Conversion and the Rise of Hindu Fundamentalism: A Case Study from Tamil Nadu, South India

Joe Arun Campion Hall Oxford University

1. Introduction Conversion has been one of the issues used by Hindu fundamentalists both in symbolic and instrumental senses to organise Hindus against religious minorities in India, particularly against Christians. Consistently, Hindu fundamentalists have questioned that in the mass conversions to Christianity do not have any spiritual dimensions but it is only a political agenda of missionaries who by doing so destabilise the Hindu society and culture. Unfortunately by treating mass conversion of Hindus to Christianity only as a protest against the inequality of caste system and as an escape from poverty and marginalisation they experience in Hindu society Christians have not only answered effectively the question of the Hindu fundamentalists of the lack of spiritual dimension in conversion but also confirm it. This paper attempts to argue that conversion of Hindus does have spiritual dimension and it is the element that drives the oppressed Hindus convert to other religions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. The focus is here on Christianity. Often too simplistically, in the popular comprehension, Hindu fundamentalism is seen as an unprovoked reaction of Hindu fascists, attempting to decentre the secular fabric of Indian society. This thesis in fact serves the purposes of the religious minority communities and secularists (communists at the forefront of secular ideology) that only by insisting on the secular ideology and values, mostly of Indian constitution, can they possibly have some social order in the multi-religious Indian context. But it certainly fails to realise the fact that Hindu fundamentalism has been constructed mostly in opposition to the modernity and Christianity/Islam that came into India along with the British empire (Jaffrelot 1996: 11- 75; Gold 1994: 535 ff; Van der Veer 2000: 18- 24). More importantly, they have consistently shown that conversion is the most destabilising act that changes the demography and the character of India and therefore their aggressive opposition to conversion by reforming and organising themselves politically and socially is in every way justified.

Although there have been many factors that have contributed to the formation of Hindu fundamentalism, the issue of conversion was in fact one of the main factors that motivated the enunciation of Hindutva (Ram-Prasad 2003: 528). Therefore examining Hindu fundamentalism from the vantage point of the issue of conversion can better grasp and characterise Hindu fundamentalism than from any other point of view. In addition, this approach can provide better ways in which minority communities could defend their religious freedom than by seeing Hindu fundamentalism merely as politically motivated. Put simply, the paper lays bare the neglected relationship between conversion, especially to Christianity, and rise of Hindu fundamentalism in India. The paper is in three parts. The first part rehearses the ways in which Hindu fundamentalists argued against conversion and used it as an important factor in the formation of Hindu fundamentalism from the 1920s to the present and how Christians responded to Hindu fundamentalists poser on the conversion issue. The second part presenting two empirical cases of conversion to Christianity in Tamil Nadu gives a special emphasis to spiritual dimension of conversion to Christianity.1 The last part 2. Conversion and the Rise of Hindu Fundamentalism: a historical over view The ways in which the colonial administration functioned in India in the 1870s led to the first reaction of the Hindus who realised that their religion and society were in need of reform within and defence against outside threat. After successfully suppressing a strong civil revolt in northern India in 1857-8 the British monarchy took over India completely. The first act of the Empire was to enumerate, classify, and thereby control a quarter of a billion Indians (Van der Veer 2000: 19). In 1872, the population of India was divided in two lines: caste and religion. The frame of reference for the division was drawn on classical Hindu texts and made it a functional reality. This is not to suggest that the British invented caste and religion for India but the way in which these were then classified and recorded (to the extent that this classification became a tool for governance) continued to be applied all over India from that time until now. The division of the Hindu majority and Muslim minority, with their respective religious laws, became not only the electoral category that
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I have not included here the 1981 conversion of low caste Hindus to Islam in Meenakshipuram village in the southern Tamil Nadu since the present study focuses mainly on conversion to Christianity and its contributions to Hindu Fundamentalism. For studies on the 1981 case of conversion, see Khan 1981; Kalam 1984; Swarup 1986; Augustine 1981; Raj 1981; Wilfred 1983; Fernandes 1984.

helped form power structures but also the social category by which daily practices were structured and organised. Both religious organisations sent their representatives to political forums that became later fundamental to the conception and rise of religious nationalism. One powerful justification for the colonial rule was that the British were an enlightened race who had the duty to civilise the Hindus, who were divided obsessively on caste complexities and religious affiliations and guided by absurd rituals; the Indian Muslims were culturally backward (Inden 2000: 90-3; Van der Veer 2000: 21; Pandey 1990: 66ff; Dirks 1989). To strengthen such claims the missionaries and the colonial civil servants constructed texts and literature that further portrayed Hindus as a divided and backward society that warranted the colonial administration to put things in order; in addition, it was shown that this was also the opinion of the indigenous population (Dirks 2000; Raheja 2000). While the British Empire took control of India politically, many Christian missions were established all over India on a large scale. These missions proposed Christianity as a religion superior to the indigenous religions and there were mass conversions of Hindus to Christianity2. In Bengal, which was the nerve centre of the British Empire, many high caste Hindus converted to Christianity through the influence of the Protestant missionaries. Illustrative of this was the case of the missionary activity of John Muir3, a Scottish civil servant and Orientalist in the 1830s. He published literature to prove the supremacy of Christianity over Hinduism and if Christianity was the true religion then it should be proclaimed and the people must be saved (Young 1981: 73-80; Van der Veer 2001: 23-4). Muir defined what should be the criteria for a true religion: a miracle-working founder, holiness of scripture, and universality of scripture; by this he tried to prove that Hinduism was false (Kim 2003: 19). The Hindus who converted to Christianity became later prominent Christian thinkers, (for example Nilakanth Shastri, Pandita Ramabai, Sadu Sundar Singh and Narayan Vaman Tilak) who, like the missionaries, argued for the
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I should note here that I am not concerned with the conversion work of the Catholic church for the reasons that she had many versions of conversion, which differed largely from protestant and other evangelical Christian groups that actually had engaged aggressive conversions from 1870s until now. See Kim 2003: 88-131 for how the Catholics viewed conversion and in what ways in which the Protestants differed from. Cf. upanov 1999; Ballhatchet 1998. 3 John Muir ((1810-1888) served as an administrator in the north-western provinces and as a qualified Sanskritist he reorganised the Sanskrit College at Benares in the mid 1840s. His treatise on the supremacy of Christianity over Hinduism was published as Matapariksha, to which Hindu pandits were invited to respond. Although it was a very intellectual exercise Muirs writings did a lot to provoke Hindu sentiments. See for details of debate between Muir and the pandits Young (1981).

