Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India

Rakesh Peter-Dass

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000702248
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Asian Politics

This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and religion in contemporary India. In public portrayals, Hindi has been the language of Hindus and Urdu the language of Muslims, but Christians have been usually been associated with the English of the foreign 'West'. However, this book shows how Christian writers in India have adopted Hindi in order to promote a form of Christianity that can be seen as Indian, des?, and rooted in the religio-linguistic world of the Hindi belt.

Using three case studies, the book demonstrates how Hindi Christian writing strategically presents Christianity as linguistically Hindi, culturally Indian, and theologically informed by other faiths. These works are written to sway public perceptions by promoting particular forms of citizenship in the context of fostering the use of Hindi. Examining the content and context of Christian attention to Hindi, it is shown to have been deployed as a political and cultural tool by Christians in India.

This book gives an important insight into the link between language and religion in India. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion in India, World Christianity, Religion and Politics and Interreligious Dialogue, as well as Religious Studies and South Asian Studies.

1 Politics of religion

Hindi Christian politics

On a Sunday morning 225 years ago, William Carey walked into a local market in Bengal and started speaking to a congregation of Muslims.¹ It was the winter of 1794 and Manicktullo Bāzār was busy. Carey had just arrived in India – in November 1793, to be precise. At the market that day, the Baptist missionary was accompanied by his local assistant (mum˙śī). Local clerks played an important role in the work of missionaries in India. Carey’s Journal is replete with references to his ‘Munshi.’ The munshi helped him learn the vernacular, translate scripture, preach to locals, teach in school, and run the press. Carey could not speak proper Bengali and was unable to preach for months after he reached Bengal. The munshi translated and spoke for him most days. As it turned out, Carey would be glad his ‘Munshi’ was with him.²

Carey was happy with the turnout that day. “Our Congregation,” he wrote, “consisted principally of Mahometans, and has increased every Lord’s Day; they are very inquisitive; and we have addressed them upon the subject of the Gospel with the greatest freedom.”³ It is unclear whether “congregation” referred to a group of Christian converts or interested Muslims or some combination thereof. At the very least, the Journal makes it clear that Carey had found an eager audience that was growing every Sunday in the bāzār. Various topics were discussed but none generated more interest than two: Which was better, the Quran or the Gospels? Who was greater: Mohammed or Jesus? The debate on the first topic was vigorous. Each side spoke freely. Carey argued most Muslims could not read Arabic. If you could not read Arabic, he asked, how could you follow the Quran? Also, if you could not read it, how could you know if it was true? The ‘Mahomedans’ countered by claiming they had learned Quranic instructions and one of them had even read it in Arabic. Then, in their turn, the Muslims pressed. “The Quran was sent to confirm the Words of Scripture” because “Jews, and Christians had corrupted the Bible, which was the reason why God made the revelation by Mahomet.” The Quran was clearly an improvement on the Bible. So why settle for second best?

The conversation on who was better was equally lively. Carey posed the question: Who was better, Mohammed or Jesus? The Muslims replied, Carey notes, “Mahomet was the Friend of God, but Esau, by whom they mean Jesus, was the Spirit of God.” A friend was more important than a spirit. One could relate to a friend, spend time with a friend, have a personal relationship with a friend. What could the spirit do? Carey fell silent, it seems, for his clerk piped up. But who is higher, Munshi countered, your friend or your soul or spirit? Carey thought Munshi was clever – “shrewd,” he writes – but the Muslims were not impressed. Carey does not record the Muslims’ response to Munshi but Carey’s notes suggest the Muslims left unconvinced of the superiority of Christianity. “All this [back and forth] they bore with good temper; but What effect it may have time must determine.” The interplay between listeners and preachers was complicated. Christians preached and the Muslims talked back. The Muslims countered and the Christians talked back. Carey records numerous such encounters in his journals. The encounters were open-ended – at least, Carey logs them that way. Discourses on religious conversions in contemporary India portray a different interplay of voices. The next story from 1993 illustrates the difference. Two centuries after Carey’s encounter, Indian Christians find themselves in a situation where states and governments have found it necessary to curb the perceived threat of Christian evangelism to social order in India. Carey’s encounter with Muslims does not represent the standard encounter between missionaries and others. In some cases, the encounter was fruitful – in others, hostile. I have employed the Muslims-Carey chat-in-the-market (bāzār bātcīt) to contrast it with public perceptions of Christian evangelism in contemporary India.

