Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) [1 ed.] 9781409424390, 9781409424406, 9781315575797, 1409424391

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Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism A second generation of emerging Dalit theology texts is re-shaping the way we think of Indian theology and liberation theology. This book is a vital part of that conversation. Taking post-colonial criticism to its logical end of criticism of statism, Keith Hebden looks at the way the emergence of India as a nation state shapes political and religious ideas. He takes a critical look at these Gods of the modern age and asks how Christians from marginalised communities might resist the temptation to be co-opted into the statist ideologies and competition for power. He does this by drawing on historical trends, Christian anarchist voices, and the religious experiences of indigenous Indians. Hebden’s ability to bring together such different and challenging perspectives opens up radical new thinking in Dalit theology, inviting the Indian Church to resist the Hindu fundamentalists labelling of the Church as foreign by embracing and celebrating the anarchic foreignness of a Dalit Christian future.

ASHGATE NEW CRITICAL THINKING IN RELIGION, THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL STUDIES The Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. Headed by an international editorial advisory board of acclaimed scholars spanning the breadth of religious studies, theology and biblical studies, this openended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Other Recently Published Titles in the Series: What’s Right with the Trinity? Conversations in Feminist Theology Hannah Bacon Spirit and Sonship Colin Gunton’s Theology of Particularity and the Holy Spirit David A. Höhne Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation Problems, Paradigms and Possibilities Peniel Rajkumar Beyond Evangelicalism The Theological Methodology of Stanley J. Grenz Steven Knowles Concepts of Power in Kierkegaard and Nietzsche J. Keith Hyde Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness Christopher B. Barnett The Trinity and Theodicy The Trinitarian Theology of von Balthasar and the Problem of Evil Jacob H. Friesenhahn

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism

Keith Hebden Gloucester Diocese, Church of England, UK

First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2011 Keith Hebden. Keith Hebden has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hebden, Keith. Dalit theology and Christian anarchism. – (Ashgate new critical thinking in religion, theology and biblical studies) 1. Theology–India. 2. Liberation theology–India. 3. Christianity and culture–India. 4. Christianity and politics–India. 5. Dalits–India– Religion. I. Title II. Series 270’.08694’0954–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hebden, Keith. Dalit theology and Christian anarchism / Keith Hebden. p. cm. — (New critical thinking in religion, theology, and biblical studies) Includes index. ISBN 978-1-4094-2439-0 (hardcover:alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4094-2440-6 (ebook) 1. Dalits—India—Religion. 2. Liberation theology India. 3. Christian anarchism. I. Title. BR1155.H43 2011 230’.04640954—dc22 2010053012 isBn 978-1-409-42439-0 (hbk) isBn 978-1-315-57579-7 (ebk)

Dedicated to Peter Hebden 1944–2009

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Contents List of Abbreviations    Foreword    Preface    Introduction  

ix xi xiii 1

Part I Understanding the Postcolonial Context 1

Subversion and Resistance in Postcolonial Discourse  

7

2

Cosmic Courtship and the Violence of the Gods  

31

3

Self Preservation Society  

49

Part II Resisting the State in Colonial and Postcolonial India 4

Missiological Controversies on Church and State  

71

5

Fathers of the Nation: The Gandhi and Ambedkar Controversy  

83

Part III Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism: A Subversive Synthesis 6

Resistance from the Margins  

109

7

Dalit Theology and the Powers That Be  

137

8

Jesus the Foreigner  

153

Select Bibliography    Index   

159 167

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List of Abbreviations ABVP AICC BJP BNP BSP CLS CMS CNI CSI DSS FMPB GCSS GUST GLTC IP IPM ISPCK LMS NGO NST OBC OM POA RSS SC/ST SEBC ST TNC TNE UCNI VBS VHP WCC

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (Nationalist Student body) All Indian Christian Council Bharatiya Janata Party British National Party Bahujan Samaj Party Christian Literature Society Church Missionary Society Church of North India Church of South India Dalit Sangarshan Samithi Friends Missionary Prayer Band Gujuarati Christian Social Services Gujarat United School of Theology Gurukul Lutheran Theological College Irish Presbyterian Irish Presbyterian Mission Indian Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge London Missionary Society Non-Governmental Organisation Navsarjan Trust Other Backward Castes Operation Mobilisation Prevention of Atrocities Act Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps) Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Socially and Educationally Backward Class Scheduled Tribes Trans-national Corporation Trans-national Ecclessia United Church of Northern India Vacation Bible School Vishva Hindu Parishad World Council of Churches

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Foreword The role of the state in Dalit emancipation is emerging as a contentious topic of debate in the larger Dalit discourse. There are some who argue that it is the responsibility of the state to act in favour of the Dalit communities. Within this framework the Dalit movements creatively engage with the state to fulfil this role. On the other hand, those who approach the state from a more instrumentalist position – viewing it as an arm of the powerful classes – would argue that by its very nature the state acts on behalf of the powerful. They work to expose the instrumentalist nature of the state to coerce it to act in favour of those who are marginalised. At its basis, however, both positions assume the state as a given. It is exactly here that Keith Hebden offers the fresh insight of Christian Anarchism, inviting Dalit ideology and theology to rethink the role of the state and its theological legitimisation. He calls on Dalit theology to perceive the state itself as a colonial construct and to draw from anarchist ideas, both indigenous as well as from the Christian tradition, as valid resources for Dalit emancipation. In doing so he not only undercuts notions of Indian nationalism that equate Indian with Hindu with Brahmanism, but also offers Dalit theology the possibility of creating new ‘paradigms for transforming Indian life’. Considering a wide spectrum of material that ranges from missionary visions to present day politics, Keith offers an altogether new direction for Dalit theology by opening new perspectives and possibilities. I sincerely believe this work will energise Dalit theology to being not only more self-critical but also in offering new contextually relevant directions. Rev. Dn. Philip Vinod Peacock, Associate Professor of Bishop’s College, Kolkata

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Preface This book is the result of a search for a Liberation theology that can be understood both in the majority world context of India and the minority and privileged world context of the author. I began with Dalit theology and soon found myself unable to do that kind of work with any integrity – I am not a Dalit. Christian anarchism is an appropriate response to Dalit theology from those of who are not on the margins but who alienated within the same marginalising system. If Dalit theology is to be a Liberation theology of, and for, the Dalits, and for India, it must offer something distinctly Dalit. This book cautiously suggests what I have found to be distinct in Dalit theology. Things I have not found in my own or other theologies. The atheistic and anti-state assumptions of anarchism help us to challenge the monotheistic and statist assumptions of even the most radical theologies. I would like to thank friends I have met through the Christian anarchist conferences and Jesus Radicals forum for helping me discover the rich Christian anarchist tradition. Much of the research for this book was done at Birmingham University with Professor R.S. Sugirtharajah’s lightness, humour, and depth of wisdom as guidance; for that I am always grateful. Alongside this were visits to India, especially Gujarat, where I was so wonderfully cared for and so inspired by Bishop Vinod Malaviya and his clergy – most especially Ranchchod and Clara Gamit who opened their home to me and gave me the gift of their enormous sense of mischief. This book could not have happened without them. The section of this book “Dalit Worship as Active Resistance”, in Chapter 6, is published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing. I would also like to thanks Sathianathan Clarke and the staff or UTC Bangalore, Lancy Lobo, Cedric Prakash, RC Bishop Thomas Macwan, M.C Raj, and the many others who gave so much time to talk to me. Throughout the course of this journey I have had the support of Sophie my wife, family and friends, and most especially my father without whom I would never have had the chance to fall in love with India and who shared so generously in many of my enthusiasms; this book is dedicated to his memory.

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Introduction Indian Christian theology has a rich, varied and ancient history dating back to the Apostle Thomas, according to legend. Many Hindus have thought, acted and written in response to Christianity as presented to them and offered insights into both faiths. Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen, Nehemiah Goreh and Sri Ramakrishna are among the earliest Hindu reformers who delve into Christian doctrine from a Vedic perspective. In the early twentieth century Sadhu Sundar Singh, famously characterised by the Anglican priest Charles Andrews, drew out a challenging praxiology of faith from the Christian message. From the second half of the nineteenth century onward the Christian Bhakti movement has sought to create an understanding of worship and salvation that draws on both the orthodox Christian tradition and the Vedic tradition. However, through most of the history of the interface between these two faiths the focus has been on dialogue between the conservative elements of both. Thus the theology that has evolved tends to be individualistic, esoteric and most of all obsessed with metaphysics. Very rarely has conventional Indian theology dared to enter the realm of political discourse. Manilal C. Parekh, as we shall discover, is an unusual and extreme example. However, the advent of a liberation theology claims to have changed the emphasis and taken Indian theology in a new direction. By challenging the status quo it has created many controversies of its own. However, it is yet to be sufficiently selfcritical or self-aware to audit how far it has moved from its conservative roots. The context of the emergence of Indian liberation theology, or Dalit theology, is the postcolonial restiveness in the wider political arena fuelled by a growing awareness of the themes of liberation theologies by Indian theologians looking for sources elsewhere in the postcolonial Church, most notably in Latin America. However, the contention of this book is that liberation theology is not postcolonial enough, but is heading in the right direction. To be postcolonial is to resist the supremacy of the colonisers and recover the pre-colonial culture from their influence. Yet the greatest influence of the colonisers – the formation of the liberal democratic nation state – is rarely mentioned or challenged. The formation of the state has implications for the doing of Dalit theology, herein lays the problem. Yet Dalit theology is having a slow but steady impact on the way Dalits view, not uncritically, the nation state. In finding the resources to make this challenge real Dalits could find themselves turning to their other oppressor, another invention of the statistic colonisers – the Vedic reformers.

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Dalit theologian Peniel Rajkumar has called on other Dalit theologians to radically change their approach to the discipline.1 He brings together four important criticisms of Dalit theology as reasons for the current malaise in the Churches’ responses to the Dalit situation. First, he argues, there is a ‘lacuna between theology and action’,2 Dalit theology does not lead to praxis but to more theology; there is no paradigm offered for Christian Dalit action and no sense of Dalits being agents of change within the Church or even the recognition that they are the majority of Indian Christians. Second, Dalit Christology and Soteriology, popularly expressed by the Exodus motif in liberation theologies, has proved inadequate for Dalit theology. Christ in Dalit theology is either victim or victor – passive servant or violent revolutionary. The motif is colonialists because the emancipated slaves go to violently conquer the Canaanites, it romanticises servanthood and puts too much emphasis on pathos rather than protest.3 The Exodus motif also supports the unhelpful ‘polemic binarism’4 that is Rajkumar’s third criticism. He writes of a ‘failure to recognise the paramount importance of engaging both Dalits and “non-Dalits”’5 in the need for liberation. Fourth, Dalit theology has failed to communicate clearly with the Church or fully enabled a ‘performative and embodied hermeneutics to take place’.6 In other words, the Dalit Christians are still not active in the interpretation of the Christian stories that matter to them. This book will attempt to deal with these criticisms of Dalit theology in many ways but the main emphasis will be on the third criticism that Rajkumar makes: that of the polemic binarism found in Dalit theology as it sets up Dalits against non-Dalits and Dalit sources against Hindu or other sources. This book will seek to see beyond these boundaries to see the overall set-up of Indian culture politics as oppressively constructed by colonial interference before, during and after the British administration’s control. Anarchism both recognises that there are oppressors and oppressed but also recognises that it is the systemic oppression that must be overthrown if both classes of society are to be free. Rajkumar, in his insightful use of gospel narratives have shown that there are stories in the Jesus tradition that back this up.7 This book will attempt to further bring together Christian tradition and a political outlook that goes beyond the social conservatism of much liberation theology. Chapter 1 allows us to explore what tools are available to generate a useful postcolonial discourse in the contemporary Indian context. An understanding of 1 Peniel Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation: Problems, Paradigms and Possibilites (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). 2 Ibid., p. 60. 3 Ibid., pp. 62–5. 4 Ibid., p. 64. 5 Ibid., p. 69. 6 Ibid., p. 71. 7 Ibid., pp. 145–67.

Introduction

3

Christian anarchism is outlined because this tradition helps us to understand the liberationist hermeneutic circle as a hermeneutic of resistance. The hermeneutic of resistance is the key tool to reading colonial and postcolonial developments in theology, literature, Missiology and political ideology. This is because postcolonial theology, which is what Indian theology must be, has to challenge the continued importance placed on the boundaries and administration of the colony. This chapter asks why the state, or colony, has come to be admired so much even by anti-western critics and assumed to be authentically Indian when it took so much enthusiasm and violence to create. Leo Tolstoy and Walter Wink offer useful models for understanding India’s sociotheological context having ways of challenging colonial state-making in the West. Chapter 2 uses the hermeneutic of resistance to define the political parameters of sociotheological discourse. We name some of the defining powers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to Indian theology. Namely, we identify Mother India as the god of states; the Missionary God as the ideological position of an imposed Christendom theology on the indigenous Church; and the Vedic God as the ideological movement claiming to be the only authentically Indian tradition but which is in fact based on western foundations of modernism, statism and coercive violence. Chapter 3 analyses Christian responses to the colonial and postcolonial climate of fear and fundamentalism and asks to what extent the Church is equipped to deal with increasing tension, violence and competing truth claims. Here we take a closer look at the violence that has troubled Gujarat state, north India, over the past decade. We ask how it has emerged from a religious and political context and in what way Christian theology has responded to its horrors. Indian theology has responded by revisiting what it means to be Indian and Christian. We look at the growth of global Pentecostalism and its impact on mainstream Churches in India as well as the theological implications of the challenges the Church is facing. Chapter 4 reveals that Missiology during protestant missions of the 1930s was not universally conservative and statist. Some missionaries, listening carefully to high caste reformers like Gandhi and paying sincere attention to the context of Dalits, offer us a precursor to Dalit theology that echoes universal themes of liberation theology long before the term was coined, but in a distinctively Indian way. We also look at Roman Catholic mission by returning to present day Gujarat and showing how this tradition of nonviolent resistance is rooted in a radical theology in solidarity with the marginalised. A hermeneutic of resistance finds resonance with Indian Missiology when it engages with the politics of state and oppression. Chapter 5 breaks exciting new ground in uncovering and challenging assumptions about two of the most important figures in modern Indian history, particularly in the national narrative of Dalit political and religious discourse. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi are often seen as diametrically opposed ideologues by their fans and detractors. Neither figure is as he would first appear, according to this carefully nuanced study of their relationship and their understandings of the compact between religion and state.

4

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism

Dalits movements that reject the contribution made by Gandhi to Indian theology miss out on much that resonates with their own worldviews. Dalit movements that uncritically accept Ambedkar’s role as one of a ‘Moses-like’ figure redeeming his enslaved people do so only by ignoring weaknesses in his position. Chapter 6 shows how the modern Dalit movement, from the 1960s to the present day, along with the foreign influence of Latin American liberation theology, has shaped Indian theology and ecclesiology in important yet limited ways. In Chapter 7 we see that Indian theology has responded to but not always engaged with the Dalit movement’s symbology or literature. While certain theologians stand out as having contributed greatly to this conversation, especially A.M. Arulraja and Sathianathan Clarke, there are gaps in this emerging theology that suggest missing themes but also a hidden narrative that needs to be explored: a hermeneutic of resistance that leads to a celebration of the motif of ‘foreignness’. Chapter 8 develops this motif of subversive foreignness with special reference to Jesus and his political theology of resistance. This chapter, as well as being a conclusion is an invitation to Dalit theologians to explore the implications of setting down the defensive and reactionary apologetics of conservative Christian patriotism and respond to the times with a defiant rejection of patriotism. Instead, they may embrace both a mystic refusal to be cowed and a concrete position of solidarity with those on the margins of state. Subversive foreignness leads to a new understanding of Mother India more in keeping with both Dalit religion and Christian anarchist theology that sees her liberated from being defined by her consort and the uniformity of statism. In taking this position Dalit theology could be radically reinterpreting a lot that has been assumed ‘Indian’ and creating new paradigms for transforming Indian life.

Part I Understanding the Postcolonial Context

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Chapter 1

Subversion and Resistance in Postcolonial Discourse

They called this area ‘India’, a term then alien to the peoples of south Asia and imprecise even in European usage and they conceived this ‘India’ as a distinct Asian entity and hence, by the criteria of colonial expansion, as a legitimate subject of dominion.1

Rarely does a theology find the imagination to step behind the big assumptions of the secular world. Anarchism is a tradition born out of enlightenment Europe and the emergence of the nation state as a far from benign power and it allows us to do just that. Because anarchists remind us that the nation state is a modern novelty that evolved and emerged by coercion and much violence it helps us to see the theologies that suit the nation state emerge in the same way and at the same time. Once we grasp these twin developments of theology and nation we are able to step away from both somewhat and see a bigger picture of our context of oppression than political theologies normal allow. The first half of this chapter is a gentle introduction to the breadth of anarchist thought showing how Christian anarchism might be distinctive among it. We must also have the right linguistic tools to make clear that this is a spiritual as well as political engagement with the forces that oppress Dalits across India and continue to trouble them. We must find ways to name and describe these. Again, the enlightenment philosophers and economists as well as the biblical theology of Walter Wink – a key writer for Christian anarchists if not one himself – came in to play to support what is a radical theologically approach to Dalit liberation theology. When it has been established what Christian anarchism is and how it might work we can go on to use its assertion to pull out from history the political and theological developments that must be challenged. To understand where the Christian Dalit movement is and where it might go we first must understand how it got there and what it may have lost along the way.

1 John Keay, The Great Arc: The dramatic tale of how India was mapped and Everest was named (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000), p. 82.

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An Anarchist Critique: Tools for Deconstructing the Statist Ideology Liberation theology begins with an evaluation of context, moving to reflection from a scriptural perspective by the poor. To facilitate evaluation and reflection, appropriate tools must be identified. These tools are often Marxist economics of one form or another. Christian anarchism provides alternative tools and highlights those aspects of liberation theology that resonate with Dalitness. Anarchism is a way of understanding the dynamics of power and how they relate to justice; it is an enlightenment response to an enlightenment problem – the nation state. This problem of the violent nation state is one that has been exported to India and, while foreign to the subcontinent, has been taken as natural. It is appropriate then to at least have available the same tools to critique as are available in the West – namely the anarchist response. However, in bringing anarchism into dialogue with indigenous practice and from a Christian anarchist perspective it is possible to both understand the politics of India theologically and the Church’s political responses. Anarchic theory gives greater importance to social organisation than statepromoting theories such as democratic liberalism, or Marxism. The literal meaning of the word anarchy is ‘without ruler’. By derivation, anarchism is the doctrine [that] contends that government [the state] is the source of most of our social troubles and that there are viable alternative forms of voluntary organization. And by further definition the anarchist is the man who sets out to create a society without government.2 For its anti-state doctrine, Anarchist theory relies on a reading of history that has been developed to show that the growth of the nation state necessitates the perpetuation of fear and violence and an unequal social system. Anarchy is a social theory of what to do to bring about justice and how to understand the causes of injustice. There are overlapping schools of thought within the history of anarchy which must be identified and evaluated before moving to a theologically, politically, appropriate model of Christian anarchism. Andrew Vincent, in his anthology of Political ideologies, traces five distinct and mutually exclusive schools of anarchism. A brief outline of these will show their strengths and weakness and inform a constructive approach to Christian anarchism. First, Individualist anarchism, this school emphasises the sovereignty of the individual and his or her right to private property and self-promotion. This is a nihilistic and very literal understanding of the term anarchy that is blatantly destructive of community and goes against the rights of the poor. Second, Collectivist anarchism, influenced by Michael Bakunin, celebrates the freedom of the community over that of the individual and celebrates the ‘destructive urge’ as a creative force for change. Collectivism envisions society in relational and un-managed groups. 2 George Woodcock, ‘Anarchism: A Historical Introduction’, in George Woodcock (ed), The Anarchist Reader (Glasgow, Fontana, 1977), p. 11.

Subversion and Resistance in Postcolonial Discourse

9

Third: Communist anarchism, with proponents Peter Kropotkin, Colin Ward and Murray Bookchin. The desire to cooperate and to hold goods in common is understood as natural to society when it is not dominated and coerced by market forces and the state. Fourth, Mutualist Anarchism, private property is approved of when it does not conflict with the needs of others, economic contracts are encouraged. However, this form of anarchy stresses the importance of equality only among men, the interests of women and children are left ‘unradicalised’. Finally, Anarcho-syndicalism: a militant and union-oriented form of anarchism. This form of anarchism is closer to the concept of the Socialist state built on the influence of powerful, anti-intellectual trade unions.3 Unionism, however, is just another form of government by the Other and cannot really be considered anarchic. There is no unified theory of anarchism and this presents a problem when establishing criteria for assessing other more structured philosophies, such as Dalit theology. A workable model of Christian anarchism must go beyond the selfishness of individualism thus avoiding Western pietistic soteriology and rejecting nihilism. However, it must not fall into the impersonal restrictions of Collectivism that would oppress the individual and favour vocal conservatism. Democracy should not be considered a naturally Indian ally; the Dalits prefer a model of group consensus. The group and the individual are equal in value. A useful model of anarchism follows that utilitarian ethics are inappropriate. It must be as practical in its approach to property as Mutualist anarchism is and as committed to the rejection of the free market as is Communism. Neither communism nor economic liberalism challenges the caste system because they do not challenge statism. Christian anarchism rejects the violent anti-intellectualism of anarcho-syndicalism and the violence inherent in the Liberation theology motif while celebrating the non-literate societies as empowered regardless of formal education. This thesis pushes Christian anarchism toward polycentric-monotheism, through its interaction with Dalit traditions. The two worldviews (anarchic and Dalit) help to define one another. There are precursors to the Dalit Christian anarchism that this book journeys towards in Indian thought and practice but they are few. Two movements inspired by Gandhi are the core of this. The first during his lifetime and under his leadership and philosophy of ‘Satyagraha’. The second after his death: the Sarvodaya movement.4 The Sarvodaya movement that emerged in 1951 was organised and led by Vinoba Bhave, a charismatic young high caste Hindu who reapplied Gandhi’s principles of Satyagraha (Truth in action) and Swaraj. Bhave’s most popular contribution to reform was ‘Boodhan’, – a campaign to get landowners to voluntarily hand over their land to the villages via the Panchayat 3 A. Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies, 2ED (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Limited, 1995), pp. 119–21. 4 G. Ostergaard and M. Currel, The Gentle Anarchists: A Study of the leaders of the Sarvodaya Movement for Nonviolent Revolution in India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971).

