The conversion issue

[Ashish Chandra]

I think having read quite a few posts on this topic, I am compelled to
re-introduce my month-old "wisdom" back to the list, quite to the detriment
of some. Robert Zydenbos, in his last post on this topic, said that Hare
Krishnas convert people in the US. Is there any statistic suggesting that
they have targeted the African Americans or the Hispanics just like the
Christian missionaries have targeted the tribals in India, also quite like
the Islamic missionaries have targeted the Black community here ? Just
questions.

<<<<
RZ :
The entire anti-conversion issue looks like something anti-individual,
anti-democratic, anti-human, generated by political interests and not
justified by any binding doctrine or any generally established practice. I
believe that hardly anybody in the predominantly Christian West has raised
a hue and cry about thousands and millions of people becoming Buddhists,
Baha'is, Hindus, etc. etc. -- and this is how it should be.
>>>>>
This statement can only be made by one who is in total denial of the raw
facts as they exist in India. You must have at least read the missive of
the Sarvodaya leaders (Gandhians at that) who have written to PM Vajpayee
on the activities of the missionaries in Dangs. I'd like to know the basis
of such a statement(as above) if I may.

Below, I have attached an article I read and I think it is relevant to the
topic at hand.

Ashish
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Title:  Nailing a lie floated by missionaries
Author: Virendra Parekh
Publication:    The Observer
Date:   January 9, 1999

Fr Cedric Prakash was quite emphatic.  "Tribals are not Hindus.  They
are animists", he insisted in a press interview in relation to the
recent clashes in the Dangs district of Gujarat.  As coordinator of
United Christian Forum for Human Rights, he puts our from Ahmedabad the
Christian side of the recent clashes in Dangs.  Deep down in Dangs
forests, Sister Carmen Borges, principal of Deep Darshan High School at
Ahwa repeated the lie:  tribals are not Hindus.  The implication was, of
course, that the Hindus need not get exercised over conversion of tribals
to Christianity.
Like so many other false notions floated by missionaries to undermine
Hinduism and to consolidate British rule, this one too is lapped up by the
English-educated elite.  However, like many other such notions, it does not
bear a moment's scrutiny.
The culture cleavage between forest society and urban Hindu culture
disappears on closer analysis.  Belgian scholar Armand Neven set out to
study the mutual influencing of tribal and Hindu cultures, but gave up the
project altogether when he found that no fundamental distinction could be
made between the two, that they were essentially the same.  Tribals in
Valsad, for instance, invoke Indra at Holi. The husband of Holika is called
Meshro, from Meshrooha, a Vedic name of the Fire god.
Indian classical music is nothing more than a more developed stage of
tribals music.  Computer analysis of the ragas left no doubt that the
rhythmic schemes etc were developed from the more simple forms stills in
use in tribal music.
A number of Vishnu's incarnations like Matsya (fish), Koorma (tortoise),
Varaha (boar) and Nrisimha (man-lion) have been incorporated from tribal
religion.  Lord Ganesha is undoubtedly an animist contribution to Hindu
pantheon.
Tribals in Dangs worship tiger, cobra and mountains.  Tiger is revered
by all Hindus as vehicle of Durga, cobra is worshipped on Nagpanchmi and
mountains like Himalayas and Shetrunjay are held in high esteem as abodes
of gods.
In their manifesto, Truth Shall Prevail: Reply to the Niyogi Committee,
missionaries argue that tribals are not Hindus because they believe in a
creator, eat beef, do not worship the phallus (lingam), practise ancestor
worship, and believe in an eternal soul but not in reincarnation.
On these criteria, even Vedic Aryans were not Hindus. The Rig Veda has
several references to Prajapati, the Creator.  Whether the Vedic Aryans
were beef eaters is hotly debated.  Dr P V Kane, a great scholar on
Dharmashastras wrote: "It was not that the cow was not sacred in Vedic
times, it was because of her sacredness that it is ordained in Vajasneyi
Samhita that beef should be eaten."
Later, however, beef eating fell into disrepute and cow became Aghnya (not
to be killed).  Aryans also did not worship the lingam as the disapproving
term Shishnadevah suggests.  Vedic ancestor worship survives to this day in
the form of Shraaddha.  Vedic Aryans had no notion of rein-carnation and
believed that after death the soul goes to heaven.
So, by standards of missionary scholarship on which father Prakash relies,
Vedic Aryans were not Hindus; nor were Harappans whose civilisations the
Aryan 'invaders' destroyed.  And now we are told that tribals are not
Hindus.  In short, Hinduism does not exist.  How nice!
At grassroot level, census enumerators in the British period found it
impossible to differentiate between Hindus and tribal animists. Arun
Shourie in his book Missionaries in India has documented extensively and
meticulously the problems they faced.  One census report after another
noted that the task was proving extremely difficult.  For one thing,
tribals did not know the name of their own religion.  Worse, the dividing
line between Hinduism and animism was uncertain.
The 1901 Census noted, "Hinduism does not, like Christianity and Islam,
demand of its votaries the rejection of all other religious beliefs and...
among many lower castes the real working religion derives its inspiration,
not from the Vedas, but from non-Aryan beliefs of the aborigines".
The 1911 Census noted the mm difficulty and admitted that enumeration
depended on the idiosyncrasies of enumerators and vagaries of respondents,
both of which varied and changed over time and place.  These led to wide
fluctuations and differences in the case of same people and places,
rendering the data unreliable.
In 1921 Census report, Colonel Luard said that the classification 'animist'
had never been satisfactory and had better been dropped because "it is
never possible to know where the animist begins and the Hindu ends and
there are ample instances of animistic survivals even in Christian creeds
and practices."
The 1931 Census report for Bihar and Orissa hit the nail on the head:
"The conception of a religion in contradistinction to another religion,
where each has its own quite definite creed and peculiar observances is
something foreign to the minds of vast bulk of India's population.
When, therefore, the census tables tell us that there are so many
Hindus, Muslims or Christians in the province, they refer not so much to
the personal beliefs, convictions or outlook of these people as to the
particular communal or sectional labels to which they subscribe."
And yet the distinction was retained bemuse it served a very useful purpose
both for the British Government and the missionaries.  It kept out of the
Hindu society the tribals whom the 1931 Census Report had described as the
"most fruitful field for Christian missionaries".
No wonder Fr Prakash clings to it so tenaciously.
The missionaries' attempt to distinguish tribal 'religion' from Hindu
'religion' should not make us forget that 'both' the 'religions' are pagan,
evil and doomed in the Christian view. Under a Christian theocracy, the
tribal practice of propitiating rites for ghosts and spirits would have
cost them death at stake for witchcraft.  On the other hand, their
so-called animism shares an important common element with Hinduism.
Even the most primitive animism has characteristics like non-exclusiveness,
non-dependence on a specific revelation, potential universality and its
rootedness in the common experience of reality.  This is what Hinduism and
this is what closed creeds like Christianity and Islam reject decisively.
Time was when missionaries ran down an other religions as handiwork of
Devil and frightened their followers with eternal hen fire.  As the Belgian
Indologist Koenraad Elst points out, the current strategy is a variation of
'Divide and Rule'.  The prospective convert is told that not his religion,
but that of his neighbours is utterly objectionable, and so he should break
with them completely to lead a life of purity.
The target group is isolated from its cultural surroundings by Inventing
a deep difference between the two, then pulled closer to Christianity and
finally absorbed.  The means have changed, but the goal is the same:
Collecting souls for 'the only true faith.' Christian insistence on a
Hindu-tribal opposition is born from this soul greed rather than an
observation of reality.
The other point that Hindus need not get exercised over conversion of
tribals to Christianity can be dismissed in passing.  One has only to
look at the northeast to realise what unabated conversions could lead
to.  What the missions spread among tribals is riot just another name of
God and another form of worship, but altogether different ideas about
themselves and their relationship with other countrymen.  Having seen the
long term consequences of their 'selfless service', Hindus have reason to
be apprehensive when missionaries focus on a particular area.
Sister Carmen said she would applaud Hindu organisations if they served the
tribals with genuine social service.
All Hindus would have been applauding the missionaries if they had confined
themselves only to genuine social service.
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