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Journalism of Courage
Sitiveni Rabuka, the Fijian strongman, once told me that when the earliest missionaries arrived in his village for evangelical work, his great grandfather, in the time-honoured fashion of Melanesian cannibalism, simply had them roasted in earthen pits called Lovos and ate them. In fact, several waves of missionaries were thus devoured. Ultimately, the will of the Melanesians was broken. Today, the Melanesians, including Rabuka, who form well over half the population of Fiji, are among the world’s most devout Christians.
Stories of one of the Fijian kings travelling to England by a P and O liner are a macabre part of Fijian humour. On one occasion, His Majesty, dissatisfied with the menu on board, angrily demanded the passenger list instead.
The annals of Christian and Islamic evangelism are punctuated with this variety of black humour. But humour apart, the Church could coax a flattering moral from the Fijian experience. Cannibals had been civilised into latter day Fijians.
While on the one handChristianity liberated the Fijians, on the other it helped maintain the chiefly order which, in the ultimate analysis, served the ends of imperialism. Since the chiefs fought amongst themselves, the British monarch became the Fijian monarch as well. Over a period of time the Queen became an object of Fijian adoration next only to Jesus Christ. There was that amusing spectacle of Fijians refusing independence they were being offered, for fear of severing their cherished links with the British crown.
More recently their aching desire to get back into the Com-monwealth was a manifestation of the same impulse a desire to revert to the imperial womb, a habit inculcated over centuries when Christianity was the link with the metropolitan centre of control.
India was too large a project to be so overwhelmed by the efforts of the Church. Moreover, Christianity had been brought to India by one of Christ’s apostles much before Emperor Constantine carried the impulse westward. Islam, too, came to India early, whenthe prophet of Islam was still alive.
A local ruler, off Cranganore in Kerala, Cheruman Perumal, built the first mosque in India. In fact from ancient times every religion had found hospitality in that extraordinary strip of land called Kerala, more a function of Indian hospitality to ideas than any evangelical zeal.Poet Raghupati Sa-hai Firaq encapsuled Indian history:
With the coming of independence and democratic rule it was felt that the lure of conversions would decline.The tranquility of this school of thought was disturbed with the Meenakshipuram conversions in 1981. The post-1973 quadrupling of oil prices, escalating Arab wealth, propagation of Nizam e Mustafa in Pakistan, all fed the unproven suspicion that somehow unprecedented wealth in the hands of Muslim nations had once again enhanced the attractiveness of conversions.
The elevation of Sonia Gandhi to the presidentship of the Congress is likewise being perceived in some circles as having increased the seductiveness of conversions to Christianity.
The basic reason why the Hindu mind feels easily besieged mu-st be understood. As I have mentioned elsewhere, Islam, Christ-ianity, Marxism, Capi-talism are all linear, prosletysing systems, co-nstantly looking for new spaces. There is a fundamental problem when these systems come into contact with a non-prosletysing faith like Hinduism with its uni-que social organisation.
Electoral democracy has added another dimension to this set of circumstances. To preventDalits from consolidating themselves into vote banks, as under Kanshi Ram and Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, Hindu organisations are tempted to target minorities for greater Hindu consolidation. Just as electoral mobilisation on account of Mandal was sought to be neutralised by the Ram Mandir agitation, the anti-conversion drive may well be to prevent Dalit mobilisation against the Sangh Parivar.
Just as conversions throughout history have derived strength from rulers of the same faith, the present anti-Christian drive is taking full advantage of the fact that the BJP is in power at the centre.
Of course, the current campaign disgraces the nation and embarrasses the government in New Delhi. In fact, the centre is very angry with the campaign that has been launched by elements in the Sangh Parivar. But, being part of the Parivar, these sections are confident that barring expressions of annoyance, the government is not likely to take punitive action against creatures of its own Parivar. In some measure thereis, of course, a desire to curb conversions. But a great deal of the agenda also consists in organising greater Hindu consolidation for future electoral combat.
These are terrible times. Seldom have we sunk so low. Ghalib suggested travel as a way out whenever the mind is oppressed by petty thoughts. The `narrow vision”, he said, may well open out with the abundance of the spectacle. Visit the tomb of the great Persian poet Hafiz and watch Rabindranath Tagore’s photograph dominating the attached library.
Tagore had visited the tomb in the ’30s as his homage to Hafiz. Watch Tagore’s bust on that exquisite walk along Lake Balatone outside Budapest. Listen to Uzbek diplomats in Tashkent explain to you how Tashkent and Samarkund are in fact distortions of Samar “khund” and Tash “khund” as in Bundel “khund”, Rohil “khund”. Visit the fire temple in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, lined with Sanskrit shlokas. See Irish school children studying Sanskrit and Vedic mathematics in a Dublin school. Justconsider the reach of our civilisation and we may well heal ourselves of the sort of paranoia, which is sometimes at the bottom of the current rash of disgraceful episodes.
