1869 - 1948
Mahatma Gandhi http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/History/Gandhi/gandhi.html
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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in the town of Porbander in the state of what is now Gujarat on 2 October 1869. He had his schooling in nearby Rajkot, where his father served as the adviser or prime minister to the local ruler. Though India was then under British rule, over 500 kingdoms, principalities, and states were allowed autonomy in domestic and internal affairs: these were the so-called 'native states'. Rajkot was one such state.
Gandhi later recorded the early years of his life in his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Experimentswith Truth. His father died before Gandhi could finish his schooling, and at thirteen he was married to Kasturba [or Kasturbai], who was even younger. In 1888 Gandhi set sail for England, where he had decided to pursue a degree in law. Though his elders objected, Gandhi could not be prevented from leaving; and it is said that his mother, a devout woman, made him promise that he would keep away from wine, women, and meat during his stay abroad. Gandhi left behind his son Harilal, then a few months old.
In London, Gandhi encountered theosophists, vegetarians, and others who were disenchanted not only with industrialism, but with the legacy of Enlightenment thought. They themselves represented the fringe elements of English society. Gandhi was powerfully attracted to them, as he was to the texts of the major religious traditions; and ironically it is in London that he was introduced to the Bhagavad Gita. Here, too, Gandhi showed determination and single-minded pursuit of his purpose, and accomplished his objective of finishing his degree from the Inner Temple. He was called to the bar in 1891, and even enrolled in the High Court of London; but later that year he left for India.
Gandhi (next page)
Mahatma Gandhi
[Second of 5 pages]
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After one year of a none too successful law practice, Gandhi decided to accept an offer from an Indian businessman in South Africa, Dada Abdulla, to join him as a legal adviser. Unbeknown to him, this was to become an exceedingly lengthy stay, and altogether Gandhi was to stay in South Africa for over twenty years. The Indians who had been living in South Africa were without political rights, and were generally known by the derogatory name of 'coolies'. Gandhi himself came to an awareness of the frightening force and fury of European racism, and how far Indians were from being considered full human beings, when he when thrown out of a first-class railway compartment car, though he held a first-class ticket, at Pietermaritzburg. From this political awakening Gandhi was to emerge as the leader of the Indian community, and it is in South Africa that he first coined the term satyagraha to signify his theory and practice of non-violent resistance. Gandhi was to describe himself preeminently as a votary or seeker of satya (truth), which could not be attained other than through ahimsa (non-violence, love) and brahmacharya (celibacy, striving towards God). Gandhi conceived of his own life as a series of experiments to forge the use of satyagraha in such a manner as to make the oppressor and the oppressed alike recognize their common bonding and humanity: as he recognized, freedom is only freedom when it is indivisible. In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he was to detail the struggles of the Indians to claim their rights, and their resistance to oppressive legislation and executive measures, such as the imposition of a poll tax on them, or the declaration by the government that all non-Christian marriages were to be construed as invalid. In 1909, on a trip back to India, Gandhi authored a short treatise entitled Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule, where he all but initiated the critique, not only of industrial civilization, but of modernity in all its aspects.
Gandhi returned to India in early 1915, and was never to leave the country again except for a short trip that took him to Europe in 1931. Though he was not completely unknown in India, Gandhi followed the advice of his political mentor, Gokhale, and took it upon himself to acquire a familiarity with Indian conditions. He traveled widely for one year. Over the next few years, he was to become involved in numerous local struggles, such as at Champaran in Bihar, where workers on indigo plantations complained of oppressive working conditions, and at Ahmedabad, where a dispute had broken out between management and workers at textile mills. His interventions earned Gandhi a considerable reputation, and his rapid ascendancy to the helm of nationalist politics is signified by his leadership of the opposition to repressive legislation (known as the "Rowlatt Acts") in 1919. His saintliness was not uncommon, except in someone like him who immersed himself in politics, and by this time he had earned from no less a person than Rabindranath Tagore, India's most well-known writer, the title of Mahatma, or 'Great Soul'. When 'disturbances' broke out in the Punjab, leading to the massacre of a large crowd of unarmed Indians at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar and other atrocities, Gandhi wrote the report of the Punjab Congress Inquiry Committee. Over the next two years, Gandhi initiated the non-cooperation movement, which called upon Indians to withdraw from British institutions, to return honors conferred by the British, and to learn the art of self-reliance; though the British administration was at places paralyzed, the movement was suspended in February 1922 when a score of Indian policemen were brutally killed by a large crowd at Chauri Chaura, a small market town in the United Provinces. Gandhi himself was arrested shortly thereafter, tried on charges of sedition, and sentenced to imprisonment for six years. At The Great Trial, as it is known to his biographers, Gandhi delivered a masterful indictment of British rule.
