The Dangerous Fallacy of Dr. Dixit
©Prax Maskaren. 12th March 2003. St. Gregory the Great, Pope, Confessor & Doctor of the Faith.
This article is in reply to the 'Christian Chitpavan' page on the American Chitpavan website created and managed by Dr. Jagannath Dixit, M.D. The author makes the gravely evil suggestion that there is nothing in Christianity that prohibits the absorption of Christ as yet another of the Hindu 'gods' in the Hindu pantheon of innumerable 'gods.'
My ancestors were Gaud Saraswat Brahmins in Goa who had converted to Christianity following the entry of the Portuguese and of Christian missionaries who followed them. As far as I can ascertain, my ancestors willingly adopted Christianity, as did most of the ancestors of the present Christians of Goa. After the first wave of conversions, the Hindus hardened their attitude towards Christianity and the Portuguese administration and sought to subvert them in many ways. This became so bad that the Portuguese decided to expel the remaining Hindus from their territories.
After the anti-Christians gained the upper hand in Portugal under the malefactor Marques de Pombal, missionaries came to be persecuted and even expelled, and in fact, pagans and infidels were encouraged to intrude into Christian Goa and to subvert it. The following centuries of subvertion since have gravely weakened Goan Christianity, but it was the Great Apostasy of Vatican II and of the antipopes Roncalli and Montini that has practically destroyed Goan Christianity.
Dr. Dixit's article on Christian Chitpavans is full of inaccuracies, misrepresentation, errors born out of culpable ignorance and even outright lies and false doctrine.
The author claims that the Spanish and Portuguese sailed to explore the world only after Pope Alexander VI mediated a solution to their conflicting claims. That is not historical. The fact is that both had already begun to explore and to conquer territories, and it was precisely because they collided in their efforts, that Pope Alexander mediated a mutually acceptable solution by dividing the respective spheres of their efforts.
It would indeed be strange if the Portuguese did not know that there were already Christians in India, as the author claims. As a matter of fact, it was long known, and previous explorers and missionaries, including Fray Jordan and his companions, and Blessed Odoric of Porvenone, Marco Polo, etc., had already verified it. Again, it is a fact that a Portuguese explorer, Pedro de Covilha, had already penetrated India by an overland route and had repatriated his accounts in the decade before Vasco made his ground-breaking trip around the Cape of Good Hope.
However, even these were comparatively late visitors to India. Long before any of these, a party of English pilgrims had made their way to Mylapore to the tomb of St. Thomas the apostle, in the seventh century!
And it was precisely these accounts, including the legends of Christian priest-kings called Prester-John, that gave incentive to the Portuguese.
The claim that the Keralite Christians belonged to the 'Syrian Orthodox Church' is a historic anomaly: They were Nestorians, depending on the Assyrians and Chaldeans, became Catholics, then because of the terrorism of the Calvinist Dutch, a large part broke off and attempted to return to Nestorianism. However, since most of the Assyrian and Chaldean Nestorians had themselves returned to Catholicism, they did the next best thing and attached themselves to the Jacobites of Aram or Syria. Thus, before the Schism of the Broken Cross (Puthan Kirusu) there were never any Jacobites in India, only Catholics and Nestorians.
The author repeats the baseless and vicious lie that Goan Christians did not convert voluntarily but were forced to do so. The imposition of Portuguese names became necessary as the new Christians were weak and thus easily seduced to regress to paganism, while assimilation to Portuguese culture largely innoculated them. I would remind the reader that St Paul tell in one of his epistles that that new Christian community was not yet mature enough to eat meat, which was why he fed them milk.
Moreover, the author repeats the malicious lie that the Inquisition burned many people who were infact innocent. This is a gratuitous misrepresentation, and one that is not made any less so just because it has become the popular cant. I am certain that any one will welcome any solid evidence of systematic wrongdoing on the part of the Inquisition. In fact none has ever been produced, despite the most rigourous investigations over the last four or more centuries by scholars and dirt-diggers. I am, of course, excluding lies and misrepresentation of evidence.
The author states that "In 1720, the British Governor of Bombay, Charles Boone, expelled all Portuguese priests from Bombay and brought all the churches under the control of British Anglican Church." It is true enough that the English indulged in mischief and breached the terms by which Bombay was gifted to them as royal dowry. It is also true that they expelled Goan and Portuguese clerics on false and specious grounds. And it is also true that they robbed the Christians of the extensive property at Parel that an Armenian lady who had been kidnapped and impressed into the Mughal harem, had gifted to the Jesuits for the furtherance of religion, and after its robbery, was made into the Governor's House and latter gifted to Dr. Haffkine for his laboratory. It is also true that the Englsih demolished and ended the University of St. Anne at the north end of Mahim island on the pretext of security concerns, given the Maratha invasion and occupation of Bandra accross the Mahim river.