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(village council). Bhave also claimed that the Panchayat had moved away from its original anarchic form. He inspired a form of consensus-based organising in which leaders lived simply and with diverse roles. He rejected all forms of government that went beyond self-government; two thirds of the movement’s members did not vote in the 1962 general election. Bhave also argued for a society free from state or administrative interference idealised as ‘Rajya-Mukti’ (‘monarchy-liberated’) or ‘Arajya’ (‘anarchy’). Other members of the Sarvodaya movement added their own understanding of postcolonial reform. Two federalist anarchists within the movement were Dada Dharndikari and J.P. Narayan. Dharnkikari criticised state democracy as corrupt and police ‘goons’ as agents of the landlords at the financial and social cost of the landless. Narayan, a cautious anarchist, campaigned to eliminate party politics from the present democratic system. The Sarvodaya movement, exciting as it was remained a predominantly caste movement and could not take advantage of the radical insights that the poorest and most disposed and ancient of Indian wisdom could offer to a resistance and reform movement. A radical anarchist movement would need to be a Dalit movement. It is only very recently that Alexandre Christoyannopoulos made the first published attempt at an outline of what is meant by Christian anarchism in his almost exhaustive book of the same title.5 Christoyannopoulos outlines a broad school of thought and among other things he observes: Christian anarchism teases out the revolutionary political implications of Christianity and in so doing acts as an invitation to reflect, both individually and collectively, on a range of issues of importance today – such as the omnipotence of the modern state, the wisdom of adopting violent means to reach however laudable ends, the usual methods for dealing with criminals in society, for tackling poverty and famine and so on.6

Christian anarchism, as understood in this book, is the assumption that a hermeneutic of nonviolent resistance to violence should be applied to both text and historical narrative to draw out the statist agenda of all protagonists and challenge the assumption that the powerful, rather than the kingdom of God, is the Christian mode of salvation. As such it is a rejection of all forms of nationalism since the kingdom of God transcends temporal modes of belonging. It is not utopian in that it assumes that the struggle for liberation is ongoing and that, because the social propensities to oppress and serve will always exist, so must the revolutionary moment. Because it is not utopian, Christian anarchism reconfigures eschatology in the present continuous: the coming of the kingdom is a constant proclamation and its arrival is already assumed. 5 Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Christian anarchism: A Political commentary on the gospel (Oxford: Academic Imprint, 2010). 6 Ibid., p. 295.

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Liberation theologies such as Dalit theology apply a hermeneutic circle: the consistent return to empiricism, especially of the oppressed, as the foundation for reading and retelling the text. This model of hermeneutic fits a Christian anarchist one since both critique structures that oppress. This model would envisage a society in which rules, the ‘Law’, are replaced by covenants of action and consequence. It is no less utopian and unrealistic than the gospel theme of the ‘Kingdom of God’. Christian theology, in the Western and liberationist traditions, is fully conversant with the impractical and improbable vision of society under God’s just reign. Christian anarchism addresses the contradiction inherent in anarchic praxis and illuminates Christian Liberation theology. It is a form of anarchism that does not allow for the oppression of humans or their exaltation above one another: ‘there is but one Lord’ (1 Cor. 8:6). Such a proposition shifts away from the theological justifications of any form of nationalism, patriotism, or sense of belonging beyond that of those with whom the Christian has an actual relationship. Dave Andrews, who set up anarchic Christian communities in Delhi and Australia, defines Christian anarchy, or Christi-Anarchy, in a way that has striking parallels with both anarchism and Liberation theology. A lifestyle that is characterized by the radical, nonviolent, sacrificial compassion of Jesus the Christ. A way of life distinguished by commitment to love and to justice; marginalized and disadvantaged; so as to enable them to realize their potential, as men and women made in the image of God; through self-directed, other-oriented intentional groups and organizations.7

Andrews emphasises the community, the intentional group, namely the group who are marginalised and seek justice; his is a liberationist approach. For Indian theology, the ‘marginalised and disadvantaged’ have been identified as Dalits by Dalits. However, Dalit theology is more introspective than ‘Other-oriented,’ focusing on developing self-identity through various means, such as history and literature. Christian anarchism exposes weakness in Liberation theology in general and Dalit theology in particular, because Liberation theologies are both by the poor and for the poor hence they tend to look to the oppressed to find virtues and to the oppressor to find fault. There is a lack of challenge in this approach. On the other hand, a Christian anarchist approach looks rather to structural injustices and the corporate responsibility of both oppressed and oppressor to liberate the cosmos in an ongoing struggle with the Powers. Furthermore, because political context is understood primarily in terms of economics rather than a broader view of the politics of rulership Liberation theology is not immune to the tendency to replace one oppressive group with another. Critic Arthur McGovern notes that the Marxist model first used by Liberation theologians continues to restrict its development in some instances. 7 Dave Andrews, Not Religion, But Love: Practicing a Radical Spirituality of Compassion (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2001), p. 24.

12

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism [N]early all the liberation theologians have developed more nuanced politicaleconomic views …. [However, in] my judgment, any system, capitalist or socialist, where economic and political power are concentrated in a few hands (or in one country), will almost inevitably lead to injustices.8

Christian anarchism offers a critique of Marxist dialecticism because it does not assume, incorrectly, that moves towards a more just democratic state will result in power being dissolved to the poor. As we shall see, Dalit theology tends not to move beyond the statist model in early Liberation theology and therefore fails to realise the potential of its own subversive tradition. The most substantial commentary on Christian anarchism is that of Jacques Ellul, who defines it most simply as, ‘the rejection of violence’, yet he does not reject violence as a means of revolution change; rather he rejects it as a means of change for the anarchic Christian, for whom an alternative exists.9 His extensive study of the social mechanisms, often translated as ‘Technologies’ and his exegesis from an anarchistic perspective of Old and New Testament narratives provides a critique of the Liberationist hermeneutic as found in Dalit theology. Like many Dalit theologians Ellul is Christocentric in his approach making comparison and critique quite simple. Like Andrews, Ellul challenges the role of the coercive state as diametrically opposed to the Kingdom of God; the ‘City’ is contrasted with the ‘garden’, the coercive state with the freed community. Christian anarchism relates social structures to spiritual structures asserting the lordship of Christ over all such ‘Powers and Principalities’. The Church and related agencies are not exempt from this critique as Powers that need to be constantly redeemed from the human tendency to take power from the Other and converted to the created human tendency to strive for social justice. Christian anarchism is a moral rejection of the Western tendency to centralised and monopolising state democracies, whereby voting is the primary means of consenting to disempowerment. Liberation theology does not challenge this power structure: it simply inverts it so that the direction changes from ‘top down’ to ‘bottom up’. For Christian anarchism this is not good enough: there must not be top and bottom in a free society. It is assumed that the greater the shift in a society toward statism, the greater the loss of autonomy for the poorest in that society. These things are always held in tension: an inclination toward community and social relation and an egoistic bent towards domination of others and other communities are both observable in human nature. Statism is an umbrella term used in this thesis to refer to any ideology that presupposes the need for state and government, be that socialism, capitalism, fascism, or one of the many nationalisms, or even

8 A.F. McGovern, Liberation theology and its critics: Toward an assessment (New York: Orbis books, 1993), p. xx. 9 Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity (Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), p. 11.

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internationalism. The British colonial project and the Evangelical missionary project will be reviewed from this vantage. A Hermeneutic of Resistance For Leo Tolstoy, Jesus’ commandment not to ‘resist evil’ provides the ‘key’ or essential hermeneutic tool for working out a practical theology and for reading the gospels.10 He seems to nuance this commandment as ‘never resist the evil-doer by force, do not meet violence with violence’11 when he deals with the commandment as the fourth of the ‘Commandments of Christ’. This particular interpretation fits better with contemporary exegesis: When the court translators working in the hire of King James chose to translate antistenai as ‘resist not evil’, they were doing something more than rendering Greek into English. They were translating nonviolent resistance into docility.12

Bernard Häring refers to this resistance as ‘an attitudinal method [that] relies on the gentle but limitless power of love.’13 Tolstoy can be said to be a primary source for understanding Christian anarchism since his work predates that of Vernard Eller and Jacques Ellul and has had an impact on M.K. Gandhi making his work pertinent to a postcolonial study of Indian theology. It is appropriate to refer to Tolstoy’s key as a hermeneutic of resistance since it assumes that resistance to violence is implied but that it is resistance rather than kind. It would also be appropriate to state that the hermeneutic of resistance is the essence of a Christian anarchist hermeneutic since, as Tolstoy discovers, it leads to an irresistible rejection of the state and an understanding of the kingdom of God as an alternative to all forms of state or Powers. This hermeneutic does not always however lead to an understanding of God as nonviolent: Häring cited above fails to fully apply this as a hermeneutical key when considering the wrath of God, whereas Walter Wink, James Alison and Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer apply it well although not always drawing the same messages from like texts. So the assumption that this hermeneutic of resistance also applies to God-talk is made here. Jesus’ hermeneutic of resistance, as outlined by Tolstoy and named in this thesis, reflects God’s resistance through Christ and through the

Leo Tolstoy, ‘What I believe’, in A. Maude (Trans.), The Works of Leo Tolstoy Volume 2: A confession and the Gospel in brief (London: OUP, 1933), p. 320. 11 Ibid., p. 393. 12 Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A third way (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2003), p. 10. 13 Bernard Häring, A Theology of protest (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970), p. 9. 10

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movement of the Spirit and the proclamation of the kingdom of God – a kingdom of resistance. Tolstoy uses this hermeneutic of resistance to define his ethical stance in relation to the institutions of the state. The courts do not forgive, but punish. They deal out not good but evil to those they call the enemies of society. So it appeared evident that Christ must have condemned the courts.14

In fact from this he draws out the Christian anarchist principle that a Christian must be in opposition to any ruler, or arké, since he rules by using violence to overcome violence. Since the Orthodox Church that Tolstoy knows allows for the rule of state and of justified violence his position puts him in opposition to the Church and in suspicion of orthodox exegesis and doctrine. He writes with simple and accusing regret: ‘I was taught to respect these institutions by the priests.’15 Tolstoy demonstrates the use of the hermeneutic of resistance by applying it to the text of Matthew (Matt. 5: 17 – end) from which he distils five ‘commandments of Christ’. This fourth commandment of Christ was the first I understood and it was the one which disclosed to me the meaning of all the others.16

The language of Tolstoy is sexist and the translation by Maude is now dated so a summary of the five commandments as Tolstoy explains them and re-worded here follows: Firstly, strive for peace by counting nothing against others and always seeking their peace of mind in relation to you; second, do not even entertain thoughts of changing sexual partners; third, never make oaths or promises; fourth, nonviolent resistance to violence; fifth, treat all nations as your own because God loves all nations the same.17 Part of this hermeneutic is the assumption that anything that contradicts the fourth commandment of Christ must be either an addition or an example of exegesis bias to the state. For example, because Jesus’ instruction not to be angry ‘without cause’ (eiké) suggests that anger is sometimes appropriate Tolstoy works at the text until those words are removed. The very word [eiké] which infringes the whole meaning of Christ’s’ teaching was added to the Gospels in the fifth century and is not to be found in the best manuscripts.18

16 17 18 14 15

Tolstoy, ‘What I believe’, p. 332. Ibid., p. 332. Ibid., p. 393. Ibid., ‘ pp. 370–406. Ibid., p. 376.

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Therefore Christ, in this instance, is barring all forms of anger because they are a violence of the mind against those who do violence. Liberation theologians first made explicit what has become known as the hermeneutic circle. Gustavo Gutiérrez explains that biblical texts examined by the poor in the context of their own reality leads to eschatology and practice which, when followed by further reflection on context renews the process, hence a hermeneutic circle.19 For early Latin American Liberation theology the critical tool for reading history was Marxist dialecticism, as such it became the tool for reading the bible. Understandably, the central motif chosen by Liberation theologians was dualistic and violent – the Exodus motif. Ched Myers, activist and exegetical theologian, refers to the hermeneutic circle as a conversation between text and reader ‘requiring not detachment but involvement’.20 Myers points out that ‘White North American Christians’ such as he read the text from the site of empire or ‘locus imperium’21. Myers uses this hermeneutic to great impact in his original commentary on Mark’s gospel: Binding the Strongman. Tolstoy also worked from the locus emporium until he developed his hermeneutic of resistance from which point his hermeneutic always resisted empire and other Powers but without degenerating to that site by using violence as a means of resistance. A hermeneutic of suspicion means a reader must always be suspicious of the bias in her reading of the text.22 Jacques Ellul claims that rather than wanting freedom, humans long to be obedient to something other.23 Therefore, for both the oppressor and the oppressed there is a universal tendency toward the locus imperium: a reading allowing the interpreter to excuse oppression. Unlike a Marxist critique, a hermeneutic of resistance flags up this tendency and authenticates the hermeneutic circle. Latin American Liberation theology as moved away from its reliance on Marxism as a key to reading reality.24 This shift is partly because voices from other margins of society – ‘race, gender, cultural and ecological studies’ – have spoken into the tradition, but it is also due to the perceived failure of states based on forms of Marxism to resist globalisation.25

19 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: Revised (New York: Orbis 1998), p. xxxiii. 20 Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman: A political reading of Mark’s story of Jesus (New York: Orbis, 2003), p. 5. 21 Myers, Binding the Strongman, p. 5. 22 Ibid., p. 4. 23 Jacques Ellul, The Ethics of Freedom, Trans. G.W. Bromiley (London: Mowbrays, 1976), p. 91. 24 Alistair Kee, Marx and the failure of Liberation theology (London: SCM Press, 1990). 25 I. Petrella, ‘Introduction’, in I. Petrella (ed.), Latin American Liberation theology: the next generation (New York: Orbis 2005), p. xiv.

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The original site of Latin American Liberation theology was the margin of postcolonial countries. Being on the margins is not the same as being removed from that particular locus emporium and therefore Liberation theology, in that and other contexts around the globe has worked slowly towards a shift from the original hermeneutic to one that is informed by the same hermeneutic of resistance to some degree. The conclusion that Tolstoy and Myers have reached is neither universal to liberation theologians nor implied by the hermeneutic circle. Rather it is the necessary result of an honest use of that process. It is necessary because reading the text from the margins using the hermeneutic circle inevitably leads the marginal community to question the violence of the state and look for the same question in the text. Certainly most Dalit theology remains fixed on a Marxist critique and an Exodus motif. This may be because of the popularity of Marxism already in the history of south India – where Dalit theology has been most popular – or because Indian politics and theology remain in the conservative mould of the missionaries and colonialists and therefore cannot see beyond statism without an explicitly anti-state theology. Tolstoy’s reading of context using the same hermeneutic by which he reads the bible informs the liberationist that it is not enough to be suspicious of subjective readings of the text but it is also necessary to be suspicious of subjective readings of the context. A conservative reading by the poor of their context will not lead to emancipation even if the ‘conversation’ Myers refers to takes place, unless it is an authentically liberationist reading of context. Readings of context only liberate if the hermeneutic of resistance is applied. Alfredo Fierro, Spanish political theologian, criticises Gutiérrez for his ‘critical deficiency’ in not addressing two opposing assumptions that liberation is both a gift from God and in the hands of the oppressed.26 Indeed Gutiérrez writes of, ‘liberation from all that limits or keeps human beings from self-fulfilment.’ Yet the Exodus motif he chooses27 depicts a violent active God redeeming a people who are not only passive in their liberation but often an impediment to ‘self-fulfilment’ in the desert experience that follows it. The Exodus motif is unsustainable because it fails to deal with the mechanics of oppression: paternalism, violence and theocratic lawmaking. Dalit theologians tend to uncritically adopt this motif even if other forms of Liberation theology have moved away from it to something more authentically like a narrative of the oppressed.28 What Gutiérrez does not deal with is the fundamental problem with a text that has survived in the hands of oppressors, whatever the narrative that has Alfredo Fierro, The Militant Gospel: An analysis of contemporary political theologies (London: SCM Press 1977), pp. 326–7. 27 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, pp. 88–90. 28 P. Arockiadoss, ‘The Significance of Dr. Ambedkar for Theologising in India’, in V. Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology (Delhi: ISPCK/Gurukul, 1997) and Anthony Thumma, Springs from the Subalterns: Patterns and Perspectives in People’s Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999). 26

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survived processes of redaction must have been tamed first and what could not be tamed: rejected. Thus discerning a theology of the poor must mean taking a counter-cultural view of the text. Therefore text can be resisted or a tradition of resistance must be discerned from it but always with a hermeneutic of suspicion and specifically a hermeneutic of resistance. Elsa Tamez, a more contemporary voice in Latin American Liberation theology finds that in reading and resisting a text, that is, reading an oppressive text (1 Timothy), she is able to discern a theology of resistance.29 This is much closer to a Christian anarchist hermeneutic of resistance although not explicitly so. A Christian anarchist understands the relationship between God and creation as one of a paradigm of nonreciprocal self-sacrifice. That is, a pattern of love to be proclaimed as ‘the Kingdom of God’. For such an understanding the phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ must be understood ironically: since it has no borders, no judge, no moral coercion and no ruler. The king then, as James Alison puts it, is to be found in the ‘risen victim’, or vindicated victim, one who was declared guilty according to the law but vindicated by God.30 And so this risen victim, who is love, is the sign and means of vindication of the oppressed. For Gutiérrez the oppressed means the poor and marginalised, for the Christian anarchist the oppressed is all creation, including the violent and dominant communities because the true oppressor is structural: the principalities and Powers. Therefore, ‘the poor’ using the term as Gutiérrez might are already vindicated; they already sit in judgement on a world that judges them less important or impure or whatever reasons for oppression are given. Fierro picks up with enthusiasm on the importance of violence in a political theology. Violence is shared by all movements of liberation, revolution, or protest. It gives them concrete form, fleshing them out in the real world. Without violence they lose themselves in abstraction, unreality and ineffectiveness. The only way to subvert the dominant Powers of oppression is to oppose them with an antagonistic power.31

Nelson-Pallmeyer makes the criticism of Liberation theology that it imagines a violent God who needs to be wooed to commit liberative violence on behalf of his people.32 Since nonviolent resistance is a key to reading praxis and text, a Christian anarchist perspective has to reject this motif and in so doing is liberated Elsa Tamez, Struggles for power in early Christianity (New York: Orbis Books

29

2007).

30 James Alison, Living in the end times: The last things re-imagined (London: SPCK 1996), p. 126. 31 Fierro, The Militant Gospel, p. 202. 32 Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Saving Christianity from Empire (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 109–10.

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from a theology of redemptive violence. Because Liberation theology does not begin with nonviolent resistance, even when liberation theologians arrive at a nonviolent solution, it can only be provisional to the foundational doctrine of the ‘preferential option for the poor’. Contemporaries Karl Marx and revolutionary anarchist Michael Bakunin began in dialogue but soon fell out over the role of the state. In our opinion, once [the revolution] has seized the state it must immediately destroy it as the eternal prison of the masses. According to Marx’s theory, however, the people not only must not destroy it, they must fortify it and strengthen it and in this form place it at the complete disposal of their benefactors …33

In the above sentiment Bakunin illustrates an essential difference between Marxism and anarchism and between Liberation theology and Christian anarchism. For the Bakuninist the state must be destroyed, for the Christian anarchist it must be subverted, for the liberationist it is to be redeemed. Dalit theology has not shifted to a subversive theology, despite having the indigenous resources to do so, because it is locked into the original conception of Liberation theology of the 1970s. However a new generation of Dalit theologians are beginning to question these assumptions and new publications are bound to reflect something far more radical than we have seen before. But in order to do this we need the theological basis for questioning the very existence of the state that the hermeneutic of resistance provides and we need the theological language to describe the evils that we find against which we resist; indeed naming them is the first act of resistance. Naming the Powers: Gods of a Postcolonial India Anarchism is a tool for understanding developments in social ordering in modern politics. Explicitly it is a tool for identifying the systems that dominate and coerce people – the structural evils. Anarchists tend to refer to these as Church and state,34 but the structures are more complicated and diverse than this. Political journalist and anarchist economist Raj Patel brilliantly sums up the idea of systems as beings. But for Patel they are not simply beings but ones that act in a way that a human or animal never would: these beings lack the virtues of human experience and reflect instead the worst assessment of human selfishness. Drawing on European enlightenment philosophy he identifies the abstract philosophical idea of ‘Economic Man’ who wants to maximise personal gain with most efficient expression of energy. In other words, we all want to be lazy and rich. He points out, as others have, that human behaviour is far more cooperative and altruistic than this but that social ordering relentlessly models Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy (Cambridge: CUP, 1990), p. 181. Petr Kropotkin, The State: Its Historic Role (London: Freedom Press, 1987), p. 54.

