THE scene was Rajghat, Delhi, August, 2000. Thousands of Christians from various denominations and their sympathizers from all over Delhi and the neighbouring districts of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana had gathered there for a day long prayer meeting to protest against the atrocities committed against the Christian community in various parts of India. Besides several speeches, chanting of devotional bhajans and offering of prayers, the programme also included a nukkad natak (street play) staged by me and other students of Vidya Jyoti College, Delhi, depicting communal violence through the form of a game of kabbadi.

The lay people, children and a large number of Catholic priests and religious brothers and sisters who gathered at Rajghat all held placards with catchy slogans and wore black bands as a mark of protest against the hate campaign targeting the religious minorities. This scene at Rajghat was an image of the minority Christian community in modern, progressive, independent India. India is no doubt a predominantly Hindu nation with 80.5% of the 1.028 billion population being Hindus (2001 Census data). There are only 24 million Christians in India, a small minority community comprising only 2.3% of the total population.

While the Christian community is numerically a small minority in India, the question to be asked is, when did the Christians begin to consider themselves a minority in India? Did this minority identity emerge right from the beginning of Christianity in India in 52 AD, when St. Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, reportedly brought Christianity to India? Or did it emerge during the Portuguese period of Christianity in the coastal parts of India or much later during the spread of Protestant Christianity in British India? Or is the minority consciousness among Christians a recent phenomenon generated by the socio-political realities of independent India? It has been well established by various historians that Christians during the period following St. Thomas formed part of the mainstream of Kerala society, enjoying civil autonomy and social privileges under the local kings and there is nothing to indicate that they were marginalized or that they considered themselves as a minority community.¹ 

The colonial ventures of the Portuguese who arrived in India in 1498 AD were in the form of a mercantile expansion couched in a military and ecclesiastical mould. The religious mission of conversion was combined with mercantilism and a furthering of trade and commerce. Due to the enterprise of the Portuguese and other European chaplains and missionaries, several Christian communities emerged along the West coast with Goa as their centre. The Latin Church was closely connected to the colonial power and received state patronage.

In the Portuguese enclaves the Christians lived a privileged life compared to the Hindus and Muslims and never considered themselves as a minority community. Due to the strenuous efforts of the Portuguese in the spread of Christianity, Goa by 1851 was a Christian state with 63.8% of the population being Christian.² Christians in the Portuguese colonies in India, being numerically large, enjoying state patronage and having many educated lawyers, doctors, business men and engineers neither considered themselves nor were considered by others as a minority community.

 

Protestant Christianity began in India from the beginning of the 18th century with the Tranquebar mission on the South-East coast of India in 1706 started by the Lutherans, soon followed by other Protestant missions like the Serampore mission and the Mission Movement in Calcutta.³ The passing of the Charter Act in 1813 by the British Parliament opened the way for many Protestant denominations from Britain, Europe and USA to preach the gospel in India. This proliferation of Protestant missionary work was concomitant with the expansion of the British Empire in India. With the introduction of western education and the starting of Christian schools, the educated class of Indian society was attracted to Christianity, though their numbers were small. They provided the intellectual leadership for the Church in India and contributed towards forming an independent, indigenous identity for the Church.

 

The period following the first war of independence in 1857 witnessed tremendous growth in the Indian Church. The Protestant missionaries had initially experimented with the ‘Filtration Theory’, which proposed that by converting the Brahmins (upper castes) they would convert the rest of Hindu society.⁴ Its failure shifted the emphasis to work among the depressed classes and tribals. Almost every organization, both Catholic and Protestant, reported phenomenal growth, so much so that a majority of the Christians in India today come from these communities.

At the same time the period 1858-1947 was characterized by the rapid growth of national consciousness among Indians, which created a political dilemma and an identity crisis for the Christians in India. While many Christians, swept by the nationalist fervour, initially participated in the Indian National Congress which was formed in 1885, many others did not want to risk losing the support and favour of the British authorities. While Allen Octavian Hume, a Christian, informally organized the Indian National Congress in 1885, W.C. Banerjee, a Bengali Christian presided over the founding session of Congress. The Congress presidents – George Yule (1888-89), William Bern (1889-90), P. Anand Charlu (1891-92), were all Christians. George Joseph and Joseph Baptista from Bombay, K.T. Paul, a Tamil Christian, Brahmabandhab Upadyaya and other Christians played a decisive role in the genesis and spread of the Indian freedom struggle.

In 1909, K.T. Paul, trying to motivate the Christians to actively participate in the nationalist movement, said: ‘We will do well to realize that there is a terrible danger if we persist in the policy of keeping aloof. Materially, socially, morally and politically, viewed in fact from every standpoint, our interests are intimately bound up with those of other Indian communities. Will it ever be otherwise? Long after Britain’s political mission to India is finished – let us hope five centuries later, for all things earthly must end or change – we shall still be Indians.’⁵ 

 

A majority of the Christians came from socially and economically backward classes, with a history of being marginalized and subjugated by the upper caste Hindus. They, therefore, linked their identity to the western missionaries and the colonial rulers in an attempt to change their low status. This led other Indians to regard Christians as a foreign minority community, not really part of the Indian socio- cultural and political milieu.

While the British rulers provided separate electorates and separate representation for the Muslim community through the Indian Councils Act, 1909,⁶ it was extended to the Indian Christians only in 1920 through the Government of India Act of 1919.⁷ Finally in 1920, two Catholics and three Protestants were elected to the Madras Legislative Council, the only province of India in which Christians succeeded in getting communal representation. For this election the Indian Christian Association (of the Protestants) and the Catholic Indian Association of Southern India were treated by Lord Harding, the Viceroy, as one body, as representatives of the ‘Indian Christian community’.⁸ 

 

It is only after the end of World War II that the hopes and aspirations of the Indian Christians for the union of churches, transcending denominational barriers, and equality and freedom from foreign mission control, became a reality. The drive for swaraj (freedom) in India hastened the work of the indigenization and unity of the churches in India.⁹ After the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910, the Protestant missionaries began to share responsibility with the Indian pastors and when India became independent in 1947 most of the Mission institutions were handed over to the Indian Christians.¹⁰ This process of Indianization was common both to Catholic and Protestant churches.

The above description of the identity formation of the Christians raises the question whether given the diversity among them, they can be sociologically classified as a distinct category. The Syrian Christians of Kerala and the Christians of the Konkan coast (Mangalore and Goa) mainly belong to the upper castes and are educationally advanced and economically and politically powerful.¹¹ On the other hand the majority of the 16th century Latin Christians of the Kerala-Tamil Nadu coast and the 17th-18th century Christian converts are from the backward classes. Almost all the late 19th and early 20th century Christians are from the Dalit community (untouchables). Finally, the converts from the North East and Chota Nagpur area are tribals. Besides, the Indian Church comprises of Catholics, Syrian Orthodox Christians, various Protestant denominations, Pentecostals and different born again Christian sects, divisions based on theological and doctrinal issues.

Thus we find Indian Christians are placed at opposite ends of the power and social status graph and belong to different denominations and groupings. The Christians, on the eve of India’s Independence were not integrated as a community, but subsequent events in independent India like the communalization of politics and the rise of hard line Hindutva ideology led to religion replacing caste as the main unit of identification in Indian society. The emphasis on religion as the marker of identity and its link with Indian cultural and political identity forced the Christian community to put aside its differences of social and economic status and present itself as a united Indian Church.

 

In the history of religion in India, especially of Christianity, various historical situations and socio-political factors have fashioned the discourse on religious minorities, of which the independence of India and the simultaneous formation of Muslim Pakistan with the resultant Partition riots and other subsequent events played an important role in the politics of religious minorities in free India. At the threshold of independence, the Christian community in India, though numerically negligible, was an influential and well-accepted community due to its vast network of educational and health care institutions and social work initiatives and its image of being a peace loving people.

The acrimonious events of Partition and the growth of a militant brand of Hinduism fostered an image of Islam and Christianity as foreign religions, alien to Indian culture. Besides, various issues like the role of foreign missionaries, the regulation of foreign funds, ‘conversions’, minority educational institutions and increasing attacks on the Christians and their institutions have dominated the discourse of interaction between the state and the Church, considerably influencing the consciousness of the Christian community of being a minority that has to take every possible recourse to defend their rights and privileges.

 

In the early years, the Christians were most engaged with the nature and content of the Indian Constitution and the need for reservations. Of the six Christian members elected to the Constituent Assembly was Jerome D’Souza, a Jesuit priest who played a key role in the drafting of article 25 of the Constitution on the right to freedom of religion with emphasis on the freedom to profess, practice and propagate one’s religion.¹² He also made a strong plea for not claiming reservations for the Christian minority.

The issue of communal electoral representation had salience even during the British rule when seats in various Provincial Legislative Councils were reserved on the basis of communities. Even at that time the Christians generally rejected the idea of separate electorates for them. At the first Round Table Conference in London, 1930-31, K.T. Paul, a representative of the Protestant Christians, discouraged the idea of special privileges for Christians, though A.T. Pannirselvam, voicing the opinion of the Catholic faction of South India, asked for a separate Christian electorate.¹³ The secular character of the Indian Republic found in the Constitution implies that there is no state religion and there is equal respect for and protection of all religions.

