Nat Community
members from Sasaram District in Bihar speak out
In
recent years, the issue of conversions from Hinduism and ghar wapsi (reconversion
to Hinduism) has evoked a great deal of controversy. Hindu groups allege that
Christian missionaries use force, fraud and all kinds of illicit means in order
to "harvest souls" for Christianity. Therefore, they seek a ban on
conversions. In their defence, Christian missionaries say that they have never
used unfair means and that their proselytisation activities are merely an
exercise of religious freedom, which is guaranteed under the Constitution of
India.
While
on a recent visit to villages in Rohtas district in Bihar, during the course of
my field research into the living conditions of ghumantoo jatis
(itinerant communities) like the Nats, I got revealing glimpses of the methods
being used by Christian missionaries to win converts.
People
of the Nat community, which include saperas (snake charmers), bazigars
(magicians), acrobats, folk musicians, dancers, madaris/qalandar (those
who train monkeys or bears for performances) today constitute among the poorest
of the poor in India, although, before the advent of British rule, each such
family enjoyed secure jajmani relations with a set of villages, and many
were even patronised by rajwadas (royal courts). But today, they
constitute the lowest rungs of Scheduled Castes. Unlike other reserved communities,
the Nats have not been able to avail of the benefits of reservation on any
significant scale, because, as itinerant communities, their access to education
has been far lower than that of SC groups who lead a settled existence.
Unfortunately, census data does not record the educational level of these
communities. But all available evidence points to abysmally low educational
levels.
However,
in recent years, hunger for education has become acute even among the poorest
segments of these communities, especially since their traditional occupations
are being systematically destroyed through hostile government policies.
Unfortunately, despite its rhetorical commitment to providing education for
all, the Indian state has failed miserably in delivering on this promise
because of the absence of proper teachers, leading to hopelessly poor quality of
teaching in the vast majority of government schools. This is where the
Christian missionaries step in with their own agenda.
As
it became evident during my field trip, most Nat settlements in the district
are wretchedly poor. The only better off
families are those who have managed to get better education and moved away from
their traditional occupations. Adult males of the community eke out a living by
performing snake dances in nearby towns, or have taken to livestock breeding,
while others work as farmhands. Women from some families work as singers or
dancers in the region or in bars in faraway Mumbai. Unlike Nat homes in New
Delhi's Kathputli Colony, the scanty mud or brick lined huts of the community
in Bihar are devoid of even basic trappings of the modern age such as gas
stoves and television sets. A couple of years ago, a few families were allotted
pucca houses under the UPA government's Indira Awaas Yojna. However, many
couldn't derive this benefit owing to the itinerant nature of their lifestyle.
Despite
their precarious existence, most Nat parents today desire to see their children
get good education so that they are able to land decent jobs. And this is exactly
where some Christian missions have sensed a lucrative market for proselytisation.
Therefore,
it should come as no surprise that even the Colorado Springs, US-based evangelist
movement, the Joshua Project, lists the Nat community and its various sub-groups
in its database of nearly 10,000 "unreached peoples" globally. To
quote from the Nat page on the Joshua Project website:
“What Are Their Beliefs?
The Nat are generally Hindus but there are
some Muslims in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The Hindu Nats worship
Rama, Shiva and the other Hindu gods and goddesses. Some claim to be fortune
tellers, exorcists or healers. They celebrate the main Hindu festivals and many
of them worship ancestors too.
What Are Their Needs?
The low caste position of the Nat means they
are denied many benefits and their work and partly nomad lifestyle has caused
them problems such as poverty.
Prayer Points
Pray that the problems the Nat are having will
lead them to Jesus Christ.”
