Christians, Congress Oppose New Law Protecting Cows In Karnataka State

The Indian state of Karnataka (with a population of 53M) has recently adopted a new law banning the killing of cows (inclusive of all "cattle", including draught animals).

The Karnataka State Assembly is controlled by the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), which had made legislation against "cow slaughter" (as the issue is referred to in India) a campaign promise.

Other states in India with similar bans on cow-slaughter include Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhattisgarh. As far back as 1982, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had urged (in writing) all state governments in India to impose a total ban on the slaughter of cattle.

Over 45 years ago, Karnataka state had already adopted The Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Cattle Preservation Act of 1964. The new measure, which was approved on March 19th of this year, was enacted in order to update the older legislation, including increasing the penalties "to ensure an effective enforcement," according to Karnataka State Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa.

Strangely, Christians and Muslims (who together make up approximately 15% of the state's population) in Karnataka are claiming that the ban on slaughtering innocent animals is a violation of their religious freedom.

The Congress Party in Karnataka also strongly opposed the new law, despite the fact that even before Independence, the Congress Party had campaigned against cow-slaughter. At least 18 states under Congress rule have banned cow-slaughter, according to Congress leader Digvijay Singh of Madhya Pradesh (a state which banned cow-slaughter in 1959), in an interview published in OutlookIndia in 2003. In the same interview, Singh pointed out that his party had criticized the BJP when they were the ruling party in India for not doing enough to prevent cow-slaughter on a national scale!

Of Prepositions, Truth, and Shirley Chaplin's Crucifix

According to the UK Timesonline (on April 7th) Shirley Chaplin was offfered "a series of compromises" when she was told she could no longer wear her crucifix necklace while at work (she is a nurse at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital). "Managers suggested that she pin it to her uniform or wear it on her identity lanyard."

The Timesonline would have us believe that Ms. Chaplin is some kind of intractable troublemaker who refused to listen to reason and accept the reasonable "compromises" that were generously offered to her, and that she is just making an issue out of something that could have been easily resolved if she were being rational.

However, on March 30th the Daily Mail had reported that it was the other way around: Ms. Chaplin offered to pin the crucifix to her uniform, and her superiors refused this suggestion! On April 4th the Daily Mail repeated and elaborated on this version of the story. In both cases the Daily Mail provided direct quotes from Chaplin.

An anonymous blog entry at the British Humanist Society website, from April 7th, states that "Ms Chaplin refused the choice of wearing the crucifix in another way, such as pinning it to her uniform."

So what is the truth of the matter?

Well, according to The Guardian (on April 6th), BBC.com (on April 7th), and also the April 12th HR Magazine (a trade journal for "Human Relations" professionals) Chaplin's bosses actually suggested that she pin the crucifix inside her uniform!

Bottom line: when trying to sort out the truth in conflicting media reports, look for (1) consistency in how a story is reported over several days, (2) specificity, direct quotes, named sources, (3) verification from independent media sources.

Also, think about what your own default positions are. For example: do you by default tend to believe the boss or the worker being disciplined? Also: do you by default defend freedom of religion even when it's a religion you don't like?

Arundhati Roy's "Comrades" Massacre 76 in Red Corridor

According to an article in today's India Express:

Virtually an entire company of the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) was wiped out when 75 of its personnel including Deputy Commandant Satyawan Singh Yadav and Assistant Commandant B L Meena along with the head constable of the Chattisgarh police were killed.

The attack was the deadliest yet to be carried out by the Maoist terrorists that operate throughout a large swath of India known as the Red Corridor. These terrorists, also known as "Naxalites", openly proclaim their admiration for Joseph Stalin and Chairman Mao, and refuse to engage in any kind of peaceful political action. They prefer, instead, to "annihiliate" anyone who they see as an enemy, whether these are members of the police or rival leftists.

The article currently on the front page of The Hindu has a fairly detailed account of what happened:

The attack took place in the Mukrana forest, about 540 km southeast of the State capital Raipur. Seven injured personnel were evacuated by helicopter to the Maharani Hospital in Jagdalpur.