 

This consciousness of being a vulnerable religious minority has led the various Christian denominations to come together and unite. The Church union movement resulted in the amalgamation of various Protestant denominations into two main bodies – the Church of South India, formed in 1947 and the Church of North India, formed in 1965. In 1944, selected delegates of the Catholic Church in India met in Madras (present day Chennai) to deliberate on some of the challenges they envisaged in the context of the future independence of India – the future Constitution of India and the views of the Catholic Church, conversion to Christianity and so forth.¹⁴ The outcome of the meeting was to establish a permanent association of the Catholic hierarchy in India under the name: Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI). Faced with the changing situation and the challenge of coping as a religious minority community in a secular democratic nation, the Catholic Church of India decided to come together under a common platform (CBCI) that would formulate common policies, express a common standpoint and facilitate coordinated study and action on issues affecting the welfare of the Church in India.’¹⁵ 

 

The Christian minority identity comes to the fore and gets strengthened whenever issues affecting the Christians become part of the national minority discourse. But when the minority discourse dwells on the socially backward classes in India, especially the Dalits and the tribals, the question arises whether Christian identity weakens or breaks down completely in the face of Dalit or tribal unity.

The Central government and the highest court of the nation, the Supreme Court, have contributed to the weakening of the national Dalit identity and, in the process, a strengthening of the Christian identity by discriminating between Dalits on the basis of religion. The Presidential Order of 1950 allotted the benefits of reservation only to the scheduled caste Hindus, though exemption was given to the Sikhs through an amendment in 1956 which was upheld by the Supreme Court in a judgement in the Soosai Case, delivered on October 1, 1985.¹⁶ This forced the Church to fight for equal rights for Dalit Christians through different organizations like the All India Christian People’s Forum comprising of various Christian denominations and NGOs.¹⁷ 

The government’s identification of the Dalits of Christian origin as part of the Christian religious community and not as part of the scheduled caste community has hampered the formation of a pan-Indian Dalit identity. The same holds true for the tribals. While Dalit Christians and Church organizations involved in the struggle for Dalit rights have joined forces with other scheduled castes on common issues, the main concern of the Christians about acquiring reservation benefits from the government have differed from the concerns of the rest of the Dalits.¹⁸ 

Coming back to my earlier question, the Christian religious identity does not appear to have broken down in the face of pan-Indian Dalit or tribal unity, but instead the Indian Church has in the main supported the Dalit and tribal struggles and in the process expanded the identity of the Church in India to include other marginalized groups: ‘The Dalits and Tribals are politically exploited, educationally most backward and socially discriminated against. The Church should be in solidarity with the poor and make a preferential option for them… To realize this objective, the Church should join other people of good will and work towards the dismantling of structures like caste and class that cause and perpetuate poverty and oppression.’¹⁹ 

 

The issue of conversion has generated a lot of debate and controversy in the minority discourse of independent India. The Niyogi Commission Report 1954, the Rege Commission Report 1959, the Freedom of Religion Bill 1978 and the anti-conversion acts passed by some state governments have all revolved around the issue of conversion. These reports and bills in various ways dilute or negate the constitutional guarantees of the Preamble to the Constitution of India that assure the minorities the freedom to profess, practice and propagate their faith (articles 25-30). All these state measures have given the impression to the Christian minority that the nation is not supportive of its religious minorities.

 

Walter Fernandes asks the question whether the Catholic Church in India is a community.²⁰ He says that Christians united as one body to fight against the Niyogi Report, the Freedom of Religion Bill, the Neelackal Cross Controversy in Kerala and other such issues. To fight against the MP Anti-Conversion Act in the Supreme Court, the Church offered legal aid. When Christians in Arunachal Pradesh were facing persecution due to the Freedom of Religion Act, the Catholic Church united with other Christian bodies to publish facts and figures about the injustices suffered by the Christians on account of the discriminatory act and also organized protest meetings to support the Bishops of the North East.²¹ In the case of O.P. Tyagi’s proposed Freedom of Religion Bill, the Catholic Church mobilized all the dioceses in India to organize morchas, rallies and to issue public statements protesting against the bill.

While the Christians have come together on issues affecting the entire Christian community such as that of conversion, the number of inter-ecclesiastical conflicts over caste, rites and jurisdiction does raise the question whether the Church in India is one community or just a commonality of beliefs. The Church leaders have tried to balance this tension between the differences and conflicts within the community on the one hand and the need for the Christians to leave aside all differences and unite as a single Christian community to fight for common causes.

