Christianity, the largest religion in the world, has become one, by following certain methods from the rule book. Christianity has spread rapidly through both pleasant and unpleasant ways such as simple word of mouth, evangelism, luring, crusades, inquisitions, prosecutions, conquests, and then there is another kind called ‘Transmogrification’.
Christianity acts as a shapeshifter according to the place of its operation, based on the cultural and ethnic aspects of the people. Institution and Vatican working and monitoring projects in different countries very minutely, so they transformed Jesus and adjust his persona as per the culture of respective country.
For example, in the Bible, the gospel of John 1:29, it reads “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” But in places like South America where guinea pigs are more famously raised as pets, the same line reads “Behold the Guinea pig of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
It doesn’t only change the lines from the book, but also changes look of Jesus according to the ethnicity. They made a middle Eastern, white, Black, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and many other Christs in mufti ready to save the souls.
“It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, they preach Christ out of selfish ambition. But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice. and I’m not ashamed.” “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and spread the word of God and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” these lines are said by Paul in the bible who is considered as founder of Christianity. And pastors and evangelists take him as the inspiration for their deeds.
Imitation of Sanatan Dharma has been going on for a long time, Christianity is the primary religion trying to appropriate while Islam has appropriated mildly. We see the Muslim marriages in Pakistan & India have an element of music & dance that is not the tenet in other Islamic countries. While India is having cultural exchanges with the rest of the world for thousands of years & continues to do so even today. Many people across the world have appreciated & enjoyed the cultural richness of India. But Inculturation & Digestion are quite new concepts.
Missionaries were always working in India to convert the Hindus to Christianity, during the British rule, the missionaries moved slowly fearing the backlash from the local kings and it may go against the established British Raj. But Post-Independence missionaries had a free hand in propagating Christianity.
When people saw their religion as alien, they with a very sly plan created the fake theory of Aryan invasion. so that they can draw a line of similarity between the two religions. Br Ambedkar in his book ‘Who were Shudras’ debunked this theory to be false. People who take him as a reference when pointing a finger at Hinduism, don’t take this into consideration because it doesn’t suit their propaganda. When many tried to convert Ambedkar to Christianity, he declined, saying ”converting to religions which don’t have Indian origin, will denationalize people.” And later he joined Buddhism.
One of the difficulties that missionaries had was to show relevance between Hinduism and Christianity so that the uneducated lower strata of the society can see the similarity between Hinduism & Christianity. In Psalms job 9:9, job 38:31 of the Bible, words like kruthika nakshatra & mrugasira have been used, while translating to Indian languages. Words like Guru, Dharma, and karma have been used when the western doesn’t have the concept or even equivalent word for them in English.
The desperation to convert people to Christianity was so high that pastors &fathers started wearing saffron cloth, the concept of yatra was introduced to be carried out in every region. Mother Mary was ordained as YeshuMata wearing a saree and bindi. they started calling churches as Mandirs, building Dwajastambhas in-front of it and started doing Yagnas, representing Jesus in form of Hindu God, Offering coconut, shaving heads and started making prasad similar to Hindu tradition.
To further imitate Hindu culture, missionaries have started adopting Yoga & named it Christian Yoga. They try to draw parallels between Chakras & Holy Spirit. Created Yeshu Purusha Suktham and people recite it leading to the full appropriation of the Deities & converse the feeling that they are worshipping one of the Crores of deities that are in Hinduism. They also started celebrating Hindu festivals with a Christian touch. If only Jesus had come down today for ”The Judgement day”, he would be baffled, if whether they are converting the non-believers or himself.
As always, they imitate everything from our culture and later claim it to be theirs from the start. Such rampant shapeshifting is going on for many decades unchecked, it’s time for Hindus to wake up and realize that this is a wolf in a sheepskin and take note of the fact that it is not only Inculturation of the Sanatani culture but a colonial conquest on us all over again.