“A joint operation involving one company of the CRPF's 62nd Battalion and troops from the Chhattisgarh police were ambushed,” confirmed Inspector-General R.K. Vij. “The force was returning to base camp after a three-day area domination exercise.” Apart from the 73 foot soldiers and policemen, Deputy Commandant of the 62nd Battalion Satyavan, Assistant Commandant B.L. Meena and head constable R. Siyaram Dhruv of the Chhattisgarh Police were killed.

The following account has been pieced together from press statements issued by the Chhattisgarh police and interviews with sources in the security forces and intelligence sources in Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Delhi. A comprehensive account will be possible only after interviews with the survivors.

The ambush occurred at about 5.30 a.m. when one company of the 62nd Battalion, and between 30 and 40 men from the Chhattisgarh police, were returning from the area domination exercise. While the troops were going on foot, the APC was proceeding along a dirt track.

Four kilometres short of the CRPF camp at Chintalnar, a massive Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was detonated under the armoured vehicle, killing the lone driver, even as the troops came under heavy suppressive fire from a raised hillock bordering the path.

Troops rushed to take cover behind trees, only to find that the Maoists had booby-trapped the trees with anti-personnel IEDs. Soldiers who stayed in the open were gunned down by Maoists who used automatic weapons. In all, 75 members of the security forces were killed and seven injured. All their weapons were taken away by the Maoists.

In the second phase of the incident, reinforcements were rushed from the CRPF camp at Chintalnar, Dornapal and Chintagufa to rescue the survivors. According to a press note circulated by the Superintendent of Police, a vehicle brought to ferry the injured and the dead was also blown up with an IED, killing the driver and pushing the toll up to 76.

what the little french guy said

But if you want me to be really honest, when we see the U.S. debate on the healthcare reform from Europe, it's difficult to believe . . . .

The idea that we have such a violent debate so that the poor are not left on the streets without a cent when they are sick ... Excuse me, but we've solved this problem more than 50 years ago . . . .

If you come to France and you feel sick on the street we won't ask for your credit card before admitting you into a hospital . . . .

Welcome to the club of states who do not turn their backs on the sick and the poor.

Always look on the bright side of life!

One year of "e g r e g o r e s" (My Top 25)

I decided to put together a Top Ten Twenty 25 list from my first year of blogging.

In no particular order:

1. The Religion of Socrates
"Socrates was a Pagan, of this there can be no reasonable doubt."

2. Wonderful World, or, the Pagan Value of Basic Goodness
"We each possess our very own personal laboratory in which to investigate the questions (1) what is the fundamental essence of human nature? and (2) what is the fundamental nature of the cosmos? For me this laboratory is me, for you this laboratory is you."

3. Hic Sunt Dracones
"Having traced Pagan history back to late antiquity, and having shown that the Paganism of that time was itself a seamless continuation of the Paganism that preceded it, there can be no doubt that the Paganism of today is, indeed, the Old Religion."

4. The Essence of Religion
"While the Mosaic distinction posits its own subjective division between true and false religions, it thereby automatically creates an objective division according to which there are two kinds of religion: (1) those religions that make the Mosaic distinction, and (2) those that don't."

5. Secret knowledge, sacred knowledge
"'It is the doing, not the knowing, of secrets which is the key.'"

6. A Form of Ministry: Push Polling for Jesus
"Have you ever wondered what, if anything at all, Amway has to do with the Order of Charlemagne?"

7. Paganism is not a European Religion
"An 'expansive comparative perspective' is, unfortunately, exactly the opposite of the perspective with which many Pagans today, especially those who consider themselves "reconstructionists" and/or fans of Ronald Hutton, look at our Pagan past."

8. Gotta Serve Somebody
"Like a character in some Daniel Defoe novel, Ficino is able to save his soul and his neck through timely repentance and conversion. In this way Corsi can openly state the truth in part, and broadly imply the rest, all the while preserving Ficino's Christian reputation without denying his Paganism."

9. Detached from the masses and usually disempowered
"The examples of Boyle and Newton leave no doubt, regardless of any other considerations, that Esoteric subjects were treated seriously by some of the greatest intellects of the early modern period."

