Deepening Hindutva or citizenship? Julio Ribeiro and the choices before Indian Christians

Julio Ribeiro’s interventions in various national newspapers over the last few months have consistently made a case about the predicament of the Christian communities in India. However, no other article seems to have grabbed the attention of the national media than the one in which he asserted that he felt like a foreigner in his own country. Ribeiro’s assertion followed the increase in violent attacks against Christians, and their churches and saints across India. At a time of crisis, like the one India is facing at the current moment, it would be expected that those who face persecution from the Hindu Right would stick together. But, as much as we need to stick together to offer a common resistance, it is also important that we use this moment to engage in fruitful discussion so that we may work out the way forward. It is in this spirit that we offer this critical response to the recent op-ed authored by Ribeiro.

Following on the cliché of every crisis offering an opportunity, we suggest that rather than compromise with Hindu nationalism the present moment should be used as a moment to deepen the experience of Indian citizenship.  Hindu nationalism should be seen not as a sudden entrant into Indian politics, but a force that has frustrated the realisation of the constitutional promises of egalitarian citizenship since the very beginning of the Indian state.  Even as Ribeiro protests his current discomfort, his formulations unfortunately remain within the realm of Hindu nationalism and we propose to point a way out of the crisis, both for him and other embattled groups within the Republic.

Our primary difference with Ribeiro stems from the fact that we differ in chronology. He inquires whether it is “coincidence or a well-thought-out plan” that violence against Christians intensified after the BJP government came to power. While it is true that there has been an escalation of violence against Christians since the Modi-led Government came to power, the systematic targeting of Christians has been a part of the history of the Indian nation-state since Independence, and some would argue in the course of the national formation itself. We would like to draw attention to the Niyogi Committee Report published in 1956 that held activities of Christian missionaries and conversions to be a threat to the Indian state. The Niyogi Commission, it should be pointed out, was the product not of an openly Hindu Rightist political party, but the Congress Party. The Report was subsequently followed by the passage of multiple Freedom of Religion bills that seek to limit the right to conversion. Later, in the 1960s, the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) faced a good amount of trouble when, in the words of Cardinal Simon Pimenta, foreign missionaries in India “had been asked by the government to leave the country – visas were not being renewed; no fresh visas were issued for others who had been detailed by their superiors for work in India”. Such instances indicate the persistent hostility with which Christian activity and groups have been viewed in India.

As many studies of the history of Christianity, and conversion movements in India have emphasised, Indian nationalism has seen the conversion to Christianity as the conversion to a ‘foreign’ religion, and thus an act violative of the very soul of the Indian nation. Further, conversion to a ‘foreign’ religion was viewed as a challenge to India’s spiritual self-sufficiency. The problem that Christians have had in India, therefore, clearly predates the current government, even though the arrival of the current government has seen a scary intensification of activities. In other words, the problem with Christianity could be said to be part of the national make-up, and not merely an agenda of the BJP and the Hindu Right alone. The recent intensification of violence against Christians can be seen as a culmination of decades of such suspicion and violence.

Contrary to Ribeiro’s suggestion that Hindutva violence emerged full-grown with the Modi Government, our argument is that the history of Indian nation-state has seen a steady deepening of Hindutva, rather than constitutional citizenship. Reviewing this longer history it becomes obvious that conversion to Christianity, or the threat of conversion, is a primary reason for the hostility of the Indian state and its elites to Christianity. As long as Christians do not rock the boat, it seems that they are tolerated. This has caused a number of Christians, Ribeiro included, to distance themselves from conversion. Ribeiro captured a common perception among some parts of Indian Christian society when he suggested in an interview to the Economic Times that “some fringe Christian groups convert people in large numbers but the government should find out who they are and take action against them. Mass conversions should be opposed as they create problems in society but it is a thing of the past”.

In making a case for the toleration of only stray and individual conversions to Christianity, and asking for governmental intervention in case of mass conversions, Ribeiro is merely toeing the problematic position of the Indian state. In addition to this, he is taking up a position that is marked by his upper-class and upper-caste location. Indeed, it would be our argument, that any resolution of the problem of Christian groups in India can be resolved only if we are able to address the caste and class issues head on.

