The Meeting of Opposites?. Andrew Wingate
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is projected onto the much weaker Christian communities. It has been focused upon charismatic and fundamentalist movements who since the 1960s have come in significant numbers, from outside and from within India.
It should be noted that when there are conversions to Buddhism this is much less of a threat, and usually passes almost unnoticed. But there were the famous conversions to Islam from Hinduism in Meenaakshipuram, Tamil Nadu, in 1980, which became a national sensation. I studied these, but also conversions from two Christian villages to Islam some time after this. The government was primarily concerned with the Hindu–Muslim conversions, and it led to the village leaders being summoned to Delhi to explain themselves. The story of the two Christian villages showed how effective was Muslim evangelism. The Muslims made clear that there was no caste in their faith and they would be accepted by old Muslims immediately. There would be an imam chosen from their village, to provide local leadership. This was not the case with these Christian congregations, which were looked after by pastors who came and went from the towns or cities. I visited these villages ten years later, and found them satisfied that they were accepted, and their low-caste status had been put behind them. Of course, there are divisions in Islam, but it is sad that the degree of these divisions seems to be less, at least in South India.
The Hindutva movement of recent decades has attempted to claim India for Hinduism, and to eliminate the secular nature of the constitution established in 1949. This made clear that, as a Fundamental Right, subject to public order, morality and health, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion. As early as the mid-1950s, the Nyogi Commission was established to consider the work of foreign missionaries in Madhya Pradesh, and its report focused largely on questions of conversion. One witness commented that the aim was to create a Hindu state, with existing minorities ‘integrated into Hindu culture’. The tug of war has continued since then, with various individual states bringing in anti-conversion bills, covered over under the title ‘Freedom of Religion’ and highlighted as bills to protect poor, vulnerable scheduled castes and tribes from the onslaught of Christian missionaries, from home or abroad. Political parties were formed around this issue, and eventually the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led the coalition government in Delhi in 1998. It had a Hindutva ideology, and had been behind the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodya in 1992. Ayodya is considered the birthplace of Rama. It has led coalition governments twice in Delhi, and it won a landslide victory in May 2014, under the strong and controversial leadership of Narendra Modi, the chief minister of the Hindutva-influenced state of Gujarat. The Congress was seen as tired and unable to deal with corruption. We shall see how important Gujaratis are in the Indian diaspora.
Earlier, the BJP was never able to implement more partial Hindutva demands, such as the building of a temple at Ayodya, and eventually lost power to Congress in 2004. Minorities breathed a sigh of relief. But this did not prevent strong opposition to Christian mission, continuing in BJP-ruled states such as Gujarat, Karnataka and Orissa. In Gujarat it also led to more than 1,000 people being killed, mainly Muslims, in riots in 2002. The activist wing of the BJP, the RSS, was accused of attacks on Christian worship, buildings and occasionally, most notably in Orissa in 2008–9, on village Christians themselves. Arguments centred upon ‘inducements’ leading to conversions, and for the dedicated Hindu nationalist, Christian education or medical work could be seen as an inducement. So also exploitation of the economic weakness of the lower castes, or their psychological or mental vulnerability. The suggestion was that they were not capable of making spiritual or rational choices.
The result of this struggle over decades has been to strengthen Christian exclusivism as a missionary and theological stance. It has also led to a movement that can only be called evangelistic, to reconvert Indian Christians to Hinduism. The process of reconversion is known as suddhi. Certain mutts (spiritual centres) are dedicated to such a mission, and there is a liturgical reconversion ceremony where the pollution is removed from the candidate, ash is placed on his or her forehead, and the person readopts a Hindu name, which is then published in the local gazette. For some, this is a genuine reconversion; for others it is a deliberate plan to regain lost benefits. Relief aid is also sometimes used for conversion purposes. It is said that in Gujarat, after the earthquake in 2002, those who were suffering had to chant Ram, Ram, before receiving relief. Of course counter-claims were made about certain Christian missions, both then and in the post-tsunami period.
Another factor in reconversion at the village level has been pastoral neglect. In some mass movement areas there was a failure of ministry. Villages were rarely visited by pastors. I have documented this in the Madurai/Tiruchi area. Gradually, villages fall back, not out of belief, but lack of follow-up and teaching, and through lack of creative leadership. Eventually, they end up only celebrating Christmas and New Year, and then even that ceases. They become Hindu in all but name, and eventually in name also.
It should be emphasized that the majority of Hindus remained as they had always been, on good terms with their Christian neighbours. They attended Christian mission schools and went to Christian hospitals, without fear that they would be forced to convert, and sure they were entering institutions of quality where spiritual values were upheld. It is not surprising that, with a few regional exceptions, the Hindu majority has normally joined with the minorities in returning governments of the centre, implicitly rejecting Hindutva as an ideology.
A book by M. M. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance,21 is an important record of Hindus who remained Hindus but were deeply influenced by Jesus. Examples include Ram Mohan Roy (from Bengal), Keshab Sen (from Maharashtra) and Gandhi himself.
Apart from exclusivism, other theologies of religion developed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The impact of working closely with Hindus was to lead to awareness that this faith could not just be written off as all bad. There were so many aspects to Hindus, and to Hindu practice. How could these be seen as bad in a world God created as good? The World Mission Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 was a watershed in some ways. It reaffirmed the necessity of evangelizing the world in one generation. At the same time, it studied in detail, with a vast amount of evidence, what was happening in mission around various themes. Commission IV was on Christianity and Other Faiths. Sixty missionaries working predominantly among Hindus in India responded to a detailed questionnaire.
These responses have been studied in detail by a range of modern theologians – Wesley Ariarajah, Kenneth Cracknell, Brian Stanley, among others. This shows the quality of the responses. Kenneth Cracknell’s book is entitled, Justice, Courtesy and Love,22 and he shows how missionaries, particularly to India, came up with this description of how to commend the gospel. The predominant theology revealed is that which became known as Fulfilment Theology. Christ can fulfil the longings and spiritual quest found in Hindu traditions. We see the beginnings of a theology of dialogue. To summarize the 70 pages of analysis of the 1910 missionary responses, Cracknell found here answers which reaffirm both a commitment to the finality of the Christian revelation, and the centrality of Christ, with a generous and humble attitude to other religious traditions as encountered in India. This theology was articulated most prominently in J. Farquhar’s work The Crown of Hinduism.23 There were two major deficiencies in the work of this commission, as I see it. The movement seen from exclusivism to inclusivism is very selective. The responses are in relationship to the so-called ‘higher’ Hinduism, particularly Vedanta, and this could later be dismissed as Brahminic. And these were the answers of missionaries. The commission never asked for responses from Indian Christians. Four Indian Christians were present, most notably the future Bishop V. S. Azariah. But they did not give written evidence on their attitude to Hinduism.
However, as the twentieth century advanced, there were further developments in the theology of religions. The major mission conference at Tambaram, Madras, in 1938 moved in an exclusive direction, led by Hendrik Kraemer, whose theology of religions followed from his Barthian background and was published as Christian Message in a Non-Christian World.24 Here there can be no bridge between a human religion like Hinduism and the revelation of the Word of God in Christ.
At the same time, a group of Tamil Christians had been meeting in the same city, and they produced an important study, entitled Rethinking Christianity. They were higher-caste converts, usually lay people, and they were looking for bridges