India's conversions controversy

[frigidmagi]

BBC

Anti-Christian riots have rocked several parts of India over the past month. The BBC's Soutik Biswas travels to a remote region in the eastern Orissa state, where it all began, to explore the touchy issue of religious conversions.
A church attacked in Orissa's Kandhamal district
Churches have been attacked in Orissa

Sixty-year-old Indian farmer Kanduri Digal says he converted to Christianity a decade ago because he found "it a very useful religion".

For most of his life, Digal languished at the bottom of India's caste pyramid as a Hindu untouchable. But he doesn't say he escaped Hinduism because the caste system gave him a raw deal.

Instead, he says, Christianity offered him a road to redemption.

"When I was a Hindu I was stealing, doing bad to others. I have become a better man after I converted. Salvation is ensured in Christianity," he says.

Forty-year-old government peon Ashok Kumar Behera, who converted to Christianity 18 years ago, says he changed faith to get some "peace of life and salvation".

"The Bible says when we die we go to heaven. The holy book also lays down the instructions about life in detail, unlike Hindu scriptures," he says.

However, Digal and Behera have now discovered that in the Kandhamal district of Orissa state where they live their leap of faith has a darker side to it.

They are among the over 13,000 Hindu untouchables-turned-Christian converts who continue to live in 11 camps in the district a month after a wave of anti-Christian violence convulsed the area. Most have fled their homes which were looted and torched by mobs shouting pro-Hindu slogans.

At the root of the confrontation is an age-old rivalry between the majority local Hindu-tribes people and the converted Christians over land, affirmative action benefits and identity rights.

Touchy issue

But last month, it took an overtly religious turn after the killing of an octogenarian Hindu holy man who was a working among the tribes people, railing against conversions and arranging for reconversions of people returning to Hinduism.

It is still unclear who killed Laxmananda Saraswati. But angry tribes-people turned on their Christian neighbours triggering off a spiral of violence that left over 20 dead.


Kanduri Digal

Displaced Christians speak

Radical Hindu groups say Christian missionaries and NGO's are responsible for the situation.

One of them, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, says in a pamphlet that the "Christians in the area have long been trying to convert the tribal population... The tribals in the region over the last few years have been despising conversion due to the attacks on their cultural moorings by the Christian community".

Christian groups deny these allegations and say nobody is being converted against his or her will.

Religious conversions have been a touchy issue here. Orissa is an overwhelmingly Hindu majority state, and at just 3.8% of the population, Christians make up the largest minority.

Changing faith has also become a messy issue thanks to a controversial 31-year-old state law which outlaws religious conversion by "force, inducement and fraud". It also instructs that every case of conversion has to be reported to and recorded by the local authorities.

It is clear that the law was introduced primarily to stop the state's Hindu untouchables and tribes people, who comprise 39% of Orissa's population, from converting to Christianity. The punishment for converting these groups illegally is harsher than for converting groups such as higher caste Hindus..

But both Christians and Hindus have flouted the law openly: only two cases of conversions - both, from Hinduism to Christianity, have been officially recorded in Kandhamal in the last 31 years!

But the Christian population in the district has gone up by 56% between 1991 and 2001 alone, over four times the average population growth in the district. The Hindu population has grown by a more modest 12% during the same period.

Orissa has a long and chequered history of Christian proselytising.

Protests against attacks on Christians in Orissa
There have been countrywide protests against the attacks

On the one hand, large numbers of untouchables and tribes people have converted to escape poverty and deprivation.

It is a moot point whether that has worked: nearly 80% of the people in Kandhamal, for example, continue to live under the poverty line, according to official records.

At the same time, Christian zealots have sometimes operated with impunity: a state pastors gathering in November 1996 openly made a call to "win Orissa for Christ by 2000". And, in 1993, the police booked 21 pastors in Nowrangpur district for carrying out "induced" conversions, invoking the conversion law.

It is another matter, as some analysts argue, whether the state should get in the way of personal faith and keep tabs on and demand explanation from a person who is changing faith.

'Dangerous paternalism'

"Crude evangelism is a reality. We may also be uncomfortable at the fact that people seem to convert for all kinds of inducements," says political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta.

"But as a mature society we have to recognise this fact. The state cannot be in the business of saving anyone's soul. Why people convert is a matter entirely for them to decide. There is a dangerous paternalism if we give the state the right to decide whether someone's conversion is genuine and when it is not.

"For that matter why not also inquire into the fact whether staying in any faith is often due to inducement, coercion and false representations as well?" he asks.