Mass conversions, whether to Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism, have been measures of social protest against brahmanical violence that is daily visited upon marginalised social groups in the subcontinent. To ask for a halt on such conversions on the grounds that they cause problems in society is to not only miss the mark completely but to in fact articulate the Hindutva position! Rather than create problems in society, these conversions draw our attention to the problems that would fail to otherwise garner attention from the privileged segments of Indian society. More importantly, when they convert from Hinduism, these communities are not merely changing their religion, but in fact adopting a route toward the deepening of their citizenship experience. In casting off Hinduism, they are making an emphatic claim that they are ready for a new experience of life, hitherto unavailable under the contemporary political conditions of the Indian nation-state.

All too often rather than extend the protection of the law state functionaries stand by or participate in the persecution of Dalit groups, making mockery of the egalitarian constitutional provisions. To these groups, therefore, conversion is a critical part of realising Indian citizenship as promised by the Indian constitution. Hindutva’s problems with conversion stem precisely from the fact that these social processes challenge the upper-caste hegemony that Hindutva is based on. Indeed, early anti-caste mobilizations such as that of Mahatma Phule in Maharashtra, and E.V. Ramasamy in the Madras Presidency, drew actively from missionary rhetoric against caste, setting up an early confrontation between Christian proselytization and the upper-caste elites that have dominated the Indian national project.

Upper-caste and upper-class Christians deal with mass conversions, and seek to secure their comfort within the national narrative, by finding space for themselves within brahmanical mythologies, and associating themselves with brahmanical individuals and groups. Take, for example, Ribeiro’s employing the cliché “accident of history” that members of his social group, not excluding priests from this group, use to describe the process through which their ancestors converted to Christianity. It is as if they wish they had rather not been converted. There is a shame associated with their Christian present that they strive to wash off. A strategy often used by this group, is evidence in the manner in which Ribeiro brings his ancestors and the Parashurama myth into his complaint against Prime Minister Modi. He argues that his ancestors were possibly converted forcibly, in the kind of mass conversions that he would get banned. Ribeiro then suggests a brahmanical heritage for his ancestors, linking himself to the Saraswat brahmin Defence minister Manohar Parrikar. The journalist Rajdeep Sardesai recently drew a huge amount of flak for bragging about his Saraswat connections to two ministers in the national cabinet. If Sardesai was pilloried for his casteism, there is no reason why Ribeiro should be let off the hook either. After all, both Sardesai and Ribeiro are seeking different forms of security through their caste fraternity. To be fair to Ribeiro, he has been honest in an earlier article about his upper-caste location. The problem, however, is that he does not go far enough and his protest remains at a rhetorical level. Merely recognising one’s problematic location is not enough. This recognition needs to be translated into corrective action as well.

If one looks at conversion movements in India (whether in Islam, Christianity or Buddhism) outside the frame of Indian nationalism and upper-caste locations, the element of protest against casteism within those movements is glaringly obvious. A sensitivity to the caste question would also ensure that rather than feel obliged to answer for the crimes of the Inquisition, Christians in India would be able to question the reasons why this particular episode is being raised, and who is raising it. Although we do not wish to downplay the seriousness of the Inquisition, nonetheless, we are also against the charge that the Christians of India today need to solely bear the burden of these crimes. The fact is that Ribeiro and many upper-caste Christians along the Kanara and Malabar coast are uncomfortable with the history of Christianization in the sixteenth century and thus employ the cliché of this history being an “accident”. What such an understanding does is to paint all conversion to Christianity as “forced”, when in fact there is also evidence for voluntary conversions. The manner in which upper-caste Christians from Goa, the Kanara and Malabar coasts understand conversion and Christianization is not very different from the Indian nationalist position, and is de facto a Hindutva position.

