Uncategorized

Why did Britain burn from 6-10August 2011? What made rioters take innocent lives, loot shops, and set them on fire? How could Anders Behring Breivik murder 91 fellow Norwegians in cold blood on 22July? Why did Greeks go to the streets in May-June, protesting against $153 billion being offered to bail out their economy? At the start of this decade, who would have predicted that in less than two years: It may be too late to save the euro . . . the critical question is: Can America be saved from the evil that has gripped so much of its family, education, religion, economy, politics, law, media, and entertainment? Most importantly, what must India learn from the Western folly? We would all love to see the Arab world liberated and transformed, but I never expected the “Arab Spring” to bring forth the kind of blossoms that secular pundits expected from it. The secular intellectuals are clever. They have succeeded in turning Wall Street into a casino that makes many of them super-wealthy while bankrupting their nation. If individual wealth is the litmus test of success then Arab despots may have done better than Wall Street moguls. In fact, the secular worldview is simply too naïve to understand the West or teach the Arab world how to build a civilization that is free and just with equal opportunity for all. Sadly, secular intellectuals think that material factors and accidents of history such as “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (Jared Diamond) or Biology, Sociology, and Geography (Ian Morris) can account for freedom. They think that nation-building is about economic “killer apps” (Niall Ferguson) rather than ideas, morals, and culture. Rather than being helpful, such amoral economic experts, produced by Ivy League universities, are driving Western nations into bankruptcy. While I remain sceptical about the Arab Spring, I am more confident about the Western Autumn ushering in a terrible winter. My short-term pessimism is produced by the underlying causes of the two phenomena. The Arab Spring  It was a terrible tragedy that triggered the protests that were naively dubbed the “Arab Spring.” On 16 December, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in Tunisia was selling produce when Ms. Faida Hamdi, a city official, came along with her entourage looking for a bribe. He had not earned enough to repay the $200 that he had borrowed to buy his goods, but she (reportedly) slapped him in the face, spat at him, confiscated his electronic weighing scales, and tossed aside his produce cart. Bouazizi went to the governor’s office to complain. When the governor refused to see him, Bouazizi set himself aflame. In short order, his self-immolation initiated the deadly demonstrations and riots throughout Tunisia and ultimately forced Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to relinquish the presidency on 14 January, 2011. He had misruled his nation for twenty-three years. The firestorm spread to Egypt, forcing Hosni Mubarak to quit after 30 years of oppressive rule. Despots in Libya, Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria, however, relied on the Islamic tradition of the rule-by-the-sword to fight back the wild fires of freedom. They exposed the naivety of the Liberal expectation that Twitter can triumph over tanks. (See FPress xxx) The protests deposed two despots, but weeding is not gardening. Bouazizi had burned himself protesting against a civilization that denies human dignity and ridicules the idea of servant-leadership. Guns and germs did not produce these noble ideas of human rights and leadership. They came from the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Renaissance writers Salutati, Lorenzo Valla and Pico Della Mirandella were the first to understand that Christ’s incarnation implied man’s uniqur dignity. If God had incarnated as a human being, then that proved that man was different from the other animals. He possessed a unique value and dignity that had to be respected by the state. Later reformers grasped that if  if the Deity sacrificed himself on the cross to save sinful humanity, then leadership had to mean servant-hood. The Messiashship of Jesus made it obvious that the human rulers needed to be shepherds, not wolves that oppress God’s own children. Islam abhors even the idea of Incarnation and the possibility that a prophet would die on a cross. Secular intellectuals ridicule these very historical/theological truths that produced the kind of civilization that Muslim nations are now seeking. If Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are to liberate Muslim nations from traditional tyranny, then they will have to be used to challenge not just despots but the very worldview that has dehumanized and oppressed Muslims. Western Autumn  It was Blackberry, Twitter and Facebook that brought out Social Media rioters, costing British economy around $400 million. Under British law, the taxpayers will have to pay the actual insurance cost for the buildings and looted goods. These looters weren’t interested in the bookshops that made Britain great. Nor were they starving, looking for groceries or medicine. The gangs were looking for electronic gadgets, trendy clothing, and designer shoes.  The London riots began because Metropolitan police branch responsible for gun crimes within the black community, shot dead 29-year old Mark Duggan. The police had been investigating him for a while and believed he was planning to take revenge on those who had stabbed to death his best friend, 23-year-old rapper, Kelvin Easton. His killers had used a broken champagne bottle to stab him at the Boheme nightclub in Mile End, East London. The police say that Mark and Kevin were linked to the Star Gang, a part of London’s blooming gang culture that has little respect for the traditional British values of lawful work and family life. The police claim that they shot Mark in self-defence. He may have been a victim of an officer’s mistake who thought that he needed to fire before Mark fired at him. But, it is important to ask ourselves – are Mark Duggan and the rioters victims of poverty or of a postmodern secular culture that has killed the soul of a once great civilization? Mark was an internet-savvy young man who used Facebook under his alias Starrish Mark. His home page had pictures of him