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Mahatma Gandhi [Third of 5 pages]
Owing to his poor health, Gandhi was released from prison in 1925. Over the following years, he worked hard to preserve Hindu-Muslim relations, and in 1924 he observed, from his prison cell, a 21-day fast when Hindu-Muslim riots broke out at Kohat, a military barracks on the Northwest Frontier. This was to be of his many major public fasts, and in 1932 he was to commence the so-called Epic Fast unto death, since he thought of "separate electorates" for the oppressed class of what were then called untouchables (or Harijans in Gandhi's vocabulary, and dalits in today's language) as a retrograde measure meant to produce permanent divisions within Hindu society. Gandhi earned the hostility of Ambedkar, the leader of the untouchables, but few doubted that Gandhi was genuinely interested in removing the serious disabilities from which they suffered, just as no one doubt that Gandhi never accepted the argument that Hindus and Muslims constituted two separate elements in Indian society. These were some of the concerns most prominent in Gandhi's mind, but he was also to initiate a constructive programme for social reform. Gandhi had ideas -- mostly sound -- on every subject, from hygiene and nutrition to education and labor, and he relentlessly pursued his ideas in one of the many newspapers which he founded. Indeed, were Gandhi known for nothing else in India, he would still be remembered as one of the principal figures in the history of Indian journalism.
In early 1930, as the nationalist movement was revived, the Indian National Congress, the preeminent body of nationalist opinion, declared that it would now be satisfied with nothing short of complete independence (purna swaraj). Once the clarion call had been issued, it was perforce necessary to launch a movement of resistance against British rule. On March 2, Gandhi addressed a letter to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, informing him that unless Indian demands were met, he would be compelled to break the "salt laws". Predictably, his letter was received with bewildered amusement, and accordingly Gandhi set off, on the early morning of March 12, with a small group of followers towards Dandi on the sea. They arrived there on April 5th: Gandhi picked up a small lump of natural salt, and so gave the signal to hundreds of thousands of people to similarly defy the law, since the British exercised a monopoly on the production and sale of salt. This was the beginning of the civil disobedience movement: Gandhi himself was arrested, and thousands of others were also hauled into jail. It is to break this deadlock that Irwin agreed to hold talks with Gandhi, and subsequently the British agreed to hold a Round Table Conference in London to negotiate the possible terms of Indian independence. Gandhi went to London in 1931 and met some of his admirers in Europe, but the negotiations proved inconclusive. On his return to India, he was once again arrested. Mahatma Gandhi [Fourth of 5 pages]
For the next few years, Gandhi would be engaged mainly in the constructive reform of Indian society. He had vowed upon undertaking the salt march that he would not return to Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad, where he had made his home, if India did not attain its independence, and in the mid-1930s he established himself in a remote village, in the dead center of India, by the name of Segaon [known as Sevagram]. It is to this obscure village, which was without electricity or running water, that India's political leaders made their way to engage in discussions with Gandhi about the future of the independence movement, and it is here that he received visitors such as Margaret Sanger, the well-known American proponent of birth-control. Gandhi also continued to travel throughout the country, taking him wherever his services were required. One such visit was to the Northwest Frontier, where he had in the imposing Pathan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (known by the endearing term of "Frontier Gandhi", and at other times as Badshah [King] Khan), a fervent disciple. At the outset of World War II, Gandhi and the Congress leadership assumed a position of neutrality: while clearly critical of fascism, they could not find it in themselves to support British imperialism. Gandhi was opposed by Subhas Chandra Bose, who had served as President of the Congress, and who took to the view that Britain's moment of weakness was India's moment of opportunity. When Bose ran for President of the Congress against Gandhi's wishes and triumphed against Gandhi's own candidate, he found that Gandhi still exercised influence over the Congress Working Committee, and that it was near impossible to run the Congress if the cooperation of Gandhi and his followers could not be procured. Bose tendered his resignation, and shortly thereafter was to make a dramatic escape from India to find support among the Japanese and the Nazis for his plans to liberate India.