 

Most of the attacks on Christian missionaries and institutions in independent India have been isolated and sporadic, but the last two decades 1990-2009, have seen a spurt and pattern of sustained attacks on the Christian community. The violence in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and the most recent attacks on churches in Karnataka have shaken the Christian community and led their leaders to re-emphasize the need for a pan-Indian Christian unity leaving aside all other differences of caste, class, region, rites and denominations. ‘Mr. Prime Minister, long ago we left our fathers and our homes. We have worked without fear in distant forests and villages. Now, for the first time, we are feeling afraid,’ Sister Dolores, the National Secretary of the Catholic Religious in India, the association of priests and nuns in India, told Prime Minister Vajpayee at a meeting with him in 2000.²² 

Due to the constant targeting of Christians a sense of fear has entered, due to which many in the Church leadership are afraid to speak out, lest their patriotism be questioned or their institutions targeted. Fear and a sense of uncertainty and vulnerability have now begun to creep into the self-consciousness of the Christian community as it increasingly sees itself as an insecure and embattled minority community. At the same time the increased attacks on Christians are seen by extremist and fundamentalist Christian groups as a divine sign to go on the offensive and intensify their proselytizing activities. Persecution and attacks emboldens them to fulfil their desire of seeing a ‘Christian India’ in the near future.

 

The increasing number of attacks on Christians is part of a hate campaign by the Sangh Parivar and other right wing Hindutva forces targeting Muslims and Christians throughout India. This hate campaign questions the roots of Christianity branding it as a foreign religion, questions the patriotism and loyalty of the Christians and targets priests, nuns and Christian institutions. This discourse brands the minorities as being well-off at the cost of the majority Hindu community who are suffering and thereby painting them as enemies of the Hindus. An example of the type of writing that constructs this type of discourse on the minorities is given below:

‘The minorities are safe only under the BJP. One country, one people is its core ideology… But the definition of minorities in India is strangely distorted. Here the minorities are better off than Hindus and were the ruling class for centuries… The vote-bank politics has deprived the Hindu his status. This is at the root of the tension in places where conversion is tearing apart the social fabric. In states where the minorities are in majority their tyranny has totally subjugated the Hindu.’²³ 

The impact of the minority discourse of the Sangh Parivar was seen vividly in the last week of August 2008, when the Dalit Pana Christians experienced the fury of the worst-ever communal rage in Orissa – churches set on fire, Christian institutions, orphanages and hamlets destroyed, pastors attacked, a nun burnt alive and another gang-raped. Militant Hinduization had deeply divided Adivasis (tribals) and Dalits on communal lines in Kandhamal district of Orissa and the Kandha-Pana ethnic divide was conveniently converted by the Sangh Parivar into a Hindu-Christian communal confrontation.²⁴ The Orissa violence brought to the fore the lack of bargaining power of the Christian minority with the government authorities in a country ruled by vote-bank politics.

At the same time these attacks worked as a catalyst in uniting the Christians and making them realize their Christian identity. When the Sangh Parivar activists attacked churches in Mangalore on 14 September 2008, the church bells were rung and hearing it big crowds of Christians, especially the youth gathered at the churches and thwarted the plans of the aggressors. The pealing of the church bells is a powerful symbol for the Christians reminding them that they need to come together as a community in the face of crisis.²⁵ The attacks against Christians in Orissa and Karnataka in 2008 evoked protests, not just from within the country but also from several Christian nations, adding a global dimension to the identity of the Indian Christian community.

 

The Church has played an influential role in shaping the destiny of the people in Goa. While the Catholic Church in colonial Goa enjoyed state patronage and was associated with the Portuguese empire, in post-liberation Goa it was forced to reconstruct its identity, making its public presence felt through interventions in various socio-economic and cultural struggles.²⁶ The Church linked the preservation of Christian identity with the identity of Goa as an independent political entity and so participated fully in the anti-merger movement. Soon after the first general elections in Goa in December 1962, the issue of the immediate merger of Goa with the state of Maharashtra came up. The Church supported the stand of the anti-merger activists, demanding separate political status for Goa. In this struggle Catholic priests gave political speeches from the pulpits and marched in the streets with the laity.

 

In the opinion poll, what tilted the scales in favour of the anti-merger activists was that besides the Christians, the Hindu Saraswat Brahmins and a significant number of non-Saraswat Hindus also voted against merger. The Church followed up this victory in the opinion poll by vigorously backing the Konkani movement and the struggle to attain statehood for Goa. In pursuing a separate identity and political status for Goa, the Church backed Christian political leaders and others in this struggle. To counter the threat of the Marathiwadis, the Church strove to build a stronger Christian-Hindu solidarity linking this unity with the well-being of Goa. This struggle culminated in Goa being granted full statehood on 30th May 1987, with Konkani as its official language.

