The British East India Company set its mission of controlling India first by supplying arms and ammunitions to the little small caste ridden hindu kingdoms to fight the Mughals, Portuguese, French and Dutch. After relegating the Mughals, Portuguese, French & Dutch to a few places the British slowly gobbled up each kingdom, eventually bringing the sum total of all these kingdoms under British rule.
By the mid 1800’s the British were fully in control of the Indian subcontinent and were either directly administering through the means of the Indian civil service ( presently known as IAS ) , or were letting the local Maharajahs administer their own Kingdoms as long as the Maharajahs were paying the British the desired licence fee and were prepared to follow the terms and conditions set out by the British. Eventually when the British left in 1947 they handed over a United India to the Indian National Congress party. Everything was fine and secular in India between 1947 to 1960. The problem started in 1961 when Jawarhal Nehru sent the Indian army to wrestle control of Goa from the Portuguese. This resulted in China also flexing its muscle to capture Aruchanal Pradesh in 1962. The India-China war of 1962 drained Indias economy, foreign exchange and gold reserves. With a weakend Indian economy the Communists in India started dominating trade unions and influencing the lower and middle classes. To counter the growing clout of the communists the Congress party nurtured the upper caste Hindutva forces (RSS, VHP, BAJRANDDAL,etc) and linguistic forces (SHIV SENA,etc). With the help of the Hindutva forces & linguistic forces the Congress Party was able to push the communist to the corner. The Hindutva forces later on set up their own political front BJP for making India into a Hindu rashtra. The Hindutva forces comprising of RSS, VHP, BAJRANG DAL also have set up more than a 100 different smaller hindutva organizations not just in India but also in the western/christian countries. All these smaller hindutva organizations are funded, operated, controlled by the parent organizations i.e. Brahman RSS, Bania VHP and Para-Military Bajrang Dal. The Hindutva forces first targeted the sikhs in the 1980s the sikhs retaliated with bombs the hindutva forces stopped bothering them. In the 1990s the Hindutva forces targeted Muslims the muslims retaliated with bombs the hindutva forces stopped bothering them. 1998 onwards the Hindutva forces started targeting Christians. Since christians are a peace loving community they retaliated with candle light processions, dharnas, prayers but so far all this has not prevented the hindutva forces from thrashing Christians in India. Wherever there are Christians in India the Hindutva forces are formeting trouble and the sad part is the administration is not doing anything. Most of the Christian dominated areas in India including Goa are now being dominated by Hindus due to migration of hindus into these christian areas. It is also interesting to note that is is mainly the Hindus in India who are getting all jobs in the government/public/private sectors. This has resulted in Christians and Muslims demanding reservations. It is also a tragedy that the Christian missionaries in India instead of utilizing 50% of their foreign funds to help the poor christians are instead utilizing all their foreign funds to serve poor non-christians with an intent to convert them. This allurement based conversion activities of christian missionaries has resulted in commual disharmony between Hindus and Christians in India. What is even more sad is the clergy who preach charity and serving the poor are selling away Church properties to builders and sipphoning off the money. What is the future of Christians in India ? Marcus D'souza Bombay.