Does CSW stand for racist Christian Supremacy Worldwide?


The bicentennial anniversary of the abolition of slavery was meant to be a time when all sections of British society could come together and celebrate what was a momentous event. It is therefore unfortunate that Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) used this time to pursue its own agenda and renew its vilification of all things Hindu with unprecedented opportunism and fanaticism. On their own website the Chief Executive of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Mervyn Thomas, says:

"As we reflect on events 200 years ago in the UK, this is a critical time to re-examine modern forms of slavery and the slave trade. It is unrealistic to do this without looking at India where millions are enslaved or suffer brutal labour exploitation. Perhaps there is more slavery in India than anywhere else in the world today. The victims of these horrific abuses are, overwhelmingly, the outcast Dalits, whose pleas we can ignore no longer."
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/indian. delegation.visits.europe.to.highlight. slavery.amid.abolition.celebrations/9993.htm

Now before continuing, it is worth pointing out that HHR does not deny the problem of caste discrimination in India and as an organisation which cuts across sectarian, caste and even ethnic boundaries is well aware of the social, political and economic factors that surround the issue. However the important point in this discussion as we shall see is CSW's own interest in the "caste issue" and how organisations like CSW are exploiting the issue for their own agenda and are giving birth to religious tension and disharmony in the peaceful coexistence of the Hindu and Christian communities in India, and now abroad.

While the established churches have made great strides in work with other communities, in both the spiritual level with trying to understand other faiths, and on the practical sphere with urban regeneration programmes in the voluntary sector, CSW has in time honoured anti-Hindu fashion decided to build upon its day of anti-Hindu hate (ironically called Day of Prayer for India) on 25 November 2006 by claiming that India has modern slavery in the form of the caste system, which is directly the fault of Hinduism itself:

"Whole Dalit or tribal communities may embrace another religion and, in so doing, leave behind their place in the Hindu caste system. The role played by Dalits in India performing the most menial and hazardous tasks for little recompense, is supported religiously by the conception that they 'deserve' their lot in society on account of actions in a previous life. The subjugation of Dalits is fundamental to the Hindu social system, and is a key guarantor of the power of the upper castes."
http://www.csw.org.uk/Visits/ article.php?id=9

Hence according to CSW and their most prominent Indian affiliate Joseph D'Souza, this can only be abolished by destroying Hinduism, which in November 2006 in London they called a demonic and evil faith:

"Dalits constitute the lowest sector of the caste system, and number around 180 million in India. They are not allowed to participate in Hindu religious ceremonies and do not regard themselves as Hindus, only as constrained by Hinduism's caste system."
http://www.csw.org.uk/Resources/ Response/article.php?id=106

"For 3,000 years, Indian society has been organised by its fourfold caste system. The Dalits fall below the entire system."
http://www.csw.org.uk/Resources/ Response/article.php?id=82

Why the date of 3000 years? CSW alludes to something on its website enough times without actually saying it. In his book "Dalit Freedom", D'Souza writes on page 33:

"When the Aryans invaded India more than 3,500 years ago, they fought and subdued the native Dravidians and their original inhabitants. To maintain their purity of race, the Aryan invaders created their own social order and divided the community. This was the beginning of the caste system and the inception of social and economic segregation ordered and organised by the Aryan invaders. As time passed, this social order, which became known as the caste system, gained Hindu religious sanction."

Former leader of the violently racist and pro-slavery organisation, the Ku Klux Klan, as well as America's leading national socialist and white supremacist, David Duke is 100 per cent in agreement with D'Souza as can be gleaned by his book "My Awakening", on pages 517 and 518:

"Aryans, or Indo-Europeans (Caucasians) created the great Indian, or Hindu civilization. Aryans swept over the Himalayas to the Indian sub-continent and conquered the aboriginal people … Composed in about 1500 B.C., the Hindu religious texts of the Rig Veda tells the story of the long struggles between the Aryans and the aboriginal people of the Indian subcontinent. Sixteen Aryan states were partitioned by the sixth century A.D., and Brahmanism became the chief religion of India. The conquering race initiated a caste system to preserve their status and their racial identity. The Hindu word for caste is Varna, which directly translated into English, means colour. Today the word is usually associated with occupation or trade; but that is because occupations evolved on the basis of skin colour and ethnicity. The most pale skinned were called the Brahmin. These were the warrior-priest class, the top of the social ladder. The Untouchables (or Pariahs) were the racially mixed in the bottom caste."
http://www2.davidduke.com/ index.php?p=143