33 34

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the neat behavioural descriptions of Economic Man rather than the complex world of human community.35 Patel goes on to cite a study that compares modern corporations (and states behave comparably) to people with ‘antisocial personality disorder’ and finds stark similarities. Raj ties this idea to the older philosophical contribution of Thomas Hobbes in his case in favour of state government. Hobbes assumes that humans are selfish and destructive and need a ‘Power to keep them all in awe’. Hobbes thought that by joining together and using their reason to create an artificial person, government and humanity could impose upon itself the virtues of restraint and cooperation that people would in a state of nature lack.36 Personifying social structures then is not new. But it is much older than enlightenment philosophy and finds a home in the biblical and especially apocalyptic, traditions of Jewish and Christian faith. The approach to structural evil as integrally spiritual as well as temporal has been popularised by the American theologian Walter Wink in his series of Books, The Powers.37 Winks approach has proved popular with many in the Christian anarchist tradition. Wink identifies a henotheistic tradition through the Jewish and Christian Scriptures that better explains various biblical worldviews than simple monotheism.38 The Gods are identified by naming them as gods of respective ideologies or structural powers, all of which have organisational and temporal expressions: the Missionary God, the Mother India and the Vedic God who will be discussed below. Finally we will look at the unfolding structural evils that are oppressing and coercing the other ideologies – the Cosmic Gods of globalisation. We depart from Wink in his assumption that the Powers can be redeemed and look to the Dalits instead for a more antithetic approach to what God is and how that relates to human community. This is an important juncture where Dalit theology to date has often been too cautious, preferring to accept the theological assumptions of a colonial heritage: these too will be assessed below. The assumption of this paradigm is that the history of the formation of Mother India is one of increasingly centralised power driven by complicated bureaucracy and violence and of an increased tension between abstracted territorial and cultural identities. Political anarchist Charles Tilly maintains that European development from settlement, to city, to state is analogous to ‘organised crime’ with ‘the advantage of legitimacy’.39 The contention of this book is that the same is true of India’s history. This is no coincidence since the move from fragmented Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy (London: Portobello Books, 2009), p. 26. 36 Ibid., p. 87. 37 Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Hants: Marshall Pickering, 1984). 38 Ibid., p. 28. 39 Charles Tilly, ‘War Making and State Making as Organized Crime’, in P. Evans, D. Rueschemeyer and T. Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: CUP, 1985), p. 169. 35

20

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subcontinent, to colony, to state, to nation state was managed and coerced by a European superpower – the British Empire. In the state-making scenario, freedoms are exchanged for protections. Christian anarchism rejects all forms of paternalism for the expressed reason that they encourage an imbalance in relationships and the myth of redemptive violence: that the strong arm is the salvation of the weak hand. Christian anarchism necessitates the study of changes in power relations and relativity of freedom. Once the history of the Dalits is understood in these terms the context of Dalit theology can be critiqued, including its purposes. There is a heavy reliance in this hypothesis on a Western model; nonetheless it has a marked consistency with Subaltern Studies and Dalit ideology. The former is influenced by a Marxian view of history; the latter is anarchic in many cases. An anarchic understanding of the state includes its major institutions. For many Western countries these would be the administration of government, the army, the judiciary and the Church.40 However, a proper understanding of the state stems from its historical origins and development.41 Europe is the prototype of historical state making. Though European nation states only date back to the sixteenth century they have early precedence in the forms of bygone Empires. The accelerated accumulation of power by a decreasing number of monarchical rulers characterised this development. Where previously smaller estates had competed for power and some social groups had been independent, the growth in wealth and strengthening of standing armies allowed monarchs opportunity to consolidate their power. Christian anarchism should also challenge monotheism, since this has evolved alongside monarchical statism in the East. Liberation theology comfortably challenges the Western monopoly on God and theology and anarchists criticise the role of the Church in legitimising the state. A polycentric monotheism better fits the Dalit and the Vedic approaches to theology, as well as liberating theological doctrine and practice from the authority of a priestly or academic class of religious expert. The gradual emergence of a territorial state in which the government claims sovereign power within its borders is closely related to the development of a standing army. The existence of a permanent army simultaneously increased the demands made by governments on their subjects, especially in regards to taxation and their power to quell rebellion against these demands.42 The modern state developed from this feudal model at which point the machinery of government became impervious to the cyclical overthrow of administrations. So the creation of a state relies on certain pressures to manipulate a society into acquiescence: violence, a rigorous bureaucracy, a homogenising culture and a sense of societal participation (democracy in its various forms). Identifying these pressures, according to an anarchic model of social history, will explain the close relationship between the reification of the caste system and the role of the British administration 40 Andrew Carter, The Political Theory of Anarchism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971), p. 28. 41 Carter, The Political Theory of Anarchism, p. 29. 42 Ibid., p. 31.

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(State) and missionaries (Church). A Christian anarchist critique cannot shy away from a critique of all institutions, including Church and missionary agencies, if they are promoting a statist ideology and therefore adding to the marginalisation of the Dalits. I have focused my attention on mainstream, Roman Catholic and Pentecostal movements and found these to all have a Christendom, or statist, outlook. It may be that some marginalised Anabaptist and Quaker groups in India do not have such a view because they are often pacifist, therefore cannot refer grievances or needs to the state since the state is violent. To some extent Christian anarchism and Liberation theology are comparable. US-based theologian Linda H. Damico looks at themes drawn from anarchist texts: liberation, justice, domination, property, action, self-actualisation, violence and revolution. She outlines these concepts, comparing them with Liberationist priorities and finding shared themes. Anarchism is the ‘quintessential philosophy of freedom’,43 always ‘relative to the times and to the laws of nature and society’.44 This freedom does not amount to individual licence, so Damico, without saying so, rules out the American Individualist anarchism of writers such as Herbert Spencer. The Egoism of individual liberty should not be mistaken for the social individualism that the ‘collectivist notion of freedom entails’.45 This emphasis on a collective approach to freedom is evident in the Federalist/ Collectivist anarchism of Michael Bakunin and the Liberation theology of Ignacio Ellacuría, Gustavo Gutiérrez and Hugo Echegaray.46 For Liberation theologians, freedom is understood as the liberty of all humanity in order to be complete in its historical process.47 This is also seen in Dalit eschatology, which is understood in terms of fulfilment of purpose rather than passage of time. According to Dalit theologian M. Gnanavam, ‘eschatology is to do with the theology of wholeness and completeness’.48 It follows, since lack of freedom is unfair on those who are oppressed that ‘there is no complete freedom without justice’.49 Damico’s collectivism, understood in liberationist terms, does not go as far as Dalit theology because it is anthropocentric: it does not explicitly include nature as part of the oppressed collective. Anarchism bases justice primarily on human conscience rather than external force and although not explicitly, it is affirmed in concrete situations.50 For Proudhon, a Mutualist, this justice is understood as a search for equality, not of 43 Linda H. Damico, The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology (New York: Peter Lang, 1987), p. 18. 44 Ibid., p. 19. 45 Ibid., p. 20. 46 Ibid., pp. 22–8. 47 Ibid., p. 26 and Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 32. 48 M. Gnanavam, ‘Eschatology in Dalit Perspective’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, p. 483. 49 Damico, The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology, p. 38. 50 Ibid., pp. 38–9.

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treatment but of opportunity to develop as a member of society.51 However, love is the ideal where justice is beyond legislation: ‘The need for justice will disappear when love reigns.’52 The ultimate act of love in anarchist thinking is ‘heroic love’: self-sacrifice, laying down one’s life for the sake of the greater good.53 The Liberationist paradigm of heroic love transcending egoism is Jesus’ act of selfsacrifice on the cross.54 Jesus the liberator becomes the grounds for hope of a better corporate humanity capable of maintaining the struggle for a free society. This is illustrated in A.P. Nirmal’s Dalit understanding of the Liberationist’s hermeneutic circle. Through ‘pain-pathos’ God is revealed because God participated in the historical suffering of humanity, ‘characterized … as the passion of Jesus symbolised in his crucifixion’.55 Bishop Azariah insists on it and paints a picture of a child born in squalid conditions, made a refugee; he sees Jesus’ life as a paradigm of ‘costly discipleship’.56 Peniel Rajkumar has since questioned the ‘emancipatory potential’ of pathos-based Christologies, arguing that they tend toward a passive masochism in an oppressed and pacified community.57 For Liberationists equality, justices and love, are prerequisites for bringing about the kingdom of God, a view reflected in the approach of the anarchists that Damico highlights.58 She maintains that anarchists and Liberation theologians have a ‘shared vision’59 of an ideal society. Idealism is not utopianism, without moral frailty or opportunity for sin. They share the belief that a free society is not a blueprint to be applied but an ongoing struggle by the poor.60 The Kingdom of God is something that happens in space and time and differs accordingly. As such, the poor will shape the present; eschatology is not universal in objective or application. Such is true for both camps.61 Both have an optimistic approach; they expect humans to act justly when free to do so. The struggle for human freedom is synonymous with the fight for justice. An assumption here is that if people are free they will tend towards their own good and the welfare of others as argued from an evolutionary point of view by Peter Kropotkin.62

53 54 55 51

Ibid., pp. 40–41. Ibid., p. 44. Ibid., pp. 46–7. Ibid., p. 58. Arvind P. Nirmal, ‘Doing Theology from a Dalit Perspective’, in Arvind P. Nirmal (ed.), A Reader in Dalit Theology (Madras: Gurukul, N. D.), p. 141. 56 Masilamani Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology (Delhi: DLET/ISPCK, 2000), pp. 91–2. 57 Rajkumar, Dalit theology and Dalit Liberation, p. 65. 58 Damico, The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology, pp. 56–9. 59 Ibid., p. 193. 60 Ibid., p. 194. 61 Ibid., p. 194. 62 Petr Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London: Freedom Press, 1998). 52

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Christian anarchists recognise two dimensions to structural Powers. Firstly, the spiritual Powers: Paul’s use of the term exousia (authority), which mirrors the institutions and ideologies of violence that exist in society.63 These spiritual forces are challenged, accordingly with spiritual violence and by the authority of Jesus Christ as the ruler over all such Powers.64 But these Powers have their physical forms: ‘The exousia of the state is incarnated in a government, in the police force, the army and it is not enough to partake of the Lord’s victory.’65 Ellul uses Mammon, wealth, as an example of a Power that is overcome through what liberationists would call orthopraxis: ‘To give away money is to win a victory over the spiritual power that oppresses us.’66 The action above presupposes and simultaneously creates a challenge to the ideology of material-centred happiness. To become a Christian in Ellul’s terms implies freedom to demonstrate what liberty is like.67 But even this freedom is problematic for Ellul, who sees the liberation of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt to slavery to the law of God as a necessary but unfortunate controlling situation.68 Freedom, it seems, is not complete unless it is freedom of God, rather than a freedom from God. Ellul’s theology remains bound by a patriarchal monotheism because it is so reliant on Jewish texts. The British Mafia: The Creation of Mother India Wink asserts the importance of naming and confronting political structures as both physical and spiritual entities – Powers that either serve the Kingdom of God or seek worship for themselves.69 The theological assumption is that all temporal institutions have a spiritual dimension which one might call an ‘angel’, ‘demon’, ‘god’, or ‘spirit’. For this chapter I will call them Gods and assume that they can be transformed, redeemed, destroyed and set in competition with one another. These Gods can also be named and described and in doing so we reveal something of their character and expose it to the scrutiny of Jesus’ life and teaching. In order to understand what has happened to religion in India we must first have an overview of the centralising effect that colonialism had on the culture and politics of the region. We must see the evolution of the normative state to understand why certain religious expressions, mirroring this homogeneity, have also become normative. This process began with trade agreements and standing 65 66 67

Jacques Ellul, Violence (New York: The Seabury Press, 1969), p. 162. Ibid., p. 161. Ibid., p. 163. Ibid., p. 166. K.J. Konyndyk, ‘Violence’, in Christians and Van Hook (eds), Jacques Ellul: Interpretive Essays (Illinois: UIP, 1981), p. 261. 68 Jacques Ellul, Perspectives on Our Age (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981), p. 9. 69 Walter Wink, The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday, 1998), p. 31. 63 64

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armies and expanded to Britain declaring India as part of her commonwealth. But the process has not ended since India is left with much of the cultural, religious and political legacy of colonialism. Independent India is still enslaved to the values of colonial Britain. When European trading companies began exploiting the subcontinent they were confronted by a complex but loosely combined network of states and regions, some monarchical, some minimal or ultra-minimal.70 Life was entirely organised on a local level in India. There was no such thing as the nation state and no such thing as patriotism, nationalism, or Mother India. The British, with maps, surveys and railways, reined this in. The missionaries gradually took the role of converting and indirectly subduing the spirituality of this emerging nation. Missionaries worked with good intentions and made personal sacrifices; nonetheless they were products of their time and place and were understood quite differently to their intentions by those they came to convert. Gujarat illustrates the developing role of Church and state, showing how communities have been modernised, nationalised and domesticated. The British government took advantage of local conflicts to control Gujarat much like a Mafia boss intimidating shopkeepers to extort protection money. The dual concepts of fear and protection are essential ingredients to the formation and perpetuation of the nation state. The state creates for its subjects an object to be afraid of and then offers the subjects – at a cost – protection from the perceived threat. These threats may be as straightforward as two communities competing for finite resources or as subtle as the threat of losing or failing to gain status. The British administration had a parasitic relationship with Gujarat from 1802. They were efficiently collecting rents from settled communities from 1803, by force if necessary. British government entered Gujarat claiming to be a protective agency but commercial interests in the prosperous peninsular motivated this.71 The British Empire used reward, protection and punishment to further its eminence and control of India. These three means also characterise the Missionary God, on whose behalf the empire acts and vice versa. Missionaries offered food and shelter in times of scarcity and taught the punishing doctrine of penal atonement: ‘God is angry but Jesus will protect you.’ The theology of most missionaries was just another protection racket. The greater the empire becomes, the greater the Missionary God must be. The empire was implicitly understood to be God’s grace manifested in Mother India, to whom the Missionary God was beholden. This can be said to be true in practice, if not in doctrine so that missionaries believed that God was greater than the state, according to creed, but relied on the state not the Missionary God for reward, protection and punishment. What the missionaries described about God they experienced of the state. 70 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1974), pp. 26–8. 71 C.S. Lely, Gazetter of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. IV, Ahmedabad (Bombay: Government Central Press, 1879), pp. 143–6.

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The task of surveying Indian society was exhaustive: by 1881 the government of India had begun to efficiently list the age, occupation, caste, religion, literacy, place of birth and current residence of every person in India. To achieve this around 500,000 people were enlisted, mostly volunteers.72 In effect it allowed the government to construct Mother India to rule over the nationalised pantheon. India was reified and diagnosed: a state chronically affected by civil conflict and in dire need of the ‘strong hand’ of the British.73 By enumerating their empire the British were vainly and oppressively centralising and stratifying control. It was an attempt at stately omniscience – the government should give the appearance of being all seeing, all knowing and extensively present. Surveying India, geopolitically and otherwise made imagining an Indian nation possible because it bounded up and recorded its peoples into a conceptual and auditable whole. The nation state is an abstract social system with its own soul or ‘God’ rather than a material reality. The same colonial administrative process reified the caste system as civil servants set about categorising communities and describing them ethnometrically and otherwise. The process created a theological vacuum for indigenous communities and their leaders: who, where and what is God in this new nation state? Such theology would have to include a monotheistic and omnipresent, omniscient God or it would not be up to the challenge of being consort to an omniscient, universally prescriptive state. If India was to have a God that matched the new colonial rulers’ prowess she would have to co-opt the Missionary God, re-invent the Vedic God, or reject the whole ideological basis of dependence on the state, effectively rejecting those holding the levers of power. In order for the state-making project to thrive and survive it needed the consent, first of all, of an elite social stratum. The British came from a country with a national religion and still has an ‘established Church’ so the assumption was that all nations should have similar. Indian National Congress was formed in 1885.74 The elite among caste Hindus assimilated the nation state as ideal and natural. Indian nationalism and national theology was forming: Gandhi became the locus of both and perhaps this was the source of his incredible influence. Gandhi held neither political nor religious positions of administrative control yet steered both. He could be said to be a midwife of the nation state. The later insurgence of right-wing Hinduism was built on the colonial process of nation making and the postcolonial modernism of the West. Modern ‘Hindutva’ – the ideology of Hindu fundamentalism – is a hegemonic cultural nationalism and a betrayal of sanatan dharma75 (a heterogeneous term for primitive Hinduism). The B.S. Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 8. 73 Ibid., p. 10. 74 P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 5. 75 L. Jayaseelan, Towards a Counter-Culture: Sebastian Kappen’s Contribution (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999), p. 32. 72

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Indian National Congress favouring territorial nationalism was foundational to the Hindutva agenda because territorialism gave an imaginative space to the dominion of the Vedic God. For Dalits God’s are far more localised and interchangeable and the idea of having a God of all India from among local deities makes no sense hence Dalit religion is in peril of being subsumed in the jealous and territorial Gods of Hinduism (and of Christianity for that matter). Beginning with Vinaya D. Savarkar it is possible to trace the development of the Vedic God. Hindutva, a fundamentalist Hinduism is a modern religion born out of a globalisation of western statist enlightenment ideology. The British statemaking project fostered and embraced Hindu fundamentalism through colonial interference – the nationalisation of religion. The Vedic God thrives on colonial interference while simultaneously using strong rhetoric to reject it. While their sense of injury has credence, the Hindutva manifesto is unabashedly racist. Racial and religious chauvinism are European social constructs: there is nothing ‘indigenous’ or ‘pure’ about them. Savarkar used the term ‘Hindutva’ and inspired the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS) and the notion of cultural nationalism.76 The RSS was formed with the intention of building a Hindu nation state. Savarkar was obsessed with the re-writing of history and did so to demonise Muslims and Christians and assimilate Buddhists and Sikhs into the Hindu fold.77 For Christians and Muslims, the option of being both Indian and faithful to their own jealous monotheistic deities was ruled out by the Vedic God.78 The force of modern caste prejudice finds its birth in cultural nationalism and the struggles for national independence. If there was no nation state there would be no struggle for cultural and national independence and much of the emotive pressure of Casteism would be lost. RSS chief, M.S. Golwalker, in his writings openly praised the Third Reich and German attempts to purify its culture and nation of minorities.79 The non-Hindu peoples in Hindustan must either accept Hindu culture and language … or stay in the country wholly subordinate to the Hindu nation deserving no privileges, far less preferential treatment, not even citizenship rights.80

V. Savarkar, ‘Hindutva’ (Popular Prakaskan, Bombay, 1996): p. 263, in T.M. Joseph, Indianization of the Minorities, The United Church Review, 1970, 153. 77 Ibid., pp. 46–57. 78 Ibid., p. 70. 79 M.S. Golwalker, ‘We, or Our Nation Defined’ (Nagpur: Bharat Publications, 1939), p. 44. Quoted in S. Varadarajan, Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold, in S. Varadarajan (ed.), Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2002), p. 17. 80 V.H. Devadas, ‘The Future of Christianity in India’, in Peoples Reporter, Vol. 16, No. 10, May 25–June 10, 2003, p. 7. 76

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Imperialist traders cultivated the indigenous national religion that later rejected them as a foreign interference and any other religious form as foreign. There appears to be no critical self-awareness among the Hindutva, their leaders say nothing of their great debt to British administrators and Indologists for their extraordinary status. The Hindu Rashtra – organisations that propagate the Hindutva ideology – maintain a homogeneous sense of identity and an opportunity for Hindu outrage against minorities such as Muslims and Christians. Proponents of Hindutva are finishing the task begun by British Indologists and missionaries in selecting elite sacred texts, for example the Manusmurti, then reinventing values and cultural expectations from those texts and applying them to the whole society. Ironically the Hindu Rashtra is the most vociferous in denouncing the colonial imperialists for interfering with the cultural practices of India even though it is the colonial perspective that they wish to conserve and even develop. The Vedic God, for the Hindu Rashtra, is the true consort of Mother India. Fundamentalism, as it refers to the Hindu Rashtra, is not a call to return to a true and ancient religion of the India, but to a modern version of the Brahminic faith that assimilates or marginalises castes and communities for political ends. Sociologist Lancy Lobo accuses the Hindu fundamentalists of erasing the variety of culture in India, building directly on the process begun by the British administration. Sanskritisation (first described by M.N. Srinivas)81 is the process whereby indigenous Indian traditions are co-opted into the homogenised religion of the key Sanskrit texts and altered or converted into modern-day Hinduism. In a process of Sanskritisation a modern puritanical form of Hinduism is replacing the variety inherent in Indian society.82 Both Ilaiah83 and Yagnik84 insist that most Dalits see only one choice; either they embrace Hindutva or the Dalit Bahujan’s solidarity with the Dalit movement. Just as many converts to Christianity will Christianise their names so some Dalits will Brahminise their names to conceal their low status.85 What is attracting Dalits and Adivasis to both Christianity and more compellingly to Hinduism is the politically and theologically potent monotheisms now key to both religions. Because monotheism and political centralism are alien concepts to indigenous religion Dalits struggle to find the resources to repel them.

81 M.N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996). 82 Lancy Lobo, Globalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Christians in India (Jaipur: Rawat Publications, 2002), p. 81. 83 Kacha Ilaiah, Why I am not a Hindu: A Shudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy and Political Economy (Calcutta: SAMYA, 1996), p. 69. 84 Aruna Yagnik, ‘Search for Dalit Self-Identity in Gujarat’, in T. Shinoda (ed.), The Other Gujarat: Social Transformations among Weaker Sections (Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2002), p. 34. 85 Ilaiah, Why I am not a Hindu, p. 69.

