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Few Questions over the Beatification of Devasahayam Pillai – aka – Neelakanda Pillai

By: P. Sandeep Kumar, Director CSIS

The catholic church recently declared Devasahayam Pillai, purportedly belonging to the erstwhile kingdom of Travancore, a blessed martyr. The fundamental arguments of the church to declare Pillai as a holy martyr naturally kindle doubts about the validity of their claims.

Prior to the formation of the state of Travancore in 1729, there existed a small kingdom named Venad. It was during the reign of Umayamma Rani, the Queen regent at Venad in 1677-1684, the Dutch established a factory in Kallada in 1682. But the relationship between the Rani and the Dutch was not at all cordial. Hence the Dutch were not even allowed to trade in Venad. Nevertheless, the Dutch secured pepper by offering a bribe to the local people of Venad, says some reports. Interestingly the same Rani allowed the English East India Company to build a fort in Anjuthengu in 1696. In 1729, Anizham Tirunal Marthandavarma became the ruler of Venad, and the state of Travancore was formed. The Dutch adopted a policy of intervention in the internal affairs of Travancore and annoyed King Marthandavarma. Soon the strained relationship between Travancore and the Dutch culminated in a war in 1741. The Travancore forces decisively defeated the Dutch in the battles. In the battle of Colachael, the Travancore forces even captured many Dutch soldiers as prisoners of war. One among them was De Lannoy, a Dutch naval commander. Later, under the influence of Travancore King Marthandavarma, De Lannoy joined Travancore forces and became an important figure in its military history. During his days in the Travancore army, one Neelakanda Pillai acted as the translator for De Lannoy to understand Malayalam.

According to church chronicles, this Neelakanda Pillai was converted and baptised by the Jesuit missionaries as Lasar. But he was later executed by the religiously intolerant Hindu King and his officials after falsely implicating him.

Religious Tolerance of Travancore Kings and Story of Devasahayam Pillai

According to sources, there was one Neelakanda Pillai in the Travancore army, and he was executed under the charges of treachery. But there is no conclusive evidence to prove that, this Neelakanda Pillai and Lasar or Devasahayam Pillai are the same. Even if these two are the same person, the ground for the execution of Neelakanda Pillai was not religion but treachery. As per the Church narratives, Neelakanda Pillai is identified as Lasar, or later Devasahayam Pillai. The church narratives try to assert that the only reason behind the purported murder of Pillai was his conversion to Christianity. By doing so, the church is trying to undermine the illustrious legacy of Travancore rulers as far as religious tolerance is concerned.

Incidentally, De Lanny was a Christian, and the King had no objection to appointing him to the Travancore army. Further, King Marthandavarma gave total religious freedom to De Lannoy. According to T.K. Velupillai, Kaarthika Thirunaal Rama Varma or Dharma Raja, and The Maharaja of Travancore after Marthandavarma met the expense of building Udayagiri church at the request of De Lannoy and granted a salary of 100 Panams to the Vicar. According to the chronicles, when the capital was shifted from Padmanabhapuram to Thiruvananthapuram in 1795, Margret, wife of De Lannoy, demanded a church. An area in Travancore named Kunnukuzhy was granted to her for the same purpose. Also, the daughter in law of De Lannoy demanded a church be built in Travancore. A place in Pettah was given for the construction of a church. Moreover, the tomb of De Lannoy, his wife and his son are well preserved even today in Udayagiri fort.

The King even made tax exemptions for the lands he gifted to the Church at Varappuzha.There were also Christian populations in Travancore who didn’t face any issues with Marthandavarma. Also, in his letter dated 2^nd July 1774, Pope Clement XIV to the Maharaja of Travancore appreciates his kindness towards the members of his church resident in Travancore. His gestures towards the Muslim subjects were also of benevolence, not only to Christians.

From all these incidents and evidence, it is clear that the King had no issues with any other religions or Christianity. He was a person of religious tolerance. In this historical context, it is hard to believe that a king and his kingdom famous for their religious harmony killed Devasahayam Pillai just on the issue of religious conversion.

Interestingly, according to some sources Devasahayam Pillai was captured for the first time for looting money but was released later. He was converted in 1745, and four years after his conversion, i.e., in 1752, he was killed. If at all, Devasahayam Pillai needed to be murdered for conversion, the King would have never waited for these many years to kill him.