(Nat (Hindu traditions) in India, Joshua Project,
https://joshuaproject.net/people_groups/17763/IN)
While
interviewing Nat families in Bishrampur Nat Tola, about 10 km from the district
headquarters at Sasaram, we found that most children enrolled in the local
government school were also simultaneously enrolled with an organisation called
Gospel Echoing Missionary Society (GEMS) set up by Christian missionaries for
supplementary coaching. These include prayer sessions as well as going over
their school curriculum. Classes are for all age groups from class 1 to 12. The
difference between those who went to GEMS for these tuitions, and those who
merely went to only the sarkari school, was clear as daylight. All those
coached by GEMS could rattle off tables and answer questions far more
confidently and without many errors, whereas those who depended only on sarkari
teaching were lagging far behind. GEMS students also looked better fed and
relatively better dressed, because the missionaries reportedly give them good
meals that include fruits, milk, eggs and meat. They also reported being taught
hygiene and provided soap etc. to bathe in the GEMS day hostel. Therefore,
almost all parents, including the poorest of the poor in Bishrampur (as well as
Beda village and the Nat settlement in Sasaram) were keen to have their
children admitted to GEMS. Parents of those who didn't get admission were
desperate enough to plead with us to intervene with the priests of the local
branch of GEMS to admit their children. Their intense desire to see their
children get good education was both humbling and saddening, for it showed that
despite all the money being spent by the government on teachers' salaries and
providing free mid-day meals, books, uniforms, as well as special scholarships
for “weaker sections”, even poor illiterate parents could tell that their
children were not learning anything worthwhile in government schools nor
getting edible food by way of mid day meals.
That's
why, in the abovementioned three Nat community settlements as well as in eight
other Nat villages of Gaya, Jahanabad, Bhojpur and Rohtas districts, we found
that most families whose children were studying in government schools were also
paying for private tuition for their kids, although they lived in abysmal
poverty. Wherever Christian missions had set up GEMS-like institutes, they
became the villagers’ preferred choice.
THE GEMS EXPERIENCE
The villagers informed us that the supplementary classes held at GEMS
covered the entire syllabus at a reasonable pace. But in the government school,
teaching was fitful and the entire course was seldom covered, since staff
absenteeism was commonplace. We were told that teachers dozed off in the
classroom after taking attendance, while unsupervised children went out to play
or did wild things, including vandalising school property. In contrast,
teachers at GEMS ensured proper discipline. Another big attraction of GEMS is
that English is taught from Class III onwards.
About
100 children of Bishrampur Nat Tola village go to GEMS, which also has a hostel
with amenities like free food, clothing and toiletry. One’s first
spontaneous impression could well be to feel a sense of gratitude towards
Christian missionaries for having come to the rescue of these vulnerable
communities. But, perchance we heard from the children and parents of
Bishrampur Nat Tola the price they had to pay for these free tuitions and
meals.
For
instance, Shankar Kumar, a parent, told us that the missionaries
indulged in unethical pressure tactics, including violence on children to force
them to convert to Christianity. Many children were summarily expelled from
GEMS because they refused to give up their ancestral faith. Ranjan Kumar,
a student of Class VII, told us that he was beaten brutally with a stick
because the priests got to know that he had accompanied his parents to the
temple of Goddess Mandeshwari. He was expelled from school and readmitted after
a whole year. For that, his parents had to repeatedly beg the missionaries to
forgive their son and promise that he would never again visit a Hindu temple or
take part in Hindu religious rituals.
Similarly,
Anish Kumar was beaten so mercilessly with a wooden stick that his legs
were swollen for days. He had committed the sin of going for prayers at the
temple of Goddess Tara Chandi to thank the deity for the new motorcycle his
family had been able to purchase. Like Ranjan, Anish was also forced by his
parents to apologise to the priests and return to GEMS because otherwise he
would have possibly become a wastrel.
Ten-year
old Majnu described the vicious
caning he received when he went with his family to pray in a local Hindu
temple. The priests allegedly also forbid these children from attending
weddings of their relatives because those involve Hindu rituals. Another boy
said they are beaten up for praying even at home to their Hindu deities. A
villager pointed to a little boy in the gathered crowd who had been beaten
brutally because he skipped school for a day due to illness. But he was told he
was also being punished because he had not given up Hindu prayers. The
missionaries had put all families on notice that their children would have to
give up the Hindu faith if they wanted to continue studying in GEMS. All the adults and children we met in a group
repeatedly mentioned one particular missionary — Chandrashekhar — who used the
most brutal methods on children to force them to convert.