In 1942, Gandhi issued the last call for independence from British rule. On the grounds of what is now known as August Kranti Maidan, he delivered a stirring speech, asking every Indian to lay down their life, if necessary, in the cause of freedom. He gave them this mantra: "Do or Die"; at the same time, he asked the British to 'Quit India'. The response of the British government was to place Gandhi under arrest, and virtually the entire Congress leadership was to find itself behind bars, not to be released until after the conclusion of the war. A few months after Gandhi and Kasturba had been placed in confinement in the Aga Khan's Palace in Pune, Kasturba passed away: this was a terrible blow to Gandhi, following closely on the heels of the death of his private secretary of many years, the gifted Mahadev Desai. In the period from 1942 to 1945, the Muslim League, which represented the interest of certain Muslims and by now advocated the creation of a separate homeland for Muslims, increasingly gained the attention of the British, and supported them in their war effort. The new government that came to power in Britain under Clement Atlee was committed to the independence of India, and negotiations for India's future began in earnest. Sensing that the political leaders were now craving for power, Gandhi largely distanced himself from the negotiations. He declared his opposition to the vivisection of India. It is generally conceded, even by his detractors, that the last years of his life were in some respects his finest. He walked from village to village in riot-torn Noakhali, where Hindus were being killed in retaliation for the killing of Muslims in Bihar, and nursed the wounded and consoled the widowed; and in Calcutta he came to constitute, in the famous words of the last viceroy, Mountbatten, a "one-man boundary force" between Hindus and Muslims. The ferocious fighting in Calcutta came to a halt, almost entirely on account of Gandhi's efforts, and even his critics were wont to speak of the Gandhi's 'miracle of Calcutta'. When the moment of freedom came, on 15 August 1947, Gandhi was nowhere to be seen in the capital, though Nehru and the entire Constituent Assembly were to salute him as the architect of Indian independence, as the 'father of the nation'. Gandhi (next page] [Pages 1, 2, 3, 5] Mahatma Gandhi [Last of five pages]
That evening, as Gandhi's time-piece, which hung from one of the folds of his dhoti [loin-cloth], was to reveal to him, he was uncharacteristically late to his prayers, and he fretted about his inability to be punctual. At 10 minutes past 5 o'clock, with one hand each on the shoulders of Abha and Manu, who were known as his 'walking sticks', Gandhi commenced his walk towards the garden where the prayer meeting was held. As he was about to mount the steps of the podium, Gandhi folded his hands and greeted his audience with a namaskar; at that moment, a young man came up to him and roughly pushed aside Manu. Nathuram Godse bent down in the gesture of an obeisance, took a revolver out of his pocket, and shot Gandhi three times in his chest. Bloodstains appeared over Gandhi's white woolen shawl; his hands still folded in a greeting, Gandhi blessed his assassin: He Ram! He Ram! As Gandhi fell, his faithful time-piece struck the ground, and the hands of the watch came to a standstill. They showed, as they had done before, the precise time: 5:12 P.M.
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The last few months of Gandhi's life were to be spent mainly in the capital city of Delhi. There he divided his time between the 'Bhangi colony', where the sweepers and the lowest of the low stayed, and Birla House, the residence of one of the wealthiest men in India and one of the benefactors of Gandhi's ashrams. Hindu and Sikh refugees had streamed into the capital from what had become Pakistan, and there was much resentment, which easily translated into violence, against Muslims. It was partly in an attempt to put an end to the killings in Delhi, and more generally to the bloodshed following the partition, which may have taken the lives of as many as 1 million people, besides causing the dislocation of no fewer than 11 million, that Gandhi was to commence the last fast unto death of his life. The fast was terminated when representatives of all the communities signed a statement that they were prepared to live in "perfect amity", and that the lives, property, and faith of the Muslims would be safeguarded. A few days later, a bomb exploded in Birla House where Gandhi was holding his evening prayers, but it caused no injuries. However, his assassin, a Marathi Chitpavan Brahmin by the name of Nathuram Godse, was not so easily deterred. Gandhi, quite characteristically, refused additional security, and no one could defy his wish to be allowed to move around unhindered. In the early evening hours of 30 January 1948, Gandhi met with India's Deputy Prime Minister and his close associate in the freedom struggle, Vallabhai Patel, and then proceeded to his prayers.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/NuclearArms.htm
Gandhi On Nuclear Arms
There have been cataclysmic changes m the world. Do I still adhere to my faith in truth and nonviolence? Has not the atom exploded that faith? Not only has it not done so but it has clearly demonstrated to me that the twins constitute the mightiest force in the world. Before it the atom bomb is of no effect. The two opposing forces are wholly different in kind the one moral and spiritual, the other physical and material. The one is infinitely superior to the other which by its very nature has an end. The force of the spirit is very progressive and endless. Its full expression makes it unconquerable in the world. In saying this I know that I have said nothing new. I merely bear witness to the fact. What is more, that force resides in everybody, man woman, and child, irrespective of the colour of the skin. Only in many it lies dormant, but it is capable of being awakened by judicious training.