While the existence of some amount of forced conversions cannot be denied, Ribeiro has very little evidence to show that his ancestors were forcibly converted. On the flip side, there is solid research to indicate that within the core territories of the Portuguese Estado da Índia, conversions were undertaken, among other reasons, because it was seen that the new religion offered ways in which people could escape their location within the local hierarchy. We would argue that it is important that the voices of brahmanical groups among Indian Christians not be privileged at this moment in Indian history. We make this argument largely because this leads to skewed understandings of the history of Christianization in India and its ramifications in contemporary times. Rather than forcing a challenge to the violence of the casteist order that is fundamental to the Indian state these voices often urge a negotiation and compromise with it. If the Christians in India are to wriggle out of the mess that they find themselves in then it is imperative that the challenge be directed not only at the BJP government and its masters in the Hindu Rightist organisations, but also at the language and logic of Indian nationalism.

The manner in which the compromise with Indian nationalism is effectuated is strikingly obvious in the manner in which Pakistan and Muslims are framed in Ribeiro’s recent interventions. In speaking on behalf of Christians to be left alone, Ribeiro indicates that Christians are a “peaceful people”. Ribeiro then contrast Christian peacefulness with Muslim belligerence when he suggests that if the Hindu “extremists later turn their attention to Muslims, which seems to be their goal, they will invite consequences that this writer dreads to imagine”. A similar statement was made in Delhi at the time of the attack on the church in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj neighbourhood. In that instance, the priest suggested that ‘“We are peace-loving people. If it had been another community, Muslims, khoon kharaba ho jaata” (Blood would have been shed)’.

This peaceful versus belligerent contrast seems to be a general malaise amongst Christians in India. As Nidhin Sobhana remarks, “Over the years, in several Christian gatherings, across caste groups, I have been a mute listener to thick accounts of the enemy. I know of Christians who refer to Muslims as ‘Anti-Christ’. For me, the single most important feature of these descriptions is their startling similarities to Caste Hindu descriptions of Muslims. It is as if they share a common word bank of epithets to describe Muslims. The image of the bearded enemy, walking down the street after his evening prayers is programmed in one’s mind. The scale of hatred may vary from indifference, antagonism to explicit acts of hostility. However, the image is fixed, unchanging”.

What Ribeiro and other Christian leaders do not seem to realise is that this trope of Muslim violence is not only one of the founding tropes of Indian nationalism, but also that it is born from the same logic that is now directing its ire against Christians.  As the scholar Rupa Viswanath has recently pointed out, Indian political history has been marked by the manner in which the political elites have sought to constitute majorities, and manage minorities. This may have been part of the logic that Ribeiro recounts where he was sent to Punjab to manage a separatist violence which was fuelled by a long-standing resentment towards Indian state repression. While the details of the separatist movement in Punjab are too complex to get into here, it needs to be pointed out that the Sikh militants were a creation of the postcolonial Indian state. They were born from the requirement, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, to win votes from an electorate swaying away from Indira Gandhi’s Congress after her widely criticised ‘emergency’. In other words, religious identities were used to manage complex political problems. This strategy was perpetuated by sending in a Christian, member of another minority group, to act as a moderator. This choice hid the fact that this Christian addressed the resolution of the conflict not from his faith tradition, nor from his marginalised location within the national body, but from the position as an empowered functionary of the Indian state.

What Viswanath means by constitution and management is very much in line with our use of the term minoritised, in preference to the more usual option of minorities. Both these perspectives suggest that ‘majorities’ and ‘minorities’ do not exist, rather they are actively produced. Crudely put Indian nationalism is a product of upper-caste, especially Hindu upper-caste, desires to control the destinies of the subcontinent. This process was managed largely through the constitution of a Hindu majority. A critical moment in the constitution of this majority was when Gandhi sought to prevent the assertion of Dalit difference from Hinduism, and through the Poona Pact ensured that they would be considered Hindus. It was this production of a Hindu majority that resulted in the creation not of equal citizens, but a variety of minority groups. As Ribeiro’s example demonstrates, rather than mobilize alongside other minoritised groups it was now left for the minorities to play the role of diligent pupils before a bad-tempered school-master, vying to outperform each other as the ideal minority. An excellent example of how this plays out is once again provided by Ribeiro when he indicates “it warmed the cockles of my heart that ordinary Hindus, not known to me, still thought well of me and would like to be friends 25 years after my retirement….” In other words, to prove his innocence Ribeiro insists that he has the goodwill of “ordinary Hindus”. In other words, play by Hindu rules, or suffer the consequences. Two groups, the Parsis, and western-educated Christians have fulfilled this role within the Indian nation-state, largely because led by upper-caste leaders they played by the casteist rules of the Indian nation-state.

