Religion as an ID card

You don't look like a Christian," said a neighbour. The statement was obviously meant to be a compliment. Would she have been taken a...

You don’t look like a Christian," said a neighbour. The statement was obviously meant to be a compliment. Would she have been taken aback if I hadreturned the compliment and said, “You don’t look like a Hindu?”

What does a Christian look like? Of course she meant that I don’t have bobbed hair or wear a dress with a prominent cross in my cleavage like the stereotyped Rosies and Ritas of Bollywood films. She too certainly wasn’t clad in the nine-yard sari typical of her community. She wore the Punjabi salwar kameez and her daughter wore tight dresses and jeans. So what does that make her? It’s obvious that she was talking from a certain mind-set. She could not reconcile my long hair, bindi and sari with my religion.

I was suddenly aware of an identity crisis and I was resentful. What does my appearance have to do with my God? She had no right to make me feel alien. Did she not know that Christianity is an oriental religion and was established in India in the first century AD by St Thomas, a disciple of Christ? It flourished in India at a time when it was virtually unknown in the West. The St Thomas Christians did not change their customs or dress to accommodate their new religion. They probably accepted Jesus as another avatar of the Almighty, as Hinduism holds that all forms are manifestations of one God.

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It is my humble contention that if the Europeans, and the British later, had not presented Christianity to the rest of India as a Western religion, it would easily have been assimilated into the Indian religious fabric. Christ would have been an undisputed part of the Hindu pantheon. And here I am not referring to any religious ideology. As a human being, you have the fundamental right to worship any God, "whatever you conceive Him to be".

People laugh at me for presenting such an idyllic scenario. But why can’t we emphasise the similarities rather than our differences? Shashi Tharoor has made the point so well in his book, Ã²f40Ã³India: From Midnight to the Millennium: "We are all minorities in India." He goes on to show that there is no group which can claim to be a majority community. We are so minutely divided by ethnicity, caste, rituals, language, dialects, food habits, dress, political differences that no one can claim majority status.

There is no one more contemptible than a bigot, be he a Hindu, Muslim or Christian. And being part of the Christian community I know that tolerance does not sit easily on bigoted Christian shoulders any more than it does on those in other communities. I am disconcerted when a Christian lady admonishes me for participating in the "heathen" festival of Holi in the north. But I am reassured when I remember a grand-uncle’s account of the boat races in Kerala, when Hindus, Muslims and Christians comprised the teams of oarsmen. On the way to the starting line they would stop at the temple of the local deity. The Christians and Muslims would get off the boat outside and wait respectfully while their Hindu brethren made obeisance to their God. The common purpose of the race was to win it and it did not matter which God rooted for you.

Easy acceptance is what used to make Hinduism a great religion. There is no one greater than a free-thinking, liberal Hindu. Fortunately I have many friends who, like Tharoor, are proud of Hinduism and are equally proud of their capacity for tolerance and acceptance of other religions.

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Is it naive of me to believe that till recently we were genuinely proud of our diversity? That the Unity we claimed was like an all encompassing security blanket? But today, I feel as if it has been ripped from me, baring me, shaming me and, worse still, maiming my innermost being.

There is iron in our souls and we don’t know it.