7/27/2019 Conversions and Politics of Hindu Right - Sarkar
1/11
Conversions and Politics of Hindu RightAuthor(s): Sumit SarkarSource: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 34, No. 26 (Jun. 26 - Jul. 2, 1999), pp. 1691-1700Published by: Economic and Political WeeklyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4408131
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SPECIAL ARTICLES
onversions
n d
P o l i t i c s
o f
i n d u
i g h t
Sumit Sarkar
With the
spread
of
liberation
theologies,
churches have
been
changing.
Christian
groups
have been
prominent
in
progressive
movements. In the
face of
attacks,
they
have not retreated into sectarian or
fundamentalist
sihells but have
joined
secular,
liberal
and
Left formations.
It is this
progressive
aspect of
contemporary
Christianity
that arouses the
greatest anger
and
fear among proponeints
of
hindutva.
I
Attacks on Christians
POKHRAN
blasts
apart,
t
seems
likely
that BJP-dominated
ule at
Delhi
might
come
to
be rememberedbove
all
for the
concerted
campaignagainst
Christians.
The
Sanghparivar
as
always
neededone
ormore
nemy
Other' o
consolidate nto
anaggressivelocthe 'Hindu ommunity'
which t claimsto
represent
nd seeks to
constitute.What
s
largely
new s thatover
the
past year
Christiansseem to have
displaced
Muslims as
primary
arget.
The
epicentre,
o
far as the
number
of
incidentss
concerned.
asbeenBJP-ruled
Gujarat,
here
already
n
August
1998 a
fact-finding
eam sent
by
the Nishant
Theatre
Group,
Delhi,
saw
many
villages
sporting
the
banner 'Vishwa
Hindu
Parishad
elcomes
you
o
HinduRashtra'
village'.
The earlierattacks
were
widely
spread
ut,
andnot
confined o the
Dangs
tribal area. Particularly ross incidents
included
hatof
Samuel
Christian,
whose
body
was
exhumed rom
Kapadvanj
em-
etery
Nadiad
district)
n
July
8,
1998and
thrown utside
he Methodist
hurch,
nd
the attack
n
a
century-old
Christian
irls
school at
Rajkot
on June
20,
1998 where
amidst
logans
of 'Jai
Shri
Ram',
copies
of the New
Testamentweretorn
out from
the
hands
of
students
and 300 of them
burnt.
By
August
1998,
the
All
India
CatholicUnion
had
compiled
a
list
of 33
incidents n
various
parts
f
Gujarat,
most
of them
during
he
preceding
ix months.
The
targets
were
mostly
Christians,but
also includedsome
Muslims
-
for
they
have
certainly
not been
left off the hook
altogether.
hus
at
Bardoli
cores
of
shops
owned
by
Muslims were
burnt
after an
inter-religious
marriage
between
a
Mus-
lim
boy
and
a
Hindu
girl,
and
large
num-
bers
of Muslims of
Randhikapur
(Panchmahals)
nd
Sanjeli
(Godhra)
had
to
flee their
homes
following
a
couple
of
cases of
similar
nter-religious
ove af-
fairs.
The
Gujarat
overnment's
eaction
was
characteristic,
nd
revealing:
t set
up
a
police
cell to
'monitor',
e,
harass
and
discourage,
nter-religious
arriages.
he
same
government
as
disbanded
nearlier
police
cell thathad
been
set
up
to
investi-
gate
atrocities
against
women.)l
Then,
during
Christmas
week,
no
doubt
to teach
Christians
lesson
or
having
had
the
temerity
o
organise
most
mpressive
peaceful countrywide
protest
and shut-
down of missionary chools on Decem-
ber
4,
there
ame
he
obviously
oncerted,
planned
attack
on Christian
Dangs.
Be-
tween
December25 and
January
3,
24
churches,
hree
chools,
andsix houses
or
shops
were
burnt,
destroyed
r
damaged,
andnine
Christianribals uffered erious
injuries.
The
nly ights
visiblethat lack
Christmas
ight,
and the
nights
to
come,
were infernos of
churches
[Gonzalves
1999].
Incidentsn
other
tates
have
been
more
sporadic,
but in some
cases even more
horrifying.
On
September
3,
1998 there
was thegang-rape f fournunsatJhabua,
MadhyaPradesh.
L
Sharma,
ormerBJP
MP and
currently
entral
ecretary
f the
VHP,
claimed
hat
his was a resultof the
"anger
of
patriotic
youth
against
anti-
national orces...thedirectresult
of con-
versionof Hindus o
Christianity
y
the
Christian
riests."
The
subsequent
ssur-
ance
by
VHP
general
secretaryGiriraj
Kishore
that his
organisation
was not
condoning
ape
did not
improve
matters,
for he
demanded hat
"foreign
missionar-
ies should
be removed
rom the
country
(Hindu,
September
29,
1998;
The
Times
of
India.October
1998).2
And then n the
last
weekofJanuary
999 ame he
burning
alive
at
Monoharpur,
rissa,
once
again
amidst
slogans
of 'Jai Shri
Ram',
of the
Australian
missionary
octor
Stainesand
two of his
children.Staines
had
left the
comforts
of
firstworld ife to servefor
40
years
the
lepers
of this
obscure
village
in
India.
The
sheer
horror f the Staines
murder,
and the almost unbelievable
fortitude,
dignity,
and
deeply moving
Christian
forgiveness
withwhichhiswidowreceived
the
news,
evoked
powerful
nd
widespread
emotional reactions.both
in India and
abroad.
"Serve
epers,
do not
bur
those
who
serve
them",
ran the banner arried
by
some
school
children
at
a
protest
demonstration
n
Delhi on
January
30,
1999one
of
many hroughout
he
country.
Quite
unusually,
he initiative
or
protest
rallies
often
camefrom tudents
enerally
aloof frompolitics,as at Delhi colleges
like
Miranda
or St
Stephens.
The
prime
minister claimed
that
he was
hanging
his
head
in
shame,
and the
intensity
of
reactions
seems
to
have
forced
a certain
retreat,
or the time
being.
But
scattered
incidents of violence and intimidation
are still
being
reported,
and
there
are
also
signs
that
a
systematic
ampaign
f
lies
anddistortions
oncerning
Christians
is
being
disseminated
through
leaflets
and brochures.Some of these
-
usually
those
without
press-lines
-
are
crudely
slanderous,
and threaten
open
violence
againstChristians.Otherspresentwhat
might
appear
at
first
sight cogent
argu-
ments
against missionaryactivity,
often
claiming
o
quote
rom
respected
ational
figures.
Let me
give
one
example,
rom
a
pam-
phlet
of the more 'sober' kind. 'Sevaki
aad me church ka
shadyantra'
church
conspiracy
under
cover
of
service),
by
Ravindra
Agarwal
Hindu
Manch,
Delhi,
Sivaratri,
999),
carries,
ery
prominently
on its
inside
cover,
the Hindi translation
of a
passage
from
Gandhi
which seems
to
ustify
thecurrent
nti-missionary
am-
paign.
I checked
up
the
reference,
and
found that
it is
there
in
the
Mahatma's
Collected
Works,
Volume
XLVI,
pp
27-28,
nor is the
translation nfair.
In
an inter-
view
dated
March
2,
1931
given
o
Hindu,
Gandhi
apparently
tated
that if in self-
governing
Indian missionaries
kept
on
"proselytising
y
means
of
medical
aid,
education, tc,
I
would
certainly
sk
them
to withdraw.
