Thank you BiblicalChristian101 for the quick response,
DEFINITIONS: ACCEPTED By lack of response or contention.
TIME FRAME: 22nd Oct 1764 to 15th Aug 1947. ACCEPTED By lack of response or contention.
NOTE in R1: Although Christian influence came to India in the form of Portuguese,French and British trading companies, for the purpose of debate Christian influence and British influence the two terms should be held synonymous.
JUSTIFICATION in R1 : British held majority of the Indian landmass(98%), with French and Portuguese holding isolated areas in selected regions(2%).
CON's response:
" While Con uses the term Christianity I would like to instead give credit more to the Bible than Christianity in general, the reason for this is that as William Wilberforce wrote, "It is a sad reality that fanatics, bloody persecutors, self-interested hypocrites of all kinds, have falsely called themselves Christians....We would not discard liberty because people abuse it, nor patriotism, nor courage, nor reason...though all abused," so we should not discard Christianity though it has been abused."
OBJECTION: CON can give credit to any source or any entity as CON wishes but CON has to proof how that source or entity contradicts anything PRO has stated in the Burden of Proof or the note above mentioned. I am sure Bible has a verses to learn from but I just dont see how it is germane to the above mentioned point.
COMMON OBJECTION TO ALL POINT BELOW: All points addressed are against Hinduism, Since Hinduism is the predominant religion in India(80% of the population) , but other half of the country and their tradition and how Christianity had any( if any) effect on them has been ignored religions being : Islam,Sikhism,Buddhism,Jainism. Small minority of Indians are practising Christians but can be ignored for this debate since they account for approximately 1% of the population. Rest 19% also needs to be addressed by CON.
Sati
This is the practice where a widow would be lain beside her dead husband, while alive, and be burned alongside him. This practice left many children orphans with no father and mother to take care of them. Supposedly it comes from Indian mythology where Sati, the wife of Lord Shiva, was so angry at her father's disapproval of her marriage that in protest she burned herself and prayed to reincarnate back as Lord Shiva's wife, which she did thus becoming Parvati. Interestingly, Sati wasn't a widow and the practice, though done to commemorate that story has no relation with the actual story. This practice was followed through all the way up to as recent as 1987.1 One of the biggest opposers to this practice who sought to eliminate it from India was the missionary William Carey. William Carey joined Raja Ram Mohan Roy to end, not only suttee, but also the burning of lepers in India.
OBJECTION: A lot of misinformation is being spread:
Multiple sources in direct contradiction with CON' stance:
"Initially a trading company, the British East India Company gradually made its way into the murky politics of the Indian subcontinent. With their ultimate aim being total control, the foothold they needed on Indian soil to achieve it was through the attack on ‘Indian culture’ for being barbaric, savage and in need of reform that involved imbibing Victorian morals.
They took to social evils to maintain their argument, and Sati was the perfect entryway. While Sati as a practice existed in the subcontinent, it wasn’t as rampant as the British made out to be. Collection of data on the death of women in and around the Calcutta region between 1815 and 1828 was presented to make their case before it was finally abolished in 1829, but the process of collecting and analysing the data was where the loopholes existed."[1]
"
The Sati or suttee[note 1] was a largely historical practice found chiefly among Hindus in the northern and pre-modern regions of South Asia, in which a widow sacrifices herself by sitting atop her deceased husband's funeral pyre.[2][3][4][5]With time, it became a forced practice. Women who did not wish to die like this were forced to do so in different ways. Traditionally, a widow had no role to play in society and was considered a burden. So, if a woman had no surviving children who could support her, she was pressurised to accept sati.
The extent to which sati was practised in history is not known with clarity. However, during the early modern Mughal period, it was notably associated with elite Hindu Rajput clans in western India, marking one of the points of divergence between Rajput culture and Islamic Mughal culture" [2]
CONTRADICTIONS:
- It was a social evil and has no connection with Hinduism , since it has no mention in any Hindu holy texts and thus no association can be made by CON , and any attempt without concrete proof is essentially misinforming the audience.
- No child was left uncared for, it was practised and associated with some very specific regions and limited to widows with no child.
