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        Recently one of my friends gave me a copy of Tehelka's February 7th, 2004 issue which carried a cover story under the title 'George Bush has a big conversion agenda in India.' I am given to understand that on the same theme there was a smaller follow-up article in the February 14th issue of Tehelka. I would like to give the details and analyse the national implications of the investigative report developed by Tehelka's team of journalists, which any one can see particularly from the point of view of our national sovereignty, territorial integrity and national security. As a known, saffronised, communal, obscurantist, illiterate, uncivilized, barbarous, half-savage Hindu, I am aware of the fact that my credentials can be questioned even to look at a report of this kind. In order to match the official, if not the intellectual, stature of President Bush, I would like to quote the words of another fellow American of equal official stature called Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), one of the great founders of the American State.
 
 

D M Bebbett (1818-1882)	Anthony Comstock (1844-1915)	Today's Global Evangelist

        Thomas Jefferson in a brilliant letter to his nephew Peter Carr in 1787 declared with conviction: 'Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this subject. ... You will read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the following two opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended and reversed the Laws of Nature at will, and ascended bodily into Heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to Roman Law. ... I repeat you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons or descriptions of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by Heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision. I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ including those which a Council of Ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be pseudo-evangelists. ... because, those pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those pseudo-ecclesiastics.'

        One of the early and most important major policy decisions which President Bush took on 29 January, 2001, was in regard to a 'Faith Based' social service initiative that included a new White House office to promote government aid to churches and Christian faith-based organisations. This had the immediate effect of throwing the massive weight of the federal government behind religious groups and religious conversions. The Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives was set up in the White House in the first week of February 2002 and a man called Jim Towey was appointed as Director. The most interesting and important point to be noted in this context is that Jim Towey was the legal counsel to Mother Teresa in the late 1980s. Thus he was fully qualified in every sense of the term to play the role of an aggressive evangelist. What is most disturbing to note is that though Bush's initiative as a 11th century Crusader to fund 'salvation and religious conversion' has been stalled in the Congress over constitutional and civil rights concerns, yet he has pushed for its implementation through his own executive orders. Consequently, new waves of aggressive evangelism have been emanating and issuing out from America. According to V K Sashikumar, this White House-sponsored movement for the evangelisation of India is well funded, superbly networked and backed by the highest of the land in America. This is being fully supported informally by the Islam-embracing, Christianity-coveting and Hindu-hating UPA government in New Delhi under the stranglehold of a de facto Prime Minister, tracing her spiritual and cultural roots to Italy in general and to Vatican in particular.

        I am quoting verbatim from the Tehelka Website on their correct assessment of the serious implications of the Bush-sponsored Massive Evangelization of India (MEOI): 'Religious expansionism has not witnessed this scale, scope, and State resources in a long time. Detailed investigations by Tehelka reveal that American evangelical agencies have established in India an enormous, well-coordinated and strategised religious conversion plan. The operation was launched in the early 1990s but really came into its own after George W Bush Jr, an avowed born-again Christian, became President of the United States in 2001. Since then, aggressive evangelists have found pro-active support from the new administration in their efforts to convert some sections of Indian society to Christianity. At the heart of this complex and sophisticated operation is a simple strategy - Convert locals and then give them the know-how and money to plant their own churches and multiply.'

        When Bush and Blair invaded Iraq in 2003 to remove the 'carefully planted weapons of mass destruction' in that small country, I wrote in these columns that it is a savage act of Anglo-American Imperialism. Bush has been behaving like the Nazi Dictator and Tyrant Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) ever since he took over as President in 2000. His attitude towards the non-Christian masses of India, particularly the Hindus in majority, is no different from his attitude towards the Muslims in Iraq. Seeing this Nazi-type attitude in Bush, I am only reminded of another character in American history called Anthony Comstock (1844-1915). Who is Anthony Comstock? In 1873 Comstock created the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an institution dedicated to supervising the morality of the public. Later that year, Comstock successfully influenced the United States Congress to pass the Comstock Law, which made illegal the delivery or transportation of both 'obscene, lewd, or lascivious' material as well as any methods of, or information pertaining to, birth control. George Bernard Shaw coined the term comstockery, meaning 'censorship because of perceived obscenity or immorality,' after Comstock alerted the New York police to the content of Shaw's play Mrs. Warren's Profession. Bernard Shaw, by no means a saffronised, communal, superstitious and obscurantist half-savage Hindu, remarked that 'Comstockery is the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States. Europe likes to hear of such things. It confirms the deep-seated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial place, a second-rate country-town civilization after all.'

        President Bush has become the Anthony Comstock of today through his programme of Massive Evangelization of India (MEOI).

        In this context, I would like to imagine that I am playing the role of another great American called D M Bennett (1818-1882), who was a courageous and controversial historical figure. Few Americans were as courageous - and suffered more - in their search for truth in the cause of 'Free Speech, Free Press, Mails free from espionage and Comstockism.' He was revered and hailed as the 'American Voltaire,' while his Christian adversaries of today's Bush variety called him the 'Devil's Own Advocate.' Inspired by the life and example of Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Bennett founded the Truth Seeker in 1873, devoted to science, morals, and free thought. Bennett promoted birth control, supported women's rights, and opposed dogmatic religion. In less than a decade, he became the country's leading publisher of liberal literature. Mark Twain, Clarence Darrow, and Robert G Ingersoll - 'the Great Agnostic' — were only a few of the illustrious freethinkers who subscribed to the Truth Seeker. Bennett took great pride in debunking the Bible and exposing hypocritical clergymen. He was the first editor in America to routinely report the misdeeds of Ministers, compiling a list of crimes by clergymen that he published as 'Sinful Saints and Sensual Shepherds.' A prolific and provocative writer, Bennett was vilified by religionists for denouncing Christianity, which he called 'the greatest sham in the world.'

        Bennett's publications were censored, prohibited at newsstands, and denied access to the US mail long before the expression 'banned in Boston' was heard. At the same time Bennett began publishing the Truth Seeker against all odds. Free speech came under attack by Anthony Comstock, the US Post Office's 'special agent' and America's self-appointed arbiter of morals. Comstock was the chief vice-hunter of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, an organisation founded by wealthy and powerful purity crusaders including soap tycoon Samuel Colgate. Comstock arrested Bennett for publishing his incendiary 'An Open Letter to Jesus Christ' and entrapped the elderly editor for mailing a free-love pamphlet. Bennett was prosecuted, subjected to a widely publicised trial, and finally imprisoned in the Albany (New York) Penitentiary. Like Emile Zola in France later in the 19th century, Bennett wrote: 'The charge is ostensibly 'obscenity.' But the real offence is that I presume to my utter sentiments and opinions in opposition to the views entertained by the Christian Church.These great traditions of Comstock are not only being maintained but enriched by President Bush using the transient authority of his fleeting office in the White House, not in the United States, but in several other parts of the world like Iraq and India. President Bush's programme of Massive Evangelisation of India (MEOI) reads very much like an Agatha Christy crime story!