superiority of Christianity and invited Hindus to follow their way. Apart from this, mass conversion of outcastes (Depressed classes) all over India to Christianity increased the intensity of the aversion Hindus had towards the British Empire and Christian missionaries who spoke about Hinduism as a religion steeped in idolatry and inequality of caste system that were the opposites of individualist and utilitarian values of the secular West4. Many Hindu customs were prohibited by law and in tandem the missionaries engaged in active proselytisation and educational services (Jaffrelot 1996: 14). This provoked strong opposition from many Hindus who were forced to initiate internal reforms to make Hinduism compatible with the modernity of Europe. There were three strands in which the Hindus confronted western criticism of Hinduism (Jones 1989: 212-3; Kim 2003: 13). People like Ram Mohan Roy were able to see the equivalence of Christianity and Hinduism, based on the ethical core of religion; the second strand, proposed by Mahatma Gandhi, was that both Hinduism and Christianity were valid although each followed different paths; but the Hindu pandits argued for the supremacy of Hinduism over Christianity (Kim 2003: 13). Although Mahatma Gandhi did not have any problem with having Christianity in India he viewed the mass conversion of Hindus to Christianity as a threat to the unity and harmony of India and to the very fabric of Indian tradition. He construed it as the agenda of the British Raj and he even suggested the retention of foreign missionaries after independence (The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi XXVII: 204; also quoted in Kim 2003: 25). During this time opposition to conversion was more an intellectual idea than a political reality. For instance, Ram Mohan Roy made efforts to show the similarities between Hinduism and Christianity by appealing to the fact that both religions were more or less unified in their basic tenets and people like Mahatma Gandhi argued for the equality of both religions (Jones 1989: 212-3). Beyond the intellectual debate, the conversion issue led to the formation of many organisations that were meant to defend Indian culture and Hindu religion. Initially, they aimed at reforming Hinduism by going back to the golden age of Hindu Dharma by which a just society was formed, which was later according to them invaded by Muslim rulers (1200) and the British (1800) (Van der Veer 2000: 65; Jaffrelot 1996:
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On the contrary, Van der Veer (2001) has shown convincingly that in the times of colonial encounter between India and Britain religion played a vital role in the formation of Indian nationalism and British national culture. Therefore, it is wrong to label India as religious and Britain as secular categorically.

14). Later a militant strand of Hindu reform was born in the form of Arya Samaj

started in 1875 in Bombay by Dayananda Saraswati and, in a sense, this planted the seed of the Hindu fundamentalism that gave rise to so many Hindu fundamentalist organisations later, such as The Hindu MahaSabha (1915), Rashtriya Swayam Sewak (RSS-1925), Vishwa Hindi Parishad (VHP, 1960), and Jana Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), popularly called the Sangh Parivar ( legion) that promoted the Hindutva6 ideology of one culture, one nation and one people7. In that sense understanding Arya Samaj could help us understand and explain other fundamentalist organisations, more sharply, Hindu fundamentalism itself. One of the seminal writings of Dayananda, The Light of Truth, informs us that the ideology of Arya Samaj viewed Varna social hierarchy as the Hindu culture and the Hindu identity meant to be paradoxical to the Other (Muslims and Europeans); it described the Aryans of the Vedic era as a chosen people who had territory between the Himalayas and Vindya mountains, the Indus and Brahmaputra, and who spoke Sanskrit, the mother of all languages (Dayananda 1981: 248, 277-9). All this was aimed at constructing ethnic pride among the Hindus. More importantly, to counter Christian conversions, Arya Samaj imitated the conversion techniques of the Christian missionaries in its Shuddhi, a purification ritual used for pollution removal for high castes who came into contact with impure people (Dayananda 1981; Jaffrelot 1996: 16-17). One of the fundamental strategies of Arya Samaj was to assimilate those cultural traits that had provided superiority to Christianity and emulate these by discovering similar traits in Hindu scriptures and traditions and, in addition, it used every means to stigmatise other religions. In two chapters on the Bible and the Koran in his The Light of truth, Dayananda examined the idolatry of the Old Testament and the weak arguments of the Prophet and stigmatised Christianity and Islam as a threat to Hindus and their traditions. In this sense, the writings of Dayananda for Arya Samaj provided the ideological apparatuses and logic of cultural reform from which
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Before Arya Samaj the Hindu reform movement was started by Brahmo Samaj organised by the Calcutta aristocracy in the middle of the 19c. Arya Samaj was mainly upper middle class organisation and it was only RSS which began to have membership from lower middle classes see also Gold 1994: 537ff. 6 The term Hindutva is a neo-Sanskrit term, the Sanskrit masculine suffix, -tva has been added to Hindu to form an abstract term Hinduness (see Bhatt 2001: 77ff). 7 The term arya has many connotations. It basically refers to the early Indo-Aryans lived in the second millennium B.C.E. In modern Hindi the term means cultured or refined or noble, a meaning which highlighted by Hindu fundamentalist organisations. Arya Samaj means society of aryas, society of cultured Hindus following holy traditions inscribed in Vedas. See for more details on this Yadav (1976: 13) and Gold (1994: 534ff).

