A Secular Indian's of Christianity in India

The publication of a number of books incorporating “the Idea of India” into their title recent times is indicative that this idea has been in a crisis for a while. Carpenters and Kings is one more response to this crisis of India, dealing with an oft-ignored population group. In an environment where the Hindu Right seeks to suggest the foreignness of Christianity and Islam in India, this book seeks to “set the record straight” and demonstrate that the history of Christianity in India is a nearly two-millennia-long story of great complexity. Divided into three sections that deal with Antiquity, the Medieval period, and finally the colonial, Siddhartha Sarma’s book admirably demonstrates that Christianity was present in India from its very inception.

Sarma writes that Christianity in India predated the conversion of the Syrian Christians who claim to be the first Christians in the subcontinent converted from local groups. Sarma points out that Christianity’s emergence was rather the result of the Gospel taking root among Jewish communities of the western coastal region, who may not have consciously broken from the religion of their ancestors.

The presence of these communities was the result of a network of Greek-speaking traders linking the subcontinent’s maritime commerce with Egypt, Persia, and Rome. Sarma´s book further challenges the popularly-held idea that the Latin Church, or the Church of Rome, was first established in the subcontinent via the Portuguese. Rather, Sarma writes, it was through the efforts of the Franciscan Giovanni of Montecorvino in the late 1200s, who, among other things, established a church at the tomb held to be that of St. Thomas in Mylapore. Sarma uses these facts to affirm that the subcontinent has “never been a land for a single people, or culture or religion” but populated by a diversity of groups, transient and settled, which were always in conversation with one another.

Carpenters and Kings is clearly a political history, locating early Christianity in the subcontinent among political processes, both local and global, be it Greek trade networks, the assertion of the Mongols, the rise of the Arabs, or the expansion of Western Europe. By dealing with the councils of Nicaea, Chalcedon, or the heresy of Manichaeism Sarma demonstrates that to explain contemporary Christianity in India it is necessary to go into the very foundations of the religion, and be familiar with the theological discussions within Christianity across the world. Given his desire to stress the foundational nature of dialogue to the idea of India, in various chapters Sarma stresses intercontinental and intercultural dialogues, pointing, for example in the chapter titled “The Fruits of the Wisdom Tree”, which discusses the legend of the saints Barlaam and Josaphat, to how the subcontinent impressed on Western Christianity.

Sarma is not focused only on how the East influenced the West and Christianity, however. His chapter “The Forge of the World” refers to how Tibetan Buddhism, in particular, seems to have interacted with Christ and Nestorian Christianity. The section that deals with the medieval world references in how the period of the Crusader states in the Middle East saw conversations between Franks and Arabs. All in all, the book is a delightful exercise in comparative history, which Sarma manages in elegant prose.

Nevertheless, the merit of Sarma’s work is compromised by the methodological nationalism that guides it, i.e. reading the existence of a contemporary nation-state back into time. For example, despite acknowledging that the ancients referred to a wide swathe of Asia, and at times even eastern Africa, as India, Sarma persists in referring to the subcontinent as if it were the same as the nation-state established in 1947. This ensures a number of erasures, like that of the contemporary states of Sri Lanka and Nepal which he subsumes into India, as well as the narratives and agency of Christians in India.

Another error flowing from Sarma’s methodological nationalism is the suggestion of the “natural multiculturalism of Indians”, which is not only mistaken, because it presumes the existence of an Indian society as if the polities in the subcontinent were an integrated, unified and relatively homogenous unit, but also a dangerous proposition since it erases the kinds of violence that have been engaged in but subsequent and prior to the founding of the Indian state in 1947.

An acknowledgement of caste, the foremost of these subcontinental violences, is glaringly missing from this reading of subcontinental history. Illustrating this is Sarma’s description of “an old man who had been born a Brahmin and had sailed across both the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal” and then converting to Latin Christianity, leading Sarma to surmise that “apparently, caste restrictions on sea voyages were different in that period, or perhaps more relaxed.” He ignores the possibility that the brahmin converted precisely because he had lost caste. Like Islam in the subcontinent, Christianity has been the refuge of outcastes, and indeed Christians have often been treated as untouchable.