The
children are ordered to pray only to Christ every morning and evening, as well
as before every meal. The classes at GEMS include teachings of Christianity.
While neither the parents nor the children seemed to mind “accepting” Christ,
almost all parents we spoke to were extremely resentful that in the eyes of
these priests, accepting Christ was insufficient without virulent and forceful
rejection of their ancestral faith and culture. The missionaries bullied them
into believing that their families were worshipping false gods, that their own
faith was full of evil practices and that Christ is the only true god who could
guide them to the path to Heaven.
It
is not hard to sympathise with the predicament of these parents who accepted
such bullying and blackmail and allowed their children to disown their own
faith, just so they can get some help with schooling. However, most parents
were categorical that it was a survival strategy for them to let their children
pretend they had accepted Christ, even while in the privacy of their homes and
in their hearts, they remained rooted in their family traditions and, that as
soon as they finished school, their pretense at being Christian would be cast
aside. They accepted this charade because government schools were doing a
shoddy job. Although the government school also provided a meal in the
afternoon, it usually consisted of poorly cooked sub-standard rice along with a
measly serving of poorly cooked vegetables. Moreover, the quantity of meals
served was insufficient. In anger, the students often break the plates and
vandalise school property. In contrast, at GEMS, students are served meals on
chairs and tables, allowed to eat as much as they want, and the food is of far
better quality. Considering that these children come from very poor homes, if
they too find government school food sub-standard, one can well imagine the
level of incompetence and corruption prevalent in the mid-day meal scheme in
Bihar.
In
contrast, at GEMS, meat, chicken or eggs are served on certain days in a week,
with fruits and snacks in the evening. Students
can have as much food as they want. However, we found it noteworthy that GEMS
provides non-vegetarian dishes mainly on days of the week such as Tuesday, on
which even meat eating Hindus avoid taking non-vegetation food in deference to
their Ishta Dev.
Kanchan, a Class VIII student, spoke
at length about the religious indoctrination students were routinely subjected
to at GEMS. She described how they are brainwashed into believing that only
Christianity could take them to heaven. All other religions meant permanent
perdition. Children are taught that worshipping Hindu gods and goddesses is to
worship false gods since the idols were manmade and could not speak for
themselves, whereas Christ is the only “true god”, since he died on the cross
to pay for man's sins. We were told that students quietly accept all that they
are taught even if they don't agree with the negative image painted of their
family's faith. The general consensus among the adults and children we talked
to was that there was no point in openly challenging the interpretation given
by the missionaries even though the idea of conversion was repugnant to them.
When asked whether children were
expelled from GEMS for refusing to convert, Kanchan initially said: “No.” However, she started agreeing with Govind Nat
when he emphatically said there were cases of children being thrown out for
refusing to accept Christ. Even though not formally
baptised, many children get into the habit of praying to Christ at home, even
while their families discourage them to do so. Govind and others said
that if the children openly state that they go to
GEMS only for getting education and not to pray to Christ, they face harsh
consequences. In such cases, the families have to look for private schools.
Despite
all the inducements offered by missionaries, only one young boy, Aman Kumar,
claimed to have converted to Christianity. When asked what attracted him
towards his adopted faith, he replied that it was because he was told that all
his sins would be forgiven if he prayed to Christ. He also liked the food and
other facilities the missionaries offer. He said his parents, though Hindu, did
not object to his converting. The missionaries have promised him a job after he
graduates from school. This in itself is a huge incentive, given the high level
of unemployment in this community. His father is a very poor farmer who takes
other people's land on rent for cultivation.
Apart
from Aman, a woman named Shanti said she has been going to
church every day to join the prayer sessions, though she had not yet converted.