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Some political sociologists have attempted to explain why the Hindu rashtra have felt the need to develop this new ideology of Hindutva. Lancy Lobo notices a connection between the increased use of communal intolerance, or communalism by the Hindu rashtra during the 1980’s with the conscientisation of Dalits. Lobo believes that the Hindutva has grown in influence as landowners and knowledgekeepers felt the economic impact of the conscientisation of Dalits. Sanskritisation was seen as a way to draw the poor back into the cycle of oppression, through popular and patriotic nationalism.86 By creating fear of religious minorities and fear of cultural values being lost to foreigners, Hindu fundamentalists generate a culture of communal animosity. Hindutva is projected as though it is Hinduism and since Hinduism was historically decentralised and fluid the claim is rarely challenged. Hindu sects may use both the terms conversion and reversion but co-option better describes the effect of Hindu mission. The VHP co-opt communities and synthesise their values and culture. Co-opted Dalits build temples instead of visiting their established shrines. Temples are far more impressive structures. Slowly, loyalty is transferred to deities with Vedic names while Dalit pantheons are subsumed or made to be synonymous with Vedic Gods. Solidarity between different Dalit groups is thus replaced with loyalty to the successful dominant caste religion. This is always at the expense of the rights and culture of the Dalits who, in willingness to be represented by Hinduism fail to be represented within Hinduism. Anti-Brahminic apologist and academic, Swami Dharma Theertha, a nonDalit writing in 1940, outlined the nine steps towards creating a Brahmo-centric British India as understood by the Shudra and Dalit literati.87 Firstly, they elevated the Brahmins in politics; second, funded the renaissance and nationalisation of Hindu Temples and festivals; third, they established caste tribunals; fourth, they exaggerated the importance of key Hindu texts; fifth, they handed over the temples to Brahmin trustees; sixth, through surveying and bureaucratising society they established ‘being Hindu’ as the Indian norm; seventh, they gave caste distinction state recognition; eighth, made it impossible for people to alter their status by fixing categories on paper; ninth, strengthened ‘evils of society’ as in caste oppression; tenth, ‘Christian antiquarians’, by which he means missionaries and anthropologists, have flattered Casteism and idol worshipping as cultural achievements. Theertha wrote in a period of history when India was coming close to independence from the British and the struggle for power was at its height. He saw that this was a statist project as much as a cultural and economic one and his insight shows why colonialists and missionaries were sometimes at odds with their purpose for being in India. The colonialists were setting up the Vedic God as the consort for the state and the Christians were setting up the Missionary God as the consort for the state. The former, pragmatic, the latter driven with vision. Both Lobo, Globalisation, Hindu Nationalism and Christians in India, p. 49. A.G. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva: The Godse Connection (New Delhi:

86 87

LeftWord Books, 2002), pp. 159–60.

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parties were condescending in their belief that the Western system of a nation state was a global natural norm that had to be imposed. We have seen that structural powers can be named and described and – to whatever extent – they take on a life of their own. Not only are these Powers – or Gods – animated into existence they form and shape one another and are insatiable in their bid for dominance, or their desire to be worshipped. Much of the rest of this book can be seen as responses to the centralising dominance of the Gods whether competitive, antagonistic, or in resistance to their pervasive and oppressive rule. Throughout this journey a Christian anarchist critique – a hermeneutic of resistance – will keep our theology from falling into the usual trap of being seduced by Mother India and being in thrall to her power which is never truly benign.

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Chapter 2

Cosmic Courtship and the Violence of the Gods

There is only one more thing which Britain has to do to discharge her trust to the dumb millions of her subjects and to fill the cup of unhappy India’s suicidal bliss and that is to handover the seal and emblem of the Indian Empire to the templepriests and give a farewell kiss and kick, to the blissful fool, the Independent India.1

Understanding the political and ideological evolution of Indian society in terms of the outplaying of a courtship between Gods illustrates that a centralising theology reflects a centralising domination system, whereas a decentralising theology draws the religious imagination into a decentralising political world; even an anarchic one. One can understand the concept at Gods at many structural levels. After a brief discussion on power and violence, below is a description of the development of two of the Gods of India: the Missionary God and the Vedic God. Naming these Powers is the first step to reclaiming power from them. Dalit theology has been characterised an identity theology but this introspective approach can only take any movement for change so far: it does not transform the Other. Indeed it encourages the ‘polemic binarism’ that Peniel Rajkumar warns of in the over use of the Exodus narrative in liberation theologies.2 A theology of resistance isn’t interested in personal attacks or polemicisms but rather in structural transformation that redeems the whole of society where all play their part in upholding a domination system and can have awaken inside them the desire for liberation. Revealing the Powers: Idols of Redemptive Violence In the Hebrew tradition, before the cult of exile developed monotheism, there is evidence of competing and cooperating concepts of God. Some are bound to particular sacred places like Bethel or Shiloh, others represent different power groups wrestling for ideological domination, others steer vital aspects of natural life but Israel’s evolution towards mono-Yahwism3 and monotheism has had 1 Swami Dharma Theertha, History of Hindu Imperialism, 4ED (Madras: Dalit Educational Literature Centre, 2000), p. 160. 2 Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation, pp. 63–4. 3 Norman K. Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250–1050 BCE (London: SCM Press, 1980), pp. 679–80.

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huge implications for Christianity meaning that almost all Christian theology is understood through a lens of monotheistic faith: a crude theological implement to most primitive cultures. A slow and often violent process of centralising of themes, ideas and institutions eventually leads to the situation we find in first century Palestine: an unsteady Priestly ideology, codified in the scriptures, interpreted definitively by those who have the power to penalise: the client kings, proconsuls and temple priests and scribes. Walter Wink identifies these competing socio-spiritual structures as principalities and Powers.4 In doing this he opens up the possibility of thinking more openly about what and who is a God or Gods for Christian theology because suddenly there are Powers with realms and in community with one another in both harmony and distress. In an Indian context it is worth thinking and talking in terms of competing Gods all of which have organisational and temporal expressions: the Missionary God, the Mother India and the Vedic God who will be discussed below. Wink hopes prophetic action can redeem the gods but the Dalits have a different approach. Dalits subvert these homogenising Gods who compete for primacy because indigenous Dalit religion and culture is not inclined toward monotheism or political expansion. Dalit liberation theology has done much to challenge colonial and Vedic assumptions but still tries to shoe-horn Dalit Christianity into a colonial and modernist model of political and religious identity. A hermeneutic of resistance names the Gods as both structural and spiritual. Jacques Ellul5 uses wealth, as an example of a God that is overcome through what liberationists would call orthopraxis – right action. To live generously is to win both a spiritual and political victory over mammon to create a society based on self-giving instead of capital liberalism is to defeat the God of wealth. To resist oppression is to prefigure freedom in action. To name the Gods of India is to take a step towards active intervention. The assumption of this paradigm is that the history of the formation of a nation state is one of increasingly centralised power driven by complicated bureaucracy and violence and of an increased tension between abstracted territorial and cultural identities. India’s development from settlement, to city, to state is analogous to a series of organised criminal deals: protectionism, intimidation and violence, paternalism. All these are hallmarks Al Capone’s successful Chicago mafia or the ‘Five Families’ of New York in the early twentieth century. The British statemaking project acted more efficiently and bigger but the principles remain the same. A mafia is a mafia no matter whom the Godfather represents. Well meaning attempts at reforming the nation state – making it more just and humane – are futile because they do not challenge the metanarrative of the state: Walter Wink’s ‘Myth of redemptive violence’. The myth of redemptive violence is easy to understand and once grasped, even easier to observe in most societies. Wink points to how the myth is prolific Wink, Naming the Powers. Ellul, Violence, pp. 161–6.

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in children’s cartoon characters such as Popeye: There is a good guy, a bad guy and a victim. The good guy wins because his violence is better than that of the bad guy. Pluto looks stronger and therefore gives the impression of being more violent but Popeye punishes most thoroughly. The Exodus motif narrates a God who delivers a people through violence and discipline and forms them into a community through violence. A proper understanding of the state stems from its historical origins and development. Europe is a prototype of historical state making and colonial statists imposed on India an accelerated version of the same historical process that politically and theologically transformed Europe. Though European nation states only date back to the sixteenth century, they have early precedence in the forms of bygone Empires. The accumulation of power by a decreasing number of monarchical rulers characterised this development. Where previously smaller estates had competed for power and some social groups had been independent, the growth in wealth and strengthening of standing armies allowed monarchs opportunity to consolidate their power. A hermeneutic of resistance should also challenge monotheism, since this has evolved alongside monarchical statism in the East. Liberation theology comfortably challenges the Western monopoly on God and theology and anarchists criticise the role of the Church in legitimising the state. A polycentric monotheism better fits the Dalit and the Vedic approaches to theology, as well as liberating theological doctrine and practice from the authority of a priestly or academic class of religious expert. The creation of a state relies on certain pressures to manipulate a society into acquiescence: violence, a rigorous bureaucracy, a homogenising culture and a sense of societal participation (democracy in its various forms). Identifying these pressures in Indian colonial history will illuminate the close relationship between the reification of the caste system and the role of the British administration (state) and missionaries (Church). A hermeneutic of resistance cannot shy away from a critique of all institutions, including Church and missionary agencies, if they are promoting a statist ideology and therefore adding to the marginalisation of the Dalits. The purpose of this chapter is to identify two of the Gods of colonial and postcolonial India. These Gods compete as prospective consorts for the nation state on a Christendom model of Church-state relationship. The nation state is Mother India – the modern nation state. The gods intent on romancing Mother India are the Missionary God and the Vedic God. The Missionary God was mostly predisposed toward self-promotion in ways that demonstrated its affinity with the purposes of the state. The Vedic God developed alongside mother India and the struggle for self-rule. The Vedic God challenged the Missionary god to mother India’s affection on the basis of ‘macro-endogamy’ – the missionary is a foreigner but the Vedic God is one of us. We shall see that Hindutva, the movement for Hindu cultural nationalism, has lived with the contradiction between patriotism and cultural authenticity by failing to acknowledge it. This is the Achilles heal of the Hindutva movement, if only the movements for liberation were to see it and can be subverted through action and in terms of liberationist propaganda.

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The Missionary God Like Hindu reformers, modern missionaries were co-workers of the state-making project: their missiology, ecclesiology and reliance on colonial Indology affirmed the myth of redemptive violence and the primacy of the state as the über god, ‘Mother India’. An outline of early and modern mission reveals a self-conscious felt need among missionaries to provide an apologetic for the Church in India. That defence of the Church’s role is set in the contexts of a belief that religion partners state and that the Church, as the one true religion is the most suitable partner for the state. Preaching and teaching the doctrines and scriptures of the Christian faith were the sole measure of the missionaries’ commitment and the conversion of a Brahmin determined his standing. Reformed Christianity, despite its foundation in the principle of ‘Sola Scriptura’, has a tendency towards Sola colonial-interpretation-of Scriptura. Apocryphal history dates Indian Christianity to the first century and the preaching of one of Jesus’ disciples, Saint Thomas. Certainly an early relationship formed between a Church in Malabar, South India and the Syrian Church in Mesopotamia. The Syrian Mar Thoma Church thrived in both spiritual and temporal terms until fifteenth-century Muslim invasion caused her decline. Meanwhile the Roman Catholic (RC) Church had shown an interest in India in the South and the North West. The Portuguese named Bombay (Beautiful Bay) as they spread North and South from Goa from 1510 onwards. The most famous RC missionaries were both Jesuits: Francis Xavier arrived in 1542 and Robert de Nobili arrived in 1606. However, RC Mission floundered again until the 1830s when the Vatican made a concerted effort to demarcate the parish boundaries of the subcontinent and invite various orders to re-attend the mission field, for example, Carmelites in Gujarat and Poona. Through the course of the nineteenth century various Protestant organisations, some ecumenical but largely denominational followed the East India Company, who did not welcome their interference, into India. It is this modern missionary campaign with which we are concerned because they formed the state-theologising outlook. The early nineteenth century saw a revival of missionary efforts from Europe and North America to India. Although the modern missionary movement to India dates to William Carey’s arrival in Calcutta in 1793, for Gujarat, a more appropriate date would be 1813, when Carey sent Carapeit C. Aratoon, an Armenian, to Surat. The London Missionary Society soon joined Aratoon, arriving in Surat in 1815. With an emphasis on evangelical principles the prevailing priorities were translating and expounding the Bible, selling tracts and teaching set prayers and liturgies. This practice continues to form a core part of what is understood as mission in Gujarat and much of India today. The Bible society, established in 1804, has a greatly reduced market but the use of literature for guarding and teaching truth is still valued among church leaders. These literarybased techniques incline the missionary endeavours towards literate subjects, that is, the non-Dalits. Thus the Missionary God emerged as a literate God, a God of

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the Powerful who tended to the poor out his mercy and with consideration of their ignorance. It was a God worthy of this new nation state. Missionaries, starting with the Serampore Baptists (William Carey and company) and Scottish ministers like Alexander Duff, concluded that Brahmins represented Indian high culture, largely through forceful imposition of themselves ‘above Kings in honour’. This view dictated Duff’s attitude toward mission and influenced missionary attitudes for half at least half a century. Missionaries met with their most vocal opposition from Brahmins and learned, from this, to respect them and use their response as a base line to measure evangelistic success. However, Brahmins were also the nemesis of the missionary: their values, summed up as idolatry and ambition, became symbols of Indian heathen sinfulness. Duff, massively influential in the field, propelled into missionary thinking the belief that any attempt to theologically engage with India meant stooping as low as necessary but no lower – to the Brahmans by necessity, to the Dalits as a last resort. One of Duff’s ‘star converts’ was K.N. Banerjea (1813–85), a Brahmin scholar and linguist and an enthusiastic apologist for Vedic/biblical theology, especially published in the 1870s and 1880s. Banerjea argued that the Vedas were drafts of the Biblical canon, pointing to the Christian ‘truths’ the bible contained and useful for gleaning and illuminating Christian theology. This bold thesis elevated the status of the Vedas in missionary thinking from irredeemably idolatrous to ‘repositories of gems of the Christian mysteries’. While this was good news for the status of Christianity among some Hindus and vice versa, it was bad news for the Dalits. First, the Brahminical scriptures were overtly antagonistic in their readings towards them, linking them to the Bible simply put both traditions out of their reach. Second, in his bid to promote Brahmanism, Banerjea went so far as to claim common genealogical lineage between the caste ‘Aryans’ and the Judeo-Christian tradition. This elevated the status of caste Christians to a priestly caste in their own right, pushing Dalits further to the bottom of the pile. The modern reformers’ emphasis on personal understanding of faith and scripture liberated European Christians from seventeenth-century Roman Catholicism. This autonomy of interpretation aimed at guarding the liberty of conscience of the believer and was defended by a strong belief in equal access to God’s revelation for the whole community. However, the European obsession with scripture as either the sole or primary source of authority in all matters of belief and practice translated into Protestant authoritarianism. The imposition of creeds, liturgies and European-style higher criticism followed. Although the Pope was no longer the divine source of interpretation, the Protestant missionaries held fast to the tools of interpretation, disbarring Indian Christians and non-Christians from finding new ways to negotiate the text or narrative. Missionaries preferred to describe beliefs in the hope that converts would internalise them without the cumbersome mediation of indigenous exegesis. The Missionary God was a God of the passive consumer not the produce of worship or theology because it was based on the dependency model of the mafia state.

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It is in its competitive propaganda and action that the Missionary god reveals himself. Modern mission agencies sought out a nemesis: the Vedic God. Assuming that a nation has an identifiable national religion, comparable in status to Christianity in the West, missionaries obsessed about ‘Hinduism’ and how to provide apologetics and evidence to expose it as false and unworthy of the role of consort to Mother India. This missionary agenda is not always easy to identify. However, in many missionary responses to plague and famine and subsequent mass movements for conversion among the Dalits it is marked. A visitor to the missionary archives at Ellis Bridge might be shocked by the images on plates in some of the books and leaflets published during the early decades of the twentieth century. Near skeletal bodies posed with an arm out or clinging to a stretcher. Rows of starved corpses lined up outside poor rural dwellings. Between 1899 and 1903, famine and plague struck much of India, along with cholera. This would have been a moving experience for any missionary agent and a crisis of vocation for those who saw themselves as sent to bring salvation only to minds and morals of India’s people. Mass movements of conversion took place in the wake of these famines. There has been some controversy as to the motive of mass converts or their impact on the Church but neither the opportunity to serve the poor nor the response of some communities who then converted to the Church have been universally welcomed. Converts fretted over mixing with ‘inferior’ castes; missionaries agonised about casting Christianity as a religion of inferior converts. Even the few missionaries who championed the Dalits, cautioned against the danger of creating a barrier to high-caste Hindus. In 1920, missionaries convened a council to propose the proscription of all baptisms of Dalits and suppression of their conversions en masse. Already the Mass Movements had changed the nature of the Church in India; they reinforced the micro-communal identity of particular groups rather than dismantling them to remerge as the new Christendom community of the Church. By converting corporately Dalits challenged the state-making agenda and the supremacy of the Mother India who relies on the isolation of the individual and her reliance on external agencies, like the state, welfare and reservation policy. This caused a great deal of consternation for the missionaries. Missionaries’ thoughts of Dalits were in terms of quantity over quality. This was the moral dilemma of an unethical agenda: if the Missionary God was to present himself as the consort of Mother India then he needed to be lauded by high society, not low. London Missionary Society agent G.E. Phillips, writing in 1915, saw mass conversion as the first stage in a salvific process, ‘an indispensable first step’ towards a sense of individual identity that would lead, in turn, to spiritual salvation. However, he makes optimistic claims about the ability of missionaries to then disciple these mass converts and seems unconvinced by his own arguments. Phillips points to the transcendent value that an outcaste Christian becomes aware of at his baptism: ‘proof marvellous enough’ of subsequent conversion. Phillips had a highly sacramental view of baptism for a LMS missionary, unthinkable half a century earlier. Henry Whitehead (Bishop of Madras and contemporary

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of Phillips) also admits to doubt on the ‘difficult question’ as to the doctrinal inclinations of a mass movement converts faith, but does not doubt their sincerity of intention to change. Some agencies, for example the Wesleyan Mission, considered the ‘trouble and anxiety’ of bringing relief during the famine, coldly at first, then as an exciting new means to an imperial end. The Chairman of the Bombay District referred to the work among orphans in Mahim, Western India as ‘something thrust upon us’ (1899), ‘The nurseries of the church’ (1901), ‘A good work’ (1902), ‘An excellent work’ (1903). The growing enthusiasm for the orphanages was due entirely to the hope that they were an investment in the future of the Church in India, not to mention relief from the criticism of backers in the West, whose enthusiasm depended on numerical return. The famine not only brought large numbers within the sound of the Gospel, but it has also necessitated our taking more orphans under our care. The work of the orphanages has been done with the same efficiency as in former years and there is promise of a large harvest of blessing and increase to our Church in future years from this Christ-like work.6

The baggage of caste prejudice and the paranoia felt by missionaries who wanted everyone strata to submit themselves to the Missionary God meant that the famine and plague period was controversially interpreted. Was the Missionary God showing India just how potent and providential he is? Would this lead other castes to join this great and growing religion? Were the missionaries faithful to their calling to preach and proselytise? These anxieties speak volumes about the theological and pastoral superficiality on the part of most missionaries in most agencies. More importantly, they betray a theological integration of the myth of redemptive violence, since missionaries saw their welfarism as evidence of their status as co-patron in the new nation alongside the military protection offered by the British and co-opted militias. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) was and continues to be, an evangelical Anglican organisation. Although marginalised in the United Kingdom they were the driving force of Anglicanism in Victorian and modern India. Bishop of Gujarat, Vinod Malaviya, claims CMS were opposed to the Anglo-Catholic and liberal Christian agendas, therefore unlikely to be influenced by the ‘British Raj’. He suggests that personal conversion, biblical conservatism and piety were the evangelistic priorities of CMS, not cultural and colonial replication.7 However, British Evangelicals were, at the time, extremely individualistic bringing as many colonial assumptions with them as any agency. They sought to begin with the 6 E. Martin, ‘The Lucknow District’, in The Wesleyan Missionary Notices (London: The Wesley Mission House, 1901), p. 89. 7 Vinod Malaviya, Anglican Contributions to the Church of North India in Gujarat (Dublin: Mphil Thesis, University of Dublin, 1987), pp. 98–9.