On March 12, 1993, two hundred years after the bāzār bātcīt, a group of Christian leaders walked into a meeting with the governor of Andhra Pradesh. Governor Krishan Kant had called the meeting. Bishop Franklin Jonathan was in attendance and recorded the exchange. The Christians met Kant for more than an hour, and Jonathan was impressed. Kant was “a good scholar, top-class politician and a political leader desirous of national unity and communal harmony.”⁴ Kant had something specific on his mind. He wanted to talk about evangelism. He wanted to and proceeded to criticize Christian mission. He doubted Christian motives and questioned their actions. Kant praised Christians as learned and enlightened but was adamant in alleging that evangelism was a social problem. For Kant, propagating religion was not an invitation to a conversation but a slippery slope to discord. It needed to stop. The Christian community and Christian leaders are “most enlightened,” Kant felt, but it was the governor’s “request” (āgrah) that all forms of evangelization “be voluntarily stopped for at least fifty years.”⁵

Kant made a request. It was not a demand. Jonathan took pains to note this. Kant was a state official in secular India and could hardly demand that Christians in India voluntarily self-curtail their constitutional right to profess and propagate religion. Kant did not say his ask was a request. Jonathan described it as such. One wonders whether Jonathan was being diplomatic in print. Noticeably, Jonathan does not print the Christians’ response. Did they talk back? Did they refuse the ‘request’? Did they agree to consider it? Did they offer any response, then or later, to the governor? It is clear that Kant’s request did generate some reflection on Jonathan’s part. “What is the meaning,” Jonathan wrote, “of evangelism? Is it to share the love of God with others?”⁶ “Have we,” Jonathan wondered, “sent the wrong signal to those who are outside the church?”⁷ Jonathan was sympathetic to Kant. Yet his response to Kant is absent from his public report. It is unclear whether the Christian leaders did much after the meeting or whether Christian communities paid any heed to Kant’s ask.

Comparing the encounters is revelatory. Contemporary perceptions of Christian activities have focused on evangelistic practices by Christians. While the social footprint of Christian churches in India – through their many hospitals, schools, colleges, orphanages, and charities – garners little public attention, conversions and evangelistic practices have come to occupy a primary place in public perceptions of Indian Christians. State governments and lawmakers have felt increasingly motivated to intervene in such practices in order to ‘protect’ easily-swayed ‘Hindus’ from converting. Studies have traced the relevance of caste context behind such motivations.⁸ Nevertheless, in contemporary narratives of Christian evangelism the agency to refuse Christian claims seems to have disappeared. According to accounts of Hindu nationalists, ‘naïve and easily-swayed Hindus’ need to be protected from the aggression of Christian evangelists. Underlining the opposition to Christian conversions in India is the perception that one cannot be both a loyal Christian and an Indian. This perception is being fostered by a pair of complementary forces in contemporary India: Hindu nationalism and Hindi nationalism.

Hindu nationalism and Hindi nationalism are complementary ideas. A Hindu is original to India and India is Hindu. A Christian or Muslim is a foreigner and not Indian. Allegiance to one group (India) cannot overlap with allegiance to another group (Christianity, Islam). Aligning with both identities can only divide an Indian’s loyalty. Hindu nationalism argues that pitting one identity against the other is the outcome of confusion on what it means to be ‘Indian.’ A central feature of Hindutva has been portrayals of Muslims as a “community outside the ‘national mainstream’ ” and intent on undermining “Indian/Hindu culture and civilization.”⁹ A ‘true Indian’ is anyone who recognizes India, the land of Hindus, as her geographic fatherland and cultural motherland. ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’ are synonymous, and for Hindu nationalists, as Richard G. Fox puts it, a bharatiya (‘of India’) is a ‘Hindian.’ As such, attributes like Hindu, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Tamil, and Dravidian are sectarian identities that should never be confused with and empowered over an Indian’s essential identity, which is Hindian.¹⁰ The third attribute of an Indian is loyalty to Hindi. This is the central claim of Hindi nationalists. Hence, advocates for the national primacy of Hindi in India made claims regarding the foreignness of Urdu and Muslims that echoed the claims made by Hindu nationalists.

Both movements – Hindu nationalism and Hindi nationalism – matured around the same time, the quarter century preceding 1947. Both movements had similar demographic attributes. Hindu nationalism drew support from Hindu, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Politics of religion
• 2 The making of a genre
• 3 Linguistic choices
• 4 Shaping identity
• 5 Christians in India
• 6 Message matters
• Index