One group that historically did not quite play by these rules were segments of the upper-caste Muslim elites of colonial India. H.M. Seervai, former Advocate General of Bombay, jurist and author, opines in Partition of India: Legend and Reality, that M.A. Jinnah’s object was not partition but ‘parity’. It was their failure to play along with caste Hindu majoritarianism that earned the various Muslim communities of India the wrath of the Indian nation-state. Rather than being recognised as victims of Indian nationalism, they have been unfairly cast as violent trouble-makers.

Ribeiro’s suggestion that the Modi-led government seeks to make “India a saffron Pakistan” are equally blemished. These comparisons, unfortunately, are driven by the Islamophobia that has been a foundational element of Indian nationalism. So enthralled have we been by this fear of Muslims that we have been blinded to the manner in which Hindutva was taking firmer root all around us. It is not that India has only now become saffron. It always was. On the contrary, as this text keeps emphasizing, the shade of saffron has merely become deeper in the past few months.

In sum, rather than cast ourselves against similarly beleaguered Muslim communities in India, it would make much more sense to challenge the narratives of Indian nationalism. This challenge to Indian nationalism would require that rather than seek to effectuate a temporary compromise with Indian nationalist logics, we should perhaps go back to the drawing board and rethink the way in which we would like to see the future of the India project.

The final argument that we would like to make involves reflecting on the irony that it has been Ribeiro, a former strong man of the Indian state, who has come out in anger against the Modi government, which celebrates precisely this kind of strong man politics. As Ribeiro has rightly pointed out, there are a number of Christians who have faithfully served the Indian state, often compromising their religious ethics in its service. Some would argue that Ribeiro’s own record in terms of human rights is not without blemish. This is not the point we would like to stress however. What we would like to point out is that despite his committed service to the Indian nation-state, the same state seems unwilling and unable to secure his safety, and that of his community. This should be a valuable lesson for the various minoritised groups who believe that they can use Hindutva to climb up the social ladder. Hindutva has been crafted to secure the hegemony of the upper-caste Hindu groups that dominate various parts of the Indian state. Non-Hindu upper castes groups, and Hindu bahujan groups may tussle for second place, and indeed individuals within these groups may ascend to power. However, Hindutva will not allow entire groups parity. Increasingly it appears that the destiny of these groups is second-class citizenship, or genocidal destruction. If we desire parity, then it is imperative that we recognise that the fault lies not in the Hindu Right alone, but in the structures of Indian nationalism.

While we sympathize and empathize with the insecurities faced by Julio Ribeiro and his need to speak out against the growing violence against Christians in the country, it is also important to highlight what we see as the conceptual flaws in his argument and the manner in which he positions himself as a Christian and as an Indian. There is an option that is opening up to various Christians as well as other minoritised groups in the country. We can continue to play by the rules of casteist India, or we can challenge the norms and rework the way in which the India project is run. 

(A version of this post was first published in the DNA India as a two-part article on 27 March 2015, and 28 March 2015

This post was written with Dale Luis Menezes).

Modi’s Verbal Politics Made Flesh

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was recently invited to be the chief guest at a national seminar on “Religious Witnessing” organized by the Syro-Malabar Church in New Delhi. The seminar was to mark the recent canonization of Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Mother Euphrasia. Modi’s comments at this event seem to have sent leaders and members of Christian groups, as well as secular liberals, into paroxysms of delight. This frenzy possibly has its roots in the unnerving stony silence that the Prime Minister’s Office maintained for months after the recent vandalisations and desecrations of churches in the national capital. This silence was a matter of concern for many and one can understand why the leaders of the Christian communities were relieved that Modi has finally taken initiative on the matter. The delight from various quarters has also been fuelled by the manner in which the media has framed Modi’s statements as a “reaching out” to Christians, and a commitment in favour of freedom of religion.

