OPINION
Why subsidised pilgrimages to Jerusalem are bad news for Maharashtra's
Christians
Chief Minister
Devendra Fadnavis has
been urged to
subsidise Christian
pilgrimages to Israel
and Palestine. The
plan must be nipped
before it takes off.
Mario da Penha
Apr 1, 2015
A week ago, on March 23, a delegation representing three
Christian groups met Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra
Fadnavis in Mumbai. The groups -- the Indian National
Christian Council, Bombay Catholic Sabha and United Churches
of Mumbai -- sought an assurance from Fadnavis that those who
vandalised a church property in New Panvel recently will be
apprehended. Besides this, they put forward six demands
concerning the Christian community -- one of these was a
government subsidy to Christian pilgrims from Maharashtra
visiting Jerusalem and other sites in Israel and Palestine
associated with the life of Jesus Christ.
The demand for a pilgrimage subsidy piggybacks on similar
schemes introduced by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS
Rajasekhara Reddy in 2008 and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J
Jayalalithaa in 2011. Under those programmes, the southern
states had earmarked Rs 1 crore for a maximum of 500
Christian pilgrims, each of whom could receive Rs 20,000 at
most as subsidy to visit Jerusalem. Jayalalithaa sweetened
the deal for her state a year later by offering an allowance
of Rs 1.25 crore to Hindu pilgrims travelling to Mansarovar
in Tibet and Muktinath in Nepal. Six other Indian states --
Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and
Uttarakhand -- also cover a slice of the Mansarovar expenses
of pilgrims from their states.
Jayalalithaa's largesse to Hindu devotees in 2012
came even as the Supreme Court ruled that another
pilgrimage allowance, the Haj subsidy, should be
discontinued. While upholding the subsidy as
constitutional, the apex court argued that the
Qur'anic injunction to visit Mecca only applied to
those who could "afford the expenses". It asked
the Central government to progressively reduce the
amount of subsidy until it was completely
eliminated by 2022. At the time, Muslim public
opinion welcomed the verdict, arguing that the
subsidy unfairly benefited the terminally ill Air
India, allowing it to stay afloat through its Haj
monopoly, even as other carriers offered cheaper
deals to pilgrims. With the rising costs of
airfare and the increase in the number of pilgrims,
the annual Haj subsidy had swollen from Rs 10 crore
in 1994 to Rs 685 crore by 2011.
Though the allowances granted by Andhra Pradesh and Tamil
Nadu to the Jerusalem pilgrimage are meagre compared to the
Haj, these annual allocations could rise rapidly if lawmakers
felt they were a secure way to corner community patronage.
There is no dearth of portentous signs around.
Creating new bureaucracies
The Christian groups' meeting with Fadnavis last week was
facilitated by Ashish Shelar, the first-time Bharatiya Janata
Party MLA from Bandra West in Mumbai. In 2009, after Shelar
lost narrowly to the Congress's Baba Siddique in the heavily
Christian Bandra West constituency, he actively began
courting the Christian community. He first aided the
re-naming of a public square in Santa Cruz, a part of this
constituency, after the cartoonist Mario Miranda. This led
one priest to eulogise him as "an honest and upright
politician" who "helps Christians". Then, in 2013, he met
then Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar to urge him to provide
a subsidy for the Jerusalem pilgrimage.
During the assembly elections in 2014, Shelar found himself
in the midst of robust Christian support. The Catholic
Secular Forum nailed its colours to Shelar's mast, and the
Catholic cardinal of Mumbai, Oswald Gracias, exhorted the
community to vote for "good governance". Gordon D'Souza of
the Bombay Catholic Sabha, who accompanied Shelar to meet
Fadnavis last week, also enthusiastically cheered the
cardinal's entreaty to the community last October. In the
end, Shelar defeat Siddique by a margin of over 26,000 votes.
While Shelar insists his proposed subsidy is
"entirely voluntary", this pork barrelling of
Christians through superficial community concerns
has met with anger, including from a former
office-bearer of the Catholic Sabha who decried the
politics of sponsorship. Creating new state
bureaucracies to screen both pilgrims and tour
operators will only strengthen these patronage
relationships and increase their clout over
communities.
Unlike the Haj, Christians are under no scriptural obligation
to visit Jerusalem. As the anthropologist Margaret Meibohm
has shown, pilgrimages of Mumbai's Catholics have long been
directed not towards Jerusalem or Rome, but syncretic Indian
sites such as Vailankanni in Tamil Nadu.
In rituals shared across religious divides, devotees at this
shrine dedicated to Mary offer coconuts, shave their heads,
don the saffron clothes of ascetics, and roll through the mud
in obeisance. Public ceremonies at Vailankanni include
carrying Mary's sculpture on enormous chariots through the
town, much in the way that Tamil Hindus carry the goddess
Mariamman in procession. While a few Indian Christians do
visit Jerusalem, a government subsidy will substantially veer
Maharashtra's Catholics away from these eclectic and
inclusive places.
Subsidies for international religious pilgrimages
also generate a hostile public discourse that
serves to channel resentment against the
minorities. Furthermore, they overshadow far more
substantive issues, such as the crippling rates of
poverty among, and continued denial of affirmative
action to, Dalit Muslims and Christians.
The colossal Haj subsidy does nothing to change the fact that
Muslims across castes in urban Maharashtra have a poverty
rate of 49%: the rate for members of the scheduled castes and
tribes in the state is 33%. Approximately 32% of Dalit
Christians live below the poverty line in urban India. As
long as these figures stand, diverting public resources
towards international pilgrimages will not serve
Maharashtra's Christians.
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