Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report on Christian Missionary Activities

Description

The Constitution of independent India adopted in January 1950 made things quite smooth for Christian missions. They surged forward with renewed vigour. Nationalist resistance to what had been viewed as an imperialist incubus during the Struggle for Freedom from British rule, broke down when the very leaders who had frowned upon it started speaking in its favour. Voices which still remained 'recalcitrant' were sought to be silencsed by being branded as those of 'Hindu communalism'. Nehruvian Secularism had stolen a march under the smokescreen of Mahatma Gandhi's sarva-dharma-samabhava. The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with applause from the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K.M. Panikkar's Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi's Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie's Missionaries in India published in 1994, and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha on 20 December 1996. Panikkar's study was primarily aimed at providing a survey of Western imperialism in Asia from CE 1498 to 1945. Christian missions came into the picture simply because he found them arrayed always and everywhere alongside Western gunboats, diplomatic pressures, extraterritorial rights and plain gangsterism. Contemporary records consulted by him could not but cut to size the inflated images of Christian heroes such as Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci. They were found to be not much more than minions employed by European kings scheming to carve out empires in the East. Their methods of trying to convert kings and commoners in Asia. Preface The Sunshine of Secularism Rift in the Lute Report of the Christianity Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee 1956 Volume I: Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee, Madhya Pradesh Part I Part II Part III Part IV Appendices Volume II: Part A: Tour Programmes of the Committee Explanatory Tour Notes Including Important Petitions Received by the Committee on Tour Questionnaire Replies to Questionnaire Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee Madhya Pradesh Extracts From Catholic Dharma Ka Pracharak and Other Pamphlets Showing the Methods of Propaganda Volume II: Part B: Short History of Chhattisgarh Evangelical Mission Statement Made Before the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry Committee. Activities of Christian Missions in the Eastern States and Proselytism in the Udaipur State