According to T.K. Veluppillai in Travancore State Manual, the capital punishment is awarded to crimes for inciting or committing acts of insurrection, pre-meditating or attempting the death of the Raja, Murder and Gang robbery. Moreover, in Travancore, the death penalty was conducted only by hanging. The body was displayed in a public cage and was called Chitravadham, and this practice was named Kazhuvettal. Never in the history of Travancore, there existed the practise of execution by firing, which the church claims that happened to Devasahayam Pillai. Nagam Aiyya in State Manual records that as a palace official, Nilakanda Pillai was detected tampering with political secrets, on the strength of which action must have been taken against him. If he was indeed Devasahayam, Baptism could not have had anything to do with his death. According to A Sreedhara Menon, not even a single case of persecution was recorded in the history of Travancore in the name of religious conversion. On the basis of historical evidence, we can conclude that the story of Devasahayam is nothing but a well-concocted story and a figment of the imagination.

Religious Intolerance of Jesuit Missionaries

Church narratives mention that Devasahayam Pillai was converted and baptised by the Jesuit missionaries. In fact, the Jesuit missionaries are the real force behind the concocted story behind Devasahayam Pillai depicting the Hindus as religiously intolerant. Unfortunately, in a race to prove the Hindus as a religiously intolerant social group, the Jesuits forgot their history of intolerance. A mere glance through the history of the world will give you compelling evidence to reveal the dark side of Jesuit missions. India is a perfect example. The arrival of Jesuits to India was part of a colonising missions. In the initial days they were acting like fifth column of the Portuguese colonisers. The figurehead of Jesuit missionaries in India Francis Xavier, himself is notoriously known for his religious intolerance. During his days in India, he made concerted attempts to destroy and desecrate temples in the name of idolatry, infringing on Hindu religious sentiment. In 1545, Xavier wrote a letter to King John III of Portugal, his sponsor and requested him to establish the House of Inquisition in Goa to torture anyone who refused to convert to Christianity in India. Francis Xavier was a vital cog in the genocide of Goa’n Hindus, which claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people. Further, a large number of Hindus ran away from Goa to free themselves from religious persecution. Not only Hindus but even Buddhist religious institutions were targeted by these Jesuit Christians. The destruction of a Buddhist pagoda in Nagapattinam is a glaring example. It was constructed in 1006 CE during the reign of Rajaraja Chola I and was demolished by the Jesuit Missionaries in 1867. Dilapidated reminiscences of this Pagoda are visible in museums today. The same Jesuits now depict themselves as victims and the Hindus as intolerant villains. This is nothing but a distortion of historical facts and victim shaming. If they have an iota of intellectual honesty, the Jesuit missionaries should come forward to apologise for their bad deeds during the colonial days and they should also take a vow that they will stay away from molesting the Indian traditions.

The Church and Blood Money

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The Vatican has a number of skeletons in its cupboards, ranging from money laundering, drug trafficking, sex scandals and paedophilia. Gerald Posner investigates the death of Pope John Paul I, operations of the Catholic Church and its nexus with politics and organised crime. God’s Bankers is more thrilling than Mario Puzo’s Godfather, writes KUMAR CHELLAPPAN

The Catholic Church is a subject of interest to millions of non-Catholics all over the world mainly because of the secrecy associated with the functioning of the world’s largest religious congregation. The Iron Curtain which shields this church will put both the former Soviet Union as well as the Italian Mafia to shame. The Vatican City, world’s smallest sovereign country (area 110 acres and population 842) and abode of the Pope, the spiritual head of the Catholics, wields tremendous influence in global politics.

The younger generation in India may not be aware of the influence wielded by the Catholic Church in India. The role it played in getting the EMS Namboodirippadu-led Kerala Government (world’s first democratically elected communist regime) dismissed in 1959 was revealed by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the former US diplomat in his book A Dangerous Place. The CIA too helped the church in Kerala, financially as well as morally, to get the communists removed from its path. The church feared that the communists would take over the vast stretches of landed properties and educational institutions owned by it.

Such is the power of the Catholic Church in India that many people attribute it to the fall of the Janata Party Government in 1979. The Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in Parliament by OP Tyagi resulted in the disintegration of the Morarji Desai Government with Mother Teresa, the queen of proselytisation herself coming out to stage protest march against the Bill.

