Desicritics Section: Culture

Why Does Ragging Happen?

Freya — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:49:35 EDT

I have never been ragged. In Mumbai, thankfully, many colleges either have Anti-Ragging Squads or the seniors are really good people who just mind their business. In my college too, there's no ragging and seniors are real sweethearts. I once ended up in a third year classroom by mistake, but still they all were very nice to me and neither did they tease or bully when I realized my folly. But that's another story.

The recent news of a 19 year old boy named Aman Kachroo who succumbed to the severe injuries inflicted upon him by his drunk seniors doesn't shock me. This is not the first time someone's killed due to ragging. The authorities of Dr. Rajendra Prasad Govt Medical College are trying to pass this off as a suicide case which makes it sound more heinous. I'm sure that either the seniors boys involved here mostly come from rich families who can silence the authorities with their money or the authorities are trying to just protect their image. So, when is this going to be stopped?

Ragging is a part of college-dom. Every college prospectus says that "Ragging is strictly prohibited". But how many colleges actually have no ragging? Very few.

I would first blame the college authorities. It is their college and the students belong to it. Strict steps should be taken against ragging of any form. In residential colleges, there should be more than one warden for every dorm. If possible, they should have separate dorms for juniors and seniors. Alcohol should be banned and there should be raids in dorms regularly. I have studied in a residential school myself and though there wasn't much ragging, bullying surely existed. I had some senior friends who used to proudly boast how they gave "treatments" to their juniors.

Next, I would blame the parents who don't believe their children or don't care. Most parents who have sons have this habit. They have the "ladka-hai-toh-sambhal-lega" kind of attitude. When it comes to girls, parents become overprotective. I say, stop idolizing your male children as supermen. THEY ARE NOT! Males are definitely more physically powerful than females but when 5 grown-up boys or even 5 girls attack a boy who's equally grown up, he cannot definitely do a Shaktiman there. Now, how do you expect your sons to protect themselves?

I cannot blame the first-years much. Though they can do something to protect themselves like forming groups of students who complain the same thing and demand an explanation from the administration. Sadly, there is a different kind of student politics in every institution. There are so many colleges who don't care what's happening or just ignore whatever is happening. There are still parents who think of their children(boys, especially) as superhuman. Only the tormentors can stop what they do. Senior students should be matured enough not to behave in this fashion. They needn't be godfathers to their juniors but at least think about their own future or their conscience which can prick them later.

Poem: Only The Light

Kashkin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:42:31 EDT

Absent and not in view
The golden words of our past
Still there, an old craving to explore
Only in view, the shackles of time
The separation of days from its demise
As I write, to form a soul
Of once that was, now a dream

As I labor to turn,
The old wheels of fortune
In the land of my ancestors and poets
Only the words I have
At my disposal and at my service
As I rotate with the earth and its burdens
Through labyrinth of time and space
Not guilty my conscience and my soul
Of all my crimes, still there some peace
Always in debt to serve, in tattered clothes
The land up in smoke and in fury of hatred

When will you awake, from this slumber?
Of mayhem and of shames,
What will you do to these traditions of past
The murderous routines and ghastly crimes
The future is yours, belongs it to you
Only the steps, you need to take
Silence is a crime if you chose to remain
In surrender to the desires of the world
The glory will come, only if you refrain
From these acts of crime, to your land
Plenty of enemies in view but it's within
Distinguish it well, as there it remains
The clues to your success and dreams

Hold it well and keep it close
The memories of your past
The promise of the future
Shine, my friends, shine
As it is in there you will find
The story of your being and its land
Do not wait or hope for others to come
Summon your souls and bodies to perform
The miracles of change, the miracle of unity
It's time for you to form a soul
Still there, an old craving to explore
In shackles of time and despair of days
Only the light, only the light, in your fate

Comic Strip: It's Not A Lie If It Makes Someone Happy

IdeaSmith — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:30:22 EDT

Well, what else is a woman to do?

(Click on thumbnail to view idea-toon on a new page)

The Catholic Church Once Again Proves It Cares More About Dogma than Humans

smallsquirrel — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:27:29 EDT

A shocking report out of Brazil details the saddening situation of a nine year old girl who was repeatedly raped by her step-father. The young child became pregnant with twins, and her mother decided that the best thing for the child was to have an abortion.

