Lesson 6 - India's Christian Ummah

1. India’s
Christian Umma

2. Pradip Ninan Thomas
Indian Christian scholar
‘…The advent of Christian broadcasting
in India, transnational as well as local
channels, offers the space for
identification with a “Christian Umma” far
beyond the boundaries of the
territorialized nationstate….’

4. 6.1. US-based Expansion of
Indian Christianity

5. US-based Expansion of Indian
Christianity
 A base for Western domination is being effectively constructed within India through
evangelical organizations.
 The goal is to spread a fundamentalist kind of Christianity and create a population of
believers with strong emotional bonding and dependence on the West.
 The founding fathers of India’s constitution created laws to protect the faith of
indigenous communities against evangelical onslaught.
 But evangelical forces within and outside India coordinate their efforts to try to remove
the laws prohibiting abusive proselytization in sensitive border-states like Arunachal
Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh, and elsewhere in India.

6. How Evangelists
view and depict India ?

7. Vishal Mangalwadi
On Hinduism
 He claims that colonialism under the British was very good for
India.
 India’s suffering has been caused by its heathenism.
 Lost in ‘esoteric philosophic and religious mysteries’.
 Hinduism = Hindutva = Cultural fascism’.
 Indian democracy has failed, he charges, and the reason is
that it did not use the Bible as its moral compass.

8. Vishal Mangalwadi
On Bible

9. Vishal Mangalwadi
On Hindu Gurus
 Hinduism is a delusion.
 Various gurus –are deluded – drugs or mistaken
map of reality.
 The foundational problem with Hinduism is
moral, which only the Bible can solve, he
insists.
 It is not solvable by philosophy or yogic effort.

10. Vishal Mangalwadi
On Communal Violence
‘…Pro-Christian Maoists in Orissa have
already warned a number of specific
Hindu leaders responsible for anti-
Christian violence, that they are next on their
hit list. A few hundred ‘Christian- Maoist’
guerillas will change the power- equation
in Orissa….’

11. Ravi Zacharias
 Hinduism - an amalgamation of religious beliefs
of ‘dark-skinned Dravidians in the South, India’s
original in habitants’ and ‘the lighter skinned
Aryans with their own mixture of paganism’,
 He promotes Dravidian Christianity by slipping St
Thomas in the lineage of south Indian savants
from Adi Shankara to Dr Radhakrishnan.
 Blames Eastern religions for all social problems
that the developing nations face.

12. 6.1.1. Institution Building in
India for Transnational
Control
and Intervention

14.  Financing and Building Institutions
 Transnational evangelical organizations have invested an enormous amount of financial
capital to create huge infrastructure networks across India. Government assistance from the
West, such as USAID funding, is also being channeled through these evangelical institutions.
 Media
 Christian journalists have systematically infiltrated India’s secular media, from where they are
deployed by transnational Christian media networks (like Gegrapha and Boslife) to provide
atrocity literature on India to the world.
 Intelligence
 Elaborate anthropological studies of Indian communities are being conducted by large-scale
projects, like Project Joshua based in Denver. They profile individual Indian communities for
evangelical marketing and share the data with Western intelligence agencies.

16. World Vision
A description by a Western scholar :
‘…World Vision has, on a number of
occasions, functioned as an intelligence-
gathering arm of the US government. In
the 1970s World Vision was charged
with having collected field data for the
CIA in Vietnam….’

17. World Vision : Vision
Indian Website
 Projects a humanitarian image,
describing itself as ‘a Christian
humanitarian organization working
to create lasting change in the
lives of children, families and
communities living in poverty and
injustice’
US Website
 All applicants for staff positions with
World Vision United States will be
screened for Christian commitment.
The screening process will include:
Discussion with the applicant of his/her
spiritual journey and relationship with
Jesus Christ; Understanding of
Christian principles; Understanding
and acceptance of World Vision’s
Statement of Faith and/or The
Apostles Creed.