It is further observed that without the recognition of this truth and due effort to realise it, there is no escape from self-destruction. The remedy lies in every individual training himself for self-expression in every walk of life, irrespective of response by the neighbours.
... You cannot successfully fight them with their own weapons. After all you cannot go beyond the atom bomb. Unless we can have a new way of fighting imperialism of all brands in place of the outworn one of a violent rising, there is no hope for the oppressed races of the earth.
Gandhi & Non-Violence
Nonviolence in the sense of more non-killing does not appear to me, therefore, to be any improvement on the technique of violence. It means slow torture, and when slowness becomes ineffective we shall immediately revert to killing and to the atom bomb, which is the last word in violence today. Therefore, I suggested in 1920 the use of nonviolence and its inevitable twin companion, truth, for canalizing hatred into the proper channel. The hater hates not for the sake of hatred but because he wants to drive away from his country hated being or beings. He will, therefore, as readily achieve his end by non-violent as violent means.
And has not the atom bomb proved the futility of all violence? And yet we are crazy enough to think we can win Swaraj by breaking a few skulls and destroying property which, after all is said and done, is our own.
If we cease to be inferiors [the foreigner] cannot be our superior. His arsenals and his weapons, typified in their extreme in the atom bomb, should have no terror for us. It follows that we must first have things before we cease to covert them. This tempting argument leads to the prolongation of the agony. Must I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
Some time back a military officer in Poona, who is about to return to England, (remarked) that violence was on the increase in India and would further increase as people were gradually turning away from the path of nonviolence. "We in the West not only believe in violence but our society is based on it. Several subject races have won their independence through violence and are today living in peace. We have discovered the atom bomb for stopping violence. The last great war is a case in point." Continuing, the military officer said, "Gandhi has shown your people the way of nonviolence. Has he discovered any such power as the atom bomb which will at once convert people to nonviolence and bring about a rule of peace? Cannot Gandhi's "atom bomb" stop people from following the path of violence? Ask Gandhi to exercise his power over the people and tell them to give up all thoughts of violence and adopt his creed. If he cannot wean his people today from the terrible violence that is spreading all over the country, I tell you that he will live a disappointed man and his life's work will be ruined."
While it would be absurd to say that violence has ever brought peace to mankind it cannot either be said that violence never achieves anything.
That I shall have to repent if I cannot stop violence does not enter into the picture of nonviolence. No man can stop violence. God alone can do so. Men are but instruments in His hands. Man does not and can never know God's law fully. Therefore we have to try as far as lies in our power. Ahimsa is one of the world's great principles which no power on earth can wipe out. Thousands like myself may die in trying to vindicate the ideal but ahimsa will never die. And the gospel of ahimsa can be spread only through believers dying for the cause.
It has been suggested by American friends that the atom bombs will bring in ahimsa as nothing else can. It will, if it is meant that its destructive power will so disgust the world that it will turn it away from violence for the time being. This is very like a man glutting himself with dainties to the point of nausea and turning away from them only to return with redoubled zeal after the effect of nausea is well over. Precisely in the same manner will the word return to violence with renewed zeal after the effect of disgust is worn out.
Often does good come out of evil. But that is God's, not man's plan. Man knows that only evil can come out of evil, as good out of good.
That atomic energy though harnessed by American scientists and army men for destructive purposes, may be utilized by other scientists for humanitarian purposes is undoubtedly within the realm of possibility. But that is not what was meant by the American friends. They were not so simple as to put a question which connoted an obvious truth. An incendiary uses fire for his destructive and nefarious purpose, a housewife makes daily use of it in preparing nourishing food for mankind.
Atom Bomb Vs. Gandhi
So far as I can see the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. There used to be the so-called laws of war which made it tolerable. Now we know the naked truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atom bomb brought an empty victory to the allied arms but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see. Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner. We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events. A slave-holder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage holding the slave. Let no one run away with the idea that I wish to put in a defence of Japanese misdeeds in pursuance of Japan's unworthy ambition. The difference was only of one degree. I assume that Japan's greed was more unworthy. But the greater unworthiness conferred no right on the less unworthy of destroying without mercy men, women and children of Japan in a particular area.
