The New Indian Express adopts a very clever strategy - its editorials go that extra mile to project a secular image of itself. At the same time, it gives huge and prominent spaces to anti-minority intellectuals like Gurumurthy and Francois Gautier to propagate the communal agenda and divide the people. What is the purpose of this doublespeak?
God knows what fancy rate the paper gives a cantankerous journalist like Gautier. This Frenchman’s simplistic and shallow readings of Christianity and Hinduism, and his seeming sympathy with the ill treated majority is reminiscent of the age old dirty game played by the imperialists to divide and rule. What surprises me is the way the New Indian Express is playing into the hands of this incurable imperialist. Or is it t hat the paper is using Gautier for a straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth type of an impact to secure its communal agenda? His recent article has let loose a lot of hate responses, both in the daily and on the net.
Wonder what this paper is up to. Why is it indulging in these nefarious divisive games? Is The New Indian Express laying the foundation for a theocratic dispensation for India?
Yes, I felt the same. Good that you pointed it out in your blog.Indian Express had supported saffron agenda for quite some time now.But many innocent readers still does not know.
ReplyDelete:)
ReplyDeleteIts said that tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye is a definite bad idea for a secular system like ours. I agree.
In line -- Calling a Spade "A SPADE" too is not a good idea according to your write-up. I Don't agree. This I say, because; our country has no secular media at all. :)
The fact that a particular media is secular, right wing, left wing etal.. is just a conspiracy.
I saw that you had written a comment there ("shameful article".. which is very true.. that guy seemed hell bent on increasing the divide between hindus and christians)
ReplyDeleteBut now it seems to have gone.
Suppressing public opinion???
Or does comments get wiped out every day or something?
@ deepak
ReplyDeleteno. comments dont get wiped out. the comments before mine - the hate comments- are still there.mine must have been published without giving much thought to the content. i sent a letter to the editor(daily) which was not published.
the deletion must be an afterthought.
truth is always unpleasant.often, it doesnt see the light of the day
Hello KPJ!
ReplyDeleteIndian Express is a prejudiced, biased newspaper surviving on sensationalism.
One of their major agenda is the hate campaign against the Nehru-Gandhi family. There are people like Shekar Gupta, TJS George and Gurumurthy taking extraordinary pains to sully this family's name by spreading canards as truths. The pity is that IE big wigs can't even understand that that the intelligent public are having a good laugh at the paper.
Shekar Gupta wrote so much bunkum against Pratibha Patil just because Sonia Gandhi nominated her. The paper had to eat an humble pie because Pratibha Patil won with a thumping majority and became our President.
This paper is losing its sheen and at this rate it will soon be classified as yellow paper.
Have a good day!
"The New Indian Express adopts a very clever strategy - its editorials go that extra mile to project a secular image of itself. At the same time, it gives huge and prominent spaces to anti-minority intellectuals like Gurumurthy and Francois Gautier to propagate the communal agenda and divide the people. What is the purpose of this doublespeak?
ReplyDeleteGod knows what fancy rate the paper gives a cantankerous journalist like Gautier. This Frenchman’s simplistic and shallow readings of Christianity and Hinduism, and his seeming sympathy with the ill treated majority is reminiscent of the age old dirty game played by the imperialists to divide and rule. What surprises me is the way the New Indian Express is playing into the hands of this incurable imperialist. Or is it t hat the paper is using Gautier for a straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth type of an impact to secure its communal agenda? His recent article has let loose a lot of hate responses, both in the daily and on the net."
Oh so it's the paper that is trying to divide and rule people? It's the paper that has a communal agenda? Let's examine what Gautier actually wrote and see who is hateful and communal:
"I WAS born in a Catholic family. My uncle was a priest, a wonderful man of warmth and compassion and I spent most my early years in Catholic boarding schools. When I was young I wanted to become a missionary and to ‘convert’ pagans in Asia. What I was taught by priests was that Hindus worship false gods and they needed to be brought back to the True Word by Jesus Christ.
Then of course, I came to India and discovered that actually Hindus, far from being the heathens, as had been portrayed in Europe, not only believed God’s diversity, the wonderful concept of avatar, but had given refuge to all persecuted minorities of the world, whether the Syrian Christians, the Parsis, the Jews (India is the only country in the world where Jews were not persecuted), the Armenians, or today the Tibetans."
Here, Gautier is talking about his PERSONAL EXPERIENCE growing up as a Christian. This is hardly a shallow reading of anything, and the only one being duplicitous here is you. There is nothing shallow about this; it is a REALITY experienced by many evangelical Christians. Furthermore, what exactly is wrong with having "sympathy for an ill treated majority." If Gautier writes about the ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley, should he be considered to be playing an "age old dirty game?" because India is a Hindu majority country? Nonsensical drivel like this is really a pain to have to refute.