10. Pythagoreanism: the personal is cosmological
"Pythagoreanism, then, is a way of life, and both Plato and Aristotle refer to Pythagoras as a "founder of a way of life". In this way of life there is no separation between ethics and cosmology, just as there is no separation between the nature of the human soul and the nature of the Cosmos and the Gods. The ethical principles that human beings should strive to implement in our lives reflect the moral order that can be observed at work in the cosmos. And in the same way, the human soul internally mirrors the external order of the cosmos and, therefore, the fate of the soul is bound up with our progress in aligning our lives with the cosmic order.

11. Worshipping the Source: The Buddhist Goddess Prajnaparamita
"'Even Buddhas and bodhisattvas pay homage to her, because to her they owe their omniscience. To worship a Buddha, the relics of a Buddha, or a stupa is to honor what she has brought into being; to revere her directly is to worship the source.'"

12. J.B. Bury on Christianity and Persecution
"'Persecution was an unavoidable consequence of Constantine's act in adopting Christianity.'"

13. All Along The Watchtower
"If the Joker is Dionysos, then the Thief can only be Hermes, the God of Thieves. Hermes, very appropriately is also the God of Boundaries - and while this means he is associated with city walls and borders of every kind, it also means that he is the master of all boundaries and is, therefore, very much the God of crossing boundaries."

14. Intolerance and Coercion in Islam
"'Then when the sacred months have passed, slay the polytheists wherever you find them, and catch them and make them captive, and wait in ambush for them at every place.'"

15. God. Purpose. Culture. Side Hugs.
"Be. Very. Afraid."

16. Hindus and Pagans: A Return to the Time of the Gods
"'If the Renaissance had taken its full course, it would also have become aware of its Eastern, its Hindu, links, but it was soon aborted. In fact, an opposite movement started, an anti-renaissance movement, in the shape of Protestantism, a movement of 'back to the Bible,' 'back to the Apostles.''"

17. Brad Warner versus the Dalai Lama?
"'In the framing itself, the question is already skewed. It’s not so obvious to a person who’s totally immersed in Western civilization and has almost no understanding of anything outside of Western civilization. Frankly, so much of this antireligious rhetoric from the likes of Richard Dawkins is just wildly unconsciously and uncritically ethnocentric.'"

18. "End", as in Telos (You are the Harbinger of Death, Kara Thrace)
"Depending on how one reads the original character Turnus, though, there is a serious problem with the Turnus=Tory equation, and this is especially true to the extent that we accept Maffeo Vegio's version of the ending. However, for those who see Turnus as a pure villain, then this is a pretty good match."

19. Socrates: Still making people crazy after all these years
"Socrates was mercilessly and masterfully ridiculed in Aristophanes' The Clouds, which was entered into the comedy competition of the City Dionysia in the year 423 BC, when Socrates was 45 years old. One story holds that Socrates was in attendance during the performance, and at one point stood up and cheerfully took a bow while the play was in progress."

20. Why They Hate Francis Collins
"'Isn't he disqualified, not by whether or not he leaves his beliefs outside the laboratory and the committee room, but by the very fact that he is capable of holding such beliefs at all?'"

21. Immanence versus Transcendence (three part series)
"'The Immutable is the still and secret foundation of the play and the movement, extended equally, impartially in all things, samam brahma, lending its support to all without choice or active participation. Secure and free in His eternal immutability the Lord projects Himself into the play and the movement, becoming there in His self-existence all that the Seer in Him visualises and the Thinker in Him conceives.'"

22. A Brief History of Revolutionary Monotheism (seven part series)
"'Such awful things to happen! To account for them, awful passions must be imputed. If these were in the service of some cause, then the cause itself must be considered, in itself bloody.'"

23. Heart of Darkness: Christianity, Colonialism & Africa (five part series)
"The vast majority of Christians in Africa today are Christians because of only one reason: European colonialism."

24. Nazis & Christians & Pagans (six part series)
"'in an unscrupulous manner the fantasy was concocted that I wished to reintroduce the pagan cult of Wotan.' [Alfred Rosenberg]"

25. The Varieties of Sceptical Thought (five part series)
"'We are not the type of philosophers who think that nothing is true.'"

