Jagdish Bhagwati | The false alarm over Christians in India
Alarmist views about Indian Christians being under threat are
overplayed and must be forcefully exposed as such
Photo: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
A recent opinion piece by Julio Ribeiro, the
much-admired scourge of Khalistainis, complains
plaintively that he is on "a hit list" today from
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because he is a
Christian. Similar alarmist views on Christianity
are common in India today, simply because of the
election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the
decimation of the Congress by the BJP. They are
being spread by church leaders; for example
Catholic Archbishop Anil Couto is reported to have
even celebrated the defeat of BJP in the recent
Delhi elections as if a calamity for Christians had
been averted. But they are so ridiculous and
libelous to the prime minister, and even the BJP
generally, that they must be exposed forcefully as
such.
Before I do that, let me establish my credentials concerning
the issue at hand. I come from a family that is impressively
pro-Indian-minorities. My wife, Padma Desai, has converted to
Christianity (in a moving ceremony described by her in her
memoirs, Breaking Out, published by Penguin/Viking in India
and MIT Press in the US). Two of my nephews have married
Christians: one is from Mumbai and is a
multiple-award-winning psychiatrist practising in London and
periodically in Mumbai, whereas the other is a Syrian
Christian from Kerala. Another niece is married to a Parsi
(who, of course, belongs to a still smaller, and equally
beloved minority as Christians in India); and yet another
almost married a Muslim young man. My only daughter's
significant other for years was a Christian and indeed an
American-Indian on his mother's side.
Abid Husain, my closest friend of over 40 years, whom I met
in Turkey when we were both working there, was one of India's
most distinguished reformers and a pioneer in community
development programmes. He was a Muslim and had married a
brilliant Parsi intellectual. Indeed, the other equally close
friend for over half a century has been former prime minister
Manmohan Singh, a devout Sikh (yet another minority much
loved in India except for the awfully heinous massacre,
indeed a pogrom, of the Sikhs in Delhi by some Congress party
men in 1984 after prime minister Indira Gandhi was
assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards).
Most of all, I went to St. Xavier's High School in Bombay. I
got excellent education there, and I expressed my sentimental
bond with the school when I was chosen recently to receive
the coveted Xavier Ratna award. On a lighter side, with
discipline a high point, we used to joke how strict the
school was because they even had a guy nailed to the wall.
So, if there was anything to the Christian fears today, I
should be the first to join the protests. But the truth is
that these fears are totally groundless and are, at best, a
product of a fevered imagination.
First, we now know from the admirable investigative
report in Firstpost (Crying Wolf: The Narrative of
the 'Delhi church attacks' flies in the face of
facts, 17 February) by Rupa Subramanya that there
is simply no evidence for the six alleged attacks
on Christian churches and one Christian school.
This turns out to be a case of the "monkey say,
monkey repeat" phenomenon that converts false
allegation into a fact.
Second, Ribeiro resents the remark of Mohan Bhagwat of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh that Mother Teresa was interested
in conversions to Christianity, not just in the welfare (as
distinct from the spiritual salvation) of her flock. But
surely, Christians do believe in conversion, as do Muslims;
does Ribeiro deny that? Again, what is sauce for the goose
must be sauce for the gander. If Christians can convert
non-Christians to their faith, what is wrong with Hindus
doing the same? In fact, being a religion that does not
normally convert, only a minuscule number of Hindus will do
this whereas a far higher proportion of Christians and
Muslims will.
Moreover, Ribeiro is offended that Mother Teresa is not
respected as a saint by Bhagwat. But he is clearly ignorant
of the fact that Mother Teresa may have won the Nobel Peace
Prize but many doubt her bona fides, including the late
Christopher Hitchens whose scathing critique of her was not
the only dissenting voice on her, as recently recounted by
the Washington Post reporter Adam Taylor (Why, to many
critics, Mother Teresa is still no saint, 25 February). Since
Hitchens followed this with a scathing attack on Hillary
Clinton (an icon mostly to herself), I must confess that when
he was coming out of a television debate on Hillary Clinton
and I was going in to do a debate of my own, I could not
resist telling him: Christopher, you did not say that Hillary
Clinton was no Mother Teresa.
Ribeiro, the Archbishop and other Christians also forget that
Sonia Gandhi is a Roman Catholic. To my knowledge, many have
objected to her leading the country because she was born
abroad (much as Americans disbar foreign-born citizens from
becoming the president), but hardly anyone, in BJP or
elsewhere, has objected to her because she was a Christian.
US President Barack Obama's speech in India where he talked
of Mohandas Gandhi's legacy of respect for all religions has
been self-servingly appropriated by anti-BJP and anti-Modi
critics (such as my former Columbia University student
Siddharth Varadarajan) as a chastisement of their alleged
communalism. But this interpretation is absurd since the
president clearly had in mind the difficulties that the US
itself is having with such issues. In fact, on returning to
the US, he proceeded to tell Americans that Christianity
itself had been guilty of serious lapses over many centuries.
Ribeiro and the Archbishop are good men who have allowed
themselves to be dragged into politics that plays on fear and
partisanship. I only hope that they will join those of us who
would like to see religious harmony, not the religious
discord that can only subtract from our humanity.
Jagdish Bhagwati is University Professor (economics, law and
international affairs) at Columbia University.
Comments are welcome at [email protected]
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