 

F. Yeats-Brown in the Bengal Lancer, put it bluntly, 

"The Brahmins, made a circle within which they cooked their food. So did we. We were a caste, pariahs to them, princes in our estimation. The compulsions of imperialism negated all passions for democratic equality or Christian egalitarianism. Imperialism, by virtue of its very nature, was insular, racist and arrogant." 

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty. Penguin Books. 1991 p. 87-90).

Dogs and Indians?

"Dogs and Indians not allowed” 

           - Such a barbaric signs during the British Raj clearly classified Indians as belonging to some other-than-human species.

***  

"...dogs and Indians" were, by notification in that precise language, excluded from some of "Europeans only" clubs. Indians were not allowed to travel by railway carriages, or use railway waiting rooms, reserved for Europeans. Not only that, Indian judges were not allowed to try Europeans in the districts and the Ilbert Bill, introduced in 1883 during Lord Ripon's viceroyalty, to remedy the situation, had to be withdrawn in the face of vicious opposition by Europeans and Anglo-Indians.

(source: Colonialism and animals - By Hiranmay Karlekar - dailypioneer.com - March 5 2004).

Britannia, a lion at her feet, examines a string of pearls she has taken from a cushion held up by an Indian woman.

Soon India would be depicted as a naked black female submissively offering her rich jewels to Britannia.

  India now entered in the cataclysmic epoch which has left few native cultures of the world intact – the Era of Colonialism. The Indians, bearers of the world’s oldest civilizations were treated like children by people who thought themselves as superior race.

(image source: British Library. Refer to India: Empire of the Spirit - By Michael Wood).

Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide

For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby

***

Jawaharlal Nehru has remarked: "In India every European, be he German, or Pole or Rumanian, is automatically a member of the ruling race. Railway carriages, station retiring rooms, benches in parks, etc. are marked 'For Europeans Only.' This is bad enough in South Africa or elsewhere, but to have to put up with it in one's own country is a humiliating and exasperating reminder of one's enslaved condition." 

In this land of caste the British have built up a caste which is rigid and exclusive."

(source: The Discovery of India - By Jawaharlal Nehru. p.295).

An Indian woodcut from around 1870 shows a train with separate carriages for Europeans and for Indians.

(source: Colonial Overlords: Time Frame Ad 1850-1900  - Time-Life Books. The Scramble for Africa ASIN 0809464667 Noon of the Raj. p. 22). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel

Sir Winston Churchill's attitude to Indians was quite explicitly racist. He told the Foreign Secretary, Leopold Charles Maurice Stennett Amery that:

“the Hindus were a foul race…and he wished Bert Harris (Air Marshall Bert "Bomber" Harris  could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them.”  

Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

For more refer to chapter on European Imperialism.

***

"The Viceroy sat at the apex of a colossal pyramid of power, and British rule was founded on an idea of hierarchy as baffling in its complexity as the caste system of the Hindus themselves. The Hindus had their castes while the British had their classes, and in each case very fine distinctions sometimes separated one social level from the next. The subtleties of the British class system became elaborately codified in the Warrant of Precedence, which was designed as an infallible guide to hierarchy in India, indispensable to the proper arrangement of ceremony, conference or even of a mere dinner party."

(source: India Britannica - By Geoffrey Moorhouse  p. 130). Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Indian caste system created by British

An umbrella group of Hindus says prominent British members of parliament who want legislation in Britain to protect against caste discrimination are being "misled by Christian groups".

The Hindu Council UK (HCUK), which is opposed to religious conversion, said in a new report that caste discrimination does not exist in Britain - and that caste, in any case, was created by the British in India . "Today, we are putting the record straight. We are also naming and shaming those who spread misinformation about Hinduism and its relationship to caste in an ill-disguised attempt to vilify the Hindu people and cause division within our community," said HCUK general secretary Anil Bhanot. He claimed in his foreword to the report that ruling Labour Party MPs Rob Marris and Jeremy Corbyn, "who are lobbying the Department of Communities and Local Government to legislate against caste discrimination, may have been misled by Christian groups who want, quite simply, to 'save' people from the 'falsehood' of Hinduism and convert people to Christianity."

"Caste has been the subject of ill-informed comment for too long," Bhanot said. The report's author, Raj Pandit Sharma, added that the caste system had been created by the British during their colonial rule in India . "It was the British who single-handedly formulated the caste schedules that remain in place today," Sharma wrote. "The evils manifest in the current form of the caste system cannot be ascribed to the Hindu faith. The current adulteration of the Hindu 'varnashram' system is a direct result of generations of British colonial bureaucracy."

Accusing some anti-caste groups in Britain of "seeking government legislation and government funds to tackle this supposed problem", the HCUK said: "Caste, as described in the Hindu scriptures, is not determined by birth." "It is no joke to have to ward off concerted misinformation campaigns from UK parliamentarians who really ought to know better," Bhanot said. Caste, the group said, is "assumed by most non-Hindus to be always a gross form of unjust discrimination, an alleged feature of Hinduism so maligned it justifies attempts by Christians to convert Hindus here in the UK , in India , and elsewhere." It, however, acknowledged and condemned what it called the "abuse of varnashram" in India .

(source: Indian caste system created by British: Hindu group - hindustantimes.com).

Claude Alvares has written: "The English establishment themselves as a separate ruling caste; like other Indian castes, they did not inter-marry or eat with the lower (native) caste. Their children were shipped off to public schools in England, while they themselves kept to their clubs and bungalows in special suburbs known as cantonments and civil lines."

(source: Decolonizing History: Technology and Culture in India, China and the West 1492 to the Present Day - By Claude Alvares p. 191).

Amaury de Reincourt (1918 - ) was born in Orleans, France. He received his B.A. from the Sorbonne and his M.A. from the University of Algiers. He is author of several books including The American empire and The Soul of India, he wrote:

"But the most important result was to create a tremendous ill feeling between many Indians and many distrustful, infuriated British, a chasm that was never really closed again. From now on, the social aloofness of the British in India became legendary and the British rulers became a new super-caste imposed on top of the existing caste structure, as rigidly exclusive as any native caste; they became the super-Brahmins in charge of government and administration."

And it was not long before Indians themselves saw the difference. Victor Jacquemont (1801 -1832) who traveled throughout India in the early 1830's, pointed out that Indians "have two expressions only to mention a European. A saheb logue, a lord or gentleman...and a gora logue..a white man. The former character is much respected by them; the latter may be dreaded, as it is indeed very often quite dreadful, but respected never. This aristocratic character of British society stamped its features on the British Empire and accommodated itself quite naturally with India's caste system."

(source: The Soul of India - By Amaury de Riencourt   p. 205 -223). 

The indenture system

In the colonies of the British, French and the Dutch, exploitation in one form or the other stalked the Indian indentured laborers.

The Coolies who arrived to work in the sugar estates in the West Indies were marched to their barracks known as ‘Nigger Yard.’ It was the same in Mauritius -- only the language was different, ‘camps des Noirs’ or the backbreaking work in the canefields.  

In 1843 the first shipload of 217 Indian labourers arrived in Port of Spain in Trinidad in the Caribbean. And in the same decade, others were taken to British Guiana in South America, and Mauritius off the coast of Africa; in the 1860's to the British colony of Natal in South Africa; in the 1870's to the Dutch colony of Surinam; in the 1880's to Fiji. By 1917-20 the indenture system was abolished but not before 1.5 million Indian bonded labourers had been induced move to remote parts of the globe in the service of British capitalism.

In South Africa they worked from daybreak to nightfall, from four in the morning to seven in the night, and far beyond their capacity. They were strictly confined to the limits of their master’s estate. Beating and flogging was part of the regular routine in the plantations. In the West Indies the cattle whip was employed; in Malaya it was the cane, and in South Africa it was the rawhide cattle lash. One callous estate manager reportedly said “As long as the coolie is working for you, you have the right to do what you like with him—that is, short of killing”. 

Some Caribbean planters solved the problem of the sick by abandoning them to fate. In Grenada the majority of the 2000 Indians were kicked off the estates when they became ill and allowed to die on the road. The editor of a Jamaica newspaper wrote in 1863: 

‘One must see these wretched hungry, houseless and outcast specters picking up in the streets a chance bone or any putrid offal…. and so crippled, nude, skeletoned before their death, they live on, no parish authority taking them in’.

Unlike the Chinese and the Blacks, the Indians were also wary of the penchant for proselytizing among white missionaries who were on the lookout for ‘heathen converts’. Indians were always branded as the dregs of their country, lowborn, even criminal. Inspite of this, the Europeans managed to take Indian women for sexual purposes – usually the daughter of a coolie.

(source: Life of Indians Overseas: Laborers in the Plantations - indolink.com).  Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com  

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

***

Dave Freedholm teaches world religion and philosophy at a nationally recognized independent college preparatory school in the U.S. and a practitioner of Hindu spirituality for some years, says:

'Caste' was used to justify Christian proselytizing and for continued domination over the Indian population, and this continues to be the case today. Also, the ills of contemporary Indian society (poverty, caste, etc.), which were exacerbated in part due to centuries long foreign occupation, exploitation and domination, are blamed primarily on Hindu thought. Thus, some Western scholars, ignoring the historic subversion of Indian society and Hinduism by the West, align themselves with the 'oppressed' against the 'evils' of Hinduism. The victim is made to feel guilty and hence the 'Hindu shame' I find amongst some Hindus.

Most Christians today (and most scholars of religion) would be scandalized if the feudal system, slavery, capitalist exploitation or anti-Judaism were used to define the essence of Christianity. They would understand these things to be historically and socially bound and not part of Christian universal ideals. In short, descriptions of Christianity in textbooks would distinguish the core or essence of Christian theology from specific social, historical and political contexts. However, Hinduism is not treated in the same way. 