the entire Hindu fundamentalism and fundamentalist organisations would take inspiration later in history every time they needed to do so in organising the Hindu population of India. Many studies have revealed the fact that Arya Samaj with its ideology was instrumental in founding other more militant organisations like the Hindu MahaSabha, RSS, and VHP (Gold 1994; Jaffrelot 1996; Ludden 1999; Van der Veer 2000; Kim 2003; Ram-Prasad 2003). In particular, V.D. Sarvarkar gave the substance for Hindutva (Hinduness) through his writings, especially in his Hindutva: Who is a Hindu?, he explained that a nation should be construed as Hinduness on the basis of unity of geography, race and culture (Ram-Prasad 2003: 527). To be a Hindu means considering India as the Holy land. This is what differentiates Hindus from Christians and Muslims. This was the only effective way, suggested Savarkar, in which Hindus as one united community could confront Christianity and Islam and exposed the diversity and heterogeneity of Hinduism. This Hinduness became gradually highly useful to create us (Hindus) and them (Christians/Muslims) and laid the foundations for Hindu fundamentalism, a Hindu nation. Specifically mentioning conversions, Savarkar said that Hindus who were converted to Christianity and Islam were still Hindus because they inherited Hindu blood in their veins and they share territory and race with Hindus; but they did not belong to the Hindu nation because they were no longer part of the Sanskritic civilisation. This was due to their taking on a new cult and having as their holy land not India but Arabia and Palestine (1969: 91-113). However Savarkar invited Indian Christians and Muslims to join by showing allegiance to India as the Holy Land and Motherland. It greatly inspired Keshav Baliram Hedgewar who formed RSS to revive Hindu nationalism that had been suspended for quite some time by the Nehruvian secularism in the 1930s. Later, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar drew inspiration from Savarkar for strengthening the Hindutva ideology that can be found in his We, or Our Nationhood Defined. Like Savarkar, Golwalkar too saw that Hindu culture was becoming weakened by outside influence and he proposed that Hindus should be united to form a Hindu rashtra (Hindu nation), an extension of Savarkars Hindu state (Golwalkar 1939; Gold 1994; Jafferlot 1993; Bhatt 2001). More importantly, Golwalkar, following the Nazism of Germany and the Fascism of Italy, suggested that only violence could bring Muslims and Christians into the Hindu fold (1970: 26; cited also in Bhatt 2001: 146-7). Savarkar, Hedgewar and Golwalkar were the three seminal leaders who laid down the foundations for the Hindu fundamentalism that we have 6

today in India; this was conceived against the reality of conversion to Christianity and Islam and in particular against the influence of the Christian missions in India. The issue of conversion continued to be the most contentious element in the relationship between Hindus and Christians even after independence. It was also one of the central concerns of the Indian Constituent Assembly, particularly from 194749, that provided a legal base for religious freedom as one of the main fundamental rights in the constitutions (Kim 2003: 37-58). The Hindu leaders, who had the experience before independence of opposing mass conversion that had led to the issue of so many laws the Regulation Act in 1832, the Raigarh State Conversion Act in 1936, the Patna State Freedom of Religion Act of 1942 and the Udaipur State Anticonversion Act in 1946 putting legal obstacles to conversion, were particular that the framing of the constitutions of India should specifically mention the prevention of conversion. These Hindu leaders consistently viewed conversion as something alien, a symbol of oppression and enslaving power imposed upon the people of India against their will, and therefore essentially evil and wrong and complained that Christian conversions were organised by using institutions like hospitals and schools and this caused disorder in India, whereas the Christians treated conversion as an important element of their religion and vital to religious freedom (Kim 2003: 50, 51). In 1954, the Madhya Pradesh state government launched a massive enquiry into missionaries in the state who were alleged to have used illegitimate means to convert tribals and backward classes. The committee led by Bhawani Shankar Niyogi, retired Chief Justice and a Christian representative in it, presented a 936 page report on missionary activities to the state government on 18 April 1956, which was called Niyogi report8. This report said that the Christian churches with their money from the West carried out large-scale proselytisation among backward tribes and low castes. For this purpose, the report said, the missionaries had used their schools, hospitals and orphanages. More than all these what provoked angry protest by Hindus was that the case noted in the report how some protestant churches abused and denigrated Hindu deities (The Nyogi Report I: 106-22). This was picked up by RSS, which had a strong presence in Madhya Pradesh, and saw the conversion activities of Christian missions

Of the 385 questionnaires only 55 received from Christians and the rest from non-Christians and among the 11,360 people interviewed only 20 percent were Christians... See Kim 2003: 62-4 for details of making of the report.

as a direct threat to the ideology of RSS and its political wing Jana Sangh9. These Hindu groups who advocated theocratic government and ethnic nationalism over the secular nationalism of the Indian National Congress considered conversion as a denial of Hindu identity and therefore a rejection of being Indian and the missionary as an instrument of foreign oppression (Kim 2003: 63). Jana Sangh launched an anti-foreign missionary week during which the Hindu fundamentalist organisations took strong roots all over the state and led to the formation of similar groups all over India. The neighbouring state of Orissa took the conversion issue more seriously than the Madhya Pradesh government. In 1967, it passed the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act and in 1978 the Arunachal Pradesh passed the Freedom of Indigenous Faith Act that condemned missionary activities and prohibited conversion from Hinduism. From then on there have been many instances in which the missionaries and the Hindu fundamentalists clashed with each other. measures to contain this. Relatively, there was much less tension between religious communities until the 1990s when Hindu fundamentalist organisations rose to prominence and sharpened their Hindutva ideology of one nation, one culture and one people through their participation in active politics through BJP (Bhatt 2001: 149ff). One of the main reasons for the Hindu uprising once again was the conversion issue. Although in the 1998 elections the BJP party, with the strong support of the Sangh Parivar, won many parliament seats so as to take over power at the centre that many feared would cause communal clashes, it was in fact only the alleged mass conversion in tribal areas by Christian missionaries that created a deep divide between the religious communities. This prompted Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the prime minister and leader of the BJP, to call for a national debate on conversion. Hindu fundamentalist organisations such as RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal used the issue to build their support bases in the tribal areas by showing effectively to the general public that Christians were trying to destroy Hinduism. To counter this, the Parivar launched a reconversion programme popularly named Ghar Vapsi (home coming) in which the Hindu activists reconverted tribals from Christianity to Hinduism. To complement this they also started schools and other welfare activities in the tribal areas (Shah 1999: 312-5; Kim 2003: 156-8).
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State governments have used ad hoc

Jana Sangh was started as a political party when the leaders of RSS were increasingly unhappy about the ways in which the central government containing missionary activities. Jana Sangh became later Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

