Background to the Bible bonfires in India

By Jan McGirk

NEW DELHI: Between the followers of the late Mother Teresa in Calcutta and the headhunters of the northeast jungles who were redeemed by evangelical Baptists, India has provided many souls for foreign missionaries to save in the 50 years since independence.

Even during the British Raj there were occasional accusations of forced conversion in the sub-continent. Do-gooders were misunderstood and Christians often were accused of inducing the poor into switching religions for their own gain and then exploiting the grateful wretches for votes.

Especially in the rural hinterland, traditional Hindus openly resent it when Christians short-circuit the caste system with projects that boost the dignity of the lowest laborer. Hundreds of thousands of struggling families feel their status is threatened.

But most Indian Christian beliefs go back to before missionaries arrived. Some of the faithful maintain that the Apostle known as Doubting Thomas personally rowed ashore in Kerala, South India. When Jesuit missionary St Xavier arrived in the 16th century, there already was a Church established in India for more than 1,000 years. Today, most of the Indian elite of all religions spent their childhoods in English language boarding schools run in the hill stations by Christian clergy -- mostly Irish nuns or local Christian sisters.

In metropolitan newspapers and on the Internet, the most eligible brides and grooms in the matrimonial want-ads for Hindu- arranged marriages must be "convented", or educated by English speaking nuns. And inevitably, millennial celebrations take place in India. (Even though the new millennium supposedly counts off 2,000 years after Christ's birth, and is meaningless to followers of the Islamic or Hindu calendar).

Officially, the Indian constitution guarantees complete religious freedom. It was penned by Dr B.R. Ambbedkar, a former Untouchable who became a statesman but converted to Buddhism in late life.

The caste system barriers were deeply entrenched and he despaired of reform. Even now, after recent repeated instances of Christian persecution across India, and a renewed call for debate on conversions by the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, there is very little friction between religious sects in Kerala, Goa, or in downtown Chennai and Mumbai. Protest marches by threatened priests and nuns crying out against the Gujarat burnings have repeatedly taken place in major cities.

Although only about 2.3 percent of almost a billion Indians are Christians, Christmas is an important national holiday. Spiritually tolerant Hindus party alongside 27 million believers. The Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Nataraja Center, for instance, holds an annual Bible reading, Christmas feast and gift exchange for its members and keeps room on the eclectic altar of idols for Christian icons.

Most Hindus believe in pluralism -- the more gods the merrier. Christmas carols, processions, celebrations and carnivals take place every year in cities across India. K.R. Narayanan, President of India -- a former Untouchable -- is married to a devout Christian. The president of the opposition Congress Party, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, is a lapsed Roman Catholic.

Hostility against Christians is increasing. Throughout Dec. 1998, Bible bonfires broke out in the western state of Gujarat, where there is a large population of indigenous tribes who are converting to Christianity.

More chapels in the Dangs district were set alight this month. A gang rape of Christian nuns in the heart of India, Madhya Pradesh, sent off alarm bells last autumn. Extremist Hindu organizations, resenting social programs for the tribal forest- dwellers and marginal laborers who are helped by Christian layworkers, openly show displeasure.

They appear to resent all new education and health benefits for the underclass. Any acquisition of land or well-water rights by new Christians can trigger an attack by these mobs.

Earlier, such incidents seemed sporadic, and not part of an organized political campaign. Nuns like Sister Julie in St Anne's convent, located in Madras, took karate lessons to fend off upper-caste Hindus with violent objections to their educational project for Tamil village women back in 1994. They dreaded being stopped by police and risking rape in custody, and some soon wore blackbelts beneath their rosaries and continued "upliftment programs".

Since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 1998, the lunatic Right has begun to menace minorities. Faith-healers have been driven from their tent meetings, and the central government keeps careful tabs on all foreign donations to religious organizations, particularly Christian.

Yet the outspoken BJP politician, Lal Krishna Advani, did not oppose the Bible-thumping American television evangelist, Pat Robertson, organizing a rally in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, earlier this year. But a flying hospital performing routine eye surgery nearby was grounded until the Christian doctors stopped distributing a printed prayer of blessing to patients. Recently, conversions to Buddhism among the underprivileged have been far more frequent than to Christianity.

If large numbers of the underclass were to convert to Islam, militant Hindus would be even more outraged. The repeat of bloody sectarian riots such as rocked Bombay in 1993 or the demolition of more mosques by Hindu zealots would be feared.

-- Observer News Service