India, Its Life and ThoughtJones, John P. (John Peter)
Religion
India, Its Life and Thought
Jones, John P. (John Peter)
India -- Civilization; India -- Religion; Missions -- India
Among the most demoralizing institutions to the youth of India are the
temple cars, which are found in every village of any consequence
throughout the land. They are erected at great expense, by temple
authorities, are most elaborately carved, and are used for the
conveyance of the gods through the village streets upon festival
occasions. There is hardly one of these cars, in South India at any
rate, which is not disfigured by grossly sensual carvings such as
ought to bring blushing shame to any decent and self-respecting
community. They are open to the public gaze, and children of the
village play under their shadow, and gaze daily upon their vile and
disgusting sights. The government would forbid the erection of such
cars to-morrow, if they had not pledged themselves not to interfere
with the religion of the people!
In the Vaishnava cult of Hinduism there is at least one sect, well
known throughout the land, whose worship is loaded with impurity, and
whose worshippers, at certain festivals, specially, yield themselves
to all forms of sexual practices such as cannot be mentioned.
Sakti worship, or the worship of the goddesses, lends itself
definitely to this gross evil; and the leading Tantraic books of this
cult are so filthy that they are not fit to be translated. In Bengal,
where the worship of Durgai, the wife of Siva, is dominant, the Hindus
themselves are beginning to protest against the lewdness, obscenity,
and licentiousness which prevail at their great Holi festival, which
is the annual festival of the goddess.
Another institution connected with the temple worship of India, and of
which Hindus ought to be heartily ashamed, is that of dancing-girls.
Little girls in their infancy are devoted and dedicated by their own
mothers to the temples. They are supposed to be married to the gods of
the temple, and are called "the servants of the gods." They dance in
attendance upon the gods, upon festival occasions, and are an inherent
part of the temple worship. But the sad thing about these women is
that their own mothers knew, when they dedicated them in infancy, that
they were binding them to a life of shame. For the dancing-girls are
the professional prostitutes of India. There are a host of these women
(twelve thousand in South India alone) who, without their own consent,
and in the sacred name of religion, have been handed over to this
life of shame, to corrupt and debase the youth of the land. Their life
is a loud cry against their mother-faith, which systematically devotes
them to destruction of soul and body. Some educated men of the land
denounce this as an evil which should be stopped. But the leaders of
the faith turn a deaf ear to all such cries.
7. The treatment of woman within Hinduism is worthy of attention.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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