Dry and barren, Gulripada was until 12 years ago just another miserable village in the vast outback of the tribal-dominated Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. The animistic Bhils scratched a bare living from the unfriendly soil. Along came Father Peter and his team of dedicated missionaries who dug a pond and taught them a thing or two about irrigation. Now, the whole village is Roman Catholic.
Gulripada's children go to school, a mobile dispensary trundles in to look after the sick and the police no longer harass the villagers. For the Bhils, their new-found prosperity is the work of Mata Mariam and they have embraced the new religion with fervour. For the vhp, it is a prime example of conversion through pralobhan (inducement).
Where is the conversion? Even those who are becoming Hindus are primarily being converted, says Father Peter, who has spent 18 years in the village. The tribals haven't abandoned their traditions. Gattu, son of 60-year-old Kanji who converted after working at the mission farm, is getting married and struts around coated in turmeric powder. Rupin, who has the distinction of being the first missionary from the village, says his parents are proud of him although they themselves have not converted. The fact that they did not embrace Christianity didn't prevent Rupin, at the time called Rumal, from finding a place in the mission school.
In neighbouring Dangs district, which falls in Gujarat and has been the focus of the Sangh parivar's anti-conversion campaign, the picture is not substantially different. Budhra Dukhbadia of Subir village converted to Christianity 25 years ago after the padre cured him of a debilitating illness. I am being threatened by the mukhiya and his men to become a Hindu. I am afraid, but I will not leave the faith which gave me life, he says. His family concurs strongly. About half the village is Christian but there has never been any ghettoisation. In many a tribal family, some brothers are Christian and some Hindus. They coexisted peacefully for decades until the Sangh parivar unleashed its campaign of terror on Christmas Day last year.
Like in Gulripada, here again mission schools and dispensaries have improved the quality of life of the villagers. Says Mohan of Jamlapada: The padre prayed for my father and he was healed, so we all converted. In the bargain, the old man followed the priest's suggestion to send his children to the mission school and Mohan now has a diploma in agricultural technology and a good job. There are many similar examples; Elizabeth of Panchkuin village of MP's Jhabua district who bore eight children, all suitably well-employed, or Yakoob and Martha of Nawapada whose daughter works as a nursing attendant.
Thus, social and economic empowerment are primary reasons why tribals and Dalits convert to Christianity, says Congress leader P.A. Sangma (See interview). Once educated and freed from the bonds of the caste system which branded them untouchable, they become upwardly mobile.Nowhere is the contrast between Christian and non-Christian
tribals more evident than in Madhya Pradesh's tribal-dominated Sarguja district, where Christian tribals are doctors, lawyers and government servants, while the non-Christians still struggle to survive. And it was here that the Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad had concentrated its ghar vapasi (reconversion) programme, led by bjp MP Dalip Singh Judeo, erstwhile raja of Jashpur.
But it was Dangs which set alarm bells ringing in the Sangh parivar. There's been a sharp increase in conversions to Christianity in the last decadeas much as 416 per cent, according to Avinash of the Lok Adhikaar Samiti, a Left-oriented tribal welfare organisation based in Ahwa. Even so, tribal Christians in Dangs, the focus of an anti-conversion campaign in the last three weeks, number just 25,000 to 30,000 in a total population of 1.7 lakh, although Christian missions have been working there for nearly a century. Likewise, although the mission in Jhabua is 150 years old, the district has less than 25,000 Christians, points out Father Pradeep Cherian of the mission hospital in Meghnagar.
The vhp has it that the facilities provided by the church amount to forced conversion because the innocent tribals are being virtually bribed to change their religion. There are a few who join the religion for some perceived gains but then, no one does anything without matlab (motive). The vhp would not be doing all this if it did not have one too, observes Father Joe Perringalloor, priest of a mission in Panchkuin. Another charge made by the Bajrang Dal is that the padres fool people into converting by promising to cure them of various diseases. We should not use tactics like faith healing. I am also against it, says Bishop Karim Masih of the Church of North India (cni).
Given the fact that there is no compulsion to convert and mission facilities are open to all, it is the novelty of an organised religion, the example of service set by the missionaries and the material improvement brought about by their efforts which attracts tribals to the faith. Or so Bishop Vinod Malviya of Ahmedabad believes. The first Gujarati grammar text, the first Gujarati dictionary, the first press in Gujarat, were introduced by missionaries. During the famine in Saberkantha, our mission fed 10,000 people a day. During the 1985 drought, we installed handpumps, looked after cows. Where were the vhp and Bajrang Dal when the tribals were mired in misery? he asks. Another senior church functionary points out: How many lepers has Ashok Singhal embraced?