“William Carey was the nastiest Englishman that ever came to India,” said Mr. R.M. Pandit, my fellow-passenger.[i] We were both on our way to England. His mission was to research Carey in connection with the 250th anniversary of his birth on August 17, 2011. Panditji’s confident mannerism encouraged me to ask: “Who was Carey? What did he do to us?”  “In England he was just a chamar—a cobbler. In 1793 he violated British Parliament’s ban on missionary activity in India and slipped in as an undercover Baptist missionary. He started the chain reaction that culminated in our day in a chamar woman becoming the ruler of Uttar Pradesh—the very heartland of Hinduism.”  “Why should that be so worrying?” I wondered out loud. “After all Ms. Mayawati is dependent on Brahmins and they can easily ditch her in the next election.”[ii]  “I’m not concerned about one Mayawati,” clarified Panditji. “My concern is that Carey brought to India cancer cells that continue to multiply. They are infecting Hindu parties such as the BJP.[iii] Why do you think the BJP routinely appoints [untouchable] Shudras[iv] as Chief Ministers in the states it rules? Why can’t it respect Hindu culture and promote professional rulers?”  “I’m sorry Panditji,” I said sheepishly, “but I’ve no idea what you are talking about. If Carey was born 250 years ago, how is he responsible for what the BJP does today? If he was really the worst Englishman, why don’t we hear more about him?”  Panditji seemed eager to educate me, “Other Europeans came to colonize and loot India militarily, politically, and economically but William Carey came to change India. He pioneered the missionary movement with a goal to colonize our minds, to harvest our souls, and destroy our culture. This is the worst kind of colonialism.”[v]  “I’m afraid you have to help me understand how one can colonize someone’s mind,” I requested the scholar.  “Whoever controls your language controls your mind. Whoever writes your history controls your future. Why do you think that a Shudra in Tamil Nadu and a Dalit in Bihar both designate themselves as ‘Dravidians’? Their forefathers saw themselves as an intrinsic part of the Aryan culture. Who changed our language of caste into that of distinct races—Aryans and Dravidians? Some European scholars had taken an interest in Indian languages and literature before Carey. But he turned that academic curiosity into missionary mischief, inspiring thousands of missionary-linguists to build on his foundations.”  “I’ve never heard this interpretation before,” I assured Panditji.  My inquisitiveness encouraged him to continue, “Hindu sages engineered a harmonious society by categorizing us into castes along the lines of a family’s expertise. Caste system allowed parents to teach their children how to excel in their family profession. How can a person who milks cows teach his son to govern a state or navigate the sea? You tell me: do all human beings appear equal to you? Did the white Christians in America treat their black slaves as equal?”  “Definitely not,” I agreed, “but Mahatma Phule[vi] was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln and he praised devout Christians who put religious values above economic interests and fought against their fellow whites to emancipate black slaves. That is why the blacks in America love the Bible even more than the white people. Didn’t President Obama put his hand on Lincoln’s Bible to take his oath of office?”  “The myth that God made all human beings—male and female—equally in his image does come from the Bible. But educated people believe in evolution. Of course, no one has actually seen a fish evolve into a bird, but evolution confirms what our sages taught: that some people are more evolved than others. How can everyone evolve equal? Evolution presupposes the fact of inequality, but as a chamar, Carey wanted us to believe the Bible’s myth of human equality. He converted ignorant people and required them to break caste by eating together.”  “What strategy did he use to change India?”  “Since he believed the myth that men and women were created equal, Carey’s mission started educating girls as well as boys.” “What’s wrong with that?” “You only change what you don’t like. In order to change India Carey had to misrepresent our culture.” “Like, how?” “He published papers against the nobility of upper-caste women. They committed sati by climbing on to the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands to join them in the after-life. But Carey used his influential paper,Friend of India (which merged into Calcutta’s Statesman), to launch a campaign that got the British to abolish the sacred tradition of sati.” “Really? I always heard that it was Raja Rammohun Roy who stopped widow-burning.” “Roy had become Carey’s disciple in order to learn English. A Sanskrit Scholar, Hariharananda Vidyabagish, took Rammohun Roy to William Carey. The three of them fabricated Maha Nirvana Tantra or the “Book of the Great Liberation.” It pretended to codify ancient Sanskrit law, proving that the Hindu scriptures did not require a widow to commit sati. For decades the British courts yielded to the authority of this book in interpreting the Hindu law. Using that spurious book in law courts made Roy and the Tagore clan wealthy. Roy parted company with Carey when Roy became a Unitarian. But throughout his life he advanced Carey’s agenda to change India. Along with the missionaries, he was the primary reason why Lord Macaulay ruled that the East India Company’s money should be used to teach English not Sanskrit. Carey, Roy, and Macualy wanted to enrich Indian vernaculars by injecting English rather than Sanskrit ideas into our languages. Raja Rammohun Roy followed Carey in condemning the very core of Hinduism—worship of idols and nature. He felt that economic development meant governing nature, not worshipping it. In order to smuggle his peculiar version of Christianity into Bengal, Roy disguised it as “Brahmo Samaj.” His college was a platform for missionaries such as Alexander Duff.”  Trying to make sense of what I was hearing, I asked: “What exactly did Carey do to corrupt India?”  “Why is Hindi our national language: why not Sanskrit, which was a pan-Indian language?”

“Breaking India” by Rajiv Malhotra -A Review A Review of Breaking India: Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines by Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan, (Amaryllis, New Delhi, 2011) The authors of Breaking India display a tremendous capacity for collecting data. Had they also the intellectual integrity to interpret fairly the people they critique, they might have won many hearts and minds. The authors’ goal is noble – to unite India – although they come across as terrorists, indiscriminately shooting every Western scholar, linguist, scientist, politician, philanthropist, and missionary who ever spoke out against the oppression of “lower caste” Indians. “Faultlines” that divide India can be bridged if the case for unity is made honestly, with grace and charity. After 650 pages, I was left with feeling that the authors heaped loads of insult on every intelligent Hindu who feels that caste and untouchability are wrong. The book’s main concern is valid, i.e., many efforts to emancipate the Dalits and empower Dravidians are often corrupted by hatred for Brahmins and Aryans. Politicians and Maoist use hatred as their primary weapon. Some evangelists and activists also leverage that hatred as a strategy, since it does lure “lower castes” away from Hinduism. Some Christians repackage that “spirituality” of hate as “social justice,” “human rights”, or “scholarship” to raise money in the West. The oppressed do hate their oppressors, but that privilege is not available to Christians, since Jesus commanded his disciples to love their enemies. Jesus viewed Rome’s Empire as Satan’s kingdom, yet, he refused to cultivate hatred against the Romans. He precipitated a confrontation between the kingdoms of God and Satan – that is between the kingdoms of love vs. oppression. The hate-driven struggle for “social justice” has indeed resulted in a Rwanda like blood-bath in Orissa. It boosts Church-growth in the short run, but it is neither good for India’s harmony, nor for the cause of Christ.  I am a Christian and an Indian citizen. Malhotra and Neelakandan condemn me by name in three different chapters. Nevertheless I agree with them that some Christian writing about Hindu violence is indeed manipulative “Atrocity Literature.” That does not mean that no Hindu ever persecutes any Christian: twice I was arrested on trumped up charges of converting Hindus. Once the police accused me of threatening to kill a Hindu by holding a revolver to his head unless he became a Christian! Then I was accused of bribing to convert a Brahmin woman who had been used and discarded by a Brahmin gang as a prostitute. Those cases were only the tip of the iceberg; I might still be in prison if Hindu “saints” and politicians had “properly” paid the police, witnesses, lawyers, and judges. Even though sadhus, politicians, police, and criminals sometimes come together to massacre Muslims, hurt Dalits, and persecute Christians . . . Malhotra is right that some Christians have turned “persecution” into a money-making industry. Churches would be less likely to donate were they told the truth that the 2008-09 genocide against Dalit Christians in Kandhamal, Orissa was not religious persecution. It was tragic. Many victims were innocent and needed financial help. Yet it was not “religious persecution” because the violence was caused neither by Christians’ faith nor practice. That was a communal conflict that erupted for two reasons: The conflict began because justly or unjustly, wisely or foolishly, some Dalit Christians were agitating that scholarships and jobs “reserved” for tribals should be shared with their children. Then some Maoists murdered a Hindu religious leader in defense of the agitating Dalit Christians.  To turn to the main point of the book: On the very first page, Malhotra and Neelakandan admit that oppression of Dalits and Dravidians is India’s internal problem. They consider it a dangerous faultline or “centrifugal” force that could be used by the West (Islam or China) to break India. Before India’s independence (1947), the Aryan-Dravidian divide had inspired Tamil leaders like C. N. Annadurai to propose breaking India up into separate nations for Muslims, Aryan-Hindus, and Dravidians. During the Cold War, when our prime minister Pandit Nehru tilted towards the former USSR, the American government supported Annadurai to weaken Nehru. Such “Western Interventions in Dravidian and Dalit Faultlines” generate legitimate concerns. However, the question that the authors evade is what created these internal faultlines and how they can be bridged? Breaking India devotes hundreds of pages to suggesting that “academic” categories of Aryans and Dravidians were created by Western linguists, social historians, scientists, and missionaries. These experts, including those who did not believe the Bible to be God’s Word, were guided by the biblical perspective or “Mosaic ethnology.” That assumes that our human race originated from one pair of parents. Initially everyone spoke the same language. Linguistic and racial divisions arose after Noah. The authors are right in saying that from the 17th to the early 20th century it was not secular rationalism but the Bible that inspired and directed Europe’s intellectual vitality, including Indological studies. Hinduism and Islam had been in India for centuries but neither of those faiths stimulated their followers to study India, its languages, history, people, or natural resources as the Bible inspired Europeans. Someone reading Breaking India could get the false impression that India was one harmonious nation before wicked Western scholars divided it by studying vastly different features, languages, dialects, beliefs, and practices of its inhabitants. Quite the opposite is true: a tiny band of British soldiers, led by a commercial clerk, Robert Clive, was able to begin colonizing India because Hindus and Muslims had divided us into thousands of weak and warring kingdoms. Hating for colonial rule is understandable. But intellectual honesty does demand admitting (a) that the idea of India as one nation was invented by the British, and (b) that, for better or for worse, it was the Bible that gave to the world, via Europe, the modern notion of nation-states. This idea did not define Europe prior to the 16th century biblical reformation o society, and since WWII Europe has been trying to dismantle nationalism in favor of the European Union. By contrast, the British united India. They acquiesced to