No surprise that this Aryan Invasion Myth of pseudo-scientific racism is faithfully copied by Duke's admirers and ideological bedfellows, the British National Party, as seen by this report on Celebrity Big Brother on their website by Clive Potter, president of the party's trade union body Solidarity:

"Miss Shetty herself is a hypocrite who, apart from failing to condemn the racism of her fellow contestants, is a member of a higher caste in her homeland of India. As a member of that country's racial elite (where the paler skin colour is regarded as an indication of that high status and those with darker tones are regarded as inferior) she clearly has social blindness when it comes to the racist nature of Indian society. The caste system itself is a relic of the social system created by Aryan tribes who invaded India in the Second Millennium BC, and who developed the caste system as a form of social control that was effectively racially-based. The lower castes remain ostracised from mainstream Indian society despite recent efforts to afford them some measure of protection and equal opportunity. Intercaste marriage is unofficially forbidden as 160 million people in India are regarded as untouchables, or dalits, due to no other factor than the darkness of their skin. If Miss Shetty had been a member of a lower caste, Indians would have ignored her plight."
http://www.bnp.org.uk/ articles/big_brother.html

Inverting the racial theory, certain Afro-centric writers in America are a mirror image of David Duke's views. Among them is Runoko Rashidi, African-American pseudo-academic, in his views on "Caste and Race in India":

"The White tribes that invaded India and disrupted Black civilization there are known as Aryans. The Aryans were not necessarily superior warriors to the Blacks but they were aggressive, developed sophisticated military technologies and glorified military virtues. After hundreds of years of intense martial conflict the Aryans succeeded in subjugating most of northern India. Throughout the vanquished territories a rigid, caste-segmented social order was established with the masses of conquered Blacks (called Shudras) essentially reduced to slaves to the Whites and imposed upon for service in any capacity required by their White conquerors. This vicious new world order was cold-bloodely racist, with the Whites on top, the mixed races in the middle, and the overwhelming majority of Black people on the very bottom. In fact, the Aryan term varna, denoting one's societal status and used interchangeably with caste, literally means color or complexion and reflects a prevalent racial hierarchy. Truly, India is still a racist country. White supremacist David Duke claimed "that his 1970's visit to India was a turning point in his views on the superiority of the White race." Servitude to Whites became the basis of the lives of the Black people of India for generation after generation after generation. With the passage of time, this brutally harsh, color-oriented, racially-based caste system became the foundation of the religion that is now practiced throughout all India. This is the religion known as Hinduism."
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/caste.html

Just like the views of David Duke and a host of other white supremacists, missionary lobbies and self-appointed Communist scholars who dominate the Indian academia, this Afro-centric view is no less racist and no less insulting towards Hindus. It is not even proper scholarship as it is based on some childish racial fantasy which in any other context would be rightly condemned as tribalistic ethnocentric prejudice of the lowest common racist denominator. Interestingly Dr. Bhimrao Ramjo Ambedkar, who is regarded as the hero of Dalits for fighting against what was in his time horrendous oppression of lower castes, actually rejected that caste had any racial basis in his 1916 book "Castes in India":

"The Negroes and the Whites and the various tribal groups that go by name of American Indians in the United States may be cited as more or less appropriate illustrations in support of this view. But we must not confuse matters, for in India the situation is different. As pointed out before, the peoples of India form a homogeneous whole. The various races of India occupying definite territories have more or less fused into one another and do possess cultural unity, which is the only criterion of a homogeneous population. Given this homogeneity as a basis, Caste becomes a problem altogether new in character and wholly absent in the situation constituted by the mere propinquity of endogamous social or tribal groups. Caste in India means an artificial chopping off of the population into fixed and definite units, each one prevented from fusing into another through the custom of endogamy."
http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/ 01.Caste%20in%20India.htm

In the same work he even doubts that caste system was the creation of those "evil" Brahmans:

"The spread and growth of the Caste system is too gigantic a task to be achieved by the power or cunning of an individual or of a class. Similar in argument is the theory that the Brahmins created the Caste. After what I have said regarding Manu, I need hardly say anything more, except to point out that it is incorrect in thought and malicious in intent. The Brahmins may have been guilty of many things, and I dare say they were, but the imposing of the caste system on the non-Brahmin population was beyond their mettle."

