Confessions of an Indian Christian
Prashant Parikh
Harih om, the following account was shared by an Indian Christian who is a Hindutvadi and unabashedly proud of his Indian heritage and Dharmika civilization. Terminology clarification: 'Sunday School' is a common expression that refers to 'attending Church'.
Please read what he has said below.
__________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8ZvXW_PdEo
Quote: /// A dharmic Indian Christian - the type Hindutva loves as our own - is being called "confused" by an American Evangelical. Unfortunately, most
Indian converts to Christianity are now like sheep corralled by
different Western denominations. They are filled with a hateful
ideology, and in addition to that also preach racial hatred based on EVR
pamphleteering.
A personal anecdote: When I was young, I was eager to go to the Church, but my father disallowed it. He was from a fanatical Tamil Christian family, but had turned Communist and stayed away from "organized religion". Still, one summer vacation my patti, grandma, set us to Sunday School [Church]. The format was that the pastor would give the children some gyaan, and then we would launch into a hymn. One piece of indoctrination was as follows: Two school-friends, Ram and John. Ram was a good boy, did his homework, never lied; John had a good heart but was sometimes naughty and often played truant. Still, at the time of death, John goes to heaven because he has accepted Jesus as his Lord and Saviour, but Ram goes to hell even though he was a good boy.
I remember, both my little brother and I were shocked and looked at one another aghast. To us, the pastor was doing something terrible. But none of the other regulars there - for whom this was just another indoctrination session - thought there was anything wrong in the slightest in this pastor's teaching or his kind of 'god'. In fact, they joyfully launched into the next hymn, thankful that they were born into Christian families and were "saved". No doubt, they would go to school on Monday and play with their Hindu schoolmates, but knowing that those guys would go to hell. The would carry around a cognitive dissonance for life.
I recalled this episode once when I was reading a Vaishnava commentary. It said that 'Putana' was like organized religion, which comes to children in their cradle and impressionable years in the guise of providing spiritual nourishment, but their breast is poisoned. It actually kills the conscience. It was clear that those children going to Church had lost any conscience, while my brother and I - who were eager to participate in Sunday School - received a jolt from our inner conscience. We went home and told our father, and that gave him enough ammo to overrule patti for the rest of summer vacation (though she couldn't understand why he had a problem with what the bible apparently says).///
GM
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "dhārmika-saṁvādaḥ" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dharmika-samva...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to dharmika...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dharmika-samvada/CALzkvCKZoBSTXTkdNADouXK7CWevPHR7f9772rSZyZcv2VJurA%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.