17. Missions since Independence

The Constitution of independent India adopted in January 1950 made things quite smooth for the Christian missions.  They surged forward with renewed vigour.  Nationalist resistance to what had been viewed as an imperialist incubus during the Struggle for Freedom, broke down when the very leaders who had frowned upon it started speaking in its favour.  Voices which still remained �recalcitrant� were sought to be silenced by being branded as those of �Hindu communalism�.  Nehruvian Secularism had stolen a march under the cover of Mahatma Gandhi�s sarva-dharma-sambhAva.

The followers of Mahatma Gandhi were the first to forget what their Master had said repeatedly on the subject of proselytization.  Some of them found berths in the new power set-up and fell in. line with Pandit Nehru.  Some others who felt frustrated for one reason or the other became fascinated by Mao-tse Tung and started seeing the Mahatma reincarnated in Red China.  Constructive workers of the Gandhian movement gave priority to economic programmes and sidelined all social and cultural problems.  A new breed of �Gandhians� became busy floating Voluntary Agencies and looking forward to being funded by Western Foundations.  Some of these foundations were avowedly dedicated to promoting only Christian causes.  Small wonder that these �Gandhians� became, in due course, active or passive accomplices of the Christian missions.

The worst crisis, however, overtook those who became known as Hindu leaders in post-independence India.  So long as the Mahatma was alive they had prospered by accusing him of promoting �Muslim and Christian causes� at the cost of �Hindu interests�.  Now that he was no more, they did not really know what to do.  Some of them continued to live in the past, deriving satisfaction from cursing the Mahatma for misleading the country for all time to come.  Others revised their attitude towards him but they did so more out of convenience than conviction.  Sarva-dharma-samabhAva acquired a new meaning for them.  Criticism of Christian, dogmas became a �negative� approach.  The �positive� approach, they started saying, should match the missionary effort in the fields of education, medicine and social services.  It did not occur to them that Hindu society being poor and bereft of a state of its own was in no position to run the race.  The �positive� approach thus became, for all practical purposes, an excuse for not facing the problem at all.

The bright sunshine in which Christian missions started basking can be reported best in the words of a Jesuit missionary.  �The Indian Church,� writes Plattner, �has reason to be glad that the Constitution of the country guarantees her an atmosphere of freedom and equality with other much stronger religious communities.  Under the protection of this guarantee she is able, ever since independence, not only to carry on but to increase and develop her activity as never before without serious hindrance or anxiety. The number of foreign missionaries registered an unprecedented increase.  �One must admit,� continues Plattner, �that the number of missionaries who came to India soon after independence had perceptibly increased.  During the war years very few of them ever reached India.  So a kind of surplus was building in Europe with corresponding lack of personnel in India� At the same time the Communists were expelling thousands of missionaries - mainly members of the American sects - from China.  Some of them were then transferred to India but not all of them could adapt themselves to Indian conditions.�

Far more foreboding than this forward march of the Christian missions, however, was the fact that they were able to take in their stride two serious exposures of their character and activities made during the fifties.  The first jolt they received was from a book by K. M. Panikkar published in 1953.  The second was the publication, in 1956, of the Niyogi Committee�s report on missionary activities in Madhya Pradesh.  The powers that be - the Government, the political parties, the national press and the intellectual elite - either protected the missions for one reason or the other or shied away from studying and discussing the exposures publicly for fear of being accused of �Hindu communalism�, the ultimate swear-word in the armoury of Nehruvian Secularism.