Despite the fact that he is quoted repeatedly by Christian extremist and other organisations as somehow being a follower of the Aryan Invasion Theory and its genesis as being the origin of caste, in his 1948 work "Who Were the Untouchables", he even casts doubt on this most sacred tenet of the hate lobby under review:

"The Dravidians invaded India and conquered the aborigines and made them Untouchables. After Dravidians came the Aryans. The Aryans conquered the Dravidians and made them Shudras. The theory is too mechanical, a mere speculation and too simple to explain a complicated set of facts relating to the origin of the Shudras and the Untouchables."
http://ambedkar.org/ambcd/39A.Untouchables %20who%20were%20they_why%20they% 20became%20PART%20I.htm

Therefore it is not some mythical Hindu fundamentalists but Ambedkar himself in that same work who finally puts the nail in the coffin of caste having racial origins:

"The racial theory of Untouchability not only runs counter to the results of anthropometry, but it also finds very little support from such facts as we know about the ethnology of India. That the people of India were once organized on tribal basis is quite well known, and although the tribes have become castes the tribal organisation still remains intact. Each tribe was divided into clans and the clans were composed of groups of families. Each group of families had a totem which was some object, animate or inanimate. Those who had a common totem formed an exogamous group popularly known as Gotra or Kula. Families having a common gotra were not allowed to intermarry for they were supposed to be descended from the same ancestor having the same blood running in their veins. Having regard to this fact an examination of the distribution of the totems among the different castes and communities should serve as good a test for determining race as anthropometry has been … The racial theory of the origin of Untouchability must, therefore, be abandoned."

It is therefore obvious that in his belief in an Aryan race and its invasion of India, D'Souza's has ideological leanings would be happily welcomed by the followers of David Duke, the BNP, and similar figures, even if his skin melanin content might cause a few issues.

But unfortunately this is only the beginning of a hatefully evil ideology that unites hatred of Hindus with that long-standing tradition of anti-Semitism, not infrequently manifest in the Christian faith itself, the age old hatred of the Jews. In his chapter of "Jesus and Brahmanism", D'Souza makes a sinister connection between the oppression offered by both Hindu and Jewish faiths, on page 97:

"As Jesus demonstrated with the Pharisees and Sadducees, Brahmanism must be countered by all Indians on an ideological basis. Like Jesus, who challenged Pharisaic religion, we should not be afraid to speak out on behalf of justice and truth."

Attacking the "Pharisaic" religion is a thinly veiled attack on Judaism, and has provided Christianity with 2000 years of nutrition in making anti-Semitism an article of faith. Just what this ideological basis is that our Indian hatemonger advocates, becomes clearer when D'Souza speaks admiringly on pages 70 and 71 of V.T. Rajshekar, the so-called advocate for the deprived and poor sections of Indian society, and one who regards Hinduism as Brahmanism and thereby Nazism. Rajshekar is spoken of glowing terms by African supremacist Rashidi, because he takes Afro-centric ideas to explain caste phenomenon in which he sees Hinduism as a tool of Brahmanist white supremacy:

"It is not generally appreciated that Blacks live all over the world, comprising the world's largest oppressed group. That Asia has a large Black population is also not well known. Indian Blacks themselves are not aware of this fact … The Black liberation struggle against white racism, inequality and male domination is an international struggle … The Blacks are also the ancestors of Indian Untouchables (Dalits). That is why the Blacks wherever they are, belong to one single family."
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/dalits.html#bio

But there is no evidence for India's Dalits being a distinct racial group from other Indians, and certainly not of specifically African origin. Are such people even aware that the Aryan Invasion Theory was proposed by German Indologist Max Muller to justify British rule over India's darkie natives? Even more so are they aware that he actually disowned it? Interestingly none of this has any impact on CSW, which despite their much vaunted human rights mission, ignore raw racism and speak very well of Rajshekar in their India Visit Report of July 2005, found at http://www.csw.org.uk/Visits/article.php?id=9 regarding him as an important source of information on the oppression of Dalits by upper caste Hindus:

"Although the delegation was not able to meet any Hindu leaders during its visit, there is a widespread awareness in India that the main grievance of upper caste Hindu nationalists, which underlies much of the persecution faced by Christians, is against the mass embracement by Dalits of Christian faith. This perception is reflected in the media and public discourse, and in the sort of accusations faced by Christian groups and individuals. The argument presented here reflects that which was put forward by a number of Christian and Dalit spokespersons met by the delegation, including in particular Dr John Dayal and Dr V.T. Rajshekar."