18. Traditional vs. Evangelical forces in
South American countries
‘…State officials complained that World Vision outbid their programs,
conditioned community aid on a monopoly of presence, and even induced
villagers to destroy competing projects. . . . Funds were generally given to
Indian evangelical congregations or emerging Protestant political
associations to distribute. In several cases World Vision employees held
simultaneous posts in municipal administration. This led to conflicts between
traditional and evangelical sectors of Indian communities, including
destruction of project property and even violence along with widespread
maladministration of funds…’
Report from a study on development strategies

19. In Sri Lanka, the activities of
World Vision raised a strong alarm
‘…World Vision is one such organization. Based on the evidence led
at the Presidential Commission of inquiry on Non Governmental
Organizations, it was proved beyond reasonable doubt that World
Vision was an American funded manipulative Christian evangelical
organization, which was surreptitiously trying to convert Sinhalese
Buddhists to Christianity through a program of work that was identified
as ‘The Mustard Seed Project….,
Lt Col A.S. Amarasekera of Sri Lanka

20. World Vision in India
Keeping proselytization in disguise
‘…World Vision India is active in Bhil tribal areas and openly admits its
evangelical intentions: ‘The Bhil people worship ancestral spirits but
also celebrate all the Hindu festivals. Their superstitions about evil
spirits make them suspicious of change, which hinders community
development. ADP staff live among the Bhil people they work with,
gaining the villagers’ trust and showing their Christian love for the
people by their actions and commitment….’
The Tehelka Report

21. Despite all these disturbing
facts about World Vision…..

22. J.P. Rajkhowa
a former chief secretary ( Gov. of Assam )
‘…The rural development department of the sensitive border-state of
Assam has not only recognized WV-India as a leading development
agency in the State and recommended that WV be the prime choice
for receiving bilateral funds, but also the government has sought WV’s
assistance in creating a US $80 million proposal for development
works in the state….’
He finds this “most disturbing”

23. Gospel for Asia (GFA) is a well-funded Texas-based Christian
missionary organization with a vast infrastructural network in India.

24. Gospel for Asia (GFA)
 It serves as a case study of an evangelical organization being used
as an effective tool in the hands of transnational forces seeking
India’s subservience.
 It was founded by K.P. Yohannan, a man who got his training as a
teenager while working for the fundamentalist Christian group,
Operation Mobilization.

25. K.P. Yohannan
battle against pagans and demons
‘…Our battle is not against . . .
symptoms of sins such as poverty and
disease. It is directed against Lucifer
and innumerable demons which fight
day and night in order to drag the
human souls into an eternity without
Christ….’

26. Spiritual Tradition of India =
Lucifer and innumerable demons
‘. . . viewing the effects of pagan
religions on India, I realised that the
masses of India are starving because
they are slaves to sin. The battle
against hunger and poverty is really a
spiritual battle, not a physical or social
one as secularists would have us
believe. The only weapon that will ever
effectively win the war against disease,
hunger, injustice and poverty in Asia is
the Gospel of Jesus Christ….’

27. Goals : Gospel for Asia (GFA)
 GFA has declared that its ‘focus and goal as a ministry is to reach
the 2.7 billion people in the 10/40 window who have never heard
about the love of God.
 In India alone, there are over five hundred thousand villages with
no Gospel witness’.
 Turning a blind eye to the radical anti-secular stance, Western aid
organizations promote such proselytizing groups to carry out
development assistance to third-world countries.

28. Gospel for Asia (GFA) :
Unscientific Approach
 For example, it is proud that one of its workers who ministers children
suffering from high fever only prays, but does not ‘call a doctor or get
them medicine or bring them chicken soup’.
 It saw the 2004 tsunami in India as ‘one of the greatest opportunities’.
 In Tamil Nadu coastal villages, its activities sparked protests. For
example, in the village of Akkaraipettai, GFA set up an unauthorized
orphanage, taking more than a hundred traumatized children, mainly
Hindus, and making them recite Christian prayers six times a day

29. 6.1.2. Christian Media

31. Assist News Service
In 2006 it had succeeded in
making India’s prime minister start
an investigation under
international pressure:
‘Our letter writing campaign is
working’, it wrote, quoting the head of
one American evangelical group. ‘We
must continue to write and fax letters
of protest this week’.

32. Mission Network News
 When Manmohan Singh was appointed the
prime minister of India in 2004, Mission
Network News (MNN), an evangelical news
broadcasting service, reported that this would
be good for evangelism.
 And that a group called ‘Bibles For The World’,
was planning to start three thousand Christian
schools ‘around New Delhi’ as ‘one way of
reaching out to the community’.

33. Mission Network News
 When Christians face hostilities from
Indian Muslims, it is carefully downplayed
in order to mask the Islam/Christianity
tension and to make it look as if all
problems arise from Hindu antagonism
against Christianity.
 Ex : Kashmiri Muslims attacked the
Western missionary who was the principle
of Burn all School and St Joseph’s school
in Srinagar, and founder of Good Shepherd
Mission School in Kashmir.

