A convoluted path to salvation

Christian activists in India had breathed fire and brimstone over some obscure attacks on the churches in New Delhi not long ago. Not a single person was scathed in those attacks. No hate graffiti, banner or literature was recovered from the spots. Yet, those isolated incidents were quickly attributed to the BJP’s ascension to power. On one occasion, the Delhi Police Headquarters was gheraoed, and on another, roads in the heart of the city were blocked. Christian activists met the Union Home Minister and suggested  amendments in the Indian Penal Code/Code of Criminal Procedure for as ‘hate crimes’.

But those activists preferred to look the other way when a racist massacre at a US church outraged the conscience of the world. The reason was not because the US is another country, half-a-world away from India, but engaging with the Charleston shootout could undermine the new race theory that the Christian activists/missionaries are surreptitiously cultivating in India. Few realise the disaster potential of this new race theory using Indian mythological figures/motifs. 

On June 17, a lethal mass shooting inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina claimed nine lives. The victims were all Blacks, including a State Senator. The crime was racist not simply because Dylann Storm Roof, the 21-year old assailant, was a White man. It was categorically racist because Roof had revived the controversial flag used by the Confederate States during the American Civil War. 

In 1861, the States of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, louisiana and Texas that had broken away from the US. These States were bastions of Black slavery; and seceded in defiance of Abraham lincoln’s intention to abolish that evil. The secession proved transitory, as the Confederates were worsted by the Unionists in a four-year long bitter war. But the defeat of the Confederates in 1865 did not imply cessation of racism in the southern States. 

lincoln himself was shot dead by a White supremacist. The racist secret society, Ku Klux Klan, set up in Tennessee by Confederate war veterans in 1866, spread a reign of terror. In defiance of the 13th (1865), 14th (1868) and 15th (1870) Amendments of the US Constitution that abolished slavery, emancipated the Blacks and enfranchised them respectively, the southern States began a 100-year long regime of racial segregation. This came to a close only in 1964, when the Civil Rights Act was promulgated. 

An interesting feature of the Civil Rights Movement was that it was born in the lap of Black community churches. Reverend George lee, the first martyr of the movement, ran four churches in addition to his grocery shop. He was among the first who tried to register for vote Mississippi but Sheriff Ike Skelton rejected it. The father and grandfather of Martin luther King Jr were pastors in Atlanta, Georgia. King himself became the Minister at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama. No wonder, Black churches had been targeted by White supremacists. 

What explains this silence in the Charleston massacre case, passed off as a non-event for Indian Christian activistsIJ Not that they were silent altogether during the period. They let their unease about the International Day of Yoga be known on Facebook pages. Mr John Dayal informed that he would be holidaying away from the hustle and bustle of Delhi. He did not forget to add that there would be no television to interrupt his retreat with ‘wall-to-wall publicity of Yoga Day’. Allahabad-based Vishal Mangalwadi advised Christians to stay away from Yoga. 

They chose silence on Charleston massacre because it punctured the holy myth that Christianity is liberating. It will expose that Christianity has failed to bridge the racial divide. Thus Christianity is unlikely to be a model for the SCs/STs and OBCs in India. There has been noticeable shift in the approach of Christian activists/missionaries towards India. It is no longer the straight path of converting people. They want to stir up conflict within the Hindu fold. This is being done by co-opting figures, expression of speech, ideas from within the Indic tradition. For a change, Jesus Christ is no longer being projected as the model and the goal. Rather Mahishasur, Bali Raja and Jyotirba Phule are being projected as heroes for some segments of Hindu community.

For the last few years, a Mahishasura Martyrdom Day is being observed in Jawarharlal Nehru University. The media describes it as expression of protest against Brahmanic narrative. But few know that its intellectual arsenal comes from a bilingual magazine Forward Press. It published a special issue of Mahishasura last year where it gave a derogatory description of goddess Durga. Interestingly, Forward Press is owned by a Spanish man, Ivan Anthony Kostka. He and his wife are directors of Aspire Prakashan Private limited. Why are two Spaniards, who are not academics, publishing a magazine on Dalit issuesIJ 

Similarly missionary Sunil Sardar, married to a White American lady Pam Sardar, and working in Maharashtra tried to con people by projecting Jesus as Baliraja. His deen bandhu (friend of the poor) Ministry, launched in 1990s in Yavatmal, described baptism by water as Ganga-Snan to beguile the tribesmen. He runs Truthseeker International whose website says, “Truthseekers is committed to the belief that the Gospel of Jesus will destroy one of the most grievous violations of human rights still in existence — the caste system. The caste system is a hierarchy of slavery defined and justified by the religion known to the world as Hinduism”.