Panikkar�s study was primarily aimed at providing a survey of Western imperialism in Asia from A.D. 1498 to 1945.  Christian missions came into the picture simply because he found them arrayed, always and everywhere, alongside Western gunboats, diplomatic pressures, extraterritorial rights and plain gangsterism.  Contemporary records, consulted by him, could not but cut to size the inflated images of Christian heroes like Francis Xavier and Matteo Ricci.  They were found to be not much more than minions employed by European kings and princes scheming to carve out empires in the East.  Their methods of trying to convert kings or commoners in Asia were fraudulent or conspiratorial or morally questionable.  Seeing that �missionary activities� were connected with Western political supremacy in Asia and synchronised with it�, Panikkar had concluded, �It may indeed be said that the most serious, persistent and planned effort of European nations in the nineteenth century was their missionary activities in India and China where a large scale attempt was made to effect a mental and spiritual conquest as supplementing the political supremacy already enjoyed by Europe.�

What hurt the missionaries most, however, was Panikkar�s observation that �the doctrine of the monopoly of truth and revelation is altogether alien to the Asian mind� and that �practically every educated Asian who seriously and conscientiously studied to understand the point of view of the missionary, from Emperor Kang Hsi to Mahatma Gandhi, has emphasised this point.� He had knocked the bottom out of the missionary enterprise.  No monopoly of truth and revelation, no missions.  It was as simple as that.

The missionaries were up in arms.  �To prove his point,� they said, �Panikkar picks and chooses historical facts and then deals with them one-sidely.� But none of them came out with facts which could redeem or even counterbalance those presented by Panikkar.  Efforts to explain them away or put another interpretation on them, also remained a poor exercise.  Fr. Jerome D�Souza had jibed, �A very fine narrative Mr. Panikkar, but you must not call it history.� He or his missionary colleagues, however, never bothered to tell what was that history which Panikkar had not taken into account.  Subsequent Christian writings show that missionaries have not been able to stop smarting from the hurt caused by Panikkar�s study.

The message that Panikkar had tried to convey to Asians, particularly, his own countrymen, was that the history of Christianity was, for all practical purposes, a running commentary on the Christian doctrine.  Christian missions were quick to understand it although they have never acknowledged the debt.  Ever since, Christian historians have been making herculean efforts to salvage the doctrine from the history it had created.  By now there is a plethora of Christian literature which bemoans �the colonial handicap� that has stood in the way of Christ scoring over Rama and Krishna.  And there has been a determined effort to present to the Indian people what Stanley Jones has described as the �disentangled Christ�.  It is only India�s politicians and intellectual elite who have failed to grasp what Panikkar had revealed about the character of the Christian doctrine.

Thus howsoever serious the flutter which Panikkar�s book caused inside missionary dovecotes, the atmosphere outside continued to be favourable for them.  Of course, �narrow minded Hindus and fanatical Communists� provided some pen-pricks off and on.  But they came to nothing in every instance.  �The question was raised in Parliament,� narrates Plattner, �as to whether the right to propagate religion was applicable only to Indian citizens or also to foreigners residing in India, for example the missionaries.  In March 1954, the Supreme Court of India-expressed its opinion that this right was a fundamental one firmly established in the Constitution and thus applied to everyone - citizen and non-citizen alike - who enjoyed the protection of India�s laws.  With this explanation the missionaries were expressly authorised to spread the faith, thus fulfilling the task entrusted to them by the Church.�

In 1955 a bill came before Parliament �which if passed would have seriously handicapped the work of missionaries�, because it �provided for a strict system of regulating conversions.� The issue was conversions brought about by force, fraud or material inducements.  But no less a person than the Prime Minister of India, Pandit Nehru, came to the rescue of Christian missions and persuaded the Parliament to throw out the bill.  �I fear that this bill,� said Pandit Nehru, �will not help very much in suppressing evil methods but might very well be the cause of great harassment to a large number of people.  We should deal with those evils on a different plane, in other ways, not in this way which may give rise to other ways of coercion.  Christianity is one of the important religions of India, established here for nearly two thousand years.  We must not do anything which gives rise to any feeling of oppression or suppression in the minds of our Christian friends and fellow-countrymen.�

The signing of the defence pact between the U.S.A. and Pakistan in 1954 had, however, made the Government of India somewhat strict about granting of visas to foreign, particularly American, missionaries.  �The Catholic Bishops of India,� writes Plattner, �found it very difficult to reconcile themselves to this new turn of affairs, which they considered highly unpleasant and unjustifiable.  In March 1955 a delegation under the leadership of Cardinal Gracias of Bombay requested an interview with Prime Minister Nehru and Home Minister Pandit Pant, who had succeeded Dr. Katju.� Pandit Nehru, according to the Secretary of the Catholic Bishops� Conference of India, was �sympathetic but pointed out that the problem was political and national, not religious.� Pandit Pant, on the other hand, gave a practical advice which proved very helpful to the missions in the long run.  �He could not understand,� continues Plattner, �why the Catholic Church, which had a long and historic existence in the country, had not succeeded in training Indian priests and professors for seminaries.  The interview helped us to realise that in every sphere we have to recruit locally and train selected candidates for responsible positions.� The Home Minister of India, it seems, had no objection to the sale of a narcotic provided the vendors were native.  Nor did he see any danger in the spread of a network financed and controlled from abroad.  The lesson that the East India Company had subjugated the country by training and employing native mercenaries, had not been learnt.

What the network was doing was revealed soon after by the report of an Enquiry Committee appointed by the Government of Madhya Pradesh.  �In the words of the Secretary of the Catholic Bishops� Conference of India,� reports Plattner, �it created a sensation everywhere in India.  For the Committee roundly condemned the efforts of Catholic and Protestant missionaries among the aboriginal tribesmen of the State�s remote rural areas.  The converts, it was alleged, were estranged from the ways of their own country with the express purpose of creating a �State within a State�.  It expressed the fear that one day the Christian community would assert its right to form a separate state as the Moslems of Pakistan had done.�

The appointment of the Committee was occasioned by �the activities of some Mission organisations in the recently Merged States of Raigarh, Udaipur, Jashpur and Surguja� where trouble had been reported soon after their merger in Madhya Pradesh.  �This strip of land,� recorded the Committee, �comprising Surguja, Korea, Jashpur, Udaipur, Chang-bhakar and some other small States of Orissa is surrounded by Bihar and Orissa States and is inhabited by a very large percentage of aboriginals.  The tract is full of forests and mineral resources.  Foreign Missionaries from Belgium and Germany had established themselves in Bihar and Orissa and also in Jashpur in 1834 and had succeeded in converting a very large number of people to Christianity.  In order to consolidate and enhance their prestige, and possibly to afford scope for alien interests in this tract, the Missionaries were reported to be carrying on propaganda for the isolation of the Aboriginals from other sections of the community, and the movement of Jharkhand was thus started.  This movement was approved by the Aboriginals, local Christians and Muslims and the Missionaries sought to keep it under their influence by excluding all the nationalist elements from this movement. The demand for Adiwasisthan was accentuated along with the one for Pakistan in 1938.  The Muslim League is reported to have donated Rs. One Lakh for propaganda work.  With the advent of political independence in India, the agitation for Adiwasisthan was intensified with a view to forming a sort of corridor joining East Bengal with Hyderabad, which could be used for a pincer movement against India in the event of a war between India and Pakistan.�

The missionaries had not welcomed the merger of these states with Madhya Pradesh.  �On the integration of the States,� according to the Committee, �Missionaries became afraid of losing their influence.  So they started an agitation, playing on the religious feelings of the primitive Christian converts, representing the Madhya Pradesh Government as consisting of infidels and so on.  Some of the articles published in Missionary papers, such as �Nishkalank�, �Adiwasi� and �Jharkhand� were hardly distinguishable from writings in Muslim papers advocating Pakistan, before the 15th of August 1947.  The Missionaries launched a special attack on the opening of schools by Madhya Pradesh Government under the Backward Area Welfare Scheme.�

Simultaneously, Mr. Jaipal Singh, member of the Constituent Assembly and President of the All India Adiwasi Mahasabha, �accused the Bihar Government with failure to serve the people by not insisting on the integration of those states with Bihar.� A pro-Bihar agitation was started in November 1947 and some Congressmen from Bihar were roped in. These Congressmen, however, became wise when they saw what the agitation was aimed at.  They �brought to the District Superintendent of Police�s notice that there was a conspiracy between Pakistan and some American and German missionaries to instigate the aboriginals to take Possession of their own land commonly known as Jharkhand.� The Jharkhand News reported on March 6, 1949 a controversy �between Shri Jaipalsingh and Professor Hayward, his secretary, as regards the person who had received the amount of 50,000 from the Muslim League.�

The Government of Madhya Pradesh had to take notice of the agitation worked up by Christian missionaries.  It had already led to violence in the adjoining States merged with Orissa.  The missionaries had become too powerful in Madhya Pradesh to be ignored any longer.  �It must be noticed,� recorded the Committee, �that about 30 different Missions are working in Madhya Pradesh with varying number of centres in each district.  Almost the entire Madhya Pradesh is covered by Missionary activities and there is hardly any district where a Mission of one denomination or the other is not operating in some form or the other.  More than half the people of Madhya Pradesh (57.4 percent) consist of members of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes and it is amongst these that Missionary activities are mostly confined.�

The appointment of the Committee was announced on April 16, 1954 by a press note of the Government of Madhya Pradesh which said, �Representations have been made to Government from time to time that Christian Missionaries either forcibly or through fraud and temptations of monetary and other gain convert illiterate aboriginals and other backward people thereby offending the feelings of non Christians.  It has further been represented that Missions are utilised directly or indirectly for purposes of extra-religious objectives.  The Christian Missionaries have repudiated these allegations and have asserted on the other hand that their activities are confined solely to religious propaganda and towards social, medical and educational work.  The Missionaries have further alleged that they are being harassed by non-Christian people and local officials.  As agitation has been growing on either side, the State Government consider it desirable in the public interest to have a thorough inquiry made into the whole question through an impartial Committee.�

The Committee had seven members including the Chairman, Dr. Bhawani Shankar Niyogi, retired Chief justice of the Nagpur High Court.  Mr. K.C. George, a professor in the Commerce College at Wardha, represented the Christian community.  It started by studying the material in government files.  As a result it was led to enlarge its terms of reference to include political and extra-religious activities also.  �The material gathered in the initial stages of the enquiry revealed to the Committee that its significance far transcended the bounds of any one country or region in the world and that it was calculated to have world-wide repercussions.  That compelled the Committee to view the subject as an integral part of a larger picture on the broad canvas of world history.  The Committee had to consult a number of published books, pamphlets and periodicals for determining the nature and form of their recommendations.�

The terms of reference enabled the Committee to evolve a Questionnaire which was sent to such individuals and organisations as could help in the investigation.  It received 385 replies to the Questionnaire, 55 from Christians and 330 from non-Christians.  Besides, the Committee toured 14 districts in which it visited 77 centres, contacted 11,360 persons, and received 375 written statements.  Hospitals, schools, churches, leper homes, hostels, etc., maintained by various missions were among the Christian institutions visited by the Committee.  The persons interviewed came from 700 villages.

�In all these places,� recorded the Committee, �there was unanimity as regards the excellent service rendered by the Missionaries in the fields of education and medical relief.  But on the other hand there was a general complaint from the non-Christian side that the schools and hospitals were being used as means of securing converts.  There was no disparagement of Christianity or of Jesus Christ, and no objection to the preaching of Christianity and even to conversions to Christianity.  The objection was to the illegitimate methods alleged to be adopted by the Missionaries for this purpose, such as offering allurements of free education and other facilities to children attending their schools, adding some Christian names to their original Indian names, marriages with Christian girls, money-lending, distributing Christian literature in hospitals and offering prayers in the wards of in-door patients.  Reference was also made to the practice of the Roman Catholic priests or preachers visiting new-born babies to give �ashish� (blessings) in the name of Jesus, taking sides in litigation or domestic quarrels, kidnapping of minor children and abduction of women and recruitment of labour for plantations in Assam or Andaman as a means of propagating the Christian faith among the ignorant and illiterate people.  There was a general tendency to suspect some ulterior political or extra-religious motive, in the influx of foreign money for evangelistic work in its varied forms.  The concentration of Missionary enterprise on the hill tribes in remote and inaccessible parts of the forest areas and their mass conversion with the aid of foreign money were interpreted as intended to prepare the ground for a separate independent State on the lines of Pakistan.�

