Sunday 10th November 2024,
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Modi Visit Sparks Anti-Hindu Hate by America’s Right-Wing Christian Extremists

Modi Visit Sparks Anti-Hindu Hate by America’s Right-Wing Christian Extremists

When renowned and respected atheist writer and philosopher Bertrand Russell recognised Bolshevism as being a religion, even he could not have foreseen the accuracy of his observations, and indeed the book which he subsequently wrote after visiting the emergent USSR.

The unholy axis which worked to have Narendra Modi banned from America in 2002 involved an atheist Marxist academia with their tribe of failed revolutionaries. With the ideological fervour of Dr Goebbels they ensured Modi would be termed a dangerous ‘Hindu nationalist’, Hindu ‘fundamentalist’, communalist, and above all someone who adhered to a Hinduised form of Nazism and fascism. Such a person would be deemed incompatible with democracy. The inconvenient truth was however that America had employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,” declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich. One SS officer, Otto von Bolschwing, was a mentor and top aide to Adolf Eichmann, architect of the “Final Solution,” and wrote policy papers on how to terrorize Jews. Yet after the war, the C.I.A. not only hired him as a spy in Europe, but relocated him and his family to New York City in 1954. Not to be outdone, the USSR had no qualms about doing the same and even funded the Socialist Reich Party in West Germany, founded by Otto Ernst Remer who had crushed the July 1944 plot against Hitler. Modi by contrast was cleared by India’s democratic judicial process. But apparently he was a bigger threat than Nazi war criminals.

War with the Hindu Anti-Christ

Now the other element in this plot to ban Modi has been the Christian Right, America’s very own holy warriors, part of an evangelical movement pioneered by such demagogues as Jerry Falwell in reaction to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s which finally gave African-Americans legal equality with whites, but which home grown fascists like Falwell, the Southern Baptist Conference, and the Ku Klux Klan saw as a communist plot to subvert American Christian values. The extreme-right wing Christian lobby such as the SBC had the ear of George Bush Jr, which is why he banned Modi so quickly, yet dragged his feet when confronting the mechanics behind 9/11. Right-wing Christian organisations see a nuclear apocalypse or some similar holocaust as necessary in order to fulfil millenarian prophecies such as the Rapture where the chosen of God will be saved; leaving the rest of us to wallow under the rule of Satan.

Hence their support for the war in Iraq as a crusade against the Anti-Christ. But they also have more immediate concerns. Hinduism represents the most evil and demonic threat to their worldview: worse than communism, Cuba, North Korea, or al-Qaeda. In Modi they see a malevolent servant of Satan, bringing the idol-worshipping heathen samosa-eating Hindus as the ultimate nemesis of all that is as American as apple pie. Hence they joined hands with godless atheists of Marxism to crush their common Hindu enemy. But then monotheists always did understand each other, which is why there is so much sympathy for Christian terrorists in north-east India as well as jihadis in Kashmir. Both the Marxist Left and the Christian Right see these genocidal forces as fighting for ‘freedom’ against ‘Hindu’ oppression, using similar language, terminology, lobbying power, lucrative funding drives, and of course powerful media outlets with their Orwellian Newspeak.

Gary Lane is the senior international reporter for CBN: Christian Broadcasting Network founded by evangelist, unscrupulous businessman and right-wing Christian extremist, Pat Robertson. On 3 October 2014 Lane posted on the CBN website “Rockstar Welcome for India’s Persecuting Prime Minister”, a reference to the state visit by India’s democratically elected Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. A news programme was run in conjunction with the inflammatory hate piece

“In March 2002, as many as 2,000 Muslims were believed to have been killed during riots In the western Indian state of Gujarat. Some Indians believe the riots were pre-meditated by Hindu nationalists. Modi was governor at the time and ordered police to stand down, not to interfere.

Because of his complicity (if not involvement) in the brutal attacks on Muslims, he became the first person (in 2005) to be denied entrance into the U.S.A. under provisions of the International Religious Freedom Act denying visas to those deemed guilty of religious persecution.

What a difference one federal election makes. Last May, Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 52 percent of all seats in the Indian parliament. The persecutor of religious minorities became prime minister and this week was given a hero’s welcome in the Big Apple.

