Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
we spent some time.
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And I think it's
an interesting time
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talking about North Korea
and the difficult situation,
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but the small signs of
Christian understanding
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and perhaps one day an
opening for Christianity there.
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But let's talk about India.
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Sure.
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You know, after in the west,
I think we're ignoring India.
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We see China as a growing
political power which it is,
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in fact, it's
superseded in some ways
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the US economically.
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India is at close second.
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Yes.
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It's a developing area, massive.
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In Bangalore they have
their own Silicon Center.
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Yep, their own. Yeah.
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In fact, you know, I
actually had a chance
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to visit India back in 2017.
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And some of the
things that I learned,
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it was just
fascinating as far as,
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for example, in technology.
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I mean, they've got
people that are even gurus,
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you might say,
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with algorithms and math
and doing the numbers for,
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you know, cyber
work and all of that,
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they're
completely very, very high
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well-developed
programs that they have there.
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Yeah, I mean
there's gross poverty there.
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And the population there,
they're over a billion people.
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Right, but it's a growing
economic power technologically
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and even
geopolitically very few people
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seem to be aware
that this is a hot...
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Already a hot
fighting war on the border
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between China and India.
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Yeah.
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The other day
there was a conflict
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where I think it was about
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a hundred Chinese
soldiers were killed.
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Yeah.
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So it's going to
shape current events,
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but on religion.
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Yeah.
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When I was there,
the thing that I learned
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as I visited
different Christian groups
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from the south, all the
way up to almost a further,
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well, I got midway
up into the country
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and I didn't go
further because they warned me.
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They said, the
further north you go,
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the more Hindu standing it is,
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meaning that they're
more very traditional Hindus.
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And as you probably learned,
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we say India,
but who is an Indian?
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There are many
tribal and ethnic groups.
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It's a very
diverse and huge country.
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Interesting country.
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Yes, for sure.
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With a great history and
a history of Christianity,
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you remember the...
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I think it's a
little more than tradition,
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but the traditional story
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is that Thomas came up
I think to Goa, isn't it?
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Correct. Yep.
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Yeah. Soâ |
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And spread the gospel there.
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And then, of course,
Western Christian missionaries
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were there pretty early.
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And well-known Mother Teresa.
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Yes.
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You know, had
orphanage in India.
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And the colonial experience,
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which, you know, you can
find a lot of problems with it,
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but if anywhere in the
world of colonial experience
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seems to have shaped
India, the bureaucracy
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and the edifices of English rule
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are pretty much the same.
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Yes.
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And the habits die hard.
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And, of course, the
respect for religion,
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and it's a deeply
religious country.
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For sure.
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Many religions, Hinduism
and as Buddhism and Islam.
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There's Persian emergence, yes.
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Yes.
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'Cause the country's
of borders influenced it
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and strong Christianity.
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Yeah.
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You know, the,
the concern though
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that I have from visiting there
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and also studying kind
of the trajectory from 2017
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onward is that you've got
the current administration
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that is very
strongly leaning in favor
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of recognizing
India as Hindustani.
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In other words, that's the name
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they would like
to really revert it
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to and to emphasize
the influence of religion.
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We're back to
Hindustan, aren't we?
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We made a comment
on another program
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that whenever there's
a stan after a country,
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there's a little trouble.
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Yes.
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So Hindustan
being the original name.
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The land of the Hindus.
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Yes.
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So based on that Hindu
being more and more becoming
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recognized as
the national religion
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and therefore other groups
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that are
minorities like Christianity,
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Islam, and so forth,
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being ostracized
from public forums,
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their opinion and viewpoint
not having as much weight
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in public discussion and
even some of their institutions
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actually being closed or
funding being restricted.
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You know, one of the
concerns that when I was there,
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that Kristen
shared with me is that,
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whereas in the past
they were able to receive
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the monetary donations
from outside of the country,
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i.e. other countries
that would send it in
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to support their school,
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Christian schools
or their churches,
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their mission
projects, et cetera.
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That is something
that the Indian government
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now is using
their secret service
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to monitor as
those funds come in,
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because they're
looking at those groups
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as being divisive to the
state and potentially people
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that are enemies of the state.
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Yeah.
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India was very
influential to me.
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I was...
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I've been there
a couple of times,
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but the first time I
was barely out of my teens
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and we went there
as a family on the way
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back to Australia
because my father had moved
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to the US as a missionary
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from Australia
within our church.
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And I saw the dynamic
situation of India and people,
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the overwhelming level of people
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was quite shocking to my system.
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And I'm sure you
had that same feeling.
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And so I saw the
need and the church,
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Adventist Church,
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the Christian
Church doing fairly well,
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and many Adventists
were joining the church,
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but anybody that had a
means and the right initiative,
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a lot of them were
going to the US to study
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and not coming back.
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And that shaped my thinking.