This is part XXII of Vishal’s monthly series “Why Are We Backward?” for India’s Backward Castes.  In the holy city of Gangapur, two preachers were most renowned:  Gyananand enthralled his audience by explaining that the European numerals (I, II, III, IV, V, etc) could not have produced Western science, technology, banking, or economic development. They were inherently incapable of calculating mathematical units such as percentages or economic units such as compound interest. Dhyananand would then describe the accomplishments of Indian mathematicians such as Brahmagupta (seventh century), Mahavira (ninth century), and Bhaskara (twelfth century). The two never failed to mention that the world of modern finance owes its existence to the unknown sage who may have been a Brahmin and may have meditated on the banks of Mother Ganges, as he came up with the all important mathematical concept of shoonya (zero). Uma Devi was one their favorite devotees. In fact, all the “holy” men were fond of her because whenever an ascetic went to her door, she always sent one of her children with freshly cooked food. She had made it a morning habit to set aside the first portion of the food for sadhus, who had renounced their own wives, children, and parents in order to find enlightenment. Her piety, however, did not prevent god Saturn from devouring her husband along with her youngest son. The truck that hit his scooter simply vanished. The tragedy became even more terrible because the scooter’s insurance had run out. Her husband had chosen not to renew it, since he was thinking of getting a loan for a small car for the family. Uma’s world fell apart: she was too shattered to be comforted even by these saints. “Shall I commit sati?” she inquired of them in desperation. “It is illegal,” they counseled, “but dharma still accrues to a widow who chooses that sacred path.” “But what will happen to my children?” she cried. “The scriptures say that your karma will benefit seven generations” they consoled her looking at her daughter (9) and son (7). T his terrible story is, of course, made up. It is intended to help us understand the cultural factors that made Indian/Arabic numerals to sustain an repressive economic system in India while becoming a foundational tool for the amazing development of the West as illustrated by the Widow Fund in Scotland . That Fund began modern insurance and risk management that undergirds contemporary economic life, while secularization or perversion of that wonderful concept of welfare scheme is an important source of the political problems of Europe, Japan, and America. The Scottish Widow Fund, originally called, “Fund for a Provision for the Widows and Children of the Ministers of the Church of Scotland,” was the first modern, mathematics-based Insurance Company. It provided an innovative, “scientific” alternative to other ways of caring for widows – asylums, lotteries, ponzi schemes, prostitution, starvation, or sati. The Fund, which grew to over £ 100 billion, has served as a midwife to tens of thousands of economic enterprises. It has also supported educational and philanthropic initiatives such as India’s oldest continuously running liberal arts college, the Scottish Church College in Calcutta (1836), and the Scottish orphanage for girls in Mumbai that became Bombay Scottish School (1847). It began a scientific system of risk management that made it possible for people to borrow large amounts of capital to start new ventures across the continents and now into outer space. The Widow Fund was created by two Calvinist pastors in Scotland, Robert Wallace (1697-1771) and Alexander Webster (1708 – 1784). Both of them were mathematicians and Bible preachers. While we were condemning our upper caste widows in India to life-long solitary confinement, if not to the flames of their husband’s funeral pyres, the pro-life, pro-sex, pro-marriage, pro-widow spirituality of these pastors came together with the best available mathematics to create the world of modern finance. Unlike our saints who had to renounce their own wives and children, these Protestant pastors were both married because the Bible teaches that the physical world – including human body and sex – are created by a good God who declares them “good.” God does not want godly men to separate from the material realm. He wanted Adam and Eve to become one in order to harness and channel their sexual energy to establish a family that will produce and nurture children to fill the earth and govern it by establishing human culture.  This outlook (worldview) enabled Robert Wallace, who became the Moderator of the Church of Scotland – that is, equivalent of a Sankaracharya or Archbishop – to write a pioneering study, “An Essay on the Principle of Population.” Like Wallace, Webster also began his career as a minister (pastor) in the Church of Scotland, in Culross in Fife. There he met and married Mary Erskine of Alva. While our sages thought that to be “holy” meant to renounce (take sanyas from) family commitments, Webster’s biblical spirituality freed him to celebrate his romantic and sensual love for his bride: When I see thee, I love thee, but hearing adore, I wonder, and think you a woman no more; Till, mad with admiring, I cannot contain, And, kissing those lips, find you woman again. His love for his own wife as well as a deep concern for his friends’ widows motivated him to team up with Wallace and use his training as a mathematician to solve widows’ problems. In 1748, he published hisCalculations, which set forth the scientific principles on which their scheme for widows’ pensions was based. The other mathematical prodigy who helped refine their innovation was Colin MacLaurin who had improved upon Newton’s theories when he was only 14-years old! MacLaurin was himself an orphan who grew up with his uncle – also a pastor. [Note – This article’s author is a Fellow of the MacLaurin Institute at the University of Minnesota named after Prof. Colin MacLaurin.] Unfortunately, MacLaurin died while he was still too young to see the Widow Fund flourish. In their day, if a minister died, his widow and orphans received a stipend from the church for six months; after that

According to the US Treasury, during March 2011, the Federal Government spent eight times more than its total income: · Total expense — $1.0528 trillion · Net income (Federal Taxes) — $128.179 billion! Out of this $120 billion went for domestic liabilities (Social Security – $49.8 billion + Medicare – $47.4 billion + Medicaid – $22.575 billion). · By “selling” new “Securities,” the Federal Government borrowed six times its income ($786.5 billion) simply to repay earlier loans (705.3 billion) called Securities. Little wonder, American “Securities” are making the world very insecure. Erskine Bowles, co-chair of President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, who had served President Clinton as his Chief of Staff, summed up Federal Government’s cash-flow situation before Senate’s Budget Committee: “I’m really concerned . . . I think we face the most predictable economic crisis in history. A lot of us sitting in this room didn’t see this last crisis (2007-08) as it came upon us. But this one is really easy to see. The fiscal path we are on today is simply not sustainable. This debt and these deficits that we are incurring on an annual basis are like a cancer and they are truly going to destroy this country from within unless we have the common