History

         Christian conflict in Europe

Going back to medieval Europe in the 16^th CE, the Entire Europe was fighting over the belief system within Christianity. Before the Treaty of “Peace of Augsburg” Roman Catholics envied Protestants and vice versa, nobody was ready to accept the belief system of others. People were being hanged or killed for not following certain orders within Christianity. It led to the “Peace of Augsburg” which allowed different princes within the Roman Catholic Empire to have a state Christian denomination. It was either Roman Catholicism or Lutheranism (Protestants). This treaty was not enough to stop the conflict of belief systems, again the matter got precipitated in 1618 CE which came with the “Thirty Years War” in Europe just because people within Christianity wanted to believe their choice of beliefs, it’s childish to see when we look at Bharat, where people from ancient times are allowed to follow, criticize, not follow any of the belief systems to the current date. All these European or Western Nations try to preach the Secularism and Religious freedom index to Bharat when their own history and present are mired with “racism”, and “communalism” generated and born within their own country and inflicted onto others while they were looting countries in the name of “Civilizing the natives”.

       The racism origin and the division of Race and Religion

When this war of beliefs was over in 1648 CE, there was relative peace established in Europe and this was the exact time when different nation states which were the by-product of the “treaty of Westphalia 1648” started sending missions to other countries in search of more resources and civilizing (Christianising) the natives since in Christianity there is a concept of soul vs soulless. The one who is human is soulful and if he is not a Christian he needs to be brought into the folds of Christianity or else he will be damned as uncivilized.  So, the very communal idea of Christian vs non-Christian, Muslim vs non-Muslim, and so on was the fount from Christianity, and this idea was propagated in European colonies during the Colonisation period and customized to every colony. Fault lines were created and if already present, then it was widened to meet the colonial objectives of divide and rule.

Even the racism that the entire West and Europe are engulfed into, which discriminates on the basis of skin color and ethnicity, especially towards South Asians also finds its origin in the Biblical Theory of Race and the Myth of Ham which is accepted as veritable history in Christianity even to this date.

According to the Bible, there was a great flood in ancient times, after which the descendants of Noah repopulated the earth. Noah’s three sons were Ham, Shem, and Japheth. On one occasion, Ham laughed at Noah’s nudity, who felt insulted and cursed the descendants of Ham that they must forever live in servitude to the descendants of the other two sons. When European colonialists captured various parts of the world, their missionaries and merchants encountered unfamiliar non-Western cultures. In most accounts, the “Dark-skinned peoples” were identified as the descendants of Ham. Any culture that doesn’t fit or isn’t appropriated according to Christianity was labeled as Hamitic, barbaric, uncivilized, immoral, cunningly intelligent, and therefore deserving of servitude.

               Over the course of history, the colonial era missionaries propagated this and it resulted in the establishment of race theory and racism of Black vs White, White vs Asian, and so on. The entire slave trade during the colonial era which was the bedrock of the European economy was supported by such Biblical dogmas, between 1517 and 1840, it is estimated that 2 Cr (20 million) Africans (black) were captured, transported to the Americas, and enslaved in a manner that can only be considered a holocaust. It is only the Christian nations, especially the nations that have a history of Colonisation i.e., the U.S.A, Europe, etc. that racism is still rampant in these countries, irrespective of what they say or preach, but on the ground, such racism theory is well accepted by a certain section of people who occupy positions in the system. Non-European or non-Christian countries don’t have this disease of racism since it has not originated and has been practiced anywhere else.

Christianity fundamentals recognized only three categories—Christians, infidels, and idolaters. Columbus initially struggled to place the natives of the Americas in any of the three, and, therefore assumed that they were not people from a ‘wrong’ or ‘false’ religion, but were simply without religion. The absence of religion was perceived as the absence of the soul as a condition precedent for a human to establish a connection with the divine. Hence, colored native people were seen as ‘non-souls’, and racism was generated. Therefore, the European Christian colonizer was ‘White’ and the native peoples were ‘Black’ (or of color), the white Christian became the one with a soul, and therefore fully human, while the Black native was without a soul, and therefore not fully human, or simply non-human. Now Blacks can be subjected to any inhuman behavior at the hands of white, it could range from treating them as slaves or raping or killing them. Which we can see often happen in America.

Universal Process of Subjugation

         Modus Operandi of Christian European Colonialists

               The European colonial project, which started with the Columbus expedition in 1492, did indeed have a clear Christian inspiration that gave them a sense of superiority over the rest of nature, including non-Christian idolatrous and nature-worshipping indigenous peoples (Native Americans). This sense of anthropological superiority created a race consciousness that spawned the global imperial exercise to civilize the soulless heathen natives by replacing the entirety of their cultures with the Europeans. The cumulative effect was a colonial remapping of geographies and a distinctly religion-inspired, race-driven reallocation of labor and resources, culminating in the creation of the modern economy as well as its political institutions.

These Christian European colonizers first garbed as traders and visited countries and then in the name of trade gained some advantages. As contact and trade increased between the two groups, the native gradually saw his land being lost to the Europeans to cover the debts incurred in the course of trade, and as the colonizer’s greed for native land increased, conversion to Christianity did too. At the very least, serious efforts were invested by Christian European missionaries to map local traditions and deities into Christianity to reconcile the two and gradually ease the natives into the colonizer’s religion. This can be seen in Africa, America, Bharat (India), etc. Finally, the goal would be the integration of the native peoples into European culture and the complete elimination of native culture.

