Author: Virendra Parekh
Publication:
Date: September 25, 2008
As anti-missionary (not anti-Christian) violence
is reported from some parts of the country, we are once again witnessing the
familiar charade of public debate. A government that showed stoic indifference
to a series of terrorist acts that killed dozens in several Indian cities;
stayed mute when fanatic mobs desecrated the Tricolour on the Independence
Day; is alarmed by reported on churches in Orissa, Karnataka, and Kerala.
Upset enough to invoke the rarely-used Article 355 to issue directives to
Orissa and Karnataka to restore law and order, ignoring the meaning of anti-missionary
violence spreading to Kerala, haven of secularism.
The spontaneous response of unorganised Hindu
mobs is being portrayed as pre-meditated attacks on Christians by members
of blood-thirsty communal outfits. While the Hindu reaction to missionary
mischief is highlighted with sharp focus, the original provocation (murder
of a Hindu sanyasi and continuous forced conversions) is all but ignored.
The church assumes an air of injured innocence
and secularist edit writers and 'analysts' indulge in sanctimonious humbug
on the duty of a secular state to protect the minorities' right to religious
freedom, including propagation of religion, dangers of 'majoritarianism',
damage to the country's image abroad and social fabric at home, etc.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the
Karnataka chief minister is under attack for saying that forced conversions
are inappropriate. The Indian establishment feels duty-bound to protect, if
not encourage, those who are out to subvert Hinduism. The slightest whiff
of dissent, the vaguest hint of a different perspective, invites instant condemnation
from those who have positioned themselves as guardians of democracy and secularism
in the country.
This ostrich-like mentality is not shared
by people at large. The government, media and civil society will be missing
the wood for the trees if they regard the current spate of violence against
missions as attacks on minorities by communal outfits out to polarize society
and raise communal temperatures on the eve of (possible national) elections.
Large sections of Hindu society have never concealed their discomfort with
conversions carried out by missionaries, and particularly with the means employed
to win converts.
Missionaries point to the numerous schools
and colleges, dispensaries and hospital run by them. They claim it is the
iniquities and injustices within the Hindu fold that drive the lower classes
to the church. And ultimately, they point to their constitutional right to
propagate their religion - a right inserted in the constitution at their insistence.
Yet all this put together fails to make a convincing case for conversions.
Hindu leaders from Swami Vivekananda down
to Acharya Dharmendra have questioned the motives underlying the much-publicised
social service of the missionaries. They have questioned not the 'service'
per se, but its strong link with conversions. That link is freely acknowledged
by missionaries themselves. The Church makes no secret of its strategy of
selecting groups which are the weakest, approaching them when they are most
vulnerable, and converting them in return for the assistance rendered. [Internationally,
this practice abhorred even foreigners when applied in the Asian tsunami of
2004 in Indonesia and Sri Lanka].
"India and its Missions", an official
Catholic publication, discusses the Spiritual Advantages of Famine and Cholera
under that very heading! It quotes the report of the Archdiocese of Puducherry
to his superiors in Europe: "The famine has wrought miracles. The catechumenates
are filling, baptismal water flows in steams and starving little tots fly
in masses to heaven. a hospital is a readymade congregation; there is no need
to go into highways and hedges and compel them to 'come in'. They send each
other." Such a passage appears to Hindus as reminiscent of vultures circling
over carcasses. Soul for food is a Faustian deal, and offering temptations
is the way of Satan, not saints. Yet the church regards it as appropriate
action at the proper time.
If selfless service truly motivates missionaries,
why doesn't the church renounce conversions given the resentment and reaction
they breed? In fact, why don't missionaries actively encourage converts to
return to their traditional faiths, after assuring them that they would continue
to get the same service as before?
When asked the motive behind conversion, most
converts talk about food, clothes, loans, jobs, medicine and education. There
is hardly any talk of Christ! This is a poor commentary on the spiritual and
philosophical worth of a sect that claims to be the world's only true religion,
and arrogantly presumes to be the culmination and fulfillment of all other
religions.
If missionaries have faith in the Gospel as
Word of God and the tribals' wisdom to recognise it as such, why do they use
force, fraud and allurements to spread it?
If missionaries do no more than selfless service
to the tribals and other poor, why do the beneficiaries of their service turn
on them? "It is outsiders who instigate people and create trouble",
say missionaries. This is simply untrue - no outsider can instigate simple
people to harm or kill their benefactors. Missionaries have the least right
to complaint against outsiders coming to their area of work. When they spread
out all over the world with the express purpose of destroying traditional
religions and decimating local cultures, surely people with the agenda of
preservation of natal faith and culture have a far greater right to be present
at these locales.
"But they are coming to us because you
(Hindus) have neglected, oppressed or exploited them," we are told. Were
this true, by now the entire SC and ST population would have converted to
Christianity or Islam (another 'liberating' faith). The truth is that despite
tremendous and sustained expenditure of money, manpower and manipulation,
Christianity has been able to penetrate only a small fraction of softer targets
among the downtrodden. Islam, with all its use of state power to win converts,
remained a minority religion after six hundred years of rule. This suggests
there is something fundamentally wrong with the officially taught history
of caste relations in the ancient, medieval and modern ages, though this need
not detain us now.
It is normally found, in Dangs (Gujarat),
in Kandhamal (Orissa), and elsewhere, that conversions have a disruptive influence
on the traditional community lives of tribals. Conversions lead to a split
in family and village community, because converts are told to repudiate traditional
gods, ways of worship, and rituals. This is happening all over the country
wherever missionaries are active among tribals. This provokes a violent reaction.
This happened in Dangs a decade ago; this was the reason why Australian missionary
Graham Stains was burnt alive in Orissa; this is also at the root of recent
incidents in Karnataka.
An obvious way of avoiding such tragedies
is for missionaries to abstain from conversions, and to be seen to be doing
so. Many modern Hindus wonder why the Church must introduce the tribal to
Christ, the Bible and Christianity, when his own objects of veneration and
spirituality can serve him even better.
The church claims the right to freedom of
religion, by which it means its own right to convert others, and never the
other way round. What it forgets is that if missionaries have a right to preach
the Gospel, ancient societies professing pacifist non-proselytising religions
have a right to defend themselves. When food or service is offered as a right
of the giver, the recipient has a right to look into his motives.
Recognising the social disruption that conversions
bring about, and the kind of intense reaction they engender, the Centre must
move in the matter and enforce legal restrictions on conversions far more
stringently. Many States including Orissa and Madhya Pradesh have laws banning
conversions through force, fraud or allurement. But, unfortunately, they remain
no more than a dead letter in most cases.
The current violence in Orissa and Karnataka,
as also in Gujarat and Orissa in the recent past, is a consequence of that
failure of the Indian State. Our experience shows that when the State falters
in rectifying a wrong, society (usually irate mobs) moves in and takes the
law in its own hands. Such actions tend to violent and ham-handed.
Ideally, missionaries themselves should refrain
from targeting the weak and the vulnerable for conversion. If they are so
sure of the superiority of their dogma, they should try to convert those who
are financially independent, who can understand Christian theology, withstand
pressure and act independently. This is not an unfair demand. This is exactly
what Hindu teachers do when they go to other countries to give an exposition
of Hindu dharma; but missionaries have an altogether different agenda.
The author is Executive Editor, Corporate
India, and lives in Mumbai