Every
nation's
religion
s
as
good
as
any
other.
Certainly
ndia's re-
ligions
are
adequate
or her
people.
We
need
no
convertingpiritually."
hecrunch
Economic and
Political
Weekly
June
26,
1999
1691
7/27/2019 Conversions and Politics of Hindu Right - Sarkar
3/11
comes
when
we look at
the
entire
article,
which was
lirst
published
in
Young
India,
April
23. 1931.
Here
Gandhi
began
with
this
passage,
but
went on to
add that
"This
is
what
a
reporter
has
put
into
my
mouth...AIl that I
can
say
is that
it is a
travesty
of
what I
have
always
said and
held."
He
offered
a
corrected
version,
where
he
explained
tliat
"I
am,
then,
not
against conversion. But I am against the
modern
methods of
it.
Conversion
nowa-
days
has become a matterof
business,
like
any
other."The
moditications he
made in
the rest
of the
quote
are
equally
interest-
ing: "Every
nation considers its own faith
to be as
good
as that of
any
other.
Certainly
the
great
faiths
held
by
the
people
of
India
are
adequate
for
her
people.
India stands
in no
need of conversions from
one
faith
to another." As
striking,
and
utterly
in
contrast to hindutva
tenets,
is the list he
went on to offer
of India's
'great'
and 'all-
sufficing'
faiths:
"Apart
rom
Christianity
andJudaism,Hinduism and its offshoots.
IslamandZoroastrianismare
iving
faiths."
The
article ended
with
a characteristic
plea
for
"living friendly
contact
among
the
followers of the
great religions
of the
world and not a clash
among
them..."
An
anti-Christian
campaign
in
India
today
necessarily
has
to base itself on the
question
of
conversions. This
is
in
partial
contrast to Hindu-Muslim
relations,
for
between Hindus
and Christians there are
no
memories of communal violence or
partition,
nothing
that
really corresponds
to issues like
'go-korbani'
(cow
slaughter)
ormusic beforemosques thathave
sparked
off so
many riots
at
least from the 1890s
onwards.3 It
is
not
at
all
accidental,
there-
fore,
that the
so-called
mild face of the
BJP,
Vajpayee,
had recourse
to
this
ploy
when
he visited
Gujaratjust
ftertheChrist-
mas
burnings
of churches and called for
a 'national
debate' on
conversions,
thus
adroitly
hinting
that Christians are
ulti-
mately
responsible
for their
own
woes.
And
this,
though
C P
Singh,
director-
general
of the
Gujarat police,
had cate-
gorically
declared
on
October
6,
1998
that
the
charges
being made of forced
inter-
religious
marriages
and
conversions
were
baseless,
and that it was
rather
"the
acti-
vists
of the
Vishwa
Hindu Parishad
and
Bajrang
Dal activists who were
taking
law
into their own hands which
posed
a
serious danger
to
peace
in
Gujarat"
Conm-
nmunalisnmombat
1998].
As
for
Staines,
he had been
a
doctor,
not
an
ordained
priest,
and
could
not
have
baptised
anyone
even
if he had
wanted to.
A
delegation
of
religious
leaders
of
various communities
that went on a
pilgrimage
to
Monoharpur
recently
found
that there was not
a
single
Christian
among
the 80 inmates
of
Staines'
leprosarium
[Thampu
1999].
Conversion
through
force
evidently requires
the
com-
plicity
of sections of the
state
apparatus,
and. whatever
may
or
may
not
have
hap-
pened occasionally
under
colonial
rule,
in
today's
circumstances
-
and most obvi-
ously
in the BJP's
Gujarat
bastion
-
it is
clearly
absurd to
think
that such
support
could ever come the way of Christian
missionaries.
Actually
some information
is
available
about who
exactly
is
doing
forced con-
versions
in
the
Dangs.
"...since the
past
few
months,
and more
extensively
in
the
first
fortnight
of
January.
ribals
(of
Goghli
and
surrounding villages)
were
being
bundled
into
jeeps
and taken
to the
'garamkund'
(hot
springs)
at Unai
for a
'shuddhikaran'
(purificatory
bath).
Then
they
were driven to Swami Aseemanand's
ashram,
to state that
they
have 'recon-
verted' to Hinduism."4
What is worrying is the confusion the
question
of Christian conversions can still
evoke,
even
among
well-intentioned and
progressive
people.
There are
very
few
who would
not condemn the Staines
murder,
yet
this could be
accompanied by
something
like
a
sotto voce 'but' about
conversions. Thus even Swami
Agnivesh.
well known
champion
of so
many
pro-
gressive
causes,
welcomed
Vajpayee'
scall
for
national
debate,
and,
while
stating
that
"individual freedom is
the
key
to the
modern
outlook".
declared
that he was
"indignant
at conversions"
[Communal-
ism Combat 1999]. The Hindu Manch
pamphlet
I
have
cited
quotes
with
great
glee
a
report
from Indian
Express,
Janu-
ary
7,
1999,
headlined
'Gandhians
blame
conversions,
seek total ban'. The
state-
ment
apparently
comes from
two senior
GujaratSarvoday
workers,
one
of
whom,
the
82-year-old
Ghelubhai
Nayak,
claimed
that
way
back in
1948 Sardar
Patel
had
sent him to
Dangs
to
counter
possible
Christian
conversions
there.
In
logic
and law
alike,
one would have
thought.
there is little
scope
for
doubt
or
confusion
here. Article 25
(i)
of the
Fun-
damental
Rights
chapter
in
the Constitu-
tion defines
the
'Right
to
Freedom
of
Religion' quite categorically:
"all
persons
are
equally
entitled to freedom
of con-
science and the
right freely
to
profess.
practise
and
propagate religion".
Propa-
gation
makes no
sense
at all without the
possibility
of
convincing
others of the
validity
of
one's
religious
beliefs and
rituals.
Freedom of
choice,
in
religion
or
for
that
matter
n
politics
or
anything
else,
and therefore
freedom
to
change
one's
beliefs,
is
surely
in
any
case
integral
to
any
conception
f
democracy.
onversely,
conversion
by
force
or fraud
s
contrary
to the basic
principle
of
equal
freedom.
Yet,
in
an
admittedly
pecific
and so-
lated
judgment,
a
Supreme
Court
udge
defiedcommon ense
by declaring
hat he
right
to
propagate
does not
include
the
right
o
convert,
and t is
pointless
o
deny
thatdoubtsabout
his
subject
have come
to be acceptedas somehow'natural'by
many.
But
it
is
always
the
'natural' hat
stands n need of the
most
rigorous
ques-
tioning.
and
I
feel
that a
little historical
explorationmight help.
In what
follows.
I
look first
at
the
question
of
conversions
and ts
changingmeanings
nd orms cross
time,
trying
to
investigate
when,
under
what
conditions,
andhow
it
became uch
a contentious ssue.
My closing
section
will
come back o current
vents,
andask
why
the
Sangh
parivar
has
chosen
such
a
tiny
minority
as
prime
arget,
and what
developmentsmight
be
helping
o make
such targetingappearplausible.
II
Conversions in
History
Let
me
beginby
raising
wo
preliminary
questions,
one of
logic,
the
other
of se-
mantics.
