Hindus, The Last Of The Pagans?

12-20-2002, 07:46 PM

December 20, 2002 VNN7681
http://www.hinduhumanrights.org
Hindus, The Last Of The Pagans?

BY HINDU HUMAN RIGHTS

EDITORIAL, Dec 20 (VNN) — What is called paganism, heathenism, and
polytheism is in fact the Natural religion of humanity. In areas
where it has survived the onslaught of anti-human ideologies with
their ego gods, it has retained its self-respecting name. In Japan it
is Shinto, in Taiwan Confucianism And Taoism, and in India as
Hinduism.

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire
under Constatantine, the natural humanistic beliefs were proscribed.
With the spread of Christianity after the fall of Rome, the story was
the same across Europe, the Maghreb and the former Roman Middle East.
The high philosophy of the Greeks, the ancient beliefs of ancient
nations like the Armenians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Celts, Teutones,
Norse, Slavs, and last of all, right up to the thirteenth century,
the Lithuanians, fell to the rapacious jaws of iconoclastic and
dogmatic Christianity. Under both the dominant Greek Orthodox and
Roman Catholic churches, manifestations of the natural religion was
condemned as sorcery, Satanism, and witchcraft. The incineration of
heretics at the stake replaced the pluralism which had been the
standard of classicalist Europe under Celtic, Roman and Greek
cultures. Schism and reformation brought no respite. The Russian
Orthodox church became perhaps the most backward and regressive of
all Christian sects. Protestants saw veneration of icons and
celebration of life as remnants of paganism which had to be stamped
out. The Catholic multinational machine became even more zealous. Yet
this could not stem rationalism which stemmed from the Renaissance, a
rediscovery of the classical past.

Christ now paled in the shadow of a resurrected Plato, Aristotle,
Socrates and Pythagoras. Voltaire saw that Confucianism made Chinese
civilization every much as valid as Europe but without the inflexible
dogmatism that made science a slave to the accursed one, the Church.
Thomas Jefferson pondered whether the Christian deity was a god or a
devil. It was these rationalist ideas, which fuelled The industrial
revolution, made western states the most powerful, brought ideas of
democracy and free thought, as well as toleration of pluralism in
personal belief. It had nothing to do with Christianity, which now
sought refuge in opposition or mutated form, seeking allies with
Fascists, National Socialists, and Marxists, people for whom the very
idea of personal belief was a complete anathema.

In Europe today Christianity presents a different face, of
compassion, equality, multiculturalism, and interfaith pluralism. But
this has not been the case throughout history. It is not even the
case now in India. While the fundamentalist Christian propaganda
machine, losing souls it once considered its private property in
Europe, pumps out the blatant untruth of Hindus as Nazis,
fundamentalists, and satanic followers in India, it is forgotten just
how much damage Christianity did to the paganism of Europe. How many
were burnt at the stake or killed by some other means? How many were
forcibly converted by zealous crusaders like Charlemagne? How many
temples were desecrated and turned into churches for the one ego god?
How many Pagan festivals were reincarnated as Christianity such as
Christmas itself? Yet this is happening in India right now.

In the northeast Christian inspired terrorists are wiping out the
indigenous Hindus. Pope John Paul II has said that the future harvest
lies in India, and that Hinduism should be annihilated where it
contradicts the teaching of the church, which means that it will be
annihilated per'se, just as paganism was in Europe. The pagans of
Europe who have been told they must have nothing to do with the Hindu
Nazis of India should ask themselves if they should believe an
ideology which threw Europe under its dogmatic boot for almost two
millennia, and yet now cries wolf in the face of resistance in India,
the last refuge of what it calls paganism.

The propaganda machine pumps out a stream of stories that Hindu Nazis
are persecuting Christians. But is it never asked just exactly what
Christians are doing converting Hindus in India by? fraud, force or
bribery, desecrating Hindus shrines, and demanding heroic status for
criminals like Francis Xavier. How quickly the Inquisition of Goa has
been forgotten. If paganism is to be revived and flourish as it once
did, the pagans of Europe needs to ask themselves this, Should they
keep calling themselves by the term pagan, an insulting subjective
term invented by the close-minded church? Second, should they not
have sympathy for the Hindus of India, who are suffering the same
fate that their like minded spiritual brethren did in Europe
centuries of Europe?

India is the spiritual mother of natural religion. Without India the
natural beliefs of humanity can never be fully realised. Can the
pagans of Europe thus sit back and let happen in India what they have
taken almost two thousand years to throw off themselves? These are
not issues for the next few years, but ideas long overdue for now. It
must be understood that a renewed fundamentalist church in India
would threaten the physical existence of neo-pagans of Europe. The
battle between rationalism and dogmatism is not yet over.

Hindu Human Rights

http://www.hinduhumanrights.org