The
Christian Community in India 2015
JOHN
DAYAL
It
does not happen to “other people”. It
happens to “us”, though this may not be apparent at first sight. This is the sort of truism that social-psychologists,
cultural anthropologists, and even environmental scientist have been stressing
on a range of issues a diverse as the impact of climate change to that of
cinema on peoples and communities. Faith communities cannot, and do not, remain
untouched with what is happening around them. In fact, their response to these
developments pretty much defines their future cohesiveness and growth, and the
robustness of their faith in their God.
In Many ways, the Christian community in India, a mere 2.3 per cent of
the population, coalesced in a few areas of Southern and North-Eastern regions of the country and
scattered in vulnerable segments in other parts of the large land mass, best reflects this link between cause and
effect in a very critical juncture of the nation’s history.
We
are a faith people divide by race, ethnicity, language, denominations and
economic strata, unlike the more homogenous populations in other parts of the
world. Add to this issues of caste, and the presence of two very large
religious communities, the overwhelming Hindu population and the world’s second
largest Muslim group, as well and the Sikhs who are about as many in numbers as
the Christians but far more economically and politically powerful, and one can
see the complex societal matrix in which followers of Jesus Christ find
themselves 15 years into the 21st century.
The
recent universal religious growth survey by the US-based Pew Foundation has predicted
a very bright future for Islam, universally, and in India. Globally, by 2050,
it may be just a whisker less that the Christian population, but by 2070, it
may well be the largest single religious group. In India, Islam will grow and
while it becomes the world’s largest national group, it will still be far below
the Hindu population, which will hold its own both globally and in the
political borders of the country. In fact, Hinduism will grow very much abroad,
in the US and Europe, and in other countries where it already is sizable, if
not majority, faith such as Mauritius, and various other Indian Ocean, Pacific
and Caribbean islands.
PEW
does not predict any large comparable growth for the Christian population that
is organically linked with many international factors, specially in relation of
the situation of the Church in Europe. Claims by the more triumphal church
plants remain just that – claims. And those Dalits who love Christ by their
heart and soul, but understandably also love the benefits accruing from
government laws for reservation of sears in
Parliament and legislatures, government employment and educational institutions,
will continue to be recorded as Hindus in the official records till the Supreme
court outlaws the notorious Section 3 of Article 341 of the Constitution. Going
by the statements of the ministers in Mr. Namenda Modi’s Cabinet, that does not
sound possible for a long, long time. It was the Congress which closed the
doors of Christians of Dalit Christians anyway, it needs be remembered.
It is, however, not an issue of
numbers that is important. More important is that neither international nor
Indian researchers and missiologists have made any deep study of how political
developments, and the growth of Hindutva – which is seeing phenomenal impetus
in the second coming of the National Development Alliance government with Mr.
Narendra Modi at the helm -- will impact the Christian community in the short
and the long term. It impacts almost
every sphere, the growth of the faith, the educational, livelihood and economic
status and competitiveness, and the future of the Dalit Christian and Adivasi
communities within the faith. This needs to be done, and perhaps on an urgent
basis. Relationships within village communities, and perhaps even extended
families will be impacted.
The
Modi government, it is becoming increasingly clear, intends to remain focused
on expanding the national penetration of the religious nationalism ideology of
the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the fountain-head of Hindutva, whose cadres
and polarizing hate campaigns against Muslims and Christians brought it to
power ten months ago. Its secondary objective is to try to keep alive the flow
of foreign investments and the Indian corporate sector, even if it means
whittling away whatever safeguards there are to protect the environment, land
and forest rights and basic constitutional rights of association such as trade
unions.
Since May
2014, when the Modi government was sworn in, there has been a marked shift in
public discourse. The 300 days have seen an assault on democratic structures,
the education and knowledge system,
Human Rights organisations and Rights Defenders and coercive action using the
Intelligence Bureau and the systems if
the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act and the Passport laws to crack down on
NGOs working in areas of empowerment of
the marginalised sections of society, including Dalits, Tribals, Fishermen and
women, and issues of environment, climate, forests, land and water rights.
Environmental
norms have been diminished to an extent that now they will be almost non
existent, threatening the environment and the climate. Land acquisition laws
are being changed to benefit crony capital.
These impact states such as Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and
Chhattisgarh which have reasonable population of Tribal and Dalit Christians.
The
immediate focus is on the threat to secularism, which underpins India’s modern
existence as a country, and impacts deeply on the Christian existence.
Despite a
tongue lashing by President Pranab
Mukherjee on Republic Day and repeated assertions of freedom of faith by Vice
President Hamid Ansari – not counting the naming and shaming done by visiting
United States President Barack Obama – the government has learnt little. Mr.
Modi, at a public function called by the Syro Malabar Catholic church, spoke of security of minorities, but failed
to name the Sangh Parivar as the spruce of much violence. In fact, he put the
aggressors and the victims on the same platform.
His
Home minister, Mr Rajnath Singh, a former president of the BJP and like Mr.
Modi, a lifelong member of the RSS, has been transparent in announcing his
sympathies. He has called for a national ban on conversions, a national ban on
beef, total opposition for scheduled
caste rights for Dalit Christians and Muslims. And he too has hedged in saying
he will punish the spewing of hate and coercion.
The civil
society report “300 Days –Documenting Sangh Hate and Communal Violence Under
the Narendra Modi Regime” lists 168 targeting Christians. Desecration and
destruction of churches, assault on pastors, illegal police detention of church
workers, and denial of Constitutional rights of Freedom of Faith aggravate
the coercion and terror unleashed in
campaigns of Ghar Wapsi and cries of Love Jihad.