- Christian contribution and contribution of Missionary William Carrey in it's abolishment is being overemphasized.
NOTE FOR THE READERS : CON is referring to a single isolated incident in some rural area in 1987[]. Using that premise to state that the practise was continued till the 1987 (the exact year of the isolated incident) is same as saying Satanic rituals are practised in the west till date[], isolated incidents of human rights abuse happen all across the world but those incidents cannot be taken as a precedent for an argument. Exceptions are not examples.
ARGUMENT:
Raja Ram Mohan Roy, was the reformer credited for change in opinions of people and helping abolish Sati, all the British and missionaries did was pass laws and note the events or cases , that process too had many loopholes. A law is only as good as its implementation. The person and his followers who took the risk of implementing it should be acclaimed for the abolishment. It is same as saying not Martin Luther King Jr. but the American Government should be accredited for advocating for equal right for African- American citizens of USA.
Dowry Deaths
In the vision of Ramakrishna Paramhansa he saw Kali, the Mother-goddess come out of the dark water of a river, deliver a baby and then eat it. Why? Because when it got into her mouth it was empty. Thus, according to Brahma, life and death are trivial. India, of course, rejected the Bible along with the British in the 1940s. With the rejection of the Bible came the inhumanity of dowry deaths. This happens because the in-laws will try to extort more dowry from the wife. In order to extort the dowry they will torture the bride until her family pays up what they demand. This even affects the young girls. Many parents will starve their little toddler girls if they have more than one because they do not wish to get into more than one dowry dispute when there daughters come of age to be married. According to 2015 report 7,600 women were murdered or driven to suicide over dowry and reports have been coming about these deaths as recently as 2018.3
The Bible, however, brought humanity once to India by abolishing and ending suttee and it must be brought again to bring the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ to lost people stooped in a religion that dehumanizes others lives.
OBJECTION:
1.Ramakrishna Paramhansa is an individual with say only in an individual capacity about Hinduism or India, CON is a individual , CON can have a dream about when he saw Jesus wearning ripped jeans, and singing " I am on highway to hell" on the streets of New York , but CON's dream does not give any credence to Christianity, How can an individual be held to account for anything if he does not hold an Office or any Official position in the same lines as that of the pope for Christians within or outside the Republic of India.
2.Can you source the girl child starvation point anywhere ?because PRO's mother was the third girl child of her parents,neither her nor her elder sister was starved to death,neither in his near vicinity or anywhere has PRO even seen people even talking about Dowry let alone asking for it. Some regions and very specific regions (5-10%) by landmass have said to have that problem.
Those regions too have seen a significant reduction in such cases 7600 is a big number for readers mind but it accounts for 1.4 deaths per 100,000 women.
- Compare it to Gun deaths in America 12 per 100,000 individuals , India has just 0.285
- Compare it to Drug related deaths in America 20.7 per 100,000 individuals , India's tally is so low government does not even release that statistic a few hundred cases in total throughout the year.
PRO is not emphasizing this comparison to belittle USA or the western society but to merely point out every society has one or the other problem, if CON wants to engage in mudslinging further PRO would happily bring up how marriage is a broken institution in the West and how drug-addicted babies are a common sight in the West.
Hinduism and Rationality
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi started the Transcendental Meditation movement where one recites a mantra to a minor Hindu demigod. The mantras don't mean anything because the point isn't to know a truth but to empty the mind of rationality. Thinking is ignorance and bondage to rational thought. One must meditate to escape thinking because the root of existence is Avidhya-ignorance.
The Bile on the other hand makes rational thought to be based on a person, the Logos, or the Word, which is Jesus. We can know the truth because Jesus is the Truth
OBJECTION: Point is redundant, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is an individual with no established link in the sense of representation of Hinduism or India , he is entitled to his individual opinion just like PRO and CON are , If CON were to say he wants to dance on top of Himalayas that is his choice , that PRO would only suggest CON apply for proper Visa to India, other than that CON has individual liberty to believe whatever he wants just like this guy. There are people who still believe earth is flat, I hope my point goes across CON.