All three of her children are enrolled at GEMS. She is the only one from the
village who goes to church regularly. She told us that the priests at GEMS had
promised to give her family either a chicken farm or a tempo or some other
means to earn a better living. But that would come only after the whole family
converted. Her husband works as a daily wage truck driver in the nearby stone
quarries and earns Rs 200-250 per day. The priests also provide them with
medical services in a nearby mission hospital. It is noteworthy that none of
the villagers displayed any negative sentiments towards Aman or Shanti for
taking to Christianity even though the common view was that Aman had converted
under pressure because those who resisted Christianity were treated very
brutally. Those who cannot afford private schools send their children to GEMS
under compulsion. But they knew their children would stick to their family
culture after they were through with school. Though most GEMS students have
started praying to Christ even at home because they have been trained to
inculcate this habit by the missionaries but almost all the children were
emphatic that they did not want to convert and preferred their own faith.
If missionaries can act so aggressively
in a Hindu majority village, one can well imagine their militancy in states
like Nagaland when conversions have led to wholesale Christianisation of the
population. In such states, it has become virtually impossible for
non-Christians to survive and live safely unless they convert.
THE
ASSAULT ON CULTURE
The
missionary assault is not just in the domain of faith but targets the entire
spectrum of cultural practices and value system of the Nat communities. For
example, the traditional occupation of most Nat families of Bishrampur is
singing and dancing. At one time, Natnis were patronised even in royal courts,
because, like the tawaifs of North India or devadasis of the
South, they were accomplished in music and dance. With the decline of royalty
and traditional jajmani relations, these women have taken to dancing at
weddings and other festive occasions, as well as in low-end hotels, restaurants
and beer bars. Some had even gone to work in Mumbai's dance bars till the bars
were forced to shut down by the Maharashtra government.
The
community has well-established liberal norms for those among its women who are
trained for dancing. Recognising that women who take to public performances
can't live by the expectations and norms applicable to byahata (married)
women, girls who take to dancing don’t get married. They are however free to
have short or long-term relationships with men of their choice. But they
continue staying with their parents and children born out of these
relationships, are fully accepted by their families as well as community. There
is no stigma attached to children born out of wedlock. However, the
missionaries insist that singing and dancing is immoral and should be
abandoned, thus making the community ashamed of its traditional occupation. By
force of circumstance, the dances these women perform today are not the
traditional variety but their own adaptation of Bollywood song and dance
numbers.
The
cultural disorientation of such communities can be well imagined. Their
traditional dance forms are not much in demand because of the rage for
Bollywood-style dances. Nor are the old patrons available any more. While the
Katrina Kaifs and Priyanka Chopras are treated as national celebrities and
icons of feminine success for their latka jhatkas, and Bollywood dance numbers are emulated in
elite parties and discotheques, these lowly-educated women from poor
communities are looked down upon with utter disdain for being naachne-gaane
walis, although they are merely emulating Bollywood heroines. It is likely that
those who invite them at their wedding parties don't always treat them with due
respect. As a safety measure, these women always go for performances as part of
an established group, never singly. But the pressure from the missionaries to
abandon their occupation is strong. They
throw out of school all girls who are being trained as dancers by their
families.
THE
DISMAL STATE OF GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
Although
beating of children in schools is a punishable crime under the Right to
Education Act, 2004, none of the parents would dare complain to authorities
because of their desperation for better education for their children. The sorry
state of affairs in government schools described by these children is no
surprise because the Bihar government's own inquiry had revealed that most of
its school teachers are totally unqualified for the job. In 2013, over 10,000
contractual teachers twice failed a competency test for knowledge of Hindi,
English, mathematics and general knowledge for up to Class V. Many could not
even answer simple questions like five plus 20 equals what?
The
Bihar government employs over 150,000 teachers for 53,000 plus primary schools.
But most of them lack elementary skills required for the job. On 18 May 2015,
the Patna High Court directed the director of the Bihar Vigilance Department to
probe the recruitment of nearly 40,000 government teachers who allegedly used
fake degree certificates to get jobs.