When the Catholic diocese of Recife, Brazil heard of this act, the Archbishop excommunicated the doctor who performed the procedure, the team that assisted him and the mother of the assaulted child.

The stepfather, who committed the brutal raped and impregnated a child was allowed to remain in the church.

To add insult to injury, Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho added the following statement: "A graver act than (rape) is abortion, to eliminate an innocent life."

This whole situation proves to me that the Catholic church is much more interested in rhetoric and dogma than it is in the physical and spiritual well-being of its parishioners. They have offered no support to this child, this horribly abused and now physically and mentally broken child. But they will publicly pass judgment on her. And yet they take no stand against a man who is a pedophile and a rapist. The church need not change its views on abortion, but in extreme cases such as the well-being of a nine year old child, it is perhaps appropriate that they remain on the sidelines. Or maybe they could offer counseling to the family. Something, anything other than criticism, rhetoric and hateful judgment.

In my eyes it does not get more depraved and disgusting than this. This act by the Archbishop is not only indefensible, it is also inexcusable. The church is supposed to be a refuge for people to bring them closer to God. It is not meant to stand in judgment publicly and turn an already bad situation into a heinous media circus.

And perhaps not surprisingly, the Vatican has decided to stand behind the decision of the Archbishop. Not really newsworthy, as it recently defended the Holocaust-denying Bishop, and reinstated him into the church even though he continued to espouse anti-semetic and generally offensive views.

The Catholic Church has sunk to the lowest of the low.

Movie Review: 13B - Not Fear's New Address

IdeaSmith — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:40:14 EDT

Flush with the success of my earlier movie plan which turned out such great results, I decided to go one extra and spice up my next movie outing as well. So, I proposed 'Kitsch is Kool'. The idea was to do something unusual with a touch of whackiness, all in the name of entertainment. I decided to pick something different. Comedy...nah, we did that last week. Oscar winners...too bloody high-brow (Besides it was more fun to diss celebrity style)! Drama...umm, show me something else. How about horror? And what could add more ice to the chills than watching it in a rundown, semi-seedy theatre to add atmosphere? No comfortable plush sofas to sink your face into during the scream-moments, no multiplex comfort food of caramel popcorn and seat-delivered colas. Just rattling, creaky rexine seats where your knees bumped into the cold metal of the seats in front of you, each time you shrieked. 13B at Chandan cinema was the plan.

I'd love to tell you how, full of daring and adventure, I set forth with my brave bunch of movie-buff friends. Instead, every single one of them chickened out!!! Even my plaintive sell of

But guys, just imagine the thrill of facing up to your fears! After all, darr ke aage jeet hai!

was met with,

No!! Darr ke aage nightmares hai!

Like that. Hmph, so I ended up mall-ratting as usual and watching 13B in the aforementioned multiplex complete with comfort food. So not kitschy, definitely not kool. Maybe that took away from the experience, maybe my review would have been nicer if we had gone with the original plan.

13B is driven forth by Madhavan who despite his cult status in Kollywood (the Tamizh film industry, for the uninitiated) has failed to make a splash on the rest of the Indian audience. To his credit most people have fond memories of him in Banegi Apni Baat and Sea Hawks but the big screen seems to be rather cruel on South-Indian men, doesn't it? Considering the hero is a very large proponent of a movie's appeal, it already starts off with a handicap.

In addition, 13B is playing in that rather unfashionable genre of Bollywood horror movies. After the steady Ramsay brothers diet of B-grade potboilers (Veerana, Khooni Murda), the Indian audience was introduced to relatively more sophisticated offerings minus the ketchup-blood and clay-masks of yore. Ram Gopal Verma played guardian angel to this movement with Bhoot and Darna Mana Hai. I don't know how commercially successful they were, compared to the other Bollywood fare but they certainely ushered in a new age of horror in Hindi movies.

Cut to the present. The audience has been seeing a steady stream of 'experimental' movies right from the short-length skits favoured by Nagesh Kukunoor to NRI flicks to collages (Darna Mana Hai, Dus Kahaniyan) to audience-targetted films. Purely from a marketer's standpoint, now would have been a good time to take a leap forward in the undeveloped theme of horror movies. By that premise, 13B is over a decade too late. Raat was made ages ago, Urmila's wide-eyed Bhoot has shocked us all years back. What else is new?