sense to do something about it. . . I used to say that I got into this thing for my grandchildren. I have eight grandchildren under five years old. I’ll have one more in a week. And my life is wonderful and it is wild. But this problem is going to happen long before my grandchildren grow up. This problem is going to happen . . . It may be two years, you know, maybe a little less, maybe a little more. But if our bankers over there in Asia begin to believe that we’re not going to be solid on our debt, that we’re not going to be able to meet our obligations, just stop and think for a minute what happens if they just stop buying our debt [Securities]. . . What happens to interest rates? . . . And what happens to the U.S. economy? The markets will absolutely devastate us if we don’t step up to this problem. The problem is real, the solutions are painful . . . “ Bowles was telling America what prophet Elijah told Ahab (Israel’s king): It is certain that off shore winds will no longer rain prosperity upon our land. People are realizing that, like Greece, America can no longer repay its debt without getting into greater debt. So what will the US do? Go to war as did Hitler? If the birthplace of Protestant Reformation – Germany – could be captured by supernatural powers to produce the 20th century anti-Christ, could the same forces or entities turn the most religious nation on earth into the 21st century Kingdom of the Beast? In Avatar, James Cameron explores that plausibility.  There is, however, another option: on Mount Carmel, Elijah urged Israel to repent and return to her Foundation – the Truth. The world did not trust America because of Capitalism but because of American Character born of her commitment: “In God we Trust.” Now the world is insecure because secular America has changed its motto to, “In Greed We Trust.” Bowles is not alone in predicting that it will stop raining. The famine will follow. In March, before the Treasury Report, the TIME magazine and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria expressed similar fears. The drought and the famine will hurt, but they could lead to a new quest for truth, repentance, and a new birth. Can America rediscover the historical truth about its own greatness? What created America’s character, freedoms, inventiveness, trustworthiness, economic and institutional success? What made it a light to the nations? These are questions explored in “The Book That Made Your World: How The Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization.” (Thomas Nelson). My book is already selling on Kindle and will be launched formally in Atlanta on April 21 (see below). For the tough times that do lie ahead, the good news is that like Elijah on Mount Carmel, this book graciously confronts “apostate” America with irrefutable Truth. As Dr. MacDonald says below, a small rudder could have saved the Titanic: This book could help change America’s direction and alter its destiny. Here is what people, who care deeply for America, are saying about this book: Dallas Willard Professor of Philosophy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles The condition of a society, good or bad, is the outflow of communal character—of what the usual citizen is prepared to do as if it were obviously right, and is prepared to sacrifice for if necessary. That communal character, in turn, arises out of a system of ideas and beliefs about what is real and what is good. The system of ideas and beliefs that gave rise to and sustained the “Western” world has its unique source in the Bible and in traditions arising out of it. Devotion to truth, to the common good and to the good of every individual, and—within that framework—freedom to live as one chooses, has never in world history had another foundation than the Bible. Look and see. The failure of contemporary education and intelligence is nowhere more manifest than in the appalling ignorance of “leaders” about the true foundation of our ideals and practices of public order and private well-being. With solid, detailed information, clarity of presentation, and logical force, Vishal Mangalwadi enables anyone willing to see how our “Western” world depends entirely upon what the Bible, and it alone, teaches about reality and how to live. We must be aware of that dependence, and of the manifold follies of well-meaning people who, for around two centuries now, have tried to set the Christian outcome upon a secular or non-Christian basis. At this point our institutions are lost. It is time for the prophet. Here we have one. Chuck Colson Founder of Prison Fellowship and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview “I have been a

In a bold statement to a world in turmoil, the American space agency, NASA, has named one its spaceships to Mars, Zahran. The 23-year old beautiful Sally Zahran was beaten to death by the security forces of Egypt’s ousted dictator, Hosni Mubarak. Zahran, a university graduate in English and translator, was one of hundreds of Egyptians who paid the ultimate price for throwing off 30-years of oppression. Now the beneficiaries of her martyrdom face the even greater challenge to establish a just and free government that is responsive to the needs of the Egyptian people. About 6,700 – 11,000 Muslims have died at the hands of fellow Muslims between December 18, 2010 and March 11, 2011 in an effort to modernize the cradle of human civilization – Middle East and North Africa. They deserve our support and prayers that their sacrifice will help deliver their nations from a medieval mindset that for centuries kept much of the world, including my native India, in slavery.  It was 26-year old street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, in a small town in Tunisia, who lit up the spark that began this movement for freedom. When he was only 3-years old, Bouazizi’s father died of a heart attack. His mother married his uncle who became sick, unable to support the family of six children. Bouazizi had to start working when he was ten and by the time he was 18, he had to give up his own ambition for an education to support his mother, uncle, and sisters – one of whom he sent to a university. In a country with over 30% unemployment, Bouazizi had few options. Every application he submitted for a job was rejected. He borrowed money to buy and sell produce on the streets. His hard work made it possible for him to dream of buying a pickup truck – provided he could save something from the policemen who regularly extracted bribes from people like him. They were paid to protect him and his property; some of them even worshipped in the same mosque that he did.  What he could not accept was the humiliation that was (allegedly) meted out to him by a 45-year old female official on December 17, 2011. The previous night he borrowed $200 to buy the produce before dawn. By 8 am he was selling on the streets. She came along with her entourage at around 10:30 am, demanding a bribe. He had not had the time to earn enough to repay even the interest on his loan, but she wanted her cut first. It is said that she slapped him in the face, spat at him, confiscated his electronic weighing scales, and tossed aside his produce cart.  