This caused serious communal violence in many places in the northern states, particularly in Gujarat and Orissa, in which many Hindu activists started attacking Christian missionaries. A much publicised case was that of the killing of Graham Staines, with his two sons, an Australian missionary who worked among leprosy patients. The Christians in the two states responded to this with protest rallies and their leaders condemned the attacks as a deliberate campaign of Hindu fundamentalist organisations with the blessings of the central government (Martin 1999; National Christian Council Review August 1999: 607-12). The Hindu organisations refuted the argument of the Christians by saying that the root cause of communal violence was only the deliberate act of the Christian missionaries who abused and attacked Hindu deities (Shenoy 1999). The Hindu activists identified conversion as violence against humanity and therefore evil and unacceptable and as an attack on Hindu nationhood; it portrayed, they argued, the inherent intolerant nature of Christianity (Kim 2003: 166-9). From then on the Hindu fundamentalist organisations used the issue of conversion to incite religious sentiments of Hindus by which they aimed at building Hindu India. 3. Two cases of conversion and rise of fundamentalism Case 110: Pappanallur village lies in the northern part of Tamil Nadu, 93 km south of Chennai city, in Madurantagam taluk of the Kanchipuram district. As elsewhere in Tamil Nadu, the village is, socially and geographically, as in a typical Tamil village, divided into Ur and Colony. The former is the residential area of the high castes and other low castes and the latter is the residential area for the Paraiyars, one of the three major outcastes in Tamil Nadu (the others are the Pallars and the Arunthathiyars Chakkiliyars) 11. The population of the village is 1135 of which the Paraiyars are 433 and the Vanniyars 702. The Paraiyars are organised into four vagaiyaras, literally meaning etcetera connotatively division or lineage (Moffatt: 1979:157) Taliyari, Theradi, Sanar and Dhoti. Each vagaiyara traces its origin not only to its ancestors but also by means of myths. Unlike the past, except for ten families, all the other Paraiyars have a minimum of one or two acres of land, some of which they bought
The data is drawn from my field study in the village on the conflict between the Paraiyars and the Vanniyars. 11 Pallars are the dominant outcaste group (64%) in the southern districts such as Thirunelveli and Ramanathapuram. The Arunthathiyars are concentrated in Coimbatore (70%) and Madurai districts. More than 94% of Paraiyars live mainly in the northeast part of Tamil Nadu.
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from the Reddiyars who sold their lands and settled in the nearby towns and in Chennai, and some were forcefully expropriated as Dargos12 land. Most of them, for their livelihood, work on the land in cultivating paddy in wetland and millets and pulses in dry land. A few go to Chennai city, mostly to suburban centres for coconut tree tapping. All the Paraiyars were Hindus and part of the village until 1941 when they were converted to Christianity after a conflict between them and the Vanniyars in the village. In 1939, the Paraiyars distinctly remember, on the day of the Pongal festival, after they had chased the cattle, a part of the festival, some of the Vanniyar youth led the cattle into the fields where the Paraiyars had been cultivating pulses and destroyed the pulse plants. As soon as the Paraiyars heard about this, more or less fifteen Paraiyars went to chase away the cattle from their fields. While doing so they beat up some milch cows to the extent that two cows died on the spot. This infuriated the Vanniyars who went into the Colony in large numbers, burnt some of the huts of the Paraiyars, and beat up Paraiyar men and women. This then led to a violent riot between the Ur and the Colony. Although there was no death, more than twenty Paraiyars and five Vanniyar men sustained serious injuries. The Vanniyars lodged a complaint against the Paraiyars that they were creating caste conflicts in the village. The police from Achirapakkam arrested about hundred men and women from the colony and ten men from the Ur. The Vanniyars with their influence bailed out their men but the Paraiyars were very helpless For the Paraiyars this was the first time they had been to a police station and they did not have a clue about how they should go about getting out. Asirvatham, one of the Paraiyars, who had some contacts with the Cheyur Catholic parish, ten miles from Pappanallur village, proposed that they should go to Cheyur to meet the parish priest, Father Paul, who would probably help them get out on bail. So a few Paraiyars went to Cheyur and narrated the whole incident to Father Paul who promised to do what was necessary. Since the parish priest had a good rapport with the police, he persuaded them to release the Paraiyars. The elder Paraiyars have vivid memories today of how the priest brought them from the police station and gave each family ten kilos of rice. One of them said, if Father Paul was not there to help us we would not have survived the attack of the Vanniyars.
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The term dargos comes from Urdu word darkhast for petition. This is the system instituted by the British in Chengalpattu area in 1863 by which a cultivator could petition to the government for permanent patta title to the land that he had been cultivating for a long time (Moffatt: 1979:73).

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After the event, Father Paul began to visit the Colony regularly. He talked to them about how they should become economically self-sufficient and the importance of educating their children. Being impressed by Father Pauls concern for them and his support to them, both moral and material, the Paraiyars expressed the wish to become Christians. Some Paraiyars claim that it was the priest who asked them to convert to Christianity since he thought that from within Hinduism the Paraiyars would not be able to change the situation. Contrary to the above two views the high castes maintain that the Paraiyars became Christians because they were given Bulgur wheat and rice. The Catholic priest played on the Paraiyars weakness for food, as soon as they see food they will be ready to do anything, said Kannappa Gounder. To which the Paraiyar youth argue, we accept our grandparents became Christians for wheat, but you should not forget that that was only way we could get out of the domination of the Ur people. We have no regrets argue the Paraiyar youth. While the debate continues what we are certain about is that the Baptismal register kept in Cheyur parish gives us the evidence that on 19th June 1941 forty-nine Paraiyars, and later on 8th August in that same year, twenty-eight Paraiyars had received baptism. Others gradually were converted to Christianity and, by the year 1949, the whole Colony of the Paraiyars had become completely Christian. The Vanniyars say that they were not aware of the baptism but they came to know about the conversion only when Father Paul celebrated mass in the Colony. Initially they expressed their displeasure about this to some of the Paraiyars saying that it was a bad precedent to allow outsiders to become involved in the affairs of the village and this did not contribute to the unity of the village. The Ur council took it up in one of its meeting during which the Paraiyars were forced to promise that although they were now Christians they would continue to do all the services they had done when they were Hindus, including drumming at funerals and village festivals, especially at festivals in Hindu temples. More importantly, the Hindus (mostly Brahmins) planned to organise a pilgrimage (paatha yaathrai) to the holy site of Thirupathi Venkateswarar temple in Andhra Pradesh state. From 1950s onwards the Hindus of the village started organising pilgrimages on a large scale in which many Hindus were asked to take part so that they could stop conversions to Christianity. In the village council it was decided that every family should pay two bags of paddy or Rs. 100 ( 1.5) for the maintenance of temples of the village. Some of the leaders contacted the Hindu religious leaders at Kanchi Mutt in 11

