They are "totally groundless...at best, the product of a fevered imagination". That's what Columbia University economics professor Jagdish Bhagwati declared in an opinion piece on Sunday, dismissing the fears expressed by some Indian Christians that they are facing a rising tide of intolerance. Bhagwati repeated his claims on Monday in an interview on NDTV. He was reacting especially to former police officer Julio Ribeiro who had maintained in a much-discussed article two weeks ago that he, as a Christian, suddenly felt like a stranger in his own country.
Before Bhagwati launched into his argument, though, he spent a remarkable four paragraphs – almost two-fifths of the entire piece – explaining that he comes “from a family that is impressively pro-Indian-minorities”. He did this by retailing a series of Amar-Akbar-Anthony-esque anecdotes about his Muslim and Sikh friends and how as a student at Mumbai's St. Xavier’s High School, he had cracked jokes about the crucifixion with his pro-minority classmates.
As it turns out, the country in which Bhagwati has lived for several decades, has a handy phrase to describe this logical fallacy: “I have black friends." In the US, playing the “I have black friends” card as a shield for making racist remarks earns instant ridicule, but apparently Bhagwati thinks that it is acceptable to deploy it in India. If anything, the fact that the prejudice implicit in the “I have black friends” trope made it to a debate on India’s genteel op-ed pages suggests that the rhetoric expressed on the streets outside is even more vicious.
Ghar Wapsi history
Secure in his bullet-proof secularism, Bhagwati plunged into his argument with the self assurance that can only come if your niece has married a Parsi and your nephew, a Syrian Christian. Bhagwati dismissed fears about all church attacks – such as the one in Haryana where a cross was replaced by a Hanuman idol – as “alarmist”. Concerns over the Sangh Parivar’s Ghar Wapsi programme didn't pass muster either. “If Christians can convert non-Christians to their faith, what is wrong with Hindus doing the same?” said Bhagwati.
To characterise the Sangh Parivar’s Ghar Wapsi programme as a benign example of religious evangelism, equivalent to missionary activity, is either disingenuous or naive. The Sangh Parivar is a group with direct links to the country’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Ghar Wapsi, which has been proceeding in some form since the 1960s, is a highly politicised project of religious conversion that often uses majoritarian might and even state power.
In 1999, Graham Staines, an Australian missionary was burnt alive along with his two sons, aged ten and six as they slept in their car in Keonjhar district, Orissa. A hundred-strong mob held Staines and his children down as they tried to escape. The court held that Dara Singh, a member of the Bajrang Dal, had masterminded this gruesome crime because he was angry with missionaries who he believed encouraged the “conversion of innocent tribals into Christianity and [were] spoiling our religion and culture”.
A decade later, there was widespread anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal in Orissa, sparked off by the Ghar Wapsi-versus-missionary narrative. Almost 40 people were killed in the violence for which BJP MLA Manoj Pradhan has been convicted.
Gujarat anti-Christian violence
Gujarat saw widespread anti-Christian violence too, as the Sangh Parivar conducted its Ghar Wapsi programme in the adivasi Dangs district of Gujarat in 1998. The head of the Sangh’s tribal-affairs wing, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Swami Aseemanand, proudly told Caravan magazine that “40,000 Christians got converted to Hinduism” during this Ghar Wapsi campaign and that 30 churches had been destroyed.
In 2006, another large programme was held for which the Narendra Modi-led state government spent at least Rs 53 lakh to divert water into a local river so that it would be able to accommodate the large crowds for a shuddhi ceremony to Hinduism. Modi also passed an anti-conversion law, practically making it impossible to convert away from Hinduism in Gujarat.
In recent months, with its own party in power in the Centre, the Sangh Parivar has intensified the Ghar Wapsi programme and is conducting it on a national scale. Towards the end of last year, Scroll's Supriya Sharma travelled to Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to report on how Sangh organisations were working in concert with the civic authorities to spread fear among members of minority communities, especially among Christians. Given the violent history of the programme, it would be unusual if religious minorities did not get alarmed.
Finally, just to bring home the point as to how disconnected Bhagwati seems to be from India’s ground realities (in spite of the fact that his daughter’s significant other for years was an “American-Indian on his mother’s side”), he also mentions that “hardly anyone, in [the] BJP or elsewhere, has objected to her [Sonia Gandhi] because she was a Christian”.
Sonia’s church conspiracy
As it turns out, someone fairly senior in the BJP has actually done so. In 2002, Narendra Modi, when he was Gujarat's chief minister, had a tussle with Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh, who had decided to postpone elections for the state assembly. In a public speech, Modi criticised Lyngdoh, highlighting his Christian faith by articulating his middle name with a great deal of emphasis (for Muslims, the dog whistle was the word “miyaan”). Modi also drew a connection between Lyngdoh and Sonia Gandhi, sarcastically asking whether the Election Commissioner was from Italy. The link between the two, insinuated Modi, was also their religion: he claimed that they met in church to conspire against him.
There's no doubt that India is being led by a political formation that has made its displeasure of religious minorities rather clear in the past. The same political formation has also carried out mass religious conversions that has lead to widespread violence. With the Bharatiya Janata Party in power at the Centre, the atmosphere is being vitiated again with a massive Ghar Wapsi campaign. Just on Sunday, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad announced that it would conduct a Ghar Wapsi function in the same Delhi neighbourhood where a church had been attacked. Given these conditions, it takes delicious lack of irony to turn around and blame the minorities for their "totally groundless" fears.
The historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam once wrote that we should be thankful for VS Naipaul because he helped us to understand the extremist neo-Hinduism of the Indian diaspora: “With his clarity of expression and utter lack of self-awareness, he provides a window into a world and its prejudices: he is thus larger than himself.” For similar reasons, we should be thankful for Bhagwati’s articles. It provides a clear window into a type of majoritarian thinking which, in spite of overwhelming evidence, peremptorily dismisses minority fears in Modi’s India.