What conditions. or
widely
held as-
sumptions.
are
necessary
before conver-
sions
can
become
a contentious
ssue,
arouse
widespread
nd violent
passions?
Clearly,
religious
communities
need to
havebecome
crystallised,
ome
to
be seen
as havingfirm and fixed boundaries,o
that the
crossing
of bordersbecomesa
dramatic,
one-shot matter.
Such devel-
oped
'community-consciousness',
ow-
ever,
is a
necessary,
but
not
sufficient,
condition for the
development
of what
20th
century
ndian
English
has
come to
call 'communalism':
when,
obviously,
conversions become
controversial
n
a
qualitativelyhigher
scale. This
requires,
not
just
the
transition rom
'fuzzy'
to
'enumerated' communities
to
which
Sudipto
Kaviraj
drewour
attention
ome
years
back
n
an influential
ssay.
but the
further
assumption
of inevitable. and
overriding,5
onflict
of
interests.
uch
hat,
in a
kind
of zero-sum
game,
the
gain
of
one
community
s
thought
o
invariably
involve the loss
of
the other.
It
needs
to
be
emphasised
that this
distinction
between
developed
commu-
nity-consciousness
nd communalism
s
importantprecisely
because
tendencies
exist that
virtually
equate
the
latter
with
any firmly-bounded
religious
identity.
These
operate
from
two
diametrically
opposedpoints
of view.
Pradip
Datta
has
1692 Economic and Political
Weekly
June
26,
1999
7/27/2019 Conversions and Politics of Hindu Right - Sarkar
4/11
recently
made the
very perceptive
point
that communalism
s
distinctive
among
ideologies
in its refusalto name itself.6
There
is rather the
constant effort
at
identification
with
religious
community,
as
well
as,
for
Hindu-majoritarian
om-
munalists,
withnationalism.Consider
or
instance
he
very
term 'hindutva'
which
literally
means
no
more han
Hindu-ness',
but has come to be the self-description,
fromthe
mid-1920s
onwards,
of a much
more
pecific
andnarrow
deology.7
And
here
extremes sometimes
meet,
for if
secularism
etsequated
with
anti-religion,
the
implication
becomes hatcommunal-
ism
can be
countered
only by
exposing
religion
as
'superstitious'
r
'irrational'.
Once
again,
n
effect,
communal's
being
collapsed
into
'religious
community'.
Operationally,
uch
hostility
to
religion
has
been
rarewithin
ndian
ecularism,
or
here he ermhas
really
been
synonymous
with anti-communal
olicies
and
values,
rather hanbeing anti-religiousor even
particularly
ationalist.
Anti-secularist
polemic
however
requently
makes such
an
equation
or its
own
purposes.
Para-
doxically,
when
combinedwith
rejection
of
hindutva s withinan
nfluential urrent
intellectual
rend,
communal'
and
'com-
munity'
once
again
tend to
get
collapsed
into
each
other,
except
that then a
sharp
disjunction
s
postulated
between 'mod-
em' and
'premoder'
communities,
reli-
gion-as-ideology'
s
contrastedo
a
some-
what
romanticised
religion-as-faith'.8
The sense of
outrage
evoked
by
reli-
giousconversion, hirdly,can be
greatly
intensified nd
made
o
appear
muchmore
legitimate
f the
loss
can
be
given
a
'pa-
triotic',
or
'national'.
colour.
This,
of
course,
has
been the
special advantage
enjoyed
by
Hindu
majoritarianism,
ar-
ticularly
after 1947.
Sangh
parivar
usti-
fications
f recent
outrages gainst
Chris-
tiansare
replete
with
nstancesof suchan
equation.
Oneneeds
o notealso
the
very
effective
semantic
ploy through
which
t
has come
to be
widely
assumed that
Hinduism
s
near-uniquemongreligious
raditions
n
being
non-proselytising:
conversion to
other
aiths
herefore
s
a loss thatcannot
be
recuperated,
ndso
particularly
nfair.
This
at first
sight
seems to fit in
well with
the
common sense view
that one can
become
a Hindu
y
birth
lone,
sincecaste
(whether
n the
'vara'
or the
'jati'
sense)
is crucial to
Hinduism,
and
your
caste
status s
hereditary.
But
certain ticklish
questions
arise as
soon as we
enlarge
the
time-perspective:
where did all
the
Buddhists f
ancient
ndia
o,
for nstance?
Andhow
didHindu cons and
mythsspill
over into
large parts
of south-east
Asia?
More
crucially,
one needs to
recognise
that,
across centuries but
in accelerated
manner
with
modernised communica-
tions,
brahmanical Hindu
rituals,
beliefs,
and
caste
disciplines
have
spread
across
the subcontinentand
penetrated
and
sought
to transform communities with
initially
very
different
practices
and
faiths. It
has
somehow become conventional to describe
the
processes
here
by
anodyne
terms like
'Sanskritisation'
or 'cultural
integration',
but
they really
amount nevertheless to
what with other
religious
traditions would
have
been termed 'conversion'. There is
also much historical data about the
spread
of
specific
varieties of
Hindu
traditions.
like for instance
Chaitanya
bhakti from
central
and western
Bengal
into Orissa
and the
uplands
of Jharkhand. A
whole
battery
of terms was
developed
from the
late 19th
century
onwards as
expansion
directed towards
marginal groups
and
tribals became more organised: 'reclama-
tion',
'shuddhi'
('purification'),
'recon-
version',
'paravartan'
'turning
back".
he
term
preferred by
the Vishwa
Hindu
Parishad
oday).
Common
to
all these labels
is an
insistence
that all
that is
being
at-
tempted
is to
bring
people
back
to their
'natural'
state:
which,
for all
the
targeted
groups,
is
always
assumed
to
be
being
Hindu
in a more
or less
sanskritised
manner.Semantic
aggression
can
hardly
go
further.
But if
shifts in
religious
allegiance
are
obviously
nothing
new,
their
forms are
likely
to have
changed
over time. The
precise
meanings
of
'conversion' need to
be historicised.
The
thrust of
much recent historical
work has been towards
the
destabilisation
of
assumptions
of
continuous,
firmly-
bounded identities. This is in
significant
contrast to the
bulk
of earlier historio-
graphy,
which had
tended
to
essentialise
terms like
Hindu or
Muslim,
and
then
gone
on to
emphasise
either the moments
of
synthesis,
or
(in
the communal
variant)
perennial
conflict.9 One need not
go
as far
in
the
questioning
of
pre-colonial
identi-
ties as
some colonial
discourse
analysts
would
want to
agree
that the absence
of
modem
communicational networks
(de-
veloped
roads,
railways, telegraph
lines,
the
printing
press,
etc)
must have
greatly
hindered the
formation
of stable and
tight
countrywide religious
blocs. Trends
in
medieval
Indian
scholarship
seem to be
moving
in
a similar
direction,
through
a
more
rigorous probing
of the rhetorical
aspects
and
precise
implications
of texts
than at first
sight
seem to indicate a
high
level of
religious
conflict and
persecution.
(Selective
19th
century
translations from
some
of
these,
notably by
Elliot
and
Dowson,
had
greatly
contributed
to
communalisation.)
