"An example will serve to illustrate the spiteful spirit of the Christian missionaries at that time. They spread a canard in India and abroad that many Hindus voluntarily rushed under the wheels of the great chariot during the annual rathayãtrã at Puri, and got themselves crushed to death in order to attain salvation. The great chariot, according to them, was always accompanied by droves of dancing girls who sang lascivious songs and made obscene gestures towards crowds on both sides of the broad street. The “great” William Wilberforce, who ruled the circle of Christian crusaders in Britain and who adamantly advocated the Christianization of India by an unstinted use of state power, demanded immediately that the temple of Jagannath be demolished to stop this “devil-dance” for good. The British Commissioner of Puri at that time saved the situation by writing a long letter to a liberal British M.P. in which he stated that he along with many other British civilians in the district had been a regular witness of the rathayãtrã for twenty years but had never witnessed a single victim under the wheels nor found anything immodest in the songs and symbolic gestures of the dancing girls. The English word “Juggernaut”, which according to the Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary means “any relentless destroying force”, is a living witness to the inventive imagination of the early Christian missionaries."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Goel, S. R. (2015). Hindu society under siege. (Ch. 3. The Residue of Christianism)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jagannath_Temple%2C_Puri
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jagannath Temple, Puri
23 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jagannath Temple, Puri →
Related Quotes
"After Tãj Khãn, his brother Sulaimãn Karrãni took possession of the province of Gaur and proclaimed his independence'…"
"The Sultan left Banarasi [Cuttack] with the intention of pursuing the Rai of Jajnagar, who had fled to an island in t…"
"Allah, who is the only true God and has no other emanation, endowed the king of Islam with the strength to destroy th…"
"The present temple of Jagannath at Puri was constructed by Anantavarman Codagangadeva of the Eastern Gangas (r. 1078-…"
"India has had a spiritual freedom never known until lately to the West. Christianity when it came offering its spirit…"
"It was formerly believed that devotees had offered themselves as sacrifices, as in the case of fanatics supposed to h…"
"This girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahm…"
"The Riyazu-s-Salatin recorded that the wooden image (images?) of Jagannath (and Balabhadra and Subhadra?) were taken …"
"Cakoda Pothi, a local Oriya chronicle stated, “there was a complete anarchy (arajaka) and nobody was there to care of…"
"In this year also Sulaiman Kirrãnî, ruler of Bengal, who gave himself the tide of Hazrati Ãla, and had conquered die …"