Not a word was uttered by the Washington elite about his jaded (if not criminal) past, or about the ongoing persecution of religious minorities in the world’s largest democracy.”

This completely ignores the reality that much more vicious communal riots preceded Modi as chief minister of that state, under the ‘secular’ Congress Party. It ignores the fact that Modi was cleared of any wrongdoing by India’s highest court. It ignores that masses of Hindus were not only killed in 2002, but it was the lynching of Hindu pilgrims that began those disturbances. >  2002 Gujarat riots : What The Media Dont Want You To Know <

 

Pat Robertson’s Blood Diamonds

It also raises much more disturbing questions about the very jaded past of Gary Lane’s boss. In 2013, the documentary Image result for pat robertson‘Mission Congo,’ which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, revealed that televangelist Pat Robertson’s charity in Zaire to help refugees that fled from post-genocide Rwanda, Operation Blessing (OBI), really served as an elaborate front for his diamond mining operation. According to Jessie Potts, who served as Operations Manager for OBI in 1994, the charity stopped sending medical teams to Goma several weeks into the operation. Instead, the film alleges that these resources—the donations, the cargo planes, etc.—were used for the for-profit African Development Company Ltd., a diamond mining operation that was headquartered in Kinshasa, while the mining site itself was located in the remote village of Kamonia.

Robertson was the sole shareholder and president of ADC ; a company which had a mining license granted to it by Mobutu, then-president of Zaire, who had been sanctioned by the United Nations over alleged human rights violations. Mobutu was one of Africa’s worst despots who stripped his country’s wealth for his personal use, building palaces while his people starved and remained pauperised. Opponents were thrown into filthy dungeons or fled abroad.

Yet Pat Robertson actually lobbied to have the sanctions against his friend Mobutu removed. The film also presents a video from 1994 where Robertson is strutting around in Africa with Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who then ushers him onto a helicopter. Bagasora was an instrumental figure in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and was later sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ITCR). Robertson also started a farming operation in then-Zaire that he called “Dumi Farm”, which served as a front to bypass taxes on his mining operation.

It does not stop there. Robertson had extensive business dealings with Liberian president Charles Taylor, with whom Robertson negotiated a multi-million dollar contract for gold mining operations in Liberia. In response to Taylor’s alleged crimes against humanity, the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his capture. Robertson accused President George W. Bush of “undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country.” At the time Taylor was harbouring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade.

In February 4, 2010, at his war crimes trial in the Hague, Taylor testified that Robertson was his main political ally in the U.S., and that he had volunteered to make Liberia’s case before U.S. administration officials in exchange for concessions to Robertson’s Freedom Gold, Ltd., to which Taylor gave a contract to mine gold in southeast Liberia. Under cross-examination, Taylor said that Robertson had volunteered to make Liberia’s case before U.S. administration officials, and had spoken directly to President Bush about Taylor. He also confirmed that Robertson’s company, Freedom Gold Limited, signed an agreement to exploit gold in southeastern Liberia, but that it never generated any profit.

Freedom of Religion in America?

Image result for Tina Ramirez hard wiredIn the news report, Lane interviewed Tina Ramirez, founder of Hardwired, dubious charity which claims to defend religious freedom. On 13 June 2013, at the Committee on House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security. Ramirez gloated at Modi being banned under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA).

“The State Department denied a visa to Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat State in India, pursuant to IRFA for his direct involvement in the persecution of Muslims.”

On the Hardwired page, Ramirez claims minorities are persecuted in India. Perhaps she is being more than just a little economic with the truth. In India the Christian and Muslim minorities enjoy their own personal law, as opposed to a uniform civil code practised by the state. Would Robertson or Ramirez allow such a policy in America? Robertson has opposed even yoga being allowed in his country with, “We can’t let that stuff come to America.” In his book The New World Order, Robertson wrote:

“When I said during my presidential bid that I would bring only Christians and Jews into the government, I hit a firestorm. ‘What do you mean?’ the media challenged me. ‘You’re not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe in Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?’ My simple answer is, ‘Yes, they are.”