When the Catholic Bishops Council of India, the most powerful body of the church in the country, came out against the Narendra Modi Government questioning its “indifference” to vandalisms perpetrated by “Sangh Parivar” activists on churches, all hell broke loose in India. Cardinal Cleemis, the CBCI chief, was vocal in his criticism of the Modi Government and alleged that minorities have become unsafe under the present BJP dispensation at the Centre. With law enforcement agencies unravelling the details of each and every attack on the Churches, the Cardinal has become somewhat silent.

The Catholic Church has overturned Governments and regimes in South America, Africa as well as in Europe which were not of its likings. Vatican has a number of skeletons in its cupboards. It ranges from money laundering, drug trafficking, sex scandals and cases of pedophiles. A lot of wealth under the dispensation of the church is said to be dirty money and the curia (the bureaucracy in Vatican City) has a lot to shield from public scrutiny, reportedly.

God’s Bankers, authored by Gerald Posner, the attorney-turned-investigative journalist is a well-researched chronicle about the history of money and power at the Vatican. The book has brought out hitherto unheard accounts and mysteries associated with the church and the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978. Not only the death of the Pope; many investigating officers, prosecutors and crucial witnesses who could have thrown much light into the shady deals of the powerful people in Vatican were either bumped off or killed in staged accidents.

A shocking revelation made by Posner is about a woman who was present in the official residence of John Paul I in the Vatican the night he breathed his last. The Vatican has never revealed to the outside world about this fact as it would have given rise to many uncomfortable questions about the Pope’s celibacy. John Paul I, whose real name was Albino Luciani reigned for just 33 days. He was elected Pope following the death of Pope Paul VI on August 6, 1978. According to a communique issued by the Vatican, Pope John Paul I was found dead on September 29 around 5:30 am by John Magee, his private secretary.

But Posner’s investigations are based on the secret files in the archives in the Vatican and interviews with people who had inside information and first hand access to the interiors of the papal palace and has thrown out some shocking facts which may put a shadow on the Vatican’s claims of puritanism. It was Vincenza Taffarel, a nun who had been with Albino Luciani for more than 20 years as the head of his household who first found him dead. Vincenza ran to John Magee’s bedroom and roused him from a deep sleep. Magee sprinted to John Paul’s private chamber and put his hand on the pontiff’s cheek.

Villot, the secretary of state, who decided to cover up the presence of Vincenza and drafted the version that it was Magee who found out the Pope dead. Villot also summoned two morticians to prepare the Pope’s dead body for public display. “The morticians took out a small rope from a canvas bag. They tied some around the corpse’s ankles and knees. Then they straightened his legs and secured the rope to each end of the bed’s frame. The morticians looped it around John Paul’s chest and both pulled his arms and torso until the corpse was flat,” says Posner in his account.

Though the Vatican officials described “myocardial infarction” as the cause for John Paul’s death, there were many accounts which said that the Pope was poisoned to death. One of the morticians attending to the Pope found that there were clotting around the Pope’s neck. But the group of cardinals who reached the Vatican immediately after the pontiff’s death ruled out the possibility of any autopsy which sabotaged the chances of getting any lead for the investigators.

What went unnoticed was an attempt on the life of the Pope which happened days before he was found dead. Metropolitan Nikodim, the second-ranking prelate of the Russian Orthodox Church called on John Paul immediately after his installation as the Pope. “Nikodim sipped coffee from a cup the Pope had just poured. Then the bishop dropped his cup and saucer. He clenched at his throat as he gasped for air, and fell over backward, smashing a small table as he slammed into the floor. Luciani (the Pope) called for help and dropped to his knees to administer the last rites. By the time Dr Renato Buzzonetti, the deputy chief of the Vatican medical service arrived a few minutes later, the 48-year-old Nikodi was dead”, says Posner in the book.

Strangely no autopsy was performed. A conspiracy theory swept through the Vatican; a poisonous brew that had been intended for the new Pope had killed Nikodim. This incident as well as the unexpected death of John Paul in a gap of few days are similar to the murders and mayhem carried out by the dreaded Mafia.

Much has been written about the death of John Paul 1. The book In God’s Name by David Yallop has given an entirely different account about the murder. Kunhanandan Nair, an Indian journalist, who covered the death of John Paul and the subsequent election of the next Pope, has said in his reports that the Pope was murdered by a cartel consisting of certain cardinals, politicians and mafia dons who wanted him out of the scene as they feared the Pope would throw out those responsible for money laundering and financial embezzlement worth hundreds of crores of dollars from the Church owned Bank of Vatican (Banco Ambroziano).