The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter-bombs even as violence cannot be by counter-violence. Mankind has to get out of violence only through nonviolence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. I am aware that I am repeating what I have many times stated before and practised to the best of my ability and capacity. What I first stated was itself nothing new. It was as old as the hills. Only I recited no copy-book maxim but definitely announced what I believed in every fibre of my being.
Europe seems to be heading for another war. It is not sufficiently exhausted."
"Europe is terribly exhausted. But with the atom bomb human beings don't matter so much. A few scientists are enough. The next war will be carried on by pressing a few buttons. That is why colour war is so dangerous."
An English friend enquired:
"Was the world progressing? Had the making easier of life and the struggle for existence in the modem world resulted in the dulling of man's instincts and sensibilities?"
"If that is your comment, I will subscribe to it," replied Gandhi.
"And the atom bomb?"
"Oh, on that point you can proclaim to the whole world without hesitation," exclaimed Gandhi, "that I am beyond repair. I regard the employment of the atom bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science."
What was the antidote? Had it antiquated non-violence? "No", was Gandhi's reply. On the contrary, nonviolence was the only thing that was now left in the field. "It is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, "Unless now the world adopts nonviolence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind."
Mr. Andrew Freeman of the New York Post, who took lessons in spinning with Kanu Gandhi, had come to Gandhi with the assumption that the spinning wheel had a cultural and therapeutic value, especially for the malaise from which the West was suffering and which had culminated in the atom bomb.
Has the spinning wheel a message for America? Can it serve as a counter weapon to the atom bomb?" he asked.
"I do feel" replied Gandhi that it has a message for the USA and the whole world. But it cannot be until India has demonstrated to the world that it has made the spinning wheel its own, which it has not done today. The fault is not of the wheel. I have not the slightest doubt that the saving of India and of the word lies in the wheel. If India became the slave of the machine, then, I say, heaven save the world."
Hitlerism & Non-Violence
Asked as to how it would be possible to destroy Hitlerism by nonviolence, Gandhi said that that was what we had to find out. Otherwise, if they depended upon superior violence in order to destroy violence of the Hitlerism type, then small nations would have hardly any chance of survival. So that nonviolence alone was the only guarantee of protection against heaviest odds. Unless we could develop this courage and this type of resistance, democracy could never survive.
The West is today pinning for wisdom. It is despairing of the multiplication of atom bombs because atom bombs means utter destruction not merely of the West but of the whole world, as if the prophesy of the Bible is going to be fulfilled and there is to be a perfect deluge. It is up to you to tell the world of its wickedness and sin-that is the heritage your teachers and my teachers have taught Asia.
General is reported to have said as follows: "nonviolence is of no use under the present circumstances in India, and only a strong army can make India one of the greatest nations of the world."
I fear, like many experts, General has gone beyond his depth and has been unwittingly betrayed into a serious misconception of ahimsa of whose working, in the nature of things, he can only have a very superficial knowledge. It is his ignorance of this, the greatest duty of man in the world, which makes him say that in this age nonviolence has little scope in the face of violence, whereas I make bold to say that in this age of the atom bomb unadulterated nonviolence is the only force that can confound all the tricks put together of violence.
Generals greater than (Him) have been wise and humble enough to make the admission that they can have no right to speak of the possibilities of the force of ahimsa. We are witnessing the tragic insolvency of military science and practice in its own home. Should a bankrupt, who has been ruined by the gamble in the share market, sing the praise of that particular form of gambling.
Gandhi On War
The conversation then turned on the question of war. "How do you think the succession of wars such as we have witnessed of late can be stopped?" he asked.
"I have no doubt," replied Gandhi, "that unless big nations shed their desire of exploitation and the spirit of violence, of which war is the natural expression and the atom bomb the inevitable consequence, there is no hope for peace in the world. I tried to speak out during the war and wrote open letters to the British people, to Hitler and to the Japanese and was dubbed a fifth columnist for my pains."
Behind the death-dealing bomb there is the human hand that releases it, and behind that still is the human heart that sets the hand in motion.
In an interview with a New York Times correspondent, at a time when the democracies were faced with a crises, Gandhi suggested simultaneous disarmament on the part of the democratic powers as a solution. "I am as certain," he said, "as I am sitting here that this would open Hitler's eyes and disarm him". "Would it not be a miracle?" Gandhi's interviewer asked. Gandhi replied "Perhaps. But it would save the world from the butchery which seems impending."
On Non-Violence & Atom Bomb
The hardest metal yields to sufficient heat; even so must the hardest heart melt before the sufficiency of the heat of nonviolence. And there is no limit to the capacity of nonviolence to generate heat.....During my half-century of experience I have not yet come across a situation when I had to say that I was helpless, that I had no remedy in terms of nonviolence.