34. The Voice of the Martyrs
 Whose mission is ‘dedicated solely to
serving persecuted Christians worldwide’.
 It is dedicated to rallying Western
Christians, human rights groups and
governments to the cause of Christians.
 It makes no mention of the way some
evangelicals provoke encounters in the old
Roman tradition of seeking martyrdom by
initiating the hostilities.

35. Christian Broadcasting Network
 Pat Roberston’s Christian Broadcasting
Network entered Indian media with a
mission to ‘reach out to every Indian
home’.
 ‘…Hinduism and many of the occult
activities that come out of the Orient
are inspired by demons and demon
worship. . . . There’s this concept that
all religions are the same and all are
good. That is not true. The worship of
the Devil is not good….’

36. BosNewsLife
 Providing atrocity literature to the
Oxford Centre for Religion and Public
Life.
 It uses mostly Islamist sources to claim
that Hindu terrorism is growing with
tactical support from the government.
 It equates this with Islamic terrorism
and declares it as even more
dangerous.

37. Gegrapha
 Gegrapha is a transnational para-church organization
founded by David Aikman, a Christian fundamentalist.
 In 1999, just before the general election, the Gegrapha
reported about India:
‘….The burning of a missionary, the rape of nuns, the destruction
of churches, the assault on a priest, are ominous signals to
Christians of all denominations. . . . How many perpetrators
against the Christian community in India have been brought to
book? Commissions of inquiry are appointed but very little comes
out of them. Action? Seldom! A true picture or a distorted,
engineered report?...’

38. 6.1.3. Intelligence-gathering
Operations

39. By far the most ambitious and far-reaching Christian project in the
world to gather propaganda material and marketing data
is the Joshua Project, based in Denver, USA.

40. Joshua Project:
grew out of a
coordinated effort called AD2000
Telhelka reports:
‘…When AD2000 was conceived for India, the plan was based on a
military model with the intent to invade, occupy, control, or subjugate
its population. It was based on solid intelligence emanating from the
ground and well-researched information on various facets of selected
people groups. The idea was to send out spying missions to source
micro details on religion and culture. The social and economic
divisions in the various Indian communities were closely examined…’

41. Joshua Project : Mission
 Its mission is to ‘identify and highlight the people groups of the world
that have the least exposure to the Gospel and the least Christian
presence in their midst’.
 Maintaining a vast database of information, the project ‘shares this
information to encourage pioneer church planting movements among
every ethnic people group’.
 ‘We need a church within cycling distance, then within walking
distance and finally within hearing distance.’

42. Joshua Project : Information gathering
 The report by Tehelka shows how global evangelism takes
advantage of Indian data, such as the People of India Project done
by the Anthropological Society of India.
 The project collected data throughout India by employing five
hundred scholars over twenty-six thousand field days.

43. Luis Bush, Director of Global
Consultation on World Evangelization.
‘…Never before has this kind of
information on India been so carefully
surveyed, prepared, well published and
distributed. . . . We do not believe it is
accidental. God is allowing us to ‘spy out
the land’ that we might go in and claim
both it and its inhabitants for Him…’

44. What kind of data is generated ?
 There are approximately
16,300 ethnic groups
worldwide, as identified in the
Joshua Project database, of
which 6,700 are labeled as
unreached/least-reached, i.e.
they are non-Christians.
 Of these ‘unreached’ groups
the highest number live in
India, making India the largest
target market.
 Fig 18.4 shows the statistics.

46. 10/40 Window – Joshua Project

47. 10/40 Window – Joshua Project
 ‘10/40 window’, referring to the window between latitudes 10 and 40
degrees north of the equator.
 The biggest market for the business of soul harvesting.
 Within the 10/40 window, India is the only major non-Christian
country which permits evangelism.
 Joshua Project describes the regions within this window as ‘the
strongholds of Satan’.

48. Joshua Project - Market Segment
 The strategy is clothed in the marketing language of corporate
multinationals.
 It explicitly draws a parallel between Coca Cola’s strategy and
evangelism, by profiling different segments based on the market
penetration of Christianity.
 Each market segment is given its own strategic approach, funding,
operational management and status reporting.

49. Fig 18.5 is a sample from such a marketing plan,
consisting of hundreds of pages of such details.

50. Careful examination shows how the data
correlates with the ground political reality.
 For example, it shows that the Arunthathiar Dalit community has not
responded favorably to evangelism. In a strange coincidence,
Tirumavalavan, the Dalit leader with enormous evangelical support,
threatened to get them removed from the Scheduled Castes list,
which would result in losing all their affirmative action rights under
Indian laws.
 Tamil Nadu’s Christian leadership has thus hijacked the Dalit
emancipation movement to such an extent that the Dalit groups
which resist evangelism are made to suffer discrimination even
from other Dalits.

51. The Tehelka report notes
how all this impacts India:
‘…Unfortunately, the Bible thumpers are winning and they are being
underwritten by the American tax payers. What they are probably not
aware [of] is that missionaries in India’s back of the beyond villages,
like Kerala, have been pulled into Bush’s missionary zeal. Sadly, while
Pastor Prabhat Nayak is deeply committed to bring the villagers of
Kerala to Christ, he is unaware that Christian evangelical theology and
money doled out by the White House threatens to rip apart the social
fabric of India…’

52. 6.2. Recurring Evangelical
Provocations

53. 1. One prominent evangelical website has the
following to say about Varanasi.
‘…Varanasi is Hinduism’s holiest city, with thousands of temples
centering on the worship of Shiva, an idol whose symbol is the
phallus. Many consider this city the very seat of Satan. Hindus believe
that bathing in the Ganges at Varanasi washes away all sins. A
number of Christian workers took up the burden of prayer for this city
and in prayer-walks boldly declared before the idols, ‘You are not a
living god…’

54. 2. The Traitor by
Chic publications (USA)
 Demonize Hindu gods and goddesses as bloodthirsty
creatures demanding human sacrifices, but powerless before
Jesus.
 Indians are shown as being held in bondage by evil
priests in collusion with demonic forces, and with
government officials covering up human sacrifices.

55. 3. The translation of Namghosa
In Assam, a church had to apologize and discard an entire set of
publications of hymns after the local people opposed the distortions in
the translation of Namghosa, the most sacred book of the
Vaishnavites in Assam. The translations had replaced the names of
Rama and Krishna in the original hymns with that of Jesus.

56. 4. To destroy those who
venerate green trees
In 2008, the Bible translation in Kurukh (Oraon), an indigenous tribal
language, created a major controversy. The tribal community took
strong objections to the translation of the Bible’s Deuteronomy 12:2.
The phrase ‘sarna mann’, meaning green trees, was distorted into a
command of the Christian deity to destroy those who venerate green
trees. The protesters accused the church of a conspiracy to destroy
their religion. The controversy raged for nearly two months in
Jharkhand state before the church apologized and withdrew the
translations.

57. 6.3. Effects on the Ground
The violence unleashed against
the native belief systems and cultures.

58. 1. Kanyakumari renamed ‘Kanni Mary’
 1982 marked the beginning of a series of riots between Hindus and
Christians in the Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, which resulted in
numerous deaths and considerable loss of property.
 The commission examined that ‘…the root cause of the tension and
clashes was the aggressive conversion of Hindus to Christianity and the
propaganda methods that were adopted for this purpose…’
 The judge also noted that the Christians demanded that Kanyakumari
should be renamed as ‘Kanni Mary’ (Virgin Mary),

59. 2. Decapitated Krishna:
Christian Hate Propaganda
 A local evangelical arts center called Jesus
Arts sent it in greeting cards to several
village priests of Hindu temples, with the
words ‘Jesus is the head of Purushothama’.
 In other words, Krishna has no head
because Jesus is his head: This is a crude
grassroots propaganda of the fulfillment
theology, often expressed in sophisticated
terms by Christian scholars.

60. 3. Arousing Violence on the Ground
The covers (see Fig 18.7) of a
propaganda booklet released in
the state capital of Tamil Nadu in
2008, illustrate that Dravidian
separatism is not an academic
speculation but a call for an
insurgency to break up India.

61. 4. Arousing Violence on the Ground
 The book released in a public
function in Tamil Nadu asked
people to take weapons and
destroy India in order to carve
out a sovereign Tamil Nadu.
Such ground-level mobilization
is not a freak phenomenon but
is carefully orchestrated by
transnational networks.

62. How all this impacts India:
‘…Unfortunately, the Bible thumpers are winning and they are being
underwritten by the American tax payers. What they are probably not
aware [of] is that missionaries in India’s back of the beyond villages,
like Kerala, have been pulled into Bush’s missionary zeal. Sadly, while
Pastor Prabhat Nayak is deeply committed to bring the villagers of
Kerala to Christ, he is unaware that Christian evangelical theology and
money doled out by the White House threatens to rip apart the social
fabric of India…’
The Tehelka report