Thus Persianchronicles
boasting
of
wars
against
infidels and
desecration
of
temples
-
or for that matter
a
text like the Vilasa
copperplate
grant
describing
in
lurid but
highly
formulaic
terms
the
Kaliyuga
ushered in
by
Muhammad bin Tughlaq's destruction of
the
Kakatiya dynasty
in
Andhra
-
are
being recognised
to have been
in
part
legitimising
devices.
(The
same
temples,
for
instance,
seem to be
getting
destroyed
again
and
again,
as Romila
Thapar
has
shown
recently
in an as
yet
unpublished
paper
about
Somnath.)
Again,
'Hindu'
texts,
in Sanskrit or
regional languages
like
Telegu,
use,
overwhelmingly,
ethnic
rather han
religious
terms
(Turushka,
most
commonly)
to describe the
kingdoms
and
armies we
have become
accustomed
since
the 19th
century
to call
'Muslim'.10
All
this does not mean, of course, that there
were
not
many
instances of conflicts
and
acts
of violence and
persecution
wholly
or
partly
religious' (though
even the mean-
ing
of that
term is
not
entirely transparent,
or
impervious
to
change),
amidst
much
everyday
coexistence
and
co-mingling
of
practices.Buttheirgeneralisation
nto
mass
communal
ideologies
with a
subcontinen-
tal reach
was
unlikely.
In an
important
discussion of
processes
of
Islamisation
in
medieval
Bengal,
Eaton
has tried
to
draw out the
implications
of
this relative absence of
firmly-bounded
communities for the
question
of
religious
conversions. Use of the
term
itself,
he
argues,
becomes
"perhaps
misleading
-
since it
ordinarily
connotes a
sudden and
total
transformation",
whereasthe
changes
could have
"proceeded
so
gradually
as
to
be
nearly imperceptible".
Like other
secu-
lar-minded
historians,
Eaton
(1994:269)
rejects
the
theory
of
large-scale
forcible
conversion,
since the
regions
that
became
massively
Muslim
-
East
Bengal
and
western
Punjab
-
were also those
furthest
away
frqm
major
centres
of Muslim
po-
litico-military power.
He
discounts
also
the
view
that
Islam attracted
converts from
lower castes
primarily
by
virtue of its
egalitarian
tenets,
for these were also the
areas where brahmanical
penetration,
and
therefore structures of caste
oppression,
had been
relatively
weak.
By
implication,
Eaton's account draws
attention
to
the
possibility
that in
large parts
of the sub-
continent,
certainly
in
medieval times and
to a
considerable extent even
today,
the
greatreligious
traditionshave been
expand-
ing
at the
cost,
not
so
much of each
other
as in relation to a multitude of local cults
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or
practices.
Conflicts in
premodern
times
would
have been
considerably
reduced,
further,
by
the
slow,
phased
nature of the
transition.
Here Eaton
(1994:113-19,
268-
90)
distinguishes
three
heuristic
moments,
of 'inclusion' of Islamic
cult-figures
within
the local
cosmologies,
'identification' of
some of these with
indigeneous objects
of
worship,
and
finally
(and
perhaps
often
mainlyin the 19thcentury), 'displacement'
through
which Islam became
'purified'
through
reform or
purging
of non-Islamic
beliefs and
practices.
One
might
add
that
pre-colonial
'conversion' was
probably
not so much a matter of
individual and
one-shot
choice,
as
of slow
changes
in-
volving
an
entire
group,
family
or
kinship
network,
or
local
community
-
which
would once
again
reduce the
potentials
for
conflict.
Three
major changes, roughly
from the
latter
part
of
the 19th
century
onwards,
seem
particularly
relevant
for
understand-
ing why conversions startedbecoming so
much more
controversial.
The first was the
tightening
of
commu-
nity
boundaries: here has come into
being
a
broad
consensus about this
among
his-
torians,
despite
continuing
differences
regarding
the extent of
novelty
involved
here,
or
in
the
precise weighing-up
of
causes.
1
Within the broader
framework
of
developing
politico-administrative,
economic.
and
communicational
inte-
gration,
particularly mportant nputs
prob-
ably
came from colonial
law,
and from
census
operations.
In mattersof
so-called
'personal' or 'family' law, the British had
decided in the
1770s that
they
would
administer
according
to Hindu
or Islamic
sacred texts and
in
consultation
with
brahman
pandits
and Muslim ulema: dif-
ferentially,
in
other
words,
for
the
two
major
religious
traditions. In
many every-
day
situations,
herefore,
one had to declare
oneself a Hindu or Muslim
(or
a
member
of
any
of the
other
religious
communities
that
had come
to
develop
'personal'
legal
systems
of
their
own).
While
superficially
not dissimilar to
Mughal
practice,
there
was a
significant
change
insofaras
Mughal
courts
had never tried to
penetrate
deep
into lower levels
through
the
kind
of
systematic
hierarchy
of
appellate jurisdic-
tions thatBritish rule
developed
over time.
Disputes
must
have been often decided at
local
or
village
levels
according
to diverse
customary
standards
that would
have
had
little
to
do
with textual
(or
'religious')
principles.
Colonial
'personal'
law
centralised,
textualised,
made
operation-
ally
much
sharper
he boundaries between
religious
communities and
probably
en-
hanced also
to a
significant
extent
the
influenceover the rest of
society
of
high
castes
and
Muslim elites.
The
mpact
f the
census rom
he 1870s
onwards
s
more
obvious,
and
has
been
repeatedlymphasised
n
recent cademic
discussions. Census
operations
necessi-
tated
he
drawing
f
sharp
distinctions,
f
religion,
aste,
anguage,
r
whatever
lse
the administratorshad decided on
as
worthy of being counted. Enumerated
communitiesmade
for
mutual
competi-
tion,
complaints
about unfair
represent-
ation
n
education,
obs,
administrationr
politics,
stimulated earsabout
being
left
behind
in
numbers
games.
That census
procedures
fteninvolved he
imposition
of
order,
rather han
simple
recording
f
realities n
the
ground,
ecomes
clear,
or
instance,
rom
he
amusing
nstance n
the
1911 census of a
35,000-strong
ommu-
nity
of 'Hindu-Muhammadans'n
Gujarat,
so termed
by
a
Bombay
census
superin-
tendent
confounded
by
the inextricable
combinationfmultiple ractices, eliefs,
and
even
self-definitions.The
latterwas
pulledup
sharply
by
his
superior,
ensus
commissionerE A
Gait,
who
ordered
he
locationof "the
persons
oncerned o the
one
religion
or
the
other
as best he could"
[Census 1911:118].
Colonial
modernityhelped
to
tighten
community
bonds:
t
has been
less often
noticed.
however,
hat t
also
stimulated
forces hat
made
hem
more
ragile.
What
was
coming
into existence
by
the late
19th-early
20th
century
was a
situation
conducive or
the
growth
of not
one,
but
many community-identities religious,
caste,
inguistic-regional,
nti-colonialna-
tional',
class,
gender,
in
interactive
yet
of'
n conflictual
relationships
with each
other.
2
Among
he
many
meritsof
Pradip
Datta's
just-published
work
(1999:9)
is
the
way
he
has
beenableto
bring
ogether
these
interlocking
arratives,
n
an effort
to view
"communalormations...as
art
f
a
field in which
they
have to
perforce
relate o othercollective identities
other
than ts
binary
n
'Hindu'or
'Muslim'),
such
as
class,
gender,
rcaste
affiliations".
Signs
can
be
discerned,
hirdly,
of the
beginnings
of a discourseof individual
rights.
