Posted on 12/29/2005 4:24:45 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
The campaign against the alleged harassment of Hindus in Russia by the Orthodox Church and the Mayor of Moscow is getting more intense in Britain.
Ashok Kumar, MP is launching the "Defend Russian Hindus Campaign" at the House of Commons in January.
There was umbrage here when it was learnt that Archbishop Nikon wrote a letter to the Mayor of Moscow urging him not to allow the construction of a Hindu temple in Moscow because according to him, Lord Krishna who is worshipped by the Hindu community was an "evil demon".
"Such untenable words in an age where interfaith harmony is the need of the day are nothing but an attempt to malign and persecute a faith community that teaches respect and freedom for every other faith community, " commented Ramesh Kallidai, Secretary General Hindu Forum of Britain, an umbrella organisation of most community groups in Britain.
The Defend Russian Hindus Campaign, launched by the Hindu Forum of Britain, Hindu Council UK, National Council of Hindu Temples UK, International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Vishwa Hindu Parishad UK, Hindu Council of Australia, Hindu American Foundation and many other worldwide Hindu organisations, aims to build awareness about the alleged persecution and discrimination against Russian Hindus by a corpus of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Mayor of Moscow, despite support from the Central Government.
There are over 100,000 Hindus in Russia. In Moscow alone, there are 5,000 Hindus of Indian origin and over 10,000 Hindus of Russian origin.
Two years ago the Mayor of Russia asked Hindus to vacate their temple in exchange for a piece of land on which they could build a bigger temple. After land was allocated to the Hindu temple, the original temple was demolished. The Russian Orthodox Church orchestrated mass protests against the allocation of land and started a misinformation campaign against Hindus in the media.
On October 30, 2005, after bowing down to pressure from the Orthodox Church, the Mayor of Moscow cancelled the land order and took away the piece of land given for the construction of the Hindu temple. Now, the 15,000 Hindus in Moscow have no place to worship. The consecrated Deities of Radha and Krishna will have no home, say the Hindu leaders.
Kallidai said around the time of India Prime Minister's state visit to Moscow to meet Russian President Putin, Archbishop Nikon, a leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, called the Hindu God, Lord Krishna an "evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God", and "a livid lascivious youth".
"true -- isolated incidents --which doesn't make it less gruesome, but you need to ask yourself: are all Christians all over India mis-treated?"
No, but many are persecuted, the Hindus look down on them. Just because the persecution isnt on the scale of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia does not mean the Hindus are the blameless, faultless golden people that you make them out to be.
"ok, so do YOU think the KKK are paragons of Christianity? I don't and I stand by that statement."
NO, I DONT think the KKK are a Christian group. I never said I did. What does that have to do with anything?
I mentioned nothing of the KKK, I simply informed you that sectretasianman won't be replying anytime soon as he was just ejected like a Iraqi pilot from a MiG-29. And I can't say I miss him, since the only thing he could contribute to the discussion was vicious insults.
I did not mention the kkk, your logic doesnt follow.
"Yes, you are -- you are insulting our Hindu friends by calling them demon-worshippers."
"our"?
What do you consider Kali?
"you can call them pagans (Pagan = follower of a non-Christian belief system), you can call their gods false gods, "
I can call them what I deem to be fitting.
There are no heresies in the Catholic Church -- the Catholic and Orthodox Churchs are no longer in schism, and consider each other Apostolic, hence neither considers the other heretical (though they don't agree on certain matters). Hence, if you consider the Catholic Church heretical, you consider the Orthodox to be the same and those two ARE the Church.
LONDON: Thirty-five years after a fateful clandestine meeting in Moscow between ISKCON founder Swami Prabhupada and a young white Russian who was to receive the dangerously secret gift of a banned Bhagvad Gita, take the name Ananda Shanti Das, and build from scratch a 100,000-strong community of native Krishna bhakts, the Slavonic Hindu may be emerging as the 21st century's most potent symbol of too-successfully spreading the word beyond Indian shores.
A gathering campaign by British parliamentarians is set to tell an astonished world that Russia's Hindus - white, Slav and steadfast in their faith - are living symbols of state oppression in a country counted as one of the world's eight most advanced and industrialised economies.
The campaign in the British parliament, led by UK Indian Labour Party MP Ashok Kumar and spearheaded by the umbrella Hindu Forum of Britain (HFB), will claim that Russian Hindus continue to be denied the right to build a temple and have been left without electricity, heating and water in their freezing makeshift Moscow temple. The campaign is set to unveil a devastating saga spanning nearly four decades in which Russian Hindus are alleged to have been variously vilified by the Soviet state, the Russian Orthodox church, Russian Islamist and Jewish leaders and far-right nationalist politicians such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
The British campaign is to be kickstarted when Yuri Luzhkov, mayor of Moscowand allegedly Slavic Hinduism's most implacable foe, arrives in London early next month.