Could not or did not? In a country of millions of Hindus they could not even meet one leader? Surely common sense would sense mischief here. Perhaps Rajshekar said all the right things:

"Dr V.T. Rajshekar considered that the Christian population may increase significantly if Dalit Christians are awarded Scheduled Caste status, as the lack thereof is presently a deterrent to conversion, or to publicly announcing this conversion. He suggested further that as Christians are at the forefront of the Dalit liberation movement, and their spokespersons well-educated and articulate, they are perceived by politically influential Hindutva supporters as a political threat, which will be intensified if their hand grows stronger. He accounted for the awareness of this threat as arising from a popular perception that Western Christians rule the world."

But actually it appears that Rajshekar believes another more noxious group rules the world. No theory of pseudo-scientific racism would be complete without mentioning the greatest myths of them all, and in this Rajshekar does not disappoint adherents of that which Israeli scholar Robert Wistricht called "The Longest Hatred". His publication "Dalit Voice" can be found online and the latest editorial of March 2007 does not hide what this guy really thinks:

"Zionism in its bid to shift from USA (after "finishing" USA ) to Asia are is banking upon the support of the "Jews of India". The Jews and "Jews of India" will now together attack Muslims."
http://www.dalitvoice.org/ Templates/march_a2007/editorial.htm

So Rajshekar, the man admired so much by the CSW and its Axis partner the All India Christian Council (AICC) headed by Joseph D'Souza, is the same man who in his online "Dalit Voice" praises Hitler, denies the Holocaust, uses neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial literature as if they were mainstream academic material, and claims that India is ruled by a clique of Zionist Brahmans who are really Jews in disguise:

"Brahmins - whom we have described as the "Jews of India" (V.T. Rajshekar: Brahminism, DSA-2002) - have beaten the Jews in craftiness, deceit and treachery."
http://www.dalitvoice.org/book.htm

"India is ruled by Brahmins who are just 3% of its population. Similarly, America is controlled by its 3% Jews. Both the Jews and Brahmins ethnically belong to the same stock, originated from the same area in Middle East and both have the same genetic characteristics. That is why we called them the "Jews of India"…..

Hence the "Jews of India", who are now in full collaboration with the Jews and their Zionist Israel, are more dangerous than the Jews."
http://www.dalitvoice.org/ Templates/feb2007/articles.htm

All too often his anti-Semitism is very rabid. In one incredible article, Rajshekar claims that Hitler was not anti-Jewish, and in fact had Jewish support:

"The Zionist propaganda is that the Jews needed a homeland of their own to escape from the German Nazi torture led by Hitler during the World War-II. The Nazi "torture" of Jews has become world famous in the name of holocaust.

The Jews have mastered the art of propaganda and murdered truth by capturing the entire media and thus successfully killing Truth with their monopoly media. What then is the Truth? Alan Hart, a British historian and BBC correspondent, in his book, Zionism - The Real Enemy of Jews (2005), says Hitler was not anti-Jew. Rather the Jews fully supported Hitler."
http://www.dalitvoice.org/ Templates/feb2007/reports.htm

He also denies the Holocaust:

"The world knows a lot about the Holocaust, though it is very much exaggerated if not a bundle of lies. But what the world does not know is about the more deadly and the more ancient 3,000-year-old Holocaust created by the "Jews of India" who have kept it a top secret buried under mountains of lies called Gandhian non-violence, justice and truth."
http://www.dalitvoice.org/ Templates/feb2007/articles.htm

In the midst of all this D'Souza has no qualms about talking about the spiritual fascism of Hindus, while Rajshekar habitually calls Hindus and especially Brahmans as Nazis:

"The Hindu Nazi terrorists now led by the RSS often boast about the "Indian nationalism" or "cultural nationalism". They are spending a lot of money and time to rouse this "national patriotism" among Hindus. But is India a "nation"?"

CSW sponsored D'Souza to speak at their Rally of Hate in November 2006, where he called for the destruction of Hinduism and conversion of all Dalits before they were "won over" to Islam.

It is unfortunate that this slander of Hinduism is being done under the guise of human rights. It is no surprise that the CSW have Jonathan Aitkin, an ex-convict, a man who has served time for perjury and perverting the cause of justice, and was recognised by "Private Eye" magazine as a "serial liar", as their 'Honorary President'. Nor is it a surprise that one of their trustees is Sir Andrew Green, head of the hardliner anti-immigrant group Migration Watch.

