India That is Bharat

Organiser,2004 Issues > February 8, 04


India That is Bharat

Vendors of salvation in India can now outsource the import of Mass for the masses Who lies? Who's Who?
God in heaven! Even in his wildest communal dream Satiricus would not have imagined that the "outsourcing" abilities of booming secular India would extend to services suitable for salvation. But, as communal truth is stranger than secular fiction, it has happened. News comes that churches in America and Europe are "outsourcing" the Holy Mass to churches in India, that is, the faithful in these countries who may wish to acquire punya through this ritual can place the order for its performance with their American or European church, which will convert the order into an export order, and the order would be duly executed in Kerala by actual performance of the ritual in an Indian church, by Indian priests. How wonderfully convenient, no? Of course both Satiricus and God know that Christianity is a very well organised MNC, still this new facility is fantastic. But why did it need to be provided? The answer as reported by the newspapers: "The main reason is the lack of manpower..." Does that mean there are not enough Christian priests in the Christian West anymore to serve salvation to Christians in the West? Conversely, does it mean secular India is becoming more Christian than the Christian West? If that is so, Satiricus is happy to say that half the battle is won for Indian secularism - the Christian half. For it is obvious that India cannot become more and more Christian (that is, secular) unless and until the Christian West becomes less and less Christian. And that is happily happening. Dr David Frawley writes: "The major problem faced by Christianity today is its collapse in the West, especially in Europe." Dr Koenraad Elst says the same in so many more words. He writes in his book Psychology of Prophetism: "Anyone who cares to look can see that Christianity is in steep decline. This is especially the case in Europe, where church attendance levels in many countries have fallen below 10 per cent, or even 5 per cent... . Even more ominous for the survival of Christianity is the decline in the priestly vocations." Relating the critical state of Christianity in Rome, the home of Christianity, leading British journalist David Yallop wrote in his book In God's Name, published in 1984, that in 1978 Rome had a Catholic population of two and a half-million, but had church attendance of less than 3 per cent! And while, in that period, the Roman church should have been producing 70 new priests per year, it was producing just 6! As a sort of official nail in the coffin, Peter de Rosa, a former Catholic priest, cited a secret Vatican study which "revealed that from 1963 to 1969 over 8,000 priests had asked to be dispensed from their vows, and nearly 3,000 others had left without waiting for permission". The study estimated that over the next 5 years 20,000 would leave - an estimate, says de Rosa, that "proved far too conservative". And what about the US? According to figures collected by David Frawley and Peter de Rosa, around 1970 the number of trained priests in America was 50,000, around 1990 it was down to 12,000, just three years later, in 1993, it was only 3,500, and today it is less than 3,000. Do all these figures mean the Christian Mass has lost its appeal for the Christian masses? Not being either a Western Christian or an Indian secularist, Satiricus does not know. But he knows enough to agree with David Frawley when Frawley writes in Crusade in India that ?many former churches in Europe have now been taken over by non-Christian religious and cultural organisations. The phenomenon is now spreading to America, where church buildings are being put up for sale". Frawley adds: "It is symbolic of this change that the famous Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in London is a former church." Actually, what is symbolic for Frawley is more than symbolic for Satiricus. For Satiricus recalls that during a stay in London a couple of decades ago he had addressed a meeting of workers of a Hindu organisation in a church that had been abandoned by Christians and bought over by Hindus. Now here the problem for Satiricus is, is all this cause for communal joy or for secular sorrow? He knows that the numbers are numbing, but he would not like to call it depressing desertion of Christianity by the West, he would rather look on it as inclusion of Christianity in the easy-import list of globalised India. Satiricus recalls the Pope visting secular India as head of state and still loudly calling for a "harvest of faith" in this non-Christian country. But a harvest takes time to grow. Why wait that long? Why not export Christianity to secular India from the Christian West wholesale? After all, if reformed India can import bidis and animal carcasses, why not import Mass for the masses?

THE essence of civilized behaviour is not, repeat not, to call a spade a spade, but to call it an instrument to dig with. In other words, civilization lies in lies that decorously hide the truth. This being so, did it behove George Fernandes to be so uncivilized as to expose the truth that Sonia Gandhi tells lies? Of course she tells lies. Everybody knows it. But did George have to tell the truth in such a tastelessly truthful manner? Civilized Satiricus thinks not. Had he been in George's place he would have said Sonia seems to indulge in terminological inexactitudes. Does that not sound richly refined and sweetly civilized? Unfortunately, alas, George Fernandes is apparently not as refined as Satiricus. So, while recently talking to press reporters he not only described the Congress president as jhoothie kahin ki, but added that the "woman" is even capable of telling lies on petty issues. One of those "petty" issues is Sonia's admirable academic achievements as a "vilayat-returned". The Parliament's Who's Who claims that Sonia obtained a diploma in English from the Cambridge University, but the fact is that the university does not offer any diploma in English. So what? Did the fiction that Sonia went to Cambridge University detract from the fact that she went to Cambridge? Not to Satiricus's mind. The reported truth is that Sonia was there as an "au pair", a sort of domestic helper. In that case the Cambridge claim is not so much a petty lie. May be there is such a thing as a domestic diploma.

A harvest takes time to grow. Why wait that long? Why not export Christianity to secular India from the Christian West wholesale?

Parliament's Who's Who claims that Sonia obtained a diploma in English from the Cambridge University but the university does not offer any diploma in English.