Sign o' the Times

On 23rd September, 1932, Pritilata Waddedar led a bomb attack with 10 men on the Pahartali European Club in Chittagong, Bengal. The raid was successful but she was unable to escape and was trapped by the police. She consumed potassium cyanide as her next best option. The target, the European Pahartali Club, was chosen because it bore this offensive sign at its entrance:

"Dogs and Indians not allowed"

Seventy six years later, I was in Pune for some work this week and I came across this sign outside a posh residential complex:

The Missionary Position

The Church is often accused of funding missions to convert people to Christianity. It is no secret that funds are openly made available for various proselytizing programs. But this isn't new news to anyone familiar with history. The Great Commission has been going on since the Roman Empire thorough the middle ages. After Islam came into the picture in the 7th Century it was but, only a matter of time before the Crusades began. These bloody religious wars changed the face of human society forever. Crusaders, greedy for power, masked themselves as holy warriors spreading the word of their respective Gods. Though the 13th century marked a calendared end to the Crusades, its consequences are felt even in the contemporary world. One could easily make the case that the Crusades are still going on.

Once America was discovered, the Church found a new zeal to pursue its proselytizing agenda. European powers such as Spain, France and Portugal frequently justified their Colonial efforts as spreading the message of Jesus and doing the work of God (God has been a handy term of abuse since its invention). So, alongside the genocide of the American Indians and the profitable slave trade a rapid and often forceful conversion to Christianity was taking place across the Americas and Africa. The indigenous wild pagan tribes had to be civilized.

Skeletons in the racist closet

Channel surfing amidst head over the cloud stock market euphoria, bzzzz... never ending cricket madness bzzzz... bronze statues of Hindu gods drinking our much needed milk, bzzzz... a girl from Nagaland denied entry to a bar lounge/restaurant, hmm. This got be rethinking about Racism in India and how it is rarely acknowledged yet practiced so blatantly, so casually that it would make 17th century slave owners proud.