In Uganda there is a large Indian owned hydroelectric plant on the shores of Lake Victoria that supplies freshwater to thousands of homes. However, on those same shores women can still be seen carrying water on their heads to use for cooking and drinking.
1.Again spreading false information, Nalubaale Hydroelectric Power Station is operated by :
"The Uganda Government, through the Uganda Electricity Generation Company (UEGCL), a 100% parastatal, awarded a 20-year operational, management and maintenance concession to Eskom Uganda Limited, a subsidiary of Eskom, the South African energy company, to cover both Nalubaale Power Station and the adjacent Kiira Power Station. The concession agreement commenced in 2002. The electricity generated here, is sold to the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited (UETCL), the authorized single buyer. UETCL in turn sells the power to Umeme, the energy distributor."
In India, the Hindus convinced a whole class of people that they had been created to carry water for the upper classes and if they fulfilled that duty they would be able to get to "heaven" because they fulfilled their dharma.
OBJECTION: Can you source where are you reading this stuff about PRO's country?, Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India must know about this but I am not able to find articles addressed to this by the concerned ministry.
Mahatma Gandhi, as is known, rejected technology and saw it as something that destroys the planet. However, in countries where there is barely any technology humans are forced to get other peoples water, grind their grain and clean up their latrines. Pollution is a much bigger problem in nations that do not use technology. Where you can't pump water, you can't flush toilets and in places like India, the Hindus carry out a practice where untouchables are forced to carry excreta of other people in a container on their heads.
OBJECTION: Can CON source his allegations please! Broad generalisation is being done by CON on an unprecedented scale, PRO is a Hindu, PRO cleans his own toilet , PRO's very existence is a contradiction to the CON's statement. The practise of untouchability is a thing of India's past as is crusades and burning supposed heretics and witched alive by churches across Europe in the West a thing of its past. In modern India, the class of people are entitled to reservation in colleges,government jobs, higher and post doctoral positions and that too at an allarming percentage of 50%. Which means if an applicant applies for a engineering college entrance exam 50% seats are already reserved for members of SC(Scheduled caste) which CON has mentioned, ST( Tribal people in India) ,OBC(Other backward castes) groups of people who have faced oppression in one form or the other, so as a matter of fact it is the general people who are oppressed or facing discrimination not the other way around. It is somewhat like Affirmative Action practised in US, but on a much greater scale.
Con praises the Taj Mahal as a great architectural achievement of India however, a British traveler named Peter Mundy wrote in 1631, on seeing the construction of this marvelous building, "From Surat to this place all the highway was stowed with dead people, our noses never free from the stink of them...women were seen to roast their children...a man or a woman no sooner dead but they were cut in pieces to be eaten."
Why this famine? Why did they depend on rains so much? Why couldn't they build dams and canals if they could build the Taj Mahal? Why not build storehouses to keep food in in case of drought? Egypt was able to do it four thousand years before when Joseph was prime minister. These people didn't starve because they lacked inventiveness, they starved because their leaders, both governmental and religious, cared more for their glory and their people's well being. The Indian leaders were exploiting their people to built massive monuments that benefited them. So they went about extorting tax money from their subjects and employing them in construction at the same time.
OBJECTION: How can notes of a traveller can be considered a proof or source in a debate, PRO could become a traveller and write in his notes every couple in the West in divorced and every other day a gun battle or firing takes place in the West but anyone can say those facts are incorrect.
The Bible Created a Written Language and Nationalism for India
It was Rev. Henry Martyn who forged Indian dialects into Urdu and Revs. Gilchrist and Kellogg made the base for developing modern Hindi. These men did so in opposition to the British East India Company. The main reason for these efforts of creating a written language was to be able to write the Bible, but in doing so it also brought India under a sense of nationalism. Another perspective in which nationalism was achieved in India was the rejection of many different gods that had created divides between different tribes and castes, but Christianity teaches that there is only one God and all men are made in His image and should be treated equally. Polytheism and Hinduism caused division among the Indian people for many years and since Christianity left it has brought back those problems.
Madhusudan Dutt wrote, "Why has Providence given this queenly, this majestic land for a prey and a spoil to the Anglo-Saxon?" Because "it is the mission of the Anglo-Saxon to renovate, to regenerate, to Christianize the Hindu-to churn this vast ocean that it may restore the things of beauty now buried in its liquid wilderness."
