JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, October 11, 2025

The Conversion Strategy

by

20120815

On the ar­rival of Hin­dus in Trinidad on May 30, 1845, our an­ces­tors were of­fered no as­sis­tance by the colo­nial gov­ern­ment of Great Britain or the sug­ar plan­ta­tion own­ers to pre­serve their re­li­gious tra­di­tions and cul­tur­al prac­tices. In fact, every ef­fort was made to have them aban­don Hin­duism, the re­li­gion most prac­tised, and to em­brace re­li­gious be­liefs that were alien to them.

The Hin­dus were spe­cial­ly tar­get­ed by the Cana­di­an Pres­by­ter­ian Church which poured in re­sources and man­pow­er from Cana­da for its mass con­ver­sion ex­er­cise. Some his­to­ri­ans claim that ed­u­ca­tion, through the es­tab­lish­ment of schools, was made avail­able to the Hin­dus by the Cana­di­an mis­sion­ar­ies. But most of us who un­der­went this ex­pe­ri­ence will tes­ti­fy that con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty was the ex­pec­ta­tion of the mis­sion­ary and in many cas­es where teach­ing jobs were of­fered, the re­cip­i­ent had ei­ther to con­vert or pay the price, which was usu­al­ly unashamed dis­crim­i­na­tion. Even to­day, a num­ber of so-called his­to­ri­ans con­tin­ue to spread bo­gus In­di­an his­to­ry to strength­en their con­ver­sion ef­forts which have now to­tal­ly col­lapsed.

The strength of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty in Trinidad, In­dia and else­where is the Brah­min pun­dits who are versed in the phi­los­o­phy and rit­u­als of Hin­duism. With­out these pun­dits Hin­duism would have col­lapsed long ago in Trinidad as it did in Grena­da, Mar­tinique, St Lu­cia and Ja­maica.

Now every ef­fort is be­ing made by a hand­ful of "church"-con­nect­ed his­to­ri­ans to un­der­mine Hin­duism by at­tack­ing the pun­dits who came from the Brah­min class. One his­to­ri­an and his young acolyte have writ­ten that no Brah­mins came to Trinidad, al­though all the ship's records in­di­cate that more than 12 per cent of in­den­tured labour­ers were of this class of peo­ple. These records are avail­able and some are held at the Ma­ha Sab­ha.

Hang­ing on my of­fice wall is a ta­ble of the "Cast of im­mi­grants in­tro­duced dur­ing the 1879-1880 sea­son." This is a pub­lic doc­u­ment but "church" his­to­ri­ans in T&T pre­fer not to make these cor­rect fig­ures avail­able to stu­dents. Source of the in­for­ma­tion is the sur­geon ma­jor, DWD Comins. This chart records that 175 Brah­mins came to Trinidad dur­ing the 12-month pe­ri­od. Im­mi­gra­tion last­ed from 1845 to 1917, a pe­ri­od of 72 years.

An­oth­er bo­gus the­o­ry that has now been to­tal­ly dis­cred­it­ed by mod­ern-day In­di­an re­searchers and his­to­ri­ans is the "Aryan in­va­sion the­o­ry." In or­der to fur­ther fa­cil­i­tate con­ver­sion on the sub-con­ti­nent of In­dia they in­vent­ed this the­o­ry to di­vide In­dia in­to the "light-skinned" north and the "dark-skinned" south.

Al­though now ful­ly dis­cred­it­ed in the world of his­to­ry, one Chris­t­ian his­to­ri­an in Trinidad is still teach­ing this his­tor­i­cal lie. Fran­cois Gau­ti­er, writ­ing in his book The Won­der That Is In­dia, cap­tures the ma­nip­u­la­tion of his­to­ry in the chap­ter ti­tled The Mis­sion­ar­ies. He writes:

"The mis­sion­ar­ies ar­rived in In­dia on the heels of the British. As ex­plained in the first chap­ter, their first prey were the so-called Adi­va­sis, trib­al peo­ple, whom they prompt­ly pro­ceed­ed to name as the 'orig­i­nal' in­hab­i­tants of In­dia colonised by the bad Brah­mins dur­ing the myth­i­cal Aryan in­va­sion. Was it not right, they said, to free them from the grip of their mas­ters who had en­slaved them both so­cial­ly and re­li­gious­ly?

"Thus they set the Adi­va­sis against the main­stream of Hin­du so­ci­ety and sowed the seeds of an ex­plo­sive con­flict which is ready to blow up to­day, par­tic­u­lar­ly in UP (Ut­tar Pradesh) where the caste con­flict has been cre­at­ed by Mu­layam Singh, the butch­er of Ay­o­d­hya, and Kan­shi Ram.

"The mis­sion­ar­ies in In­dia were al­ways sup­port­ers of colo­nial­ism; they en­cour­aged it and their whole struc­ture was based on 'the good West­ern civilised world be­ing brought to the pa­gans.' In the words of Charles Grant (1746-1823), chair­man of the East In­dia Com­pa­ny, 'We can­not avoid recog­nis­ing in the peo­ple of Hin­dus­tan, a race of men lam­en­ta­bly de­gen­er­ate and base...gov­erned by malev­o­lent and li­cen­tious pas­sions...and sunk in mis­ery by their vices.'

"Claudius Buchanan, a chap­lain at­tached to the East In­dia Com­pa­ny, went even fur­ther: '...Nei­ther truth, nor hon­esty, ho­n­our, grat­i­tude, nor char­i­ty, is to be found in the breast of a Hin­du!' What a com­ment about a na­tion that gave the world the Vedas and the Up­an­ishads, at a time when Eu­ro­peans were still for­ni­cat­ing in their caves!

"Lord Hast­ings, Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al of In­dia from 1813, could not agree more; he writes in his di­ary 'near­ly lim­it­ed to mere an­i­mal func­tions...with no high­er in­tel­lect than a dog or an ele­phant, or a mon­key...'"

In his His­to­ry of Hin­du-Chris­t­ian En­coun­ters (AD304-1996), Si­ta Ram Goel writes:

"Je­sus Christ has been the stock-in-trade of Chris­t­ian mis­sions down the ages. He has been packed in all shapes and sizes de­pend­ing up­on the gulli­bil­i­ty of the clients to be duped. And he has been rammed down the throats of those who have re­fused to be hood­winked by the hoax.

"As one sur­veys the his­to­ry of Chris­t­ian mis­sions in lands where this hoax has been hawked or im­posed, one comes across no end of force and fraud em­ployed in its ser­vice by a va­ri­ety of sol­diers and sales­men, most of whom are pre­sent­ed as saints."

• Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored