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" I apologise for the ones that you have met who are less than they should be."

They are far less then they should be. There have been cases where people have accepted Jesus as their God but only in a manner as they would accept any other God in their multitudinous pantheon. This ecumenical behaviour is absolutely abhorred by the radicalized preachers. There have been instances when the preachers have broken into homes of neo-converts and destroyed their "blasphemous" Hindu idols which those people worshiped alongside Jesus (since old habits die hard).

Tell me would you call that an excercise in freedom of speech or conscience? Do only Christians Missionaries have (or should have) the divine mandate to arbitrate over an individual's conscience? And who, if not the state, would protect such people whose religious/spiritual conscience is being dictated to them by some hate-filled foreign preacher.

"Hate-filled", because the very act of breaking the idols, which are held in reverence by a large population is itself an act of deliberate provocation. Tell me do you condone or condemn such behaviour?

If in the name of religion, this is what you intend to sell (through threat/intimidation) then India isn't the right place for you.

If religion is about an individual's own conscience and his/her personal/private interaction with God then one needs only a teacher and not a preacher. A preacher is one who intends to drag you like an overbearing nanny, over the path he "thinks" is the true path of sprituality. An individual needs to discover his/her own path by himself........ as said by Swami Vivekanananda.

I wish I had time to really get into some of these discussions. Sigh.

What most people accept as Christianity is quite narrow; ONLY Jesus Christ, ONLY the Bible, ONLY certain names of God. Hinduism is a broad path. The narrow exclusivity that is currently accepted as Christianity is foreign to the Vedic path. One great Hindu teacher said a few decades ago to worship Jesus and Krishna together, and I know many people who do just that. I'm not afraid to read the Bible, why are people who read the Bible afraid to read the Bhagavad Gita? Especially since one can find the same truth in many places in both, just couched in different language or examples.

Fanaticism is the enemy of freedom, and without freedom, there can be no love, only blind fanaticism.

Swami Vivekananda is right, of course.

No one will be "saved" unless God calls him to that path. And if God should call he certainly doesn't need a missionary to help him save anyone.

God does what he will. He is that that he is. 'Christianity' should learn, not teach. Its arrogance can do nothing for India but divide and cause chaos.

If a person truly accepts Jesus as God, then it must be to the exclusion of all others because Jesus Himself said He is the only way to God. To include Jesus as one among many is to reject what Jesus says about Himself.

I do not agree that a missionary has the right to enter a convert's home and destroy the idols. That is private property. A true convert would destroy the idol on his own volition. I also would say that a person grows in their faith and knowledge of Jesus so that they may accept Jesus's Lordship one day but require some time before realizing they must destroy the idols they have.

I do not condone a foreign missionary breaking the idols belonging to someone else. I condemn such behavior.

Christian missionaries do not have, should not have and never have had, although some have wrongly thought they did, a divine mandate to arbitrate over a person's conscience. That is the province of God alone and He jealously holds that responsibility to Himself.

A preacher is one who intends to drag you like an overbearing nanny, over the path he "thinks" is the true path of sprituality. I disagree with this definition of a preacher. A preacher is a person who exposes the Word of God to a congregation. It is a very high calling. To be sure, a preacher is just a human and capable of error. That is why each individual must search the Scripture for himself and see if the teaching conforms to God's Holy Revelation. But a preacher is to help point the way to what the Scripture says. He has a responsibility to be correct. God holds him in strict accountability for leading others astray.

The discovery of the path is not a matter of one's own conscience. It is a work of God's Holy Spirit.