It does seem that the caste system, as understood today, was foisted on Indian society by its Western (Christian) oppressors, the British. Efforts within Hindu society to reform itself, and to provide a new vision of Hinduism, are too often ignored or downplayed.

(source: Hinduism in American Classrooms - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com).  Refer to Varna and Jatis: The Need for Clarity - By B Shantanu - indiacause.com.

***

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide

Drain Inspector's Report?
Exclusive clubs into self-righteous assertion?

Recently, a CBS 60 Minutes segment on TV, showing the plight of Untouchables and caste system of India was done by Christiane Amanpour was nothing but a typical example of sensational journalism done in the West.  This kind of portrayal will always be negative at best. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, when he labeled the book," Mother India." by Katherine Mayo (published in 1927), as "Drain Inspector's Report" and a calculated smear on India's face with malice pre-determined. Incidentally, Katherine Mayo, was no big fan of Mahatma Gandhi or Hinduism!  

(Please refer to Katherine Mayo's hatred for Hindus in the chapter on Glimpses III and European Imperialism). Refer to Insults to the Mahatma, ignored by India - rediff.com. Also refer to Hate group numbers top 800 in USA - Southern Poverty Law Center.  

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to Christian persecution against the Hellenes - ethnicoi.org.

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Refer to Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits - And the World Remained Silent - Movie http://www.jaia-bharati.org/films/and-the-world.mpg

Inequality, is a “natural order.” said Martin Luther, author of the Reformation.

It still is a natural order to the West. Ask Wall Street!

This kind of portrayal will always be negative at best. 

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, when he labeled the book," Mother India." by Katherine Mayo (published in 1927), as "Drain Inspector's Report" and a calculated smear on India's face with malice pre-determined. Incidentally, Katherine Mayo, was no big fan of Mahatma Gandhi or Hinduism!  

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com and Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to Christian persecution against the Hellenes - ethnicoi.org. Watch video - Christian Missionary Misdeeds in India

Refer to The Dead Sea Scrolls - An Eastern View of a Western Crisis - By N. S. Rajaram - burningcross.net. Refer to Defaming of Hinduism-I – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com and Defaming of Hinduism-II – By V Sundaram – newstodaynet.com.   For more on Christian Intolerance refer to chapters on The Goa Inquisition, European Imperialism, Conversion, and First Indologists. Refer to What Every "Ugly American" Must Know about the "Civilized British - www.larouchepac.com

Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

***

Refer to Income differences - How the Right rationalizes racial inequality and Hispanic cheap manual labor and Racial differences in employment careers - Six former and current employees of an Indiana Home Depot Inc.(NYSE:HD - news) store have sued the world's largest home-improvement retailer, saying management retaliated against them when they complained of racial discrimination and harassment. Watch video on Excesses on Wall street - abcnews.com.

Suhash Chakravarty has observed in his book:

"Katherine Mayo set the trend for a new branch of literature whose preoccupation was to stretch the morbidity of Hindu customs, superstitions and rituals to a point of absurdity and invest it with a unique inhumanity." "It is small wonder that Katherine Mayo ingeniously appended Indian nationalism with the superstitions of a ritualistic Hinduism and fused them into a powerful anti-Indian demonstration. The impact of Katherine Mayo was more than ephemeral. She rendered the racial arrogance of the exclusive clubs into self-righteous assertion."

(source: The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions - By Suhash Chakravarty. Penguin Books.1991 p. 76 -79). Refer to Insults to the Mahatma, ignored by India - rediff.com.

The Hypocrisy of The Indian Church?
Casteism in Christianity

With the advent of the Christian missionaries in India under the patronage from the British rule in the eighteenth century, a new chapter of proselytisation began. The missionaries were able to use this weakness in Hinduism to convert those who were worst hit by the caste prejudice. These missionaries concentrated their “charity” work mainly in the tribal areas. They told the tribals that they were not Hindus, that their indigenous culture and religion was different from Hinduism. They taught them that Christianity, an alien religion was their own; that Jesus Christ who was born and lived in the Middle-East was also a ‘dalit’ like them and that Christianity was a religion without the caste bias and offered them socio-economic equality. In their desire to lead a life of respect, thousands of tribals got converted to Christianity assuming that they had found an answer to the wretched caste system in Hinduism.

Little did they know that conversion to Christianity would not redeem them from social discrimination and untouchability, because though Jesus never advocated the caste system, Christianity in India was not free from the caste bias. Christian outfits which criticized Hinduism for its caste system, practised discrimination based on casteism in their Churches. In spite of the fact that around 75% of the Christians are ‘dalits’ who got converted to Christianity to lose their caste or ‘outcaste’ tag, Dalit Christians within the Church were discriminated against and were denied powers within the ecclesiastical structure.

In the churches or places of worship, which were generally laid out in the shape of a cross, the Christians of upper caste have always humiliated their Dalit fellow Christians by occupying the central part of the church, while the Dalits were assigned to the wings. The Dalits were to take communion only after the upper caste people had done so. In some Protestant churches, there were separate cups for the Dalits at the eucharistic celebration. In the Catholic churches, there were separate communion rails, separate cemeteries in Madras dioceses like Trichy and Pondicherry. Such practices were also found in the Protestant churches.

Indian history appears to be remarkably free of large scale peasant revolts (like The French Revolution and The Russian Revolution) of the kind that have provided the historians of Europe and China with materials for assessing class antagonisms.

How can a person be a ‘Dalit’ when he is a Christian; for Christianity does not recognise the caste system which is an evil prevalent only in the Hindu society. 

Refer to Petition: Christians against proselytism

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com. Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com.

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn and refer to Christian persecution against the Hellenes - ethnicoi.org.

Watch video - Brahmins in India have become a minority

***

Rev. John Duraisamy, an editor of Sarvaviyabi, a Tamil Weekly from the archdiocese of Pondicherry-Cuddalore published two cartoons consecutively on 4 & 11th July 1999. These cartoons were an insult to the 240 million dalits or the untouchables of India. The Archbishop of Pondicherry who belonged to the same caste as the editor, was silent on the matter.

Archbishop George Zur, Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to India said while inaugurating the CBCI (Catholic Bishops Conference of India) in 1991:

“Though Catholics of the lower caste and tribes form 60 per cent of Church membership they have no place in decision-making. Scheduled caste converts are treated as lower caste not only by high caste Hindus but by high caste Christians too. In rural areas they cannot own or rent houses, however well-placed they may be. Separate places are marked out for them in the parish churches and burial grounds. Inter-caste marriages are frowned upon and caste tags are still appended to the Christian names of high caste people. Casteism is rampant among the clergy and the religious. Though Dalit Christians make 65 per cent’ of the 10 million Christians in the South, less than 4 per cent of the parishes are entrusted to Dalit priests. There are no Dalits among 13 Catholic Bishops of Tamilnadu or among the Vicars-general and rectors of seminaries and directors of social assistance centres.”

Logically, the term ‘Dalit Christians’ is self-contradictory. How can a person be a ‘Dalit’ when he is a Christian; for Christianity does not recognise the caste system which is an evil prevalent only in the Hindu society. 

When a person gets converted, he is no longer a Hindu and thus does not fall into any category of the caste hierarchy. But unfortunately, in India we do have this category of people who got converted to Christianity in the vain hope of leading a respectable life. Now while the progressive Hindu society is fast changing and the dalits are increasingly gaining respect in the society and the state patronage in the form of reservations, economic concessions, allotment of land, etc. , the ‘dalits’ who got converted do not get any such benefits in Christianity.

Conversion to Christianity has only added to the misery of the dalits. Many Dalit Christian leaders refer to the twice-alienated situation of the Dalit Christians in India, namely, discrimination within the Church and discrimination by the State as they are denied Scheduled Caste status in the Constitution, and the related privileges which come with that status. It is high time that the dalits realised the true designs of the church that has alienated them from their indigenous religion and culture, which is very much a part of the myriad hues of Hinduism. The hypocrisy of the Indian Church, which does not practice what it preaches, has been exposed. The Dalit Christians are welcome back to the Hindu fold, to get back their due share, where the society, which is in a reformative mode, and the state are making the best efforts to redress the wrongs that have been done by their predecessors.

(source: Casteism in Christianity - indiapride.com). Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Top of Page

Sociology of groups in Ancient India 

The whole philosophy of Indian social organization may be summarized in one word, varna-ashrama-dharma, which may be appropriately translated as Social Federalism. This principle of social integration or synthesis was understood as early as the times of the Samhitas in the Vedic age. The Vedic seers realized that the best and surest way of saving society from frequent suicidal chaos was to divide its members into specific groups, with well-defined functions and privileges or rewards for each. 

The first group was that of the Brahmans, the teachers and the priests. They were the custodians of the social and spiritual heritage of the group and were to pass it on to the succeeding generations. They were to preserve the purity of idealism, point the way to the Eternal discovered by them through study and meditation, while their fellowmen were busy with life’s daily tasks which left little leisure. The Brahman was a man of intellect; he came from the mouth of Brahma.   

Watch video - Brahmins in India have become a minority

The second group was that of the Kshatriya. They were men of action. They were the guardians of the race. They were soldiers, sailors, civil servants and legislators. They kept the peace and order within the group and protected it from alien aggression. Theirs was a life of service and sacrifice; they came from the arms of Brahma. 

The third group was that of the Vaishyas, the merchants. They attended to the distribution of the necessities of life. The vaishya was the merchant who made wealth; he was a man of desire. He was born from the thighs of Brahma. 

The fourth and last group was that of the Sudras. The sudra was engaged in producing life’s necessities, food, clothing and shelter, so that the physical organism of the group was kept in good health. On this group of working men depended the physical welfare of the whole community, its industries, its prosperity. This working class was psychologically, a group of undefined aptitudes, un-evolved, men of mechanical temperament, the common men. They came from the feet of Brahma. Look where we will, whether it be a primitive community or a modern nation, its population falls easily into these four categories. According to Manu, there are no other groups. 