OBJECTION: 1.Again spreading false information,
The work done by above mentioned personalities had no effect on India, nor did they have a contribution to be accredited for. The script these gentleman prepared was based on Urdu, modern day Hindi derives it's origin from devanagari script, having no relation to the above mentioned gentleman.
2.The present day divide was sown by advent of British(Christianity) before that people atleast as a society lived in unison. It was their policy of Devide and Rule to incite communal violence and encourage segregation of the Indian people based on any parameter they found which ultimately led to Partition of India and formation of Pakistan, a neighbour who till today actively engages in proxy war and terrorism against Indian civilians.
As for the Bengal famine: "According to experts, following the Japanese occupation of Burma in 1942, rice imports stopped, and Bengal's market supplies and transport systems were disrupted."5 So it wasn't just the British that caused the famine.
OBJECTION: The source CON uses to justify his stand contradicts CON's claim,study finds that not drought but British policy failure led to death of millions. Even capture of Burma was their fault.
All troops stationed to help protect India, Burma(being part of India at that time) were shipped off to fight a war they had no interest in, and did not affect them at all, while leaving their own Motherland susceptible to invasion.
FURTHER ARGUMENTS:
All arguments regarding cultural, wildife and economic decline are ceded to PRO due to lack of response by CON.
Human life loss: Additionally apart from Bengal Famine , One more event should draw the attention of the readers while leaving , Christianity gave a final gift to India in form of 200,000 to 2 million additional deaths caused by British's untimely exit of India. The administration fast-tracked the partition and Exit of India to new dates making it impossible for the newly formed Indian and Pakistani Governments who did not yet have a working Constitution to control the situation.
Thus the human life loss just in 4 Incidents can be stated:
1.Bengal Famine 2.1 million to 3 million deaths.
2. Partition of India 200,000 to 2 million deaths.
3.Indians soldiers in WW1, 62,000 deaths.
4.Indian soldiers in WW2, 87,000 deaths.
SUMMARY: PRO effectively demonstrates how claims made by CON lack backing by sources, furthers his argument of tremendous loss of Indian lives by advent of Christian rule in India. India under Christian rule of the British faced ecological,cultural,economic and human decline, the after -effects of the seeds of hate sown to only further ease the British rule in India are still predominant in Modern India.
Citations will be provided in next round.
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>Reported Vote: User_2006 // Mod action: Not Removed (non-moderated debate)
>Points Awarded: 4:0; 4 points to Pro.
>Reason for Decision: See Votes Tab.
>Reason for Mod Action:
This debate has been deemed non-moderated. Therefore, no moderation action is appropriate for this vote.
Full Forfeitures, explicit concessions, subjective competitions, truisms, and comedy (even if facetious) are not eligible for moderation (barring certain exceptions).
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Took a minute to realize what a vote chain is.
My reply is: I did not read Lord of the Rings in the 60s like everybody else was. Not sorry, and not a conformist.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why is there a vote chain at all?
YOU BROKE THE VOTE CHAIN REEEEEEEEEEEEE
It is FF.
what does that term mean ?
Disagree. It was a fawful falafel.
It was indeed a foul frankfurter.
As much as I appreciate the humor, as the vote is fine, we can't remove it unless he requests that.
You may always request your own vote be removed. However, no amount of other people reporting it on something like this will net that result.
He bROke thE VoTe ChaIN!
Just saying it's a possibility ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What kind of guy are you? You are voting. If this is just comments or forum posts then I do it, but this is voting.
But you can still have it removed if you tell that you want to have it removed
F for chain
If I report my own vote, then the mods will not remove it because it is correct.
It's never too late to save the chain :^)
C'mon, I didn't know there is a vote chain. I just vote for my own opinion and when I found it, it is already too late.
YOU BROKE THE VOTE COMMENT CHAIN!!!
DISCLAIMER: I dont have any anti- Christian views, I only instigated this debate because the gentleman had a lot to say about my country and my people in a previous debate, and I as a proud Indian could not let that pass.