The self-respecting young man found it hard to accept this public humiliation by a female robber! Bouazizi marched to the governor’s office to complain. He may have been too naïve to realize that Ms. Hamdi was simply a part of a giant machine the governor and his superiors used to siphon off the wealth of working people. When the governor refused to see him, Bouazizi doused himself with some flammable liquid and within an hour of his humiliation, he was aflame in front of a local government building. His self-immolation sparked the deadly demonstrations and riots throughout Tunisia which forced then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to step down on January 14, 2011, after ruling his country for 23 years to its ruin. Unemployment and under-employment give young people time to explore social medias such as Facebook and Twitter. This unregulated media, rather than the established press, university, mosques, or political forums turned the spectacular success of Tunisian protest into a wildfire. It was social network that brought young people like Sally Zahran to Tahriri (liberty) Square in Cairo, Egypt.  Abdel-Moneim Jaafar, a 49-year-old restaurant owner, demonstrated that they were not out to shout shallow slogans. He followed Bouazizi’s example, by setting himself alight in front of the Egyptian Parliament. Such desperate acts forced the resignation of Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. During 30 years of his rule his family is estimated to have amassed $80 billion at his people’s expense! This liberation from corrupt dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt fueled freedom’s fires in Yemen, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Libya. It is in Libya that Islam is finally meeting modernity’s challenge.   At the moment of writing it appears that it will be Islam, not modernity that will win the war. Gaddafi’s regime has been associated with silencing legitimate questions, oppressing rival tribes, sponsoring terrorism during 1970s and 1980s, assassinating expatriate opposition leaders, and crass nepotism. Through control over the nation’s oil, his family has amassed a fortune of at least $70 billion. A part of this money is used to buy the loyalty of his tribe as well as foreign mercenaries who have kept Gaddafi’s gang in power for 41 years. His militia is well funded to fight for years and crush its opponents. In spite of his outrageous rogue status, the West has decided not to defend the people of Libya without support from neighboring Muslim nations. It is already apparent that the corrupt and oppressive heads of other oil rich Muslim nations would prefer to follow the Middle-Eastern way represented by Gaddafi’s brutal tactics rather than the aberration that happened in Tunisia and Egypt, where corrupt leaders resigned. Since Twitter cannot fight tanks bought by Allah-given oil, the real question is: Can the brave and intelligent people of Libya or Iran or Saudi Arabia or Syria find inner intellectual and spiritual resources to free themselves from their traditional slavery? Gaddafi sees himself not as a dictator, but as the Father of one of the wealthiest nations in the whole of Africa. So, why would he send tanks to butcher his own “children?” On February 22, 2011, the ‘Father of Libya’ explained on national television that he sees the protestors as nothing more than “rats and cockroaches.” That shocked the world: had he, however, described human beings as

The Byzantine Christian Empire lost what is now Turkey to the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks between 1071 and 1453, with the result that not only the seven important churches mentioned in Revelation 2–3 were lost, but the whole region declined in every way. By contrast, from1517 the Protestant Reformation started to liberate northern Europe from feudalism. Sadly, by the end of the 19th century, Lutheranism had lost Germany to Modernism, paving the way for it to become Nazi—a terror not only to its own inhabitants but also to the world. Similarly Russia, partly due to the other-worldliness of its Orthodox Christianity, was taken over by Communism. Protestant England lost to secularism. Last week a British court ruled against a Christian couple for not giving a single-bed to two homosexual men. For twenty-five years they had observed a practice in their Bed & Breakfast facility of not giving single beds to two people who were not married. The court ruled that running a private business according to one’s moral conscience justifies punishment.  Now, the question is: Will evangelicalism lose America to postmodern paganism? If so, the loss will be America’s and of those parts of the world that look up to America. The loss will not be simply economic or the relative global political stability of the last six decades. The damage will be much deeper. Thirty years ago, Allan Bloom, a Jewish Professor in Chicago, touched on some aspects of the loss in his bestselling book The Closing of the American Mind. Let me paraphrase him in my words before quoting him: If you faced a mountain of puzzle pieces—say the size of the Himalayas—but did not have a picture of what that puzzle was supposed to look like, would you begin assembling that puzzle together? Six hundred years before Christ, the Greeks did make a beginning. It took them a few centuries to conclude that there was no hope of making sense of the puzzle. They replaced philosophy and science with stories and myths — exactly what the West (including America’s neo-evangelicalism), is now doing. No culture can sustain the intergenerational discipline needed to make sense of life and universe unless it has the big picture, the bird’s-eye view, or the world-and-life-view of what that puzzle is supposed to look like. In order to sustain that effort, a culture also needs an intergenerational sense of duty to pursue knowledge.  