Vannakkam all:

I'd like to share an incident that happened to me in a temple about 20 years ago. I was on a tiny promotional thing for the magazine Hinduism Today here in Canada. I had permission from the board at that particular temple to set up a tiny booth displaying some back issues, etc.

Out of nowhere, this man came verbally attacking me, "You are not Hindu. That magazine is a Christian magazine in disguise! You shouldn't even be allowed in this temple promoting that garbage!" and more... quite lud and qute vile .. a lot of anger Then he conveniently disappeared into the crowd, so that I or others couldn't say something. Were it not for a small innocent child who I was talking to, who together we went on a temple tour, I would have got up and left. My Tamil friend who was with me manned the booth while she and I went innocently around sharing cute stories of the Gods.

In my opinion formed from reflection afterwards over the years, had three causes:
1) the fellow felt it was his duty to defend any onslaught of the west
2) he was ignorant to the true facts of why I was there, and knew nothing at all about me personally, and certainly ignorant of Hinduism Today who has always taken the Christian conversion issue seriously and has written about it extensively and is highly regarded in the Hindu community
3) he was a racist, as that was the only thing he could see about me

But each has the right to express their POV ... until it becomes hate literature or hate speech, and in my country that is prosecuted.

Aum Namasivaya