An analysis
shows Chhattisgarh topping the list with 28 incidents of crime, followed
closely by neighbouring Madhya Pradesh with 26, Uttar Pradesh with 18 and Telengana, a newly carved out of Andhra Pradesh, with 15 incidents. Of the deaths in communally targeted
violence, two were killed in Orissa and
Telengana, 8 in Gujarat, 12 in
Maharashtra, 6 in Karnataka and 25 in Uttar Pradesh. Apart from these, 108 people
were killed in Assam in attacks by Bodo militant groups. The violence peaked
between August and October with 56 cases, before zooming up to 25 cases during
the Christmas season, including the
burning of the Catholic church of St Sebastian in Dilshad garden in the
national capital of New Delhi.
Much of the
violence, 54 percent, is of threats,
intimidation, coercion, often with the police looking on. Physical violence
constituted a quarter of all cases, 24 per cent], and violence against
Christian women, a trend that is increasingly being seen since the carnage in
Kandhamal, Odisha, in 2007 and 2008, was
11 per cent. Breaking of statues and the Cross and other acts of
desecration were recorded in about 8 per
cent of the cases, but many more were also consequent to other forms of
violence against institutions.
A
disturbing trend is the rising communal
violence in West Bengal where the BJP
and the RSS have redoubled their efforts to fill what they see is a political
vacancy following the decline of the Communist Party of India Marxist and the
Congress party in recent times. The violence has peaked in the gang rape of a
72 year old Nun in a convent and school
in West Bengal. The official apparatus is now busy trying to prove to the world
that it is just another crime, committed by foreigners or professional
criminals.
There are
fears at a severe whittling down of the 15 Point Programme for Minorities, a
lifeline for many severely economic backward communities, and specially their
youth seeking higher education and professional training.
Mr. Modi’s conditional
“assurance” to religious minorities is challenged and countered by Mr. Mohan
Bhagwat, the head of the powerful Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, who asserts,
repeatedly, that every Indian is a Hindu, and minorities will have to learn
their place in the country. Speaking at the 50th Anniversary of foundation of its religious wing,
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Mr. Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS Sarsanghchalak bluntly stated
that “Hindutva is the identity of India and it has the capacity to swallow
other identities. We just need to restore those capacities.” In
Cuttack, he asserted that India is a Hindu state and "citizens of
Hindustan should be known as Hindus".
Sadhvi Prachi, a central minister, Members of Parliament Sakshi Maharaj
and Adityanath are among those urging measures to check Muslims, including
encouraging Hindu women to have from four to ten children each. In Madhya
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and other states, the terror, physical
violence and social ostracising of Dalit and Tribal Christians, in particular,
continues.
The Indian Government sees an absolute ban on
conversions to Christianity as the only way they can control Hindu religious
nationalist elements from attacking Nuns, clergy and churches, big and small,
from the forests of Central India to the national capital, New Delhi. And going
by statements made by Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi’s senior ministers, the
first contours of such a law may soon become apparent.
The discourse is already heating up to a fever
pitch as Mr. Modi prepares his party for the State legislative assembly
elections in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where his Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP,
hopes to wrest power. These are among the biggest states in the Union of India,
and the only ones in the so-called Cow belt of the Gangetic plains where the
party does not control the provincial governments.
The BJP had repeatedly promised such a law made
to their core constituency in their successful campaign in the General
elections of 2014. This was reviving an unfulfilled dream that dates back to
1978 when Mr. OP Tyagi of the then unified Janata party moved a Private members
draft legislation, ironically called the Freedom of Religion Bill, in the Lok
Sabha, the lower house of Parliament In 1999, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, then
Prime Minister, revived the debate on the Bill when more than two dozen small churches were
destroyed, allegedly by Sangh cadres, in Gujarat’s Dangs region on the eve of
Christmas 1998.
State anti conversion laws have survived
Christian challenge in the High courts, most recently in Himachal Pradesh, and
in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has upheld such laws to be valid,
maintaining that while citizens had the freedom to chose, or change, their
faith, the constitutional right to propagate religion did not mean the right to “convert another person to one's own
religion.”
A national law will require an amendment to the
Constitution, which guarantees Freedom of Faith. The government is in no
position to do so with its minority presence in the Rajya Sabha, the Upper, where
it was recently embarrassed when the Opposition forced an amendment to the
Address of the President of India to the Joint Session of Parliament.
The religious minorities have not really been able to forge a
united movement against such laws in the states, and it has been left to the
Christians to seek recourse in the courts. The Sikh community, despite the
violence unleashed against it during a period of insurrectionist terrorism in the 1970s and the 1980s, has not been
impacted. While it attracts many Hindus to its fold, it does not actively seek
converts. Muslims in India have not been accused of any magnitude of
conversions, other than being repeatedly accused of increasing their population
by large and polygamous families.
Among Christians, prelates of some of the Syrian denominations in
Kerala have often said their churches have not been involved in
proselytization, blaming it on evangelical groups.
But increasingly in recent years, human rights and freedom of
faith activists within the Christian community, and in civil society, have felt
that the fundamental Constitutional right of freedom to profess, practice and
propagate religion, circumscribed only by issues of law and order and health,
has to be defended to prevent a further erosion of civil liberties which could alter the basic
character of Indian democracy.
India is, at present, perhaps the only real multi-religious and
multi-cultural country in Asia. Its neighboring countries are either
theocracies or democracies where the majority religion, linked with ethnicity, is
overwhelmingly powerful, as in Sri Lanka which has only recently emerged from a
three decade long civil war. Keeping it genuinely secular is important to
regional peace.