"How would you meet the atom bomb with nonviolence?" Margaret Bourke-White, the American correspondent, asked Gandhi on the 30th January, 1948, just a few hours before he was killed. He replied: "I will not go underground. I will not go into a shelter. I will come out in the open and let the pilot see I have not a trace of ill-will against him. The pilot will not see our faces from his great height, I know. But the longing in our hearts - that he will not come to harm - would reach up to him and his eyes would be opened."
Then guessing probably what was passing in his interviewer's mind, he added: "If those thousands who were done to death in Hiroshima, if they had died with that prayerful action-their sacrifice would not have gone in vain."
Source : Mine & Metal Workers, Gandhi Jayanti 1998
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Departing from MAHATMA GANDHI'S TRUTH:
In 1930, the following Church was formed in INDIA..... http://berchmans.tripod.com/malankar.html
For a comprehensive understanding of this article, first read:
Apostle Thomas in India
Early Christians of India
Western Influence on Thomas Christians
Orthodox Churches in India
Because of the Latinizing policy of the Portuguese a large number of Malabar Christians became separated from the Catholic Church and joined the Jacobite Church of Antioch. They were not truly happy with it and repeatedly sought to return to the Catholic fold with self-respect. Such efforts were constantly thwarted by the Latin domination. The hostile attitude of the missionaries towards the Jacobite metropolitans who were in favor of union with the Catholics heightened the tension.
In the second half of the 18th century, the requests of Mar Dionysius I (alias Mar Thomas VI), one of the then bishops of the non-Catholic Thomas Christians for being received into the Catholic Church, were looked upon with suspicion by the Padroado and the Propaganda prelates. This made the Thomas Christian priest Kariattil Joseph (an alumnus of the Propaganda College, Rome) take steps to go to Rome. In Rome he did not get a cordial reception. While he was in Lisbon, Kariattil, his rite having been changed into Latin, was consecrated archbishop of Cranganore under the Padroado, on Dec. 16, 1782. With all faculties to receive Mar Dionysius I into the Church, Kariattil returned to Malabar. But before reaching Malabar he met with a premature death in Goa on Sept. 10, 1786. This is well described in Vathamanapusthakom, the first travelogue written in Malayalam, by Fr. Thomas Paremakal the co-traveler of Kariattil. After Kariattil’s death, Paremakal was nominated Administrator (Governador) of Cranganore.
Later, the S. Congregation was prepared to accept Mar Dionysius I as the bishop of his own people on condition that his successor was to be elected by the people and confirmed by Rome. The Vicar Apostolic began sending reports, which were not very favorable. The faculty given to the archbishop of Goa by the Pope on Aug. 27, l794, did not go beyond accepting Mar Dionysius I as a priest. This was thoroughly disappointing.
However, through the efforts of Thachil Mathoo Tharakan, Mar Dionysius I embraced the Catholic Church at an unauthorized assembly on June 21, 1799. Mar Dionysius I promised he would remit a sum of money to the Travancore government if he reverted to Jacobitism. According to the accounts kept by the Thomas Christians, Mar Dionysius I made the profession of faith according to the formula of Pope Urban VIII and also accepted the "synod" of Diamper which the missionaries were insisting upon as a condition sine qua non for reunion. Neither the Vicar Apostolic nor any one else did anything in the matter. Nobody was found to receive Mar Dionysius I legally into the Catholic Church even as a priest. After six months he returned to Jacobitism and remitted the above mentioned sum to the Travancore government. There is no justification for this sort of hostility and stubbornness of the authorities of the Catholic Church. Rome does not seem to have known of the affair in time; otherwise things would perhaps have taken another course. Mar Dionysius I, who was not satisfied with the Jacobite Church, invited the Church Missionary Society (CMS) consisting in Anglican missionaries to reform the Jacobite Church, which later paved way for the birth of another Church in Malabar, the Mar Thoma Church.
