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India is infested with a large number of these uninvited guests, the Michael Scotts and the Father Ferars. One need hardly emphasise public attitude towards them. They have come to India to save the heathens from damnation. We are to believe that they have come on a mission of mercy.
Let a missionary try to convert a single Muslim in any Islamic country, he is sure to be lynched and murdered immediately by the Muslim mobs even before the state apparatus could confiscate visas and issue orders of expulsion. Can he recruit a convert in any communist country without being caught as an imperialist agent and sent to a labour camp? Are not certain missionaries languishing in prisons in certain South East Asian countries on the charge of subversion? Even Buddhist Burma has barred his entry. One would shudder to think how the Boxers dealt with the missionaries in China. I do not want India to be marred with any such ugly event. Every child knows what reception awaits Christian Missionaries in Bangla Desh and Pakistan. It is desirable that they should not take India for granted. It is time that they should return home. GO they should while the going is good. I want every foreign missionary to reach his home back safely with sweet memories of India. Mahatma Gandhi was categorical - "If you feel that India has a message to give to the world, that India's religions too are true and you come as fellow- helpers and fellow-seekers there is a place for you here. But if you come as preachers of the true gospel to a people who are wandering in darkness, so far as I am concerned, you can have no place". Therefore, Indian Christianity requires to,be immediately de- internationalised.
Christ and his teachings are quite safe and secure in the hands of Indian Christians. They have produced bishops, archbishops and even cardinals. They have even produced abundant literature on Christianity in the vernaculars. The Western Christian countries that have themselves rejected Christianity are keeping it for export to India. The foreign ecclesiastical know how is not at all needed. Therefore, the foreign missionaries must return home, the earlier the better. A foreigner can come to India as a student, a merchant, a visitor, a sportsman or in any capacity except as a ruler or a missionary. In either case he comes to impose. It is this imposition that the Hindus resist. I need not remind you how the Hindus reacted to the activities of Father Ferar. It is not a simple outburst but a writing on the wall.
Author : Shripaty Sastry
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