This was achieved through several means, one of which was to massacre vast numbers of the community, and to ensure that the rest of the community fell in line, they were forced onto reservations with minimal resources. In some cases, diseases, such as smallpox and the plague, which were mainly the disease found their origin in Europe and spread to colonies as well. In America we see the local or native people were completely wiped out and replaced by Colonial White Europeans, In Bharat, the same model was working to replace the local culture and people but the resistance that was shown by the Bhartiya people was exemplary. They have been fighting a cultural war for more than 1000 years and the biggest damage was only done by European colonizers yet they survived and thrived in Bharat.

There are recorded instances of ‘voluntary conversion’ by indigenous peoples when the threat of confrontation with the colonizer loomed largely. In the hope of relieving the violence and harassment, people converted to the European way and faith which was Christianity and just about 10 percent of the native population survived European diseases, massacres, displacement, and assimilation. It is sometimes argued that the little that survives of indigenous tradition is proof of the colonizer’s accommodative nature, when, on the contrary, it is proof of the determination of the community to keep its identity alive.

Building of Christian Colonial Mindset

         As described above, the Christian European colonizers first studied local culture, language, ethics, etc. Then they tried to appropriate the local culture and language to Christianity. All the things that were not being appropriated were labeled as myths, dogmas, and superstitions. A classic example is the Aryan Invasion Theory in Bharat. When Britishers first arrived and studied Bharat, they couldn’t believe that there can be a civilization and culture older than Christianity. Hence, they formulated the Aryan Invasion Theory to appropriate the oldest civilization of Bharat as something that originated from Europe. Similarly, all the festivals, practices, and all sorts of local cultures were damned as primitive, immoral, etc. Eventually, everything that was local irrespective of its nature was labeled with all sorts of names and tried to give a European or Christian substitution for that. Eating beef was shown as if it is a sign of a civilized person, whereas in Bharat it is one of the biggest sins that any Hindu can perform in his life. Wild-life, nature was exploited despite the Hindu beliefs of respecting them and using them on a need-to-require basis. Celebrating European festivals was linked to modernity whereas believing in one’s culture and Hinduism was termed a sinful act and cave culture.

A similar thing happened with language and administration. When Christian European colonizers took control of the political sphere, they tried to impose their language onto the uppermost class within the native people. Because they knew if the most influential people from the natives believed that their culture, language, and practices were inferior and that the European lifestyle and language were superior then the entire population would follow suit. Therefore, they first tried to Europeanise or Christianise the upper class in native societies. In America, Bharat, Latin America, etc. The administration was being run in the European Christian way, European languages were given preference, if you spoke your mother tongue, you would be considered immoral, illiterate, and uneducated. This was done to push local people to accept the European Christian way as soon as possible, and then only they would be able to completely Christianise the colonies.

Institutions of native people were destroyed by codifying laws around them, putting regulations, and preventing them from the financial supply that was being given by the local people of Kings. In Bharat, the Gurukul system was thriving even under the Mughals because the Mughals were not as intelligent as the Britishers in terms of converting people by hijacking intellectual institutions. They were more focused on death threats or financial lures for converting people. Knowledge-producing systems were decimated and now they introduced the substitution in the form of the boarding schools or schools as we know today for imparting education and that too was done in European Christian style. They tried all possible sort of ways to convert the local people to bring them under the Christian fold either by hook or crook.

Cure-Christian Colonial Mindset

         When we see many countries like America, Latin America, Australia, and South Africa have mostly vanished from their local culture and people if not all, Bharat is a country that has been surviving brutal attacks in the form of invasion, cultural invasion, conversion, etc. But Bharat has been able to successfully preserve its culture, language, and institutions. But one thing that still needs to be done is the mental colonialism in the minds of our people especially those who have been educated in the English education system in Bharat in the hands of Bhartiya. Today we are reciprocating the same things of the colonial era that Britishers or Europeans were trying to impose on us. Damning one’s own culture, language, festivals, and history. If anyone speaks their native language they are deemed to be illogical, and uneducated whereas if you know nothing and can speak English or any of the European languages. You will be considered a well-educated person.

Similarly when we try to talk about our ancient history of Ramayan, Mahabharat, Puran, Upanishads, etc. We are labeled as primitive, immoral, illogical, and against modernity. From where all this is coming? It is coming from the system that was established by our colonial masters before 1947 and our leaders so far were unable to change this system because they were too busy fighting elections and nobody cares about the mental colonialism that Bharat and its people are still under its grip. In Bharat, if you want to become a peon or want to do a third-grade level job, then you do not need to know English. But if you want to become an Engineer, Doctor IAS, or any class A level person, you don’t have a substitution for English. You cannot choose your language in all these dimensions.

Always feel proud to speak your language, but only when you speak it refined, today Hindi is not Hindi, it’s a mixture of Urdu, English, Arabic, Turkic, etc. First, correct yourself and demand from the government that you want higher education in your own language. Embrace your culture, and festivals and ignore the mentally colonial people. You and only you are the carriers of the oldest and the only surviving civilization in the entire Universe. So, feel proud and lead the new Bharat into the future.