Vindicated by Time-The Niyogi Committee Report on Christian Missionary Activities

It was the summer of 1982. VOICE OF INDIA had hardly started its programme of publications. One fine morning an aged and visibly ailing sannyasi dropped in at my office in New Delhi. He had travelled all the way from some place (I forget the name) in Andhra Pradesh. Someone had given him a copy of my booklet, Hindu Society Under Siege, and having read the chapter. Residue of Christianism', he had concluded that I was the guy he had been looking for. He introduced himself as Baba Madhavdas and placed on my table printed copies of a summary of the Niyogi Committee Report in English and Hindi, published by him. Before I could ask him to take a seat, he shot a question at me, "You must have read the full Report? What do you think of it?"

I felt small and confessed that although I had seen the full Report soon after it was published, I had not read it even cursorily. His face fell. I had disappointed him. He brightened only when I told him the story of how I had missed reading the full Report till that time, and promised to read it as soon as I could lay my hands on it from a Government shop or some library. He told me that it was no more available in the Government shops because Christian missionaries had bought all available copies and destroyed them. Even in libraries, it was rarely available because the same missionaries had seen to it that copies were removed, or borrowed and not returned.

Hindus from early seventeenth century Pandits of Tamil Nadu to Arun Shourie in the closing years of the twentieth, have spent no end of ink and breath to demolish the dogma of Christianity and denounce missionary methods. But it has hardly made any difference to the arrogance of Christian theologians and aggressiveness of Christian missionaries. That is because the dogma was never meant for discussion. It is an axiom of logic that that which has not been proved cannot and need not be disproved. Who has ever proved that the nondescript Jew who is supposed to have been crucified by a Roman governor of Judaea in 33 AD atoned for the sins of all humans for all time to come? Who has ever proved that those who accept that man as the only saviour will ascend to a heaven of everlasting bliss, and those who do not will burn for ever in the blazing fire of hell? Nor can the proclamation or the promise or the threat be disproved. High-sounding theological blah blah notwithstanding, the fact remains that the dogma is no more than a subterfuge for forging and wielding an organizational weapon for mounting unprovoked aggression against other people. It is high time for Hindus to dismiss the dogma of Christianity with the contempt it deserves, and pay attention to the Christian missionary apparatus planted in their midst.

**Contents and Sample Pages**