Sat Ma­haraj

In T&T there are a num­ber of Chris­t­ian colum­nists who on a week­ly ba­sis at­tack the re­li­gious prac­tices of non-Chris­t­ian cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly the Hin­dus. Some of these are them­selves guilty of bring­ing their church in­to dis­re­pute.

We know of cas­es lo­cal­ly and abroad where women have lured priests who have been sworn to celiba­cy, forc­ing them through con­science to leave the church. At this point in the his­to­ry of re­li­gions, the Catholic Church is be­ing ex­posed for the wrongs of some of its priests. Ear­li­er this year, Ire­land and the rest of the Catholic world were rocked by ev­i­dence of phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse met­ed out to the chil­dren in the care of the church. Over the last two weeks an­oth­er scan­dal has bro­ken in Ire­land over oth­er now ex­posed sex­u­al abuse of chil­dren in care of the church. Ab­sorb­ing dis­si­dent An­gli­can priests and fol­low­ers will not dim the fo­cus on any wrong­do­ing by this church's priests. In the US, hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars have been paid out by the Catholic Church for the abuse of young Amer­i­cans left in their care. Yet our lo­cal writ­ers ig­nore these crim­i­nal acts by their church lead­ers which have stretched over a pe­ri­od of more than 1500 years. They pre­fer to con­cen­trate on Hin­duism which is re­gard­ed as the re­li­gion of the fu­ture.

For hun­dreds of years the Catholic Church was fund­ed by Eu­ro­pean gov­ern­ments through their na­tion­al bud­gets. Even to­day the Catholic Church is re­gard­ed as a state on­to it­self with priv­i­leged am­bas­sadors in every coun­try in­clud­ing one in Port-of-Spain. Some fol­low­ers of this church be­lieve they have a di­vine right to en­ter every coun­try in the world to win con­verts. Chi­na has its own laws about re­li­gious ac­tiv­i­ties and there seems to be a con­stant bat­tle be­tween the Chi­nese au­thor­i­ties and the Catholics who would like to con­vert 1.2 bil­lion Chi­nese. These pa­trons of the con­quis­ta­dors have a bloody his­to­ry in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Aztecs of South Amer­i­ca but the lo­cal Catholic writ­ers are more con­cerned with the ac­tiv­i­ties of the RSS and the VHP (Vish­va Hin­du Parishad from In­dia), to which the Sana-tan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha is af­fil­i­at­ed. Un­like the Catholic Church, the lead­er­ship of the Hin­du com­mu­ni­ty is not a po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion. Nei­ther the VHP nor the RSS are po­lit­i­cal par­ties and they do not strad­dle the world po­lit­i­cal­ly. All af­fil­i­a­tions which stretch across the world fo­cus on re­li­gious and cul­tur­al mat­ters.

In Sep­tem­ber 2008, I was present at the Third Hin­du Mandir Ex­ec­u­tive Con­fer­ence held in Ro­mu­lus, Michi­gan, USA. The head of the Vish­va Hin­du Parishad, Ashok Sing­hal, sent a mes­sage: "Sant, Shaash­tra and Mandir are the se­crets of the en­dur­ing na­ture of our mri­tyun­jay (im­mor­tal) Hin­du so­ci­ety as the world his­to­ry teach­es us that many oth­er an­cient civil­i­sa­tions dis­ap­peared in­to the lim­bo of his­to­ry be­cause, in­stead of ap­pre­ci­at­ing, they dis­count­ed these fac­tors. "Our tem­ples are our San­skar Kendras and play a key role in trig­ger­ing and con­sol­i­dat­ing the holis­tic world­view, cul­ture (ku­laachaar), core com­pe­tence (Swad­har­ma), se­va bhaav, co-op­er­a­tive and co-cre­ative abil­i­ties, in­tegri­ty, hu­mil­i­ty, high self-es­teem, ap­pre­ci­a­tion and iden­ti­ty in the in­di­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al­i­ty of our new gen­er­a­tions that would make them po­ten­tial achiev­ers, bril­liant and re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens. "I con­grat­u­late you on your suc­cess so far and send here­by my best wish­es for the tar­get­ed suc­cess of the third con­fer­ence. This con­fer­ence is an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone for fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of our tem­ple net­work, re­li­gion-cul­tur­al-so­cial-ed­u­ca­tion­al-San­skar-health and mu­tu­al in­ter­face ac­tiv­i­ties. Mil­lions of our Hin­du brethren and like-mind­ed peo­ple will be its ben­e­fi­cia­ries."

Ashok Sing­hal is the most pow­er­ful Hin­du on plan­et Earth. But he en­joys no spe­cial priv­i­lege in any na­tion. He is af­ford­ed no diplo­mat­ic priv­i­lege and I have on my vis­its to New Del­hi sat in his bed­room and spo­ken about Hin­duism world­wide. His great­est am­bi­tion is to make Hin­du lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy avail­able to all mankind. Our Catholic lead­er­ship how­ev­er, is more priv­i­leged. They are af­ford­ed spe­cial diplo­mat­ic sta­tus in near­ly every coun­try in the world. In T&T, Thomas Ed­ward Gul­lick­son is the Apos­tolic Nun­cio with res­i­dence at Mary Street, Port-of-Spain. The Pa­pal Nun­cio (of­fi­cial­ly known as an Apos­tolic Nun­cio) is a per­ma­nent diplo­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Pope to a state, hav­ing the rank of an am­bas­sador ex­tra­or­di­nary and plenipo­ten­tiary, usu­al­ly with the ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal rank of tit­u­lar arch­bish­op. The Nun­cio serves as the li­ai­son be­tween the Pope and the Ro­man Catholic dioce­san epis­co­pate in the na­tion or re­gion to which he is as­signed. The na­tion­al or re­gion­al epis­co­pate is usu­al­ly su­per­vised by a na­tion­al con­fer­ence of bish­ops, whose pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer is of­ten the high­est rank­ing bish­op or arch­bish­op of that na­tion.

Apos­tolic del­e­gates are al­so sent to re­gions such as the West In­dies and the is­lands of the Pa­cif­ic. These del­e­gates are al­so ap­point­ed Nun­cio to at least some of the many states cov­ered by their del­e­ga­tion, but the area en­trust­ed to them al­so con­tains one or more ter­ri­to­ries that ei­ther are not in­de­pen­dent states or are states that do not have diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with the Pope.

* Sat­narayan Ma­haraj is the

sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the

Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha