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Missionaries in India

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Reviewed by C. J. S. Wallia

Arun Shourie is India's leading writer on politics and history. He has been an economist with the World Bank, a consultant in the planning commision and the editor of Indian Express. Among the many honors and awards for his writings, noted for rigorous analysis and meticulous research, he has received the International Editor of the Year Award, the Dadabhai Naoroji Award, the Magsaysay Award, and the Astor Award.

In Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas, Arun Shourie focuses on the intentional misinterpretations of Hinduism by Christian missionaries. The book is based on an invited lecture, he gave at the 50th anniversary meeting of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India in January 1994. The bishops got quite an earful! Nonetheless, to their great credit, Shourie notes, "the bishops, the senior clergy, and scholars gathered at Pune heard him politely with unwavering attention." He adds, "Had I urged the themes of this lecture to our 'secularists', they would have denounced them as 'communal', 'chauvinist-fascist' and, having labeled them, they would have exempted themselves from considering what was being said."

Shourie quotes from a recent issue of the Texas-based magazine Gospel for Asia: "The Indian sub-continent with one billion people, is a living example of what happens when Satan rules the entire culture... India is one vast purgatory in which millions of people .... are literally living a cosmic lie! Could Satan have devised a more perfect system for causing misery?"

Swami Vivekananda during his historic visit to the U.S., a hundred years earlier, wrote: "Part of the Sunday School education for children here consists in teaching them to hate everybody who is not a Christian, and the Hindus especially, so that, from their very childhood they may subscribe their pennies to the missions .... What is meant by those pictures in the school-books for children where the Hindu mother is painted as throwing her children to the crocodiles in the Ganga? The mother is black, but the baby is painted white, to arouse more sympathy and get more money. What is meant by those pictures which paint a man burning hisown wife at a stake with his own hands, so that she may become a ghost and torment the husband's enemy? .... If all India stands up, and takes all the mud that is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and throws it up against the Western countries, it will not be doing an infinitesmal part of that which you are doing to us."

Is this fair to the missionaries? one asks. What about the numerous schools, colleges, and hospitals the missionaries established in India? Did they have a hidden agenda? Yes, says Shourie quoting from Gandhiji's Collected Works. In Gandhiji's discussions with missionaries, they acknowledged that "the institutions and services are indeed incidental, that the aim is to gather a fuller harvest of converts for the Church."

Many of the missionaries who came to see Gandhiji had in his words "designs to convert" him to Christianity. "But what is your attitude to Jesus? the missionaries would always come around to asking Gandhiji. He was a great world teacher among others, Gandhiji would say But that he was the greatest, I cannot accept. He had not the compassion for instance of the Buddha, Gandhiji would recount.... The reverend gentlemen would retire with the imprecation, 'Mr. Gandhi... soon there will come a day when you will be judged, not in your righteousness, but in the righteousness of Jesus."'

In the central section of the book, "The Division of Labour"-- among the British administrators, missionaries, and European Indologists-- Shouire cites extensively from historical documents to establish that these three groups colluded in essential agreement that "India is a den of ignorance, inequity and falsehood; the principal cause of this state of affairs is Hinduism; Hinduism is kept going by the Brahmins; as the people are in such suffering, and also because Jesus in his parting words has bound us to do so, it is a duty to deliver them to Christianity; for this, it is Hinduism which has to be vanquished."

Macaulay's notorious minute instituting English as the medium of instruction in India, says Shourie, "was laced with utter contempt for India, in particular for Hinduism, for our languages and literature: of course, Macaulay did n6t know any of those languages... his ideas about Hinduism had been formed from the calumny of missionaries .... But the breezy, sweeping damnation-- even a century and a half later, the imperialist swagger takes one's breath away."

Shourie quotes, at considerable length, from the writings of two high-ranking nineteenth century British administrators, Richard Temple and Charles Treveylan. Richard Temple: "...the missions in India are doing a work which strengthens the imperial foundations of British power.. the results are fully commensurate with the expenditure." Trevelyan: "A generation is growing up which repudiates idols. A young Hindu, who had received a liberal English education, was forced by his family to attend the shrine of Kali, upon which he took off his cap to'Madam Kali,'made her a low bow, and hoped her ladyship was well."

Most of the European Indologists were far from being the objective scholars they pretended to be. The two most prominent Indologists were Max Muller and Monier-Williams, both committed to uprooting and destroying Hinduism.

Here's what Max Muller, the best-known European Indologist, wrote in a letter to his wife. "...I still have a lot of work to do... my translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of that religion and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3,000 years."

Monier-Williams, the second holder of the Boden chair of Sanskrit at Oxford University and whose Sanskrit-English dictionary is still used, wrote in its preface that "the Boden chair of Sanskrit was set up by Colonel Boden to promote the translation of Christian Scriptures into Sanskrit, so as to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion." He told the Missionary Congress held at Oxford on 2 May 1877, "The chief obstacle to the spread of Christianity in India is that these people are proud of their tradition and religion." His dictionary, he hoped, would enable the translation of the Bible into Sanskrit and "when the walls, of the mighty fortress of Brahminism are encircled, undermined, and finally stormed by the soldiers of the Cross, the victory of Christianity must be signal and complete."

Looking at the cauldron of calumnies cooked up Christian missionaries, the imperialists, and the so-called objective scholars, makes the outrage expressed by Swami Vivekananda and Gandhiji entirely understandable. Gandhiji wrote: "If I had the power and could legislate, I should stop all proselytising.... it is the deadliest poison that ever sapped the fountain of truth."

To present the point of view of the Church, Shourie has included a 50-page report distributed by the Catholic Bishops at the Conference. This report describes the four churches which make up the Church in India--the Syrian Christian communities in Kerala; the Padroado Church originating in Goa, the Tribal Churches in Central India and in the North East; and the Dalit Churches.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the intellectual history and cultural make-up of contemporary India.

Arun Shourie, as always, starts out with exhaustive and authoritative research, quoting extensively from the gospels, the Church, and other Biblilcal research published over the ages, and then proceeds to the conclusions. The conclusions drawn by the book are that even though the Church worldwide has long abandoned most of the falsehoods it has used throughout the ages to convert people, in India, missionaries are still using those to convert people. Example - missionaries in rural and tribal India employ this favourite ploy: a stone idol of a Hindu god is immersed in water, where it promptly sinks. Then a wooden cross is immersed in water where it floats. The missionary then proclaims, 'How can your God save you when He can't even save himself?!!'

The other very informative chapter is on the history of the implementation of the Macaulay system of education by teh British in India, which was meant to educate and raise a class of Indians who would be English in thinking and Indian only only in color.

Section by section, chapter by chapter, Arun Shourie strips away at preconceived notions held by many people regarding the Church, the Bible, the gospels, and the historicity of those books, people, and events. To call the book a 'neo-Hindu' view of Christianity is misleading, and suggests a narrow-mindedness to the book that is simply not present. I found it highly readable, and recommend it.

Finally, to paint all of Christianity and missionaries with the same brush would be unfair. Arun Shourie points out in his book that there is a lot of good that has been done by missionaries in India and that we Indians could learn from. However, that should also not stop us from casting a critical eye where required.

Arun Shourie gives the picture of the motive of missionaries in India. Christians should read this and understand that missionaries in the past were militants just as they always point out the Muslims countires as Islamic Fundamentalist. The author gives vivid details and one can easuily follow how Christianity spread in India and the world.My thanks to the author for dispelling the myths Christians have about Missionaries. Chirag Parikh San Jose

I have given this book two stars as it is biased and only present Christian missionaries in negative light ignoring that there could be any good. Also lack of coverage of Hindu organizations like ISCON and other religion missionaries makes this a biased read to attack one religion. I believe all views have to be fair and both sides of the story need to be told. I liked the read and the authors points but the author seems very biased including two of the reviewers here. I do agree that there is fact that "Some" missionaries did use that to gain converts. It does not mean that all missionaries are doing that today. The ISCON movement in Hinduism too looks for converts does not mean all hindus organizations try to convert. Ram Krishna mission does some great work so does swami narayanan sect. There is more perception based stereotyping which I am against. Also the author has only spoken negative about missionaries and propaganda to prove them wrong without giving a fair chance that many missionaries were also spiritual and did it out of love or did not force or lure. Also christian missionaries is a broad term which encapsulates a whole lot of sects stereotyping is dangerous.

Christianity came to India before it came to Europe via Saint Thomas Christ's disciple. He was was butchered by angry brahmins who felt threatened of losing power. I wonder why and who is violent here? Conviniently ignored by author. Arun Shorie is a right wing BJP supporter,I do see the political angle supporting extremist Hindu organizations like VHP. I do agree some missionaries convert by tricks but they belong to specific denominations and groups and was more rampant in the old century and sprodic incidents occur today. This has more to do with the kind of human beings some missionaries are than with christianity, are we saying there are no Hindus who committed atrocities or are hypocrites ? I believe exploiting for power is a human trait. Are we saying destroying churches or mosques by some hindus was fair to the right of worship of muslims and christians who were caught in crazy fundamentalist rage in an Indian Democracy? Some missionaries doing something does not mean all missionaries are crooks, just cause he produced some facts has he studied all missionaries ? Just as few hindu extremist's and organizations do not make up the views of all Hindus.

The prime proponents of generalizing all christians,muslims and other minorities are power hungry Indian politician's and their sub colonial narcistic extremist hindu organization's who were even involved in killing Gandhi. Most of these political parties use extremist organisations to spread hatred so they can build a vote bank and gain power. There is also some truth that many do not want backward and other classes to get educated as they lose power and control, in short they use religion to get elected and like it that religious divisions prevail and some of their colonial educated Nationalist believe this view.

Religious fundamentalism, Narcism and Egoist thinking is a human trait that comes from pride,lack of education,I am better than you attitude and strong identification with ones religion in traditional than spiritual ways. I am sure every spiritual person who really feels love and god be it Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist or Christian is compassionate. As a convert from a Hindu brahmin family of forefathers 300 years ago, I do know lot of people who converted from Brahminism and other indian caste as they saw some people using caste system to persecute people. Many people also liked the teaching's of Christ actually many brahmins followed Hindu life in mutts and Jesus Christ's teaching's.

Jesus Christ was a compassionate person whether or not we disagree on other things, this lead Gandhi to say" If all Christians followed the teachings of Christ the world would be 100% Christian". I know many people try to use something negative about a religion and awfulize the whole religion which is narrow mindedness. The same people who critique Indian christians and missionaries are first to keep numb when thousands of muslims are butchered in their backyard by so called Hindu extremist. Many people liked Christ's teaching of love and compassion let us not forget that.

In short a good book as long as we do not generalize the authors views and read other views. Also evolution of Christianity in India and abuse of the caste structure meant for organization by some Hindus needs to be given some fair thought. Please also consider political angles of this book to meet certain implicit motives. That said I hope I have given a fair review of this material.
Please do read other books on evolution of Christianity in India to get a balanced view.

Those interested in a balance view should also read "Christians and Missionaries in India: Cross-Cultural Communication Since 1500"
Robert Eric Frykenberg and articles on "Christianity In India" for complete view on subject.

Satya Meva Jayathe truth always prevails)
Ajay