Integration of various factors 

This division of men into four types, the teacher, the warrior, the merchant and the laborer, is based on sound psychology, ethics, biology and economics. Some men are intellectually by temperament, some are active, some acquisitive and others undefined, none of these. To each are assigned the task true to its type, in conformity with its inherent temperament, svadharma. All together formed an organic whole. Under an arrangement such as this, there is conservation of social energies; there is no necessity of trial and error method. All are not equally endowed with equal physical and mental capacities, but every one should be given an opportunity for putting to use the faculties with which he has been endowed. Man should be treated as man, and not as an economic hand. Danger of exploitation of one group by another can be eliminated. Social harmony and conscious co-operation were made the chief characteristics of human association. The ideal was to evolve a functional and not an acquisitive society. It is this varna dharma that has been the bulwark of Indian civilization and saved it from wreckage of time. Each group had its duties and its own rewards or compensation. The laborer had to work, but he was to be looked after as a younger member of a family. The man of desire, the vaishya, was to acquire wealth; power and authority was vested in the kshatriya, while all these were to honor the teacher, to obey his religious and spiritual injunctions and accept his guidance. The teacher was to be supported by the gifts of the other three groups. 

It was with the aid of this mechanism that India sought to solve her racial problem. The Aryans did not resort to the short cut of annihilating the primitive people with whom they came into contact as the European races have done whenever they have occupied lands in America, Asia, Africa and Australia, but they gave them a place in their body-politic, assigning to them the task befitting their intelligence and subordinate status. Observant scholars of the West have not failed to notice the spiritual significance of the varna-ashrama-dharma and given it its due praise. 

Writing of this varna-ashrama-dharma, Auguste Comte (1798-1857) the great French sociologist, wrote in his book Système de philosophie positive or Positive Society: 

“No institution has ever shown itself more adopted to honor, ability to various kinds than this polytheistic organization…In a social view, the virtues of the system are not less conspicuous. Politically, its chief attribute was stability…As to the influence on mortals, this system was favorable to personal morality, and yet more to domestic, for the spirit of caste was a mere extension of the family spirit….As to social morals, the system was evidently favorable to respect for age and homage to ancestors.”

These principles formed the background of the Indian social organization; on them was built a superstructure of social institution, such as education, marriage, family and the state.

It was realized by the Indian sociologists that both the individual and the group could find self-expression and fulfillment only in and through a complex of social institutions, based on dharma, co-operation, mutual aid, integration, synthesis, the vision of the whole. 

(source: India: A synthesis of cultures – by Kewal Motwani p  120 -128).

Top of Page

Discrimination in Western Societies

Annie Besant (1847-1933), a prominent leader of India's freedom movement, member of the Indian National Congress, and of the Theosophical Society, delivered lectures in 1895 on Eastern Castes and Western classes and pointed out:

"..these distinctions exist and have existed from time immemorial, and are based upon natural divisions. Caste is present in the East and class is present in the West."

(source: India: Essays and Lectures Vol. IV - By Annie Besant  London. The Theosophical Publishing Co. p.43-50.1895).

***

" Where there is Man, there are social divisions.. That's why you have the Boston Brahmins in the US, the Zaibatsu in Japan, Parisian aristocracy, the Communist Party of China, and what have you."  

   - writes Varsha Bhosle - columnist - rediff.com.

***

“Christian nations have produced, and indeed in the name of Christianity, things even more hateful than the pariah village of India."

                             -  Nicol Macnicol (1870 - 1952) Professor and author of  Is Christianity Unique  p. 52.  Refer to Petition: Christians against proselytism  

"Wherever Christians have passed, conquering and discovering, it seems as though a fire has gone, consuming everything." 

– Pedro de Cieza de León Spanish Conquistador and historian of Peru. (c. 1550, Crónica del Peru, Primera Parte, 2.66).

"It is the same ship that brought the Bible which also carried guns and alcohol to Africa ."

                                              - Michael Baffoe author of Demonizing African Culture in the Name of Christianity

***

Dr Charles Sabillon ( ?) author of several books, has observed in his article Christianity and Islam: Which is the Worst?

"The origins of both religions are based on the claims of two men, Jesus and Mohammed, and both men proved equally incapable of demonstrating their divine mandate. From that perspective, the two creeds are equally based on false propositions and can be classified as nothing more than lies. Mohammed ordered his followers to do it by the sword, and that is what they did once he died. They launched into one of the most enthusiastic conquering ventures the world has ever seen and forged an empire that extended from Central Asia to the southwest of Europe.

Nations were ruthlessly converted to Christianity by the sword just like Islam converted Arabia, Central Asia, and Africa by the sword. With his armies, Charlemagne preached the Gospel of the cross to the Saxons, the Germans, the Bohemians, and the Hungarians. This was not the only evangelizing military operation. There were also the infamous Crusades from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, the Inquisition, and the conquest of the American continent from the sixteenth century onwards. Throughout the Middle Ages in Europe, the Christian Church was the most militarily powerful organization in that continent. Being the largest landowner and the biggest tax collector provided the Pope with huge amounts of money, which were used to solidify his power by establishing a potent armed force.

(source: Christianity and Islam: Which is the Worst? - By Charles Sabillon - americanchronicle.com). 

"Of all the religions ...the Christian religion has the most horrible record"

                 -Rupert Hughes, historian and author of  Why I Quit Going To Church

Refer to Christianity’s criminal history – By Karlheinz Deschner

Refer to Quotes from the The American Taliban

Gore Vidal (1925 -   )  well known American writer, the eminent historian, and a public figure for over fifty years, in his Lowell Lecture at Harvard University given April 20, 1996 observed:

“When the white race broke out of Europe 500 years ago,… inspired by a raging sky-god, the whites were able to pretend that their conquests were in order to bring the One God to everyone, particularly those with older and subtler religions. ………"

“I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam -- good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race …”

“More people have been killed in the name of Jesus Christ than any other name in the history of the world.” "Christianity is such a silly religion."

(source: Lowell Lecture at Harvard University given - By Gore Vidal - April 20, 1996 and positiveatheism.com and Gore Vidal, in Time magazine, September 28, 1992, p. 66, from James A Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief).

Refer to chapter on European Invasion and refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Watch The Crescent and the Cross. Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI.  Refer to Christian persecution against the Hellenes - ethnicoi.org. Watch The Bible is Bullshit - Penn & Teller examine the Bible. Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn  

***

Here are some examples of glaring discrimination of minorities in Egalitarian Western societies:

America's culturally displaced people?

1492 – was a landmark year for all natives of the world. It marks the beginning of a systematic war waged against them by Western arms and religious ideology.  It marked to the beginning of their struggle to maintain their tradition, their beliefs and their customs, their ways of seeing against the overwhelming influence of Western culture.  The conquest was accompanied by genocide unparalleled in history. In the century after Columbus over 2/3rds of native population of America died due to disease – perhaps 50 million people.

Christopher Columbus wrote to the Queen Isabella of Spain:  

“Our European civilization will bring light to the natives in the darkness but for ourselves we will obtain gold and with gold we will be able to do what we want.”

(source: The Barbarian West - By Michael Wood).

Refer to The Criminal History of Papacy and Sex, lies and videotape: turmoil at the Vatican and Vatican forced to acknowledge debauched behaviour of priests and nuns and Victims of pedophile Christian priests and Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis - By Philip Jenkins.

(Note: The legacy of European civilization to the world - Dark Ages, Crusades, The Inquisition, Witch Hunt, Slavery, Colonization of Africa, Asia, America and Australia, Imperialism, World Wars, Holocaust, Bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Conversion and destruction of Native cultures to Christianity, Drug Addiction, School shootings in American schools, Gun violence, Racism, Clergy Sex Abuse, Viagra spamming Capitalism, quest for individualism, Iraq war …. ). 

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide

***

Ward Churchill (enrolled Keetoowah Cherokee) (1947 - ) is Professor of American Indian Studies with the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He has achieved an unparalleled reputation as a scholar-activist and analyst of indigenous issues in North America . He explores the history of holocaust and denial in this hemisphere, beginning with the arrival of Columbus and continuing on into the present. Churchill provides examples of how Euroamericans have played fast and loose with dates, and more currently with the spiritual nature of Native Americans. He theorizes that the attempt to understand the culture of Native Americans has led to the dispossession of that culture.

“In actuality, the missions were death mills in which Indians, often delivered en masse by the military, were allotted an average of seven feet by two feet of living space in what one observer described as ‘specially constructed cattle pens’. Although forced to perform arduous agricultural labour by the priests from morning to night, six days a week, the captives were provided no more than 1400 calories per day in low nutrient foods, with missions like San Antonio and San Miguel supplying as little as 715 calories per day."

(source: A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present - By Ward Churchill).

British bioterrorism in Colonial Era - "Bioterrorism was one of the first things that was imposed against the Native Americans," Oyler said.

We gave them two Blankets and a Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital," trader and land speculator William Trent wrote in a journal. "I hope it will have the desired effect." 

Jimmie D. Oyler, chief of the United Tribe of Shawnee Indians, whose territory is based in Kansas, said decedents are aware of their ancestors' struggles. Another common practice among European explorers was to give "smallpox blankets" to the Indians. Since smallpox was unknown on this continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans did not have any natural immunity to the disease so smallpox would effectively wipe out entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans. William Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American villages in his 1957 work "American Indian and White relations to 1830." From 1615 to 1619 smallpox ran rampant among the Wampanoags and their neighbors to the north. The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of their population to the epidemic and the Massachusetts lost 90 percent. Most of the Wampanoag had died from the smallpox epidemic so when the Pilgrims arrived they found well-cleared fields which they claimed for their own. 

