What have Hindus done to these disciples of Christ?

(Throughout this blog whenever Hinduism is referred, you can replace it with any Dharmic tradition. The word 'Christianity' in all the posts in this blog refers to the fundamentalist Christianity. This is the form of Christianity spread by missionaries, both foreign and Indian, in India.)
 
After returning from the USA, Swami Vivekananda asked 

What have Hindus done to these disciples of Christ that every Christian child is taught to call the Hindus 'vile', and 'wretches', and the most horrible devils on earth?

We will find out the reason for the abusive language and hate propaganda peddled by Christian evangelists. People who follow the missionary activities know the reason for this hateful language. This post just to familiarize the reasons to those who have just begun to understand the missionary activities.

Are all religions same? - Exclusivism of Christianity

Hinduism(and other Dharmic traditions) does not have the concept of eternal sin and salvation and talk about different paths to find the Truth. There is no concept of "only Hinduism is true and other religions are false." in Hindu traditions.

Abrahamic religions have exclusivist claims. As Christian fundamentalism/evangelism is the focus of this blog, we will focus only on Christianity. Most denominations of Christianity have an exclusivist claim that people can be saved only by accepting Jesus, the Son of God, as the Savior of  human race. Jesus is the one and only truth - one and only light. You have to have faith in this claim in order be a Christian(exception: minor denominations like Unitarianism.) This is the truth as the Christian evangelist sees it. So there is only one way to go to heaven. Even if you do not want to go to heaven, the missionary wants to send you to heaven, hence the pestering.

For an interesting take on this difference between Hinduism and Christianity(and other Abrahamic faiths), you can read Rajiv Malhotra's Being Different. 
 

Hindus have no right to be left alone

A Christian evangelist wants to spread this "good news" that Jesus, the son of God, sacrificed for our sins. The evangelist wants us to accept this and only this - there is no alternative for this, according to our evangelist. A Hindu might say "Ok, boss, I respect your position and find salvation as you please but let me go on my way of Dharma." The Christian missionary would not accept it. You have to accept the truth as the missionary sees it. The missionary would not settle for anything different. This is the key. Until then, Hindus are not 'saved', Hindus are in 'darkness' and have to see the 'light', Hindus do not worship the real God, Hindus go to hell, Hindus do not know the 'truth'. This is the source of hateful language for Hindus and Hinduism. So Christian evangelists pester non-Christians like Hindus to accept the truth as the Christian sees it. Hindus cannot be left alone in 'darkness'. The missionary has the burden of showing the 'light' to Hindus.

Such is their dogma that the missionaries do not even realize they are insulting other living traditions when they talk about 'showing light to Hindus.' The missionaries feel sad even if Hindus happily celebrate festivals.

Do an experiment

If you do not believe what is written above, do this experiment. Do a search on Twitter for "mission trip India" (Mission trips are explained here. An example of a mission trip.) for people coming on missionary activities to India. All these people going on mission trips are going on trips to convert people to Christianity. Ask them about this exclusivist claim. Ask them whether you go to hell or what happens if you don't accept Jesus as the ultimate savior. Many won't respond as they are not open to dialog. If at all they respond, they say "yes, you will go to hell". I asked many such missionaries  who come to India on mission trips. A couple responded and they confirm their dogma. 

Why Hindus are prime targets in the numbers game

Missionary activity is as old as Christianity. Missionary activity in India also goes back to centuries but this activity has exploded in recent times. It is all about numbers. More numbers have to be brought into the Kingdom of God.  They have run out of people to convert in Europe and North America. So ambitious projects like Joshua Project are commissioned to profile 'unreached'(i.e, non-Christian) people. So it was figured out that there were a lot of people in the 10/40 window who are non-Christians and these people are profiled. Their languages, social mores, worship methods etc., are profiled to facilitate conversions. Profiling of totally different cultures leads to stereotypes when the profiler is alien to the native cultures and especially the aim of the profiler is not benign and to transform the religion and culture of the people being profiled. Some of the common utterances by missionaries on traditional media and social media are "there are 5,00,000 villages in India which have never heard of Jesus and are in darkness", "there are a billion people yet to see the light." All these numbers come form ambitious projects like Joshua Project.

Why Hindus? In the 10/40 window, the non-Christian groups to be converted are in India, China, African countries, Muslim countries Saudi Arabia, Buddhist countries like Thailand. Though they do conversions in countries like China, Iran(see here), a lot of countries in this list have restrictions on missionary activities and some countries in this window out-rightly banned conversion activities. So who is left? India and some African countries. India has a billion Hindus, and that is a huger number to be brought into Kingdom of God. And India provides the right to propagate religions. This right is abused a lot which will further explore in this blog. Huge numbers and constitutional right to propagate - what else do we need to conquer the market?

 This needs to be repeated: it is a numbers game and the market is "ripe for harvest". Market here is market in economics. Here is a Catholic news source said in March 2014. See the quotes around the words 'market share' as if they did not believe in numbers game and immediately the expressed wish for increase in the number of Catholics in India to 26 million by 2050.

During the 20th century Catholicism grew from 1.2 percent to 3 percent of Asia’s overall population, meaning the church more than doubled its “market share.” The number of Catholics in India alone went from under two million to 17 million, and should reach 26 million by 2050.

It's all about numbers. The Pope of Catholic Church himself expressed the wish convert the whole of Asia in this millennium. The same wish is expressed by missionaries from every major denomination of Christianity.

Summary

Swami Vivekananda asked American missionaries in Detroit in 1894:

You train and educate and pay men to do what? To come over to my country to curse and abuse all my forefathers, my religion and everything. They walk near a temple and say and say, "you idolators, you will go to hell."

The dogma, the fanaticism, the hate speech, sinister methods have not changed at all. Here is Joey, an American church planter who was on a conversion trip in 2009 to Dharamsala, India, about India and Dharmic religions(In the video, Himachal mountains; see the full video and this writeup to see what they did in India)

For so long in these mountains, God has not been glorified. For thousands of years, it's been pent up with sinful people and idols, idol worship and singing to idols. And God's worship has been literally robbed from this place.