It's too bad that youtube didn't exist in the 1960s when all of the hippies thought that Hinduism was just another peaceful, enlightened religion:
Huh, I forgot to mention that she was also burned alive, which would explain why the police "found no evidence of rape." I could be wrong, but semen and fire don't tend to mix all that well.
It's true that not all Hindus are like this, but you can learn a lot about a religion based on how its true believers behave.
BHUBANESWAR: The brutal rape and murder of a Hindu orphan by Hindu fanatics, who thought she was Christian because she was being sheltered by them, has added to the Orissa government's embarrassment. It is already under fire for failing to contain the saffron mob's rampage in the state.
Huh, I forgot to mention that she was also burned alive, which would explain why the police "found no evidence of rape." I could be wrong, but semen and fire don't tend to mix all that well.
It's true that not all Hindus are like this, but you can learn a lot about a religion based on how its true believers behave.
Pagans, eh?
Don't forget your leggings! ;)
By the way, how common are events like this in Hindu-dominated portions of India?
They're actually not that common across India, which is predominantly Hindu pretty much all over the country. They happen primarily in just a few states, whose names I can't remember off of the top of my head. I know one of them you can find by searching for its Communist-lead government and "anti-forced conversion law." That law is used by their government as a means to beat down Christian missionaries, even though it's generally the Hindus who are beating down everyone else.
We should invade BHUBANESWAR!
For the children!!
(They do have oil or something, right?)
Bhubaneshwar is the capital of Orissa, we lived about three hours north of there on the coast - depending on road condition. It's a fairly ancient city. There's been a bunch of recent anti-Christian persecutions that we were alerted to early this year. Just one tid-bit from an email:
On the 4th the team visited Barakhama via Phiringia and Baliguda. Most of the information as per above was realized as fact. Where ever we moved we found heap of ashes and broken walls. Most of the houses are completely broken, all the houses were looted and what ever were not able to carry they burned. Since this was already harvest the entire paddy and other grains were burned. The churches and Mission offices were severely damaged. Most of the walls and roofs were broken, church altars were broken, equipments were burned. Many people were still living in the forest with the fear of further persecution.
Did you live there because of missionary work or for another reason? India seems to be one of the last real battlegrounds for the church, but I've heard that we're winning pretty handily there. Our success there will be one of the signs of the end times approaching, since the age of the Jews cannot return until "the full number of the Gentiles has come in."
You said: "but you can learn a lot about a religion based on how its true believers behave."
Unfortunately, you seem to have put an "a" there before "Religion", and left off all the other forms of mental organisation that are prone to generating fanatics.
I'm an ordained minister. A lot of us study this stuff.
Although there is certainly a great deal of individual variation among humans, the extremes of human moral behaviour are pretty much the same as the physical limitations of the organism. If some good or evil act is physically possible, somebody has done it, and someone will most likely do it in the future.
The amoral behaviour you think may let you "learn a lot" about hinduism is not acceptable to most hindus nor is it condoned by the religious authorities and scriptures of mainstream hinduism. That sort of behaviour has been practiced by members of every other religion and also by extremist anti-religious movements throughout history, and thus it is illogical in the extreme to attempt to make any exclusive connection between amoral fanaticism and hinduism.
In reality, when individual humans give up their own moral compass and submit to the mob, regardless of whether their chosen mob is religiously, politically, or ethnically constituted, they commit a great evil. George Washington warned us about this in regards to political parties, and successfully predicted the destruction of American "free thinking individualism" that we have come to see exemplified by the mainstream of American politics today, and Thomas Jefferson warned us about the same sort of problems in religion. Neither man was the first to do so, of course.
Groupthink is inherently evil, and leads to the sort of "Lord of the Flies" culture that extremists of every flavor love, where humans willingly give up the attributes that can make us something more than machines for converting hydrocarbons.
The problem with this argument is that the fanatics are often the true believers, who study every last nuance of their religion. For example, Muslims who insist that Islam is not a war-like religion at heart ignore the fact that it has a rich, scripture-based history of conducting brutal religious wars against other religions to force them into submission to spread Islam.
I'm curious as to what teachings, that are respected as core teachings in Hinduism, create a buffer against this behavior. Christianity has Luke 9:50-56, which shows the founder of the Church Himself openly condemning such behavior, and given its status as a revealed religion, there is no practical ground for disagreement; a true believer Christian would actually have to take up the sword to stop someone from using violence to spread Christianity.
It's true that this behavior has been present in all religions, but there is a variable that is different in each religion: "what does the religion do to stop this?" For Islam, for example, it's not only nothing, but it promotes it in its scripture. For Christianity, a church has to actually ignore the revealed Word of God to condone it, and such behavior can bring terrible judgment on the church. For Hinduism, in absence of evidence to the contrary, I'm not sure if there really are strong, respected, universally applicable (within the context of Hindu scripture) teachings that create a buffer against this behavior. It's important to gauge just what the religion does to separate people who behave this way from the rest of the body of believers.
We were Missionaries. My dad was the principal of a school for orphan boys that taught trades and the means to make a living. His Masters was in Vocational Education, and also he's an ordained minister with a PhD degree in Theology from Berkeley Baptist Divinity School.
The school was started in 1906, but Baptists had been there since William Carey arrived in Calcutta in 1793 (he stopped in our town on his way), while English merchants first settled there in 1633, and the Dutch, Danish, and French followed in the 17th century. Currently the total membership of Baptists in Orissa is about 500,000 with approximately 3,500 churches.
Christians probably number behind Muslims who are still frequent in the area with Hindus being the majority. Jains are also fairly common. The region was a major center of Buddhism from the beginnings of that religion, continuing into the 15th Century. There are a lot of relics: stupas, monasteries, and carved images scattered around the former region of Kalinga.
The school was originally started because some British Christians were put-out that orphan children were being sacrificed in the jungle at a location some miles distant, and the went and rescued them - and then were stuck with the problem of, "What do we do now?" So they decided they kids needed schooling and to learn a trade so they could make their way in the otherwise difficult Hindu world. There was a companion Girls School that taught female-oriented trades about a half-mile from us.
Suttee (female self-immolation) was still a common enough event when we were there in the late 60's - but not a forced one as has been characterized. It's simply that an aged Hindu widow of poor caste has few means of self-sustenance. In the old days of the Jagganath Cart procession they would throw themselves underneath the giant wheels, in modern times a train often does the job. Orphans have similar, SOL prospects. Still it would appear that they have a local tradition about burning stuff and that includes people.
I did my Anthro thesis on the Jagganatha Temple, at Puri and the historical/structural traditions, economics, and cultural strengths of the pilgrimage route that centers on the temple nexus.
Lately the Communists have had a fairly strong following in the region, although telling the differences between various political parties, factions, and sub-parties in India can be fairly hair-splittingly difficult and murky.