A Puritan colonist, quoted by Harvard University's Perry Miller, praised the plague that had wiped out the Indians for it was "the wonderful preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his providence for his people's abode in the Western world."

It was not divine intervention that wiped out most of the natives around the village of Patuxet but, most likely, smallpox-embedded blankets planted during an English visit or slave raid.

(source: The End of American Thanksgiving - blackcommentator.com and Times of India). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn and Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

Indian people mark 500 years of terrorism

The Indian people never knew what act of violence or terror would befall them from the invaders. But death did come. It came in the form of biological warfare when small pox tainted blankets were distributed to the unsuspecting victims. It came to them from the muzzles of guns that did not distinguish between warriors, women, elders or children. It came to them in the ruthless name of Manifest Destiny, the American edict that proclaimed God as the purveyor of expansion Westward.

Christian priests burning the 'heathen' Native Americans.

Countless cultures, rich spiritual traditions and ancient way of life have been destroyed and tramped upon in the name of the “One Jealous God” of Monotheism.

Indian people were often slaughtered like animals and became "inferior" cultures in their own land. The Europeans, through book burning and bayonet, successfully, converted" them, leaving very little trace of their noble civilization.

"The (American) Indians of our country have little to be thankful for. They have been decimated and placed on reservations that might as well be concentration camps. 

Note: If Columbus had reached India instead of America, it is possible that Indians would today be languishing in reservations!

(image source: The Dark Side of Christian History). 

Watch the documentary The Barbarian West - By Michael Wood. Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity. Watch video - Christian Missionary Misdeeds in India. Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn. Refer to The Myth of Jesus Christ - By Nithin S - haindavakeralam.org. Refer to In the name of the Church - By Rahul Karmarkar. Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide. For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby

***

Indian people were often slaughtered like animals often while waving the American flag in pitiful efforts to convince their killers that they were not bad people.

At Wounded Knee in 1890, a slaughter took place that the white man often called the last great battle between Indians and the United States Army. It was not a battle. It was one the last heinous acts of terror against innocent men, women and children. 

Just as the Crusaders believed it was their Christian duty to conquer and kill those Arabs they considered as sub-humans and heathens, so too did America duplicate their misguided logic against the First Americans. The Christians of the Crusade de-humanized the Arabs, the early Americans de-humanized the Indians.  A philosopher once said, “Great Nations are judged by how they treat their indigenous people,” and I am sad to say that America has failed to pass the test of time.

After 500 years the Indian still lives in fear of the terror that is still lurking just around the corner. The Indian people have lost so much in the past 500 years and they still live in terror of what will come next for them.

(source: Indian people mark 500 years of terrorism - By Tim Giago - indianz.com). Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the former editor and publisher of Indian Country Today.

Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools

"The white man's superior technology, hunger for land, and ethnocentrism seemingly knew no bounds. The white threat to Indians came in many forms: smallpox, missionaries, Conestoga wagons, barbed wire, and smoking locomotives. And in the end, it came in the form of schools." 

                                                                        - Dr Cornel Pewewardy.  

***

"Kill the Indian, save the man"  - was the motto of Captain Richard H. Pratt (1840 - 1924) Founder of the Carlisle Indian Schools.  

When extermination of Native Americans failed, "civilizing" became the new US policy. This meant that the Indians would become "civilized" - read, deculturalized - or else. The Carlisle kids were forced to speak English only, practice Christianity and work for no or low wages. Indian people were made U.S. citizens, on June 2, 1924. After 80 years under the Indian Citizenship Act, Native peoples remain the most economically impoverished segment of American society, with all the attendant problems of poverty.

Whither Human Rights and Democracy?

Waging War through Education: Native Indian in traditional clothing (before) and (after) finished pupil in White man's image.

Countless cultures, rich spiritual traditions and ancient way of life have been destroyed and tramped upon in the name of the “One Jealous God” of Monotheism.

Shed Your Indian Identity? Social engineering of Native Americans was begun by the US government to pry indigenous societies apart began in the late 1700s, when Moravian missionaries were asked to serve as de facto federal emissaries to the Cherokee Nation." Imbued with the mystical notion that white "Aryan" genetics correlated to such "innate" endowments as intellect and "moral capacity"- which in their minds corresponded with the potential to adopt "civilized" (Christian) outlooks and values.

The United States government began this brutal attempt at social engineering in 1879. Breaking rebellious Indians by indoctrinating their children in Anglo ways was considered. a cost-effective alternative to war. But the personal cost to Native Americans was incalculable…..

Native American students arriving at boarding school.

Every school had a disciplinary jail cell.. Some even offered bounties for returned children. Contagious diseases often swept through the schools, and exposure to the elements took the lives of many runaways. Photographs show vast cemeteries of plain white headstones inscribed with children’s names. For decades, there was little criticism of this abusive program from a nation steeped in dime novels about “the savage Indian.” Instead, magazines such as Harper’s Weekly praised the schools in a glowing articles...

An Indian boarding school refers to one of many schools that were established in the United States during the late 19th century and early 20th century to educate Native American youths according to Euro-American standards. These schools were primarily run by missionaries. It has been documented that they were traumatic to many of children who attended them, as they were forbidden to speak their native languages, taught Christianity instead of their native religions and in numerous other ways forced to abandon their Indian identity and adopt European-American culture. There are also documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuses occurring at these schools.

Native peoples alone are targeted, mascotted and humiliated in sports nationwide. This is the status of Native America after eight decades of citizenship and more than a century of "civilization."  

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide

Refer to Loot: in search of the East India Company - By Nick Robins and How India became poor - indiarealist.com

***

U.S. and Canadian authorities took Native children from their homes and tried to school, and sometimes beat, the Indian out them. Now Native Americans are fighting the theft of language, of culture, and of childhood itself.  

Dolphus is one of more than 100,000 Native Americans forced by the U.S. government to attend Christian schools. The system, which began with President Ulysses Grant's 1869 “Peace Policy,” continued well into the 20th century. Church officials, missionaries, and local authorities took children as young as five from their parents and shipped them off to Christian boarding schools; they forced others to enroll in Christian day schools on reservations. Those sent to boarding school were separated from their families for most of the year, sometimes without a single family visit. Parents caught trying to hide their children lost food rations.  

Virtually imprisoned in the schools, children experienced a devastating litany of abuses, from forced assimilation and grueling labor to widespread sexual and physical abuse. Canada imported the U.S. boarding school model in the 1880s and maintained it well into the 1970s—four decades after the United States ended its stated policy of forced enrollment. Abuses in Canadian schools are much better documented because survivors of Canadian schools are more numerous, younger, and generally more willing to talk about their experiences.  

(Note: Most Native Indian communities (called First Nations in Canada) have been left bereft of their past, cut-off from their heritage and totally lacking in confidence to take on life. Their language is dead and they have lost their "civilizational moorings" - all in the span of a couple of generations. They now live off welfare and in many cases abuse drugs and alcohol.

A 2001 report by the Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada documents the responsibility of the Roman Catholic Church, the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the federal government in the deaths of more than 50,000 Native children in the Canadian residential school system.

(source: Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools - amenestyusa.org).

The purpose of Native American boarding schools was to remove Native Americans from their home and cultures in order to change their identities and lifestyles to be like the "white man". Native American children were forced to think and act like the dominant white culture and were not allowed to practice their traditional ways. Not only were languages and beliefs changes, but appearances as well. Hair styles, clothing and even names and body languages were changed. The intention was to completely erase the Indian way of life.  

Many Europeans felt "called" to Christianize these "indios" in the name of God. No one considered the fact that the Native Americans did not want or need the White Man's God.  In their usual arrogance, the thought never occurred to the Europeans that the Indians might not see a need to join their religion and abandon their own.

U.S. assimilation effort of Native Indians: "The first Indian school was established in Carlisle, Pa., in 1879, by an Indian-fighting Army officer named Richard Henry Pratt. Pratt set the tone for the schools to come by vowing to "kill the Indian and save the man" "We'd lost our hair and we'd lost our clothes; with the two we'd lost our identity as Indians" a Chiricahua Apache student said in 1886. Some government schools developed ties with local churches. The churches, eager for converts, would compete to attract students and to tried to strip culture away from the children." 

Till recently, it was US policy to promote sterilization among Native American women, even applying it secretly during postnatal care or other operations. 

(source: The Saffron Swastika - By Koenraad Elst Voice of India ISBN 8185990697  p. 819). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel.

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn. Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity.

Plight of Native Americans (The 1830 Indian Removal Act forced the tribes into smaller and smaller reservations. Of the close to two million American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts in the United States, almost one million live on or near a reservation. Isolation makes it harder for American Indians to move off the reservations and find good jobs in towns and cities. This isolation also contributes to depression and the abuse of alcohol among Indians. Today their culture is in tatters, their people have been reduced to museum exhibits, and only vestiges of their wonderful belief systems and customs remain. The same United States that issues high minded admonitions to other countries today for human right abuses came to be because of its systematic decimation of the native population. If Indigenous tribes of the Americas had a stronger and richer culture, a consistent civilization; today Europeans would have been absorbed by them like India did in past thousands of years. European settlers would not have able to destroy 95% of the natives, and the language and religion of Americas would not have been be English/Spanish or Christianity BUT Aztec, Toltec, Maya and North American languages and religion). 

(For more refer to: History Not Taught is History Forgot: Columbus' Legacy of Genocide).  

Refer to The United States Government War Against the American Indian Movement - aimovment.org and The Covert War Against Native Americans - by Ward Churchill. Also refer to Ancient Struggle Continues, Scholars Remain Clueless - By Vrndavan Parker

The Puritan commander-in-charge John Mason (1600 - 1672) after the Mystic Massacre (CT) massacre wrote: 

"And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the Almighty let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished ... God was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven ... Thus did the Lord judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies": men, women, children.

