Weekly Selection/INDIA: Missionary’s Killing Marks A Turning Point

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Jan 30 1999 (IPS) - The burning alive of an Australian missionary and his two sons in rural Orissa marks an abysmal low in India’s religion-driven right-wing politics.

It could well become a watershed, especially if the main opposition party, the Congress, actively resists the anti- minority campaign unleashed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s ruling party, and its associates.

Graham Stewart Staines, an evangelist, and his two children were killed on Jan. 23 by supporters of the Bajrang Dal, a militant outfit promoted by the ruling party’s sister organisation, Vishwa Hindu Parishad or world Hindu council.

In recent months Christians have been subjected to harassment and humiliation by India’s Hindu-right. In 1998, there were 108 physical attacks on them, 58 in the BJP-ruled western state of Gujarat alone. The harassment includes exhumation of bodies, burning of the Bible, denial of access to village wells, attacks on Church-run schools, razing of chapels, and rape of nuns.

VHP and BJP leaders rationalise this as the expression of anger of patriotic Hindu youth against Christian missionaries who forcibly convert Hindus, especially low-caste or outcaste Hindus, to Christianity. The state has failed to arrest and indict those responsible for the anti-Christian violence.

Although these attacks have been roundly condemned by most political parties, especially sharply by the Left, and by eminent citizens, there is an undercurrent of sympathy in the elite for the VHP’s campaign against religious conversion.

This sympathy is based on a number of assumptions: that conversions have been growing, largely as a result of missionary activities, that many of them involve coercion, that they are illegal under the Indian Constitution.

All these are questionable. India’s Christian population declined from 2.6 percent of the total in 1981 to 2.3 percent in 1991, the last census. The overwhelming majority of India’s 120,000 missionaries are Indians, largely from Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where Christianity took roots as early as 52 AD.

Christianity in India is older than Christianity in Europe. It also pre-dates Hinduism in its Brahminical mould.

The charge of forced conversion involves an arrogant paternalism, coming as it does not from those who have been converted, but from their self-appointed guardians. These are upper-caste, privileged Hindus who feel compelled to rescue the poor and ignorant tribals from the missionaries evil designs.

As for the law, India’s Constitution guarantees the freedom to practise and propagate one’s religion; it also gives the minorities the right to run educational institutions.

It is essentially caste-Hindu prejudice and bigotry that has driven the anti-Christian campaign. It has also drawn sustenance from BJP leaders and from the failure of the government to punish those vandalising church institutions.

On Jan. 10, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee called for a “national debate” on conversions, as if the matter was not already settled in the Constitution.

Home Minister Lal Kishan Advani too has accused the church of taking foreign donations to propagate religion. Such donations are not illegal and they are closely scrutinised by the Home Ministry.

In fact Hindu political and religious groupings probably receive much more money from abroad. The VHP (United States) admits it transferred 1.25 billion dollars to India between 1977 and 1993.

The BJP-VHP’s anti-Christian campaign is fuelled by resentment among the upper-caste Hindu elite at the fact that the missionaries’ work in education and health and human rights has empowered poor Christians. This has made them more assertive in questioning social hierarchies.

It is hard to argue that Hinduism, as it is actually practised, is tolerant of other faiths. Internally too, it is extremely intolerant, being casteist, hierarchical and male- supremacist.

There is nothing unique about Hinduism in this. Most religions have a dual or mixed character. So special claims about Hindu tolerance ring hollow although Hinduism is not a religion of the Book, it is polytheistic and permits numerous sects and forms of worship.

Staines’s barbaric killing has produced revulsion. However, the Congress seems to be hesitant to seize the opportunity of confronting Hindu sectarianism head-on.

It recently passed a resolution which says “Hinduism is the most effective guarantor of secularism in India.” And Congress President Sonia Gandhi has made a habit of quoting from Hindu scriptures and praising the pluralist, eclectic traditions of Hinduism. She has drawn up plans to visit Hindu pilgrimage centres.

Politically, this sends confusing signals and does little to reassure India’s 18 percent religious minorities, and 23 percent tribals and former untouchables, that secularism is safe in the Congress’s hands.

The Congress is wrong to equate tolerance with secularism, which is about separating religion from politics. The pre-modern notion of tolerance involves a passive relationship of co- existence with, and indifference to, other religions.

The modern conception of tolerance is based on pluralism and involves active engagement with and respect for others, who too have equal rights. It is itself derived from non-religious, secular doctrines, including universal rights and equality of citizens regardless of faith.

The Congress advocated such secular tolerance for a long time. Later, between the early 1980s and until recently, it slipped into a soft attitude towards Hindu communalism and appeased the BJP, leading to the 1992 razing of the medieval Babri mosque.

The Congress seemed to be emerging from this and evolving towards a secular orientation. Its current hesitation represents a setback to that evolution. Unless the Congress corrects course, Indian secularism will remain menaced by Hindu fundamentalism.

The Congress’s short-term calculation, that its priority is to win over upper-caste Hindus disillusioned with the BJP, may compromise the well-being of religious minorities as well as the underprivileged majority of Hindus.