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transformation of the individual and of the group indirectly. Thus, they assumed the pre-eminence of the individual over the community and therefore the role of the outside agencies – the Church and the state – in maintaining individualised society. Among the most enthusiastic was Revd Birkett. Birkett attempted to look and live, as a Tribal man, believing that Western culture should not be imposed as part of Christian conversion. Furthermore, he emphasised a missiological vision of the Church in Tribal-land as ‘self-supporting and self-governing’ with forms of worship reflecting indigenous styles. As the number of converts started to exceed the number of white Christians, in some places the missionaries were at greater liberty to think of church a bit differently to the Western model. Other attempts to encourage enculturation of the gospel included the publication of hymns written by indigenous Christians and the promotion of the oral tradition of ‘giving testimony’ to the religious experience. However, these efforts were little more than window dressing if the symptom of alienation, differing symbols, rather than its cause, differing worldviews, was all that missionaries addressed. In 1905 CMS missionary, G.C. Vyse expressed frustrations among the Tribals when a group of enquirers began avoiding him whenever he visited the area. He noticed a tendency among Tribals to ostracise converts to Christianity by cutting them off from corporate meals. Exclusion eventually drew the few converts into their own faith-based community, distinct from their fellow Tribals, creating a new outcaste community. Furthermore, missionaries were outcastes from Hindu villages, because of their association with Dalits, a dilemma for missionaries who wanted to outreach to all Indians but found that involvement in one community denied them involvement in another. Such incidents were bound to add to criticism of the caste system and the assertion that it was the greatest barrier to conversion in Indian society the blame for which cannot be wholly with the missionary. To teach an Indian tribe how to follow a Palestinian preacher from nearly 2,000 years ago, as understood by modern British colonialists without imposing foreignness is an impossible task. CMS may have been ‘sensitive’ relative to other modernist missionary agencies, but were not so by the critical standards of postcolonial studies. At the inauguration of the Gujerathi Council, in 1907, missionaries surprised that the Tribal Christian showed more concern for caste issues than temperance. With hindsight, their surprise appears naïve. That the missionaries had not expected a call for a formal statement protecting caste separation for meals suggests that, rather than creating caste discrimination, missionaries had to have casteism spelled out for them. However, the response of the missionaries showed sensitive understanding of the situation. Rather than agreeing to the social ostracism on basis of caste they defined it in terms of behaviour (albeit behaviour associated with untouchables). By Baptism persons of all castes are admitted to the Holy Catholic Church and, becoming one in Christ, have fellowship one with another and eat and drink

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together; but if any Christian should be so filthy as to eat carrion, then, till he promises to give it up, non one may eat or drink with him, or sit on his bed.8

Such a provisional inclusion of Dalits could be easily abused to accuse a family or community of ‘filthy’ acts simply to keep them away. However, it provides a doctrinal affirmation of universal inclusion, regardless of caste community origin. The Tribal Christian community did manage to maintain a degree of autonomy, through a version of the Panchayat system – a council of community elders. It was this council that dealt with issues of caste division, moral standards, forms and practices of worship etc. The council had to face the question of whether low-caste people (Tanners, Chamars, Bhangis) who eat carrion, could be accepted into the Church. Could the Bhil Christians eat with them, or celebrate Holy Communion and drink from one cup? Since most of the Christian converts came from the Bhagat community, who were vegetarians and did not drink spirits, they found it hard to eat with lower caste people. However, though it affected the growth of the Church, remembering Christ’s teaching, they decided to accept them provided they would give up eating carrion. On this issue the infant Church was divided and until today it remains divided.9 CMS had faced a similar challenge and had come to the exact conclusion – the problem of caste prejudice was made less emotive by centring on an action rather than on something innately unclean about a caste – carrion eating was to be banned. The missionaries saw the challenge as finding a way to integrate the Dalits into the Tribal Christian community or caste Christian minority, never vice versa. It was as though Dalits were perceived to have generated the caste system from below. While conversion gave meaning to the ministry of the missionaries it appeared to be an alien idea to those that they wished to convert. Already, in 1899, CMS missionaries anticipated that aid, during the famine, would encourage Gujarati’s to be more open to their message. We trust that this terrible famine, of which eight months, at least, still lie before us, may prove a great opportunity for the spread of the Gospel among the many who crowd in here for the bread which perisheth.10

A hermeneutic of resistance critiques social welfare as developing from a desire to control rather than aid the marginalised.11 Mission agents had realised the potential power in being an aid agency rather than an evangelising organisation. A.I. Birkett, Lusadia: 18 November 1907, p. 149. Malaviya, Anglican Contributions to the Church of North India in Gujarat, p. 71. 10 A. Outram, Bhil Mission, Kherwara, Central Provinces, CMS Letters, 1899, p. 606. 11 S. Millet, ‘Neither state nor market: An Anarchist Perspective on Social Welfare’, 8 9

in J. Purkis and J. Bowen (eds), Twenty-first Century Anarchism: Unorthodox Ideas for a

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The implication is the Missionary god is ‘proved’ to the potential proselytes by his material providence. Such aid comes not from any systemic or miraculous phenomenon inherent in the Christian faith but in the economic disparity between the sending Church and the receiving culture. The missionaries are proving the powerful Western model of the state but they are taking credit for this provision for their god. For centuries now, Hindus have criticised missionaries for creating ‘rice Christians’, this is something that many Christian leaders and commentators strongly deny. In part there is a hint of jealousy in the accusation that Western Christians can afford to ‘buy’ people into their religion in a market that Hindus can compete in. But it is far more a criticism of a value system that corrupts by encouraging spiritual decisions to be weighed up according to material gain. CMS, conscious of the need to train an indigenous Church and aware of the limited scope of a few foreign enthusiasts, drafted linguists into the region to translate the Anglican prayer book into Gujarati, in 1902 and ordained Tribal Christians. It is evident from the defensive stance of some missionaries that their hesitance at creating an independent Indian Church was criticised by foreign sponsors. However, the apology for delay concealed a fear that the Church would be made up entirely of illiterates (therefore, Dalits) and would lack the moral and political weight of Hindu conversions. If there is great rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents (Luke 15: 7), there was greater rejoicing among CMS staff if that sinner happened to be a Brahmin. The move to ordain indigenous Christians, first to the position of deacon and then priest, began to take precedent from 1900 onwards. The few Western missionaries still maintained control of mission and theology, guiding the indigenous ministries according to their own beliefs and values. While interest in the Church increased so did antagonism against both the converts and the agencies. Boyd, in his history of Gujarat says the charge against the missionaries at the time – that they took advantage of the misery of the people – should be ‘squarely faced’.12 However, a defence of the missionaries and their motives is unhelpful and untenable. Evidence points to the same assessment: the missionaries had great compassion for the poor during the Great Famine but saw opportunity in this misery. Refuting this accusation is pointless and dishonest. Boyd has been the most influential in encouraging the Church to project a false view of the missionaries as disinterested humanitarians. Boyd claims that missionaries were ‘scrupulous in avoiding any abuse of their position’. Such a defence of the motives of missionaries is unjustified and causes needless frustration and obfuscation for non-Christians in Gujarat. Non-Christians have one version of mission history, that the missionaries bribed the poor and Christians have another, that missionaries only had the material interests of the poor in mind. The truth is more complicated than either thesis allows. New Millennium (London: Cassel, 1997), p. 24. 12 Robin Boyd, Church History of Gujarat (Madras: CLS, 1981), pp. 84–9.

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The Great Famine and the response of a limited number of Dalits to Christianity, illustrates a number of prejudices within mission. Firstly, that missionaries did not see the massive influx of converts as the drop in the ocean it was shows that they were still intent on the redemption of the individual and indifferent to the redemption of society. Second, those missionaries, who by and large, saw the famine as providential, backs up the argument that agencies took advantage of the desperate situation the poorest found them in. However, since the missionaries were seeing the horrors of the famine first hand (unlike their financers) and often suffered alongside the poorest of the poor, their genuine solidarity with the poor is rightly applauded. Missionaries applied the necessary conversion-oriented spin to their reports but were undoubtedly absorbed by human needs of the starving and cholera affected masses. The Great Famine forced the exposure of the superficiality of modern missionary approaches and provided a historical hinge at which missiology altered from a racist colonial project to a paternalistic developmental proselytisation. It seems likely that the Dalits remained ‘in constant motion’ as they triangulated between Christianity, Hinduism and Untouchability. This, according to Mathew N. Scmalz, reflects, ‘a sophisticated awareness of the specialities of domination’ by making the most of being on the margins of society.13 If this is true it is likely that they also remained in motion between the anarchic and statist worlds that were converging upon them. The competition of the Missionary God and the Vedic God was not one they needed to enter; they were sophisticated in their freedom from this. The only way to bring Dalits into the statist agenda has been the emergence of next generation converts to either religion. Indian Church leadership has protected and preserved Victorian modes of religion while Western Christianity in Europe and the USA slowly changed in its native context. As a Western visitor to a Baptist Church in Bangalore; a Salvation Army centre in Mumbai; an Episcopalian Church in Ahmedabad, I was more alienated by the customs and language, originating in my own culture, than the congregation and leaders present. It is as though, before leaving, missionaries gave strict instructions: ‘You’re in charge now – don’t touch anything!‘ This abusive dynamic developed over the first 50 years of the twentieth century, established on a background of welfare-ism and modernist missiology proved decisive in shaping the relationship between missionary and Church. Much of the Church has become a Victorian museum piece either in fact or in the perception of Indian critics. However scavenging indigenous culture has not proved an adequate solution either. Attempts to incarnate the gospel in liturgical worship did not extend further than the use of ‘Indian Music’ and instruments. Constructing an authentically Indian worship experience is problematic. Urban Indians shied away from attempts to incarnate worship with inherited symbols and rural Christians were alienated by western attempts to incarnate. Christian leaders have made regular 13 M.N. Schmalz, ‘Dalit Catholic Tactics of Marginality at a North Indian Mission’, in History of Religions, Vol. 44, No. 3, Feb 2005, UCP, Chicago, p. 251.

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attempts, over the decades, to impose some sort of Indian style of worship, but nothing homogenous will do in such a vast landscape of cultures and languages. The quality and degree of authenticity of arrangements and lyrics varies, as much as it does in Europe and Australasia. Safe orthodoxy and musical quality are given precedence over spiritual integrity and emotional resonance – the very existence of western artefacts like Hymn Books is evidence of this tendency no matter how ‘authentic’ the tunes. The crux of this problem is paternalism. Most missionaries were so conscious of the backwardness of converts that they failed to give them opportunities to shape the ecclesiology of the Church themselves. Michael Hollis believes that the missionaries deliberately failed to encourage indigenous leadership or initiative, preferring to manoeuvre carefully converts into an artificial aping of their own ‘witness for Christ’. Paternalism is the most important reason why the Church in Indian is in decline. Hollis (one time Bishop of Madras) adds the problem of the defensiveness of paid staff protecting their ministries from the suspicious practice of ‘volunteerism’.14 Both in the South and North India, the Indian ‘Mission Agents’ were perceived of and believed themselves to be ‘agents of the missionary’ rather than the gospel. Thus they held a position of both envy and humiliation: the selflimiting role of the contemporary Indian pastor has its genesis in the authoritarian and bigoted role of the Western missionary in establishing congregations. In fact, increased unity of denominations further decreased the autonomy of native Churches as the Presbyterian Church united with the Congregationalist Churches in 1924 to from the United Church of North India (UCNI). This began the process towards greater Church united throughout north India, always following south Indian initiatives, which eventually led to the celebrated Church of North India being formed in 1970. Negotiations for greater Church unity began with the first Round Table Conference of Churches in 1929. Although a statement of faith was sketched out at this early stage, the focus of negotiations was the means of redistributing power in a united Church. It is odd that these early conferences, setting an important precedent, insisted that congregational autonomy was foreign to Indian practice. Land and power sharing were the key issues to be debated in the conversations towards Church unity, not doctrine or practice. In an attempt to avoid the political conflicts between denominations, that Indian Christians and Western missionaries saw as the legacy of post-reformation Christendom, the supporters of a united Indian Church worked towards an entirely new polity that would suit as many denominations as possible. This was a short sighted and decidedly Western approach because it portrayed the management of power, or ‘ministry’ as it was referred to in Round Table Conferences, as the most important issue facing a uniting Church. 14 Michael Hollis, Paternalism and the Church: A Study of South Indian Church History (Oxford: OUP, 1962), pp. 67–8.

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The Vedic God The Vedic God is the god of Hindu cultural nationalist movement that has been evolving as a national liberation and reform movement since the time of the Mughals but find its voice with most clarity through the activism and writings of a group of internationally influential militant Hindus from the 1920s onward. India entered the twentieth century with a government – the Indian National Party (BJP) – in power that was and remains, committed to a programme of legislative reforms that actively marginalised ‘non-Hindus’ and attempts to propagandise Dalits as Hindus in need of better integration into the broader Hindu fold. By Hindutva, I mean the BJP, the RSS, The VHP, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and other associated Hindutva organisations. We can trace the covert development of Hindu cultural nationalism and find that it is a twentieth-century phenomenon running parallel with Indian nationalism but always critical of it. The greatest increase in violence of Hindutva coincided with the political wing as the BJP and the mobilisation of Dalit youth, through the Bajrang Dal. BJP’s jingoism plays to the patriotism of Hindu nationalism, a Hindu country where Hindus can be rightly proud of its Hindu symbols of national identity. The modern cult of Ram around which Hindutva bases itself and the modern controversy of the Ayodhya Mosque, the supposed birthplace of Ram have been managed by the Hindutva to create a homogenous sense of identity and an opportunity for Hindu outrage against minorities such as Muslims and Christians. Proponents of Hindutva are finishing the task begun by British Indologists and missionaries in taking sacred texts, particular to some people living in the subcontinent, then reinventing values and cultural expectations from those texts and applying them to the modern nation state. Ironically, the Hindutva is the most vociferous in denouncing the colonial imperialists for interfering with the cultural practices of India even though it is the colonial perspective that they wish to conserve and even develop. The civic renaming of cities and streets, topped the BJP’s agenda as a warning of the cultural re-ordering that followed. Thus Calcutta and Madras are now Kolikatta and Chennai, respectively; Victoria Terminus, Bombay, is now Chatrapatti Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai. Chatrapatti Shivaji is one of Maharashtra’s bloodiest heroes, famous for his raids on other Indian states and the inspiration for the Shiv Sena, an aggressive Hindutva organisation. When they took administrative control of the Gujarat, the Sena–BJP alliance rejected 900 cases filed with the police of violence against Dalits, sending a clear message to the Dalit communities that they could expect no protection from the state against middle-caste indignation at their moderate successes. Beginning with Vinaya D. Savarkar it is possible to outline a history of modern Hinduism, or ‘Hindutva’. A fundamentalist Hinduism that, like Christian and Islamic fundamentalism, claims to have purified or reformed the original faith, yet is a modern religion borne out of a global context. Hindu fundamentalism is a response to a series of invasions of India and external pressures on Indian

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cultures. The British state-making project and embraces parts of it – nationalism, fostered it particularly – while rejecting the whole of it in principle. While their sense of injury has some credence, the Hindutva manifesto is unabashedly racist and casteism. Vinaya D. Savarkar first used the term ‘Hindutva’ and inspired the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Corps, RSS) and the notion of cultural nationalism. The RSS formed early in the process of Hindutvaisation (1925) and in parallel, not coincidentally, with fascism in Nazi Germany. It began in Nagpur, with the intention of building a Hindu state and has always had a militant form of nationalism. V.D. Savarkar came to reject such a unity and to see the Muslims as foreign invaders. He was obsessed with the re-writing of history and did so to demonise Muslims and Christians and assimilate Buddhists and Sikhs into the Hindu fold. Savarkar was a Hindu extremist, militantly opposed to the British during the 1920s and violently pro-Hinduism after his imprisonment on the Andaman Islands during the 1930s. Savarkar rules out the possibility of being both Indian and faithful to their Christianity, Islam or indigenous Dalit religions. The force of modern caste prejudice finds its birth in cultural nationalism of the struggles for national independence. If there was no nation state, there would be no cultural nationalism and much of the emotive pressure of casteism would be lost. The violence, incited by Hindutva in 2002 and leading to up to 2,000 civilian deaths, mostly Muslim, link back to the fascist vision of its early proponents. M.S. Golwalker a founder of the RSS is explicit in his national chauvinism. The non-Hindu peoples in Hindustan must either accept Hindu culture and language … or stay in the country wholly subordinate to the Hindu nation deserving no privileges, far less preferential treatment, not even citizenship rights.15

Reflecting on the Third Reich’s attempts to purify Germany of minority ethnic and ideological groups Golwalker comments they offer: ‘a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by’.16 The irony is stark: the British colonialists cultivated an indigenous national religion of their own making who rejected them and any other religious form as foreign. There appears to be no critical self-awareness among the Hindutva, their leaders say nothing of their great debt to British administrators and Indologists for their extraordinary status or the ideological underpinnings of their nationalistic religion. In his study of Christian Vankars in central Gujarat, Lobo found that revertive missionaries or ‘Hindu fundamental organisations’ use state benefits to coax

15 V.H. Devadas, ‘The Future of Christianity in India’, in Peoples Reporter, Vol. 16, No. 10, 25 May–10 June, 2003, p. 7. 16 M.S. Golwalker, ‘We, or Our Nation Defined’, p. 17.

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Christians to convert to Hinduism.17 Arjun Patel also lists Hindutva organisations that, since the mid-1980s have been bent on converting Tribals: the RSS, the ABVP, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena, the Hindu Milan Mandir, the Arya Samaj, saints, scholars and some Tribal politicians. Lobo also claims that Hindutva want to polarise conversion as extrinsic to Hindus and Intrinsic to Christians but at the same time actively co-opting Tribals and westerners ‘trophy converts’ (particularly in the USA). Interestingly, Lobo compares the Hindutva to the Pentecostal movement that is gaining popularity among Indian Christians. Fundamentalism, as it refers to the Hindu Rashtra, is not a call to return to a true and ancient religion of the India, but to a modern version of the Brahminic faith that assimilates or marginalises castes and communities for political ends. Lobo accuses the Hindutva Parivar of ‘actively erasing’ the variety of culture in India, building directly on the process begun by the British administration. In a process of Sanskritisation a modern puritanical form of Hinduism is replacing the variety inherent in Indian society. Dalits see only one choice; they embrace either Hindutva or the Dalit Bahujan’s solidarity with the Dalit movement. Just as many converts to Christianity will Christianise their names so some Dalits will Brahminise their names to conceal their low status. This process of Sanskritisation has influenced Tribal culture in South Gujarat since the mid-1980s to the extent that they are worshipping Hindu gods, building temples instead of shrines and adopting practices of caste discrimination where it had not previously existed. However, there has been some backlash against this: Tribals have begun to react to Sanskritisation by affirming their own historical, cultural precedence. They claim to be ancient occupiers of the land, marginalised only because of the violence of Aryan invaders of the past. They are beginning to realise that the Vedic God is an imposition on their historic way of life. The BJP and its allied organisations have used sacred space and history as political currency for the Hindutva agenda. This agenda, so far, has involved the liberalisation of markets, increasing communal violence and greater fear of recriminations on the part of minorities. So there is a meaningless war of nations within nations going on in India; a competition to see who is the most Indian and represents best the Mother India. Tribals and Dalits have joined the Christians and Hindus in this contest. The only people not contesting their indigenous right to be the sovereign faith is the Muslims who in turn are the most wronged against by Indian nationalism as a demonised minority. The VHP co-opt communities and subordinate their values and culture. Co-opted Dalits build temples instead of visiting their established shrines: temples are grander structures. Gradually Dalit communities transfer loyalty to deities with Vedic names while agents of the Vedic God subsume Dalit pantheons make them synonymous with Vedic gods. Arjun Patel observes the demoralisation of indigenous culture and its symbols of social and cultural power. Dalit groups 17 Lancy Lobo, Religious Conversion and Social Mobility: A Case Study of the Vankars in Central Gujarat (Surat: Centre for Social Studies), 2001, p. 176.

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replace community solidarity with loyalty to the Vedic God. This is always at the expense of the rights and culture of the Dalits who, in willingness to be represented by Hinduism fail to represent themselves within Hinduism. Dalits, including many Christians, who register in government censuses as Hindus reinforce the Hindutva propaganda message: that India is essentially a Hindu nation. Tribal culture is distinct from Hinduism in a number of important ways: while the former worship at informal shrines with simple clay horses, cows and painted stones, the latter worship ornate statues and icons in temples. In 2002 I visited a Tribal shrine in a concealed jungle clearing and found evidence of offerings of ‘first fruits’ as well as small fires and a stack of over 100 discarded clay animals. The modesty of the shrine is in stark contrast to postcolonial Hinduism. While much indigenous religious values and practices remain, there seemed a correlation between urbanisation and Sanskrisation. To journey only slightly up the hierarchy of settlements it is possible to see that many of the boundary deities, who were often simple wooden totems with markings on them, had been replaced with elaborate brick shrines with Hindu statues inside them. Dalits have no interest in marrying their localist tribal deities to Mother India. Dalit religious sensibilities do not allow a boundary deity to enlarge its boundary and become a national deity. However, if they want to worship a national version of their boundary deity then the Hindu pantheon offers that opportunity in a way the Missionary God has failed to advertise. Anti-Brahminic apologist and academic, Swami Dharma Theertha, a non-Dalit writing in 1940, outlined the ten steps towards creating a Brahmo-centric British India as understood by the low-caste and Dalit literati.18 1. Elevate the Brahmins in politics 2. Fund the renaissance and nationalisation of Hindu Temples and festivals 3. Establish caste tribunals 4. Exaggerate the importance of key Hindu texts 5. Hand the temples to Brahmin trustees 6. Through administration they establish ‘being Hindu’ as the Indian norm 7. Give state recognition to caste distinction 8. Make it impossible for people to alter their status 9. Strengthen ‘evils of society’ 10. Uphold casteism and idol worship, as cultural achievements. Theertha’s thesis is sweeping; he does not make a case for any of the bold statements. Nonetheless, he wrote in a period of history when India was coming close to independence from the British and the struggle for power was at its height. He saw that this was a statist project as much as a cultural and economic one and A.G. Noorani, Savarkar and Hindutva, pp. 159–60.

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his insight shows why colonialists and missionaries were sometimes at odds with their purpose for being in India. The colonialists were setting up the Vedic God as the consort for the state and the Christians were setting up the Missionary God as the consort for the state. The former, pragmatic, the latter driven by a naïve vision. Both parties were condescending in their belief that the Western system of a nation state was a global natural norm that had to be imposed – a contradiction in its explicit observation – why nature would have to be forced with violence and coercion. Toppling the Leviathans The first 50 years of the twentieth century saw a climax in the pre-independence power struggles in India. There was an acceleration of competition for representational power in the emerging indigenous voice in the Western political system that correlated with acceleration in the desire of some to homogenise communities as ‘vote banks’ and of debate between competing national identities. Many Indian leaders promoted their own idea of a homogenous national identity for Mother India, as the political dust settled after her independence. Others still expected a ‘composite’ culture would naturally emerge. Yet, no one came out and said they would be prepared to compromise their own identity for this patriotic vision. In 1950, when the Republic was founded ending caste prejudice was a priority that involved building positive discrimination (reservations) and ascribed social identities into the constitution. The parliamentary constitution was supposed to ensure that democracy would not neglect the minority castes, understood at the time to be the non-Hindu and Scheduled Caste (Dalit) communities. Advocates of the Vedic God and the Missionary God compete in the same game with the same rules. These rules assume a pre-eminent role for the nation state – Mother India – in ordering the lives of her citizens and protecting them from harming each other. To win the game the competing gods must prove themselves worth to be her consort. A God will prove himself worthy of Mother India by matching or even usurping her in her characteristic roles. First, the God must be able to protect its communities, whoever chooses to come under such protection. Second, the God must be able to provide materially for these communities and effectively tap into the resources of state for provision. Third, the God must be able to universalise truth in relation to the truth of Mother India it must be faithful to her. In colonial India the Missionary God had the upper hand in many of these things. In postcolonial India the power dynamic has shifted, hence we see the rise of cultural nationalism in the 1980s and the Churches both shoring up its patriotic credentials and demanding from equity of treatment from the state. Key to the continued worship of Mother India is the belief that humans need protecting from one another by an all-powerful Other: Hobbes’ Leviathan. When human society is re-imagined in ways that do not rely on a Leviathan then Mother India loses her charm. To do this it is necessary to explore the identities of those communities that

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in some way survive modernisation: and religion – the democracy of the dead – allows us to peer into a pre-statist Indian world and discover the resistive riches therein. But first it is necessary to explore more deeply and widely the implications that our worship of these modern statist Gods has impacted the theology and Church and in doing so identify some of the ways the Church has resisted God’s transformative justice.