Whatever the reason, the religious fault lines in Kandhamal are now beginning to look ominous and threatening to tear asunder two indigenous communities who have lived in mixed villages for centuries.

A Christian villager in her house which was burnt down in Orissa
Christians in Orissa are scared to return to their villages

Things are so bad that a spokesman of Orissa's Christian community, Dr Swaroopananda Patra, has been given, of all things, a bullet proof jacket by the police to protect himself.

"The Christians are so angry in Kandhamal that they want gun licenses to protect themselves. I am telling them to restrain themselves," he says.

And in Kandhamal, the head of an influential Hindu tribes people organisation sits in his house-cum-office surrounded by two bare-chested armed constables of the local police.

"I am scared that this has become a religious war now. I don't want our tribal agenda to be hi-jacked by religious interests.," says Lambodhar Kanhar.

Kandhamal, clearly, needs a respite from proselytizers of all kinds to return to normalcy and calm. After which, the people and authorities can begin sorting out the real issues.

[Mayabird]

I can't blame people for wanting to go from one religion which decrees that they're lower than the dirt on the bottom of the high castes' sandals from birth to death with no opportunity to change or escape, to another which tells them that they're actually worth something and aren't forced to take crap from the high castes. Heck, I'd do it too.

[frigidmagi]

As many people will find utterly unsurprising I'm pretty much on the Christians side in this matter. Then again those who know me in real life know I would actually like to see a Christian Asia in my life time. Yes, I'm aware most of you would not.

[General Havoc]

I'd like to see an Asia where it didn't fucking matter who was what, but we don't even have an America or Europe that's properly that yet, so I'm just whistling in the dark

[rhoenix]

I'd like to see an Asia where it didn't fucking matter who was what, but we don't even have an America or Europe that's properly that yet, so I'm just whistling in the dark

Or at least where the most that would happen is that it might spark an interesting conversation, but that's all. I remain hopeful that this happens eventually, in America or elsewhere.

[Mayabird]

As many people will find utterly unsurprising I'm pretty much on the Christians side in this matter. Then again those who know me in real life know I would actually like to see a Christian Asia in my life time. Yes, I'm aware most of you would not.

As anti-religion as I am, I recognize that conversion to Christianity (or a number of other religions) would be a huge improvement for the Untouchables and lower castes. Sure, I'd prefer some pie-in-the-sky utopian ideal that doesn't exist and may never exist, but as I say, I take what I can get. A little social progress is better than none at all.

[frigidmagi]

In what may be an ironic statement, I don't consider you to be anti-religious. Just atheist.

[LadyTevar]

This is the same promise that first caught the minds of the slaves and low-income Romans back in the early days of Christianity -- a promise of a better life-after-death, and a clear message of how to achieve it.

Pity that the Churches twisted the message later :sad:

[Mayabird]

In what may be an ironic statement, I don't consider you to be anti-religious. Just atheist.

You don't consider my views/rants about Southern Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, most versions of Islam and now Hinduism to be anti-religious?

This is the same promise that first caught the minds of the slaves and low-income Romans back in the early days of Christianity -- a promise of a better life-after-death, and a clear message of how to achieve it.

Actually, it's even more than that here. By converting, they're going from religiously mandated inescapable bottom-of-the-heap social status to not being bound by the former social limitations and being able to better themselves, gain better employment (instead of being forced to be night soil collectors that have to carry it on their heads, and not being allowed to do anything else), and so on. There are real and definite benefits while alive to converting, assuming that the Brahmins who are pissed off that they have less people to treat like shit don't go after them.

[Cynical Cat]

This is the same promise that first caught the minds of the slaves and low-income Romans back in the early days of Christianity -- a promise of a better life-after-death, and a clear message of how to achieve it.

Christianity appealed across a broad social spectrum in the early Empire. It wasn't a religion of the slaves or the poor. It became totally dominant not when it was popular (although it was at the time), but when the emperors suppressed other religions. It's success had a lot to do with the ease of conversion, it's willingness to accept everyone, it's enthusiasm for gaining converts, it's hostility to other cults, its utility to the state, and the decline of the traditional Roman religion.