The direct influence of western
liberal
and
radical
deologies,
while not
negligible,
was no doubt confined
to
relatively
ew,
but here
wasalso
he allout
from certain nstitutional
evelopments.
Colonial
justice,
while
shoring
up
reli-
giously-defined community
norms in
personal
aw,
simultaneously
nlargedup
to
a
point
"the
freedomof
the individual
in the
market-place"
n
landandcommer-
cial
transactions
Washbrook
981:650].
British Indian
definitions
of criminal
liability,
too,
came
to be
theoretically
based
on notions of "an
equal
abstract and
universal
legal subject-
though
once
again
only
to a
partial
extent,
for there were
many
accommodations
in
practice
with
existing
social
hierarchies
[Singha
1998:viii].
Equality
before
the
law,
prom-
ised
in
much-cited
official documents like
the
Queen's
Proclamation
of
1858,
was
often severely tampered by white racial
privilege.
But then
promises
simulta-
neously
held
out
and broken tend to
whet
appetites,
and
such a
dialectic
came to
operate,
though
of
course
in
widely
dif-
ferentand
at times even
contradictoryways,
both
with
respect
to attitudestowards their
foreign
overlords
of a
growing
number
of
Indians,
and lower
caste
(and/or
class)
resentmentsabout
ndigeneous
hierarchies
of
privilege
and
exploitation.
Even more
significant initially,
perhaps,
were
developments relating
to
gender.
It
has been
argued
recently
that
the
19th
century legal reforms and debates around
women
('sati',
women's
education,
widow
remarriage, age
of
consent,
polygamy)
may
have
been
significant
above all
for
their
unsettling
effect. The concrete
achievements
of social reforms
were not
very
substantial, but,
along
with
the
in-
tense debates around them
that became
possible
though
the
coming
of
print,
they
did contribute
to a
"destabilising
and
problematising
[of]
the
old
order".
For
legality
now clashed
with
religious
pre-
scription,13
a
small but
growing
number
of women
took to
education
violating
customary prohibitions, and even conser-
vative defenders of
the old
rules
and norms
had to use
increasingly
a
new
language
of the
woman's own consent.14
Indian
reformist efforts at social
change through
colonial
legislation,
though
much
resented
by many
nationalists,
helped
to constitute
"an excess that
gave
the
woman,
at least
notionally,
a
sphere
of
personal rights
outside the
rule of the
family
and com-
munity."15
I am
arguing,
then,
that
the
heightened
late- and
post-colonial
tensions
around
conversions
have to be related
to
commu-
nity
borders
becoming
simultaneously
harder and more vulnerable. Let me
try
to
illustrate
hrough
a few
sample
instances
of conflict
(or
its
absence),
relating
in the
main to Christian
conversions.
While Christian
proselytisation
through-
out tended
to focus
primarily
on tribals
and lower
castes,
the Scottish
missionary
Alexander Duff
in
the
Bengal
of the 1830s
and 1940s
tried out an alternative
strategy
of
targeting
elite Indians
through higher
education,
public
debates
and individual
contacts. There were some
spectacular
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individual
conversions
in
upper
caste
households.
like Krishnamohan
Banerji
and Madhusudan
Dutta,
and
in
1845 a
major
controversy
burst
out in Calcutta
around
Umeshchandra
Sarkarand his
wife,
aged
14 and
11,
defying
family
elders to
become
Christians.
The
sharp
differences
in educated
high-caste
Calcutta
society
around social
and religious
reform
(not-
ably the ban on widow immolation) were
suddenly forgotten
as Radhakanta
Deb,
leader
of
the
conservative
Dharma
Sabha,
Debendranath
Tagore,
inheritor of
Rammohan's
Brahmo
mantle,
and even
the Derozian
Ramgopal
Ghosh
joined
hands
to float
a Hindu Hitarthi
Vidyalay
to rescue
education from the clutches
of
missionaries.
The terms
of
argument
as
defined
by Akshoykumar
Dutta,
Brahmo
editor
of 7attvabodhini
Patrika
with a
considerable
rationalist
reputation,
were
particularly
nteresting:
"Even
the women
within
the household have started
to turn
Christian Will we not wake upeven after
this terrible
event?"
[Chakrabarti
1916].
Individual conversion
was felt to be
a
threat
to
falnily
order.16
Resentment
and
fear
among
propertied
Hindus was com-
pounded
in
1850
by
the
passage
of the
Disabilities
Removal
Act which
sought
to
protect
the
right
of inheritance
of
converts.
Throughout
he
19th
century,
there
were
numerous
polemical
encounters between
missionaries and Hindu
or Muslim
spokes-
men,
in
public
debates
as well as
through
the
press.
These could
be full of
theologi-
cal rancour and verbal violence, and yet
were
not,
perhaps,
all
that
qualitatively
different
from
what in
today's perspective
would
be termed
ntra-community
debates;
the
'shastratha'of
brahman
pandits,
or the
'bahas'
among
Bengal
Muslims.
17
Unlike
the bulk
of 20th
century
communal
dis-
courses,
such
polemics
had an intellectual
content,
turning
around
questions
of re-
ligious
doctrines
or
practices.
They
were
not as
yet
mere
appeals
for
unthinking
community solidarity, whipped
up through
emotive
enemy images.
Instances
would
include Vishnubawa
Brahmachari's
anti-
missionary
lectures
on
Bombay
Back
Bay
beach
between
January
and
May
1857,
or
the
encounter between
a
particularly
ag-
gressive
missionary,
Carl
Pfanzer,
and
Wazir
Khan,
graduate
of Calcutta Medical
College,
in
Agra
oni
the eve
of the
Mutiny.18
But the
polemic
with the
most
far-reaching
(and
long-lasting)
conse-
quences
was
undoubtedly
that launched
by
Dayananda
Saraswati
in
Chapter
13 of
Satyartha
Prakash
(1875).
This combined
serious
logical
argument
(at
their best
somewhat reminiscent
of
Rammohan's
critique
of
Trinity
and
Original
Sin)
with
an
emergent
anti-white,
anti-colonial tone:
"If
a
white man kills a black
man,
he is
for the most
part
declared
not
guilty
and
acquitted.
The same
must be the
justice
administered n
paradise".Dayananda
also
raised
a
question
as to what kind
of
face
the
personal god
of the Christians
has:
"White like
European?
Or black
like
African Negroes?" Yet there was also a
clear
patriarchal-cum-class
dimension
to
much of
this
polemic.
Thus belief in
immaculate
conception
could lead to loss
of control over
women
-
"Any virgin
who
happened
to
conceive
would
give
out
that
she
conceived
through god".
Dayananda
was
angered
both
by
the St Matthew
passage predicting
sons
rebelling
against
fathers for the sake of
Jesus,
and,
even
more,
by
the
image
of the
camel and the
needle's
eye.19
Christ to him was a mere
carpenter's
son,
living
in
a
'junglee
desh',
a wild and
poor
country:
'This
is
why
he
prays for the daily bread"[Jones 1992].20
At a different
and more obscure
level,
spread
of
Christianity among peasants
occasionally
aroused zamindar
hostility.
Landlordsseem
to
have
felt that
converted
tenants became less
amenable to their
demands,
for in missionaries
they
had
found an alternative source of
authority
and
patronage.