Yet Ramirez has no scruples appearing on the broadcast media owned by someone who treats religious freedom as something that can be discarded at a whim. But then with Robertson, Ramirez has definitely found her soul brother and partner in crime. On March 23, 1995, Pat Robertson led a television program in which he attacked Hinduism, calling it “demonic”. He said that they worship “idols” and “hundreds of millions of deities,” which “has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years.” He also spoke against the doctrines of karma and reincarnation. Rather ironic since it took a four year long Civil War and a presidential assassination to stop millions of Robertson’s fellow Americans from being trapped in bondage, to spiritual forces that taught them they were an inferior black race. Is Ramirez aware that such minorities have always played a role in India’s government, including under the BJP.

George Fernandes, Sikandar Bakht, Abdul Kalam and above all General Jacob, the Indian Jewish war hero who liberated Bangladesh from racial and religious genocide by America’s ally Pakistan, are names which stand out. In America by contrast Piyush Jindal had to become ‘Bobby’ and convert to Christianity in order to be accepted and succeed in becoming governor of Louisiana. Nimrata Kaur Randhawa similarly had to convert to Christianity by marrying her husband Michael in a Methodist ceremony and today sits on the board for Mt. Horeb United Methodist Church. That is how she became governor of South Carolina, as Nikki Haley.

Hardly surprising when one considers how Balbir Singh Sodhi, a hard-working Sikh immigrant was gunned down by a fellow citizen in revenge for 9/11. So much for religious freedom in America, a country where Dr Rajan Zed invited abuse from right-wing Christian extremists for saying Hindu prayers in the US Senate on July 12, 2007. Several days prior to the scheduled prayer the American Family Association (AFA) called on its membership to phone and email their Senators “expressing your disappointment in the Senate decision to invite a Hindu to open the session with prayer.”

Image result for historian David BartonIn the Action Alerts to their membership the AFA cited self-styled historian David Barton saying he wonders “why the U.S. government is seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god. Barton points out that since Hindus worship multiple gods, the prayer will be completely outside the American paradigm, flying in the face of the American motto ‘One Nation Under God’. As Zed moved to start the prayer he was loudly interrupted by Ante Pavkovic who stood up in the gallery holding a Bible aloft and shouting:

“Lord Jesus, forgive us father for allowing a prayer of the wicked, which is an abomination in your sight. This is an abomination. We shall have no other gods before You. Lord Jesus, have mercy on our nation for allowing this abomination, this idolatry, for violating the First Commandment ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me.’ God forgive our nation, in Jesus name, Amen.”

(Rajan zed attacked by Christians in video )

As she was restrained by the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Pavkovic’s daughter Christan Renee Sugar yelled “Father, forgive us for betraying your Son Jesus!” and was also restrained. As they were escorted out they continued to direct their shouts at Zed, saying “No Lord but Jesus Christ!” and “There’s only one true God!” Ante Pavkovic in a statement made to Gordon Klingenschmitt after being released from jail, said “The Senate was already being disturbed before we arrived. The sin of Hindu idolatry was greatly disrupting the sanctity of the Senate.

We only prayed to preserve the covenant our nation has with the most-high God, who established our Republic, in Jesus name.” Operation Save America released a statement for the press entitled “Theology Moved to the Senate and was Arrested” by their director Rev. Flip Benham. The statement took Senators to task for not joining the protest. It stated that the Congressional “chamber was violated by a false Hindu god. Benham also published an essay about the protest on the Operation Save America website “A Hindu opening prayer in the United States Senate?

How the Mighty have fallen! Have our elected officials forgotten so quickly the God of our Pilgrim Forefathers, the God of our Founding Fathers, and the God who has blessed America and made her the mightiest nation in the world? Has Jesus, who made this nation free, been prostrated to the same level as every other religion? The events that took place in the Senate chambers yesterday would indicate that the answer is, “Yes!” Well then, what happens when United States senators fail to stand for truth, and bow their knee to the false god of political correctness? Simple Christian moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, sons and daughters, must stand up for Jesus!”

Freedom of religion in America? Perhaps not after all.