The presumption of an Indian society pre-existing 1947 does not strengthen the idea of India, but is in fact at the root of the contemporary problems that are unfairly laid at the feet of the Hindu Right alone. For example, this presumption of a society ensures that he argues that “the victory of the British over the French and their rapid expansion in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries created its own form of disruption, which would have a long-term impact on the Indian society that was emerging in response to modernity”. To look at the British presence and colonialism in India as an disruption of a natural evolution is to go back to the same kinds of hiving that Indian, and Hindu, nationalists engage in, only his are limited to different periods. While Hindu nationalists see the “Muslims”, who Sarma correctly refers to as Turko-Afghans, as foreigners, Sarma accepts them as Indian, but excludes those who arrived in the subcontinent via the European expansion. The burning problem that contemporary Christians in India face is not that their history is improperly told, rather it is that their links with Christianity with the colonial period are seen as problematic. What is required is a history that accepts and naturalizes this, rather than harking back to an earlier, glorious past.

Unfortunately, having spent more time on antique and medieval Christianity, this is precisely what Sarma does not do, and perhaps because of his methodology is unable to do so.  Rather, Sarma engages in the kind of demonization of the Portuguese that is standard fare among nationalist historians of all shades. His description of the Inquisition as motivated by the need for “Faith … to be tested on the rack and by the fire” has all the marks of the dated Protestant and Northern European propaganda against the Iberian empires.

Given that contemporary Christians in India are held responsible for the factual and imagined actions of the Inquisition, this period and the institution deserves a more nuanced treatment, rather than the popular histories from which he has drawn his references. Such treatment drawing from contemporary international scholarship and Dalit histories of the subcontinent would have highlighted that the violence associated with Portuguese presence, inclusive of the Inquisition, was just one more violence in a subcontinent filled with violence, but one that allowed hitherto marginalized castes, both Catholic and otherwise, the options of social mobility.

Contemporary scholarship would have also pointed out that unlike what Sarma avers, it was not the Danish missionary Ziegenbalg who was one of the original Orientalists, but in fact, as Ângela Barreto Xavier and Ines Županov have pointed out in their recent book Catholic Orientalism (2015), it was Catholic missionaries and the Portuguese Estado da India, that laid the ground work for much that was then later appropriated without reference by later orientalists. That the empathy required missionaries to understand local cultures and attempt conversion through dialogue, a strategy attempted even by the Portuguese supported missionaries is not recognised, and that the Portuguese, despite their five-century-long stay in the subcontinent are not seen as belonging speaks of the unfortunate nationalist lens through which Sarma writes his history of Christianity in India.

Sarma’s history also suggests that Indian agitation against proselytizing and conversions were born from Portuguese violence and brutality or proselytism in the shadow of imperial British support. These suggestions, in fact, share much with the assumptions that undergird the ironically named Freedom of Religion legislation, which effectively prohibits conversion to Christianity or Islam. Sensitive histories of India and the British Indian anti-imperial nationalist struggle have already pointed out that, on the contrary, the Hindu sensitivity to conversion resulted from the savarna fear that Hindus would be reduced to a minority, ideally embodied by Gandhi’s opposition to separate elections for Dalits. Like Gandhi, Sarma seems to naturalize caste, suggesting in his brief reference to the Revolt of 1857 that had the British accommodated caste, things may have been resolved more amicably. Fortunately, this observation allows us to perceive that the violence in the subcontinent was the result of caste, rather than solely because of colonial intervention.

Despite its erudition, charming language and noble intentions, Sarma’s work does not eventually respond to the needs of Christians in India, rather it reveals that much of the battle around the idea of India is restricted to ideological battles between savarna Hindus, some who prefer secular nationalism, others who prefer religious nationalism. Both, it turns out, in one way or another minoritize non-Hindus.

Carpenters and Kings: Western Christianity and the India of India, Siddhartha Sarma, Hamish Hamilton.

(A version of this text was first published in Scroll on June 2, 2019.)

When India’s Lie Ends: A review of Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva by Anand Teltumbde

For those used to appreciating India as the largest democracy in the world, Anand Teltumbde’s recent work, Republic of Caste:Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva, will come as a rude shock. Teltumbde, a management professional, civil rights activist, and political analyst, articulates timely arguments that put paid to the decades-long publicity exercise that the Indian Republic has benefitted from. The book demonstrates how caste, and the violent exclusions it effects, is not only an on-going practice in the Republic, but is in fact hardwired into its operation.  While some scholars have more recently suggested that the observance of caste, especially in urban India, is declining, Teltumbde clarifies that while the ritualist aspects of casteist exclusion are indeed waning, this does not mean that caste is a spent force in India. On the contrary, as the book elaborates, caste has taken on new and terrifying aspects in contemporary India, finding new force and allies in the time of neo-liberalism.