Of Hutarees and Naxalites

Imagine if instead of a couple of run-down trailers, the Hutarees had managed to control a large swath of the United States including significant parts of Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Kenucky, and West Virginia?

Imagine if they were able to impose their own totalitarian government, forcing people to accept their ideology and even to join their militia, all the while collecting "taxes", and murdering at will anyone who stood in their way? Sadly, this is what it is like in India, where the "Naxalites", a group no less violent in its intentions and no less regressive in its ideology than the Hutarees, has imposed a reign of terror for 20 years throughout the mid-section of India, which is often now referred to as the Red Corridor.

Today there is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth about right-wing political violence in America. And not without good reason. The "Militia" movement, which had lain dormant (and/or gone pro, taking jobs with Blackwater, etc, in Iraq, etc) during the Bush years, began dusting off old copies of The Turner Diaries as soon as word started getting around that a Black guy might become president. The Hutarees are merely the most recent and most telegenic examples of this phenomenon.

But at the same time that American liberals are, if you will pardon the expression, up in arms over such things as death threats and racial epithets directed at Democratic Congresspersons, and even more so over the Hutarees and other "Patriotic" terrorist wannabes, where is the outrage over Arundhati Roy and her love-affair with the Naxalites?

Roy has just completed a self-promotion tour of the US, during which she talked very openly about her sympathy for the Naxalites, India's Pol-Pots-in-waiting. She defended their preference for murdering their political opponents rather than standing in elections by constantly insisting that India doesn't "really" have democracy, therefore the self-appointed champions of the "oppressed" are justified in picking up the gun and shooting anyone who won't comply with their demands.

But Roy's terrorist apologetics are cut from precisely the same cloth as the proclamations of America's own right-wing gun-thugs. The Hutarees and Minutemen and Oathkeepers, ad nauseum, all claim to be fighting against oppression and for liberty. In fact, in terms of ideology (at least on paper), much of the American far-right is arguably less noxious than the Stalin and Mao loving Naxalites!

Rejecting political violence should be a matter of principle, not political expedience. If the Hutarees were Maoists instead of Christians, would that make any difference to anyone? Well, it probably would have led to them being shut down a long time ago, rather than getting as close as they did to their planned rampage of murder of mayhem.

The Catholic Church & the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (Continued)

In 2005, Tom Ndahiro (a Rwandan journalist and genocide scholar, and a former member of the Rwandan Human Rights Commission), wrote the following (these are excerpts, go to the link to read the whole thing):

http://www.newsfromafrica.org/articles/art_10231.html

Generally, in Rwanda, the leadership of the Christian churches, especially that of the Catholic Church, played a central role in the creation and furtherance of racist ideology. They fostered a system which Europeans introduced and they encouraged. The building blocks of this ideology were numerous, but one can mention a few – first, the racist vision of Rwandan society that the missionaries and colonialists imposed by developing the thesis about which groups came first and last to populate the country (the Hamitic and Bantu myths); second, by rigidly controlling historical and anthropological research; third, by reconfiguring Rwandan society through the manipulation of ethnic identities (from their vague socio-political nature in the pre-colonial period, these identities gradually became racial) . . . .

Church authorities contributed to the spread of racist theories mainly through the schools and seminaries over which they exercised control. The elite who ruled the country after independence trained in these schools. According to Church historian Paul Rutayisire, the stereotypes used by the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government to dehumanise Tutsis, were also spread by some influential clergymen, bishops and priests, before and after the genocide. The Catholic Church and colonial powers worked together in organizing racist political groups like the Party for the Emancipation of the Hutu (Parmehutu) . . . .

The call for remorse and repentance still seems unnecessary and problematical for the Catholic Church. In March 1996, Pope John Paul II told the Rwandan people, “The Church... cannot be held responsible for the guilt of its members that have acted against the evangelic law; they will be called to render account of their own actions. All Church members that have sinned during the genocide must have the courage to assume the consequences of their deeds they have done against God and fellow men.”