The characterization of 13B is extremely dated with a honey-sweet joint family that precedes the generation of saans-bahu politics. None of the characters really stand out. Poonam Dhillon in her comeback avatar could have done so much more, had she just had a bit more to do than look annoyed at being disturbed during her noontime soap viewing. Sachin Khedekar (who shot to fame with Sailaab, a king among Hindi TV soaps) was perhaps a little too larger-than-life for TV but shrunk to his podgy-man frame in the movie. The movie doesn't exactly make the best case for Madhavan to kick-start his Bollywood career either, since he alternates between huffing & puffing up the staircase (what on earth was that about the broken lift anyway??), wide-eyed mania and goofy grins. That boy needs a lesson on not smiling too much, it makes me want to call him Mr.Cheese (and not as in Kya cheez hai!).

What's worse, there was actually a background score! Not a soundtrack to add dimension to the horror theme, a fullblown honest-to-Hindi-movie-goodness, background score complete with running around trees and *shudder shudder* an item song! This was about the only scary thing in the movie (and trust me on this, I'm a real 'fraidy-cat otherwise).

With a theme like Sab Khairiyat Hai, I was rather hoping this story would experience a Stepford Wives-esque ephiphany and explore the sublimnal horror of mind-controlled perfection. No such luck. By the end of the movie I'm only left with the feeling that there is someone who's even more petrified of gadgets and technology than I am! After all, my nightmares have never been of spooked television sets (even if I did entertain a haunted lift once). It looks like the makers were rather spooked with the idea of making a movie too. If you're looking for chills down the spine, ask a friend to dump an ice-tray down your shirt. Don't bother with 13B.

Poessay: Honesty and Trust

temporal — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:01:07 EDT

San's favourite phrase once used to be 'to be honest...' I would wince and say under the breadth "wohi tau" in the acerbic tone of the actor in the sit-com 'office office'.

Why must honesty precede with vocal reaffirmations? Are we less honest without such declarations?

Or are such 'warnings' part of some nefarious truth in advertising or packaging guideline revelations?

Truth has a way of penetrating armour. It does not need a preamble nor a warning. We can feel its piercing pain if it is unpleasant (which it mostly is).

Have you noticed when things do not affect us directly we can afford to be brutally truthful? I call it the BSS - Bitch-Slut Syndrome. (according to the narrator one who sleeps around is a bitch, but if she does not sleep with the narrator then she turns into a slut.)

And when there is a remote chance of it affecting us or a person dear to us than we embellish it with sugar coats. Like David Frum in that essay in the Newsweek where he wanted to bash Rush Limbaugh and blast him into space: but being Barbara's son he stepped around that ardent wish. Oh, he may be a drug addict, philanderer, has several failed marriages, jets in a private plane, is obnoxious, irrational, overweight, but he has a voice and we must respect it as one of the several voices in the republican fold.

We mention rationality, justification, weather, conditions, considerations doing the amazing tap dance on needle head to reveal the truth while trying not to upset ourselves or another person.

***

janay kaun dekhay ga
muskurati aankhion
kay chalakhtay aansoo

(who'd witness
the downpour
of smiling eyes)

Drop by drop, they fall, and morph into layers of disregard...mingling, partying, disappearing, re appearing, fading in euphemisms of memories labeled as past...distant or near...

I wrote reappearing...as in mujh se pehli si mohabbat m'ray mehboob na maang

Is the lover demanding it? Or is it the flutter of heartbeats ignited at a chance encounter with the past lover? A flicker of flame that was once a fire?

But as Faiz continues:

aur bhee dukh haiN zamaanay meiN muhabbat ke sivaa
raahateN aur bhi vas'l ki raahat ke sivaa
mujh se pehli si mohabbat meray mehbub na maaNg

There are heartaches aplenty (in the world) other than those of love
There is peace and joy aplenty other than the ecstacy of love
Don't ask me to rekindle that love, O Love

To be honest, agar maaNg bhee lay tou bura kiya hay. Dil ko achcha lagay ga. [tr: to be honest, even if the lover is reminiscing about lost love it has a nice feel about it.]

Trust me!

