Thread by @MumukshuSavitri

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In school we were all taught that the word “Juggernaut”was simply an English mispronunciation of Bhagwan Jagannath of Puri whose Rath Yatra is one of the most famous festivals of Hindus. But do you know the horrific origins of the English word “Juggernaut” ?

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For thousands of years Lord Jagannath, Balbhadra & Subhadra are placed on beautifully decorated chariots, and pulled through the streets of Puri by devotees, so that all devotees can get a Darshan of the sacred family. The English first saw this spectacle in the early 1800s.

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When the British invaders first saw the Rath Yatra they could not believe their eyes at the grandeur. Reverend Claudius Buchanan, an Anglican missionary was the first British official to use the word “Juggernaut” in the West in the early 1800s.

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In his letters to Britain, Buchanan represented Juggernaut as a murderous, savage & bloodthirsty cult which sacrificed children. In 1811, Buchanan published Christian Researches in Asia, his “assessment” of the religious condition of India where he demonized “Juggernaut”

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In his very first experience of a glimpse of the Rath Yatra festival , Buchanan was horrified. He immediately tied it to Biblical references of Evil Pagan God “Moloch of the Valley of Hinom”. This was the valley where pagan altars were created hundreds of years before Christ

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According to the Old Testament "There the evil devotees of the mysterious dark god Moloch beat drums to drown out the ghastly cries of children immolated in sacrifice in front of their own willing parents." The Moloch idol was equipped with outstretched, cantilevered arms.

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The idol’s arms extended to a small platform on which innocent babies were tied. Slowly the platform swivels toward the consuming flames as the baby shrieked in helpless agony. Buchanan immediately identified Jagananath with such evil, without a single shred of similarity.

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“The idol called Juggernaut has been considered as the Moloch of the present age; and he is justly so named, for the sacrifices offered up to him by self-devotement are not less criminal, perhaps not less numerous, than those recorded of the Moloch of Cannan.”

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When Buchanan saw the Puri Temple he referred to it as Golgatha- where Jesus Christ was crucified. To him the “walls & gates are covered with indecent emblems.” & the nearby sand plains by the sea was “whitened with the bones of the pilgrims” whom he claimed were sacrifices.

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To Buchanan each & every Hindu ritual was horrifying & demonic. When the women started the auspicious Ulu Dhwani to welcome the Lord, Buchanan heard devilish
“ sounds like whistling…as if a serpent would speak by their organs uttering human sounds."

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The very idol frightened him - he describes it as " a frightful visage painted black with a distended mouth of bloody color” in reference to the blood that “Juggernaut” drinks from his human sacrifices. Clearly he was portraying Hinduism as the devils of the Bible.

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When the worship began - to him it consisted of “obscene stanzas” & when a boy of twelve was brought to sing & dance in devotion during the Puja, Buchanan saw it as something “Lascivious” likening it to some sort of obscene sexual ritual to please the God.

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The entire Puja ceremony was repugnant to him. He says “An aged minister stood up & moved a long rod with indecent action, completed the variety of this disgusting exhibition. I was appalled at the magnitude & horror of the spectacle” He gives no idea what was indecent.

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Then out of nowhere he claims just as Moloch’s worship is about obscenity & blood, there would now be blood sacrifice. He says a pilgrim offered himself as a sacrifice to the idol & was crushed. Then he says Jagannath is “said to smile when the libation of blood is made”

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To Buchanan Juggernaut represented everything that was horrible about Hinduism & only Christianity could save the violent bloodthirsty Pagan savages. He showed Juggernaut as a symbol of utmost violence, savagery, human sacrifice & idolatry

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His description of Juggernaut became so popular that Christian Researches in Asia was reprinted in several editions in America and Britain. The Juggernaut demon cult was breathlessly derided & discussed in all the major Christian missionary magazines.

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This horrific perception of Juggernaut among Protestant missionaries was used as a metaphor for alcohol . Like Juggernaut, alcohol has “shrines on the banks of almost every brook” and “4000 self-devoted human victims, immolated every year upon its altars.”

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In 1930s, an anti-communist book labeled communism as “The red juggernaut.” In 1963, The Juggernaut made his first appearance as a villain in Marvel’s X-Men comics. Juggernaut was firmly entrenched in Western imagination as a symbol of evil, violence, death, and danger.

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The Western demonization of Bhagwan Jagannath was all about the fear, paranoia & hatred that Christian missionaries felt about Hinduism The word “Juggernaut” represents their ultimate fear of an immense, violently powerful, & unstoppable force that they could not conquer.

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By using terms as "Juggernaut" without understanding their historical context, we encourage the perpetuation of Hinduphobia. It's important that such words no longer be treated as innocuous, but rather be called out for the unbridled hatred they were invented to represent.

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References:
Christian Researches in Asia - Rev. Claudius Buchanan, 1811

“Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu: American representations of India” By Michael J. Altman

For those of you who can stomach it or want to research more on the topic, Buchanan’s book is available on archive:

archive.org/details/christ…