Immediately after assuming the throne, the Pope had ordered a thorough probe into the financial irregularities committed by this cabal of cardinals, bishops, bankers and mafia dons with money drawn from Banco Ambroziano, owned by the Vatican. The Catholic Church today is the world’s largest capitalist holding company with lot of financial, commercial and political interests.

The Banco Ambroziano was one of the largest private banks in Italy and was owned by the church. Roberto Calvi, chairman and managing director of this bank was found hanging from the London Bridge on June 18, 1982, four years after the death of Pope John Paul I. Though the coroner in London declared it as a suicide, in 2002, it was scientifically proved that Calvi was murdered and hanged from the London Bridge. Why? Posner answers this question and many other hitherto unasked and unanswered queries which are not music to the ears of the church.

But why all these shady deals and operations? The church authorities have the answer themselves: “You can’t run the Church on Hail Marys”, a bishop is reported to have told the author. Posner has given a chilling account of the activities of the Catholic Church with special focus on Italy. One cannot help laughing when Catholic bishops and cardinals in India describe the BJP, RSS and other Hindutva forces as fascists. The Vatican City, the abode of the Pope itself is a gift of the Fascist Mussolini to the Catholic Church.

The church was with Hitler and Mussolini during the Second World War. Even today, the Church is run on blood money. Blood money from where? By whom? Well, the details are in God’s Bankers. It is a must read for all those who love action-packed and suspense -filled real life incidents. God’s Bankers is more thrilling than Mario Puzo’s Godfather.

Source

Ethics Of Conversions

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As the debate on conversions and Gharwapsi continue, it would be good to recall that this issue is not new. Intellectuals and national leaders from the early 18th century have been drawing our attention to the menace of conversions in India.

Pragnya Bharat had conducted a public discussion on “The Ethics of Religious Conversion”. Speakers included eminent Indologist and Vedacharya Dr. David Frawley (Vamadeva Shastri) and Samineni Arulappa Archbishop of Hyderabad.

The article below contains the speech delivered by David Frawley

Sarva Dharma Samabhav?

Hinduism is based upon respecting reach individual and the swadharma of each individual. The highest goal of the Hindu religion is self-realization , not simply knowing God but understanding who we are and the Divine presence within us. It would be a tremendous loss if India gave up Hinduism and became another Christian and Islamic country. We have enough of them already. India has a wealth of spiritual tradition. Westerners come here for this wealth of spiritual knowledge. Infact, you should be exporting your religion.

Today, throughout the world, and in the United States, with very little exception, there is no “Sarva Dharma Samabhava” taught in religion. It is something I never encountered in my Christian education in the West. Most of the We were taught that Hinduism was a religion of idolatry.; it was religion of polytheism and superstition and there was no place for Hindus in heaven. The average Christian throughout the world has been taught to believe that only Christians gain salvation. To date, there is no major Christian leader or Moslem leader, in the world. Who is saying that Hinduism is as good as Christianity or Islam.

Some people say all religions teach the same things and they differ in inessentials. Is the Law of Karma and the process of Rebirth something inessential ?

Christian claim that their faith alone is enough to save you. This means that a person may be a mass murderer, but if on his death bed he converts to Christianity, he will go to heaven. Another person may live the life of a saint, but if he does not convert to Christianity, there will be no heaven for him. Recently in United State, a woman who had been convicted of murder was converted to Christianity on death-row and the Christian leaders- particular the fundamentalist Christians -asked for the death sentence to be removed because that woman had converted to Christianity and therefore the sin no longer counted.

Conversion activity:

Why is this conversion business so big in India? Because India is the largest country and largest non-Christian country, in the world, where missionaries have the freedom to act and to propagate. Islamic countries- Pakistan, Bangladesh- do not allow this missionaries activities to be conducted. In Saudi Arabia, you cannot even bring a Bible or a picture of Jesus into the country. China, also does not allow missionary conversion activities.

Organized conversion activity is like a trained army invading a country from the outside. This missionary army often goes into communities where there is little organized resistance to it or which may not even be aware of its power or its motives. It will even take advantage of its communities that are tolerant and open minded about the religion and use that to promote a missionary agenda that destroys this tolerance.