All this appears to have been lost on prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who called for a national debate on conversions during his visit to Ahwa. The statement attracted flak from non-bjp political parties which described it as unbecoming of a prime minister. In a transparent effort to provide a sop to the rss, still piqued at attempts to sideline it during the bjp national executive in Bangalore, Vajpayee has succeeded in tearing away his own pseudo-liberal mask, says Janata Dal MP S. Jaipal Reddy.
The Church was quick to pick up Vajpayee's gauntlet. Both the Catholic Bishop's Conference of India and the cni issued statements endorsing the suggestion. Let the facts come out. If the Christian population accounted for 3 per cent in 1951, it is 2 per cent in the 1991 census. It is in actual fact falling. Why not target the neo-Buddhists, who have been converting in large number ever since 1950? asks the cni's Bishop Masih. He dismisses as bakwaas (nonsense) the vhp's contention that conversions of Dalits and tribals are not being shown on paper, so that converts can still take advantage of reservation and other concessions not open to Christians.
Church authorities point out that missionaries have been in India for 250 years. They were the first to open schools and offer healthcare to the poor. Practically the entire Indian intelligentsiaincluding home minister L.K. Advani, an alumnus of St Patrick's, Karachiis a product of mission schools. Not one of them can claim he or she was asked to convert. And even during the British Raj, was a single temple ever damaged by a missionary? We have educated all of India; have we converted everybody? Agar hamari niyat kharab hoti (if our intentions were bad), would this not have been a Christian nation? asks Masih, who is also chairman of Delhi's St Stephen's College, alma mater of many a central services officer. Dil ki baat hai (it is a matter of the heart), he adds, challenging the vhp to cite one example of a forced conversion.
Tribals were not even considered as Hindus for innumerable centuries, points out Bishop Malviya. It was the missionaries who first went to tribal areas, facing enormous hardship to bring them education and medical care. We are Indians. We are also working to build the nation. Just weigh our contribution to the development of the country against the small number of conversions, he says.
Sangma admits that prosyletisation was used as a political tool by the British in the northeast. Unable to subjugate the fierce head-hunters of the hills, they sent in missionaries, dividing the region between the Presbyterian and Baptist churches. The first missionaries were killed but others followed and conquered the hostile terrain through the gospel. So much so that communists in Nagaland could make headway among the local population only with the slogan Nagaland for Christ.
In post-independence India, the Church has been steadfastly apolitical. Even in Mizoram, where it enjoys tremendous social clout, it's been pretty much non-partisan. An attempt to set up a Christian political party in Mumbai two years ago fell flat when the Church refused to back it. The Christians have, however, been traditionally Congress supporters. And tribal Christians doubly so.
It is this that piques the Sangh parivar, claims the Congress. By setting tribal against tribal, it is attempting to cement a Hindu votebank in tribal areas by using Christian-bashing as a unifying factor. The missionary penchant for educating tribalsHindu and Christianboosts social awareness and threatens the bjp's upper-class votaries. On the Sangh parivar's open attack on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the party said: It is pathetic to observe the parivar suggesting that conversion by Christians is a direct consequence of support by the Congress.
For the government, the possibility of the Sangh parivar's campaign willy-nilly fuelling Christian militancy ought to be a source of worry, say senior politiciansespecially given the fact that the traditionally peaceful community has tremendous access to funds abroad. The issue, in fact, figured for the first time in a meeting of heads of police organisations last week.
The vhp has raised the demand for a specific law to check conversion. In the 6th Lok Sabha, O.P. Tyagi moved the Freedom of Religion Bill, 1978, along the lines of the Arunachal Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, which was meant to protect the religion of the tribal sun-worshippers. Both Madhya Pradesh and Orissa passed similar laws in 1968, purportedly to prevent forced conversions. Under these Acts, the district collector has to be informed about any planned baptism or conversion. The Church's contention that the laws are violative of Article 25 of the Constitution which guarantees free profession, practice and propagation of religion was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1978. Tyagi's Bill didn't find enough takers but two decades later, Vajpayee's call for a debate seems to have paved the way for its revival.