Kanchipuram town for financial support to safeguard the Hindus in the village who they said would be soon converted by Christian missionaries. Immediately, Kannappa Gounder, a former village leader said, the Mutt sanctioned a substantial amount of money to Pappanallur temples. For quite some time there had been communal tension between the two groups which was mostly seen as a caste conflict rather than a religious conflict, although the line between religion and caste in the village was so much blurred that it was not easy to categorise the conflicts either along caste or religious lines. But what happened after the conversion of the Paraiyars helps us believe that Hindus had started organising aggressively against the Paraiyar Christians. Illustrative of this was the fact that many Hindu youths of the village were given a specific responsibility not only to protect the temples and but also to create disturbances when the Christians had their mass in the Paraiyar Colony. Every time mass was celebrated in the colony Hindu youth used to throw stones at the church buildings to disrupt the mass. Later, in the 1980s, when the Hindu Munnani (Hindu Front) was formed in Tamil Nadu in the context of conversion to Islam in Meenakshipuram village, which we will discuss soon, more than twenty five youths from Pappanallur joined the front and took part in various events which the front organised to unite the Hindus in Tamil Nadu. In the village the high castes formed an association called Thirupathi Bajanai Sabha that regularly held meetings to discuss not only rituals in the village temples and pilgrimages but also how to counter Christian missionaries influence in the village. At the time of field study done in the village in 2002, the Hindus of the village considered the conversion of the Paraiyars in 1941 as the way in which Christian missionaries spread their religion by giving money and food to the Paraiyars. They argued that this largely contributed to the creation of strong Hindu fundamentalist sentiments in the village. However many Paraiyars said that the high castes used the conversion idea to create divisions between the two religious communities and this enabled the high castes to deliberately disguise their genuine efforts to liberate themselves from untouchability. Case 2: Conversion in Madurai City In Madurai, one of the southern cities of Tamil Nadu, on 23 August 2002, more than two hundred Hindus were baptised by a team of pastors belonging to the Seventh Day Adventist Church, at its `Thirumarai Peruvizha', `South Tamil Conference', held at the Seventh Day Adventist Matriculation Higher Secondary School, at Ellis Nagar in the city (The Hindu, August 23, 2003). Most of them were drawn from places like 12

Dindigul, Ammapatti, Sankarankovil, Tirunelveli, Manamadurai and Sivaganga, by the pastors who had convinced them about the benefits money, free education for the children of the converts and jobs for the youth accruing to them if they embraced Christianity. The baptism was held as the final event on the second and final day of the conference. Earlier, the villagers were asked to affirm their commitment to Christianity by raising their hands to about 10 questions relating to Jesus Christ's second coming, their determination to go by the Ten Commandments and their determination to donate one-tenth of their monthly earnings for missionary work. During 2001, similar events had been held by the Seventh Day Adventist Church at the same place, said a member of the Church, and had converted 1,500 Hindus belonging to Sholavandan, Perayur, Tirumangalam and Melur to Christianity,. They were given clothes and money, and promised employment with the mission and free education for their children. According to an organiser of the baptism, the president of Seventh Day Adventist Church, India, D.R. Watts, a Canadian, had set a ``tough target'' for the pastors, entitled: `go one million', four months ago. The website, `maranatha.org', reveals the activities carried out by this congregation throughout the country, particularly in Nellore, Ongole and Tenali in Andhra Pradesh, where thousands of Hindus were converted to Christianity as a part of the major project of conversion by the Seventh Day Adventist church. Both press and TV media made much of the event that provoked the Hindus in Madurai and the Hindu Munnani (Hindu Front)13 led by Rama Gopalan to speak in the media against Christians in Tamil Nadu and pressurise the state government to
It is believed to be a Tamil Nadu wing of RSS. From the early 1980s, the RSS has been planning to penetrate Tamil Nadu, one of the few States which was free from the ideological and political influence of the Hindu communalists. Coimbatore was one of the prime targets selected by the RSS, just as Kanyakumari district and some other pockets in southern Tamil Nadu, where the composition of the population provides the opportunity for creating hatred against the minorities, were targeted. The RSS set up the Hindu Munnani as its front for its political and communal activities in Tamil Nadu in 1980 and it became active in Coimbatore. For one-and-a-half decades now, the Hindu Munnani has been the platform of the RSS combine. As in many other urban industrial centres the pattern unfolded in a typical way. Religious processions were promoted - such as the Vinayaka Chathurthi procession, which was a new feature in Tamil Nadu. Just as the Ganesh Chathurthi processions in Maharashtra were used as a vehicle for communal mobilisation and propaganda against minorities, these processions sharply escalated tensions. Clashes took place even in Chennai as a result of such processions. (Frontline, October 22, 1993) Significantly, another front organisation set up by the RSS was the Tamil Nadu Hindu Merchants Association. This was used to rally Hindu merchants and to communalise commercial rivalries with Muslim traders. See Pandian (2000) for how the Sangh Parivar adapts to Tamil nationalism of the Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu.
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curb the conversions14. The event also appeared to be one of the main reasons why the state government, headed by Jayalalitha, Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK), who is portrayed as a sympathiser of the Sangh Parivar, promulgated an ordinance prohibiting conversion in October 2002, which was called the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance (published in the government gazette, October 5, 2002, no. 659, Part IV Section-2). The ordinance not only prohibits forcible conversion; it also hands out imprisonment and a huge fine to those found guilty of the offence and it requires all religious conversions to be reported to local magistrates. It is important to note that it was an ordinance, not a law, which needed urgently to be issued by the state governor, P.S. Rammohan Rao, since the State Legislative Assembly was not in session to pass a law. Stating the reasons for such urgency for an ordinance, the explanatory note attached to the ordinance, signed by A. Krishnankutty Nair, secretary to the government law department, said that the government received serious reports of conversions by use of force or allurement or by fraudulent means and it further said that it would act as a deterrent against the antisocial and vested interest groups exploiting the innocent people belonging to depressed classes. To understand the background of such an explanatory note one has to visit the Marina beach in Chennai where the Protestant churches and the Baptists churches that have links to the USA regularly organise massive Charismatic conventions. These occasions are used to propagate Christianity aggressively by the churches and are offensive to the beach goers in hot summer days. They often are flooded with leaflets and flyers asking them to believe in Jesus and if they do not do so they were told they will only go to hell. Behind all this there are many organisations funded by different churches abroad which run biblical colleges to train ministers whose only aim is to convert as many as possible. It is an industry in itself (cf. website: www.forerunnerindia.com). Meanwhile, Christians and Muslims vehemently opposed the ordinance and organised rallies and token fasts to express their views against the action of the state
14