All Visitors are Gods, But Some Visitors are Higher Gods

Vinod Joseph — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:23:23 EDT

Recently, an Indian I know suffered verbal abuse of a racist nature at a public place in the UK. Commiserations from friends and well-wishers flowed in. Amidst all the support and handholding, which were all on the usual lines (not every Brit is racist, it’s the recession which makes people so nasty, don’t let a sicko disrupt your life), one comment stood out and set me thinking: ‘We (Indians) treat these people so well when they come to India.’

My initial reaction was to agree with that comment. I could think of so many instances when I used to work in Mumbai or study in Bangalore when I have gone out of my way to help foreign visitors. I have taken detours so that I could walk visitors to destinations they had trouble finding. I have spent valuable minutes answering questions in painstaking detail, questions on everything ranging from why Indians defecate in public to why Indian trains are usually late.

My initial reaction was buttressed by this blog post by Peter Foster, one-time Telegraph reporter based in Delhi who has very recently moved to Beijing with his family. In his post, Foster tells us of a recent experience in Beijing where an old man saved his life (from his kids) by doing some carpentry work for free. Foster goes on to wonder if he would be just as helpful to a newly arrived Chinese immigrant in London asking him for help in broken English.

So, on the fact of it, one gets the impression that Indians and other Asians and possibly even Africans are very helpful and friendly towards foreign visitors whilst nasty westerners are not. But is this true? Is this the full story, the whole truth?

How do Indians treat illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in India? You might well say that an illegal immigrant does not deserve any respect or warmth. Fine (though throwing them out of the country without even the semblance of a trial is not, in my opinion, the right thing to do), let’s look at the case of Nepalis in India. How do we treat them? I have known restaurants in Colaba (Mumbai) which has a small floating population of working class Africans, treat poor African customers shabbily (the treatment Indians reserve for servants) and at peak times, even turn them away. African students in India are frequent targets of racist abuse as are people from India’s north-east.

Arabs are legendary for their hospitality, (force) feeding their guests even after they say No, even when they don’t have enough food for themselves. Hospitality is supposed to be a duty and a matter of honour. However, this hospitality rarely extended towards the hundreds of thousands of Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, Filipino and African workers in Arab lands.

In short, the fabled Indian or Arab hospitality is restricted to prosperous, white Western visitors. This phenomenon can be seen throughout Asia.

Bhutan is a country which strives for Gross National Happiness rather than GDP. However, it has always treated its Nepali-speaking population as second class citizens even though Nepali migration to Bhutan started in the beginning of the 20th century at the invitation of Bhutan’s rulers. Many Nepalese have been forced to leave Bhutan for refugee camps in eastern Nepal.

After the Chinese revolution, the Chinese government gave scholarships to African students to study in China. As elaborated in this article, the Chinese government’s enthusiasm for Chinese students was not shared by the Chinese populace. African students in China were frequent targets of racist abuse. Hatred towards African students was the focal point which helped galvanise Chinese students into organising themselves, which ultimately led to the student demonstration at Tienanmen Square.

Foster is right in saying that if a Chinese immigrant speaking broken English looks for help in London, he is unlikely to receive the sort of assistance which Foster (speaking broken Mandarin) received in Beijing. However, an African immigrant in China is unlikely to get more any help than a Chinese or Indian immigrant in London.

Prosperous Singapore, Hong Kong or Japan are no better than their poorer Asian neighbours in this regard.

I am not for a moment saying that a coloured person in the West who is the victim of racism doesn’t have the right to protest. However, Asians treating White people so well and treating other Asian minorities and Africans so shabbily, is a manifestation of the racism that is so deeply entrenched in the Asian psyche. In my opinion, if Asians can learn to treat all their visitors with respect and dignity, (rather than treating a few select ones as Gods and feeding them till they burst), if Asians can bury their prejudices and work with poor African countries in improving their common lot, they will be able to deal a death blow to racism.

Book Review : Identity and Violence by Amartya Sen

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:04:51 EDT

Amartya Sen’s book, “Identity and Violence’ examines the unfortunate connection between violence and our tendency to identify with one key trait — our ethnicity, or religion, for example — to the exclusion of all others. Sen argues that we can combat this tendency by rejecting this narrowly defined, limited sense of identity, and embracing a broader, richer and more complex understanding of ourselves.