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And I determined
after visiting India
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that I would go
back to Australia,
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which I did after I
graduated from Andrews with MA,
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not a doctorate.
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I went back, but I
intended to stay there forever.
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And it was only a special
call to be a missionary again
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to America that I came back.
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But so it was
very pivotal with me.
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And I still tell my
wife every now and again,
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when she gets antsy with me.
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I say, you should go
to India to, you know,
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there's an awful lot of
wonderful people in India,
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they're
scrambling for existence,
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trying very hard
even to be a beggar
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in some places is hard work.
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To see parents, did
you see it with twisted
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little kids with twisted arms
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and that parents
will often do that,
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that way they're guaranteed
a security as a beggar.
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Yeah.
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And even the taxi driver.
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I remember how, I
remember him telling us,
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he says, you
like my loyalty sahab,
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my loyalty?
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You know, life is a book
that I love on World War I.
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Says, life is not a
game, but a grim struggle.
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And for many people in
India, that's the case.
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Yeah.
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And yet they're rich in culture
and their religious views
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are very multidimensional.
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True.
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And I think that the
challenge that one finds there
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in the country of
India is that not only from,
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you know, the constitution
grants religious freedom,
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it's how it's actually applied.
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Because when I was there
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in the Southern
part of the state,
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you've got, it's
almost like living
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in a part of the West, right?
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Because there's
so much freedoms,
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freedom of
expression, freedom of religion.
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The churches don't have issues
with trying to obtain property
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and build
churches and proselytize,
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but the more, the
further north you go,
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it's more
centered around Hinduism.
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And that's actually
where they've had play,
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some of the villages were devout
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as I call it devout, or
maybe I could just say veryâ |
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Hindu nationalists,
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they identify being a
Hindu mostly an Indian.
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Yeah.
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They attack Christians and, you
know, cut off arms and limbs,
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burn them, all kinds of attacks.
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I don't know the
breakdown of laws within India,
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but India generally, in
its overall constitution
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has adopted many Western
liberal concepts of, you know,
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bringing all together aside.
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In my view, the biggest problem
is not laws, it's communities.
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And those
communities that you mentioned
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where there's the
strong prejudicial atmosphere
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or attitude toward
non-Hindus usually,
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but there's
Christian and Muslim and other,
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remember Pakistan
is a product of that.
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They had a civil war on religion
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and that which caused
the formation of Pakistan.
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And then in my lifetime,
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they fought with
the East Pakistan,
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which then became Bangladesh.
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It was a country that
was split by a civil war.
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So I don't think the laws
are the major problem in India,
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but the cultural, tribal,
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regional aspect of
different religions
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and commensurate with that often
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the low education
in the village level.
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Yeah.
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There's
periodically just, you know,
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where a hundred
people are killed
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in an orgy of
murders in a little town.
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You know, another thing I
think related though on that,
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this topic of looking
at the global perspective
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of countries and
kind of movements, right?
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So there is an
element of nationalism
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that again is trying to blend
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in with religion making Hindu...
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Hinduism, the national religion,
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and the current
administration with that focus,
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they're wanting to lead it
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in the direction
of maybe by 2025,
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having that established
as a part of the nation.
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Yeah, and there's something
going on, you're right,
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in a visible level, I
noticed that the other day
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that Prime Minister
Modi, he said, yeah Modi.
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Yep, Modi.
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You know, I
remember no more than about
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two years ago, seeing him
with Putin at a public meeting,
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very westernized
looking clean shave in Goa,
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no criticism of you, but
now he's like an Indian sadhu
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he's got a long
flowing white beard.
00:10:01.70\00:10:04.53
And so I don't think
it's just a personal,
00:10:04.57\00:10:07.94
you know, adornment,
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I think he's
just throwing a signal
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to this more
ancestral religious view
00:10:14.61\00:10:18.25
of what it is to be Indian.
00:10:18.28\00:10:19.71
So there's something
going on. You're right.
00:10:19.75\00:10:21.85
For sure.
00:10:21.88\00:10:23.22
So India and North Korea, right?
00:10:23.25\00:10:27.96
Where do we go
from here on that?
00:10:27.99\00:10:29.32
Yeah.
00:10:29.36\00:10:30.69
You know, I think that
certainly as Christians,
00:10:30.73\00:10:32.36
we recognize the global picture
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and the need of
Christians around the world.
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And certainly,
in these countries,
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we've talked about
North Korea and India
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taking time to pray
for them on a daily basis.
00:10:41.77\00:10:44.91
Not only for
those of our own faith,
00:10:44.94\00:10:46.61
but other Christian groups
that face daily challenges
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to live out their
faith in those countries.
00:10:50.28\00:10:52.65
And as we do that, we
can be assured that Christ
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will answer our prayers
00:10:54.82\00:10:56.15
on behalf of believers globally.
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