The Malankara (Orthodox) Churches in Malabar had always a sort of tension with the Jacobite Patriarchate in Antioch, and so from those Churches there had always been attempts to restore communion with the Holy See of Rome. Mar Ivanios, the founder of the "Order of the Imitation of Christ", after much study and prayer determined to be reunited with the Catholic Church. In 1926 a Jacobite Episcopal Synod at Parumala, empowered Mar Ivanios, Metropolitan of Bethany, to enter in to negotiation with Rome to effect a reunion with the Catholic Church under the express condition that the ancient and venerable tradition of the Malankara Church should be kept intact. Pope Pius XI graciously accepted the condition and welcomed the reunion. Accordingly, Archbishop Mar Ivanios and his followers made their profession of faith on 20th September, 1930 and were duly received into the Catholic Church. By the apostolic constitution, Christo Pastorum Principi, Pope Pius XI constituted the Malankara hierarchy on 11th June, 1932 with Mar Ivanios as archbishop of Trivandrum and Mar Theophilos as the sufragan bishop of Thiruvalla. Mar Ivanios took possesion of his Metropolitan See of Trivandrum on 12th March, 1933.
The Syro-Malankara Church is the third hierarchy of the Catholic Church in India. It is granted all the rights and privileges and its own liturgy and legitimate customs of the Antiochene Rite, and also administrative autonomy. The married clergy was retained but was asked to observe priestly celibacy in the future. The Church also has adopted a few laws, customs and practices of the Latin Rite.
The Syro-Malankara Church, at present, has two Archdioceses: Trivandrum, with one suffragan diocese of Marthandam, and Thiruvalla, with two suffragan dioceses of Sultan Battery and Muvattupuzha. There are 300,000 faithful with 5 bishops, 500 priests and 1200 religious men and women as members.
What has become of INDIA since?
More Background: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/in.html
since China and India launched a security and foreign policy dialogue in 2005, consolidated discussions related to the dispute over most of their rugged, militarized boundary, regional nuclear proliferation, Indian claims that China transferred missiles to Pakistan, and other matters continue; various talks and confidence-building measures have cautiously begun to defuse tensions over Kashmir, particularly since the October 2005 earthquake in the region; Kashmir nevertheless remains the site of the world's largest and most militarized territorial dispute with portions under the de facto administration of China (Aksai Chin), India (Jammu and Kashmir), and Pakistan (Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas); India and Pakistan have maintained the 2004 cease fire in Kashmir and initiated discussions on defusing the armed stand-off in the Siachen glacier region; Pakistan protests India's fencing the highly militarized Line of Control and construction of the Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River in Jammu and Kashmir, which is part of the larger dispute on water sharing of the Indus River and its tributaries; UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) has maintained a small group of peacekeepers since 1949; India does not recognize Pakistan's ceding historic Kashmir lands to China in 1964; to defuse tensions and prepare for discussions on a maritime boundary, India and Pakistan seek technical resolution of the disputed boundary in Sir Creek estuary at the mouth of the Rann of Kutch in the Arabian Sea; Pakistani maps continue to show its Junagadh claim in Indian Gujarat State; discussions with Bangladesh remain stalled to delimit a small section of river boundary, to exchange territory for 51 Bangladeshi exclaves in India and 111 Indian exclaves in Bangladesh, to allocate divided villages, and to stop illegal cross-border trade, migration, violence, and transit of terrorists through the porous border; Bangladesh protests India's fencing and walling-off high-traffic sections of the porous boundary; a joint Bangladesh-India boundary commission agreed to fully demarcate the Bangladesh-India boundary in the Dhubri-Kruigram sector; Bangladesh referred its maritime boundary claims with Burma and India to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea; fencing along the India-Burma international border at Manipur's Moreh town is in progress to check illegal drug trafficking and movement of militants; Bhutan cooperates with India to expel Indian Nagaland separatists; Joint Border Committee with Nepal continues to examine contested boundary sections, including the 400 square kilometer dispute over the source of the Kalapani River; India maintains a strict border regime to keep out Maoist insurgents and control illegal cross-border activities from Nepal
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refugees (country of origin): 77,200 (Tibet/China); 69,609 (Sri Lanka); 9,472 (Afghanistan)
IDPs: at least 600,000 (about half are Kashmiri Pandits from Jammu and Kashmir) (2007)
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current situation: India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation; internal forced labor may constitute India's largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children are held in debt bondage and face forced labor working in brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories; women and girls are trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage; children are subjected to forced labor as factory workers, domestic servants, beggars, and agriculture workers, and have been used as armed combatants by some terrorist and insurgent groups; India is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation; Indian women are trafficked to the Middle East for commercial sexual exploitation; men and women from Bangladesh and Nepal are trafficked through India for forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation in the Middle East
tier rating: Tier 2 Watch List - India is on the Tier 2 Watch List for a fifth consecutive year for its failure to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combat human trafficking in 2007; despite the reported extent of the trafficking crisis in India, government authorities made uneven efforts to prosecute traffickers and protect trafficking victims; government authorities continued to rescue victims of commercial sexual exploitation and forced child labor and child armed combatants, and began to show progress in law enforcement against these forms of trafficking; a critical challenge overall is the lack of punishment for traffickers, effectively resulting in impunity for acts of human trafficking; India has not ratified the 2000 UN TIP Protocol (2008)
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world's largest producer of licit opium for the pharmaceutical trade, but an undetermined quantity of opium is diverted to illicit international drug markets; transit point for illicit narcotics produced in neighboring countries and throughout Southwest Asia; illicit producer of methaqualone; vulnerable to narcotics money laundering through the hawala system; licit ketamine and precursor production
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Today - March 25, 2011 - News from the Vatican:
HOLY FATHER RECEIVES PRELATES OF SYRO-MALANKAR CHURCH
VATICAN CITY, 25 MAR 2011 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican the Holy Father received prelates of the Syro-Malankar Church, who have just completed their five-yearly "ad limina" visit.