So far, there has been no official response to the allegations from Luzhkov's office or President Vladimir Putin's government.
But the new campaign, which aims to harness the collective might of British and European political, press and public opinion to recall Moscow to a sense of its human rights obligations, is thought to be dangerously poised to undo Russia's attempts to gain global legitimacy even as it controversially takes over presidency of the G8.
The British campaign, which is bolstered by European and Australian Hindu organisations, comes exactly 25 years after the then deputy KGB chief Semen Tsvigun first exhorted the Soviet Union to recognise and stamp on the three greatest threats to the state - "Western culture, rock and roll and Krishna".
Commentators and academics, including Edwin Bacon of Birmingham University's Centre for Russian and East European Studies, say the Russian campaign against the indigenous spread of Hinduism is part of a " broad line taken by the state certainly since the mid-1990s ... of encouraging 'traditional' religions, especially Russian Orthodoxy, whilst putting in place restrictions on other groups deemed non-traditional".
So great was the Russian sense of threat that a 1994 council of Russian Orthodox bishops warned that "the teachings of the Bhagvad Gita are a false religion" and that "neo-pagan, pseudo-Christian, occultist faiths (such as Hinduism) are a threat to the unity of national consciousness and cultural identity of Russia".
Accordingly, Slavic Hindus were remorselessly persecuted, the HFB's Ramesh Kallidai (Romapada Dasa) told TOI on Friday, and the victimisation included incarceration in prison, forced labour in Siberia, mafia violence, prevention of temple construction, abuse of Lord Krishna as "wicked and malicious" and the Hindu faith as "a satanic obscenity...idolatorous".
The Russian Hindus' only offence, claimed Kallidai, was that they worshipped in the Hindu way, did not eat meat, observed Hindu religious festivals and went to the temple. "The persecution continues today", claimed Kallidai, "and it is time Britain, India and the world does something to stop it".
But still, Russian Hinduism continues stubbornly to grow and flourish, claim community leaders, with 97 registered charities, 22 registered monasteries, 250 so-called 'home groups' that conduct satsang and an astonishing 20,000 free meals served every day in Russia's estimated 100 embattled temples.
If anything, says Kallidai, Slavonic Hinduism may be the new template for a turbo-charged globalised Hinduism with an hitherto-unremarked reach.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1353212,curpg-1.cms
I have to know just what it is YOU are smoking....
The Orthodox & Catholics, are and have been in schism since 1054 AD. Until The Latins remove the filioque, and the other heretical inovations added since the 7th Ecumenical Council, then there will continue to be Schism. If you are aluding to the symbolic removal of the anathems in 1968, well, the Pope can do what he wishes for his own church, but the Ecumenical Patriarch doesn't have the authority to do the same. Those Anethemas were placed by ALL of the Orthodox Patriarchs, and they TOGETHER are the only ones who can remove them. That "dog isn't gonna hunt" as we say in Texas.......(not likely to happen)
I don't believe in perscuting the Hindus. I just don't think they have a right to build a pagan temple in the capital city of Holy Mother Russia, the "Third Rome".....
There is only ONE way. As a Christian, you either believe it or you don't. This country is cursed with too many milk-toast, ecumenical cowards that are not willing to stand up for their faith. If you think my belief is harsh, well, the only reason that the Holy Orthodox Church exists today, is because of people who refused to compromise their faith. People like St.John Chrysostym, or Mark of Ephesus, and the list goes on and on. They didn't hide behind the veil of "ecumeniculism"
I see to have missed a lot of fireworks.
"I just don't think they have a right to build a pagan temple in the capital city of Holy Mother Russia, the "Third Rome"....."
But, I suppose your persecution-complex kicks off if Indians would to prevent Christian churches from being built in Holy Mother India. It isn't a one way street.
"The point is there should not be outcast communities nor religious tenant that permit visiting any sin you wish on a group of outcasts."
You seemed to have missed my point. You said, "2 dalit women are raped daily," as if the upper-castes are responsible. Please provide evidence that they were raped by non-dalit men. Is rape of dalit women by dalit men a fault of upper-castes? Is alcoholism, prostitution, or drug addiction so rampat among the dalit communities a fault of upper-castes too?
And, no I don't think there should be outcast communities, but the reality is that there are. Oh, and even if dalits become Christians, they call themselves 'dalit Christians'. Why do they do that?
The EP has done so, and I think the others bar the Russian Patriarch (and I'm not sure about him), have done the same.
recent converts to ORthodoxy do tend to go over the top.
Actually, I would respect that, if the Indians wish it...however, I am not certain, but I believe Christianity pre-dates Hinduism in India.....
NO...they havent.
I am not a convert. I was born Orthodox.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.