For my part, I fail to see what the excitement is all about. Not only were Modi’s statements at this event a case of too little, too late; they are also dangerously ambiguous. Rather than supporting non-Hindu religious groups (Christian or otherwise) in the country, his statements in fact underline the Hindutva logics that have resulted in the recent vandalisations and desecrations.

“We cannot accept violence against any religion on any pretext and I strongly condemn such violence. My government will act strongly in this regard,” Modi is reported to have said. So far, so good. But it is what comes later that should, if not give cause for alarm, warn us that the Prime Minister has not swerved from the path of the Hindu Right.

The other statements that we should give closer attention to include the folowing: “[m]y government will not allow any religious group, belonging to the majority or the minority, to incite hatred against others, overtly or covertly.” In addition, the Financial Times reported Modi as having said, “[m]y government will ensure that there is complete freedom of faith and that everyone has the undeniable right to retain or adopt the religion of his or her choice without coercion or undue influence.”

The devil, as they say, is in the detail, and it is this detail that I have italicised above. In phrasing his supposedly soothing words to the Christians in the country, Modi has also suggested that it is not just supposed majority groups that incite hatred against others but minoritised groups too! These are hardly the salving words one extends toward communities that have been at the receiving end of mob violence. Rather, it suggests that these groups may have done something to invite the violence. This position is, of course, in keeping with the position of the Hindu Right that argues that it is Hindus who are under attack, and that all forms of violence from the Hindu Right are merely the result of righteous anger. The VHP is reported to have said as much, indicating that Modi was not referring to the Hindu Right, but in fact delivering a lecture on the good behaviour expected from Christians in the country.

In light of these facts, one can assume that when Modi assures that “We will act strongly against such violence” what he is doing is in fact playing out the standard tactics of the Hindu Right. These tactics include the march toward an authoritarian state. Authoritarian states have a peculiar relationship with violence. They would ideally not like to exercise mob violence continuously, knowing full well that violence once unleashed can be hard to control. Further, the leaders of the violence could develop their own agenda and pose a challenge to the existing leadership. Thus, what they would like is to strategically exercise this violence, allowing it brief and controlled reign from time to time. The fact of past violence is used as a threat to repressed groups. One need only look at the playing out of the genocidal violence in Gujarat in 2002 to understand the first part of the equation that I have just elaborated. And it is not just Gujarat; one could argue that in India, mob violence does not simply happen, but occurs because the state allows for it to take place.

In the light of international outcry, and the Presidential rebuke from Obama the anti-Christian violence is now an embarrassment to the Modi regime. In this context, it is now perfectly comprehensible if heads will roll for the anti-Christian violence in Delhi. Also, bear in mind that this assertion of the intolerance of the state against violence will just as easily be turned toward members of besieged faith groups. This fact was in evidence both in the recent protests in Delhi, but also in 2008, when Christians in Mangalore protesting against attacks on their churches were arrested and attacked by the police.

That this assertion of an inclination toward law and order has little to do with securing the security of non-Hindu groups becomes evident in Modi’s statements about the freedom of religion. In assuring that he stands behind the right to freedom of religion, he also felt the need to add that there ought to be no coercion or undue influence in the course of adopting the religion of one’s choice. This latter caveat is critical, because coercion and undue influence is exactly what Hindu nationalists allege against both Christian and Muslim missionaries. Hindu nationalists of all stripes have since Independence used this allegation of coercion and undue influence as a way to place legal restrictions on the freedom of faith. As a result, the various Freedom of Religion legislations in India make conversions actions that can be monitored by the state executive. In doing so the Indian state makes a mockery of the right to freedom of religion. Modi has simply confirmed a repressive practice of the Indian state and is being applauded for it.

The final straw is the manner in which Modi chose to frame the entire incident. From the Hindustan Times we hear that his statements that supposedly assure Christians that their place in the country is secure were framed by Modi pointing out that “equal respect” for all faiths was an ancient Indian value that was also integral to the Constitution. “This principle of equal respect and treatment for all faiths has been a part of India’s ethos for thousands of years. And that is how it became integral to the Constitution of India. Our Constitution did not evolve in a vacuum. It has roots in the ancient cultural traditions of India.” 