"The apostolic traditions which you maintain enjoy their full spiritual fruitfulness when they are lived in union with the Church universal", said the Pope in his English-language remarks. "In this sense, you rightly follow in the footsteps of the Servant of God Mar Ivanios, who led your predecessors and their faithful into full communion with the Catholic Church. Like your forefathers, you too are called, within the one household of God, to continue in firm fidelity to that which has been passed down to you".
"The deposit of faith handed down from the Apostles and faithfully transmitted to our times is a precious gift from the Lord", said the Holy Father, noting that "due to its ancient roots and distinguished history, Christianity in India has long made its proper contribution to culture and society, and to its religious and spiritual expressions. It is through a determination to live the Gospel ... that those whom you serve will make a more effective contribution to the entire body of Christ and to Indian society, to the benefit of all. May your people continue to flourish by the preaching of God's word and by the promotion of a fellowship based on the love of God".
Benedict then turned to consider the challenges facing the prelates in their work, especially the shortage of parish priests. In this context he encouraged them not to lose heart because "small Christian communities have often, as you know, given outstanding witness in the history of the Church. ... It is this divine presence which must remain at the centre of your people's life, faith and witness, and which you their pastors are called to watch over so that, even if they must live far from their community, they will not live far from Christ".
"One of the ways in which you exercise your role as teachers of the faith to the Christian community", the Pope concluded his remarks to the bishops, "is through catechetical and faith formation programmes. ... Since 'instruction should be based on Holy Scripture, Tradition, liturgy, and on the teaching authority and life of the Church', I am pleased to note the variety and number of programmes that you currently employ. Along with the celebration of the Sacraments, such programmes will help ensure that those in your care will always be able to give an account of the hope which is theirs in Christ". AL/ VIS 20110325 (440)
********************************************************************** Observations:
The Vatican is part of the One World Order/New World Order having been a part of the 1822 Secret Treaty of Verona, which was signed by Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, the U.S. and England............. The One World Order/ New World Order has the support of the United Nations, the Masons/Freemasons - identified by the use of the terms "rights and privileges".
See the Syro-Malankara Church article with "rights and privileges" which identifies their connection to the One World Order/New World Order.
Therefore, the Syro-Malankara Church, which began in 1930, prior to Mahatma Gandhi's death, did depart from the teachings which represented the majority part of India.
The United Nations which was formed by the CFR, Council on Foreign Relations made up of the U.S., England, and the bankers (Morgan and International bankers including Bank of England) did depart from the Law of Nations.
Queen Liliuokalani did document that the U.S. and England breached the Law of Nations. Then the organizations departing from the Law of Nations were formed after she died. See John Nelson's article at http://myweb.ecomplanet.com/GORA8037.
So, what's the big deal?
The moves made affecting INDIA in the news shows the constant momentum of support of those who move away from the values of the majority.
TRUTH, freedom from slavery, etc. was the primary momentum of INDIA with Mahatma Gandhi's time and his works affected many others such as South Africa's Nelson Mandela, et. als.
In viewing what happened to Ko Hawaii Pae Aina/Hawaiian Kingdom, the TRUTH of a neutral, non-violent, friendly nation was usurped.
Everyone needs to be aware, watchful of the PIRATES of the World, and the PIRATES of the Pacific because the momentum is to deny the TRUTH which leaves many innocents slaves.
Gandhi said: "After I am gone, no single person will be able completely to represent me. But a little bit of me will live in many of you. If each puts the cause first and himself last, the vacuum will to a large extent be filled."- The Last Phase by Pyarelal, Vol. II, p. 417
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