To that last quote, yes, im sure that your big macs and meat loaf are far more appetizing and healthy.

all i ask is that christians view the rest of the world with less biased opinions that they have now, and understand that all religions, including their own, have their flaws.

I lived in India for just under a year. When I was there I was a volunteer with both Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, but also part of a small group of people who would visit some train stations everyday and feed the people who were starving to death. In the 4 months or so that I walked those platforms I, or another in my group, would find people everyday who had serious illness’, such as TB, Bronchitis, Hepatitis, and HIV. (The homeless woman, and yes sometimes little girls, whom we met who slept in these stations were raped on average 3-7 times a night. That is how the HIV and Hep were spreading so quickly.) We would also meet people everyday who had severe infections in an external body part. I had no medical training except for what I was shown by the medical professionals who volunteered alongside, and before me, but I myself have picked up men and woman dieing because their infections in their head or foot is so bad that they have maggots crawling in and out of their ears and eye ducts, or they have lost all the flesh on their toes and all that is left is rotten yuckiness and bone. (By the way I am sorry if this is too graphic for you. I am just assuming from your blogging that you are a very mature type of kid, Like I was, and like my sister of 11 is now.)

Everyday, THOUSANDS of people walked by these poor sick people, and no one helped them. I have picked up a woman who was in the middle of a flood of people, hundreds getting off a train and just walking around her. She died in Mother Teresa’s Nirmal Hriday minutes after we brought her there. If someone had helped her earlier maybe she would have at least felt loved before she died.

Now, I am not telling you this so that you think I am really cool or good or anything like that but so that you can believe me when I say that I know what the people of India really believe about Love and Social Injustice. It was as if I saw them cast a vote every time they passed up a person in need..’He is not worth my Love’, ‘Her Karma is why she is like that so it must be justice that happens to her’,'If that person wants help why don’t they get a friend or their family to help them? It is wrong to expect me to do something!”
Their actions spoke for their faiths. Yes, I mean faiths in a plural sense. (India is 80% Hindu, 13% Islamic, and 2% Christian, while Jewish and Zoroastrian people are numbered in the thousands.) While there I have to say that I honestly never met a Jewish or Zoroastrian person, Christians I did meet, of all different denominations and focus’, and Muslims were abundant in the areas of India that I lived in and visited, but Hindus…well they were everywhere. And they ALL seemed to be waiting for something or someone else to fix their country. I didn’t meet 1 Hindu who helped me help another person without expecting either baksheesh from me, or believing that they would get a boost in their own Karma for having helped me. Muslum men helped me several times to carry the sick, and never asked for even a chai in gratitude, and the Christians… the ones that I met were the true saints of India. They were the ones who would give me their own dupattas to wrap the maggoty wounds in.

Those who Love others and respect human dignity always show it in their actions. People who claims to follow any religion that Loves or respects human dignity and then walk past a person who desperately needs them are hypocrites, not true followers of any faith.
If Hinduism is indeed supposed to be what Vignesh, says it to be then, well, I didn’t meet any Hindu’s in India at all! In fact, all I met were as he said ‘laypersons’ who practiced a type of faith in multiple gods out of fear. There was no true Love or self giving in what I saw. And let me take this one small step further: If the only people who are actually practicing Hinduism are “…some learned adult Hindu(s), who really knows about the religion…” then Vignesh has just made a hypocrite out of himself when he says that he does not uphold the caste system. Because the only Adult LEARNED people who practice Hinduism are in the higher castes! To be learned implies the ability to A.) Have the time to study, B.) have the ability to study, such as literacy, and C. afford to study in either an institution of learning or with a guru type person. The poor who practice Hinduism have not got the time to stop the work the do all day long to feed their families, in order to learn to read, and study their faith. They live on tradition and common belief practices. These type of lay people are the majority of Hindus in the world! ( Not people like Vignesh, who own computers, and have time to read 12 year old’s blogs, and then pretend to not uphold the caste system. )

I challenge Vignesh to name ONE “…learned adult Hindu, who really knows about the religion…” who did not benefit from either: a foreigners education,(meaning the influence of foreign thought and most often religious education as well), being born into a higher caste, or having long established family connections.

Keep traveling and learning Alex! I hope that more young Americans go and learn about the world like you do!

cheers, Barrier!