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Before Bhagwati launched into his argument, though, he spent a remarkable four paragraphs – almost two-fifths of the entire piece – explaining that he comes “from a family that is impressively pro-Indian-minorities”. He did this by retailing a series of Amar-Akbar-Anthony-esque anecdotes about his Muslim and Sikh friends and how as a student at Mumbai's St. Xavier’s High School, he had cracked jokes about the crucifixion with his pro-minority classmates.
As it turns out, the country in which Bhagwati has lived for several decades, has a handy phrase to describe this logical fallacy: “I have black friends." In the US, playing the “I have black friends” card as a shield for making racist remarks earns instant ridicule, but apparently Bhagwati thinks that it is acceptable to deploy it in India. If anything, the fact that the prejudice implicit in the “I have black friends” trope made it to a debate on India’s genteel op-ed pages suggests that the rhetoric expressed on the streets outside is even more vicious.
Ghar Wapsi history
Secure in his bullet-proof secularism, Bhagwati plunged into his argument with the self assurance that can only come if your niece has married a Parsi and your nephew, a Syrian Christian. Bhagwati dismissed fears about all church attacks – such as the one in Haryana where a cross was replaced by a Hanuman idol – as “alarmist”. Concerns over the Sangh Parivar’s Ghar Wapsi programme didn't pass muster either. “If Christians can convert non-Christians to their faith, what is wrong with Hindus doing the same?” said Bhagwati.
To characterise the Sangh Parivar’s Ghar Wapsi programme as a benign example of religious evangelism, equivalent to missionary activity, is either disingenuous or naive. The Sangh Parivar is a group with direct links to the country’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. Ghar Wapsi, which has been proceeding in some form since the 1960s, is a highly politicised project of religious conversion that often uses majoritarian might and even state power.
In 1999, Graham Staines, an Australian missionary was burnt alive along with his two sons, aged ten and six as they slept in their car in Keonjhar district, Orissa. A hundred-strong mob held Staines and his children down as they tried to escape. The court held that Dara Singh, a member of the Bajrang Dal, had masterminded this gruesome crime because he was angry with missionaries who he believed encouraged the “conversion of innocent tribals into Christianity and [were] spoiling our religion and culture”.
A decade later, there was widespread anti-Christian violence in Kandhamal in Orissa, sparked off by the Ghar Wapsi-versus-missionary narrative. Almost 40 people were killed in the violence for which BJP MLA Manoj Pradhan has been convicted.
Gujarat anti-Christian violence
Gujarat saw widespread anti-Christian violence too, as the Sangh Parivar conducted its Ghar Wapsi programme in the adivasi Dangs district of Gujarat in 1998. The head of the Sangh’s tribal-affairs wing, the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Swami Aseemanand, proudly told Caravan magazine that “40,000 Christians got converted to Hinduism” during this Ghar Wapsi campaign and that 30 churches had been destroyed.
In 2006, another large programme was held for which the Narendra Modi-led state government spent at least Rs 53 lakh to divert water into a local river so that it would be able to accommodate the large crowds for a shuddhi ceremony to Hinduism. Modi also passed an anti-conversion law, practically making it impossible to convert away from Hinduism in Gujarat.
In recent months, with its own party in power in the Centre, the Sangh Parivar has intensified the Ghar Wapsi programme and is conducting it on a national scale. Towards the end of last year, Scroll's Supriya Sharma travelled to Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat to report on how Sangh organisations were working in concert with the civic authorities to spread fear among members of minority communities, especially among Christians. Given the violent history of the programme, it would be unusual if religious minorities did not get alarmed.
Finally, just to bring home the point as to how disconnected Bhagwati seems to be from India’s ground realities (in spite of the fact that his daughter’s significant other for years was an “American-Indian on his mother’s side”), he also mentions that “hardly anyone, in [the] BJP or elsewhere, has objected to her [Sonia Gandhi] because she was a Christian”.
Sonia’s church conspiracy
As it turns out, someone fairly senior in the BJP has actually done so. In 2002, Narendra Modi, when he was Gujarat's chief minister, had a tussle with Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh, who had decided to postpone elections for the state assembly. In a public speech, Modi criticised Lyngdoh, highlighting his Christian faith by articulating his middle name with a great deal of emphasis (for Muslims, the dog whistle was the word “miyaan”). Modi also drew a connection between Lyngdoh and Sonia Gandhi, sarcastically asking whether the Election Commissioner was from Italy. The link between the two, insinuated Modi, was also their religion: he claimed that they met in church to conspire against him.
There's no doubt that India is being led by a political formation that has made its displeasure of religious minorities rather clear in the past. The same political formation has also carried out mass religious conversions that has lead to widespread violence. With the Bharatiya Janata Party in power at the Centre, the atmosphere is being vitiated again with a massive Ghar Wapsi campaign. Just on Sunday, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad announced that it would conduct a Ghar Wapsi function in the same Delhi neighbourhood where a church had been attacked. Given these conditions, it takes delicious lack of irony to turn around and blame the minorities for their "totally groundless" fears.
The historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam once wrote that we should be thankful for VS Naipaul because he helped us to understand the extremist neo-Hinduism of the Indian diaspora: “With his clarity of expression and utter lack of self-awareness, he provides a window into a world and its prejudices: he is thus larger than himself.” For similar reasons, we should be thankful for Bhagwati’s articles. It provides a clear window into a type of majoritarian thinking which, in spite of overwhelming evidence, peremptorily dismisses minority fears in Modi’s India.