The medieval and modern West began the intellectual revolution which created our world, because the Bible gave to the West the Creator’s overview of what the whole of reality— that mountain of puzzle pieces—was all about. The biblical worldview was never fully understood. There was always plenty of room for genuine disagreement about where a particular piece actually fits in the puzzle. Nevertheless, the biblical worldview became the West’s soul – its guiding compass. Without its soul, America will lose not just its family and health care but also its science and compassion, liberty and justice, innovation and virtue, music and optimism—all of which arose from the Bible, as is demonstrated by any comparison with a non-Biblical culture (in my new book mentioned below I look at many non-biblical cultures). As James Cameron suggests in his film Avatar, America’s currently dominant non-Biblcal greed-and-unemployment driven economy will turn America into a greater terror to the world than what Hitler could have managed. Bloom was only scratching the surface of the problem when he lamented in the 1970s that by the end of his long career as a professor, he had noticed that students were coming to the university without knowledge of the Bible (the big picture) and, therefore, without an interest in great books, arts, music, science, or wisdom of the West — much of which was related to the Bible and could not be understood without it. Bloom may not have known why Paganism leads to mysticism, not science and knowledge, but intuitively he realized that there was some connection between ignorance of the Bible and the university’s loss of interest in the puzzle of life – in pursuing understanding, wisdom, and virtue: In the United States, practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, one that united the simple and the sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old, and—as the very model for a vision of the order of the whole of things, as well as the key to the rest of Western art, the greatest works of which were in one way or another responsive to the Bible—provided access to the seriousness of books. With its gradual and inevitable disappearance, the very idea of such a total book is disappearing. And fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise—as priests, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine. Contrary to what is commonly thought, without the book even the idea of the whole is lost.* [*Allan Bloom,The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 58.] Bloom did not experience the full consequences of the loss of the West’s soul, that is, the Bible. George Orwell, who lived through the two World Wars, as did J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, did actually experience those. In 1940, at the height of a war unleashed by an ex-Protestant nation, Orwell wrote, For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded, and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake: The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all; it was a cesspool full of barbed wire . . . It appears that amputation of the soul isn’t just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic. [George Orwell, Notes

Yoga: Seven Paths of Salvation in Hinduism For most of history most people have not needed to stretch their hands, legs, and backs or exercise their hearts. Normal chores of life kept their muscles toned. Other than special groups such as athletes and soldiers, those monks needed to exercise who sat and meditated but did not “work.” Now technology has redefined “normal work.” An increasing number of us just sit to work. To maintain normal health, it has become necessary for us to cultivate the discipline of setting aside time for intentional exercise. A class offers discipline, competent instruction, and stimulating group dynamics. If it is Yoga class, then it also evokes the mystique of learning from ancient, exotic sages who spent years perfecting techniques to tone some of their muscles. What made these sages think that the exercises that were good for their bodies could also lead them to mystical enlightenment? Could secular practitioners who only want physical fitness get pulled into philosophies that promise peace, meaning, purpose, and oneness with the divine Self? My video-lecture  Yoga: Seven Paths of Salvation has now been uploaded on RevelationMovement.com/learn. An introductory, 6-minute version is onYoutube.com/RevelationMovement. Thank you for your prayers and tax-deductible donations that keep us going. We would love to have you as our regular, monthly donor. You can sign up as a regular donor online. Do keep your heart healthy.  Sincerely, Vishal and Ruth Mangalwadi

Why Did the Hobbits Have Hope?  Dear Friends,  Evil had become invincible in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. At least, that is what the Wizards’ leader, Saruman, believed. This mighty “man of skill” – for that is what his name means – was convinced that the only sane course was to join the most powerful force on earth. His belief corrupted him. The Hobbits, on the other hand, were unskilled. They were weak and vulnerable. Why did they risk their lives to resist evil? Why did Tolkien believe that evil should be resisted and will be overcome? What were his grounds for hope? Does your culture have such transforming hope? Please share your wisdom with us. Nazism and Communism were overrunning Tolkien’s Europe. Do you think his hope, in the face of such overwhelming evil, came from the Bible? We would love to have you write a 2,000 word essay on The Bible, Literature and Transforming Hope and be one of the ten who will win an all expense paid Literary Tour of England. For details please visit www.RevelationMovement.com . However, if you cannot participate in this competition, you are invited to post you answer to the above question on the Discussion Forum: Go to www.RevelationMovement.com Access – Library Click on Connect Click on Literary Tour And post your answer. In that Discussion Forum you will see that a number of people are engaged in serious discussion on the Bible, Literature and Hope. Here is another question on that Discussion Forum that is waiting for an answer: Was C. S. Lewis an escapist? Commenting on the state of modern English novel, especially after the two World Wars, Terry Eagleton, a renowned English literary critic, in his book “The English Novel: An Introduction” says this: “[The]patrician landscapes as with the whimsical fables of P. G. Wodehouse or the Gothic scenario of Mervyn Peake, are too socially marginal to be much more than splendid curios. Much the same can be said of the fantasy worlds of the Oxford conservative medievalists (Tolkein, C. S. Lewis), natural aristocrats who, unable to see modern democratic life as much more than a dismal decline, took refuge in their own self-enclosed mythological worlds. The notion of a ‘spiritual’, traditional or authentic England underlying the degradations of the modern is inherited in different style by Peter Ackroyd. This mixture of myth, magic, freakishness and social realism has recently staged a momentous come-back with J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. The questions we can discuss are: (1) What social function, if any, does “fantasy” perform? (2) Does it, especially the fiction of Lewis, strengthen democracy? (Question by Dr. Ashish Alexander, posted on the Discussion Forum) Many people are visiting the Discussion Forum as they prepare to write their essays. Your answer will help shape the thinking of aspiring writers who wish to draw inspiration from classic writers such as Tolkien and Lewis and others.  Anyone is welcome to participate in this contest. There is no age limit. You do not have to use Lewis and Tolkien as your literary sources. You can use any writer from any language to illustrate your points. Your essay, however, should be written in English. Essays will not be judged on the merit of your language. The judges will examine your understanding of how the Bible inspired transforming hope in literature. Hundred essayists will win Vishal’s new book The Book That Made Your World: How The Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization to be published by Thomas Nelson in April 2011. Five hundred essayists will win the novel Conspiracy of Calaspia by the Guptara Twins, Suresh and Jyoti. The winners will need to pay the postage for this book. The last date for submitting the essay is March 1, 2011. This is an effort to mentor the next generation of wholesome writers. You can also participate by praying and donating. May you experience the presence and power of God in the New Year.  With best wishes, Vishal & Ruth Mangalwadi