Speaking of his own identities, he says:

I can be, at the same time, an Asian, a British citizen, a Bengali with Bangladeshi ancestry, an American or British resident, an economist, a dabbler in philosophy, an author, a Sanskritist, a strong believer in secularism and democracy, a man, a feminist, a heterosexual, a defender of gay and lesbian rights, with a nonreligious lifestyle, from a Hindu background, a non-Brahmin...This is just a small sample of diverse categories to each of which I may simultaneously belong.

He bemoans our predisposition to separate human kind into many different boxes – he cites Samuel Huntington and his Clash of Civilizations stereo types. Huntington of course contrasts Western civilization with "Islamic civilization," "Hindu civilization," "Buddhist civilization," and so on. The supposed conflicts of religious differences are incorporated into a sharply fractured vision of hard-boiled divisiveness. In fact, of course, the people of the world can be pigeonholed according to many other subsets, each of which has some—often far-reaching— importance in our lives: nationalities, locations, classes, occupations, social status, languages, politics, and many others. While religious groupings have received much expression in recent years, they cannot be supposed to eliminate other characteristics. Amartya Sen contends that our society is driven as much by confusion as by hatred. Challenging the division of people by race, religion, and class, he presents an alternate understanding of a world that can be made to move toward peace as firmly as it has spiralled in recent years toward brutality and war.

Sen also notes the inclination to create a random -often historically inaccurate- identity of the self in order to distinguish it from the other. Here he criticizes the idea of the Western mind whereby certain ideas (e.g., democracy) are claimed to be the sole property of the Occident. Citing examples of Buddhist councils during the reign of Emperor Ashoka (3rd Century BC) and tracts on religious freedom during that of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (16th Century AD), Sen attempts to demonstrate how such an identity can be quickly disputed.

A lot of the book is preoccupied with the Muslim identity because much of the attention is directed towards the perception and understanding of this identity in the world. Moreover, much that is valuable in the Western civilisation is a legacy of Muslim as well of other, such as the ancient Hindu, civilisations. In other words, watertight compartments between civilisations are historically unsustainable. And, of course, people themselves are blends of several civilisations so that it is not correct to assume that there is such a thing as a uniform, homogenous, monolithic Muslim civilisation.

But is it really possible to fix the responsibility for all the violence that we witness today on the failure of people to recognize the various identities of others? Would that not be as naive an attitude to take towards the occurrence of violence as the perpetrators of aggression take towards identity? How are identities really shaped and very importantly how are they correlated to more concrete, real-life processes that go on in the world? Again, while it is true that everyone has multiple identities what compels one person to prioritize one of these many identities over all others? that is for us, the readers to figure.

If the World Becomes Colour Blind...

Hardik Ruparel — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:53:19 EDT

As the day passes by, the spirit of Holi seems more and more distant from me. Even more distant than the sun itself. I can see the sun and I can feel it. But I really cannot feel the spirit of Holi today.

Maybe Liverpool thrashed Real Madrid, and India did the same to New Zealand, but still today seems so gloomy. The colors on my face just seem to be another symbol. And I hate symbolism. I hate it when we wear headgear as a display of symbolism. I wear a cap because I protect myself from the sun.

Nothing seems to alienate me from the thought (or fact ? ) that the world is spiraling downwards. My friends here in college play around with water and colors as they know nothing. But it's hard to believe they're so ignorant. It's becoming harder to find a reason to smile. It's so hard to believe the world has come to this.

The (so-called?) God we pray to has become the basis of hatred amongst each other. In the common room next to my room, some students do their Namaaz 5 times a day diligently. I don't understand what they're saying. It sounds beautiful. I stand in awe, listening hard, wishing I could understand them, their message, and tell the world how great they are. But then these students walk past the common room. They scoff and they laugh "Terrorists. "

I fail to believe what just happened. Have my ears defied me ? Should I trust my ears or should I trust the people ? I do not know. I fear to think what's the truth.

We haven't progressed much from the Dark Ages. We just don't execute and kill people the way they used to. We're not any more humane than they were. We're just some generations below them. Do we really think we're civilized enough ? We still think, imagine, in our hearts, how we could punish people that we don't like. We hate to admit it. But it's true.

It's true and the world has only gotten worse. Technology has done it's part. Before we could love each other and eradicate diseases like communal hatred, we've found myriad ways to destroy each other.

On such complicated days, nothing seems to cheer me up. Not even good jokes. They only bring a smile. Or probably two. I go back to my magic, and my deck of cards refuse to vanish like they should when I wave my hands ( I don't yet have a magic wand...)