The
dismal failure of our government school system, coupled with the equally
disastrous performance of the sarkari health care system, has created a
vacuum being filled by Christian missions. It is not as if missionary schools
for the poor provide as good an education as their schools for the elite
classes. But it is far better than what is provided in the vast majority of
government schools. Therefore, a certain amount of attraction and goodwill for
Christianity is inevitable. This may understandably lead to a few voluntary
conversions. But for most Hindus, their goodwill for Christianity and even
accepting the greatness or divinity of Christ doesn't easily lead to their
abandoning their traditional faith and culture. For instance, in the Catholic
Convent School I studied in, we too were made to chant Christian prayers and
cross our heart before and after every class in addition to the morning
assembly prayer to “Our father thou art in Heaven…” The most common prizes for
topping in the weekly or monthly class tests in different subjects were holy
pictures of Christ, Mother Mary and other Christian saints. All of us treasured
those as prized possessions. Although nearly all the students in our school
were from well-off Hindu or Sikh families, none of the parents minded our
singing Christian hymns or saying Christian prayers as a daily ritual, or being
taught the Bible in the moral science class. And yet not a single child converted
to Christianity, nor did the nuns put any pressure on us to change our faith.
If
the Christian missions were content to merely preach their religion in their
schools and spread goodwill for Christianity without subjecting the poor to
unethical pressures, blackmail or material inducements, no Hindu organisation
is likely to protest. But when missionaries use devious means to convert in an
apparent bid to “harvest souls”, when the social services they provide are
essentially a pious mask for proselytisation, there is ample ground for
worry.
HISTORY OF GEMS
GEMS
was founded by one D. Augustine Jebakumar who arrived in Bihar as part of the Texas,
US-based MGM Ministries in the early 1970s, with the express aim to proselytise
among the locals. It was registered as a society in 1979 to especially enhance
evangelisation efforts in Bihar. Other than Bihar, GEMS is now also active in
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra in India, and in Nepal. The society minces no words while enunciating
its agenda on its website:
“The activities of this society are primarily
church planting and evangelism. Later educational services, medical services
and social services were added in order to cater to the needs of people.
Working in 27 Districts of Bihar alone, we have
established about 11 English Medium Schools, 118 Hindi Medium Schools (Day Care
Centers), above 50 Homes for Children, which made an impact in the whole State.
We have workers from North India (mainly
people who were transformed by the love of the Lord who were trained through
our Discipleship Training Centers and Workers Training Centers) along with
South Indians (1/3 of the total force) and right now we have over 2479 people (as
on Mar ’13) who get support on various levels.
South Indian Churches and Prayer Groups
mainly support the workers, whereas our friends from overseas and other
agencies support our social work, major buildings and donate vehicles.
Bihar after the bifurcation (from Nov 2000)
has around 82 million people and only 40,000 people are Christians including
Roman Catholic, even today. Out of which around 20000+ people are active
believers. So, GEMS would like to multiply the harvest force by giving
leadership training to Women and Men, so that the trained people may go and
train others as the field is vast and getting ready for Harvest.”
(Gospel Echoing Missionary Society, http://www.gemsbihar.co/gemsb/index.php/aboutus/history)
Such
“soul harvesters” are not content with merely getting a person to join their
ranks. They are also insistent on the converted person severing all ties with
his familial traditions, and display aggressive contempt and hostility towards
his/her ancestral faith as evil mumbo jumbo. One cannot fault individual
priests for it. This hostility to the "false gods" of other faiths is
the core belief of Christianity, as it is of Islam. The "One and Only True
God" of Christians (as of Islam) is a virulently jealous God who will
wreak vengeance on all those who retain any respect or soft corner for the
deities or culture of their ancestral faith traditions. People who don't yield
to this key commandment deserve to be wiped out. That is exactly what the
medieval Crusades aimed at. That is exactly what Christian missions succeeded
in doing in all of Latin America and Africa.
Even
when living in a Hindu majority India, they have the gumption to insist that
Christian converts (including those targeted for conversion through their
schools) sever all bonds with the faith and culture of their kith and kin and
stay away from religious rituals of their community. One can well imagine the
predicament of non-Christians in states like Nagaland which have witnessed mass
conversion in the last 65 years. The
pressure to convert is far more intense in Nagaland because missionaries work
hand in glove with insurgent groups and can get people opposing conversion
drives altogether eliminated. In Nagaland, 98 per cent of the tribal community had
converted to Christianity, as per the 2011 census. In 1941, Christians
constituted less than 10 per cent of Nagaland's population. The same pattern is
visible among Scheduled Tribe communities in other Northeastern states, notably
Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur.