Chapter 3

Self Preservation Society

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.1 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4: 18, NIV)

Violence In February 2002 riots erupted in various places across the state of Gujarat leaving around 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims and many more homeless and with their businesses destroyed. The increased Hindu fundamentalism (Saffronisation) of the mechanics of state allowed the BJP to manage the police and the civic response to the 2002 riot. Preparation too has become more sophisticated as information on homes and businesses of Muslims were in the hands of Hindu rioters who set out with gas canisters to be used as bombs and sharp knives and sticks. Christian concern has partly been for the Muslim community but also the possibility that they might become a target too. The police were instrumental in collecting information on both Muslims and Christians and supervising and aiding the destruction of life and property. The manpower for riots, at its core, is drawn from the poorest communities (in the case of Ahmedabad this means those who live in central and eastern districts). Even in this, the poor are exploited. Maya Kodnani, a BJP Member of the Local Assembly, denies the extreme reports of violence and almost excuses it on the grounds of ‘a natural hatred and anger in the heart of every Hindu’, because of the alleged attack on a train full of RSS members by Muslims.2 In this she echoes the reaction of the Bajrang Dal to the attacks on Christians on 25 December 1998, which they explained as a ‘patriotic reaction’ to the ‘unpatriotic’ conversion of Indians to Christianity. Thousands of Gujarati Muslims continue to live in temporary camps in and around Ahmedabad, afraid to return to their communities and unable to vote in the upcoming elections. During a visit to Ahmedabad in August 2002 I saw growing numbers of Christians had moved to safer, Christian-majority ghettos of the city, with reports from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Hollywood: Lucas Films, 1983. Citizen’s Initiative report, How Has the Gujarat Massacre affected Minority

1 2

Women? 16 April 2002, p. 15.

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Churches that similar Muslim ghettos were growing west of the river and south of the city. In Ahmdedabad, Christians are migrating out of the centre of the city into large communal groups in the South-West, as a reaction to the communal violence. Attacks on Churches that took place during 1998 and the sporadic communal violence have encouraged this migration. Muslims are also moving out of the city and many Muslims in Ahmedabad are refugees within their own city. Changing demographics play a key role in triggering communal violence. During the twentieth century Ahmedabad’s population shifted and expanded a great deal. Neighbourhoods, particularly those vulnerable to poverty, therefore with greatest cause to feel threatened by change, feel unsettled. While vertically and horizontally mobile upper-castes moved to new and better housing to the west of the old city the void was filled by poorer Dalit groups, alongside established poor Muslims homes and businesses. Sujata Patel believes that the root cause of hostilities between the two communities in the walled city (where the majority of the violence has taken place) is principally territorial, which of course does not negate caste and religion as keenly felt distinctions between the rival communities. However, economic factors have increased tensions: a slump in textile production and increased migration of rural poor Dalits and Tribals in the latter half of the century. Since the 1990s the impact of globalisation and the New Economic Policy (NEP) – which amounts to economic liberalisation – have resulted in even higher unemployment and a larger casual, migratory labour market: ‘consumerism of the rich and gross marginalization of the masses have been rising phenomenally’.3 The poor are increasingly desperate and vulnerable to any ideology that promises some hope at whatever cost. The extent to which Dalits and Tribals were responsible for the violence inflicted on Muslims in the city, appears incongruous, because it was seen as the work of caste-conscious Sangh Parivar groups like the VHP and Bajrang Dal (as it was). However, since the mid-1980s the VHP have been deliberately wooing both minorities in to its own flavour of militant Hinduism. Lancy Lobo sees increased globalisation as fuelling the nationalist feeling of the Hindu right. This is a phenomenon observed in European countries over the last decade whereby increased fear of federalism has led to greater influence for the far right ideologies of UKIP and the BNP in the UK and conservative right wing parties in Austria and Germany. Some Dalits have taken up violence and Vedic symbols and narratives of war in order to pre-meditate and aggravate riots. Riots in Gujarat serve a purpose; rather, riots serve different purposes for the interested parties but they have an accepted societal function – not to restore equilibrium, but to reinforce the imbalance of power. While it is not possible to forecast a riot, not yet at any rate, it is possible to observe the fomenting of social ingredients that lead to a clash. There is a direct correspondence between the rising influence of the BJP (1998–2004) and increasing communal violence in Gujarat. The media has become more important in engineering ill will and Lancy Lobo, Religious Conversion and Social Mobility, p. 38.

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disinformation about grievances, real and perceived (Godhra; Ayodya; Rath Yatras; election fraud; reservation etc.). A grievance is essential in the build up to riot and the BJP have proven adept at the deliberate mismanagement of faith relations. Furthermore, the ongoing violence and nationalist propaganda forces the Churches to respond both against the obvious injustice it perceives from the state and in ways that it hopes will protect it from violence and interference from the same. So the Church is struggling to be a prophetic critic of a system it relies upon for protection and affirmation. Trying to be Indian There is little Dalit or Tribal theology in Gujarat because of the legacy of westernisation of the Church by the missionary organisations. From the work of Gujarat’s branch of the Bible and Tract Society this appears to be true, most of the work is done by translators, like Alliance Minister Neriyas Dholokia (Senior Translator) who spends most of his time working on Western materials, having just helped produced Gujarat’s first Study Bible (2004) based entirely on Western study materials. When visiting the press at the Bible and Tract Society, I discovered that the major resource used is The Upper Room, a Western evangelical tract that is heavily subsidised by its Western publishers and full of Western materials. CNI is now working in partnership with Friends Missionary Prayer Band (FMPB). FMPB staff, including its National Field Director, Ebe Sundar Raj, are predominantly South Indian Christians working as missionaries in North India.4 FMPB has a stated policy of planting indigenous Churches. However, FMPBs definition of what it means for a Church to be indigenous leaves room for criticism. An indigenous church means a church that is rooted in its culture on the basis of biblical principles, having its own administration by the local peoples, fully supported by the local income for its maintenance and outreach.5

To say that a Church is ‘rooted’ in one thing but has a ‘basis’ in another is semantic nonsense. A Western understanding of what ‘biblical principles’ means is evident in the movement through its teaching material and course contents. However, the organisation has practices that can be identified as attempting to create indigenous Churches; for example buildings for worship are made from local materials and in the same way as the homes. I have visited Tribal villages in south India where everyone lives in a mud hut except the Church minister who lives in one of the only concrete building in the village (the other being the Church itself). The FMPB approach, therefore, seems more subtle and fitting. When I mentioned 4 S. Arulraja, An Analysis of the Training of Local Church Leaders by Friends Missionary Prayer Band in South Gujarat (Pune: Mdiv Thesis, UBS, 2003), pp. 6–34. 5 Ibid., p. 15.

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FMPB’s policy to the Bishop he assured me that the mud hut Churches of FMPB would be replaced and were being replaced with concrete buildings. This gives evidence of a divergence of approach between the partner organisations. FMPB works independently in Tribal villages: The Mangadas in Valsad and Dharampur; Gamits in Vyara; Kuknas in Dangs; Chowdris in Surat; Bhils in Surat and Baruch, eventually handing over the ‘indigenous’ new congregations to mainstream denominations. While FMPB claims to be an Indian movement, its roots lie with Vacation Bible School (VBS) that was founded by USA missionaries. FMPB encourage new converts to orally share their experiences of God with each other, this leaves room for indigenous interpretation of experience in language which comes most naturally to the convert – it is an empowering approach. Meetings are held at night rather than Sunday morning and Melas, Tamasha Parties and Bhajan Mandalias are held. Evangelism is largely through relationships rather than through big tent meetings, which gives greater control of the language of witness to more participants. There are shared meals and the local dialect is always used. Despite this there is still a heavy reliance on Western theology and resources. For example, the Jesus Film (published by ‘Agape Ministries’) depicts a fair skinned and longhaired Jesus in a setting that looks like something between Palestine and rural Italy. This film is used widely by FMPB and provides a powerfully Western image of Jesus. Revd Prabhakar, perhaps the person most informed about the work of FMPB in Gujarat says that there is no Tribal theology as a result of the planting of ‘indigenous churches’ as yet but welcomes the idea. However, FMPB is an evangelical organisation and would be at odds with itself if it encouraged an authentically Tribal Christian spirituality. The formation of CNI in 1970 was not entered into fully enough by the various denominations, suspicious of one another to the last. Although creeds and constitutions have helped to plaster over the cracks between the Churches these cracks are beginning to show. However, the Mainline Churches are working together in certain spheres of Christian missionary in pan-Indian projects and in Gujarat specifically. The leaders are brought together in denouncing Hindu fundamentalism and through meeting with foreign missionary agencies like FMPB, VBC, OM, SPCK and others. The desire to work with foreign Christians is greater than the desire to work apart from other denominations. Although at both leadership and lay level there is antagonism to the new wave of Charismatic Churches, Charismatic Christianity is increasingly popular. Satellite television, ‘Crusades’ by Prosperity hawks like Benny Hinn promote aspirational Christianity and the belief that wealth and health are within the grasp of all Christians who have ‘faith’. Mainline leadership are under pressure to compete with the promises and easy formulae of these new teachings, this other Gospel but are at a loss as to how to provide an alternative since the Gospel they preach is too conservative to cope with the new political and social context of urban Gujarat. Hence mainline Churches are focusing their evangelistic efforts on rural parts of the state, competing more with the VHP than the Charismatic movement. VBC and OM exploit the mainline Churches but not without the complicity of its leaders; the

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latter provides the only lay led ecumenical movement to train Church members in conservative Christianity in a way that they are not being trained in their local congregations. Yet OM has lost its impetus and become a denomination in itself, turning its back on the Mainline Church leadership but maintaining the support of traditional lay Christians. There is room for optimism then, since the Church is finally turning to the margins of society to reclaim its indigenous identity, albeit with excess caution. However, the theology in place remains statist and therefore lacking ambition. Christian Introversion The Church must feel acutely Sebastian Kappen’s criticism of a ghetto Christianity whose ‘sectarian, exclusivist, narcissistic subculture’ is restraining the Church’s prophetic calling.6 On the other hand, the ‘Jesus-tradition will contribute to what is lacking in the Indian religio-cultural tradition of dissent’. The Church barricades itself into the margins of political society with its own private, but elaborated, hierarchy of belief and membership. The fragmented and alienated Church is the legacy of paternalistic missionary methods. Western missionaries grafted the Western theology and ecclesiology onto the Indian social tree but it withers rather than taking root. This is why Gnanadason calls for ‘a moratorium on any kind of external pressure’ and challenges CNI to ‘cut the umbilical cord’ with its foreign partners.7 It is vital that the Church in India answers this question positively. The financial and emotional ties to the West continue to dictate theology, method and the national place of Christians in India. Boyd claims that the Church should ‘simply be itself … the natural growth of the tree now firmly rooted in Indian soil’.8 This is not possible while the Church remains a Western franchise. It is only from a position of theological self-reliance that Indian Christianity can enter into a ‘dialogue with traditional Western Christian theology’ as Dalit theologian Franklyn Balasundaram seeks.9 Christians who aspire to greater degrees of service become frustrated in the mainline Churches or aspire to a funded ministry. The mainline Churches, having shifted little from their Victorian position of proselytisation and pasturing now look more to the growing Pentecostal and Prosperity Gospel movements in the west, which in turn are influenced by the developing Charismatic and fundamentalist Sebastian Kappen, Jesus and Culture (Delhi: ISPCK, 2002), p. 67. Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Shifts in Mission Thinking: Emerging Paradigms of Mission’,

6 7

in Nalunnakal and Athyal (eds), Quest for Justice: Perspectives on Mission and Unity (Delhi: ISPCK, 2000), p. 33. 8 Robin Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), p. 248. 9 F.J. Balasundaram, ‘Dalit Theology and Other Theologies’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, p. 251.

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movements from the USA. CNI is not withstanding the rigours of Church politics as well as was hoped less than half a century ago. This is a unity of power sharing, rather than the sharing out of responsibility. The logo of CNI bears the words, ‘Unity-Witness-Service’, suggesting that witness and service are distinct and that unity does not itself bear witness to fellowship in Jesus Christ. The Dalits are a ready source of superficial converts in the modern Church. Foreign agents and those endorsed by them are especially inclined to using financial inducements to encourage people to be baptised into a particular Christian ministry without finding out whether they are already part of another religious group, Christian or otherwise. Dalits are being exploited by the missionary dollar. Both Oza and Gnanadason have reasons to hope for the future of the Church in Gujarat, despite their bleak assessments of the present. Gnanadason notes that only threat of persecution unifies the Church at present10 but that unity could come through the desire to see justice enlivened through grassroots movements. Nalunnakal suggests that compassion for those outside the Church who are persecuted could be equally unifying. Nalunnakal, while acknowledging the fragmentation of the Church sees concerted ministry to the margins of society as the means of expressing the unity of the Church: a unity of purpose. The Church should be united in ‘challenging the structures of violence and injustice against the Dalits, tribals, women and other oppressed communities’.11 It is this emphasis on the ‘structures of violence’ that typifies an anarchic approach to Dalit theology. Gnanadason believes that there are ‘areas of life of this country where the Church is still desperately needed’.12 Both think in terms of bringing justice on a national level for the Dalits. This is where Dalit theology fails to realise its radical potential. It cannot cut loose from the ideology of state. The Dalit movement and the rise of the Hindu right are being treated by Indian Churches as separate but related issues. The latter is dealt with through media protest and government lobby on behalf of the Churches. The former is dealt with through fashionable theology and separate lobbying of government, primarily on behalf of Christian Dalits. The same social-political-religious system rises up the Dalits against the Christians and Muslims on behalf of Hindutva Parivar as exploits the Dalits and maintains their occlusion. As long as it remains wedded to the ideology of the state the Church will be loyal also to the concept of oppression, which in turn leads to the exploitation of the Dalits and others on the margins. The Church, in reflecting on Dalit theological concerns can address the system and widen its protest to a universal quest for justice and reconciliation.

Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Shifts in Mission Thinking: Emerging Paradigms of Mission’,

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p. 35.

11 G.M. Nalunnakal, ‘Mission and Unity in the Context of Contemporary Challenges’, in Nalunnakal and Athyal (eds), Quest for Justice, pp. 71 – 2. 12 Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Be a Minority: Become an Indian Christian Church Today’, in Nalunnakal and Athyal (eds), Quest for Justice, p. 2.

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Transnational Ecclesia – Pentecostalism and the Neo-colonial Gods Overt evangelisation is dominated by South Indian agencies such as FMPB or Charismatic Churches and para-Church organisations. The rise of Pentecostalism in Gujarat especially can be over estimated if its leaders’ own statistics are relied on. While I have seen files of papers showing weekly baptisms of new converts I have heard stories from Church leaders of every major denomination of multiple conversions of the poor. I have also spoken to mainline laity and clerics who visit Pentecostal Churches but continue to support the mainline Church. A number of Pentecostal leaders are growing in wealth, due to foreign involvement and therefore attracting Christians who sincerely want to be successful in Christian ministry. However, these movements have not been able to offer much more than a conversion message and therefore haemorrhage members and visitors. Dialogue between mainline and Pentecostal movements is lay-led, but foreign funded through outreaches, seminars and teaching materials. There is a move towards new charismatic Churches in Gujarat comparable to the House Church movement in the UK in the 1970s. Those from a traditional Church note its informal, contemporary and apolitical approach. The growing popularity of Pentecostal Churches draw members of traditional Churches to their meetings and sometimes into membership. Many traditional Christians are irregular attendees at both the new and mainstream traditions. Concern that it encourages self-centred and materialistic spirituality is evident in the messages preached and literature produced by leading charismatic movements in the state. Leaders of various traditions (CNI, Methodist, Salvation Army, Alliance, Team mission) complain of ‘sheep stealing’ by charismatic Churches and financial incentives given by its senior leaders, to encourage Pastors to make new converts. Nonetheless, it is incumbent upon the mainline Churches to acknowledge that: Many people faithful to the mainstream denominations are attracted to the charismatic and intimate style of community found in the Pentecostal Churches. Charismatic Prosperity-based Churches have strong links with similar Churches both in Europe and the USA. Pentecostal Churches offer Christians a sense of community that is not fostered in traditional Churches. For example, for many years Chandrakant Chavda has received funding from Covenant Ministries International, which has Churches in the USA and Western Europe. He now receives financial support from ‘Ministries without Borders’ that is also funded in the USA and Europe. Other organisations, like Jesus is the Answer are said to operate similarly. At a pastors’ conference in Baruch, 2004, a group of pastors from various mainline Churches in Nadiad complained bitterly about Chandrakant Chavda, formerly of the Methodist Church and now associated to an international Western organisation. The accusations were fierce and emotive and related very little reflection on the state of the Church in that city but rather its politics. These new Churches illustrate two affects of globalisation: the atomisation of society into the wants of the individual; the theological deference that numerically successful Churches must make to the new breed of foreign agencies: the TNEs.

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Each new Church claims to be utterly transforming India – wholesale – on behalf of Christ so that the need to be the consort of the Mother India is as urgently felt as ever. Moreover, the desire to be recognised by successful TNEs drives these new Churches to invent baptismal/conversion figures, further inflaming both the Christian centre-left and the Hindu right. Self Preservation as Mission The violence of the twentieth century and the general eroding of Hindu identity by a patronising and oppressive Christian colonialism led to the insurgence of zealous nationalism. Since the arrival of Protestant Christianity in the early nineteenth century until India’s independence, foreign missionaries have used Brahminic Hinduism as a foil for Christian conversion, using the dark violence of the Manusmrti to decry the caste system. Caste Hindus sense that they have been wilfully misrepresented. The purpose served was to extol the Missionary God as the rightful consort of Mother India. The Modern missionaries’ purpose and mission was grim. Missionaries and Brahmin elites have consistently criticised one another for exploiting the Dalit communities. The Hindu and Christian fundamentalisms are two sides of the same coin. They are not ideologically opposed, rather they are one in purpose; where they diverge is on symbolic orientation. Both sides claim to have the interests of India’s Dalits at heart; both sides are keen to see a religious cultural nationalism succeed over secular, or territorial, nationalism. Both sides are vying for the hand of ‘Mother India’. Furthermore both sides have taken a modernistic, sectarian and essentially non-Indian religious identity and claim it to be reformist and historically authentic. Both sides exploit the poor, although in different ways: both sides are hegemonic and statist in their missiological approach to India. There is a sense in which they define and justify each other: they are the ‘rock’ and the ‘hard place’ between which the Dalit Christians are stuck. The BJP’s media correlation of Christians and Muslims with subversion and foreign imperialism suggests a disturbing trend towards state-sponsored racism. ‘Muslim’ represents ‘Pakistan’, ‘Christian’ represents ‘The West’. Christians are treated as ‘remnants of the British Raj’.13 Christians suffer double discrimination in India because of having Scheduled Caste status but no electoral, college, or government work reservation or government aid, because of conversion. Discrimination against Christians in state legislation is not primarily intended to impoverish Christians so much as it is ‘a punitive measure to keep Dalits from wandering into Christianity’. The media repeatedly calls Gujarat the ‘Hindutva laboratory’ for ‘Experiments in hate’, provoking Dalits and Muslims to fight among each other and presenting the BJP as the only viable solution. Narendra Modi, Caretaker Chief Minister John Dayal, Dalitstan Journal, Vol. 2, Issue 3, June 2000.