Belgian authorities had required all of their Rwandan colonial subjects to carry ID cards identifying the ethnic group of the holder. The large majority of Rwandans were categorized as Hutus. At first, both the Belgian government and the Catholic Church, which operated as a seamless extension of the colonial apparatus, groomed the Tutsi minority in the hopes that these could be turned into a local ruling elite obedient to their European masters.

The Tutsis were favored on the basis of the Hamitic hypothesis, according to which some Africans were less unequal than others, by virtue of their supposedly closer racial affinity to White Aryans. These racially fortunate Africans were dubbed Hamites, and the Tutsis were considered a prime example of the veracity (and utility) of the Hamitic hypothesis.

During the first half of the 20th century, this kind of scientific racism was part of mainstream European intellectual culture. The Hamitic hypothesis in particular became an important doctrine in the academic field of missiology (which is to missionary work as military science is to warfare).

But the Tutsis proved to be insufficiently grateful and obedient to their Christian Aryan betters. And then there was also the embarrassing problem that after WWII, scientific racism not only had lost any credibility, it was now considered morally bankrupt at best, and a great evil at worst. In fact, horror of horrors, even European colonialism itself was going out of style!

And so the Belgians and the Church embraced decolonization and democracy. But now the Europeans promulgated a racially infected view of independence and democracy: cynically pitting the Hutu "people" against the Tutsi "oppressors." In such an atmosphere, Rwanda gained formal independence during a "social revolution" which saw the first large scale massacres of Tutsis by Hutus.

More details and extensive documentation concerning the role of the Church in the Rwandan Genocide can be found in great quantity in the following:
Doing the Lord's Work in Rwanda
Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience
Preparing the Way for Genocide in Rwanda

Hey, Ratzinger: What About Rwanda?

Martin Kimani, writing in today's UK Guardian, states that the Vatican's "moral place" is "now even lower than that of the government of France for its enduring friendship with genocidaires."

The horror of Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which between 500,000 and 1 million people (10-20% of Rwanda's population) were exterminated in the span of just 100 days, is such that one is tempted to attribute it to a sudden, inexplicable outbreak of psychosis. But as Kimani outlines in his Guardian article, the genocide was well prepared ahead of time, and the ideological and psychological preparation not only stretched out over many decades, but it had the direct participation and support of the Catholic Church in Rwanda. And the killings were carried out methodically under the direction of rational human beings in complete command of their senses.

Kimani's point being, to state the obvious, that an apology is in order for Rwanda as well:

The losses of Rwanda had received no such consideration. Some of the nuns and priests who have been convicted by Belgian courts and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, respectively, enjoyed refuge in Catholic churches in Europe while on the run from prosecutors. One such is Father Athanase Seromba, who led the Nyange parish massacre and was sentenced to 15 years in jail by the tribunal. In April 1994, Seromba helped lure over 2,000 desperate men, women and children to his church, where they expected safety. But their shepherd turned out to be their hunter.

One evening Seromba entered the church and carried away the chalices of communion and other clerical vestments. When a refugee begged that they be left the Eucharist to enable them to at least hold a (final) mass, the priest refused and told them that the building was no longer a church. A witness at the ICTR trial remembered an exchange in which the priest's mindset was revealed.

One of the refugees asked: "Father, can't you pray for us?" Seromba replied: "Is the God of the Tutsis still alive?" Later, he would order a bulldozer to push down the church walls on those inside and then urge militias to invade the building and finish off the survivors.

At his trial, Seromba said: "A priest I am and a priest I will remain." This, apparently, is the truth, since the Vatican has never taken back its statements defending him before his conviction.

Oscar Kimanuka, a writer based in Kigali, had earlier written a similar criticism of the Church back in April, 2008: Pope should apologize to Rwanda.

Kimanuka's call for an apology was very thoughtfully taken up and further discussed in an article by Henry Makori, at the time editor of the Nairobi based Catholic Information Service of Africa (click here to see what is up to now).

See also the series "Heart of Darkness":
Part One: "By This Sign We Prosper"
Part Two: Christian Demographics Fun Facts
Part Three: Doing the Lord's Work In Rwanda
Part Four: Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from Rwanda
Part Five: Preparing the Way for Genocide in Rwanda