Sita Ram Goel on Arun Shourie

“The Christian missionary orchestra in India after independence has continued to rise from one crescendo to another with the applause of the Nehruvian establishment manned by a brood of self-alienated Hindus spawned by missionary-macaulayite education. The only rift in the lute has been K.M. Panikkar’s Asia and Western Dominance published in 1953, the Report of the Christian Missionary Activities Committee Madhya Pradesh published in 1956, Om Prakash Tyagi’s Bill on Freedom of Religion introduced in the Lok Sabha in 1978, Arun Shourie’s Missionaries in India published in 1994 and the Maharashtra Freedom of Religion Bill introduced in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, M.L.A. on 20 December 1996.”

“A dialogue for serving its third purpose could be held only in January 1994 when Arun Shourie, the noted journalist and scholar, was invited by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) to present a “Hindu assessment” of missionary work in India. But unfortunately for-the managers of this “dialogue”, it went out of hand and misfired. Ever since, the giant Christian establishment in India has been smarting with the hurt which Arun Shourie has caused. The uproar he has raised can be compared only with the uproar which had followed the publication of K. M. Panikkars’ Asia and Western Dominance in 1953. Missiology has been mobilizing its arsenal of apologetics and polemics in order to control the damage that has been done to Christian claims and pretensions... The CBCI was celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation, and holding a Seminar at Ishvani Kendra, a Catholic seminary in Pune. Almost all the Catholic big-wigs in India were present when Arun Shourie gave his talk on 5 January 1994... By the time the paper was fully elaborated, it had acquired the size of a book. Arun Shourie published it in early May 1994 under the title, Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas. ... Meanwhile, Arun Shourie had written several articles on the subject in his syndicated column which appears in more than a score of newspapers published in several languages all over the country. The articles evoked a lively discussion in the Maharashtra Herald of Pune.”