If neo-liberalism rests, as Teltumbde demonstrates in the evocatively-titled chapter ‘The Education Mantra and the Exclusion Sutra’, on the privatisation of public goods, then the caste system, which rests on the appropriation of surplus of those at the bottom of the system is primordially suited to neo-liberalism. However, what the context of neo-liberalism– i.e. the corporate requirement of the Indian market and cheap labour, etc. – ensures is that now there is no criticism of the horrific culture of savarnas, nor any State attempt to reform it. This is what fuels the rise of Hindutva, which is gung-ho casteism of the Indian middle-classes, overwhelming constituted by dominant castes, rather than earlier apologetic casteism of the Congress.

But the renewed operation of caste in the functioning of the Indian Republic cannot be put down merely to the effects of this neoliberal time. Rather, ‘Reservations: A Spark and the Blaze’, the first chapter in book, demonstrates how, through the provision for caste-based reservations, the space for the legal operation of caste was written into the Constitution itself. Teltumbde affirms the need for a constitutional scheme of positive affirmation but suggests that the strategy adopted in the Constitution, which extended reservations to Tribes and Backward Classes, the latter being defined along caste lines has effectively reinforced caste identities. This, Teltumbde argues, is due, in large part, to the fact that the formulating of the Constitution and the schedules that identified groups able to claim reservation was merely an exercise that “served the Congress by exhibiting its commitment to social justice” (p. 51). As such, reservation now works “simply [as] a mechanism to ensure dalit participation [in the Republic], not a measure of justice” (p.59).

Refreshingly, Teltumbde does not hesitate questioning the major symbols that have taken on added significance in these troubled times. While there is no doubt that Teltumbde is committed to what the Indian Supreme Court would call constitutional values, he points to the largely undemocractic nature of the Constituent Assembly whose “members were indirectly elected via a system of proportional representation from the Congress-dominated provincial assemblies, which in turn had been elected in March 1946 on a restricted franchise consisting of about 20 to 24 per cent of the adult population” (p. 125); and the fact that the Constitution was “very largely a rehash of the India Act 1935” (p. 126). This is a bold argument at a time when many opponents and critics of the BJP government, including Dalit activists, base their opposition on a fierce defence of the Constitution.

There is a method to Teltumbde’s madness however, for he indicates that if we peel away the rhetoric and look critically at the Constitution, we would realise that:

Instead of being an instrument of change, it has, in operative terms, fortified the rule of the entrenched classes. The first-past-the-post election system, adopted as a method to effectuate democracy, is the primary mechanism that guarantees the perpetuation of the status quo. The structural absence of the feature of checks and balances between the three wings of the government – the legislature, executive and judiciary – considered most vital for any constitutional democracy, also furthers the same object. In India, the first two, i.e., the legislature and executive, collapse into a single oppressive apparatus that manifests in the nexus of police, bureaucracy and politicians at ground level, playing a maleficent role in every atrocity case. The only hope for ordinary people has been the judiciary, which for all its infirmities, has evinced a certain independence of mind from time to time. However, if one takes a view from the perspective of the exploited and the oppressed, its record is also pathetic. Barring some honourable exceptions, the courts have always been biased against the poor, tribals, dalits, and Muslims (p. 173).

Addressing those who uphold the Constitution as the result of Dr. Ambedkar’s efforts, Teltumbde points out that Ambedkar himself had disowned the Constitution soon after its adoption.  Discussing Ambedkar’s politics, Teltumbde stresses Ambedkar’s pragmatism, changing “opinions, decisions and actions” (p.27) to grapple with evolving situations and whose theory emerged not from a desire to craft theory, but was “the by-product of practical struggles that he waged…” (pp. 140-1). This appreciation of Ambedkar, which suggests taking his concerns as a starting point for our politics, offers a route away from contemporary attempt to deify Ambedkar which Teltumbde argues only aids Hindu nationalist attempts at controlling the “terms on which people engage with him, replacing the uncompromising thinker with a deified object of rituals, a saffron Ambedkar, a handy Trojan horse for gharwapsi” (p. 268).

