Sat Ma­haraj

The his­to­ry of colo­nial pow­ers, es­pe­cial­ly Britain and oth­er Eu­ro­pean colonis­ers, is re­plete with sto­ries of not on­ly the repa­tri­a­tion of the wealth of con­quered na­tions to their home coun­tries in Eu­rope, but al­so brain­wash­ing the con­quered peo­ple in­to re­li­gious con­ver­sion.The sto­ry of Eu­ro­pean em­pire-builders is al­so the sto­ry of how Chris­tian­i­ty was spread by the sword and gun­pow­der in In­dia, Africa and oth­er non-Chris­t­ian con­ti­nents.

The ar­rival of In­di­an im­mi­grants as ear­ly as 1838 to work the sug­ar cane fields in Trinidad, is al­so the his­to­ry of at­tempts to den­i­grate the re­li­gious be­liefs and prac­tices of Hin­dus.Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies saw it as their du­ty to con­demn the prac­tices of our an­ces­tors that date from thou­sands of years be­fore Je­sus Christ. These mis­sion­ar­ies, with­out at­tempt­ing to learn about the philo­soph­i­cal and re­li­gious strength of Hin­du dhar­ma, con­demned a hard-work­ing, pray­ing com­mu­ni­ty of Hin­dus.

In his pub­li­ca­tion Racial Ide­ol­o­gy in Trinidad, Den­ni­son Moore, the au­thor, quotes the 1883 words of the Rev William Moister:

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly these peo­ple have brought with them their idol­a­try and su­per­sti­tions and have in many places erect­ed their idol shrines and tem­ples, where they per­form their noisy and fool­ish cer­e­monies. Their ex­am­ple has thus ex­er­cised a bane­ful in­flu­ence on their sable neigh­bours and been pro­duc­tive of evil in many ways with­out any coun­ter­act­ing in­flu­ence, very lit­tle hav­ing as yet been done to prop­a­gate the Chris­t­ian faith among them."

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers