Dear Editor,
Pope Francis has concluded his triumphant so-called “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada to offer his apologies for the crimes of the Catholic Church perpetrated on sections of the indigenous of that country. It was a carefully choreographed and highly publicized show with the slick Vatican PR team ensuring the presence of the camera to publicise an abject and an ostensibly apologetic Francis often with his head buried in his hands feigning shame.
Not impressed with what appears to be a publicity stunt, many observers have expressed a great deal of cynicism over this “penitential pilgrimage” claiming it has to do more with salvaging the sinking ship of Catholicism that is rapidly losing ground in its traditional stronghold such as in Latin America, North America and Europe, than it does with any genuine apology to the indigenous Canadian population.
However, there are many who are profoundly moved by this show of contrition and are asking questions, perhaps hopefully, about the Pope’s next stop in his “penitential” sojourn. Will it be India where the Goa Inquisition arguably surpassed the horrors of the Inquisition in Europe, in terms of the number of people racked, burnt, and murdered for not accepting the “one true god” the “one true religion,” and, of course, the “one true saviour?”
I am not so sanguine that any pope will ever “apologise” for the crimes of the Catholic church in India. Not that it even matters. The thing is that the Catholic Church, as does all Christianity, still sees India as “contested territory” rich in the potential of “the harvesting of souls.” One recalls with a sense of shock and horror, John Paul II in his visit to the Philippines in 1995, in a show of Christian power, triumphalism and imperialism declaring, “In the first millennium, the Cross was planted in European soil; in the second, in American and African ground; we can pray that in the third Christian millennium, there will be a great harvest of faith to reap in this vast and vital continent.”
How reminiscent all of this is of the days of gunboat diplomacy when western powers used their military might to force many Asian countries, principally China and Japan, to open their doors to “free trade” to exploit their vast resources for commerce and raw material, and as is always the case, the “market for souls.” This was in fact nothing new for a few decades earlier in 1857 David Livingstone speaking to a London audience that lapped up his every word in sheer delight, “I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity.”
In terms of the conquest of Asia for Christianity as envisioned by the Vatican, it goes without saying that India is the prime target, the proverbial “jewel in the crown.” We see an uncanny similarity between the policies and attitudes of the colonial mission and the current 21st century pronouncements of Christian missions to India. Charles Grant, the evangelical chairman of the rapacious East India Company had (in)famously declared that the “Indian territories were allotted by providence to Great Britain,” a view enthusiastically supported by William Wilberforce.
It is for this reason that the Christian Church in India interprets the freedom to propagate religion as essentially the freedom to engage in conversion which they often camouflage with fancy language such as the gospel commandment to “share” Christian teachings, notwithstanding not being invited to do so. It was precisely this attitude to conquer and dominate that led John Paul II on his second visit to India in November 1999 to arrogantly declare to a country of nearly a billion Hindus at the time that conversion is a right.
This being the predominant attitude of Christianity in general and the Vatican in particular to India, there is no way that the present pontiff, or any other in the foreseeable future, will venture to apologise to Hindus for the untold and unspeakable crimes committed against them, even though there have been demonstrations of ardent and profuse apologies for anti-Semitism, the Crusades and the inquisition in Europe.
Will not an apology imply that the Christian mission to begin with was an error, as the theology that undergirds it? And, if mission and mission theology are wrong, then the right to convert as asserted by the Vatican has no legs to stand on.
Yours faithfully,
Swami Aksharananda