Cultivators
and fishermen
of
Rammakolchoke,
a
village
to
the south
of
Calcutta,
were fined
Rs 10 each
in the
late
1820s
and
beaten
with shoes
by
their
zamindarforturningChristian.
There
were
clashes
in
1840
at
Bohirgacchi
near
Krishnagar(Nadia), and in a Barisal vil-
lage
in 1846 Hindu zamindars
seized the
lands,
implements,
cattle and even
clothes
of
29
Christian families
and
destroyed
their
huts. The converts
had
to
take shelter
among
Muslim
neighbours
[Oddie
1979:114-16].
Diligent
work
on mission-
ary
archives and
local official records
would
probably
reveal
many
other in-
stances. The missionaries
were no doubt
motivated
primarily
-
and
in
many
cases
perhaps
solely
-
by
desire for
conversion,
and would not
have been
pro-peasant
or
socially
radical on
principle.
Their
pres-
ence could
still be a resource for
the under-
privileged,
as
for
instance when French
Catholic missionaries
of the
Pondicherry-
based Societe des
Missions
Etrangeres
helped agricultural
abourersbeaten
up by
landlords
in a court case at
Alladhy
in
1874-75,
an
incident which seems to
have
stimulated a wave of mass conversions
in
that area
[Bugge
1997:105].
It
needs
to
be added
that
there
were occasions
when
missionary lobbying provided important
inputs
in moves towards
pro-tenant
legal
reform,
as
in
the
run-up
to
the
Bengal
Tenancy
Amendment f
1859,
or in
early
20th
century
Chhota
Nagpur
where
ccord-
ing
to the
census
report
of 1911
"the
agrarian
egislation,
which is the
Magna
Cartaof the
aboriginal,
s
largely
due to
their
influence".
It is truethat
therecan be a
nationalist
position,
abstracted
rom
considerations
of social
ustice,
which
might
ind n
such
pro-peasantmissionarynterventionsvi-
dence
only
of efforts to consolidate
co-
lonial
power
throughdividing
the Indi-
ans.21
But then
what
are
we to make of
a substantial ection
of
foreign
mission-
aries n
Bengal during
he
1850s,
headed
by
Reverend James
Long,
who took a
public
stand
against
ellow white
indigo
planters
efore
and
during
he 'Blue Mu-
tiny'? Long
even went to
jail, accepting
responsibility
for
publication
of the
English
version of
Dinabandhu
Mitra's
play Neel-Darpan exposing
the
horrors
of
indigo
-
which
had been translated
by
anotherChristian,MichaelMadhusudan
Dutta.
Long
has been
deservedly
mmor-
talised n
Bengal
folk
memoryby
a
popu-
lar
ditty:
The
indigo
monkeys
have
been
ruining
golden Bengal
Harish iedbefore
is
ime,
Long
hasbeen
sent
to
jail.
Prior o around he
tur-of-the-century,
Christian
roselytisation
mong
he
poor
-
as distinct
rom
he rarebut
spectacular
conversionof
prominent
men
-
does not
seemtohavebecomea central
upper
aste
(or
ashraf)
intelligentsia
concern.
Much of
the expansion,nthe 19thcentury s well
asoften
ater,
was
n
outlying
reas,
argely
untouched
by
mainstream
Hinduism
nd
Islam.
The
element of
competition
and
conflict enteredmuch
later,
with
Hindu
'reconversion' fforts.
In
an
interesting
analysis
of Christian conversion
in
Nagaland,
Richard
Eaton
suggested
hat
this could even
provide
a
"paradigm
f
how
previous
aboriginals
f India
might,
in earlier
epochs,
have acculturated
o
Hinduism,
Buddhism
or Islam".
As he
argued
ater aboutmedieval
Bengal,
the
role of
poritical
oercionseems
to have
been
negligible,
despite
he racial
affinity
betweenmissionaries
ndcolonialrulers.
The
great eap
in
Naga
conversions
ook
place
after
ndependence,
nd here s also
a
significant
ack of
correlation
etween
presence
f
foreign
missionaries
nd
pread
of
Christianity.22
uchmoredecisive
was
the
association
of
Christianity
with
the
spread
of
literacy
and effective modern
medicine,
processes
that were
greatly
accelerated
rom the second world
war
and the Kohima
campaign
onwards.The
missionaries
ame as "emissaries f the
Economic and
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high
culture of the
plains
bringing
the
written
word to the
forest",
in
a
region
of
shifting
cultivation,
no written
script,
or
town
life
-
not
unlike,
in other
parts
of
the
subcontinent
earlier,
brahmins,
Bud-
dhist
monks,
Muslimjudges
and
holy
men.
There were in addition elements of skilful
adaptation
of
Christianity
to
indigenous
traditions,
establishing
links with
existing
Naga notions of a supreme divinity, for
instance
-
once
again.
a
parallel suggests
itself with
processes
of
sanskritising'
kind
(ibid:32,43).
The last
quarter
of the 19th
century
was
marked
by
a
surge
in
the
number
of
Christian
conversions,
so much
so
that it
has been
described
in mission histories as
the
era of
"mass
movements".
Whole
families,
villages
or
sub-castes
came
over
en
mlasse
in a
manner
that
possibly
re-
duced
the
aspect
of conflict
at local
levels,
but
heightened
fearselsewhere.23
Repeated
famines
could
have
had
something
to do
with this - the phenomenon of 'rich
Christians',
relief
work
by
missions
ac-
companied
by
baptisms,
at times of small
children,
which embaiiassed
many
Chris-
tians
at
times.
But,
in some areas at
least,
there were
also links with
lower caste/
class
discontent,
as
among
the
pariah
agri-
cultural abourers
of
Chingleput
and north
Arcot in the
early
1890s where Methodist
and Free Church of Scotland
missionaries
actively
fostered effoils
at
empowerment
directed
against oppressive
mirasidars
[Oddie 1979:128-46].
Developments
like
these
may
have
had
something
to do with
Vivekananda's
powerful pleas,
in course
of and after
his
travels in south
India,
for
upliftment
of untouchables
-
with which
he
often
linked the
danger
otherwise
of
Christian
conversion.
Three
processes began
coming together
from
around
he
turnof the
century
to raise
high-caste
Hindu fears
about
conversion
to a
qualitatively higher
level.
The com-
petitive
logic
of numbers
made
possible
by
census enumeration
acquired
greater
saliency
through
the
gradual
spread
of
representative
institutions.
In
regions
where the
major religious
communities
had been
revealed
by
census
operations
to have
roughly equal
numbers
(like,
notably,
Bengal
and
Punjab),
even small
changes
through
conversions came
to
be
perceived
as
ominous.
There
were
in
addition
clear
signs
of
a
rapid
growth
in
lower-caste
affirmations,
in
part
stimu-
lated
by
the census bid
in
1901
to fix
caste
rankings.
There
was
a
quantum
eap
in
the
number
of caste associations and of
pub-
lications
by
or on
behalf
of lower caste
groups, seeking
in
the main
upward
mobility
of a
'Sanskritising'
kind,
but also
going
in at times for
quite
a lot of anti-
brahmanical and anti-caste
rhetoric.
An
additional
input
was
provided
by
British
divide-and-rulemoves
like
Gait's abortive
suggestions
in
1910
to list
separately
in
the
coming
census
lower castes denied
brahman
services
and
entry
to
temples.