RABID AMERICAN EVANGELICALS AT WORK
Today,
rabid right wing Christian missions of North America, backed financially and
politically by the US government, are in the forefront of conversions. To quote
a well researched report by Tehelka (http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004shashi.asp&id=1):
“Religious expansionism has not witnessed this
scale, scope, and state resources in a long time. Detailed investigations by
Tehelka reveal that American evangelical agencies have established in India an
enormous, well-coordinated and strategised religious conversion plan. The
operation was launched in the early 1990s but really came into its own after
George W Bush Jr, an avowed born-again Christian, became president of the
United States in 2001. Since then, aggressive evangelists have found pro-active
support from the new administration in their efforts to convert some sections
of Indian society to Christianity. At the heart of this complex and
sophisticated operation is a simple strategy — convert locals and then give
them the knowhow and money to plant their own churches and multiply.
Around the time that Bush Jr moved into the
Oval office, a worldwide conversion movement, funded and effected by American
evangelical groups, was peaking in India. The movement, which began as AD2000
& Beyond, and later morphed into Joshua Project I and Joshua Project II,
was designed to be a sledgehammer — a breathtaking, decade-long steamroller of
a campaign that would set the stage for a systematic, sophisticated and
self-sustaining ‘harvest’ of the ‘unreached people groups’ in India in the 21st
century. Just as the operation was taking off that the script changed. Much to
the delight of American evangelicals, one of their own, George Bush Jr, became
the occupant of the White House.”
However,
even before Bush became US President, Christian evangelism had been an integral
part of US foreign policy. Many of these evangelical groups, such as the
Baptists, have been well known for their Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
links. The Joshua Project is brazen about targeting countries like India that
haven’t fallen prey to Christianisation to the extent that the African or Latin
American countries have.
To
quote Tehelka on the sinister agenda of the Joshua Project.
“A large-scale intelligence operation
that brought together American strategists, theologians, missionary
specialists, demographers, technologists, sociologists, anthropologists and
researchers to create the most comprehensive people group profiles in the 10/40
window… The 10/40 window, denoting the latitudes on the globe considered the
prime target for conversion, has India squarely in its sights.”
The
Joshua Project is designed as a full-scale ideological war. The training of
missionaries is carried out with precision and efficiency, using the same
models as for conquering territories.
Vast amounts of funds are put at the disposal of zealous missionaries
who are assigned territories, issued quotas and trained into “planting”
churches, as they did in Bishrampur.
They invariably choose sites where poverty is rampant and government has
failed in providing quality education and health services.
OPEN HATRED FOR HINDUISM
K.P.
Yohannan, who founded Gospel for Asia, typifies the hatred and hostility of
Christian missions towards Hinduism, which they describe as a “Satanic” faith.
“Our battle is not against… symptoms of sins
such as poverty and disease. It is directed against Lucifer and innumerable
demons which fight day and night in order to drag the human souls into an
eternity without Christ. … Viewing the effects of pagan religions on India, I
realised that the masses of India are starving because they are slaves to sin.
The battle against hunger and poverty is really a spiritual battle, not a
physical or social one as secularists would have us believe. The only weapon
that will ever effectively win the war against disease, hunger, injustice and
poverty in Asia is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Billions
of dollars are being spent every year on conversion drives. Yet the matter does
not end with merely converting people to an altogether another faith. As Rajiv
Malhotra has painstakingly documented in his book Breaking India,
Christian missionaries have made common cause with Maoists, Islamist
terrorists, in addition to promoting various secessionist groups in the North
East — all of whose stated mission is to wreck and Balkanise India. Their mission
relies on first identifying real or imaginary fault lines within the Indian
society on the basis of caste, class, religion and region, and then do all they
can to widen the divides so as to convert various ethnic identities into
permanently warring groups. This is why scheduled tribes and scheduled castes
are their special targets. They also are clever enough to invent new fault
lines where none existed before. In this, Western scholars and their cronies in
Indian academia and human rights groups funded by the West ably assist them.