Since 1961 the Catholic Church in post-colonial Goa has got involved in various human rights and environmental struggles. The Church in colonial Goa which was rather inward-looking and aloof from society has revamped its identity to become more radical. In its new activist identity it does not merely remain silent, but by aligning with civil society and constructing Hindu-Christian solidarity, is ready to tackle the roots of social injustice. The involvement of the Church in the struggle to preserve Goan culture and ethos has allowed it to expand the concept of Christian minority identity to include all concerned citizens and thus equate Christian identity with Goan identity. Thus, when the Church in Goa protested against the attacks on Christians in Orissa and Karnataka, people from other religious communities also addressed the well-attended public meeting held at Panaji.

 

The history of Christianity in India reveals that at different periods the Church, the state and society constructed Christian minority identity in distinct ways. In colonial India, Christians could not be classified as a community, since they were divided on the basis of caste, class, denomination and rites. In independent India, with religious identity becoming politically significant, the Christian community has been forced to put aside its differences and present itself as a united Indian Church in political and public spheres. While Dalit tribal and women’s struggles do complicate the emergence of a united Christian identity, the Church has attempted to bring these together. In its construction of a pan-Indian Christian identity it has tried to expand the Christian identity to be ‘the Church of the Poor’²⁷ to include other marginalized and minority groups and communities.

 

Footnotes:

1. See the works of historians like A.M. Mundadan, M.D. David and others.

2. J.N. Fonseca, An Historical and Archaeological Sketch of the City of Goa, Thacker and Co., Bombay, 1878.

3. A.M. Mundadan, Indian Christians: Search for Identity and Struggle for Autonomy, Dharmaram Publications, Bangalore, 1984, p. 160.

4. M.D. David, ‘History of the Church in India’, in M.D. David (ed.), Asia and Christianity, Himalaya Publishing House, Bombay, 1985, p. 170.

5. G.A. Oddie, ‘Indian Christians and the National Congress 1885-1910’, ICHR 2 (1968), pp. 45-54.

6. S.C. Kashyap, Our Constitution: An Introduction to India’s Constitution and Constitutional Law, National Book Trust, India, 1994, p. 16.

7. Hugald Grafe, History of Christianity in India, Vol. IV, Part 2, Church History Association of India, Bangalore, 1990, p. 231.

8. Ibid., p. 232.

9. Mundadan, Indian Christians, op.cit., p. 177

10. M.D. David, p. 170.

11. Walter Fernandes, The Role of Christians in National Integration, Indian Social Institute, New Delhi, 1988, p. 22.

12. Hugald Grafe, p. 238.

13. Ibid., p. 235.

14. CBCI Evaluation Report, CBCI Evaluation Committee, New Delhi, 1995, p. 36.

15. Ibid., p. 37.

16. S. Manickam, Studies in Missionary History: Reflections on a Culture-Contact, The Christian Literature Society, Madras, 1988, pp. 154-177.

17. L. Stanislaus, ‘Empowering the Oppressed in Society’, in S. Ponnumuthan et al. (eds.), Christian Contribution to Nation Building: A Third Millennium Enquiry, Documentary Committee of CBCI-KCBC, Cochin, 2004, pp. 271-291.

18. A Dalit Vision for a New India, a document of the national Dalit policy drafted by Dalit academicians and activists and civil society organizations and released in November 2006 highlights the main concerns of the Dalits.

19. Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India statement on ‘The Church in Dialogue’, 25th General Body Meeting, Jalandhar, 1-8 March 2002.

20. W. Fernandes, p. 21.

21. CBCI Evaluation Report, p. 47.

22. John Dayal, ‘India’s Plural Culture, Secular Democracy: Challenge and Opportunity’, unpublished paper presented at the hearings of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, Washington, 18 September 2000.

23. R. Balashankar, ‘Are Minorities Safe in BJP-Ruled States?’ Economic Times, 22 September 2008.

24. For a detailed analysis of the Kandhamal riots see Pralay Kanungo, ‘Hindutva’s Fury Against Christians in Orissa’, EPW 43(37), 13 September 2008, pp. 16-19.

25. ‘An Open Letter to the Catholics of Mangalore’ by Fr. Cedric Prakash, 25 September 2008.

26. See Arun Sinha, Goa Indica: A Critical Portrait of Postcolonial Goa, Bibliophile South Asia and Promilla & Co, New Delhi, 2002.

27. Statement of the Asian Bishops’ Manila Conference, 1970 in John Desrochers, The Social Teachings of the Church, Bangalore, 1982, p. 379.