The gutter inspectors are out, revelling in the discomfort of devout Hindus, telling us exactly what’s wrong with us. To begin with, it’s the Brahmins and the caste system, an euphemism for the fact that we’re still a predominantly Hindu society. Then it’s those few Hindu mathams that still enjoy the wealth and eminence characteristic of the pre-Islamic era, and do not have to beg for survival. Indeed, they can establish schools, universities, libraries, hospitals and clinics and give the soup-for-your-soul merchants a run for their money.
Believers in the one true god (whoever that is, since every Islamic and Christian sect claims monopoly) warn that mandirs peddle superstition and exploit gullible followers. It is only corporate America, annually pushing millions of dollars into the “faith-based” humanitarian industry, which has the right to stalk the poor and vulnerable in the name of social service. And it has powerful native allies who can tick off the Kanchi Matham for serving devoted Dalit Hindus, and tell the Shankaracharya to confine his activities to the daily ‘arti.’ If we are a soft State as evidenced in our attitude towards Pakistan’s continued jihadi activities, it is equally true that we are a soft people who have taken the continued humiliation of Swamigal lying down.
Recently a leading US magazine (secular in the uniquely White American way) tried to whitewash Francis Xavier’s bloody legacy and convince us that because hundreds of Christians (native and tourists) flock to his once-intact-but-since-disintegrated body, he was a great saint (figure that out, if you can). The Inquisition may have been excessive, but its noble objective was saving the heathens.
The trouble with conversions is that, like a dog that runs after a moving car and wouldn’t know what to do if he caught it, the missionaries appear clueless about what to do with the saved (sic) souls. In the West, Christians continued to mistreat their slaves after converting them to Christianity, which is why the liberated slaves are striking back through the Black Muslim movement. India’s contemporary Dalit movement is in crisis because it is largely financed and indoctrinated by American and British proselytizers. It is heartening that a few intrepid souls are venturing to challenge these instruments of neo-colonial geo-politics and find their own voice. Though ignored by the secular media, they nonetheless have a case.
Earlier in September this year, several hundred activists of the Poor Christian Liberation Movement (a Dalit Christian body) held a dharna at Jantar Mantar to protest the “increasing corruption in Church organizations.” They urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to ensure transparency in the functioning of Christian NGOs that misuse foreign aid received for the welfare of the poor and downtrodden.
The PCLM alleged that some Christian NGOs were torturing and oppressing workers who objected to the mis-utilization and embezzlement of funds. Demanding an enquiry into the affairs of these NGOs, PCLM president R.L. Francis alleged that “Christian missionary NGOs are indulging in corruption, casteism and favouritism,” and that Church organizations do not submit any account of the crores of rupees received as grants-in-aid. Mr. Francis said that Christian schools, colleges, hospitals and other bodies earned huge profits in the name of serving the community, but the church leadership refused to provide accounts of the same either to the community or to the government. Unlike secular Hindus, Mr. Francis is not seeking Government takeover of these rich bodies, but wants the UPA regime to press Church organizations to spend at least 50 percent of their profits and incomes on uplifting poor and downtrodden Christians. This raises legitimate questions about the activities for which funds are received and their actual utilization.
Scorning the Church demand to include Dalit Christians in the Scheduled Caste list, Mr. Francis countered: “On the one hand, the Church demands reservation for Dalit Christians from the government while on the other, it opposes and refuses to provide them reservation in the Church structure. The Poor Christian Liberation Movement wants that the Prime Minister, instead of giving Dalit Christians the lollipop of including them in the Scheduled Caste list, should instead set up a Dalit Christian Development Board for undertaking concerted social and economic development of Dalit Christians.”
There is some merit in this view. According to the 1991 census, there were 19.65 million Christians in India (10.7 million in South India and 3.6 million in the North-east). Of the 3.2 million Christians in Tamil Nadu, Dalits constitute nearly 65%. Now, as Vigil public forum legitimately asks, if conversion entails empowerment and Dalits and tribals comprise such a high percentage of the Christian population, what kind of power-sharing equation has been established in the Church hierarchy between priests of the erstwhile upper castes and erstwhile Dalits?
And shouldn’t Dalits cease to perceive themselves in terms of caste after becoming Christians? Sadly, the truth is otherwise. Until 1991, out of approximately 134 Catholic Bishops in the country (14 in Tamil Nadu alone), there was no Dalit or tribal until the ordaining of Bishop Ezra Sargunam, a Dalit. Barring the States of Goa and Kerala, Dalits and tribals comprise a major percentage of Christians, yet they are hardly visible at the level of Bishops, Vicars-General, priests, Directors, Professors in seminaries, and surgeons and heads of departments in Christian hospitals and medical colleges.
Even Archbishop George Zus, a high ranking member of the Vatican Hierarchy, commented adversely on this situation while addressing the Catholic Bishops' Council in Pune, in December 1991. Dalit Christians, he said, “make 65% of the ten million Christians in the South, but less than 4% of the parishes are entrusted to Dalit priests. There are no Dalits among the 13 Catholic Bishops' Council of Tamil Nadu or among the Vicars-General and the Rectors of seminaries and Directors of social assistance centres.”
Secular oppressors of gentle souls like the Kanchi Shankaracharya will, of course, ignore the fact that while Hindu society has elevated Dalits to high status in all walks of life, including the Presidentship of the Republic, the faiths that lured them away from the Hindu fold in the name of equality and social justice have left them seething with discontent. Vestiges of the despicable practice of untouchability are routinely thrown in the face of the Hindu community, but little respect is shown to dharamacharyas who devote their lives to eradicating it. On the contrary, they become vulnerable to persecution.
Of course, secular fundamentalists do not dare probe how untouchability – which has no sanction in dharma – arose in Hindu society. Like the slave trade, it appears to be the creation of a particular socio-political historical situation. In any case, untouchability is not the only form of discrimination suffered by Christian Dalits. To this day, there are hardly any inter-caste marriages among Christians of the upper castes and Dalit converts, though such marriages are common in Hindu society and no longer attract attention. Yet even today, upper caste Christians will cringe at the thought of accepting the holy water from a Dalit Christian priest, and many churches and cemeteries have even erected walls to keep the dust of the upper caste laity safely distant from the dust of Dalits. Separatism has thus been extended to Mother Nature (earth) and Eternity itself, as Christians are supposed to be admitted to Heaven or Hell at death.
The Pioneer, 28 December 2004