• So "the Lord was pleased to smite our Enemies in the hinder Parts, and to give us their land for an inheritance".
• Because of his readers' assumed knowledge of Deuteronomy, there was no need for Mason to quote the words that immediately follow:
  "Thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth. But thou shalt utterly destroy them..." (Deut 20)
• Mason's comrade Underhill recalled how "great and doleful was the bloody sight to the view of the young soldiers" yet reassured his readers that "sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents". 

John Endicott and his pastor wrote to the Governor asking for 'a share' of the captives, specifically 'a young woman or girle and a boy if you thinke good'." 

• Reverend Solomon Stoddard, one of New England 's most esteemed religious leaders, in "1703 formally proposed to the Massachusetts Governor that the colonists be given the financial wherewithal to purchase and train large packs of dogs 'to hunt Indians as they do bears'." 

(source: Victims of Christian Faith and Christianity's Criminal History - By Karlheinz Deschner).

"That the world’s great powers achieved "greatness" through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. By 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop (1588- 1649) was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders.  

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington (1732 -1799)  in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians’ land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest.

He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in shape." Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn’t stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them." As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway."

American Founding Fathers, who wrote that “all men are created equal” in the Constitution, owned slaves and viewed women as second-class citizens.

Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide

Watch video - Christian Missionary Misdeeds in India

***

(source: Give Thanks No More - By Robert Jansen - outlookindia.com and Redskin: A 500 year Hate crime). Refer to The Last War: Racism, Spirituality, and the Future of Civilization - By Mark L. Perry Oxford). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com. Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity.

Refer to The United States Government War Against the American Indian Movement - aimovment.org and The Covert War Against Native Americans - by Ward Churchill. Also refer to Ancient Struggle Continues, Scholars Remain Clueless - By Vrndavan Parker and Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn.

Refer to Christian persecution against the Hellenes - ethnicoi.org.

Watch We are Warlike people - By George Carlin. 

Also refer to Christian video game draws anger - BBC.com - It's about religious warfare. The way to win is to convert or kill. You have both the Inquisition and the Crusades.

Sad history of Native Americans...

"The (American) Indians of our country have little to be thankful for. They have been decimated and placed on reservations that might as well be concentration camps. The genocide of the indigenous population of the United States has been much more effective than that of the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews.  

The population of the indigenous American Indian population in the United States fell from 12.5 million in 1500 to approximately 250,000 in 1900. Some tribes were completely wiped out. This means the settlers of the United States exterminated entire cultures. These unique ways of life will be extinct forever" ...The people on reservations live in conditions worse than the conditions of the people in Afghanistan and no one is dropping them rations. There is no humanitarian aid for those people who are in need right here within the borders of our own country. If any ethnic group in this country should get paid reparations in it is the native people. But how much is all the land from Florida to Washington State worth?"

(source: The American Genocide of Native Peoples - By Missy Gallihugh). 

In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

(source:  The Real Story of Thanksgiving - By Susan Bates - Alternative Press Review - November 23, 2005).

Civilizational Graveyards? Christianization of Alaska

European colonization of the Americas - A massive European colonization of the Americas started in 1492 when Columbus decimated the populations and cultures of the Native Americans. During the 15th through 19th centuries, their populations were ravaged by displacement, disease, warfare with the Europeans, and enslavement.

In 1890 there probably was not a single Christian Inupiaq (sing.) Eskimo. Twenty years later, there was scarcely an Inupiaq who was not a Christian. Among Alaska natives, the 20-to-29 age group had the most suicides, 39 percent of the total, while that age group ranked seventh nationwide. Roughly 80 percent of all Alaska suicide victims are male. Suicide among natives is commonly linked with depression and mental illness, which often goes untreated in rural areas, as well as with alcoholism and cultural and economic stress.

“They’ve lost their culture, they don’t have a way to support their family, and then what we see is a lot of alcohol and drug use, particularly alcohol,” said Diane Casto, the section manager for prevention and early intervention for the state’s division of behavioral health. “There’s such a feeling of hopelessness, particularly for young men.” Christian missionaries, followed by government bureaucracy and modern technology, have long since transformed villages on the tundra into places where seal meat is hung out to dry in the shadow of steeples, public schools and satellite dishes. Many natives still hunt and fish for staples even as the outside culture promotes materialism.

(source: In Native Alaskan Villages, a Culture of Sorrow - nytimes.com).

Extinction of Native Hawaiian Culture
Christian Missionary modus operandi - Destroy ancient world religions and put their cultural artifacts in museums and amusement parks.

By the 1860s,

"in Hawai'i the Reverend Rufus Anderson (1796 - 1880) surveyed the carnage that by then had reduced those islands' native population by 90 percent or more, and he declined to see it as tragedy; the expected total die-off of the Hawaiian population was only natural, this missionary said, somewhat equivalent to 'the amputation of diseased members of the body'." 

 - author D. Stannard in American Holocaust.

***

Crippled by western disease and stripped of its land, language and culture by 167 years of determined Christian missionaries, the old Hawaiian inner way of the life is lost forever. In 1820, the first of fifteen companies of Puritan missionaries arrived from Boston anxious to "save the heathens from the pit of darkness." A small, traumatized Hawaiian population was easy prey. Churches were built, the Bible preached, English aggressively taught, and the melodic, soulful Hawaiian language soon vanished. So the missionaries penned their own portrait of the Hawaiians - a bizarre caricature of unclothed savages who needed the Word of God. These writing bled the Hawaiians of their own self-respect and stigmatized them "uncivilized and pre-Christian."

Queen Lili'uokalani ascended the throne after the death of her brother in 1891, she began work on a new constitution that would have effectively reversed the 1887 document. Two years later, under threat of U.S. troops, she yielded her authority, saying, "Until such time as the Government of the United States shall ... undo the action of its representative and reinstate me in the authority which I claim as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands."  The queen was later imprisoned in Iolani Palace for eight months for her participation in an attempted 1895 revolt, until she relinquished her claim to the throne in return for her release. She died in 1917 at 79.

(source: "We're Not Extinct!" - Say Mystical Native Hawaiians - Hinduism Today). Watch documentary of Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai'i

Refer to Native Hawaiian and To Steal a Kingdom - By Michael Dougherty and Media Downplay Hawaii Uprising, Back Hawaiian Apartheid Bill.  Refer to Slokas On The Mount – ‘Christianisation of India ’ - Outlook India Magazine May 12, 2008. Watch Why we fight (2005) documentary - Imperial and technological arrogance of world's Super power: describes the rise and maintenance of the United States military-industrial complex and its involvement in the wars led by the United States during the last fifty years, and in particular in the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. The film alleges that in every decade since World War II, the American public has been told a lie to bring it into war to fuel the military-economic machine, which in turn maintains American dominance in the world.

The Plight of Native Americans 

The bigotry and obscenities inflicted upon the American Indians by Christian missionaries constitutes one of the most repugnant periods of American history. Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville (1680 - 1767) upon meeting the Nez Perce for the first time wrote these words in his diary: "Their honesty is immaculate and their purity of purpose most remarkable. They are more like a nation of saints... than savages.”

One might wonder how the nation's indigenous population became "inferior" cultures in their own land, or how a nation could have committed such atrocities in the name of "progress".

Less than two-thirds of native Americans are high school graduates. Some 29% are homeless, and more than half live in substandard housing. More than a third of all native American children aged 6-11 live in poverty. The government estimates that 50% of native Americans are unemployed, and at Pine Ridge the problem is even worse - 73% do not have jobs. It is home to 38,000 people, but has no public transport network and only a few small native American-owned businesses such as cafes, video stores and petrol stations.

(source: Showing maturation, churches apologize to American Indians – By William Edelen – The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Plight of Native Americans - BBC). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth.

Refer to The United States Government War Against the American Indian Movement - aimovment.org and The Covert War Against Native Americans - by Ward Churchill. Also refer to Ancient Struggle Continues, Scholars Remain Clueless - By Vrndavan Parker and Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

***

"I advance it, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."

- Thomas Jefferson, author of the famous statement, "All men are created equal."

(source: Dialog on Whiteness Studies - By Rajiv Malhotra - sulekha.com).

Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn. Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.  Refer to Plot to Kill Barak Obama

***

Lynching in Black America: a dark dirty corner of the American experience and psyche
Germany took responsibility for it's crimes, but The United States has its own distinctive horror.  

James Gillispie Birney (1792 - 1857) in 1842 wrote his pamphlet on American slavery. It was entitled: The American Churches: The Bulwarks of American Slavery. 

He told his English audience: “The extent to which most of the Churches in America are involved in the guilt of supporting the slave system is known to but a few in this country.”

Frederick Douglas (1818 - 1895), was an American abolitionist, editor, orator, author, statesman and reformer. Called "The Sage of Anacostia" and "The Lion of Anacostia", Douglass is one of the most prominent figures in African-American history and United States history. He said:  

Douglas said the most difficult obstacle to end slavery was how closely Christians had connected it to their religion.  

“The church and the slave prison stand next to each other; the groans and cries of the heartbroken slave are often drowned in the pious devotions of his religious master. The church-going bell and the auctioneer’s bell chime in with each other; the pulpit and the auctioneers’s block stand in the same neighbourhood; while the blood-stained gold goes to support the pulpit covers the infernal business with the garb of Christianity. We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support missionaries, and babies sold to buy Bibles and communion services for the churches.”

(source: Slavery and Christian Mythology - nogodzone.com).