On August 7, 2010, some “devout” Muslims in Badakhshan, Afghanistan dragged 10 Christians out of their vehicle, robbed them and shot them one by one. The victims of this brutal “spirituality” included three women. They were returning from mountainous Nuristan after completing an eye-camp for poor Muslims. The ladies had joined the medical team to make it possible for Muslim women to receive treatment without having to see a male doctor, nurse or translator. They were “guilty” of walking miles and miles in hilly terrain, offering free treatment and surgery to those who suffered from various eye-diseases. The murderers did not blame their victims of converting Muslims, because everyone knew that they did not convert anyone. The Christians were blamed for carrying Persian (Farsi) Bibles! It was their Christ-like, self-sacrificing service that became a serious threat to Islam. I knew two of the victims – Dan Terry and Tom Little. They were the team leaders. Our daughters studied with theirs and for two years our families lived next door. I talked more with Dan because he was more talkative. Dan, 64, first went to serve Afghanistan in 1971, much before the Soviet invasion or the Taliban takeover. Their organization, International Assistance Mission (IAM), was registered with the Afghan government as a Christian group. It had signed the “Principles of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Response Programmes”. One of these “Principles” stipulates that aid will not be used to further a particular political or religious standpoint. IAM was strict about following the “No Preaching” policy. That is why many Muslims invited them to their towns and villages and protected them. The team travelled unarmed and without security. Why would devout Muslims fear such dedicated public servants? Dan explained the puzzle to me: “We do not preach,” he said, “but everyone knows that we serve because we follow Christ. Therefore, many intelligent Afghans come to us privately and say, ‘Our land is under a curse – the curse of Islam. We want freedom to seek truth. But we are kept in bondage at gun-point.’”  Opposition to Truthseeking  So, why does Islam deny individuals the freedom to seek and find truth? It is because Islam is not public truth. It is based on private revelations of an individual and private revelations cannot be cross-examined.  Even though four centuries after Christ, Roman paganism injected intolerance and bigotry into the church, Christianity was able to resist it and institutionalize religious liberty because the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not a private revelation: It is public truth; many eye-witnesses saw Jesus die for our sin and rise again. But why is Hindutva scared of giving to individuals the freedom to investigate truth and choose their own religious or non-religious beliefs? Why does it see individual liberty as a grave political threat to its existence?  Through an advertisement in Hindustan Times (July 27, 2010, Page 4) the Law Commission of the Government of India has notified the public that it is considering a national legislation on conversion. Some people suspect that the legislation under consideration may be a subtle avatar of the law that was first proposed in late 1970s, during Morarji Desai’s rule, to restrict an Indian individual’s freedom to choose his or her faith. The Commission, however, says that its primary reason for considering this legislation is a formal request by Kerala High Court. The court has found it difficult to resolve divorce cases that involve inter-religious marriages. For example, if a Hindu marries a Muslim, should the divorce be according to Hindu Marriage Act or Muslim Marriage Act? The High Court feels that resolving such cases will be simplified if one of the spouses “legally” converts to another’s faith. The problem is: requiring truth-seekers to file legal papers declaring their new faith will endanger their businesses, inheritance and even life. If a Brahmin woman filed legal papers that she had become a Muslim, Hindutva forces might even start a riot. Kerala High Court’s suggestion then may solve a few technical problems in a private case, but create umpteen public problems.  The Truth Behind Myths So, why is Hindutva so opposed to our religious liberty?  I understood Hindutva’s problem during a winter vacation in Tamil Nadu. We were visiting the world-famous Meenakshi temples in Madurai. Our guide was enjoying lecturing to us, since our host, the principal of a local woman’s college and her daughter, had accompanied my wife, our young (minor) daughters and me. After learning much about the grandeur of ancient Hindu religion, culture and architecture, I asked the guide, “Isn’t this a tantric temple? Isn’t this a platform where sexual orgies would have happened in this holy temple?” The guide blushed and took me away from the ladies. He began to point out the mini erotic sculptures that are easy to miss seeing in that huge temple complex. “This temple had bigger and better erotic sculptures than Khajuraho,” said the guide, “but they have been vandalised and stolen. Yes, that platform is where the priests and royalty had sexual orgies with devadasis (female “slaves of gods”). I left the temple saying to myself, “Indian women have such a strong sense of modesty: how did these brahmacharis (celebate priests) get the women to have sex with them in public?” From Madurai we went to Madras (now Chennai) to see the famous Mylapore temple. Before we got off the bus, the guide told us the story behind the temple: “Shiva and Parvati were sitting here. A peacock came and Parvati got distracted. Shiva was angry and cursed Parvati. Immediately, she became a peacock. She was terrified and began to worship Shivalingam (Shiva’s penis) morning and evening, until Shiva was pleased and turned her back into a woman.” “What a crazy story!” was my spontaneous reaction, “Why would anyone build such a magnificent temple to commemorate such an absurd story?”  It so happened that I was using that winter vacation to read Greek philosopher Plato’s famous book Republic. On the way from Madurai I