George Ponnaiah, a Roman Catholic priest was recently arrested by the Arumanai police in the Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu for hate speech and spreading vitriol against the Bharat Mata, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and various others. However, what struck after his arrest was a video where the pastor, in a tone reminiscent to that of rabid Islamists used the trope of the burgeoning minority population to assert dominance over the Hindus.
Intimidating Hindus with the changing demography of Kanyakumari where Christians have become the majority, overtaking Hindus, Ponnaiah issued veiled threats by stating “We are now majority (in the Kanyakumari district) from 42 per cent we have crossed 62 per cent. Soon we would be 70 per cent. You cannot stop us. I am saying this as a warning to my Hindu brothers.”
ऐसे लोगों की घटिया सोच देखकर लगता है ये भारत की भूमि पर जेल के भी लायक नहीं है। #GeorgePonnaiyaArrested #GeorgePonniah pic.twitter.com/CQiTTwcf0h
— Mahima Pandey (@Mahimapandey90) July 25, 2021
It is indeed worrisome that while other faiths and most pertinently Christians have continued to grow in numbers, the Hindus, still the majority, have somehow shrunk in size in the southern portion of the state, viz. Kanyakumari.
A study released by the Centre for Policy Studies, a Chennai think-tank in 2016 revealed that Tamil Nadu was the most favourable state in India for the growth of Christianity. Kanyakumari district has seen a rapid increase in the number of Christians, where the share of Christians in the population rose from 30.7 per cent in 1921 to 34.7 per cent in 1951 and has risen to 46.8 per cent since then. The population of Hindus which constituted 90.47 per cent of the State’s population in 1951 has come down to 87.58 per cent by 2011.
And these figures are from almost a decade ago. With the rampant polarization, the dissemination of lethal Dravidian ideology and the unholy nexus of Dravidian parties and Evangelical societies, it wouldn’t be a surprise that the numbers might have swelled up by ungodly numbers up until now.
Apart from Kanyakumari, Christians in Tamil Nadu are concentrated in several pockets spread across the state. These include a pocket around Chennai city in the north, other comprising parts of Thanjavur, Tiruchirappalli and Dindigul in the middle.
Charting towards the West, parts of Coimbatore and Nilgiris have a sizeable Christian populace while in the southeast Sivaganga, Ramanathapuram, Tirunelveli and Thoothukkudi have distinct Christian dominated areas, according to the CPS report.
The Dravidian ideology in its essence is a design manifested by the Church to systematically destroy Hinduism. The origins of this divide lie in the failure of the Christian Church to introduce Christianity in massive swaths as it imagined it should have in India, under 250-300 years of Christian British Rule.
It is interesting to note that the other Southern States of Andhra/Telangana, Karnataka & Kerala do not identify themselves as Dravidians as much as the state of Tamil Nadu. In fact, Andhrites & Kannadigas identify themselves as Aryans rather than Dravidians. And Keralites identify themselves as descendants of the Aryan Asura King Bali Chakravarti (Mahabali), grandson of Prahlad in whose honour the festival of Onam is celebrated.
Read More: Tamil Nadu is not a Dravidian State
However, the malicious ideology has found its way with parties like DMK who thrive on the support from the eagerness of Evangelists who want to implant the ‘kiss of Christ’ on the entire Hindu civilization.
Reported extensively by TFI, DMK has been infamous for its anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin bigotry in the garb of Dravidian ideology. This anti-Hindu stance is amply clear from the statements of late DMK President M. Karunanidhi who said, “Lord Rama is a drunkard“.
The late DMK patriarch had also remarked that the term ‘Hindu’ means ‘thief’. He stated, “Who is a Hindu? You must ask Periyar EVR. A good man would say the word Hindu means a thief.”
Read More: Adultery, hatred for Hindus, defiance of law— the Periyar doctrine is a super amusing read
DMK, like Congress, had also supported the destruction of Ram Setu citing there was no historical evidence to prove the existence of Shree Ram. After the historic Ram Mandir Janmabhoomi verdict by the Supreme Court, DMK was upset with its ally Congress for supporting the event as Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Kamal Nath and several other party leaders openly flaunted their support for the temple’s construction.
And if one of the ruling parties is openly anti-Hindu in its ideology, then it doesn’t come as a surprise that it condones the behaviour of pastors such as George and also one of the biggest conversion mafia of Tamil Nadu – Bishop Ezra Sargunam.
Ezra has close ties with the DMK and has on several occasions supported them, especially during the elections. He claims to have converted crores of Tamil Hindus into Christianity and built thousands of Churches aka conversion centres across the state.
In 2019, Ezra Sargunam, spreading vitriol against Hinduism had remarked, “Punch on their (Hindus) face, let them bleed. Then make them understand the truth (referring to Christian Conversion)”.
"There is nothing called as a Hindu Religion, Punch them in their face couple of times, make them bleed and help them understand the truth" – Bishop Ezra Sargunam, now you know why M.K.Stalin wants to uproot Sanatana Dharma. pic.twitter.com/L8lwwZMVop
— Vishwatma 🇮🇳 ( மோடியின் குடும்பம் ) (@HLKodo) June 12, 2019
In the video clip, he also tries to establish that the Hindu religion doesn’t exist. He says that during the time of the British the census takers were confused as to who they can classify as a Hindu. A committee defined the identity ‘Hindu’ as someone who wasn’t a Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Buddhist.
The presence of temples and Hindu customs is thus an impediment in the quest of imposing Christianity and the racist divide of the abhorrent Dravidian philosophy. There is a reason why Temples are looked down upon by the DMK government and razed whenever the administration gets the chance. There is a reason why Temples have been in the clutches of the government that has seemingly leased them out to be marauded by Christian missionaries.
However, not all hope is lost as the Madras High Court earlier this year gave an earful to the Stalin government and issued a set of 75 directions for the maintenance and protection of historical monuments and ancient temples. The Court stepping in and announcing a major overhaul is surely expected to set things in motion and help the historic Hindu temples achieve their past glory and optimistically, it should help curb the lopsided demography change which is slowly plaguing the state.