Lynching by Another Name

Image result for African-Americans lynchingIt was not that long ago that African-Americans who dared to exercise their democratic rights or protest against forced labour, rape, sexual predation and other abuse by the majority community, would find themselves burnt alive or hung from the nearest tree by their good Christian neighbours burning wooden crosses and wearing white sheets. Nowadays if American bigots want to spread hatred and misinformation, they have media outlets such as CBN and so-called human rights activists like Tina Ramirez.

If Ramirez and CBN are so concerned about what happened to innocent Muslims in India, then why are they silent or even apologetic about the innocent lives ruined by being incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay, or killed and tortured in Iraq by electric shocks and other clear violations of human rights? Or the hate crimes that have taken place against Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in America, especially in the wake of 9/11? Or racial profiling at airports? Ramirez said that Modi was never held accountable. Is she aware that he was actually subjected to the full rigour of the Indian legal system? Compare that to America where having enough money and buying resultant political clout gives you superhuman status and the ability to pull enough political strings to operate above the law.

She claims Modi has fomented violence against Muslims, Christians and Sikhs, without any evidence or proof. Ramirez says that American politicians overlook the threat of Hindu ‘nationalism’ and anti-conversion laws. Well has she looked at how Diwali is banned from India’s north-east, or how Hindus have been ethnically cleansed from Kashmir? Yet this anti-Hindu bigot has no qualms comparing India under democratically elected Modi, to the anarchy in Iraq: which was created by America in the first place. Gary Lane then asks perhaps Obama was more concerned about economic ties rather than human rights, a rather laughable attitude considering how his manager and company dictator Pat Robertson used the civil war in Rwanda, Congo and Liberia to walk hand-in-hand with genocidal despots and further his own business interests.

Ramirez enjoys her cheap attempt at the fame so clamoured for by her Generation X by saying that without religious freedom democracy itself is at risk. Well then how come she is so blind to it in her own country, or the places where Robertson has his greasy palms so deep in blood diamonds? She even hints that under Modi, minorities in India will face genocide. No Miss Ramirez, the only genocide in India is the one faced by Hindus such as in Nagaland where American Baptists back terrorists who spread the Bible and praise the Lord with the machine gun, or jihadis in Kashmir backed by your country’s allies Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Ramirez laments to Lane how the situation for minorities is worse as Hindu nationalists claim India is a Hindu nation, and they will forcible convert minorities. Really?

Well let us look at what the first Hindu prayer in the American Congress caused as a backlash. Tony Perkins an official for the Christian group the Family Research Council issued a statement on the day of the protest saying:

“No one can legitimately challenge the fact that the God America refers to in the pledge, our national motto, and other places is the monotheistic God of the Jewish and Christian faith. …There is no historic connection between America and the polytheistic creed of the Hindu faith. I seriously doubt that Americans want to change the motto, ‘In God we Trust,’ which Congress adopted in 1955, to, ‘In gods we Trust.’ That is essentially what the United States Senate did today.”

In 2010, the Family Research Council—under Perkins’ leadership—was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Two months after the protests a Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) publication issued a story entitled “Hinduism influence on the rise” quoting N.S.R.K. Ravi, the director of the SBC’s North American Mission Board’s Evangelism Response Center. Ravi (a convert from Hinduism) stated:

“The god Rajan Zed represented is a different god. The prayers he offered are not to the God of the Bible. The god Rajan Zed represented is powerless. He cannot forgive sin, therefore he leaves the sinner to the fate of karma and reincarnation and endless human suffering.”

Pointing out that Zed had, before the prayer, sprinkled some water from the Ganges River (held as sacred by Hindus) Ravi said:

“The holy water he sprinkled on the Senate floor was from the land of India, which means the god is limited to a specific region of the universe. He is not the God of the universe. What is next? Prayers to Satan? Pagans? Dead spirits? Prayers to atheists?”

Now the SBC is the world’s largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with nearly 16 million members as of 2012. But it was formed in the antebellum South by white racists who supported slavery. During the 1960s, the SBC rejected civil rights for blacks. Not until 1995 did the SBC apologise for its past

Pat Robertson’s Stealth Jihad in India

When Lane asks Ramirez about Modi’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netenyahu, and if Jews will be persecuted in India, the fake human rights bigot just sniggers smugly, and again talks about the Indian leader’s culpability in the Gujarat riots. She never actually answers the question and that he is a man guilty of double speak and cannot be trusted. Well what does that say about trusting anti-Hindu fanatics like Ramirez? While Jews were never persecuted in India by Hindus, the same cannot be said about America. India has no equivalent to the brutal lynching of Jewish factory owner Leo Frank, in Georgia in 1915 or to home grown Nazi leaders like Theodore Bilbo, Lincoln Rockwell or David Duke.

She also hits out at how Christian organisations are being denied visas to India. Incredible hypocrisy because she was overjoyed at Modi being denied one to America. If India feels that foreign groups are fanning the flames of religious hatred, should it just welcome them with open arms? On her own website, Ramirez writes:

“Religious oppression is at the root of injustice everywhere and is a major threat to freedom for all of humanity. No one should be oppressed for his or her beliefs.”

Perhaps she should look at home grown injustice such as the SBC and the reaction to Hindu prayers in Congress. After all, charity begins at home.

Robertson’s CBN has broadcast programs in over 70 languages. CBN India alone produces three shows, a daily Hindi program Ek Nayee Zindagi, a bi-weekly Telugu program Nireekshana and an award-winning weekly Bengali program Samadhan. Robertson’s Indian puppet state has its capital in Gurgaon. http://cbn.in/About-cbn-foundation.php

Further at http://cbnindiablogs.wordpress.com/about/ :

Christian Broadcasting Network India is a multimedia company dedicated to reach out to every Indian home with a message of hope through quality television programs. CBN India’s purpose is to reach out to the people of India by touching their hearts and winning them over to the Lord Jesus Christ through the use of the media and through humanitarian intervention.

Our vision is to prepare the nation of India for the second coming of Christ by presenting the message of the Gospel and bringing people closer to the Lord through humanitarian efforts.”

Again double standards. Robertson does not want Hindu stuff like yoga in his lily white America, but his superiority complex means that when he is not getting filthy rich off blood diamonds in Africa, he is busy destroying the world’s most ancient culture and civilisation in the name of “hope”. It also hardly shows proof that India is somehow intolerant of Christianity or indeed any other faith if someone with the complete lack of integrity as Robertson is allowed to beam his propaganda into India homes. True to form CBN has invited such demagogues as Dr Joseph D’Souza, president of the All India Christian Council and disciple of the Aryan race theory, onto his hate programme called the 700 Club http://www.cbn.com/700club/Guests/Bios/Joseph_DSouza042205.aspx :

“If a higher caste Hindu is touched by an untouchable or even has a Dalit’s shadow cross them, they consider themselves to be polluted and have to go through a rigorous series of rituals to be cleansed….In November 2001, the Dalit people began their quest for individual freedom by embracing a number of religious options that would allow them to break free from the ancient caste system. The Christian church wholeheartedly embraced this movement and a major reform is the result. The Dalits are becoming Christians in record numbers and becoming free from the cycles of poverty and abuse. But the persecution increases as well.”

Of course this does not sit well with the reality. America’s constitution was written by a group of slave owners like George Washington. The integral portion that “all men are equal and endowed by their Creator with certain rights” would ring hollow not just for the slaves on Washington’s own estate, but for generations of blacks until today. In fact even today as the shooting in Ferguson County demonstrates. But who wrote India’s constitution? Dr BR Ambedkar from the Mahar caste. In other words a Dalit and a Dalit who had rejected Christianity. Who is Narendra Modi? One of these upper caste Hindu oppressors? Well no actually. In reality he was born into the Ghanchi (oil-presser) community, which is categorised among the other backward classes by the Indian government. But then the truth never did sit well the unholy axis which from the very beginning has been determined to ban Modi from America, by use of the same nauseating and regurgitated myths about the very fascism, fundamentalism and intolerance which it enforces towards Hindus.

 

About The Author

Ranbir Singh : Writer and lecturer, HHR chairman : BA (Honours) History, MA History from School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London : , Have lectured previously at De Montfort University, London School of Economics, Contributor to various political and human rights discussion outfits.

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