"I am also aghast at the one-sided coverage by the Indian media of the Christian- Hindu problem: blasts after blasts have killed hundreds of innocent Hindus in Varanasi, Delhi, Mumbai train blasts, Jaipur, etc. Yet, neither Manmohan Singh nor Sonia Gandhi have pronounced once the word ‘Islamic terrorism.’ But when furious Hindus, tired of being made fun of, of witnessing their brothers and sisters converted by financials traps, of seeing a 84-year-old swami and his Mataji brutally murdered, of reading blasphemy about their Gods, vent their anger against churches, many of them makeshifts, the Indian government goes after the soft target which the Hindus are. The same thing applies to the United States: they never warned Muslim organisations in India about the killing of Hindus, but when dollars are used to buy new converts and it angers the majority community of India,Washington has the arrogance to issue a warning, and Manmohan Singh does not have the pride to tell the US to mind its own business."
ReplyDeleteHere, as Gautier points out, it is the MEDIA that is indulging in divide and rule by keeping quiet when evangelicals attempt to uproot India's ancient heritage (which you claim to adore, clearly another lie) yet screeching about communalism when Hindus get frustrated and strike back against missionary evangelical bigotry. Yet, when Gautier merely points out this double standard, HE is communal? This is illogical to the extreme.
"Neither the Indian press nor the western correspondents bothered to write about what made Hindus angry in Karnataka: Newlife, one important westernfunded missionary centre ( http://www.newlifevoice.org), began making conversions in and around Mangalore by accosting poor people in market areas, or in bus stands, befriending them and then taking them to churches to introduce them to the father.
ReplyDeleteUpon introduction they were paid Rs 2,500 per person and then taken to the Velankanni shrine, in Tamil Nadu, where they would get another Rs. 3,000.
When they finally converted to Christianity by changing the name, they got an incentive of Rs 10,000 onwards.
Newlife would then give them instructions to abandon wearing tilak on forehead, not to visit and offer prayers at the Hindu temples, replacing the photos and idols of Hindu gods and goddesses with a Cross, etc.
But what really angered local Hindus was when Newlife went one step further and published a book in Kannada — Satya Darshini — which was widely distributed by its missionaries. Here below is the translation of some of the most abusive passages: “Urvashi — the daughter of Lord Vishnu — is a prostitute.
Vashistha is the son of this prostitute.
He in turn married his own Mother. Such a degraded person is the Guru of the Hindu God Rama. (page 48).
When Krishna himself is wallowing in darkness of hell, how can he enlighten others? Since Krishna himself is a shady character, there is a need for us to liberate his misled followers (page 50). It was Brahma himself who kidnapped Sita.
“Since Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva were themselves victims of lust, it is a sin to consider them as Gods. (page 39).
When the Trinity of Hinduism (Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva) are consumed by lust and anger, how can they liberate others? The projection of them as Gods is nothing but a joke. (page 39). God, please liberate the sinful people of India who are worshipping False Gods. (Page 39).” When blasphemy and much worse is brought against the most sacred Hindu Gods, Hindus are supposed to take it meekly as sheep and let themselves be converted to a foreign religion! There are more than 4,000 foreign Christian missionaries involved in conversion activities across different states."
As Gautier points out, it is the MISSIONARIES who are dividing and ruling by BRIBING Hindus to convert to Christianity and SLANDERING Hindu deities by publishing hateful books against Hinduism without any kind of references to back up their bogus claims. It is the evangelicals who are engaging in cultural imperialism here, not Gautier, as you would have us believe with your laughable "logic." When Christian missionaries convert some Hindus to Christianity, it is naturally, and regrettably going to cause conflicts between the converts, who want the Hindus to abandon their ancestral faith, and the Hindus, who want to keep it. THIS IS DIVIDE AND RULE BY DEFINITION!
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that missionaries accompanied European imperialists, not imperialists in your perverse meaning of the word but true imperialists who justified their conquest of India to "civilize the heathen" who is "half devil and half child" while the missionaries wanted to "save their souls from spiritual darkness." That you consider Gautier to be communal and attempting to divide people for EXPOSING and criticizing missionary cultural imperialism and divide and rule tactics speaks volumes about your respect for India's heritage and your sense of justice.
It is clear, therefore, to anyone who actually READ Gautier's article that it is the Congress, the Media, and the Missionaries whoa are dividing and ruling India by trampling on its ancient heritage and attempting to uproot it. The only "communal" people, the only ones engaging in "nefarious games" are people like you who claim to love Hindu culture with one side of your mouth and call people who want to defend it communal with the other. There is no "saffron agenda" behind protecting one's heritage form bigoted missionaries who openly call for its erasure.
ReplyDelete"One of their major agenda is the hate campaign against the Nehru-Gandhi family. There are people like Shekar Gupta, TJS George and Gurumurthy taking extraordinary pains to sully this family's name by spreading canards as truths. The pity is that IE big wigs can't even understand that that the intelligent public are having a good laugh at the paper."
The only people having a good laugh are those who are laughing at Joseph's abysmal ignorance of the nepotism, corruption and apathy towards the people of India that is epitomized by the Nehru Gandhi dynasty.
"Shekar Gupta wrote so much bunkum against Pratibha Patil just because Sonia Gandhi nominated her. The paper had to eat an humble pie because Pratibha Patil won with a thumping majority and became our President."
That Pratibha Patil became President does not suddenly erase her corrupt past. That you assume this is so shows your lack understanding of logic that even children have. The paper did not have to eat humble pie because it was not proven wrong. It is hardly promoting theocracy; it is calling a spade a spade and promoting truth.