Evangelization sounds nicer and more ennobling than conversion. Such evangelical movements have world conversion strategies and programs to target India and Hindu state by state, tribe by tribe , even village by village. They keep track of the numbers o converts and mark them in the win column as gain for Christ.

Missionary activity is like an ideological war. It is quite systematic, motivated and directed. It can even resemble a blitzkrieg using media, money, people and public shows to appeal to the masses in an emotional way.

In fact colonialism has not truly ended but has recently taken a more economic rather than military form, along with the Westernization along economic lines. As Christianity is the dominant Western religion it continues to use the current economic expansion of Western culture to promote its conversion agendas.

Even when it is a question of a Christian minority in a land dominated by a non-Christian religion, the non-Christians are often at a disadvantage in terms of money and media through the Western support that the Christian community has, particularly in regards to its conversion activity. They are using financial and media advantages including mass marketing, to promote their agenda of conversion.

Evangelical missionaries still identify Hinduism with devil worship. Today it is illegal in most countries to promote racial hatred, to call a person of any race inferior or the product of the devil (which white Christians used to call the blacks until recently). Most such Christians have never seriously or open-minded studied Hinduism. They know little of Yoga and Vedanta or the great traditions of Hindu and Buddhist spirituality. They prefer to highlight the Hindu worship of God even in animal images like Hanuman as a form of superstition or evil.

The Catholic Church is bit more diplomatic thee days. It is now telling Hindus that their religion may have some values but Christianity is even better. This view is a bit more tolerant but cannot be called sincere either. If Catholic no longer believe that Hinduism is a religion of the Devil, as they were promoting until only recently, they ought to apologize to Hindus for their mistaken notion and the problems that these must have caused.

In India Christians claim that by eradicating the caste system they are helping people and raising them up socially. They could do this easier by helping reform Hindu society rather than by trying to destroy or change the religion. Clearly they are using, if not promoting the caste differences as a conversion strategy. Christian cultures still have their class and other social inequalities, particularly in Central and South America but Christians do not see that the religion has to be changed in order to get rid of these.

Changing a person’s religion may not help them in terms of health, education or economics. Social work born of love is hardly to be found in missionary Christianity, though it likes to pretend that this is the motivation.

Conversion and Cults:

In the West there is a cry against cults, which any religious movement out of mainstream Christianity can be called. There is a tendency to regard Hindu based religious movements in the West as cults. Under the guise of being a cult a religious organization can be sued for millions of dollars if even one disgruntled or disappointed former disciple can be found who feels they have taken advantage of. Many Hindu- based and yoga movements in the West have been sued as cults.

The criticism against cults is that they are outside the cultural religious norm, that they are intolerant of majority religions, that they divide families and turn individuals against their upbringing. Precisely the same charges can be leveled against missionaries all over the world

People in India may believe that , in America, all religions are treated equally. Certainly the law requires that but this is not the fact of life. For example, it is still very difficult for Hindus to build temples in the United States, particularly in areas in which fundamentalist Christians are strong. To put it in perspective, one would say that it is over 10 times harder in America to build a temple than it is to build a Church. In many areas, temples must not outwardly look like a temple, but should look like a school or church or the local governments would not approve of them.

Most Americans believe that Hinduism is a religion of cults. Organized Christian cult busting legal groups, with dozens of lawyers and budgets in man millions go around systematically encouraging suits against Hindus for Indian religious groups such as ISKON , TM Anand (a Yogananda group), The Himalayan Institute, Rajneesh and Sikhs under Yogi Bhajan to mention a few.

Any Hindu-based teacher in America, particularly pone wo is working with general American public or bringing people rom Christianity to Hindu-based teachings, remain under a severe legal threat.

The legal secularism of the West still hides much religious prejudice. We also note that the West politically will defend Christian interest overseas and criticize alleged discrimination against Christians. Recently the Russians criticized the Mormons, an evangelical American Christian group, as a cult. The American government lodged a protest to protect the Mormons and their missionary activity in Russia. No Indian Government so far has made any such protest to protect Hindu groups in the West.

Source: “The Ethics of Religious conversion” book., written based on a public discussion conducted on the above topic . The speaker is an eminent Indologist Dr. David Frawley.

Arise Bharat

Rousing National Consciousness

Tag Archives: Church

Few Questions over the Beatification of Devasahayam Pillai – aka – Neelakanda Pillai

The Church and Blood Money