‘Contribution of Christian Missionaries in India’
Written by Camil Parkhe
Published by Gujarat Sahitya Prakash,
Post Box No 70, Anand, 388 001
Gujarat, India
Email: booksgsp@gmail.com
First Published in 2007
ISBN 978 81 8937 36 2
Price Rs 95.00 US$ 10.00
Foreword by Anosh Malekar
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)
’’In 1998, I moved to the western Indian State of Gujarat to work as a correspondent of The Week magazine. I was thrown into the thick of things almost immediately. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and the Bajrang Dal (Hanuman’s Army), the storm troopers of the Hindu nationalists, were on the rampage; exhuming the dead body of a Christian from a graveyard at Kapadvanj town in north Gujarat followed by the burning of a Bible at Rajkot city in Saurashtra region.
Later that year, the trishul (trident)-wielding members of the saffron brigade attacked churches on Christmas day in the southern tribal district of The Dangs. This was followed by the rape of nuns in tribal Jhabua, a remote district in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, and the naked parading of a Catholic priest in the central Indian state. The burning alive of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two little children in the eastern Indian state of Orissa caused outrage among ordinary Indians and shook the world.
Gujarat was ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party)- and continues to this date- and so was India till the rejection of its ‘India shining’ campaign by the voters in the Parliamentary polls of 2004. The years of saffron rule witnessed arson, loot, assault and brutalisation of Christian religious personnel all over the country. And it is expected to continue in some form or the other as globalisation breeds a new generation of Indians who are eager to settle in the West but yearn to maintain their cultural branches in the ancestral land. This axis between globalisation and fundamentalism has been sufficiently exposed ever since the Gujarat riots.
The consistent demonizing of Christians, especially the religious personnel commonly and freely referred to as missionaries, may seem to some as unwarranted-Christians in India are a tiny and scattered minority- but it is indispensable to the project of a Hindu nation. Hindu nationalists have always sought to redefine Hindu identity as opposed to a supposedly threatening ‘other’. Their effort has been to unite Hindu society by constantly invoking real and imagined threats posed by the evangelical Christians and militant Muslims. Though Christianity in India traces its origins to 2000 years on the southern coast, the missionaries referred to in this book came to India mostly from Europe and America during the past couple of centuries. A majority of today’s Christian population, just over 2 per cent of the total population, is a result of the conversions administered by these missionaries. Some Hindus refer to the missionaries as peddlers of Christian salvation and denigrators of their religion. Religious conversions exposed the porous borders of Hinduism and raised questions over its deeply held beliefs and metaphysical `certainties`.
Camil Parkhe’s book is important because it is not about missionaries and the Hindu right, nor is it about salvation and metaphysics. The legacy of the missionaries is not a handful of Indians calling themselves Catholics or Protestants. It is their disproportionate undertaking: between themselves and some other denominations the Christians run 25 per cent of India’s voluntary service sector. The beneficiaries belong to all castes, creeds and cults.
According to figures provided by the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India in late 1990s, Christians take care of 5 per cent primary education, 10 per cent of all literacy and holistic health care, 25 per cent of existing care of orphans and widows and 30 per cent of all existing care of mentally and physically handicapped, leprosy and AIDS victims. About four million children graduate from Christian educational institutions every year.
Camil’s book is in a way about the humble origins of what many in the voluntary sector and the media now perceive as mammoth voluntary conglomerates. It is about the women and men who went beyond their moral and spiritual calling with their insistence upon the sacredness of every human being as a living temple of God. They were to have the profoundest effect upon all the subsequent social and political life in India.
Camil’s missionaries are not all men, nor are they essentially white-skinned. The list includes Pandita Ramabai, Laxmibai Tilak, Baba Padmanji, and Rev Narayan Vaman Tilak, who contributed a great deal to the social transformation in Maharashtra during the pre-Independence era. Satyavan Namdev Suryavanshi, a successful journalist and exponent of the popular Marathi kirtan finds a place of honour in the book. Though, some readers may find the list heavily tilted in favour of missionaries who worked in Maharashtra or were Maharastrians.
Camil is a Marathi-speaking journalist who writes in English for newspapers and switches back to his mother tongue when writing books. I do not know if this is true or false but knowing him for over a decade and a half I have concluded that journalism has been his profession and writing a vocation. I learnt the basics of journalism from Camil and we have worked together long enough for me to know that writing in Marathi or English, working on a news story or a book happens almost simultaneously. It now seems effortless but there is a lot of hard work behind it.
And perhaps a need too! In the current social and political milieu the fact that Christians are no longer catalysts of change that they had been in the initial stage cannot escape a probing mind. Christians today are increasingly becoming responders to and even victims of changes initiated by others. This book should help them realise that their history, while often a painful story, is nonetheless one in which they can take legitimate pride. They can affirm their heritage and build upon it; they do not have to deny or renounce it in order to live fuller lives in the present.
The book, essentially pens portraits of individuals and their efforts, also comes at a time when there is a certain excitement; there is a growing feeling that India, with its 9 per cent plus growth rate, is ready to take on the world and make a mark on the global map. But still there are over 300 million Indians yet to see or feel it. This is the ‘other India’, the India that suffers silently even as the other half prospers. Most experts are convinced that the future of India depends on her ability to better their lives. Not just for economic reasons but also political ones. But can India muster up its missionary zeal in the times of globalisation. Sometimes it helps to reflect on the past. ‘’
Anosh Malekar.
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)
Written by Camil Parkhe
Published by Gujarat Sahitya Prakash,
Post Box No 70, Anand, 388 001
Gujarat, India
Email: booksgsp@gmail.com
First Published in 2007
ISBN 978 81 8937 36 2
Price Rs 95.00 US$ 10.00
Foreword by Anosh Malekar
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)
’’In 1998, I moved to the western Indian State of Gujarat to work as a correspondent of The Week magazine. I was thrown into the thick of things almost immediately. Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and the Bajrang Dal (Hanuman’s Army), the storm troopers of the Hindu nationalists, were on the rampage; exhuming the dead body of a Christian from a graveyard at Kapadvanj town in north Gujarat followed by the burning of a Bible at Rajkot city in Saurashtra region.
Later that year, the trishul (trident)-wielding members of the saffron brigade attacked churches on Christmas day in the southern tribal district of The Dangs. This was followed by the rape of nuns in tribal Jhabua, a remote district in neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, and the naked parading of a Catholic priest in the central Indian state. The burning alive of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two little children in the eastern Indian state of Orissa caused outrage among ordinary Indians and shook the world.
Gujarat was ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party)- and continues to this date- and so was India till the rejection of its ‘India shining’ campaign by the voters in the Parliamentary polls of 2004. The years of saffron rule witnessed arson, loot, assault and brutalisation of Christian religious personnel all over the country. And it is expected to continue in some form or the other as globalisation breeds a new generation of Indians who are eager to settle in the West but yearn to maintain their cultural branches in the ancestral land. This axis between globalisation and fundamentalism has been sufficiently exposed ever since the Gujarat riots.
The consistent demonizing of Christians, especially the religious personnel commonly and freely referred to as missionaries, may seem to some as unwarranted-Christians in India are a tiny and scattered minority- but it is indispensable to the project of a Hindu nation. Hindu nationalists have always sought to redefine Hindu identity as opposed to a supposedly threatening ‘other’. Their effort has been to unite Hindu society by constantly invoking real and imagined threats posed by the evangelical Christians and militant Muslims. Though Christianity in India traces its origins to 2000 years on the southern coast, the missionaries referred to in this book came to India mostly from Europe and America during the past couple of centuries. A majority of today’s Christian population, just over 2 per cent of the total population, is a result of the conversions administered by these missionaries. Some Hindus refer to the missionaries as peddlers of Christian salvation and denigrators of their religion. Religious conversions exposed the porous borders of Hinduism and raised questions over its deeply held beliefs and metaphysical `certainties`.
Camil Parkhe’s book is important because it is not about missionaries and the Hindu right, nor is it about salvation and metaphysics. The legacy of the missionaries is not a handful of Indians calling themselves Catholics or Protestants. It is their disproportionate undertaking: between themselves and some other denominations the Christians run 25 per cent of India’s voluntary service sector. The beneficiaries belong to all castes, creeds and cults.
According to figures provided by the late Archbishop Alan de Lastic of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India in late 1990s, Christians take care of 5 per cent primary education, 10 per cent of all literacy and holistic health care, 25 per cent of existing care of orphans and widows and 30 per cent of all existing care of mentally and physically handicapped, leprosy and AIDS victims. About four million children graduate from Christian educational institutions every year.
Camil’s book is in a way about the humble origins of what many in the voluntary sector and the media now perceive as mammoth voluntary conglomerates. It is about the women and men who went beyond their moral and spiritual calling with their insistence upon the sacredness of every human being as a living temple of God. They were to have the profoundest effect upon all the subsequent social and political life in India.
Camil’s missionaries are not all men, nor are they essentially white-skinned. The list includes Pandita Ramabai, Laxmibai Tilak, Baba Padmanji, and Rev Narayan Vaman Tilak, who contributed a great deal to the social transformation in Maharashtra during the pre-Independence era. Satyavan Namdev Suryavanshi, a successful journalist and exponent of the popular Marathi kirtan finds a place of honour in the book. Though, some readers may find the list heavily tilted in favour of missionaries who worked in Maharashtra or were Maharastrians.
Camil is a Marathi-speaking journalist who writes in English for newspapers and switches back to his mother tongue when writing books. I do not know if this is true or false but knowing him for over a decade and a half I have concluded that journalism has been his profession and writing a vocation. I learnt the basics of journalism from Camil and we have worked together long enough for me to know that writing in Marathi or English, working on a news story or a book happens almost simultaneously. It now seems effortless but there is a lot of hard work behind it.
And perhaps a need too! In the current social and political milieu the fact that Christians are no longer catalysts of change that they had been in the initial stage cannot escape a probing mind. Christians today are increasingly becoming responders to and even victims of changes initiated by others. This book should help them realise that their history, while often a painful story, is nonetheless one in which they can take legitimate pride. They can affirm their heritage and build upon it; they do not have to deny or renounce it in order to live fuller lives in the present.
The book, essentially pens portraits of individuals and their efforts, also comes at a time when there is a certain excitement; there is a growing feeling that India, with its 9 per cent plus growth rate, is ready to take on the world and make a mark on the global map. But still there are over 300 million Indians yet to see or feel it. This is the ‘other India’, the India that suffers silently even as the other half prospers. Most experts are convinced that the future of India depends on her ability to better their lives. Not just for economic reasons but also political ones. But can India muster up its missionary zeal in the times of globalisation. Sometimes it helps to reflect on the past. ‘’
Anosh Malekar.
Assistant Editor,
The Indian Express (Pune edition)
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