According to the 1991 census, there are 19,640,284 in India that constitutes 2.34 per cent of the Indian population. Catholics form 50 percent of the total Christian population, 40 per cent are Protestants (many distinct persuasions and churches such as Church of South India (CSI), Pentecostal, and seventh day Adventist) 7 percent Orthodox Christians and 6 per cent belong to indigenous sects. Of 2.34 per cent Christian population 16.18 per cent are in Tamil Nadu. In the total Christian population over 50 percent are from the untouchable castes, 15 to 20 per cent are tribal in origin and the upper caste Christians are largely from the Konkan coast and Kerala. See DSouza 1993 ; Rowena 2003)

14

government. On 24 October 2002, Christians and Muslims organised a massive fasting prayer at St. Andrews church, Chennai, and on that day more than six thousand educational institutions run by both Christians and Muslims remained closed (The Hindu, 24 October 2002). Most of the speakers in the function from different political parties and non-political organisations viewed the ordinance as an agenda of the Sangh Parivar done through the Jayalalitha government that was alleged to be making plans to join the BJP-led alliance at the centre. Although there was apparently a certain unity between all the Christian denominations in their protest against the state government for its ordinance, the Catholic Church had a different view of the ordinance itself from that of the Protestant churches. In principle the Catholic Church was itself against forced conversion, but it feared that there was every chance of Hindu fundamentalists in Tamil Nadu as elsewhere in India abusing the ordinance for their own political ends. Vincent Concessao, Archbishop of Delhi, Vice-President of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI), said that he had no quarrel with the ordinance but he was afraid of the BJP led Hindu fundamentalist groups against minorities and to explain the position of the Catholic church, he suggested, to refer to the Catholic Churchs Vatican II document (No. 4) where it is clearly stated that it would be an abuse of ones own right and that of others to convert somebody forcefully to Christianity (quoted in Joshua 2002). However, the mainstream churches the Catholic Church and the Church of South India (CSI) accepted that there were some fringe group churches, probably referring to groups like the Seventh Day Adventist church, which were involved in an aggressive evangelisation that in fact embarrassed the mainstream churches and left them in an uncomfortable position that their sincere efforts to defend the charitable activities of their churches were weakened. To avoid such a situation the mainstream churches argued that people converted to other religions from Hinduism because of the caste discrimination within Hinduism; instead of reforming Hinduism the Hindu organisations made laws to protect the oppressive caste hierarchy and untouchability (Vyas 2002; cf. Fernandez 1984; Wilfred 1983). As seen by Kim (2003:172), the view that conversion is a form of social protest and therefore a socio-political activity removed the spiritual dimension

15

in the act of conversion, which in fact helped the Hindu organisations see conversion as a political threat to Hindus and their culture. Therefore, as expected by the Christians, the Hindu organisations in Tamil Nadu not only welcomed the ordinance but also used it as a powerful symbol by which they started organising the Hindus all over Tamil Nadu and propagated their Hindutva ideology. In Gandhinagar, Gujarat on 23 October, the BJP national president, Venkaiah Naidu, suggested that all other States should enact anti-conversion laws to stop conversions by allurement or force (The Hindu October 24, 2002). Talking to media persons after a meeting of the party's election campaign committee for Gujarat, Mr. Naidu attacked the Congress for what he called its "double standard'' - the party opposing the move in some States while its own party governments implemented anticonversion laws in some other States. To a question, Mr. Naidu said the BJP's manifesto for the Gujarat elections would include an assurance on anti-conversion law. Mr. Naidu disagreed that the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee's suggestion for a national debate on the issue had been given the go-by by the BJP. ``The debate is on in one form or another,'' Mr. Naidu said (Ibid). In Tamil Nadu, in sharp reaction to the spontaneous consolidation of minorities and secularists against the ordinance, Hindu leaders and heads of various Hindu temple organisations called Mutts extended `wholehearted' support to the Chief Minister, Jayalalitha, for taking a "bold and timely" step to stop conversions in the State. Participants at the one-day `Anti-conversion and Hindu awakening' conference, organised by the Hindu Awareness Movement in Madurai on 20 October 2002, called upon their cadres to "eschew casteist differences and untouchability'' so that a united Hindu society could be formed to counter the "alien threats to Hinduism'' and issued a stern warning to political parties opposing the ordinance under the "garb of secularism" (The Hindu, 21 October 2002).The Hindu voters will reject them in future,'' they said. The conference urged the members of the Assembly to set aside their political differences and accord legislative sanction to the ordinance and wanted other States to promulgate a similar ordinance. The concessions that are being extended to minority Christian and Muslim institutions should be provided for the Hindu institutions too, it said. The meeting called for stringent action against minority organisations, which threaten to close down their institutions and urged the Hindu

