Swami Dayananda Sarwasti, Natarajan Gopala Iyer, Tamil Nadu, India (15.8.1930-23.09.2015), a Monk of the Hindu Saraswati order of Samyasa, also known as Swamiji, a Teacher of Vedanta.
Founder of Arsha Vidya GuruKulams, a residential school where students live with their gurus as part of an extended family, traditional religious education in the US, RishiKesh, UttaraKhand and Tamil Nadu India.
Swami Dayananda Sarwasti was the spiritual Guru of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was versed in the English language and noted for his knowledge of the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagawat Gita, religious texts and practices of other faiths.
Swamiji believed there were two distinct religious traditions in the world: One tradition does not believe in conversion. A Hindu is born of Hindu parents, so too are the followers of Shintoism, Taoism and many indigenous religious groups all over the world. They are born to be followers of their religions, not given to religious conversion. These traditions are regarded as non-aggressive: physically, economically, verbally, one can be aggressive, but often the worst kind of aggression is cultural and religious.
When you convert somebody, you have to criticise the person’s religion, his worship, his culture; all these hurt. Even when he changes, it hurts. How will he change? He has to disown his parents and their wisdom and their culture. His ancestors and his entire community, you are isolating him, uprooting him and all the uprooted people are emotionally unsettled.
We find some people die for their religion because in their scripture it is told that if your religion is in danger, then you will have to sacrifice your life so that you will also have a better place in paradise. The individual begins to believe that, and he is ready to give up his life. This is indoctrination. So, for their religion’s sake, they have double standards. One who does not believe in their religion is anti-God, as if God has given only their religion for everyone to follow. If he does not follow that, he is an enemy of God, an infidel and deserves to be killed.
God will be pleased that you have proved your faith. For the followers, one set of values and for the non-followers, another set of values. Killing gets a sanction. That is why these are all dangerous religions. All converting religions are dangerous. They have created problems. It is like somebody wanting freedom to destroy me. If I do not give this freedom, I become a ‘fundamentalist’. But if I give them the freedom to destroy me, then I am a ‘liberal’.
Today, we must ask the questions: where are the religions that built the Great Sphinx, Tomb of Queen Nefertiti of Egypt, ancient Roman monuments, the Colosseum, the Pantheon? They no longer exist.
The theologians have to change, but they will not. They believe in indoctrination; there is no use even to make an attempt. They just wait for an appropriate time. The people have to be made aware and proud of their religion; that would take care of this problem; they should be able to say enough is enough.
It is no secret that religious conversions often have socioeconomic roots. A person’s economic situation can be a powerful motivator to convert to a new religion. This is because people are often attracted to religions that offer them a way out of their current situation, whether poverty, oppression, or simply a lack of meaning in their lives.
Poor people are often coerced to convert to Christianity for a better life. Christianity promises its followers that if they follow its teachings, they will be rewarded in the afterlife. This is a powerful message for someone struggling to make ends meet in this life. Christianity also offers a sense of community and support that can be lacking in other religions.
Missionaries are smart, well-trained to play on an individual’s sentiments; they tempt them with money, incentives and other benefits. They begin to enter the heart, they make the most unkindly cut; the missionary tells the person that daily Pooja is wrong, that his altar of prayer is not the altar, he has to alter that.
It is a stab in the heart; innocently, he has given some space for the missionary to enter. That very place becomes a place for attack. He attacks at the heart of the person, his religious core. Missionaries are the most violent people in the world, appearing to do good things in order to commit heinous acts of conversion violence.
