[Goanet]Church built on destroyed temple?

[Sachin Phadte]

Re Fredrick's ".with a so-far unraised 'campaign for demolishing of 
Christian churches' (which AFAIK first came up in a tongue-in-cheek posting 
by Godfrey JI Gonsalves). Correct me if I'm wrong."

I do not remember if Godfrey raised the issue.  However, the issue was 
raised more than two weeks ago, and to my specific question of whether it 
was actually raised by the BJP today, people have gone in all directions.  
If it was a toungue-in-cheek posting, it would have been nice if Godfrey had 
said so when I first raised the issue.  And if Fredrick felt it was a 
tongure-in-cheek posting, it would have been nice if he had said at the very 
beginnning.

If this had happened, Gilbert would have no necessity to say: "The main 
message being Hindus can progress without needing a crutch of another 
community or religion."

In this context, Almeida's posting of the article "Excavating Hindutva" 
would have become redundant.

But having posted the article, let me deal with a few issues.  The court 
asked for excavation at the site in Ayodhya precisely because there were 
claims that there was a temple destroyed there, and others were saying that 
this is not historically true.  No one is claiming that the Rashtrapati 
Bhavan occupies a structure which was destroyed for the purpose of building 
the present structure.  So, bringing in this issue with that of Ayodhya is 
trivalising what is quite a serious issue.

The author of the article says, amongst other things, that one of the gifts 
of the British colonialists is the architecture of a bungalow. This is 
absurd.  The ability of our ancestors to construct appropriate places of 
dwelling is well established.  I am sure they did not need the British to 
teach them.

Of course, cross fertilisation of ideas is a feature of all vibrant 
civilisations.  While the British may have taught us somethings, they also 
learnt from their interaction with the Indians.  And this can be said of all 
civilisations.

However, what was the state of our country prior to the British rule has 
been well documented by them.  One Dharampal has studied the documents, and 
I understand that he has brought them out in a five-volume publication.  I 
also understand that one of the publishers of this set is The Other Press (I 
hope I have the name right for the publication house set up by Claude 
Alvares).

People say that the British gave us the railways.  In a technical sense yes. 
 But it makes an assumption that if were not free we would not have built 
them ourselves.  Also we should remember that the British did not give us a 
grant - they used our money to do something whose primary objective was for 
their own benefit, and the benefit for the Indians was incidental.

Anyway, in an earlier posting I had said that Hindus in Goa have accepted 
the fact that their temples were destroyed and churches built on at least 
some of them.  Also, not all churches are built on such sites.  But let us 
not raise a bogey, tongue-in-cheek or any other mode, that some 
organisations want to reclaim the sites.

Sachin Phadte.

_________________________________________________________________
Get an �IndianOil Citibank ATM/Debit Card.  
http://go.msnserver.com/IN/45534.asp Save upto 5% on your fuel expenses.

##########################################################################
# Send submissions for Goanet to [EMAIL PROTECTED]                       #   
# PLEASE remember to stay on-topic (related to Goa), and avoid top-posts #
# More details on Goanet at http://joingoanet.shorturl.com/              #  
# Please keep your discussion/tone polite, to reflect respect to others  #
##########################################################################