[General Havoc]

Honestly, the traditional Roman religion had declined long before Christianity took over. By the time it became dominant, there were already many other established monotheistic religions being promoted across the empire. Mithridism, or the worship of Sol Invictus, were both as well entrenched as Christianity, even within the Roman army (which by then was the true seat of power). Its success had much to do with the factors above, but above all it was a political calculation on the part of Constantine that Christianity, unlike the more fractious Mithridism, could be more effectively centralized into a unified dogmatic authority which he could use to establish control over the (by then) unwieldy and ramshackle Roman Empire. Not long after he converted, he convoked the Council of Nicaea to establish a single doctrine for the type of Christianity he wanted to use to unite the empire, and then systematically destroyed the influence of the other non-Christian and splinter-christian institutions, a process which wasn't complete until after the Roman Empire had finally fallen. Its success on a broad scale was a matter of political calculation and centralization of authority, largely against the backdrop of the vacuum left by the collapse of secular authority in the 4th-8th centuries

[Cynical Cat]

I thought I was clear that Christianity spread as a result of the decline of the traditional Roman religion, not that it was a cause of it. Sol Invictus, Mithrasism, and the other mystery cults (there were a lot of them) never approached Christianity's widespread popularity (Sol Invictus was both a term for the pagan sun god and for a short lived derivative cult and Mithrasism doesn't seem to have enjoyed wide popularity outside the army where it was popular, but not dominant). Constantine certainly used it to cement his authority, but he didn't choose Christianity by accident. His wife was a Christian and it was the most popular religion in the empire at that time.

As for Constantine's personal beliefs, well he asked for an Arian priest on his deathbed (and Nicea had made Arianism a heresy) and got himself buried in the thirteenth spot of the Church of the Twelve Apostles.

[frigidmagi]

You don't consider my views/rants about Southern Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, most versions of Islam and now Hinduism to be anti-religious?

Ask some of the others about my rants regarding fundamentalist doctrine and the existence of megachurches. For a while Cat qouted part of one in his sig. Being hostile to certain doctrines and practices doesn't make you anti-religious.

[General Havoc]

Constatine's personal beliefs are somewhat hard to piece together at a remove like that. He was still issuing coins with Apollo and Sol Invictus on them ten years after officially converting the empire to Christianity, and as you mentioned, he died with an Arian priest in attendance.

But I was very much under the impression that Christianity, while popular in the late Roman Empire, was not the most popular belief system out there. Mithrasism (or however it's spelled) in particular, from what I've read, was equally as popular as Christianity, and neither of them enjoyed more than a 10-12% "marketshare" throughout the empire as far as my readings have indicated. Constantine certainly didn't select Christianity by chance. It was a dynamic, popular religion, with appeal across many social strata and had a devoted following within the army (particularly within his own personal part of the army). His mother was a Christian as well as his wife, though he himself was not (originally). It made perfect sense as a religion to select. I don't believe it was the most popular one in the empire at that point however. The hundreds of mystery cults, the still-powerful appeal of the pagan traditions of the western Empire (not traditional Roman, but a regional-specific blend of celtic, moorish, and germanic beliefs), combined with the Isis cults, the Mithridic traditions, Judaism (Jews at the time comprised nearly 10% of the population of the Mediteranean basin in classical times) and whatever shreds of classical greco-roman religion were left, all had their adherents. My readings indicated that Christianity was not the largest of these, nor the only logical choice for Constantine to have made.

[Cynical Cat]

There was a lot of competition out there, but most of them lacked the broad appeal that Christianity did. Let me qualify what I'm about to say here: there's error room when talking about extinct religions that Christianity did its best to erase. Mithrasism while popular with a segment of the population, did not seem to have broad appeal. Manicheasm and other mystery cults had similar problems, including demanding religious restrictions and limited appeal. Judiasm didn't go looking for converts and had restrictive religious laws. Sol Invictus was the pagan sun god or a failed cult derivative of it and it was used on coins for a long time which makes determining its use from coins problematic because it could simply be a hold out. The traditional pagan religion never recovered, even when Julian the Apostate tried to reinstate it with all the powers of an Emperor behind it, which is pretty telling on how badly it failed.

Constantine could have made other choices and Christianity wasn't the majority religion, but it was very popular, an easy religion to adopt and popular among all social classes.

[Norseman]

As for mystery cults I think a lot of people miss the point here. Mithraism could never take over the Roman Empire for the same reason Freemasonry couldn't become a major religion. The same applies for a lot of other Mystery Cults. They weren't seperate religions as such, but rather parts of the overall expression of religiosity. For instance Julian the Apostate was a member of several mystery cults, and a neo-platonist, and eager to sacrifice to and perform the rites to the old Roman gods.

Christianity was peculiar because it was so exclusive.