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of Gujarat is widely acknowledged as the person who instigated the riots in Ahmedabad in 2002, by polarising the public with his comments and by using grassroots members, paid to form vigilante groups to attack Muslims. (42 per cent of Gujarati’s and 80 per cent of Muslims believe that Modi was negligent in his comments around the riots). Yet, the BJP not only holds the popular vote but also is said to have benefited from the riots, according to analysts. Modi used the insecurity that Christians now fear regarding their association with foreigners to dismiss the Congress’ representative Sonia Gandhi as ‘Italy ki beti’ – daughter of India. According to the media, this has been the Sangh Parivar’s intention since attacks on Christians first accelerated in December 1998. The violence in Gujarat has horrified the majority of Indians, although much of it remains unreported or ignored by the mainstream media. The incredibly number of rapes, mutilations and murders involved suggests that the intended role of the riots was the intimidation of Muslims and Dalits indirectly drawing Dalits into the Sangh Parivar fold. The mob started chasing us with burning tyres after we were forced to leave Gangotri society. It was then that they raped many girls. We saw about 8–10 rapes. We saw them strip 16-year-old Mehrunissa. They were stripping themselves and beckoning to the girls. Then they raped them right there on the road. … Then they were burnt. Now there is no evidence.14

Even more horrific accounts than this exist yet the police rarely received reports of them, in fact senior officers told police not to intervene. Eyewitnesses speak of seeing policemen sitting in vans; playing cards while the violence took place around them. The evidence against the Gujarati police has been generally damming:15 • 13.5 per cent of the victims of atrocity are criminally pressured not to lodge a complaint with the police. • 15.75 per cent of complaints supposedly recorded by police do not appear in official records. • 240 per cent underreporting of crime against Dalits by police and failure to file FIR (First Information Report). • Police desire that SC/ST (POA*) Act should be repealed because Dalits, they assume, misuse the Act. • In 36 per cent of cases the relevant provisions of the POA Act are not applied (a lesser charge is applied). K. Bibi, Shah e Alam ‘Camp, March 27, 2002’ in Citizen’s Initiative report, How Has the Gujarat Massacre affected Minority Women? 16 April 2002, p. 4. 15 Source: Martin Macwan, (i) ‘Caste System: A Conspiracy against the Poor, The Dalit Question of India 1989, Freedom from Oppression still Far Away’, Navsarjan Trust, 1998; (ii) ‘Dalits: Realities’, Navsarjan Trust papers. In N P. Divarkar (ed.), Black Paper: Broken Promises & Dalits Betrayed, Secunderbad: NCDHR, 1999. 14

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• 39 per cent of police at the level of Deputy Superintendent of police and 12 per cent at the level of Police Inspectors or Sub-Inspectors are ignorant about the various provisions of the POA Act.16 The context of violence and patriotic propaganda adds weight to this thesis and its conclusion. The solution of the Church to accusations of foreignness has been to attempt to appear as Indian as possible. However, it has tried to do this while maintaining both cultural foreignness and tacit foreign allegiances. The fact that Hindutva is equally foreign in funding and ideology does not excuse this hypocrisy, it merely highlights the futility of it. Therefore, if Indianness cannot be embraced in spirit or law the alternative is to openly reject it. In this Christians can lead the way because Jesus’ message was, in basis, anarchic. Dalits, equally, have the roots in an anarchic polytheism that rejects the option of ruling the Other. It may be that these two positions – that of the Dalit and the Christian – may unlock one another’s anarchic tendency and authentic theological voice. The Churchy laity and leadership in Gujarat and in urban centres like Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore have become increasingly individualistic and charismatic. With increasing individualism in politics and religion and mounting violence against minorities, self preservation has been turned into a Christian virtue – indeed self promotion is now understood as a saintly necessity. The focus has shifted from development and doctrine to protection and prosperity. This is due in no small part to a shift in emphasis in the Western Church to Pentecostal and ‘health and wealth’ Christianity and the popularity of media-focused Christian ‘ministries’. ‘Ministry’ no longer means service but now refers to Transnational large scale Christian, performance-centred events that encourages the poor to ‘invest’ in personality-driven Christian organisations in order to become healthy and wealthy. Examples of personality-driven Christian organisations are: Benny Hinn Ministries, Jesse Duplantis Ministries, Kenneth Copeland Ministries, the Rhema School (the Late D.L. Moody and Kenneth Hagen). Benny Hinn has visited India twice in the past two years (2004, 2005) and profited from both visits. There are many others including some based in India but funded from abroad: Great Commission Ministries (Chadrakant Chavda), for example. Like the New Age Movement, the Prosperity movement does not have a central leadership but a core of key movers, as mentioned above. Eschewed denominationalism has allowed these organisations to cut across traditional boundaries between different Christians affecting all mainstream and House Churches. The mainstream leadership are bewildered and frustrated by the success of new Christian Churches in India, backed by TNEs. Reformist foreign missionaries continue to battle for influence over the Churches in India, through organisations like VBC and VBS. Other evangelical TNEs maintain influence by offering heavily 16 Prevention of Atrocities Act 1989. An Act to prevent the commission of offences of atrocities against Dalits and Tribals, to provide for Special Courts for the trial of such offences and for the relief and rehabilitation of the victims of such offences.

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discounted teaching material: The Upper Room, for example. Progressive faith exists among some mainstream Church members and leaders and most Roman Catholics, but contemporary foreign mission has stunted the Dalit Christian movement in most of India. The values of TNEs are diametrically opposed to those of Liberation theology and Dalit theology but much more marketable. Indian interdenominational organisations, like AICC have lobbied the government for greater protection for Christians, rather than for Dalits generally, thus the Churches are being portrayed as needy. A Dalit agenda is being marginalised, in practice, in most Christian networks and organisations as preservation of traditional values and status becomes the core aim. AICC, CNI, CSI and other organisations have not made the connections between the oppression and increased burden on the Dalits and the continued violence and rising insecurity among religious minorities and especially among the poor. The Roman Catholic Church has been quicker to understand that the poor have been politically stage-managed into rioting and communalism and that social justice is at the root of finding lasting peace. There are dramatic exceptions on both sides. An authentically Dalit perspective should cut across the superficiality of the popular Christianity of TNEs and mainstream Churches. A re-orientation of Christian theology towards the Dalits would help achieve this. A hermeneutic of resistance ties this to the death and resurrection of Jesus at the hands of the Religious and Secular Powers of his day. Jacques Ellul, lecturer on ancient Roman law saw it as the greatest moral triumph of the Roman Empire yet essentially evil, when confronted with the pure righteousness of the Son of God. By submitting to Rome, Jesus does not legitimise authority but exposes it as fallen human government: ‘it is an unveiling of the basic injustice of what purports to be justice’.17 Jesus does not passively accept the Powers as legitimate and had not done so during his ministry. Rather, he subverts them by giving them no weight at all; to Jesus these Powers are revealed as lacking any real power. Studies of rural Christian Dalits have examined the pacifying and depoliticising effect of conversion. Ellul is critical of those who have converted others to a passive Christianity, one that sees only violence and surrender as options.18 These are passive responses because they are reactive rather than proactive. Too him either of these modes are ‘half Christianity’ rather than Anarchic Christianity. Part of the realism of this approach is seeing that it is not possible for Christians to dissuade either the subject or object of alienation from violent action. The Anarchic Christian is the voice of the oppressed to the oppressor and actively engages in the suffering of the poor. It is the exclusive responsibility of the Church to bear suffering on behalf of the poor, thus exposing the oppressors of the poor: ‘for if when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval’ (1 Peter 2: 20). If 17 Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity (Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), p. 66. 18 Jacques Ellul, Violence, p. 150.

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Christians must submit to unjust suffering then its form must be fully recognised and the objectives of bearing it must be clear. Walter Wink, more than any writer of political theology succinctly describes the Christian processes of political engagement using the beliefs of Jesus and his early apostles as the model of resistance. Wink, like Berkhof before him,19 reassesses Paul’s understanding of the angelic Powers as structural, rather than anthropomorphic or personal. The Powers have a physical and a spiritual dimension (Eph. 3: 10; 6: 12) : ‘visible and invisible, earthly and heavenly, spiritual and institutional’ (Col. 1: 15–20).20 Organisations of administration (of any kind) are created among people, but simultaneously spiritually created. All earthly powers, which cannot be pinned down to individuals have a spiritual reality that can be discerned. However, Wink does not describe these in the language of the Hebrews or of Paul as something up and beyond earthly reality but rather the spiritual core of every institution; the ‘socio-spiritual structures’ of the Powers. Preferring to define these Powers as impersonal realities, understood in scriptural language as angels and demons, Wink seems to suggest that the spiritual sum of an organisation is greater than its separate parts. Angelic Powers understand what God has created them for, to serve his will. A demonic Power, on the other hand, ‘makes its own interests the highest good’. The task is to unmask, defeat and redeem the Powers to return them to their original vocation: that of glorifying God. Wink seems to suggest that Paul’s conflict between understanding Jesus’ death as either a final sacrifice or the end of sacrifices comes from the idea that, in Jesus, God showed finally that violent sacrifice is not his idea. By so doing, Jesus brings an end to the sacrificial system. Paul’s Gospel thus understood is one that is letting go of the myth of God’s violence and realising that it is through Jesus, the Son of God, accepting the violence, not of God but of the Powers, onto himself, that we are all free to do the same. Because Jesus stood against the Powers and showed them to be empty when confronted with his resurrection, humanity is free to understand the Powers in the same way. The cross best illustrates Jesus’ act of subverting the Powers for all. Each stroke of the whip and ridiculing comment ‘unveiled their own illegitimacy’. In killing Jesus they stripped the Powers of their mask of decency: ‘they were nailing up, for the whole world to see, the affidavit by which the Domination System would be condemned’ (Col. 2: 13–15). It is this good news, that those who lose their lives will ultimately gain life (Luke 17: 33), that Jesus demonstrates to the world and that should be evident in the witness of the Church. It is not the violent that humanity is enslaved too but violence itself. Being free from violence means preferring death. This is reiterated by E.W. Ranly, reflected many years of work among Peruvian Base Communities:

19 Hendrikus Berkhof, Christ and the Powers (Pennsylvania: Mennonite Publishing House), 1962, p. 19. 20 Wink, The Powers that Be, pp. 24–89.

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‘The first victim of violence is really the violent person who is no longer in free responsible possession of his own being.’21 In each middle-income urban Tribal family those questioned to research this book were proud to consider themselves Tribal; however, this was with little awareness of the richness of Tribal culture or rites. For example, one family was adamant that no Tribal birth rites existed, while my companion, a Tribal CNI pastor, insisted that such ceremonies were popular in the villages that the family came from. Many of them are registered with the government as Hindus. While they have no personal need of benefits from the government, family ties with poor rural Tribal communities make this a popular standard. There is no sense of evangelistic imperative, or of relationship with non-Christian urban Tribal. However, Christian Tribals worship together as particular congregations. A certain interviewee claimed to reject caste hierarchy, although he considered Tribals to be above Sudras in the caste hierarchy. The three villages in the Vyara District, East of Surat are not isolated Christian communities (as in the case of rural Dalit Christians), but the majority of the village were Christian in each case. A strong sense of identity as Tribals with high awareness of cultural heritage was noted. Tribal dialect and vast knowledge of the utility of their natural environment reinforced the Tribal identity. Many are registered with government as Hindus. Whole villages have been displaced in the 1960s by the Congress government’s dam project. The communities were not adequately compensated either with money or arable land. This displacement continues to have a negative social impact. Many young people commute to the cities for seasonal work, they often earn less than the cost of travel on the train (therefore, they freeload). Individuals who gain social mobility are eager to help others in their own and neighbouring villages. There is a Tribal principle of giving first fruits to God, which has found a natural progression into Christian practice. Tribals consider themselves to be poorly represented in government strategy. There is a contrast of living standards between Christian and non-Christian Tribals. There is a growing pressure from proselytising Hindu groups to convert (‘return to’ as they might have it) Hindu worship, particularly to Shivite religion. The Controversy of Identity and Foreignness Protestant identity in Gujarat is ecumenical, on evangelistic grounds, although sectarian in terms of arranging marriages and social events. These sects are increasingly coming together to be part of high-profile TNE programmes. The Protestant denominations distinguish Christians along caste or ethnic lines. Rather than emphasising caste prejudice, denominationalism conceals it. The 21 E.W. Ranly, ‘Christian Spirituality and Nonviolence as Reconciliation’, in Hauewas, Heubner, Heubner and Nation (eds), The Wisdom of the Cross: Essays in Honor of John Howard Yoder (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 117.

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Roman Catholic Church however, is more inclusive and lay-oriented, maintaining an emphasis on education and social justice, especially through the Society of Jesus. Many RC converts remained within their caste communities making them vulnerable to caste prejudice from non-Catholics. It is not possible to say that there is one effect of conversion on identity, or even one type of conversion. Not even that conversion to one religion, or denomination, means full fidelity to it. This makes the issue of conversion identity a confusing one for both subject and object of this study. To lay claim to an understanding of Christian identity in Gujarat is to reveal the greatest degree of ignorance of the situation. In Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in 2002, I visited a large CNI Church surrounded by seven other Churches of various denominations, each of which has an expanding congregation. Included in this snapshot are: Alliance, Salvation Army, Roman Catholic, Pentecostal and other CNI Churches. Discussions took place with leading clergy of CNI Gujarat, including Bishop Malavayum and Revd N. Parmar. I also visited three rural communities in the Borsad District of Gujarat, accompanied by Bishop Malavayum. I met and interviewed middle-income Tribal families, all living in a prosperous Ahmedabad-West precinct. Remote jungle villages of Tribal Christians in the Vyara district of South Gujarat provide a cross section of opinions across Protestant, ethnic and topographical divides on the meaning of ‘being Church’ or ‘being Christian’ in India. Most people put their Christian identity before national identity and national identity before caste identity in theory but caste identity before any other in terms of their practical relationships. There is a psychosis between thought and practice here founded in the contradiction between extrinsic and internal values. In Ahmedabad, Christians are migrating to the southeastern districts of the city in reaction to the communal violence. Dalits live in the East and central areas; Muslims are concentrated in a corridor from the poorest central slums to the southwestern districts; the wealthiest Hindus live on the West bank of the Sabarmati River. While most of the Christians are from an SC background many have changed surname to ‘Christian’ and claim to have no knowledge of their caste background. These surname changes date back to the early nineteenth century in many cases. The changes are due to conversion, in part, but also to the historic famine and subsequent plague at the turn of the nineteenth century, when early Protestant missionaries gave support to orphans in the Som-Sabarmathi district of Gujarat. The name ‘Dalit’ is not chosen by Gujarati Christians or non-Christian Dalit groups in the most part. The term is considered to be an endorsement of caste prejudice by many Christian ministers, rather than an act of protest or solidarity. Many of them are registered with the government census as ‘Hindu’, particularly those who have retained a low-caste surname. Registered Christian faith prevents a low-caste person from receiving Dalit state benefits. If Christian identity is primarily about being Christian and not Hindu or Dalit, then the meaning of Christian identity must be explored. It relates to a denominational affiliation and a doctrinal position but also, implicitly, a caste background in deference or

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superiority to other denominations. For example, a Methodist would be higher caste than a member of the Salvation Army. Conscientisation of the Dalits has increased during the last 45 years along with the politisation of the issues surrounding caste. This has some impact on the sense of identity felt by Gujarati Christians and on theology in India but not on the political activity of mainline Christians, or on theology of Christianity in Gujarat accept that leaders and theologians in the region are more aware of concepts such as ‘indigenisation’ or ‘Dalit theology’ but not in any way that relates to the province. Political identity has become confused, as Roman Catholic anthropologist and theologian Lancy Lobo22 illustrates and Christians are acutely aware of the way they are perceived as foreign or unpatriotic but at the same time passive and moral. Christians are resented, respected, or ignored, but rarely seen as a threat unless to do so is political expedient for the Hindu right. Christianity in India, like Hinduism, has become both homogenised into a meaningless whole and fractured into caste-like divisions. The homogeneity comes from the external pressure to be part of a national religion, one that competes with or seduces the state – the Mother India. The fracturing comes from an internal pressure to maintain a distinct and relationally meaningful identity. Yet another element of confusion is added as the distinction between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Christian’ is not always clear. Lobo, in a case study of Christian Vankars in the Kheda district found a mix of practising Christians who are registered as Christian or in cases Hindu and non-practising Christians as well as some who had reverted to their pre-Christian practices. Communities ostracised individual Christians from their communities to the extent that many formed new communities in rural areas, on land bought for them. Early missionaries, to provide a safe place for converts to live, created the new settlements. Each household received an amount of land (typically, five acres) for subsistence farming. Few of these converts had farmed before moving; many swept, weaved, or held other low-caste occupations. In 2001, Lobo published a comparison of Christian and non-Christian Dalits in three villages (in the Kheda district) and three cities (Ahmedabad, Baroda, Nadiad) in Gujarat. The objective of his study was to compare converts with non-converts in rural and urban areas, where the two groups continue to co-exist. There are four pertinent findings of Lobo’s study: identity among converts is complex and changeable; conversion to Christianity tends to improve quality of life; conversion to Christianity tends to exaggerate docility; Christians have a reputation for strong moral values. Lobo found that some Christians prefer to use the term Vankar (a Dalit name) rather than Christian. Some were Hindu Christian Vankars, Church records differed from lay perceptions and reversion and nominalism also skewed the findings. Reliance on the Christian subculture has alienated Christians from the political world increasing their fatalism and lack of political protest or lay leadership. Lobo found that, regarding, ‘political participation, consciousness, leadership and activities’ Hindu Dalits outstripped Christian Dalits in both town Lancy Lobo, Religious Conversion and Social, pp. 32–42.

22

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and country. He goes on to suggest that Christian Dalits simply transferred their dependency from the dominant caste to the missionary, speculating that Christian Dalits think in terms of ‘favours’ rather than ‘rights’. The Dalit Christians of Gujarat are not, by temperament, Liberationists. The Christianity that they have subscribed to encourages them to accept their suffering or blessings as equally beyond their control or attachment. Contextual theology in Gujarat is limited and conservative. Internally Christians extend themselves towards the dignity of difference; externally they are forced toward an unnatural catholicity of beliefs and values. To some extent, the mainline Church leaders are attempting to continue the work of the foreign missionaries but have neither the funds nor the freedom to do so. This means that mission is now almost entirely lay-led but controlled and funded by TNEs. The huge ‘hysterical funding’ by mission agencies, as well as the dichotomy between leadership and laity is stifling creative study and reflection. There is a dearth of original Gujarati theology coming from CNI, or indeed any of the mainline or Pentecostal Churches both of which are solicited by an inexhaustible supply of Western-oriented literature. Officially there are no missionaries in India, since there is no longer such a thing as a missionary visa. However, every year hundreds of Western Christians arrive in India on short-term visas of up to six months (usually a tourist visa) in order to work with or on behalf of the Churches. There are also people on business visas who work with both Churches and charities in India; often they are helping those who would otherwise be neglected. Village Baptist Church, from the USA, annually sends groups of up to 40 people on short-term mission teams, teaching reformed Christian theology to youth groups and pastors. The role of the missionary has changed in many ways but the relationship remains very similar. I have seen missionaries arrive at meetings in private cars, eat separately from the pastors they are running a conference for and then leave for their hotels while the pastors stay in dormitories. I have heard Bishops and priests talk about the impossible dietary requirements of visiting Christian leaders and their dependency on being transported everywhere. The majority of CNI pastors claim that any kind of proselytisation is now impossible in Gujarat because of the threat of violence from Hindu fundamentalists. However, there is a distinction made between Hindu fundamentalists, ‘Good Hindus’, ‘Untouchables’ and Muslims. Christians talk of a menacing threat of Muslims and moral degradation of Dalits but talk largely with respect of caste Hindus. Even after the massacre of February 2002, the majority of Christians do not see Muslims as an oppressed and marginalised group. Christians fear reprisals from both Muslims and Christians and focus mostly on litigation among themselves, at the level of Christian clerics and Trusts, or discreet social projects that mainly involve teaching Christian stories to Dalits in city slums. If the modern missionaries were co-opting Indians to their Missionary God-consort, the TNEs are co-opting them to the god of international agreement: no less conservative; equally colonial – the Cosmic Gods.

