http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/standpoint-part-1-julio-ribeiro-and-the-choices-before-indian-christians-2072444
Part 1: Julio Ribeiro and the choices before Indian Christians
Jason Keith Fernandes
jason.k.fernan...@gmail.com
Dale Luis Menezes
dale_mene...@rediffmail.com
Rather than compromise with
Hindu nationalism, the present
moment should be used as a
moment to deepen the experience
of Indian citizenship.
Julio Ribeiro's interventions in various national newspapers
over the last few months have consistently made a case about
the predicament of the Christian communities in India.
However, no other article seems to have grabbed the attention
of the national media than the one in which he asserted that
he felt like a foreigner in his own country. Ribeiro's
assertion followed the increase in violent attacks against
Christians, and their churches and saints across India.
At a time of crisis, like the one India is facing at the
current moment, it would be expected that those who face
persecution from the Hindu Right would stick together. But,
as much as we need to stick together to offer a common
resistance, it is also important that we use this moment to
engage in fruitful discussion so that we may work out the way
forward. It is in this spirit that we offer this critical
response to the recent op-ed authored by Ribeiro.
Following on the cliché of every crisis offering an
opportunity, we suggest that rather than compromise
with Hindu nationalism the present moment should be
used as a moment to deepen the experience of Indian
citizenship. Hindu nationalism should be seen not
as a sudden entrant into Indian politics, but a
force that has frustrated the realisation of the
constitutional promises of egalitarian citizenship
since the very beginning of the Indian state. Even
as Ribeiro protests his current discomfort, his
formulations unfortunately remain within the realm
of Hindu nationalism and we propose to point a way
out of the crisis, both for him and other embattled
groups within the Republic.
Our primary difference with Ribeiro stems from the fact that
we differ in chronology. He inquires whether it is
"coincidence or a well-thought-out plan" that violence
against Christians intensified after the BJP government came
to power.
While it is true that there has been an escalation
of violence against Christians since the Modi-led
government came to power, the systematic targeting
of Christians has been a part of the history of the
Indian nation-state since Independence, and some
would argue in the course of the national formation
itself.
We would like to draw attention to the Niyogi Committee
Report published in 1956 that held activities of Christian
missionaries and conversions to be a threat to the Indian
state. The Niyogi Commission, it should be pointed out, was
the product not of an openly Hindu Rightist political party,
but the Congress Party.
The Report was subsequently followed by the passage of
multiple Freedom of Religion bills that seek to limit the
right to conversion. Later, in the 1960s, the Catholic
Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) faced a good amount of
trouble when, in the words of Cardinal Simon Pimenta, foreign
missionaries in India "had been asked by the government to
leave the country -- visas were not being renewed; no fresh
visas were issued for others who had been detailed by their
superiors for work in India". Such instances indicate the
persistent hostility with which Christian activity and groups
have been viewed in India.
As many studies of the history of Christianity, and
conversion movements in India have emphasised,
Indian nationalism has seen the conversion to
Christianity as the conversion to a 'foreign'
religion, and thus an act violative of the very
soul of the Indian nation. Further, conversion to
a 'foreign' religion was viewed as a challenge to
India's spiritual self-sufficiency.
The problem that Christians have had in India, therefore,
clearly predates the current government, even though the
arrival of the current government has seen a scary
intensification of activities.
In other words, the problem with Christianity could be
said to be part of the national make-up, and not merely an
agenda of the BJP and the Hindu Right alone. The recent
intensification of violence against Christians can be seen as
a culmination of decades of such suspicion and violence.
Contrary to Ribeiro's suggestion that Hindutva
violence emerged full-grown with the Modi
Government, our argument is that the history of
Indian nation-state has seen a steady deepening of
Hindutva, rather than constitutional citizenship.
Reviewing this longer history it becomes obvious
that conversion to Christianity, or the threat
ofconversion, is a primary reason for the hostility
of the Indian state and its elites to Christianity.
As long as Christians do not rock the boat, it seems that
they are tolerated. This has caused a number of Christians,
Ribeiro included, to distance themselves from conversion.
Ribeiro captured a common perception among some parts of
Indian Christian society when he suggested in an interview to
the Economic Times that "some fringe Christian groups convert
people in large numbers but the government should find out
who they are and take action against them. Mass conversions
should be opposed as they create problems in society but it
is a thing of the past".
In making a case for the toleration of only stray and
individual conversions to Christianity, and asking for
governmental intervention in case of mass conversions,
Ribeiro is merely toeing the problematic position of the
Indian state. In addition to this, he is taking up a position
that is marked by his upper-class and upper-caste location.
Indeed, it would be our argument, that any resolution of the
problem of Christian groups in India can be resolved only if
we are able to address the caste and class issues head on.
Mass conversions, whether to Christianity, Islam, or
Buddhism, have been measures of social protest against
brahmanical violence that is daily visited upon marginalised
social groups in the subcontinent. To ask for a halt on such
conversions on the grounds that they cause problems in
society is to not only miss the mark completely but to in
fact articulate the Hindutva position!
Rather than create problems in society, these conversions
draw our attention to the problems that would fail to
otherwise garner attention from the privileged segments of
Indian society. More importantly, when they convert from
Hinduism, these communities are not merely changing their
religion, but in fact adopting a route toward the deepening
of their citizenship experience. In casting off Hinduism,
they are making an emphatic claim that they are ready for a
new experience of life, hitherto unavailable under the
contemporary political conditions of the Indian nation-state.
All too often rather than extend the protection of the law
state functionaries stand by or participate in the
persecution of Dalit groups, making mockery of the
egalitarian constitutional provisions. To these groups,
therefore, conversion is a critical part of realising Indian
citizenship as promised by the Indian constitution.
Hindutva's problems with conversion stem precisely from the
fact that these social processes challenge the upper-caste
hegemony that Hindutva is based on.
Indeed, early anti-caste mobilisations such as that of
Mahatma Phule in Maharashtra, and EV Ramasamy in the Madras
Presidency, drew actively from missionary rhetoric against
caste, setting up an early confrontation between Christian
proselytisation and the upper-caste elites that have
dominated the Indian national project.
Upper-caste and upper-class Christians deal with mass
conversions, and seek to secure their comfort within the
national narrative, by finding space for themselves within
brahmanical mythologies, and associating themselves with
brahmanical individuals and groups.
Take, for example, Ribeiro's employing the cliché "accident
of history" that members of his social group, not excluding
priests from this group, use to describe the process through
which their ancestors converted to Christianity. It is as if
they wish they had rather not been converted. There is a
shame associated with their Christian present that they
strive to wash off.
A strategy often used by this group, is evidence in
the manner in which Ribeiro brings his ancestors and the
Parashurama myth into his complaint against Prime Minister
Modi. He argues that his ancestors were possibly converted
forcibly, in the kind of mass conversions that he would get
banned.
Ribeiro then suggests a brahmanical heritage for his
ancestors, linking himself to the Saraswat brahmin Defence
minister Manohar Parrikar. The journalist Rajdeep Sardesai
recently drew a huge amount of flak for bragging about his
Saraswat connections to two ministers in the national
cabinet. If Sardesai was pilloried for his casteism, there
is no reason why Ribeiro should be let off the hook either.
After all, both Sardesai and Ribeiro are seeking different
forms of security through their caste fraternity. To be fair
to Ribeiro, he has been honest in an earlier article about
his upper-caste location. The problem, however, is that he
does not go far enough and his protest remains at a
rhetorical level.
Merely recognising one's problematic location is not enough.
This recognition needs to be translated into corrective
action as well.