What is not true is that the English stole all the Christian churches and converted them to Protestant usage. That never happened. And most precisely because, for a long time, until the English policy of permitting entry to one and all had successfully made Bombay a pagan city, it was predominantly Christian. And the English were not so stupid as to antagonize the local population by any revolutionary steps.
The author makes the astonishing and shamelessly outrageous statement that "Catholics in Goa and other areas readily changed their costumes and customs to wearing short skirts." In doing so, he exhibits crass ignorance of Goan Christianity. Ignorance is not always a sin, but it is when one loosely and without study makes insulting, derogatory and lying statements.
My ancestors certainly never did change their dress or custom, and they were typical of Goans. We wore the same dresses and except for certain Hindu superstitions as the tilak, aarti, idolatry, etc., we continued the same things. Certainly, Catholicism never allowed or countenanced 'short skirts' or other forms of immodesty. Unlike Dr. Dixit's ancestors who upon conversion to Protestantism, gave up the Dhoti and the kasti for pants, because of English superciliousness towards such native attire, Goan Christians continued to use these items of apparel. My own father used to wear nothing but a kasti when he went to work the rice fields.
We only wore shirts and pants to Church, and even in the fourties, Goan Christian women still wore sarees rather than dresses. (See my family photograph from 1937, showing my father with his parents, brother, sisters, brother-in-law and niece - my eldest cousin. Note that my grandmother and elder, married aunt, are attired in sarees!)
In fact, Christian women improved their dress by avoiding the immodest Hindu custom of exposing the midriff. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that Goan Christian began to change their dress and custom, adopting Western attire. And this was largely because of their exposure to the English.
The author tells us that "Even to this day, there are Konkani speaking Muslims in northern coastal Karnataka. They are called Navayat Muslims and they are mostly fishermen, but some still wear the Brahmin's sacred thread, janave, almost 400 years after their conversion to Islam."
The Navaiyats (or Newcomers) are Konkani Muslims of Arabian origins, refugees from a rebellion in the Yemen. And they have come into India much more than a thousand years ago. I do not know of them wearing the janua, and I doubt that they do - they are not descended from any of the Hindu Dvija castes of Brahmins, Kshatriyas or Vaishyas, who alone are permitted to wear it. I think that if they do, then it must be some Arabian thing...
Or perhaps the author is confusing the Navaiyats with the descendants of Konkani Christians who apostasized to Islam in 1799 during the persecution of Tipu. These were originally Goans who had settled in Tuluva ('coastal Karnataka') and descended from converts from Hinduism.
Formula for Evil
But the most evil and objectionable thing in this article is the author's claims that there is nothing in Christianity that should exclude the Hindus from adopting and reducing Jesus Christ as just another of their innumerable 'gods'. This is the greatest blasphemy.
Thus, the author states that "When the Hindus could not find anything objectionable in the teachings and the lives of Christ, they very cleverly accepted them as yet another Avartar (incarnation) of their gods and stuck them in one of their shrines. Why fight in the name of the Lord? Just join them! After all who could complain one more addition to the other 330 million gods? Such a Hindu view of Jesus is not anti-Christian polemic, but an integration of Jesus as a guru in the pluralistic Hindu cultural and religious universe of guru parampara. This is because many Hindus do not have a religion but follow yoga, or discipline of the mind - the eternal moral law, which upholds the universe. Members of sects similar to these Samartha sects would like to worship Christ as a saint and challenge the Christian monopoly on Christ or Christian notion of uniqueness of Christ to Christianity. Christ neither built any church nor founded the Christian religion. After all Christ never wrote a single word in the Bible"
The author even emphasizes his claim, indeed his teaching, that "Such a Hindu view of Jesus is not anti-Christian polemic, but an integration of Jesus as a guru in the pluralistic Hindu cultural and religious universe of guru parampara."
The author apparently wishes to overlook and negate the fundamental belief of Christianity - the exclusivity of the one true God as emphasized by the First Commandment.
If one followed Dr. Dixit's heresy, one would not be a Christian but a pagan. And a pagan who worships Jesus Christ as just another of his 'gods' is still nevertheless a pagan who remains displeasing and loathsome to God, and who adds to his vileness by his blasphemy against Christ. This is not a sensible or profitable course to follow.