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leaders and mutt heads to take steps to form village-level committees for eradicating untouchability. On 31 October 2002, the Kanchi Sankarachraya, Jayendra Saraswati organised a massive conference in the Marina beach, Chennai, to which he had invited all caste associations and many Hindu organisations (The Hindu, 31 October 2002). It was aimed at providing an explanation of the merits of the Tamil Nadu ordinance for Hinduism and Hindu culture. This event in many ways was helpful to unify the divided Hindu population and particularly the Hindu fundamentalist organisations, particularly the Hindu Munnani, drew enormous support for their fundamentalist activities in Tamil Nadu. Justifying the need for the ordinance, the Hindu Munnani's founder-leader, Rama Gopalan said that each Hindu leader and Mutt should adopt a taluk to achieve the objective of forming conversion-free' zones. The conference was attended by a large number of cadres and senior leaders from the State's Sangh Parivar outfits, including the VHP, the RSS and the Hindu Munnani and the BJP. The heads of the mutts from Madurai, Thiruvaduthurai, Perur, Dharmapuram, Gowmaramadam and Vadalur endorsed the decision of the conference. The Hindu Temples' Protection Committee has commended Ms. Jayalalithaa for her bold decision in introducing the ordinance. In a statement in Tiruchi today, the State secretary of the Committee, L. Narayanan, said various committees and judicial commissions, which went into communal clashes in the past, strongly recommended a total ban on conversions. In November on 15 2002, Hindu Munnani organised a `Hindu uprising conference' in Salem held at Bose Maidan during which Rama Gopalan, its founder, urged Hindus to adopt Harijan children by giving them free uniforms, notebooks, textbooks. Gopalan called upon Hindus to take measures to eradicate untouchability. He urged the majority communities to collect signatures in support of the anti-conversion law. He said it was up to the people to ensure that the law was successfully implemented. As a step in that direction, he called for the setting up of "village vigilance committees'' to monitor and resist conversions. Calling conversion a proxy war waged by the minority communities against the majority communities, he said students studying in minority-run institutions were made to follow dual religions, which would not be conducive to preserve the heritage and tradition of the country.

17

Elsewhere in India, the VHP's international general secretary, Praveen Togadia, in his special address, said that the Tamil Nadu Government's ordinance was not against any religion. Neither Buddhists nor Parsees opposed it. Calling conversion a crime against society, the VHP leader said it would denationalise Bharath.' Mr. Togadia said the Supreme Court, in its historical ruling in 1977 in the Stanislaus vs. State of Madhya Pradesh case, held that the right to propagate one's religion did not include the right to convert. The All India vice-president of the Viswa Hindu Parishad, S.Vedantham, who also said the anti-conversion law came as a boon, and only when it was implemented could Hindu culture be protected. The `anti-conversion' conference, organised by he Hindu Awareness Movement, here on Sunday, is not intended to counter the agitation of the minorities against the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance, T.Thilagar, convener, has said. Addressing newspersons here today, Mr. Thilagar said Hindus, who were anguished at the "largescale conversions'' taking place in the State would wholeheartedly welcome the ordinance. The objective of the conference, he said, was to create an awakening in Hindus and unite them. Mutt heads from Tiruvavaduthurai, Madurai, Dharmapuram and Perur, participated. The Sangh Parivar (VHP-RSS-BJP) welcomed the Tamil Nadu Government ordinance prohibiting religious conversion by the use of force, allurement or by fraudulent means and demanded similar laws in the rest of the country. ``We welcome it. Similar laws exist in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa but they were never implemented. The other States should also follow suit,'' the RSS spokesman, M.G.Vaidya, told the media Conversion should be due to change of conscience and not due to allurements or force. Even the Supreme Court had said that right to freedom of religion provides for propagation not conversion,'' (The Hindu 08 October 2002). The two cases we have just described demonstrate sufficiently the fact that conversion has been central to the formation and rise of Hindu fundamentalism in Pappanallur village and in Tamil Nadu. That substantiates further what we have seen earlier about the rise of fundamentalism from the colonial times that rose sharply due to the issue of conversion. Conversion remains as an axis around which Hindu fundamentalists form their ideology to stigmatise the other as alien and threaten the other constantly to enhance cohesiveness among Hindus who otherwise are divided in terms of caste and particular religious beliefs. It also provided an opportunity for Hindus

18

and Christians to express their worldviews that furthered the divide between the two communities and gave a consolidation of Hindu fundamentalist organisations. 4. Conversion: Cultural Violence? Or Religious Freedom? Hindus and Christians held totally opposing views on conversion. Christians viewed conversion as vital to faith and religious freedom, and therefore essentially good and right but for Hindus conversion was something alien, a symbol of oppression and enslaving power imposed upon the people of India against their will, and therefore essentially evil and wrong (Kim 2003: 50). We need to discuss the two opposing views in our efforts to understand Hindu fundamentalism. Conversion as Violence and threat: Hindu response Hindus insisted that conversion is opposed to their view of retaining ones own dharma and to religious tolerance of Hinduism, on the contrary, for Christians, conversion is the core of their faith and it is a vital part of religious freedom (Kim 2003; Houtepen 1998; Gill 1983). More than Christians Hindus have taken the issue of conversion as one single factor that has to be dealt with by legislating laws against it and advocating physical violence against converters. First of all, conversion is violence against humanity and it is an evil to be fought against. Representing Hindus, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, the head of Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, wrote an open letter to the Pope in which he said that conversion is not merely violence against people; it is violence against people who are committed to non-violence (Saraswati 1999). More vehemently, David Frawly in a web site opposed conversion-accusing missionaries of perpetuating psychological violence against Hindus15. In addition, Hindus see conversion a part of the exploitation of poor people by imperialists and it has been an effective tool to destroy peoples history in India (Chowgule 1999; Kim 2003). Secondly, Hindus argue that conversion is an attack on Hindu nationhood (Dar 1999; Chowgule 1999). The concept of Hindu nationhood, Gold (1994) explains, originates from the Hindutva ideology set out by V.D. Sarvarkar, which was later taken up by every Hindu fundamentalist group. In contrast to the modern Western idea of nation of a composite and territorially defined political entity the notion of the Hindu nation refers to the culture and the people who lived from the Himalayas to the southern seas, from Iran to Singapore; the
15