What nobody seems to have realised is that Modi’s entire statement at this event was couched in references to Hindu scriptures and ‘Indian’ traditions alone. There was no recognition of the fact that the Constitution of India was in fact born via inspiration from universal modern values. The fact that equal respect and treatment is marked out as a feature of “Indian ethos” only underlines the Indian nationalist allegation that religious violence was brought into the subcontinent via the Christians and Muslims. Adding insult to injury is the fact that this history of the subcontinent is entirely fabricated. Historians, such as Romila Thapar, have indicated that rather than being an idyllic period, ancient India was marked by vicious religious violence between various brahmanical sects, and also between the Jain and Buddhist groups and brahmanical groups.

One can understand that Christian leaders, especially Bishops and their spokespersons, are obliged by protocol and a sense of caution to make polite noises in recognition of the Prime Minister’s statements. But let us be under no illusion. Modi’s words are not statements that assure security to non-Hindu religious groups in India. He has not moved an inch from the position of the Hindu rightist groups to which he owes his primary allegiance. If anything, his statements are another public relations exercise from camp Modi.  Further, the Christians are not the audience of this public relations exercise. Rather, they are merely the tools through which the international image conscious Modi government can indicate to the world that all is well in Hindu nationalist run India.

(A version of this post was first published in O Heraldo on 20 Feb 2015)

Solidarity in Times of Vandalism: Why the Minorities need to work together

There has recently been a lot of anxiety amongst the Christian communities in India owing to the desecrations and violence targeting Christian churches especially in the city of Delhi. There have been five attacks on churches in the capital of India since December 2014, the latest being the vandalization of the Church, and desecration of the Blessed Sacrament in the church of St. Alphonsa in Vasant Kunj earlier this week.

In the face of earlier attacks on churches the focus of Christian leaders turned towards the Prime Minister. These leaders report that the Prime Minister did not say anything that would reassure them. What makes it worse is that Prime Minister Modi has chosen to keep absolutely mum over these incidents. Public silence in this case can only be interpreted as his unwillingness to restrain the Hindu Right and make sure that law and order is maintained. This silence is not surprising however. We need only think back to his role in the pogrom in Gujarat in 2002. It took days for the State machinery to get things under control, and significantly Modi has been held responsible for allowing the violence to continue. Old habits, it appears, die hard.

I doubt that this tendency towards silence played on the mind of a member of a prominent Catholic business family when he suggested in conversation with me that Modi was a good administrator and “should be given a chance.” It is the limited perspectives of the elites of the community that one should also mourn. That this individual did not see managing genocidal violence as part of good administration says a lot about the milieu in which he moves.

What is worse is the fact of complicity of the state in fueling the acts of violence. A number of the victims in Gujarat indicated that the police refused to help them, claiming that they did not have orders to do so. Further, the police failed to place leaders of the violence under preventive detention. In the case of the violence against Christians, this chilling pattern is re-emerging. There has been news of visas being deliberately withheld from Catholic Bishops who were to visit from the Vatican to attend a liturgical conference organized by the CCBI (Conference of Catholic Bishops of India). More recently, persons peacefully protesting the violence against Christians and the lack of state action were set upon by the police, beaten and dragged into police custody.

These events are in fact very much in keeping, not only with the history of Modi, the BJP, but also the supposedly secular Indian nation-state. The hostility of the Indian state to the minorities of India, is a matter of record. In fact, in a scenario resembling the recent denial of visas to visiting Bishops,  soon after India achieved Independence the Indian state took an aggressive stand against Christian missionaries of foreign nationality in India. That issues did not escalate, as seems to be the case now, is largely because the Indian and Hindu nationalism of the time was more focused on destruction of the Muslim communities in India. Christians were, at the time, seen as “harmless”.