To start with, Christian missions put up a show of cooperation with the Committee.  But they realized very soon that the Committee was well-informed and meant business.  �The authorities and members of the Roman Catholic Church cooperated with the Committee in their exploratory tours in Raigarh, Surguja, Bilaspur, Raipur and Nimar districts.  Shri G. X. Francis, President of the Catholic Regional Council, and Shri P. Lobo, Advocate, High Court, Nagpur, associated themselves with the Committee.  But subsequently the Catholic Church withdrew its co-operation, not only filing statement of protest, but also moving the High court for a Mandamus Petition (Miscellaneous Petition No. 263 of 1955).�

The Petition was dismissed by the High Court on April 12, 1956, �holding that it was within the competence of the State Government to appoint a fact-finding Committee to collect information and that there had been no infringement of any fundamental rights of the petitioner.� At the same time the High Court made some adverse remarks about certain questions in the Questionnaire.  The Committee considered the remarks and �informed the petitioner and the public that none of the questions represented either the views of the Committee or any individual member thereof and our anxiety to have information on various points was due to our desire to find out to what extent, if any, could any activity be considered to infringe the limits of public order, morality and health imposed by the Constitution.�

The Report of the Committee, published in July 1956, presented the �history of Christian missions with special reference to the old Madhya Pradesh and Merged States.� Coming to the agitation for Jharkhand, it gave the background.  �The separatist tendency,� it said, �that has gripped the mind of the aboriginals under the influence of the Lutheran and Roman Catholic Missions is entirely due to the consistent policy pursued by the British Government and the Missionaries.  The final segregation of the aborigines in the Census of 1931 from the main body of the Hindus considered along with the recommendations of the Simon Commission which were incorporated in the Government of India Act, 1935 apparently set the stage for the demand of a separate State of Jharkhand on the lines of Pakistan.�

The subsequent formation of the Adiwasi Mahasabha and the Jharkhand Party followed in stages as the separatist forces gathered strength.  �This attempt of the Adiwasis,� observed the Report, �initiated by the Christian section thereof is a feature which is common to, the developments in Burma, -Assam and Indo-China among the Karens, Nagas and Amboynes. This is attributed to the spirit of religious nationalism awakened among the converted Christians as among the followers of other religions.  But the idea of change of religion as bringing about change of nationality appears to have originated in the Missionary circles� Thus while the Census officer isolates certain sections of the people from the main bodies, the Missionaries by converting them give them a separate nationality so that they may demand a separate State for themselves.�

Next, the Report considered �Christian post-war world policy,� and quoted from several Christian sources.  The aim of this policy in India was three fold: �(1) to resist the progress of national unity... (2) to emphasise the difference in the attitude towards the principle of coexistence between India and America... (3) to take advantage of the freedom accorded by the Constitution of India to the propagation of religion, and to create a Christian party in the Indian democracy on lines of the Muslim League ultimately to make out a claim for a separate State, or at least to create a �militant minority�.�

The newly adopted Constitution of India, according to the Committee, had encouraged the controllers of Christian missions in Europe and America to concentrate on India.  �Although Europe itself,� observed the Report, �required �re-Evangelisation and re-Christianisation� because of the spread of the Gospel of Communism according to Marx, the W.C.C. and I.M.C. turned their attention to India and other colonial countries.  They were encouraged by the promulgation of our Constitution which set up a secular State with liberty to propagate any religion in the country.  They noted that the Churches in India were growing steadily in number partly by natural increase, partly from evangelisation and that the mass or community movements to Christianity did not die out though slowed down, but that the spiritual life of the congregation was low and that the Indian Church lacked economic maturity.  Though India has the most highly organised National Christian Council it had to be largely paid for from abroad.  Even the institutional activities of Missions, viz., schools, colleges and hospitals were dependent upon foreign support.  Even the ordinary congregational life and pastoral duty still required some form of foreign aid.�

The Report surveyed the state of religious liberty in various countries in the past and at present.  It cited High Court Judgments in India to the effect that religious liberty is �not an absolute protection to be interpreted and applied independently of other provisions of the Constitution.� Then it turned to �missionary activities in Madhya Pradesh since independence as disclosed by oral and documentary evidence.� This was the most substantial as well as the most revealing part of the Report.  It laid bare what the Christian Missions had been doing not only in Madhya Pradesh but all over India in the name of exercising religious liberty.

There was a detailed account of �how this programme of mass proselytisation was inspired and financed by foreigners� and how the paid pracharaks of various missions had fanned out in the rural and tribal areas.  The pracharaks were particularly noticeable in the erstwhile Native States which had kept missionary operations under control before their merger in Madhya Pradesh.  �It is thus indisputably clear,� recorded the Report, �that financial assistance from abroad had been extended in far more liberal manner than even before the Constitution of India was promulgated, and that it is mainly with this help that Mission organisations are carrying on proselytisation amongst backward tribes, especially in areas freshly opened.�

This greatly extended scale of missionary operations was dressed up ideologically in a new theological concept.  �It may be recalled,� commented the Report, �that the expression �Partnership in Obedience� came into vogue at the meeting of the Committee of the international Missionary Council held at Whitby in 1947 (page 94, World Christian Handbook, 1952) and it has a bearing on the expression �need of particular churches to be rooted in the soil and yet supranational in their witness and obedience� (page 29, ibid.). These particular churches are in the old Mission fields �which are touched by new nationalisms independent in temper and organisation and yet needing help from other churches� (page 29, ibid.). The expression �Partnership in Obedience� was being interpreted variously and it was after discussion at a meeting of the Lutheran World Federation Executive and also of the Executive of the World Council of Churches held at Geneva in 1951, that it came to be interpreted as implying full and unreserved co-operation between the old and the younger churches in the effort of extending the Kingdom of God.� In plain language, the pompous proclamation meant that missions and churches in Europe and America which provided the finance would continue to plan, direct and control missionary activities in India.

The Report quoted Christian sources to show the extent to which Christianity in India was dependent on foreign finance.  Rolland Allan had written in his book, The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church, published in 1949, that �it is money, money everywhere, all the time, everything depends on money.� In another book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul�s or Our�s, published by the same author in 1953, he had felt �sad to sit and watch a stream of Christian visitors calling upon a Missionary and to observe that in nearly every case the cause which brings them is money.� Christianity in the Indian Crucible by Dr. E. Asirvatham had been published in 1955.  �One chief reason,� he had observed, �why Indian Christians in general still welcome foreign Missionaries is economy; it is an open secret that the Indian Church is not yet out of the swaddling clothes, so far as its economic support is concerned.  To give an extreme illustration only Rs. 6,000 of the total income of Rs. 1,12,500 of the National Christian Council of India... is from Indian sources and the rest comes from the Mission Boards abroad.� It was curious that Christianity was presented as a two-thousand years old banyan tree when it came to its right to spread its tentacles, and as a tender seedling when it came to its capacity for growing up on its own.

The Report provided details of how much had been contributed by which Western country to the total of Rs. 29.27 crores received by Christian missions in India from January 1950 to June 1954: