HVK Archives: Stop conversions before talking about convergence
Stop conversions before talking about convergence - The Observer
Virendra Parekh
()
January 23, 1999
Title: Stop conversions before talking about convergence
Author: Virendra Parekh
Publication: The Observer
Date: January 23, 1999
So devious are the means and arguments employed by missionaries and
their apologists that one should be grateful to them when they make
a single candid statement about their intentions and practices.
We are, therefore, grateful to Rajendra Prabhu (The Observer, 14 &
15 January) for two simple statements that have merit of candour.
First, Christians are not doing social service when they attend to
the sick. Second, although the Catholic church rejects nothing that
is true and holy in non-Christian religions, it would not stop
proclaiming its own exclusive message of Jesus as the Way, the Truth
and the Light. Everything else he says (and he has said a lot) must
be judged in the light of these two statements.
To be able to do that, however, it is necessary to clear the ground
by cutting through the maze of lies, half-truths, evasions and
distortions so assiduously built up by Prabhu in his rather longish
response to my report (The Observer, 7 & 8 January) and Bala
Chandran's Comment (12 January).
Contesting an incident of conversion (Fever? Take this powder in
the name of my God) in my report, he says there are no nuns in the
Church of North India and that churches do not distribute prasad.
Maybe, the nuns from Kerala who were on a conversion spree in Dangs
used the name of the best known church in the area or the tribal in
his ignorance associated them with it. That does not detract from
the manner in which he was lured.
Similarly, even simple-minded tribals may be level-headed enough to
know that a wooden thing will float. The point was that the church
finds it necessary and useful to employ such methods. As for the
prasad, there is a whole branch of missionary activity openly
adopting and adapting symbols of Hindu Dharma, while single-mindedly
pursuing its age-old goal. Prabhu himself speaks with approval of
the Pope being received with arti and vandana.
So some missionaries could be pardoned for using the word prasad for
a medicinal powder. All of them, no doubt, are following St Paul's
advice "to become all things to all men, by all means to win over
some of them".
Prabhu even drags in the name of Adi Shankara to justify the use of
tricks for propagation of faith. The debate between the Buddhist
monk Mandanmishra and Shankara was finally decided by a miracle of
the flower on the Buddhist monk fading. He goes on to ask: Was it
right for one of the greatest philosophers and saints of the world
to stoop to this trick or does it convey a very deep meaning behind
its apparent irrationalism like floating cross to the faithful?
The answer is: Neither. Prabhu has got his facts all wrong.
Mandanmishra was not a Buddhist monk: he was an exponent of Purva
Mimamsa, one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. The
issue was decided by shastrartha (interpretation of scripture), or
rational discourse. Saraswatidevi, wife of Mandanmishra, was
appointed as the judge by the two contestants and it was she who is
said to have put a garland in the necks of both of them, saying that
after the discourse, whosoever's garland fades will be deemed to
have lost. Notice that even in the legend, it is the judge who
prescribed the fading of garland as the indication of the outcome,
not Shankara, who came out victorious.
The legend appears to be just a legend. Ancient India had a
millennia-old tradition of rational discourse and disputation to
decide philosophical issues: and it is hardly plausible that a
master dialectician like Shankara would need any such trickery to
win a discourse: even less plausible that others would agree to
abide by such a procedure.
The same could be said of the other incident attributed by Prabhu to
Shankaracharya Chandrashekhar Saraswati of Kanchi Peeth. Such
stories are legion, but they are conspicuous by their absence in
original scriptures like Vedas, Upanishads, Gita and Brahmasutra and
no Hindu is expected to believe in anything which cannot stand the
test of reason or experience.
Incidentally, the Purva Mimamsa school poses certain questions on
God as the creator of universe, which Prabhu would find very
interesting, even if provocative.
Let us now turn to some of the more basic issues raised by Prabhu,
beginning with the use of social service and material inducements as
a means of conversion. Since the issue is much debated, only a few
observations would suffice here.
Prabhu has been kind enough to admit that Christians are not doing
any social service when they attend to the sick. They fancy
themselves in the role of Jesus: the sick are merely objects (guinea
pigs?) to play out the fantasy.
Most of the converts speak of the loans, Jobs, food, medicine and
education. There is hardly any talk of Christ or his teachings. It
is a poor reflection on the spiritual and philosophical worth of a
creed that claims to be the sole repository of ultimate truth and
arrogantly presumes that it is the fulfilment or culmination of all
other religions.
It is not correct to say, as Prabhu does, that Bala Chandran makes
light of the missionaries &~ to provide some food to the hungry.
Bala Chandran only objects to the use of such noble activity to
secure converts. The objection is as valid as it is old. Soul for
food is a Faustian deal, says Bala Chandran and points out that
offering temptations is the way of Satan and not saints. There is
no refutation of this point in Prabhu's article.
Bala Chandran's criticism is not only age-old and valid but also
very pertinent. Missionary strategists have examined the world's
population sector by sector, ideology by ideology to find out what
makes some of them unbending, others resistant and yet others
relatively pliable. They try to discover 'holes' through which
these countries could be penetrated more easily. They have also
been discussing conditions which favour evangelisation like great
mental stress, sickness, poverty, loneliness, lack of community
life, and being away from their cultural milieu eg Asian students in
the US or Britain.
Pope John Paul, in his book Crossing the Threshold of Hope, speaks
of the 'holy stubbornness': he believes that the world already
belongs to the church and it must claim it boldly: he gives the call
for a great relaunching of evangelisation.
Therefore, other societies have to be on guard. If missionaries
have a right to preach Gospel, ancient societies professing non-
proselytising religions have a right to defend themselves. When food
or service are offered as a right of the giver, the recipient has a
right to look into his motives.
If tribals can be trusted to elect their MPs and MLAs, why can't
they be trusted to choose their religion? Prabhu asks. First,
religion is not a matter of choosing from among competing brands.
True religion can neither be borrowed nor lent. It is acquired by
internal sadhana. Nothing prevents tribals from practising the
Sermon on the Mount in their personal life while remaining Hindu.
Conversion is induced by greed, not any desire for spiritual
advancement.
One can turn around and ask: If missionaries have faith in Gospel as
the Word of God and in tribals' wisdom to recognise it as such, why
do they use force, fraud and allurements to spread it?
They are coming to us because you (other Hindus) have oppressed or
exploited or neglected them, we are told. If so, by now the entire
harijan and tribal population would have been converted long back to
Christianity or Islam, another 'liberating' religion.
The truth is that in spite of tremendous and sustained expenditure
of money, manpower and manipulation, Christianity has been able to
penetrate only a small fraction of the softer targets like harijans
and tribals. Islam, with all its use of state power to win
converts, remained a minority religion after six hundred years of
rule.
This shows that there is something fundamentally wrong with the
history of caste relations in the ancient, middle and modern ages,
as it is taught now. But this is not the place to go into it.
Finally, Prabhu speaks of a convergence between Hinduism and
Christianity, of Christianity coming back to East to teach its
discipline and to learn from the eternal spring of Indian philosophy
and also be transformed in the process. He cites the Second Vatican
Council document to express the Catholic view of Hinduism. "In
Hinduism men explore the divine mystery and express it through an
endless variety of myths and penetrating philosophical insights...
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these
religions." And Jesus presented Himself as fulfilment and not as the
destroyer.
Hindus should think twice before being flattered to hear this
praise, (if it can be called that) from an institution which found
nothing holy or true in Hinduism for 19 centuries. The church is
praising Hinduism for its secondaries, while hiding contempt for its
primaries. The praise is not only grudging, but also diplomatic and
deceptive. What the Church really wants to say is: Hinduism is very
good. It is a useful preparation for Christianity. We see in your
country spiritual things, deep and uncommon. If only you were to
make sufficient progress, you will become Christians, as good as
ourselves. This is what is meant by presenting Jesus as the
'fulfilment'.
Christianity offers us a revealed truth of which it claims to be the
sole custodian. Hinduism, on other hand, like other eastern
religions, speak of spiritual truths that are hidden in man himself,
as does oil in the sesame, ghee in the curd, water in underground
streams, fire in the wood, to use a few similes from Swatashwatara
Upanishad.
Man seeks and finds them in his deeper moments. Hinduism teaches
that man in his innermost being by nature is child of divine light.
He grows from within, responding to that which he already is
secretly.
In this endeavour, there is no place for special messengers like
sole sons or last prophets with exclusive revelations, blood-
chilling calls for jihad or high-pitch sales talk of special
agencies with self-assumed burdens of propagating the 'only truth'.
There are no dogmas, only verifiable truths. Ehi, passa (come, see)
as Buddha would say.
As Ram Swarup says, Christianity has two pillars: A narrow piety and
word-juggling theology. What is good in it is also found in other
religions which it has supplanted in the past and which it continues
to do even now. What it calls her own (sole saviour etc) is mere
intellectual bluff.
Prabhu talks about conjugation between Shankara and St Thomas
Aquinas, without realising that Shankara would have made mincemeat
of Christian dogma, pointing out that it was a mere theological
statement which cannot be referred to any system of logic nor could
be verified by direct personal experience.
If the church is sincere in entering a dialogue with ancient
religions like Hinduism, it must first acknowledge that they deserve
the same reverence and allegiance that it claims for itself. And
the first and last proof of its sincerity in this respect is that it
stops converting people.
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