While the Muslims in India were being harassed and butchered across the country the Christian communities in India were by and large silent. On the contrary, these Christian groups in India played along with the logic that it was “the Muslims” who were to blame, rather than Hindu nationalists. Indeed, even in the face of these attacks, some Christian leaders are still shortsighted enough to suggest ‘“We are peace-loving people. If it had been another community, Muslims, khoon kharaba ho jaata” (Blood would have been shed)’

These Christians failed to see that the problem is not Muslims, but in fact Indian nationalism itself. They fail to see that playing the ‘good’ minority, as opposed to the allegedly troublesome Muslim minority, is not going to help. Rather, it plays straight into the hands of the cussed nationalisms in India. In fact, one could argue that playing into the hands of Indian/ Hindu nationalism has been a part of the agenda of the Catholic Church in India. Whether it was the foreign missionaries at the time immediately prior to Indian independence, or the largely upper-caste hierarchy of the Catholic Church subsequently, working towards creating good Indians has been a part of the Indian Catholic programme. This has been done in a variety of ways, either through the misguided policy of inculturation, which sought to make Catholicism in India more 'Indian', i.e. upper-caste Hindu-like, or by urging a strong sense of patriotism, which normally translates to an unblinking acceptance of nationalist rhetoric. This irrationality has ensured that we swallowed the Indian nationalist narrative, saw the Indian Muslim as the trouble-maker and tried to place as much distance between them and ourselves.

There is little distinction between Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism. The difference is largely a matter of degree, since both are built on the idea of the upper-caste Hindu as the de facto Indian. Contrary to the spiel that we have been fed since the beginning of the Indian nation-state, these nationalisms do not tolerate difference. The tolerance is merely cosmetic. When push comes to shove, as has happened in so many cases, the minority group is made to feel the pinch.

It was in light of this reality that for some decades now the Christians in India were asked to mobilize along with Muslims in India, and see the latter groups as allies rather than enemies.  There was, unfortunately, no real interest demonstrated by Christian groups. I can recall efforts in Goa that attempted to involve the hierarchy and the laity of the Catholic Church. Where the hierarchy was interested, the laity were not. The hierarchy too, had its own reservations as to how far they would, or could, go. All too often, and not just in Goa, the interest lies in engaging in superficial ‘inter-religious dialogue’, rather than lending shoulders to political battles. A significant political battle that we in Goa could lend support to is the need that the Sunni Muslim communities in Margão have for a burial ground. The existing burial ground is too small for the existing population and all efforts to secure a larger ground have met with resistance, largely from Hindu nationalist groups, but often supported by Catholic bigots.

Too often, Christians in Goa are so in the thrall of racist stereotypes about Islam and Muslims that we fail to see the diversity that exists within these groups. Despite the complex history of Islam within coastal south India, of which Goa is part, Islam itself is written off as a violent religion. Additionally, we are blinded by the nativist logics that see Goans as either Hindu or Catholic. Muslims have no space in this vision of Goa even though Islam has had a long presence in the territories that are today Goa, and many Catholics in Goa would have had Muslim ancestors. The reason we are blinded to these histories and realities is that Goan histories have been written almost exclusively by persons from upper caste backgrounds who want to privilege their putative Hindu pasts. They wish to embellish their pasts as Hindu, largely because they have long seen the writing on the wall, India works best if you are upper-caste Hindu. Indeed, as I illustrated elsewhere, it is the caste bias among Catholics in India that has ensured that the superficial inter-religious dialogues that take place are often biased in favour of Hinduism, rather than Islam.

Making alliances with Muslims does not necessarily mean working with all kinds of Muslim organizations. It would first require us to first embrace Muslims and their worlds, get to know them and understand them better. It is only after having effected this embrace that we can become alive to the diversities and differences among them. It would mean learning to identify those Muslim organizations that are no different from the RSS and working with those organizations that are open to democratic ways of social organization.

In the final analysis it may perhaps be the lack of internal democracy within the Catholic Church in Goa that stands in the way of effecting solidarity with Muslims groups. There is no doubt that the Catholic Church in Goa is appallingly lethargic and I would like to suggest that the reason lies in the manner in which it is organized and the manner in which internal dissent is dealt with. A group that is itself compromised, and comes out against Hindutva only when its direct interests are pinched is hardly going to be able to provide leadership to other beleaguered communities, or even associate meaningfully with them. It appears that our many years of lethargy is beginning to show and our pigeons are now coming home to roost. May God protect us.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 6  Feb 2015)