For
instance, long after the Aryan invasion theory has been firmly debunked by
serious historians as well as archeologists as imaginary nonsense, Christian
groups, with the help of allied NGOs and social scientists, continue to promote
Dravidian-Dalit separatism on the ground that these were the original
inhabitants of India, who were enslaved by invading Aryans, mischievously
identified as upper-caste Hindus. Their stated goal is to carve out all of
South India into Dravidistan and Central India into Dalitistan, just as the
British helped Muslims carve out Pakistan through an ethnic genocide of Hindus
in that region. They also have plans to create a new Mughalistan in all of
North India extending to Bihar and Assam. That this is not mere fantasy is
borne out by the endless series of ethnic wars in the North East and the Maoist
insurgency in Central India, all being backed and promoted by Christian
missionaries. A similar strategy resulted in the genocide in Rwanda, as ably
documented in detail by Timothy Longman in his paper Christian Churches and
Genocide in Rwanda (http://faculty.vassar.edu/tilongma/Church&Genocide.html).
Almost every society that witnessed large scale conversions to Christianity has
been ruined by ethnic wars.
Way
back in 1954, the government of Madhya Pradesh, then under Congress rule,
appointed a committee chaired by M. Bhawani Shankar Niyogi, a retired Chief
Justice of the Nagpur High Court, to investigate the activities of Christian
missionaries in India. Called the Christian Missionary Activities Enquiry
Committee Madhya Pradesh, it had B P Pathak as secretary, and Ghanshyam Das
Gupta, S K George, Ratanlal Malviya, and Bhanu Pratap Singh as members. Submitting
its two-volume, three-part report in 1956, the committee recommended the “legal
prohibition” of religious conversion that was not "completely
voluntary". Although one of the committee members, S. K. George, was a
Syrian Christian and Gandhian, Christian missions condemned the report as
biased. The Roman Catholic Church even withdrew its cooperation with the committee,
filed a statement of protest and moved the High Court for a Mandamus Petition
in 1955. The petition was dismissed in April of the following year.
The
report documented at length the many unethical means being used by Christian
missions to secure conversions. It expressed serious concern about the politics
behind conversions and warned the government regarding the long-term
consequences of leaving the process unchecked. The Committee noted: "there
was unanimity as regards the excellent service rendered by the Missionaries in
the fields of education and medical relief. But on the other hand there was a
general complaint from the non-Christian side that the schools and hospitals
were being used as means of securing converts. There was no disparagement of
Christianity or of Jesus Christ, and no objection to the preaching of
Christianity and even to conversions to Christianity. The objection was to the
illegitimate methods alleged to be adopted by the Missionaries for this
purpose, such as offering allurements of free education and other facilities to
children attending their schools, adding some Christian names to their original
Indian names, marriages with Christian girls, money-lending, distributing
Christian literature in hospitals and offering prayers in the wards of indoor
patients. Reference was also made to the practice of the Roman Catholic priests
or preachers visiting newborn babies to give ashish (blessings) in the
name of Jesus, taking sides in litigation or domestic quarrels, kidnapping of
minor children and abduction of women and recruitment of labour for plantations
in Assam or Andaman as a means of propagating the Christian faith among the ignorant
and illiterate people. There was a general tendency to suspect some ulterior
political or extra-religious motive, in the influx of foreign money for
evangelistic work in its varied forms." (Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi
Committee Report On Christian Missionary Activities, Introduction by Sita
Ram Goel, Voice of India, 1998)
"Another
device employed for proselytisation was money-lending. Roman Catholic missions
had specialised in this field. Poor people often approached the local
missionary for loans which were written off if the debtor became a convert;
otherwise he had to repay it with interest which was often found difficult.