In propagating that caste is a 3000 year old system with origins in an Aryan invasion of India, a theory itself is under question, Christian Solidarity Worldwide uses the same racist pseudo-science that led to the Holocaust, and the same racial theories used by colonial powers to legitimise the rule by a white European master race with various subhuman layers in between to help them. This has been most poignantly demonstrated in Rwanda and Burundi where caste divisions between Twa, Hutu and Tutsis were not obliterated by their conversion to Christianity, and did not prevent horrendous massacres (including by Christian clergy).

With their sponsorship and elevation of Joseph D'Souza and his anti-Hindu diatribes, also well known for his links to the anti-Semitic and racist demagogue of India, VT Rajshekar, it is ironic that CSW would use the anniversary of an event which is after all to celebrate the emancipation of a group of people enslaved for nothing other than their race and colour of their skin, to not only slander Hindus and Hinduism, but to actually use racist ideas to do so in the first place.

The CSW also seems unable to have some introspection into its own Christian faith, at a time when Church of England leaders admit that their church itself owned black slaves and did not show any need to treat them better, let alone work for their emancipation. Staunch Christians defended slavery of Africans to its last, including the stern Calvinist Boers in South Africa, unflinching largely Baptist southern Americans until losing the civil war in1865 devoutly Roman Catholic Brazil until 1888. Even the abolition of slavery did not end the practice in reality, as colonial powers used various systems of forced labour such as corvee in French Africa and the indentured labour system that took millions from India to work on plantations that were once slaveholding estates. Christian theologians saw no issue with white supremacy until well into the twentieth century. Apartheid had the blessing of the Dutch Reformed Church, and one of its pastors, Daniel François Malan was indeed the leader of the National Party of South Africa which implemented the policy in 1948:

"The difference in colour is merely the physical manifestation of the contrast between two irreconcilable ways of life, between barbarism and civilisation, between heathenism and Christianity, and finally between overwhelming numerical odds on the one hand and insignificant numbers on the other."
(GHL Le May, "The Afrikaners", Blackwell Publishers, 1995, p.208)

Balthazar Johannes Vorster was prime minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1978. In 1942 he was interned for pro-Nazi activities in the extremist Ossewa Brandwag to disrupt the Allied war effort of the Smuts government. He saw his Nazi and racist ideas in theological terms as well:

"We stand for Christian Nationalism which is an ally of National Socialism….In Italy it is called Fascism, in Germany National Socialism, and in South Africa Christian Nationalism."
(GHL Le May, "The Afrikaners", Blackwell Publishers, 1995, p.189)

In fact apartheid was defended by modern American evangelists of note Jimmy Swaggert, one time leading Christian leader in America, but more famous for his addiction to prostitutes, saw apartheid South Africa as defending white Christian civilisation against black Communist barbarism. He was joined in this by Pat Robertson and Ralph Mahoney. Some still continue with defending racism on Christian grounds, notably David Duke:

"From the earliest times that I can remember, I was a believing Christian. My father is a devout Christian who taught me the salvation that Jesus Christ offers and about His lessons for living…..

"My experience of being a renewed Christian had a profound impact not only on my Christian beliefs, but also on my secular ones, for it seemed I saw everything in a fresh light. When a man has confidence in his own beliefs, he is unafraid to joust with contrary opinions. Being 'saved' gave me a sense of security that made me more open to different ideas. When someone has doubts about the underlying validity of his beliefs, he feels threatened by challenges to them. The feeling of being "right with God and the world" gave me freedom to explore challenging ideas. It was only a few months after my baptism that I read Race and Reason, the book that began my intellectual journey toward racial understanding….

"In the early '60s, most churches in the South were still segregated, and even the Catholic Church had segregated parochial schools and separate seating during Mass for Whites and Blacks. Accepting racial differences posed no moral dilemma for organized Christianity for its first two thousand years, but after only 50 years of an egalitarian-dominated media, racial attitudes began to change in the Christian establishment. Ironically, the source of this new "Christian" viewpoint came primarily from people who were, in fact, anti-Christians. At first, Christians were told that recognition of racial differences and segregation was inappropriate. When I graduated from college in the mid-1970s, increasing numbers of churches were maintaining that racism was a "sin." By the 1980s, some churches that had been totally segregated just 20 years earlier even began to consecrate mixed marriages between Whites and Blacks.