see Missionary position in http://www.bjp.org/news/feb1799.html

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subcontinent is their motherland and Hinduness is the quality of their national culture (Golwalkar 1966: 83; also quoted in Gold 1994: 547; see also Jafferelot 1996: 25-32). Muslims and Christians are foreign elements in India but they should not be culturally apart from the body of Hindu nation; instead they should integrate into the Hindu national culture (Gold 1994: 566). Conversion in this sense for the Hindu nationalists (RSS-VHP-BJP-Bajrangdal-Hindu Munnani) not only makes Hindus abandon the Hindu nation but it destroys it. And one who converts from Hinduism alienates from the national attribute of Sanantana Dharma and he/she is not an Indian national but a minority (Chatterjee 1995: 24-30). Thirdly, conversion, in the Hindu view, is an inherent problem of Christianity that reserves salvation only for Christians and the only means to achieve it is through the Catholic Church. Authors (Shourie 2000; Goel 1994; Chowgule 1999). Shourie (2000: 404) have argued vigorously that Hindus should be alert to the design of missionaries who have developed a very well-knit, powerful, extremely wellendowed organisational goal to convert them. Every writer supported, this view, particularly Shourie, who had previously good rapport with the Catholic Church that invited him to be a resource person in their meetings, highlighted repeatedly the pluralistic character of and religious tolerance (although their practice is otherwise) in Hinduism and the exclusivistic Christianity, mostly by referring to the Catholic Church documents and encyclicals (Kim 2003: 169ff). More sharply, Koenraad Elst, who is Catholic by birth from Belgium, not only wrote two volumes titled The Saffron Wave: The Nation of Hindu Fascism, which argues for Hindu fundamentalism as a natural defence of the indigenous population against foreign religious invasion by Christians and it is wrong to label it as fascist and Nazism, he also supported through his articles the activities of Hindu fundamentalist organisations. In one of his articles entitled Towards A Real Hindu-Christian Dialogue he speaks about Christianity as untrue and a mistake and that most of the Christian churches in India were built on Hindu temples, particularly San Thome Cathedral in Chennai he says was built after destroying Mylapore Shiva temple. He has strong opinions about Christian missions in India; he describes the Christian mission as a viper-like mischievousness and he wants Indians to reject Christianity. Not surprisingly, he is hailed as a significant voice of Hindutva in the West (see all

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his articles in http://pws.the-ecorp.com/~chbrugmans/articles.html, see also http://www.the-week.com/21nov11/life2.htm). Such international representation for Hindu fundamentalism intensifies its justification of violence against Christian missionaries in India. Conversion as Religious Freedom: Christian Response Christians refuted the arguments of Hindu fundamentalists in many ways from the 1950s. After the Nyogi report (1954-7) on missionary activity in India and the subsequent debate in the Constituent Assembly, Christians began to realise more fully the intensity of Hindu opposition to conversion, and more importantly, to missionary activities. The Christian response has never been a single and unified one. Instead, there have been three approaches: secular, liberation, inculturation. The secular approach suggested by Protestant theologians, said that conversion did not need a change of religion. What was needed is a Christian way of living in Hindu society (Parekh 1947; Baago 1966; Thomas 1971, 1972). The ideas such as church-less Christianity, Christ-centred secular fellowship and unbaptised Christians were expressed in order to gain respect from their Hindu opponents who viewed conversion as the destruction of common Hindu identity. The liberation approach, inspired by Latin American liberation theology, responded to the opposition of Hindus to conversion by insisting on the motives of the people who convert and the Hindus who oppose it (Wilfred 1983; Fernandes 1984; Raj 1981; Jayakumar 1999). Indian liberation theologians did not treat conversion as an encounter between Hinduism and Christianity but a protest against social injustice on the part of the Dalits and adivasis (Kim 2003: 193-4). Going beyond the above two approaches, the inculturation approach emphasised the continuities and similarities between the two religions and found meeting points by dividing religion into two aspects sadhana dharma (way of salvation) and samaj dharma (social customs, ritual purity, diet etc) (Griffiths 1966; Staffner 1973). Since in their view Hinduism is more of the latter and Christianity belongs to the former, both could complement each other and learn from each other. Although the synthetic approach received strong reactions from Hindus who thought about it as a subtle way of converting Hindus, it did contribute to the normalisation of Hindu-Christian relations. As seen earlier, in 1998-9, when the issue of conversion reopened sharply the division between the two communities, again Christians needed to respond to criticism and 21

defend Christianity. Christians and moderate Hindus, who were mainly secularists and communists, construed the ways in which Hindu organisations took up the conversion issue as an attempt to divert people from the aggressive politics of the Sangh Parivar and they argued that Christians were only the victims of their fundamentalist activities (Kim 2003: 171). In addition, as it was seen earlier, Ferandes (1999) and Michael (1998, 1999) counter-argued that conversion was liberation of the victims of injustice organised by social movements (Abel 1999; Philip 1999). Such arguments instead of opposing only confirmed the criticism of Hindus that conversion to Christianity does not have a spiritual dimension; it is only political activity. In that sense, Christians failed to respond to Hindu fundamentalists comprehensively. Realising this a national consultation was organised on Re-Reading Mass Movements in India in 1997 in which many Christian scholars highlighting the spiritual elements of conversion, argued that the conversion of tribals was indeed conscious and deliberately religious in nature (Ommen 1998: 138-54; Minz 1998: 1438). In a meeting held at United Theological College in Bangalore on Religious Conversions in the Pluralistic Context of India in September 1999, scholars like S.J. Samartha condemned the Christian groups that were involved in an aggressive conversion campaign (cited in Kim 2003: 174ff) and the main line Catholic and Protestant churches wanted to distance themselves from the breakaway fringe groups like the Seventh Day Adventist group that are involved in open conversion projects (Outlook, 8 November 1999: 60; The Asian Age, 17 February 1999).

6. Concluding Remarks Whatever the arguments of Christians against the Hindu critique of conversions to Christianity what remains true is that conversion has been largely both instrumental and symbolic in the construction of Hindu fundamentalism. For conversion is seen as the most destabilising factor for a society that alters both its demography and character. So keeping conversion as a vantage point can reveal more about the reality of Hindu fundamentalism than any other way and it can also be very useful for the minorities in India Christians and Muslims, and Secularists to counter the Hindutva agenda of instigating violence against them.

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