[Cronos]

Maybe if the Catholics in India would stop supporting Communists, they would be more respected by the locals in India.

Catholics in india don't support Communists -- and in most parts of India, the Catholics and Hindus get along and have gotten along very well for centuries. The only violence has now occured due to Baptists in the north east and other protestant missionaries in Orissa who distributed literature portraying Hindu gods as demons.

Catholic priests don't do that -- they'll explain what they believe or show by example.

Most hindus go to Catholic schools, may even attend mass etc. and they all condemn the violence against Christians (against muslims, they'll go "ah,,,hhmmm", but against Christians they condemn quite vociferously).

Why? Because Catholics are integrated in India. The Orissa tragedy is more due to:
1. ethnic rivalries (lower castes v/s tribals)
2. the evils of an affirmative action system that is slowly creeping so that everyone wants a piece of the pie
3. Politics -- political partying cynically using this to gain votes.


Hinduism has a better claim of being the "one true faith' of the Indian people, as it evolved out of various faiths that existed on the subcontinent prior to the invention of Christianity.

Hinduism is a meta-religion or umbrella term that includes a wide variety of beliefs. Many local gods like Bhavani etc. were incorporated into more pan-Indian gods or goddesses, while Shaivites, Vaishnavites can believe different things and you can also include agnostics like Arya Samaj in the Hindu fold

why, in it's most expansive term, you can brand everyone in India as Hindu by culture -- one Catholic priest said "I am Indian by nationality, Hindu by culture and Christian by religion and those three things are mutually exclusive with no issue about me being all of these".

[Clemenza]

Thank you for the most INTELLIGENT and informed post on this thread. I should have pinged you to begin with.

My ex-GF was adamant that ALL true Indians were Hindu by "worldview", but that other faiths introduced "foreign elements" over the years that were incompatible with this worldview. Of course, I did get her to acknowledge that Hinduism itself had adapted outside traditions over the centuries (as is the case with any religion that has "survived").

[swarthyguy]

>>Most hindus go to Catholic schools,

Years ago, I got a funny reaction in Texas to the fact that for a few years I had attended one.

-Your parents let you go?

-My folks used to call ‘em Papists, and wouldn’t even like us to play with them.

Now there’s a rather large Cistercian monastery in Dallas.

[vishal]

Hi,

There are lot of mis-conceptions about the hinduism. As a hindu i respect jesus a lot. Hinduism is not a separate religion you don’t need to convert from christianity to a separate “ism”. Just prey to jesus and don’t point other religions. As hindus we believe in jesus. But the saddest part happening in india is that the current christian communities in india are approaching the uneducated and poor hindu houses and scaring them that their poverties are because of not believing christ. And they are openly argueing and giving public meetings critisizing hinduism every where. The christians in india gets lot of funds from western countries and not even 10% will be really spent to the poor.

We appreciate the help of western countries to indian poor. Indians are poor because of the british rule. British used to rape so many women and moved all the resources during colonial rule. thousands are shot. Still we mix with western countries and respect their beliefs. During mughal rule they muslim kings imposed 3 times tax on hindus and hence some of the hindus got converted to islam.

recently more hindus are being impatient and started attacking these poeple who are converting. But these incidents are very few in years. Convertion is not a problem, any hindu can believe any religion, but that religion is saying that hinduism is wrong. Which is a threat to hinduism.

You don’t need to believe hinduism. Just dont try to understand an english sentense without knowing alplabets.

For Ex: khali— The goddess who hindus believe. No one has actually know that she looks like that. One rushi/yogi/priest has given/assumed and given a picture to her thinking that she might had looked like that based on the understing of some of the hindusitic books.

Gods in diffent forms like monkey god hanuman: It is said in hindu epics that . Millions of years ago humans/daemons worshipped god, impressed him and posessed un-matchable powers like ... Any human should not have powers to kill them. Those daemons used to use those powers to destroy the world and humans. At that time even god also cant do anything as he he has blessed them with those powers. he re-incarnated in a different animal forms to kill those daemons. these again has lot of logics behind them and will be understood only after understanding all those.

Sorry for a long message guys...
blessings...