"If the new egalitarian version of Christianity is right and racial separation is sinful, then by their logic God would have to be the first one condemned, for He is the one who created the racial differences of mankind. Whether one believes that God used a complex process of lengthy evolution or a simple act of immediate creation to make us, it is obvious that the different races exist and are geographically separated. If racial integrity is against the laws of God, why did he establish the races, geographically separate them, and give them distinct characteristics and qualities? Is God supposed to have made some big mistake that man in his conceit is now to rectify through integration and racial mixing?"

Even slavery is not explicitly condemned in his faith:

The New Testament repeatedly recognizes distinctions between men and women, Jews and Greeks, and servants (slaves) and freemen. In fact, although it may shock some who do not realize it, the New Testament routinely accepts the institution of slavery and says explicitly that slaveholders can be believing Christians and brethren….

I do not condone slavery or any kind of oppression of people. However, Jesus Christ obviously had no opposition to it, anymore than had God when he told the Israelites that they could keep their slaves (of other tribes) forever. (Leviticus 25:44-46)6 Jesus walked among slavery His entire life, reproaching all kinds of sin, yet He never uttered a word condemning slavery or slave owners.

An excellent example of Christ's attitude toward slavery is found in His encounter with a Roman Centurion and his slave (Luke 7:1-10). The story tells of a Roman Centurion who had a sick slave. He sent word to Jesus asking him to heal the slave, but he also sent word that the Lord need not come to him because he was sure Jesus could heal the slave from any distance. Jesus Christ did not condemn the slaveholder, nor did he instruct the Centurion to set his slave free. He simply healed the slave and praised the slaveholder effusively saying, "I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." (Luke 7:9)1 Passages such as that one suggested to me that the message Christ brought was one of personal salvation, not of liberal social activism.

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond or free, male or female" does not call for racial integration any more than it calls for the elimination of sexual differences or even the end of slavery. The message is very clear and very simple: salvation of Jesus Christ is open to all who believe in him, male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free.
http://www2.davidduke.com/ index.php?p=140

So if we are going down the route of theological competition, CSW, AICC and any other extremist groups can hardly make its case for enlightened Christianity replacing barbaric demonic Hinduism and certainly not blaming Hindus for the racism, apartheid, rank inequality, oppression and colonialism which their own civilisation and theology has itself had plenty of experience of.

European Christian civilisation may have its achievements but also has its very ugly side. Along with the Jews, the Roma or Gypsies were specifically marked out for extermination by the Nazis for their race. Anti-Roma hate is an inescapable facet of the Christian culture of Europe which looked upon these dark-skinned outsiders as undesirable heathens. In its very own form of untouchability, half of Europe's Roma were systematically enslaved in what is now Romania right up unto the mid nineteenth century. The church itself was a massive slave-owner of Roma, just as it was with blacks in the Caribbean, but few know about the enslavement of Balkan Roma communities, or how they were forbidden from speaking Romani, how their women were used as sexual entertainment by landowning boyars, how their men were castrated so as not to threaten the chastity of noblewomen, and how they were fettered with iron necklaces. In medieval times the Church said that the Roma were descended from a sexual encounter between a Roma woman and Satan. Christians believed that a conspiracy of blacksmiths, wizards and women had been organized to attack the Church. Since many Roma were blacksmiths, the conspiracy theory expanded to involve the Romani. Another belief was that Roma forged the nails used in Christ's crucifixion. The Christian inquisition against Witches during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance was also directed against the Roma, who were seized and imprisoned in witches' prisons, often without even recording their names. From 1941 to 1945, in the Nazi ally state of Croatia, Franciscan monks such as Father Simic of Knin took an active part in the massacre of Jews, Orthodox Serbs, and 26,000 Roma. Catholic clergy were prominent in the Ushtashe regime of Anton Pavelic, who was blessed in his endeavours of collaborating with Hitler by Archbishop Stepinac, the very representative of Pope Pius XII. In the Nazi ally state of Slovakia, Roma were sent to the death camps under the full approval of Monsignor Jozef Tiso, another Christian clergyman. As recently as January 2007, Tiso was praised for his rule by Archbishop Jan Sokol of Bratislava . In Poland, as in elsewhere in post-Communist Europe, Roma face the daily attacks of gangs of Nazi skinheads, with the authorities unwilling to act or actively helping the racist elements. Eva Sobotka conducted field research in Poland in June and July 2001 for the European Roma Rights Centre, and made some unsettling discoveries about untouchability in one of the most religiously observant Christian nations of Europe:

According to representatives of the non-governmental organisation Never Again, some posts in the local administration are presently occupied by members of extremist right wing organisations. According to Never Again, anti-Romani sentiments are a part of the wider xenophobia and racist propaganda of extreme rightist organisations. Officials in the Catholic Church - a very powerful institution in Poland - also reinforce antipathy towards Roma. Several priests have reportedly stated during mass that "God will never come to such a lost people as the Gypsies." In Krakow, it was reported that several church caretakers have chased Romanian Roma out of the church in order to prevent them from begging in the vicinity of the church.
http://www.errc.org/cikk.php?cikk=1286

None of this, the blatant and undisguised untouchability suffered by Roma in Eastern Europe was even raised as these supposedly democratic countries entered the EU, and concerns were raised about the xenophobia towards migrants to Britain, who were not exactly tolerant of other races themselves. Meanwhile in the EU parliament at Strasbourg in January 2007, a group of Fascist and National Socialist forces allied together to form a caucus known as "Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty" and includes Front National (France), Vlaams Belang (Belgium), Freedom party (Austria), Social Alternative (Italy), and of course the extremely anti-Roma parties of eastern Europe known as Greater Romania and Bulgaria's National Union Attack. A major glue in this axis was explained by the Front National's Bruno Gollnisch:

"properly defend Christian values, the family and European civilisation"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/ 11/weuright11.xml

The enclosing vice grip on Hindus here is interesting. On the one hand CSW uses human rights to propagate the notion that Hinduism is just 'one big spiritual fascism', with particular "racism" towards Dalits. But the irony is that Roma are descendants of slaves and prisoners of war deported centuries ago from India itself and still retain aspects of Hindu culture as well as their Romani language which is striking in its resemblance to Hindi. These Roma now fall foul of not just skinheads and general racist attitudes, but "Christian values" promoted by respectable suit and tie politicians in the European Parliament itself. Untouchability is now sanctified at the highest machinations of the EU superstate.

So with this continuing treatment of Roma as the unwanted untouchables of Europe, one has to admit rather reluctantly and with deep sadness that the issue raised by CSW is not an innocent one of helping Dalits, but finding easy pickings among poverty stricken people in the Third World to use as a stick to beat Hindu culture without even trying to understand it, and above all get as many converted as possible as church attendance declines in Britain.

Modern Europe is therefore not the enlightened place one would think as under the veneer of democratic slogans, lays the sinister underbelly. Pagans and followers of indigenous European religions are yet another group that is are also being targeted. As recently as October 2006, British pagans were attacked by Christian extremists while celebrating a sacred festival at Glastonbury. In Greece the celebration and worship of the ancient religion of Zeus and Apollo is actually illegal, even in private. Yet here we have the Christian right wing missionary lobby lecturing to Hindus about tolerance.

Returning to India, while British rule and the various empires preceding it left caste largely untouched, the years since independence have seen some incredible strides towards social progress. India has had Jagjivan Ram as Prime Minister, RK Narayan as President, Mayawati as Chief Minister of the largest state in India, Uttar Pradesh and Bangru Laxman as President of one of the major political parties, BJP. All come from what are deemed scheduled castes and are therefore under CSW's own terminology, Dalits. If CSW and others can consign racism, anti-Semitism and slavery as part of the Christian past in the belief that it is now all in the past, should not the same yardstick apply to Hindus?

Unfortunately this assortment of Christian fundamentalists, Hindu-haters, black and white supremacists, racists and neo-Nazi ideological sympathisers are supported by 13 British MPs from all three major parties. HHR call upon of these elected representatives of the people to re-examine their commitment to this extremist organisation. It asks everyone to look behind the thin veil of this so-called human rights group. Ask yourself one simple question. Are they are really concerned about Dalits? Or is it just another demographic means of making up declining church numbers in western countries, and refusing to tackle the very real racism and segregation that exists in Christian communities by flinging mud at another community? And to cap it all just what is a fanatical intolerant body like CSW, a far right Christian lobby 'H8 Machine' which has shown 'No Remorse' in its actions, doing with a privileged position to influence the parliament of what we are all told is a supposedly tolerant country that respects all faiths and ethnic backgrounds?

It is therefore fitting to end with the words of Dr. Ambedkar from his 1916 "Castes in India":

Preaching did not make the caste system neither will it unmake it."