The
resultant
compound
of resentment
and
anxiety
was
best articulated
by
U N
Mukherji's very influential text, Hindus:
A
Dying
Race
(Calcutta,
1909),
which
skilfully
used some census data and
pre-
dictions to
develop
a horrific vision of
Hindu decline as
contrasted
to Muslim
growth
and
strength
[Dutta
1999: ch
1;
Sarkar 1977:
ch
9,
1999].
Mukherjipinpointed
subordinated astes
to be the
Achilles' heel
of Hindu
society,
and
his
suggested
remedies amounted
therefore
to
a kind
of
organised
and lim-
ited
Sanskritisation
from
the
top
at
brahmanical
initiative.
In
practice, par-
ticularly
in
northernIndia as
spearheaded
by the Arya Samaj, the concrete response
to the fear of
declining
numbers
so
vividly
expressed by
Mukherji
took the form of
the
'shuddhi' movement
to
'purify'
or
'reconvert'
marginal
groups.
Social
upliftment
efforts.
which
in
strict
logic
could have been directed towards
all
sub-
ordinated lower
castes
and
untouchables,
became in
practice
exercises in
policing
and
modifying
the borders
between reli-
gious
communities. The
major
targets
to
shuddhi
-
the
Rahtia Sikhs
around
1899-
1900,
the Malkana
Rajputs
of
the
Mathura-
Farrukhabad
egion
immediately
after the
collapse
of the
non-co-operation-khilafat
movement
in 1922
-
became
precisely
groups among
whom
syncretistic
prac-
tices had
been
most
prominent,24
and
'shuddhi
sangathan'
in tandem
with their
Muslim
counterparts,
'tabligh'
and
'tanzim',
became
a
principal
source of
acute Hindu-Muslim tension and violence
in the mid-1920s.
If
Sikhs,
initially,
and then
on
a far more
intensive scale Muslims. were
the domi-
nant
'Others'
of
shuddhi,
Christians
were
not
being entirely
forgotten
in this
fast-
developing
Hindu communalist discourse
which
was
simultaneously
tending
to build
bridges
between
reform-oriented
Aryas
and
their
old,
at one
time
very
bitter,
Sanatanist rivals.
Danger
of Christian
conversion in the wake of
missionary
famine
relief work had been
one factor
behind the
Arya
interest
in the
Rahtias,
treated as virtual out-castes
by
other Sikhs
[Jordens
1981:52-531.
A
central
text of the
mid-1920s shuddhi
movement,
Swami
Shraddhananda's Hindu
Sangathan:
The
Saviour
of
the
Dying Race,
while ful-
somely
acknowledging
indebtedness to
Mukherji
in
title and
initial
chapter.
modified he
atter's hesis
hrough
iving
far
greater
centrality
to
conversion
as
central cause of
Hindu
decline,
and
by
somewhat
unexpectedly iving
almost
as
much
space
to Christians s to
Muslims
in its
polemic.
Conversion
n
any
case
had
to be made into the
key
grievance
n
a
*
movement
irected
owards
reconverting'
through urification,ndShraddhananda's
chapter
ntitled.
The
Causesof
Decline
in
Number'
announced,
n
bold
headlines,
"the
irst
cause" o
be the
"conversion
o
other
religious
aiths".
Sections
ollowed
about
Muslim and Christian
onversions
by
'force'
and 'means
other han
force',
with
the author
rying
o use a
bitof intra-
Christian
polemic
(A
German
Protestant
diatribe
against
Jesuits and the
inquisi-
tion)
to
establish
his
argument
about
Christian oercionand
trickery.
Not
too
convincingly,
t must be
admitted,
ince
all
the
instances are
confined
to
16th
centuryGoa) [Sanyasi1926:14-20].25
Anti-conversion entiments
eceiveda
major
timulus romSavarkar's
ery
far-
reaching
and influential
definition
of
'Hindu'
n
1923 as those who
uniquely
combined
pitribhumi'
nd
punyabhumi',
fatherlandwith
holyland.Through very
effective
appropriation
f nationalism
y
Hindu
majoritarianism,ndigenous rigin
of
religious orby
extension,
ther)
beliefs,
practices,
r
nstitutions
was made nto he
supreme
riterion f value.It
became
asy
to
brandMuslimsandChristians
s
some-
how
alien,
unpatriotic
by
definition a
charge articularlyffectiveagainstChris-
tians
in
the colonial
era
due to their re-
ligious affinity
with the
foreign
rulers.
The
aggressive
Hindu-nationalistdeo-
logical-political
loc thathad
come
to be
constituted
y
the mid-1920s
Savarkar's
1923
text
and the foundation f the RSS
in 1925
providing
he
obvious
benchmarks)
also tended to
be
socially
conservative,
even
though
reformist trandshad con-
tributed
ignificantly
o ts
making
t
imes.
The
point
can be madeclearer
hrough
glance
at the
precise
ways
and
extent to
which much-hated onversion
or more
generally
the
presence
of alternative
proselytising eligious
tructures
could
contribute
owards
empowerment
f
the
downtrodden
n
Hindu
ociety.
Here t is
easy
to both
exaggerate
or
-
downplay.
Proselytisation,
most of the
time,
seeks
new
adherents,
not
social
justice
except
perhaps
as means towards hat
end,
and
it would
be absurd
o
portrayChristianity
(or
Islamor
Buddhism)
as
having
been
consistently
galitarian
n
its
this-wordly
impact.
Conversion
gain
eldom
guaran-
teed
equal
treatment,
or
it
is well known
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that caste
prejudices
and hierarchies have
often
persisted
among
converts to Christia-
nity
orIslam,
despite
theoretical
principles
of
equality
in
the
eyes
of
god
or allah.
Yet an
instance from the
history
of
the
lower
caste Namashudra movement
in
central
and
south Bengal
in the
early
20th
century
uggests
that
a
degree
of
empower-
ment was
possible
through missionary
presence - even where that presence did
not lead
to
significant
conversions. The
metrical
biography
of Guruchand Thakur
(1847-1937),
leader
of
the
dissident
Vaishnava Matua sect which constituted
the
core of the Namashudra
upthrust,
explains
in
vivid detail the circumstances
that led
the Matuas
to
seek
the
assistance
of the Australian
Baptist missionary
C S
Mead-striking
an alliance that
proved
very
fruitful for the Namashudras
in their
quest
for
educational
facilities,
salaried
jobs,
and
eventually political advantages.
The Namashudras wanted
to start
a
high
school at Orakandi, Faridpur (the centre
of
their
movement),
the
poem
explains,
because
landlords and
moneylenders
constantly
tricked illiterate
peasants
like
them in
everyday
matters of
rent
or debt-
payment
receipts.
They
encountered
stiff
opposition
from
the
local
high
caste
kayasthas,
who were afraid
that
heir
share-
croppers
and servants would
no
longer
work
for them
if
they
became educated.
That.
they
are
reported
as
arguing,
would
disrupt
he
age-old principles
of 'adhikari-
bheda'
(hierarchy),
as
enshrined
notably
in the
Ramayana.
The
biography
explains
thatit was such 'bhadralok'hostility that
made Guruchand
accept
the offer
of finan-
cial
and other
assistance
from
Mead,
and
it is also
very
careful
to
emphasise
that
the
motives
were
entirely
pragmatic,
to
get
money
for
the
school
and
also
obtain
access
to British
officials. The Namashudras
were
quite
satisfied with their Matua faith
founded
by
Guruchand'
fatherHarichand
Thakur,
and
very
few of them turned
Christian
[Haldar
1943:100-10].