I look around and see how colors have made a difference in the world. Skin colors from white to brown to black to yellow. The colors of things around us influence us. Thanks to The Discovery Channel, I know that colors play a major part in our personality, society, development and hence communalism : Orange, Green, Yellow, Blue and the Red.

That brings me to imagine a day we all woke up to be colorblind. Would we still discriminate against each other ? On religion, color, race, sex, minorities, political parties and other interests ? What if all our lives lost color ? Would we be distressed enough to forget our differences ? Or would we get further enraged and kill each other with nuke bombs ? Would we realize that color actually had no importance and meaning in our lives ? Would the European countries be able to distinguish one flag from the other ? Or would we use our memory to record which object was of which color and continue living pretending that we still saw colors ?

Pretense has been one of the most important factors for survival in this world. I'm sure someone would've said this :

"Shit happens. Just pretend it didn't and get on with life."

If nobody has said it before, well it was just too general and accepted a fact to be even stated explicitly.

Today literally has no significance to today. All we can do is go back to our lives and look at the simple things in life. That brings me to the age old question asked by so many wise men and women:

"Why are we here?"

And I say we are here to enjoy the simple things in life that delight us. For me it's chocolate. Chocolate has helped me resolve many a strife, and many internal disturbances. Chocolate is one of the biggest motivation factors for me. I'm off for a bar of Cadbury's. Happy Holi.

Book Review: The Next Christendom

Shantanu Dutta — Mon, 9 Mar 2009 09:43:17 EDT

What does the future hold for Christianity? Many books have been written which make a case that secular forces will instigate Christianity to grow to be more open-minded and less literal. Such statements may be confrontational and engaging, but they don't appear very convincing in light of the concrete demographic and geographic facts

These are some of the issues that are the subject of Philip Jenkins’ book on the possible future of Christianity. If Jenkins is correct, by the year 2050, six countries (Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Nigeria, Congo and the United States) will each have at least 100 million Christians and Europe will have long been displaced by Sub-Saharan Africa as the most important hub of Christianity, while Brazil itself will have at least 150 million Catholics and 40 million Protestants. More than one billion Pentecostals, among the poorest in their diverse populations, will be spreading their own beliefs to the rest of the world. And as Christianity moves steadily south, it is also taking on a new character: Kinshasa, Buenos Aires, Addis Ababa, and Manila are on their way to replacing Rome, Athens, Paris, London, and New York as the new focal points of the Christian Church.

While many Western analysts have stated that Christianity is in decay and that it must refashion its thinking or hazard being deserted by its followers ¾ or, even worse, becoming largely irrelevant, Professor Jenkins argues that just the contrary is true: Christianity is on the rise again and leading to a very different religion that barely resembles the Western reading of it. It is a variant of Christianity that most Westerners are not habituated to seeing

The book also parleys about how in spreading South, Christianity is in many ways returning to its native soil. Founded in the ancient near east, its earliest contact was greater toward the south and east than northwest into Europe. Of course, Jenkins’s designation of Christianity is broad, encompassing notional believers (i.e., “Christians” spanning actual believers to those whose declaration to Christian associations is merely traditional or cultural) in the Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Coptic, and Ethiopian traditions, and even Indian churches tracing their roots to the apostle Thomas, and branches like the Nestorians.

The books describes how Christianity is beginning to look as it journeys south: Southern Christianity tends to be visibly more traditional theologically than northern. They are far more likely to be Pentecostal. They wait for God to work in signs, wonders, and visions–and they see it happening. Latin America is becoming more Pentecostal than Catholic. They are sending missionaries north and west. The largest church in London today is led by a Nigerian pastor. They are competing hand to hand for numbers and members with Muslims, and often, as in Darfur and previously in Rwanda, experiencing unbelievable maltreatment. They are the face of Christianity

Most books on Christianity today have had a tendency to concentrate on the experiences of the Christians in the United States and Europe - hardly a surprise, since predisposition that is where most of the readership for books tends to be situated. However, this preconceived notion offers a patchy and erroneous portrait of the factual nature of global Christianity. Deciding by the books now presented, it is nearly as if Christianity doesn't exist in the South. Jenkins’ scholarly book shows that the truth is entirely unlike from what we might tend to assume.