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As we observe the anniversary of Bapu’s martyrdom in the midst of fierce debate over the activities of an obdurately evangelising church, it is appropriate to recall the Mahatma’s vehement opposition to Christian proselytisation. Gandhi’s observations on the church in India, made more than half a century ago, have not only withstood the test of time but encompass the entire spectrum of concerns that missionary activities have recently aroused.
Young Gandhian, Niru Vora, deserves credit for bringing out a timely collection of the Mahatma’s writings on the subject in the wake of Pope John Paul It’s call for a harvest of faith in Asia (Gandhiji’s Dialogue with Christianity, Swaraj Peeth Trust, 1999). In his introduction, eminent Gandhian, Rajiv Vora of the Gandhi Peace Foundation, has effectively summed up of the issues at stake. As Vora points out, not only has the Pontiff disregarded India’s civilisational sensibility, he has also charted out a plan for her spiritual doom. In the face of this enormous challenge, Vora states, it is imperative that we shed our moral, spiritual and intellectual lethargy and make an all out bid to strengthen our flanks. We have to protect our religious space and cultural ethos, quench the spiritual hunger of our downtrodden, and neutralise the money and muscle power of the missionaries, white taking care not to tread on their just rights as citizens of this country.
Vora attributes the dilemmas we face today to the inability of the post-independence Indian state to positively define its secular character. It is the absence of such a definition, he says, that is responsible for the question that haunt us today. How we reconcile the secular Indian State with the ---- secular Vatican State to which all missionaries owe complete allegiance? How do we prevent the secular provisions of our constitution from being misused for anti-secular activity, which is what proselytisation essentially is? How do we resolve a situation where people turn to one state for their political and economic needs and to another for their cultural and spiritual requirements?
Our failure to properly, appreciate secularism and all that it entails, Vora argues, has contributed to our despiritualisation and denationalisation and the consequent acceptance by us of conversion as an issue of human rights. We have conceded as legitimate the buying and selling of faith on grounds of freedom of conscience, ignoring the fundamental truth that freedom of conscience is violated the moment a new faith is sought to be implanted in place of the one we are born with. For conscience, Vora rightly says, comes with the inherited faith; it represents the divine light within us. To tamper with conscience is to tamper with the work of the Almighty, no less.
It is on these grounds that Vora categorises Gandhi’s opposition to conversions as ‘fundamental’ and not ‘situational’, Gandhi viewed all conversions, not just forced or mass conversions, as acts of spiritual violence. He termed them as ‘blasphemy’, as ‘the deadliest poison that has ever sapped the very foundation of truth’.
Gandhi first experienced the intolerance of Christian evangelists as a young boy in Rajkot. He would see them at a roadside corner near the High School, pouring venom on Hindus and their gods. Around the same time he heard stories of Hindu converts being forced to eat beet and drink liquor at their baptism ceremony. For a brief span Gandhi himself become a target of missionaries who felt he was too good not to be a Christian. These early encounters, together with later Knowledge of the ruthlessness of missionary activity, turned him into a vociferous opponent of proselytisation.
A fighter for swadeshi in the political realm, Gandhi believed that India could truly be on the path to recovery only when she was also free in the spiritual and cultural realms. It was his greatest wish, he said, to revive our ancient culture, which was rooted in non-violence and spiritual values and held the key to our happiness and prosperity.
Christian missions, Gandhi repeatedly emphasised, were intent on uprooting our ancestral faith and replacing it with an alien one. He clarified that he was not judging Christianity as a religion, just the actions of Christian missionaries. On the personal front, however, he added, he had tried to experience Christianity, but found that it limited and restricted man’s quest for truth, unlike Hinduism which was truly expansive and gave its followers the widest scope for self-expression. Hinduism alone, Gandhi said, entirely satisfied his soul and filled his being. The solace he found in the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, he said, was missing in the Sermon on the Mount.
What he found particularly unpalatable in Christianity, Gandhi confessed, was its refusal to accept the spiritual equality of men. By insisting that Christianity was superior to other faiths, the church sought to destroy multiplicity of religions and engage in a form of imperial conquest. Why should Christians, he asked, want to convert Hindus to Christianity, why couldn’t they be satisfied if the Hindus were good or godly men?
Gandhi found missionary presence in India as disruptive of inner peace and social harmony. He agreed that Hinduism was no longer in its pristine state and a number of wholly unacceptable abuses had crept into it. But he insisted that every religion had the right to rejuvenate itself. Hindus were entitled to offer repentance and reparation for the reprehensible practice of Untouchability. Indeed, he felt that it was vital they did so, for if Untouchability lived, Hinduism, and India itself, would perish. Christians were welcome to assist in this endeavour, but for them to work independently and seize this as a chance for propaganda was unethical, Gandhi felt.
Gandhi dismissed as ‘absurd’ the Christian claim of an upsurge of spiritual hunger among Untouchables, and described most cases of conversion as ‘false coin’. In an article in Harijan, he cited the case of a missionary who descended on a faminestricken area, distributed money among the residents, converted them, took charge of their temple, and demolished it. Terming the act as ‘outrageous’, Gandhi said the temple belonged neither to the converted people nor to the missionary. Yet the latter had it demolished by the very people who a short while ago believed it to be a house of God. Reflecting on such conversions, Gandhi came to the conclusion that such converts should be allowed to re-enter the Hindu fold without the format shuddhi ceremony.
It should be remembered that Gandhi was primarily concerned with the freedom movement on the one side and the uplift of the Untouchables on the other. It was in the context of the Harijans that he first encountered the menace of evangelisation. Yet, in today’s context of the missionary focus on tribals, whom they are trying to project as non-Hindus, it would be instructive to recall that Gandhi was equally critical of proselytisation in the tribal areas. Indeed, he argued that the tribes had been absorbed into Hinduism since times immemorial. He found the British categorisation of tribals as ‘animists’ and ‘aborigines’ unacceptable, and said such thinking was. alien to the Hindu ethos. We may, in fact, view it as another instance of the imperial divide and rule strategy which present-day evangelists, backed by massive foreign funds and foreign government claiming concern with human rights, are seeking to revive. Gandhi was unequivocal In his condemnation of Christian evangelism. Modem India has no reason to deviate from his stand.
(Dr Jain is a Reader,
Delhi University)
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