Protestant missionaries and others cited before the Committee instances of how
this method worked. One of the conditions for getting a loan, for instance, was
that the recipient agreed to chop off the topknot (choti), the symbol of his
being a Hindu. Some of the people, the Report noted, who had received loans
were minors and casual labourers. It also appeared that when one member of a
family had taken a loan, all the other members of that family were entered in
the book as potential converts. The rate of interest charged was 10 per cent
and in a large number of cases examined, one year's interest was deducted in advance. On
being questioned, the people without any hesitation, said that their only
purpose in going to the Mission had been to get money; and all said that
without the lure of money none
would have sought to become Christian. Some other allurements such as the promise
of gift of salt, plough, bullocks and even milk powder received from abroad
were used to the same effect." (Vindicated by Time: The Niyogi Committee Report On Christian
Missionary Activities, Introduction by Sita Ram Goel, Voice of India, 1998)
The
Committee made the following recommendations:
(1) Those
missionaries whose primary object is proselytisation should be asked to
withdraw and the large influx of foreign missionaries should be checked;
(2) The
use of medical and other professional services as a direct means of making
conversions should be prohibited by law;
(3) Attempts
to convert by force or fraud or material inducements, or by taking advantage of
a person’s inexperience or confidence or spiritual weakness or thoughtlessness,
or by penetrating into the religious conscience of persons for the purpose of
consciously altering their faith, should be absolutely prohibited;
(4) The
Constitution of India should be amended in order to rule out propagation by
foreigners and conversions by force, fraud and other illicit means;
(5) Legislative
measures should be enacted for controlling conversion by illegal means;
(6) Rules
relating to registration of doctors, nurses and other personnel employed in
hospitals should be suitably amended to provide a condition against
evangelistic activities during professional service; and
(7) Circulation
of literature meant for religious propaganda without approval of the State
Government should be prohibited.
It
speaks volumes for the political clout and influence of Christian missions in
India and their handlers in America and Europe that none of these measures were
adopted. Instead, Christian missions began propping up and financing numerous
human rights groups all wearing a “secular” mask, but in effect acting as the
fighting swords of Christianity. In fact, the entire human rights discourse has
been designed to facilitate the war that Christians are waging against Hindus
in India under the garb of “religious freedom” and “minority rights”. Even the
English educated “liberal intelligentsia” and social scientists have become
willing sepoys in this war against Hindu civilisation. Their stranglehold over
mainstream media enables them to drown out and browbeat all voices of
resistance.
This
is well exemplified in the way Hindu groups who made rather modest (one could
say pitiful) attempts at ghar wapsi (reconverting Christians/Muslims to
Hinduism) provoked hysterical attacks, not just from Christian and Muslim
leaders but “liberal” and leftist Hindus. The very same people who go ballistic
over “ghar wapsi”, are ferocious in defending the right of Christians and
Muslims to convert Hindus to their respective faiths. Any attempt to restrict
or ban conversions by these aggressive evangelicals — even when it involves
rabid attacks against Hinduism — are condemned as an assault on fundamental
rights of minorities and religious freedom promised in our Constitution. It
doesn’t strike them that it is patently bizarre to deny Hindus the same measure
of religious freedom that Christians and Muslims insist on having as their
god-given right.
Their
strategy is to constantly badger Hindu society and keep it on the defensive, so
that their agenda of conversions can continue unchecked. On the one hand, human
rights groups propped up by Christian missions continually attack the “social
evils” allegedly inherent in Hindu faith and culture, which make it appear like
a demonic force. On the other hand, they specialise in hysterical campaigns
alleging that religions minorities are being crushed in India. They do not even
hesitate to stage-manage attacks or convert minor thefts in churches as
evidence of attacks on “hapless Christians”.
The
Modi government cannot afford to ignore this social, political and national
security challenge. Continuing with the Congress’s open door policy of
encouraging and facilitating evangelical groups will spell doom for India. Now
that even Nepal has passed a law banning Christian missionaries from carrying
out conversions, India should also draw strength and pass an all-India
legislation to this effect.
(With Shantanu Kishwar)
First posted on February 9, 2018, at https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/how-they-are-harvesting-poor-souls-in-rural-bihar-even-using-violence-against-children