Lynching became America's national pastime after the Civil War, at least in the South. From the 1880s to the 1930s the US averaged over 100 lynchings a year, mostly in the South, over 75% of the victims were black. The oppression of slavery gave way to the viciousness and animalism of Jim Crow, and for 100 years the "vicious racists" (as Dr. Martin Luther King called them) ruled supreme in the southern USA, as evil in their stupidity and cowardly fear as the Nazis of Germany were in their arrogance and megalomania.

"Newspapers on a number of occasions announced in advance the time and place of a lynching, special 'excursion' trains transported spectators to the scene, employers sometimes released their workers to attend, parents sent notes to school asking teachers to excuse children for the event and entire families attended; the children hoisted on their parents' shoulders to miss none of the action and accompanying festivities. Returning from one such occasion, a nine-year-old white youth remained unsatisfied. "I have seen a man hanged," he told his mother, "now I wish I could see one burned."

These lynchings are portrayed on picture postcards that were sent to friends and relatives of the lynch mobs.

At a number of country schools the day's routine was delayed until boy and girl pupils could get back from [viewing] the lynched man. . .the practice of lynching in America, which reached its peak from 1890 through 1930.

Lynching became almost a necessary practice “that served to give dramatic warning to all black inhabitants that the iron clad system of white supremacy was not to be challenged by deed, word or even thought” (Friedman, p. 191).

(source: amazon.com book review and crimelibrary.com and American Lynching). Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

For more refer to Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America  - By Hilton Als, et al and  Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries, Book 2, The Feast of Blood - Orlando Patterson). Refer to The Last War: Racism, Spirituality, and the Future of Civilization - By Mark L. Perry Oxford). 

Also refer to Hate group numbers top 800 in USA - Southern Poverty Law Center.  

In America, Mortgage lending institutions routinely discriminate Blacks from owing properties in affluent suburbs of America, Racial profiling, Driving while Black, Black Church burning, (note: The intention for Burning Black Churches "was to strike at the spirit and the soul of the Black community.") separate churches for Black and White Americans, Social discrimination, Blacks trapped in inner cities ghettos, and Police Brutality. According to the American Bar Association: "The charges were breathtaking: That in the heart of the most predominantly black city in the country, the Christianity-based activist organization was forcing its African-American employees to use the back entrance, and providing them separate and unequal facilities for taking breaks and eating lunch." (source: Christian Coalition’s racism). There are influential Christian racist groups like KKK, Christian Identity and the National Organization For European-American Rights (NOFEAR). 

There is the Holy Ghost, for African Americans, and St Landry, for whites. In between is the cemetery where, by law and then by custom, people of the same faith have been buried separately according to their race. In death as in worship the binary tradition of the south's racial history have persisted in deep southern states such as Louisiana. There is black and there is white and those basic differences will follow you to the grave and on to eternity.

(source: Is this the new face of rightwing deep south politics? - guardian.co.uk).  

Whither Human Rights and Democracy?

Lynching of Black Americans, White crowd watching. 1930.

Lynching served to give dramatic warning to all black inhabitants that the iron clad system of white supremacy was not to be challenged by deed, word or even thought”

Refer to O'Reilly and McCain fear for the 'white, Chrisitan, male power structure'. Plot to Kill Barak Obama and Ku Klux Klan warns race war if Obama wins. Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity. Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide.  For Cruelty inflicted by Christianity - Watch Constantine's Sword movie - By Oren Jacoby. Refer to Campus murders of Indian students in US cause for concern

Refer to Dark chapter of US history - By Matthew Bigg - tribuneindia.com and Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to World War II – By Douglas A. Blackmon

***

"Despite Jesus' call for brotherly love, isn't Sunday the most segregated day in America? If not, how does one explain the need for English-speaking African-Americans and Hispanics of Christian faith to maintain separate places of worship?  

Many fundamentalist Christian groups in the US still maintain racial separation and frown upon inter-racial dating."

(source: Proselytization In India: An Indian Christian's Perspective - By C Alex Alexander - sulekha.com). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth and Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com. Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.

Ku Klux Klan warns race war if Obama wins

A Ku Klux Klan leader has warned of a “race war” in the United States if Barack Obama wins his White House bid. Describing African-Americans as aliens who have “invaded” the United States to destroy “Christian culture”, Thomas Robb, 62, who styles himself as the Grand Knight of the Ku Klux Klan, warned: “We’re in the middle of a race war.”

(source: Ku Klux Klan warns race war if Obama wins - sify.com).

Segregation persists in town behind Brown 
Private-public school choice maintains separateness 50 years later 

Summerton, South Carolina - Take a trip to Scott's Branch Public High School, and you'll be greeted by a student body that is more than 99 percent Black. Fifty years after the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation, residents say schools in this school district are as segregated as ever. For proof, they point to a nearby private school, Clarendon Hall, which is 90 percent white and admitted its first black student only four years ago.

(source: Segregation persists in town behind Brown - msnbc.msn.com). Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

Mark L. Perry author of  The Last War: Racism, Spirituality and the Future of Civilization has observed: 

“Racism is not in our vocabulary,”  “It is not brought up in polite conversation because, like UFOs, it causes embarrassment among mature, well-educated realists and rational thinkers. Racism is a myth.” 

The Last War, however, is much more than a polemic about lingering discrimination. Rather, it is an examination of how deeply racism, and more specifically, the institution of slavery, has cut across the face of Western civilization. “My family was illegal in 16 states of the United States until 1967,” he writes, noting that laws forbidding marriage between blacks and whites were common throughout US history. “These laws characterized people of mixed racial background as social and legal abominations. He ultimately lays blame for racism, in America at least, to a mercantilist, Protestant culture that allowed early American colonists to rationalize that Africans were somehow subhuman and therefore exempt from a Christian application of the Golden Rule.

To succeed at maintaining this deception, he writes, slavery required the segregation of churches (so that slaves could not become free by converting to Christianity), laws against intermarriage, and laws allowing the violent restraint of slaves. 

(source: Some “impolite” conversation about racism - By George Ronald). Refer to Interracial marriage - South Africa, Canada, Australia and the United States are but a few countries that have had regulations banning interracial marriage. Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina has had a troubled record of outwardly prohibiting interracial dating and marriage on its campus. For decades, the university used biblical references to justify its position while threatening any student with expulsion for breaking this rule.

Mormon Christians still baptize Holocaust Jews

Researchers say that Mormons have continued to posthumously baptize Jewish Holocaust victims into their faith despite a promise to discontinue the practice. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long collected names from government documents and other records worldwide for posthumous baptisms. Church members stand in to be baptized in the names of the deceased non-Mormons, a ritual the church says is required for them to reach heaven.

"It's ridiculous for people to pretend they have the key to heaven," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "And even if they say they want to do somebody a favor ... it's not a symbol of love. It's a symbol of arrogance."

(source: Mormon Christians still baptize Holocaust Jews - newsyahoo.com). Refer to Posthumous Baptisms Still An Issue - By  Julie Wiener - The Jewish Week). Refer to Mormons Still Baptizing Dead Jews. Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel. Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

Ethnic Cleansing in New Orleans?

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." 

                                     - Richard Baker (R-La), September 09, 2005. - Online Journal.  Refer to Study: New Orleans could lose 80 percent of black population and This is turning into the ethnic cleansing of New Orleans - guardian.co.uk.

New Orleans Unmasks 'Apartheid - American Style' - By Jason Miller

Even the typically compliant mainstream media made strong note of the skin color and socio-economic status of most of the hurricane survivors, whom the federal government left to fend for themselves for several days. Stranded on roof-tops, taking refuge on islands formed by broken slabs of highway, hiding in attics, or clinging to survival inside the miserable, dangerous squalor of the "Super" Dome, tens of thousands of poor black Americans exposed a truth they have known for years. 

68% of the population was black. Less than half owned their homes. Almost 30% lived below the poverty line. An estimated 134,000 residents did not have cars or other viable means to evacuate.

Black lawmakers angry about federal response to Hurricane Katrina -  Black members of Congress expressed anger Friday at what they said was a slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Note: 2/3 of New Orleans population was Black African Americans. More than 1300 bodies have been found. - Katrina Death Toll May Never Be Known - yahoo.com.  Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

Refer to A 20-Point Plan To Destroy Black New Orleans

Refer to New Orleans will seek aid from other nations - alternet.org. - Shortcomings in aid from the U.S. government are making New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin look to other nations for help in rebuilding his hurricane-damaged city. Nagin, who has hosted a steady stream of foreign dignitaries since Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, says he may seek international assistance because U.S. aid has not been sufficient to get the city back on its feet.  

Refer to Racism in an institute of Higher learning? Harvard Police Target Of Racism Probe

White Supremacists, Crowd Clash with Holocaust survivors in Boston

White supremacists clashed with an angry crowd outside Faneuil Hall, where Holocaust survivors and their families were commemorating the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Inside the historic meeting house, Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren lit white candles to commemorate the estimated 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis.

Outside, 10 to 15 members of the Arkansas-based group White Revolution were escorted by officers to a designated protest area across the street. The officers, many in riot gear, formed a barricade between the protesters and  about 100 people who angrily shouted at them to leave Boston.

(source: White Supremacists, Crowd Clash with Holocaust survivors in Boston - yahoo.com). Refer to Christian Identity Movement. Refer to White House Defends Human Rights Record and Iraq Torture - memory hole.org and Human Rights News and Refer to Bible thumpers: Americans are being increasingly stereotyped as stupid - By Arvind Kumar - indiareacts.com). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel. Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.  Refer to O'Reilly and McCain fear for the 'white, Chrisitan, male power structure'

Refer to Racism in America and Germany. Don Imus controversy and German Army Did Not Fire Man in Video

Also refer to Klan holds rally in Gettysburg - yahoonews.com - About 30 Ku Klux Klan members proclaimed hatred for blacks, Jews, gays and Latinos as they stood behind barricades at the Civil War battlefield where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Also refer to Hate group numbers top 800 in USA - Southern Poverty Law Center.