The Christian
conversions issue fell
somewhat
nto
the
background
n the 1930s
and
1940s,
with
communalism turned
nto
an
obsessively
Hindu-Muslim
affair,
cul-
minating
in the blood-baths of
1946-47.
That
it
had not
vanished, however,
was
suddenly
revealed
by
a
near-explosion
on
the floor of the constituent
assembly
on
May
1,
1947 in course
of debates
on the
fundamental
right
to
religious
freedom.
Many
members
objected
to freedom of
religionextending
o the
iight
to
propagate,
with Purushottamdas
Tandon even
declar-
ing
that "most
Congressmen
are
opposed
to this ideaof
'propagation'.
But
we
agreed
to
keep
the word
'propagatet
out of
regard
for our own
Christian friends." And once
again
the social dimensions of the issue
got
exposed particularly
in
a
speech
by
Algurai
Shastri,
who listed
among
the
'unfair means'
adopted by
Christian mis-
sionaries
the utilisation
of
'bhangis
and
chamars':
"disputes
between members
of
such castes
as
the
sweepers
or
the chamars
on
the
one side and the
landlords or some
other influential members on the other
have
been
exploited
to
create
bitterness
among
them. No
effort has been made
to
effect
a
compromise.
This crooked
policy
has been
adopted
to
bring
about the con-
version of
the former"
(Constituent
As-
sembly
of
India
Debates,
Volume
II,
pp
483,
492).
Eventually.
the
right
to
propa-
gate
-
in
effect,
to
convert
-
was not
rejected,
but,
if
the
memory
of
the al-
ready-cited
Gandhian
opponent
of con-
versions
is
to be
trusted,
this was because
such a ban "would make a reconversion
difficult"
(IndianExpress,
January
,
1999,
cited in Rabindra Agarwal, Seba ki ad
me...,
op
cit).
It is worth
recalling
also that
along
with
promotion
of
highly
Sanskritised Ilindi
and cow
protection,
the
fight against
Christian
missions was
made into
an
early
plank
of Jan
Sangh
activity
in
the
early
1950s as
hindutva
forces
sought
to
regain
the
ground
lost
after
the murderof Gandhi.
In
November 1954 the Jan
Sangh
organised
an
Anti-Foreign
Missionary
Week
in
Madhya
Pradesh. Much had
started
being
made
of
insurgency
in
largely-Christian
Nagaland.
Then,
as
often
now,
what was
conveniently forgotten was thatmany so-
called 'secessionist' and/or 'terrorist'
movements have
had
nothing
to
do
with
religious
minorities
(e
g,
the
predomi-
nantly
high
caste
Hindu
ULFA),
while
relatively
little can be understood about
the
deeper
reasons behind such
move-
ments
by simplistic 'foreign
hand'
expla-
nations.
The
Madhya
Pradesh
Congress
reacted to the Jan
Sangh agitation
in what
had
already
become
a
strong
base of the
Hindu
right
in a manner
quite
character-
istic
-
and
always
in
the
long
run disas-
trous. It tried to outflank its rival
by
becoming
more
'Hindu',
a
move
condi-
tioned also
by
the
strong presence
of
very
similar elements within its own
members
and
leaders.
(The
Mahakoshal
Congress
was
the one
provincial
unit
which had
supported
Tandon
against
Nehru
in
1951.)
The
Niyogi
Commission it set
up
to
enquire
into Christian
missionary
activity
is still
repeatedly
and
reverentially
cited
by Sangh
parivar
spokesmen
and
publications,
for
it
suggested
a
ban
on conversions
unless
explicitly
proved
to have been
entirely
voluntary
-
passing
the onus of
proof
in
effect
on missionaries and
converts.26The
Jan
Sangh-led
Madhya
Pradesh
govern-
ment of 1967-68 did
actually
implement
some of
these
recommendations,
and
imposed
a strict test for
proving
voluntary
choice on Christian
converts.
Under the
post-emergency
Janata
government
with
a
strong
Jan
Sangh
component.
the
de-
struction of some churches in
the then
union territory of Arunachal Pradesh
became the
occasion for a law
(1978)
which
made
erection
of
places
of
worship
subject
to
administrative
permission
in
that
region.
A
private
bill
to
ban
conver-
sions was
also
moved in December
1978,
and was
supported by
prime
minister
Morarji
Desai,
but had to
be
dropped
in
the face
of Christian and other
opposition
[Jeffrelot
1993:163-65, 224,
287].
Vajpayee's
suggestion
for
a
'national
debate' on conversions is
therefore
not
a
liberal
proposal put
forward
by
a
good
man
fallen
among
unfortunate
associates,
but part of a well-thought-out Sangh
parivar strategy.
Till the recent anti-Christian
campaign,
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
may
have
been associated
in the
public
mind
prima-
rily
with Ram
Janmabhumi
and
the on-
slaught
on
Muslims
culminating
in the
destruction
of
the Babri
masjid.
But at
the
lime
of its foundation
in
1964,
and
for
quite
some time after
it,
the main
thrust
had
been
directed
primarily
against
Chris-
tian
proselytisation
in tribal areas
(the
north-east,
MadhyaPradesh,
south
Bihar).
Significantly,
those who
figured promi-
nently at the inauguralmeeting of the VHP
at
Mumbai
included,
along
with
the RSS
boss
Golwalkar
and RSS
'pracharak'
S
S
Apte
(who
became the first
general
sec-
retary
of
this new affiliate of the
Sangh
parivar),
Brahmachari Dattamurti of the
Masurasram,
which
had
been
carrying
on
shuddi-sangathana
work with a
pro-
nounced anti-Christian slant
ever
since its
foundation
n
1920
[Hellman
1993:70-71].
The 'acara samhita' drawn
up
by
the VHP
in 1968
included
'paravartan' (turning
back,
i
e,
reconversion)
among
the
basic
'samskaras'
of
the Hinduism
it was
trying
to redefine
-
which amounted
really
to
a
major
nnovation,
and
ndicated
once
again
the
centrality
of this motif for this branch
of
hindutva.
There was thus
a
continuity
with
early
20th
century
shuddhi,
but also
some
departure.
Early Arya
shuddhi had
a
measure of
reformist,
anti-caste
(or
at
least
anti-untouchability)
thrust
critical
of
orthodox
practices,
and had at times
served
as
channel for
upward
mobility
for sub-
ordinated
groups irrespective
of the
ques-
tion
of reconversion.
But
paravartan
is
intended
solely
"for those who have left
Economic and
Political
Weekly
June
26,
1999
1697
7/27/2019 Conversions and Politics of Hindu Right - Sarkar
9/11
Hinduism
or
foreign
creeds
like Islam
and
Christianity",
nd is
not
envisaged
"as
a
meansof
removing
untouchability"
(ibid,
pp
110-11).
Jaffrelot
ives
somedetails
of
VHPanti-
Christian work
among
tribals of the
Chhattisgarhegion
of
Madhya
Pradesh,
which has been channelled
hrough
he
Vanavasi
Kalyan
Ashrama,
et
up
already
in 1952by an ex-official of the govern-
ment
ribal
welfare
department
ith
RSS