As one would expect from someone who engages with the work of Ambedkar, Teltumbde is critical of Gandhi. But this critique could be sharper. Right in the first chapter, Teltumbde has the opportunity to point out that it was Gandhi’s stubborn refusal to allow for a separate electorate for the depressed classes, and his desire to constitute a Hindu majority that caste is at the beating heart of the Indian Republic. It is only in the twelfth chapter that he comes close to pointing this out, that thanks to the Poona Pact “The entire scheme of political empowerment of dalits conceived by Ambedkar was thus reversed to become its opposite, political enslavement” (p. 373), and this too is not satisfactorily articulated.

While a critical contribution to the appreciation of Indian politics, one cannot help feeling that the book lacks a coherent and systematic development of an argument. For example, the term Ambedkarite consciousness in used in the fifth chapter, even though criticised in an earlier chapter.  In an early part of the book he argues that the Green Revolution resulted in the “the erosion of an ethos of economic interdependence in the countryside” (p. 157), postulating later that “Economic interdependence is an aspect of liberty and its absence, as a corollary, spells slavery” (p. 211), dangerously suggesting the autonomous village as an arcadian paradise. These, inconsistencies probably result from the fact that the book is a collection of essays previously published in the author’s monthly column in the Economic and Political Weekly. A little more attention to the text would have gone a long way in making a more forceful argument.

The book is also marked, at times, by a bitterness, which is unsurprising given that Teltumbde admits to being misunderstood by many. The misunderstanding arises from Teltumbde’s challenging the prevailing understanding of both the Dalit and the left movements, when he sees caste and class as intertwined. There will be no resolution, he argues, to the pervasiveness of caste in the operation of the Indian republic until Indian citizens are able to follow Ambedkar’s lead in recognising the violence of caste but challenging it through harnessing of the language of class. Teltumbde’s argument for creating a class identity among castes comes out clearly when he analyzes the reasons for the Bahujan Samaj Party’s (BSP) limited success. Harshly critical of the forging of caste identities by groups such as the BSP, Teltumbde warns that “Castes are inherently divisive, they can never integrate. Nor can they be equalized” (p.366) and that the BSP’s formula of “caste-based coalition ends up deepening casteism – in ways antithetical to any social revolution” (p.364). He argues that the BSP’s formula could only be short-lived and tied to the context of Uttar Pradesh. Further, as the history of the BSP evidences, in the absence of a class agenda, the manipulative tactics would work against social revolution to privilege an elite within the party.

While critical of the functioning of Kanshi Ram and Mayawati of the BSP, Teltumbde also points out that their pragmatic politics are products of the Indian electoral democracy, where there is a grotesque and cynical use of the system to further feudal power. Their crudeness only highlights the rot of the system, for “when corruption is traced to a dalit, it gets amplified; when non-dalits engage in it, corruption appears muted or is simply dismissed as being of little consequence”(p.251).

The Republic of Caste makes for depressing and disturbing reading. The varied examples of castiesm that Teltumbde assembles fall like one bludgeon after another, revealing the quotidian violence that is the foundation of the Indian state. Is there a route out of this rot? Perhaps; Teltumbde suggests the rejection of mobilization along caste-based identities, the embrace of ethical politics, and above all revolution. At the close of the fifth chapter, he rightly observes that “Middle class attempts at tweaking the system appear trivial and ill-judged” (p. 201) an analysis that continues in his very perceptive analysis of the Aam Aadmi Party in the final chapter, and that it is only the Maoists who with their agenda of revolution “appear to have comprehended the dimension of the problem”. But the revolution he proposes is not necessarily the violent overthrow of the state. Rather, it revolves around the revolutionary – or dramatic – change in economic relations. In chapter six, where he lauds the movement in Una, Gujarat, he is clear that changing patterns of land ownership, where Dalits gain access to productive land, instead of the usual waste land, is at the heart of the revolutionary change he proposes.

Placed at the current moment, where the possibility of ethical politics in the face of contemporary Indian politics is remote, if not a joke, it appears that there is no hope in electoral politics and the only possible road to revolution would be to return to the moment before Gandhi wrecked the possibility of double electorates, i.e. to rework the Indian electoral system.

Republic of Caste: Thinking Equality in the Time of Neoliberal Hindutva

By Anand Teltumbde

Navayana, 2018, New Delhi, 432 pp., Rs 600 (HB)

ISBN 978-81-89059-84-2 

(A version of this text was first published in Biblio: A Review of Books Jan -Mar 2019)