Georgians Plan Whites-Only Prom Party: Albany, GA - "...parents and students organized separate proms for whites and blacks after school officials stopped sponsoring dances, in part because they wanted to avoid problems arising from interracial dating. After school integration, separate proms were common in the rural South. Taylor County was among the last to cling to the practice."

The prom land of American teens: For 31 years, parents and students organized separate proms for whites and blacks. For just one time last year, the school decided to have a joint prom, but this year some students have organised the "whites only" prom, causing outrage across the country. 

(source: Yahoo.com  and The prom land of American teens - Times of India - By Chidanand Rajghatta May 12' 2003  

New software tools widely available on the Internet are helping hate groups jump on the video game bandwagon with offerings such as Ethnic Cleansing — where players become cyber-Klansmen and stalk minorities through a virtual urban landscape. And a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League says there is a rise in hate games on the Web.

(source: Hate Groups Use Freely Available Software to Make Racist Games - abcnews.com).

Kahled Ahmed, columnist from Pakistan, has made an interesting point about the American way of life: 

"The American way of life can be quite isolating because of the concept of equal-but-separate rights, allowing individuals and whole communities to live in their separate identity bubbles. "

(source: http://www.thefridaytimes.com/news9.htm).

Hinduphobia in America in early 1900's

Fear and loathing towards Asians, towards people of Indian origin, towards Hindus -- this is a substratum of Indian American or Asian American history that has yet to find its way into American classrooms. I am, of course, referring to a period in American history when a Hindu, or any person of Asian origin in America, was condemned as an undesirable alien, as a lesser breed, or a benighted heathen.

The media as well as politicians had no hesitation in claiming that the people of India were undesirables of the worst kind – “the filth of Asia.”A group of residents of Glen Park and Mission districts of San Francisco wrote: “The Pacific coast is fast becoming the dumping ground of the most undesirable people whose morals and customs make an assimilation with our citizens an impossibility.” They termed the Indians “the new pest from Asia”.

It was racism fuelled by fear and loathing towards people of a different color, a different religion, and a different culture. And though it happened nearly a hundred years ago, faint echoes of this Hinduphobia or Indiaphobia still resonate in the American psyche.

As author Harold Robert Isaacs reminds us, "The image of the very benighted heathen Hindu is perhaps the strongest of all that come to us out of India from the past and it retains its full sharpness up to the present day."

Missionary Views

The statements made by American missionaries in India in their letter, books, sermons, and lectures was in a large part dominated by a powerful sense of revulsion at Hindu practices. A mild example would be the complaint, in 1852, about "the deplorable ignorance and stubborn prejudices of the Hindus, together with the caste system, their entire absence of all correct principles, and finally their moral degradation."

The Hindus, one might more commonly have heard, were "lifetime liars and worshippers of a stupendous system of carnal idolatry." Their temples would be "ornamented with all the orders of infernal architecture, displaying all the sins in the human figure and exhibiting evil spirits under the significant emblems of serpents, toads, etc." Letters prepared for Sunday school children stressed "mountains of superstitions," "the heathens in darkness," and "the Hindu mind." The whole literature was filled, author Bernard Stern remarks, "with a positively morbid preoccupation with temple prostitutes and lingamites," with lurid illustrations, and in general with material more titillating than inspirational.

Indian religions, said a writer in the Christian Century in 1905, were "debauched with deeds of lust and blood...Many of the Indian deities, given to lustful amours, are especially worshipped by the people....It is not surprising that religion in India is not only divorced from morality but married to vice...much indecency exists in India under the guise of religion, many of the temple dancing girls are merely consecrated prostitutes, and in many cases respectable women are led to lives of shame."

(source: Fear and Loathing: Hinduphobia in America -  By Francis C. Assisi - Indolink). Refer to The Last War: Racism, Spirituality, and the Future of Civilization - By Mark L. Perry Oxford). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel and Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

The Great White Wall - Anti-Hindu Riots of 1907
The Bellingham riots

"The preservation of the Caucasian race upon American soil" was the constitutional objective of the Asian Exclusion League. To achieve that end they pressured lumber mills into laying off Indian workers, lobbied to stop further immigration, and fomented riots to drive Indians from their homes. While not condoning the crude methods of the Asian Exclusion League, still the United States Congress, Judiciary, and Bureau of Immigration were sympathetic to their objective and the immigrants from India found themselves confronted by a great white wall.”

Having crossed the hurdle of admission to the United States, immigrants from India faced resistance from European and American laborers who were in competition with them for jobs and who feared they would be willing to work for lower wages. This resistance assumed tangible form in racist organizations such as the Asian Exclusion League.The group was responsible for violent incidents in Canada and the U.S. , such as the "Anti-Hindu" riot in 1907 at Bellingham, Washington.

On the night of September 4, 1907, a mob of between 400 and 500 white men attacked Bellingham 's Hindu colonies. Many of the Hindus were beaten. Some escaped from their quarters in their night clothes. Several sought refuge on the tide flats. Others were driven toward the city limits or jailed. During the course of the disturbance, the indignation of the crowd was fanned to action by speakers who addressed impromtu audiences on the street corners and incited citizens to "help drive out the cheap labor." 

Note:  President Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919) of the Republican Party, was a strong supporter of British colonialism in India. 

In fact in an address to a Methodist Episcopal Church group in January 1909, he stated that he considered British rule of India to be:

"..the greatest feat of the kind…since the Roman Empire …one of the most admirable achievements of the white race during the past two centuries…". 

His feelings would set the tone for collusion between the British and American governments to squelch efforts by Indian students (in the "land of the free" - America) to support freedom in India.

The Asian Exclusion League(AEL) provided a medium through which the more extreme racists and the politicians could meet to achieve their objectives. The British colonial government, in its mad rush to retain its control over India, actively spied on and conspired with the all too willing American government to crush any support among Indians in America for the Indian freedom movement. The environment of hatred and bigotry created by these forces led to very interesting legislative (by the U.S. Congress) and judicial (by U.S. Supreme Court decisions) maneuvers to remove Indians from America.

(source: The Great White Wall: South Asian pioneers in California 1899 - 1965 and The Indian Caste System and the British - infinity foundation). Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com.Refer to Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis - By Philip Jenkins - Since 1982, 400 Catholic clergy (out of a total of 50,000 American priests) have been accused of sexual misconduct with minors.  

The target for nuclear attacks was always Japan, never Germany

Japan was always the target for American nuclear attack, and it was never Germany. In a memorandum dated the 23rd of April 1945, General Leslie R. Groves, Director of the Manhattan Project wrote to Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, which stated, "The target is and was always expected to be Japan." And we ask, why so? 

Christian Intolerance and Racism during World War II

An imperialistic ideology that killed million of Jews in Europe and Japanese in Asia.

General Leslie Groves, Henry L Stimson, Ernie Pyle and Atomic mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.

The target for nuclear attacks was always Japan, never Germany. 

Japanese were looked upon (by the Americans) as, something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches and mice."  Japan was the target for the nuclear attack simply on grounds of race.  

Refer to Campus murders of Indian students in US cause for concern

***

The answer is obvious from the writings of Ernest Taylor Pyle (1900- 1945)a hugely popular American war correspondent who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944, and kept millions of Americans informed of the progress of the war. Pyle wrote, "In Europe, we felt that our enemies, horrible and deadly as they were, were still people, but out here (in Asia Pacific), I soon gathered that the Japanese were looked upon (by the Americans) as, something subhuman and repulsive; the way some people feel about cockroaches and mice". Japan was the target for the nuclear attack simply on grounds of race.

(source: Hiroshima Day: Remembering the Horrors of Nuclear Attack - By Dr Nachiketa Das).

Western Hypocrisy: Caste is anathema but racism is okay?
How the cream of Indian intellectuals were treated in USA.

South Asians have been harassed, intimidated, assaulted, humiliated, abused, and even killed because of what they represent through their color, their religion, their language, and their culture. And it continues to this day.

Take for example an incident from 1929: as a result of the humiliation that he received from U.S. immigration officials, the poet and Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore  (1861-1941) was forced to cancel his fourth lecture tour. That incident prompted the Nobel laureate to remark that if Jesus Christ himself were to come to America, he would be kicked out of the country - because he was an Asiatic.

Tagore explained his sentiments later by stating, "I arrived at Los Angeles, and I felt something in the air - a cultivated air of suspicion and general incivility towards Asiatics… I felt that I should not stay in a country on sufferance. It was not a question of personal grievance or of ill-treatment from some particular officer. I felt the insult was directed towards all Asiatics, and I made up my mind to leave a country where there was no welcome for ourselves… I have great regard for your people. But I have also my responsibility towards those whom you classify as colored people of whom I am one. I am a representative of Asiatic peoples and I could not remain in a country where Asiatics are not wanted."

Another Nobel laureate, astrophysicist Dr. Subramanyan Chandrashekar of the University of Chicago, confessed to biographer Kameshwar Wali (Chandra: A Biography of S. Chandrasekhar) that he was subjected to humiliating experiences in America because of the color of his skin. Chandrashekhar was born in India, educated in England, and lived all his professional life in the U.S until his death in 1991.

In the 1930s Chandrashekar taught, conducted research, and collaborated with the United States War Department on the atomic weapons research project. He became the first nonwhite person to be appointed to the faculty of the University of Chicago. According to Wali, the chairman of the physics department summarily opposed the appointment of Chandrashekhar to the faculty "because he was an Indian, and black". The dean, Henry G. Gale, also did not approve of the participation of the brilliant young Indian astronomer in teaching an elementary course in astronomy for precisely that reason. That objection was not lifted until the president of the university intervened.

(source: The Indian as "Black White" and as "Nigger" in USA - indolink.com). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel. Also refer to Insults to the Mahatma, ignored by India - rediff.com. Refer to Racism at JP Morgan

Watch No end in sight documentary (2007) and refer to The Looting of Baghdad museum: US government implicated in planned theft of Iraqi artistic treasures - The pillaging of the Baghdad Museum is a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington D.C. had been wiped out in one fell swoop. Some compare the event to the burning of the Alexandria Library. Eight thousand years of human history has been erased in two days.

Why Was Gandhi Never Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
Racism or a parochial neglect for so long of the non-western and non-Christian world?

Up to 1960, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded almost exclusively to Europeans and Americans. Scholars who have examined the issue are now willing to admit that the assertion that Gandhi was "deprived" of the 1937 Peace Prize due to British pressure is a serious charge and, as with Abrams´ insinuation that racism may have been the motivating force behind Gandhi´s omission, may contain more than a grain of truth.

Indian essayist J. Das asserts "Britain was highly perturbed when it learned that the doughty naked fakir was being considered for the prize. If he did get it, it would have meant severe political repercussions in Britain´s colonies." According to Das, 

"British government officials silently castigated the European zeal to award the peace prize to Gandhiji.” 

"Anthony Eden - Winston Churchill (who had denigrated Gandhi as a Naked Fakir)'s son-in-law, silently worked overtime on this." The basis for this assumption is the "unscheduled and mysterious movements of British officials between London and Oslo" as reported by the Times and other British papers at the time. "The brain behind all this", Das adds, "was Eden." There is, however, a sly British Foreign Office document that bears on the issue a little more closely. The comment on the file, signed by a British diplomat, states that "If the Nobel Committee wish to make fools of themselves I suppose we cannot prevent them." In his book ´Mahatma Gandhi: A New Approach,´ Mauritian Indian writer B. Bissoondayal states that ´For all time to come some will want to know why Tolstoy was refused the Nobel Prize, and later, Gandhi. He informs us that although Gandhi “Was acclaimed the world over as the greatest man of peace, he went unnoticed by the Nobel Committee even when a formal proposal was made in 1937…It was too much for British Raj to agree to Gandhi being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.”

(source: Why Was Gandhi Never Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? - indolink.com). Refer to chapter on European Imperialism.

Eugenics or Scientific Racism

Eugenics is controlling human reproduction in order to reduce the number of those that the Elite perceive as inferior to create a 'master race' with 'desirable' genetic characteristics. Eugenics was born in England; Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term, which is Greek for "well born," in the 1880s. But it was Americans who put into practice Galton's theory that society should encourage healthier people to have more children and unhealthier ones to have fewer. Alarmed by increased immigration and by the huge native black population, America's elite discovered in eugenics a "scientific" basis for their belief in white, Northern European supremacy.

Eugenics is usually associated with Nazi Germany, but in fact, it started in America. Not only that, it continued here long after Hitler's Germany was in ruins. At the height of the movement - in the ‘20s and ‘30s - exhibits were set up at fairs to teach people about eugenics. It was good for America, and good for the human race. That was the message.

(source: Supremacist Science - Mother Jones.com and Eugenics in America - 60 minutes). Refer to The Last War: Racism, Spirituality, and the Future of Civilization - By Mark L. Perry Oxford). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel.  Refer to Gay Bashing in the Bible - "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them." Leviticus 20:13.

Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide

Of the 2 million Americans in prisons, two-thirds are non-white. Many feel oppressed by the white power structure and sentencing disparities, which too often fall most harshly on minorities. (source: http://www.saag.org/papers12/paper1174.html).  Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn and Refer to Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com.

Racial profiling grounds Asians in US - Times of India  

Sporadic incidents of South Asian passengers being off-loaded from commercial airplanes are being reported amid fears of unofficial racial profiling in the US.

Dot-Busters (In 1987, Indians became targets of racial attacks in New Jersey. The Indian woman in her 'native dress', with the vermillion dot on her forehead, was easily seen as an embodiment of sheer otherness, and so she has been perceived by the so-called "dot-busters", a gang of white teenagers operating in New Jersey who had already been responsible for several violent crimes against Indians. Their demand was that "Indians get out of town."  (refer to the story: Racism in Pittsburgh).

Hindu-bashing Chicago Radio and TV talk show airs - A campaign launched by Chicago radio and TV talk-show host Tony Brown purports to "inform" the American public about Hinduism. "India Tribune likes to share its disgust and anguish with its readers." managing editor J. V. Lakshmana Rao wrote in a front page story in their July 3, 2001 edition. This country (USA) will take very many years for a black to become president, where as India already has a Dalit as president. 

(source: India Tribune - By Ed Viswanathan). 

Thus, Indians/Hindus are often faced with racial discrimination-"dot busters" in America, skinheads in England, neo-Nazis in Germany and regressive French snobbery. According to Prabha Chandran: "Be it the “Whites Only” National Front in Britain, the followers of right wing racist Jean Marie Le Penn in France or the neo-Nazis in Germany, Indians are still waiting to be welcomed as legitimate members of the multicultural societies these countries claim to be." 

(source: Asians vs Whites: Oldham gives birth to Asian racism - Prabha Chandran).  

Religion based racial bigotry in USA.

The descendants of those who invented the grim cruelties of plantation slavery and established the Southern Baptist Convention to provide it with Christian justification should have hesitated to preach equality. 

Refer to O'Reilly and McCain fear for the 'white, Chrisitan, male power structure'

Refer to How to destroy a people in god’s name - By Dr. Gautam Sen - india-forum.com and Plot to Kill Barak Obama.  Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth and Take a look at Slavery - godisimaginary.com. 

Watch An Invasion through Conversion - videoyahoo.com. Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn. Refer to Things They Don't Tell you about Christianity. Refer to The Dead Sea Scrolls - An Eastern View of a Western Crisis - By N. S. Rajaram - burningcross.net. Watch Robertson Says All Other Religions Worship Demonic Powers - Rightwingwatch.org. Refer to The United States Government War Against the American Indian Movement - aimovment.org and The Covert War Against Native Americans - by Ward Churchill. Also refer to Ancient Struggle Continues, Scholars Remain Clueless - By Vrndavan Parker. Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust - By Kevin Annett and documentary Unrepentant and Canada's Genocide.  Refer to Campus murders of Indian students in US cause for concern

***

US radio jocks air abuse call (with transcript)

Yet another instance of backlash against outsourcing to India has been reported. And this time its laced with hate, sexism and racism.

American radio jockeys Star and Buc Wild — apparently big names in their field — in an attempt to be 'funny' broadcast an abusive call that was placed to an Indian call-centre worker. The 'call' was aired in their morning show on Philadelphia's Power 99 FM radio. Apparently, the wakeup crew at the radio station thought it was hilarious, but it has provoked outrage amongst Indians back home and those living in the US.

(source: US radio jocks air abuse call (with transcript) - timesofindia.com. Radio hosts suspended for abusing Indian).

Racism is just a phone call away 

This is only a random (and printable) selection from the thousands of messages in cyberspace calling for a campaign to harass Indian call centre operators, to put an end to the offshoring of jobs. I made an Indian woman cry and promise to quit her job in 60 seconds. You can do it too!"

(source: Racism is just a phone call away - timesofindia.com). Refer to The Last War: Racism, Spirituality, and the Future of Civilization - By Mark L. Perry Oxford). Refer to Jesus Christ: Artifice for Aggression - By Sita Ram Goel

In Canada: Temple in Canada burnt to the ground - Times of India

In what police are calling a backlash hate crime, a 17-year-old Hindu temple in Hamilton, Ontario, was burned to the ground on September 17. "We have identified it as a hate crime," Sgt Maggie McKittrick of the Hamilton police force said. She said there has been a spate of incidents against Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, "but the temple burning has been the most significant hate crime."

Plight of Native Canadians. Rampant child abuse in church run schools results in thousands of lawsuits in Canada. For more than a century, Native Canadians were abused emotionally, physically and sexually in schools run by Christian Churches. The goal was to de-Indianize the children, a process which robbed them of their rich, cultural and linguistic heritage. 

(source: http://www.kahtou.com/images/apr_tlkingstck.html). Church's Face Bankruptcy. Rampant child abuse in church run schools results in thousands of lawsuits. - For more than a century Native Canadians were abused emotionally, physically and sexually in schools run by Christian churches. The goals of the schools, with government support, was to de-Indianize the children, a process which robbed them of their rich cultural and linguistic heritage. 

(source: Hinduism Today March/April 2001).  Refer to Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust.

In Australia:  The Lost/Stolen Generation  in Australia 

(For more information refer to article in Time Magazine -
http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/magazine/2000/0904/index.html ). The Aborigines, Australia’s original inhabitants before white settlers arrived, today live in appalling conditions. Crippled by crime, disease, drug abuse and alcoholism, Aboriginal activists say they have been treated as less than human for 200 years. Before the first whites arrived, the Aborigines inhabited the continent for over 40,000 years. A people with a rich culture and an almost mythical bond with their land, they have today only barely managed to survive a systematic government effort to wipe out their race. “This country, from a black perspective, is by far the most racist country in the world,” said Aboriginal activist Lyall Munro, in a report done by ABC News. 

(source: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/australia000914.html). Refer to the movie Rabbit Proof Fence - tells the story of a government policy that required "half-caste" children (whose mothers were Aboriginal and whose fathers were white) to be taken from their homes by the authorities to be trained to work as servants.

Aborigines may have numbered as many as a million in 1788 but had dwindled to 93,333 in 1901, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. They were forced off their land after British settlers began arriving in 1788 and then brutally suppressed. The latest Australian census reports the Aboriginal population as 427,094 among a population of more than 20 million. Their story encapsulates in miniature the abysmal status of many of Australia's indigenous people. The conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard has pushed the needs of the Aborigines to the sidelines, with few complaints from his white constituency, analysts say.

"Aborigines are effec