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