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That biblical literalism and conservative Christianity is the standard among the leaders of the Churches in Gujarat does not mean it represents the will among the laity and even less so among the wider population of Gujarat. Rural congregations are either isolated from or in a state of mutual distance from nonChristian communities. Urban Christians suffer the same challenges as can be found in any modern city, social fragmentation and individualism. Most Christians that were interviewed in Ahmedabad claimed to only see other Christians on Sundays and on special occasions. Davansu Oza, a CNI pastor who has studied religious conflict in Northern Ireland and Gujarat believes that both Islam and Christianity have survived the current persecution in Gujarat only because of their global presence.23 This may be true but it is a particular type of Christianity and perhaps not a validating reason for its survival. While Nero was burning Christians alive in the Roman Empire they did not rely on a global presence but were a socially transforming and subverting presence. While the Church in the United Kingdom has helped to highlight the suffering of the Church in Gujarat, Gnanadason points that a universal, or Catholic, Church promotes a universal (or Catholic) concept of history.24 If history is universalised, so is theology and ecclesiology. Revd Ranchchod Gamit, with experience as a pastor in both rural and urban Gujarat, complains that CNI has been too distracted by court cases and land issues, neglecting the pastoral needs of the congregations, especially young people.25 CNI Bishop of Ahmedabad, Malaviya, who, in an interview in July 2002, said that, while he thought of himself primarily as a pastor he was increasingly frustrated in this role because of court cases, echoes this concern. In 2004 there were only four students at GUST College. Gujarat CNI became self-funding in regard to clerical staff in 1980. Now as Bishop of Gujarat, Rt Revd Malaviya claims that funding from abroad is only solicited for emergencies (citing the earthquake centred at Bhuj in 1995). Foreign funding is divisive because both the CB and CMS in the west said they would only fund projects in areas of the diocese with which they were once historically linked; this meant that no funding for the re-building projects could come from these organisations. However, the Irish Presbyterian Mission donated towards the earthquake appeal without such conditions. Foreign funding has been needed for the CNI counselling centre set up in Maninagar, Ahmedabad in 2004; this is a project intended to help victims of the riots in the city. The counselling centre cost 41,000,000 rupees to run for the first three years and was funded by the diocese and ‘well wishers’. There are internal problems with funding too; the Bishop of Gujarat and the Secretary of the Trust that controls

Devansu Oza, Communalism in Gujarat: Ways to Reconciliation (Dublin: Unpublished MTh Thesis, Trinity College, 2003), p. 77. 24 Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Shifts in Mission Thinking: Emerging Paradigms of Mission’, in Nalunnakal and Athyal (eds), Quest for Justice, p. 29. 25 Ranchchod Gamit, The Contribution of the Church of the Brethren to the Church of North India – Gujarat Diocese (Serampore: BD Thesis, 1996), p. 43. 23

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Church land (but not Church buildings) in Ahmedabad were unable to cooperate in their appeal for funding from abroad. I have heard members of one VBC visiting team teaching material to pastors that, in the UK, would be aimed at Sunday school children. Yet, the Indian lay and ordained Christians always express gratitude for the teaching and go to embarrassing lengths to offer positive feedback. As an example, after a four-day course led by VBC in Baruch, a pastor said, ‘I have learned this week that when someone has a conflict they should first go that person and tell him’. This man had been a pastor for over a decade I assume he knew this but couldn’t think of anything of substance that had been taught at any of the seminars. Neither could I. Meanwhile, Western Churches see India and Africa as training grounds for young people who will be enthused by the new environment and the opportunities a developing world Church often allows them. It does not follow that because someone travels from one country to another as a missionary that they are the best that the sending country has to offer, but the visitor is often received as such, to the detriment of both parties. Bishop Hollis saw examples of ‘Western arrogance’ in South Indian Churches allowing this unequal relationship to continue. Westernisation of Christianity perpetuates Dalit oppression in Indian Churches. Missionaries, from the 1850s to the 1950s established the Church in India as a colour-based hierarchy. Far from removing caste they have established another layer. Modern foreign missionaries may not think of this, or even be aware of this, some even fight against. However, the vast majority of short-term missionaries accommodate this apartheid, this exclusiveness. Visiting the Christian colonies near Borsad in 2002 and Nadiad in 2004, with Malaviya and Oza respectively, I found communities with identities above their caste origins but below that of their pre-conversion caste. Nonetheless, in the case of Nadiad, the Christians mixed very freely among the Dalits and visited their shrines and homes without fear of pollution. In both instances worship took place in Gujarati using the CNI hymnal and the more economically successful members of the community became elders and patrons of the local Church. Although each family had the same amount of land to begin with, Oza said that some had become tenant farmers through poor management while others had managed to gain more. Teenagers from all families usually go to the city to look for education or work. Material these are Churches in decline, often having lost their land in the state educational reforms of the Indian government. Because they are only 15 households and these are in a rural area, there are no missiological intents; Oza believes that this is equally true of those who didn’t leave their communities when they converted. For example the Salvation Army coverts that are still considered untouchable by Hindus in a way that IPM Christians are not or with those of Roman Catholics where communities converted en masse and ‘Catholic’ became their nominal identity. An interesting feature of modern Christian colonies is the graveyards: only a low hedge and barely protruding mounds identify these. None of the graves are marked. The intention is that the graveyard should be recycled in the future and not become inflexible due to attachments. No one is allowed to mark

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a grave and the whole community adheres to this strictly. By contrast a Church secretary from CNI Sabarmati complained of homeless (Vagri) people squatting on Church property and the need to prosecute them. He also spoke of his own pride at having materially successful relatives living in North America. Today we have moved beyond the state-making agenda but not away from it. There is increased nationalism caused by the neurosis of globalisation. The state, previously seen as the new Mother India, is being usurped by the Cosmic Gods of globalisation. Thus, politically, we are returning to polytheism. Meanwhile, the Churches in India are turning to TNEs to challenge or convert the economically liberalised world. With the history we have covered in mind, this turn is inevitable, since they reacted to the state-making agenda in the same way. The Missionary God is now attempting to be consort to Mother India and to the Cosmic Gods. Conservative religion is becoming psychotic as it tries to identify wholly with both.

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Part II Resisting the State in Colonial and Postcolonial India

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Chapter 4

Missiological Controversies on Church and State

To raise up sixty million people from the very slough of despond and degradation is indeed a gigantic task. I can compare it to no other but to the great task of bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. It seems to me that we have got to do precisely the kind of work that Moses did and that we must expect the same kind of difficulties …1

Missionaries obsessed over Brahmin converts, Hindu scriptures and administrative needs. Reflective work was being written-up by only a few. This theological divergence suggests that there were those who had found, through dialogue with Dalits and with the nonviolent tradition of M.K. Gandhi, that there is a subversive tradition within the Christian faith that challenges the statist worldview and creating controversy in Indian missiology. Within these writings are precursory echoes of some of the motifs of liberation theology as well as the beginnings of a challenge to colonial hegemony and paternalism. Radical dissent remains important to some activists within the Roman Catholic Church in twenty-first-century India. Looking particularly at Gujarat, where cultural nationalism has had its most lethal effect on religious minorities and where the Dalit communities have most been exploited by the mimetic desire to please the high caste leadership, it is possible to discern another Christian theology of resistance. Controversies Among Modern Missionaries: An Emerging Theology of Resistance Long before Latin American Liberation theology, a liberationist theology was emerging, among missionaries in 1930s India. This suggests an increasing mutuality between some missionaries and Dalits. Bishop Henry Whitehead and missionaries like Edgar Thompson, Bernard Lucas and J.S. Hoyland (the latter especially) were reflecting authentically on the Liberative purpose of mission and from the point of view of the Dalits. With this was an increase in respect and a desire from missionaries like C.F. Andrews (friend and ally to M.K. Gandhi) to understand Indian philosophies, in their own right, rather than as a means of communicating Christianity. His reference to Satyagraha, as a Christ-like Henry Whitehead, Work among Indian Outcastes (London: SPCK, 1912), p. 10.

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approach to the Powers makes J.S. Hoyland of special interest to present liberation theologians. The emerging Liberation theology, in an Indian context, immediately has an anti-authoritarian flavour as the anarchic message of both Dalitism and Gandhian theosophy converge in these authentic precursors to Dalit theology. Perhaps Henry Whitehead’s ideology of mission gives the earliest example of theology for Dalit Christians. Writing in 1912 in his ideology of mission Whitehead cleverly draws on the popular evangelical language of seventeenth-century writer John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: ‘slough of despond’. However, he subverts this to mean social rather than spiritual mire, thus re-politicising the Indian gospel. Whitehead does the same thing with the Exodus motif, reminding his readers that God’s salvation for the Hebrews does not refer to personal sin but rather structural oppression of a community. Whitehead also implies Christ’s preferential option for the poor. We have tried to show what Christianity really means and to witness to the love of God, in following the example of our Saviour, who himself went about doing good and helping all who were in need.2

Whitehead’s emphasis was on orthopraxis over orthodoxy as illustrated again below. He recorded and praised, theology from Dalit Christians, giving anecdotal evidence of prayers by Dalits who found themselves baffled by Western canon and catechism. Well now, you might search through the whole English Prayer-book, you might ransack all the liturgies of antiquity and you would not find a more simple sounding prayer, one that was more appropriate to these poor people, than the simple prayer of a man who could not say the Lord’s Prayer.3

Whitehead denied that ‘the gathering in even of millions of the outcastes into the Church’ would lower moral and spiritual standards. This stand as a reminder that the missionaries debated Dalit conversion as a potential problem for the Church is struggle for identity as the superior religion. Dalit theology precedes from finding ways for Dalit Christians to express and explore their beliefs as base communities, in the way that so altered the consciousness of Roman Catholic slum dwellers in Latin American countries. Edgar Thompson, a Methodist missionary, takes the preferential option for the poor a step further. He asserts the need for theological reflection to come not only from Indian soil but also specifically from the roots of Indian society: that is those who are in the dark, oppressed and crushed. The roots of society provide sap in the tree that ‘does not flow from the top most branch downwards, but from the root 2 Henry Whitehead, ‘Drought in Aurangabad’, CMS Mass Movement Quarterly Vol. XXI, No. 1, March 1937, p. 5. 3 Henry Whitehead, Work among Indian Outcastes, p. 12.

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upwards’. There is a danger here in implying the necessity of oppression to benefit of the more celebrated in society but this is not Thompson’s intention. Radically, this suggests that theologians should source inspiration and divine experience from the poor; that it is only through the mediation of the poor that the wealthy can discover God. Thompson also re-routes the imagination away from the modernist worldview that we are selfish individuals who need the Leviathan of the state to control us; he draws us back to the medieval idea of society as an organic whole, symbiotic and interdependent. However, the medieval image is not one of mutual support – the Lord is the stomach and the serf is the hands. In Thompson’s case the Lord or the beautiful branch and the serf is the hidden root. There is something unhelpfully static about this image (and biologically it is plain wrong – it’s the leaves that most nurture the tree). Nonetheless it offers a re-evaluation of social worth. If Thompson made this assertion, he must be careful not to see theology as one more thing to extract from the poor and exploit as a natural resource to satisfy the oppressor. Are the poor to remain poor and oppressed so that the wealthy can theologise about them? The overwhelming challenge to the Methodist Missionaries of the Mass Movements of converts from a minority of the Dalit communities in India directly inspires Thompson’s theology. For Thompson the conscientisation of the Dalits is the priority of rightly guided missionaries. Second in importance, repentance from the caste communities and third, reconciliation initiated by the protest of the poor. Early in the twentieth century, missionaries like Bernard Lucas and J.S. Hoyland were discerning a missiology of resistance. Lucas subverts the phrase ‘Empire building’ to mean creating a culture of Christian praxis that resists both the empire building of modern missiology and that of the colonial exploitation of India. He is self-consciously aware of a turning point in theological thinking from the private pietism of modernist missiology to a corporate ethicism of a twentieth century conservative social gospel. The new conception of Church is inclusive of eastern worldviews and celebrates the original eastern context of the Christian message. This is distinct from the deceptive approach of dressing Western theology in Indian language; something generously referred to as ‘inculturisation’ but which amounts only to concessions in missiological approaches to the high demands of conversion and baptism. Lucas is acutely aware of the foreignness of the Church as viewed by Hindus and addresses this issue from the point of view of a missionary wanting to turn India into a Christian nation. Therefore, he broadens his approach; rather than converting hundreds of thousands of individuals, he claims, missionaries should be aiming to convert the culture of the nation. At once this appears a condescending approach. To the extent that it sees India as a nation, it is. However, in 1907, to see Indian culture as redeemable (rather than needing a replacement culture to tear it down) is a substantial step forward. Furthermore, Lucas is not suggesting that, in needing redemption, the Indian nation is any different to his own. To see Indian culture as having something authentic and valuable to offer to the Western missionary is a giant leap of imagination; Lucas makes this leap.

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Lucas refers to the Empire of Christ deliberately contrasting it with British Imperialism and locates it temporally but not in terms of the state. Indeed the Empire of Christ is in opposition to the state. He compares the British empire to first century Roman imperialism: ‘imperfect and transitory’ while the Empire of Christ is ‘complete and permanent’. There is an imperial ideal working itself out in India in this twentieth century, to which the English missionary must be as sensitive as the Roman citizen was to the Roman ideal. … There is also a religious exclusiveness; little removed from that of the Judaising teachers of Paul’s days … The bondage of the Western dogma may be as injurious to the Eastern Church as the bondage of Judaism was seen to be to the Gentile Church of [Saint Paul’s] day.4

Lucas introduces themes for Dalit theologians in the twentieth century to explore theological imperialism, dogmatism over praxis and the foreignness of Christianity needing to shift from European colonialism to cosmic-foreignness. To belong to the Empire of Christ is in effect to be neither Indian nor British but unashamedly foreign to all. Christianity is of the East, eastern; and in returning to the home of her birth she will renew her strength and reinvigorate the West.5

Lucas is able to see a relationship of dialogue and equality between the missionary and the Indian. The fact that he has to spell this out in such apologetic detail sadly suggests that such equality is a novelty to both parties. Lucas also radically challenged the conventional missiological understandings of evangelism by shifting the emphasis from orthodoxy to right action, even before liberation theologians invented the term orthopraxis. He criticises missionaries for their obsession with teaching ‘correct religious opinions’ rather than focusing on the ‘larger aim’ of acts of mercy. He also critiques the vain practice of ‘counting heads’ rather than concentrating on quality of life. Other missionary obsessions that Lucas confronts are the use of baptism and renunciation of caste as the hallmarks of conversion. In doing this Lucas is suggesting a complete about face for Indian missiology. First, he acknowledges the massive effort made by the individual convert to manage these two objectives, then the complacent passive faith that seems to follow. The missionaries’ emphasis on baptism has been so great that converts are seeing it as the end goal of Christian life, rather than a marker along the way. However, Lucas does seem ambiguous when it comes to the place of baptism in the life of the new believer. As for caste, he finds a remarkable middle way. Lucas writes that the insistence by Protestant missionaries on the rejection 4 Bernard Lucas, The Empire of Christ: A Study of the Missionary Enterprise in the Light of Modern Religious Thought (London: Macmillan Press, 1907), pp. 150–51. 5 Ibid., p. 20. See also pp. 105–6.

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of caste by all converts demonstrates a ‘premature and forced abolition’ of the system that it is not the place of the missionaries to attempt. Lucas recognises that in forcing a Western morality onto the Indian Church, the missionaries have overplayed their role. The Western Church has nothing to do with the abolishing of Eastern social customs; that is the work of the Eastern Church.6

Perhaps most impressively, the warning that missionaries failed to heed: It is ours to advise and guide and counsel, but it is not ours to rule and regulate and impose, either creed or constitution on the Indian Church. We are missionaries, not pastors; evangelists, not apostles; servants, not masters.7

Therefore, Lucas insists that Indian problems call for Indian solutions; Western minds cannot resolve these. Liberation theology cannot ignore how radical a departure these ideas were for the Western reader. That Bernard Lucas, a conservative minded missionary could draw such conclusions all the more starkly damns the majority of missionary endeavour that refused to attempt to reflect on the concrete situations they found themselves in. If Lucas could be so bold, there is no excuse for what was to unfold: a network of ecclesiologies webbed in dogma and politics and enthralled to the white-man’s ideas and hierarchies. Importantly, from a Christian anarchist point of view, Lucas rejects the doctrine of penal atonement. The priests were not there to make an offering to God; they were there to wreak their vengeance upon their victim. The victim is not the victim of an angry God; He is the victim of angry men.8

From this exegesis he removes the idea of redemptive violence, or the need for priestly mediator from the salvific equation as well as the socio-religious reality. The logical outworking of Lucas’ naming the ‘angry men’ is his exposure of the injustice of the state apparatus and the moral certainties of the state’s angry men too. Hiding behind the criticisms of the Hindu nemesis, Lucas chides missionaries for using social welfare as a cynical means to an end: offering education, healthcare and other services because they may lead to conversions. Firstly, this rarely works; second, it misses the Christian value of the acts of mercy themselves. The acts ‘stand justified on their own intrinsic merits’. It is worth emphasising at this point, the context of Lucas’ writing, the missionaries have just Ibid., p. 123. Ibid., p. 124. 8 Bernard Lucas, Christ for India: A Presentation of the Chritian Message to the 6 7

Religious Thought of India (London: MacMillan, 1910), pp. 248–51.

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witnessed the horrific plagues and famines, with the poor dying in their thousands of starvation and sickness. If ever there were a time when missionaries should not need someone to tell them these things it would be now. Yet Lucas seems to feel the need to propound the independent virtues of caring for the poor; his views are unusual for his time. Lucas, in his books, makes repeated distinction between proselytism and evangelism: the former referring to conversion of individuals to Christianity (proselytism) the latter as bringing social and spiritual freedom to the nation (evangelism). He is critical of the assumption among modern missionaries that they can replace the internal spirituality of non-Christians by a metaphorical ‘surgical operation’. He defiantly asserts that, though a minority of Indians have been successfully proselytised, India herself never can be. He is also critical of the missionary concept of indigenisation, declaiming it for its deceitful superficiality in using Hindu thought and custom to re-present the Western Christian dogmas and practices. The development of the religious life of the Pariah and his salvation from degradation of centuries, are as important and as much a duty of the Christian Church, as any ministry to the religious life of the Brahmin and other caste people. In a sense this ministry is more important, for his need is greater and he has suffered greater neglect.9

The imperative for Lucas is to resist the assumptions of the Missionary god and his agents. He is scathing of statist attempts to impose foreign religiosity on Indian. Furthermore, his emphasis on orthopraxis and on a theology that reads the Bible in the context of those on the underside of history is liberationist and subversive of the statist ideology. John S. Hoyland, writing slightly later than Lucas, emphasises on the Churches need to be in solidarity with the poor in his understanding of mission. In his liturgical books and in his missiological texts Hoyland writes about God as someone with a special concern for those who the Powers oppress and enslave, referring to him as ‘Friend of the helpless and fallen’. Protect and help those who are starving and naked, Uplift those who are downtrodden and despised, Put hope into those who have no hope now or hereafter.10

Like Liberation theologians after him, Hoyland borrows the language of Marxism as well as Christianity. 9 Bernard Lucas, Our Task in India: Shall we Proselytise Hindus or Evangelise India? (London: Macmillan, 1914), p. 44. 10 John S. Hoyland, A Book of Prayers Written for use in an Indian College (London: The Challenge, 1921), p. 49.

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Send forth among [India’s] millions, with new power, these thy great and revolutionary ideals, Thy liberty, thine, equality, thy brotherhood (sic.).11

In contrast to the reformed evangelical majority among the modern missionaries to India, Hoyland did not base his altruism in colonial superiority. His value for the life of oppressed Indians motivated him to consider them equal to all therefore having a right to his solidarity. In other words, J.S. Hoyland attempted to be in solidarity with the poor because he believed that God has a preferential option for the poor and oppressed. Furthermore, Hoyland drew on Christology as evidence of Jesus’ primary mission not to the ‘heathen Hindoos’ but to all who were oppressed by social, material, evils. Moreover, that Jesus deliberately identified himself, in life, with those who those whom society alienates. [Jesus] reveals God by identifying Himself with human need, by making Himself poor, homeless and a wanderer, by working arduously for the relief of human suffering and finally by submitting unresistingly to the worst that the evil will of force and greed in man can do against Him. That is what is meant by divine Fatherhood.12

For Hoyland, ‘Jesus is Dalit’ although he lacks access to the term itself. Hoyland developed a worldview that understood India in terms of opposing Powers, or systems, that were at the root of poverty and were the sum of what Christians meant by sin. Hoyland used exegesis of the gospels especially to show how Jesus’ context of an impoverished mass as his primary (but not singular) ministry defines his message of redemption for the poor and reconciliation from the rich (for example, the rich young ruler, whom Hoyland assumed was an unjust landlord). Hoyland understood liberation as corporate in contrast to the individual pietism of his peers. Hoyland’s contrast of the forces of ‘the world’ and ‘the spirit’ implies a struggle between two systems both of which are worked out temporally but the former being presently manifest in the nation state. St Paul was conscious, as almost all the great liberators of humanity have been conscious, of an eternal and inevitable strife between two antagonistic worldorders.13

Ibid., p. 65. John S. Hoyland, Prayer and the Social Revolution (London: SCM, 1938), p. 38. 13 John S. Hoyland, The Cross Moves East: A Study in the Significance of Gandhi’s 11

12

‘Satyagraha’ (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1931), p. 9.

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He used this Western concept to interpret Gandhi’s ‘Satyagraha’ and reflected on it Christologically by centring the suffering that Gandhi called for on the crucifixion and Christ’s challenge to his disciples to take up their own cross. For Hoyland taking up your cross was a corporate act as much as it was an individual one. Here we find a clear and pragmatic theology of liberation in terms of solidarity with the poor. Suffering is an essential accompaniment of any creative or regenerative work; and if we do not accept our share of it, we are cowards and shirkers. Moreover, the Cross means that pain, rightly borne, is vicariously effective, for the lightening of the pain of others.14

Hoyland understand service and voluntary suffering as sacraments established by Jesus and the practice of solidarity with the poor as a continuation of Jesus’ mission. He sees suffering as the only means of reconciliation with the poor and with God. Like Latin American priest-theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez, Hoyland stresses ‘a standard of action’, orthopraxis, over ‘professed beliefs or mystical statements’, orthodoxy. Still, Hoyland’s theology depends largely on a Vedic understanding in comparison to a Western theology. Yet it is radically more inclusive and of a collectivist model in comparison to either. At present Satyagraha is looked upon in the West, in spite of the astounding victory, which it has won, as ridiculous and undignified. Working-class hearers, when told about it, characterise it as ‘grown-up sulks’. More educated audiences regard it with cold disfavour. It is too exotic, too unconventional – in a word, too Christian for us.15

Hoyland has identified a liberationist paradigm that Indian theology has not needed to import from Latin America or the west. Satyagraha, born of a Gujarati Kshatriya solicitor living in South Africa and reinterpreted by missionaries simultaneously as they realised similarities between this philosophy and that of Jesus is a neglected source for Dalit theology. The fact that other missionaries did not enthusiastically take up theologies like those of Lucas and Hoyland or Indian leaders shows how deeply entrenched the character of the modern Church had become in just 100 years. The high number of Dalits accepting baptism between 1850 and 1930 and their subsequent aspirations as Christians, forced missionaries to articulate a missionary paradigm long before Dalit liberation theology emerged among South Indian Christians. J.C. Heindrich, a missionary among Basti groups in the 1930s, reflects on the pastoral issue of the ‘carelessness, lack of foresight … reckless extravagance’ Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., pp. 156–7.

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that he believes he found among the ‘depressed classes’. Heindrich observes a ‘mass inferiority complex,’ which expresses itself, paradoxically, in fatalism and ambition. While Heindrich interprets the rejection of other untouchables as a longing for superiority, Srinivas and Dalawari explain the phenomenon of the crushed oppressing one another, as a desire to identify with their ‘superiors’. Heindrich advised giving the depressed class more ‘social usefulness.16. This seems a relative and paternalistic solution; both the suggestion and the measure of usefulness came from a source external to the Dalits. Does Heindrich show evidence of Indian Liberation theology? To a minimal extent he does. Heindrich notices what was to be the primary emphasis of Dalit theology: the crushed-ness of Dalit identity. However, he does not begin to see the Dalits as agents or provocateurs of their own destiny. Nationally, writers like Bishop Whitehead and Revd C.F. Andrews, drew attention to the strength of pre-Christian spirituality in India (both caste and Dalit spiritualities). Revd Andrews wrote in 1912, criticising missionaries for their exclusivist approach to religion. While he does not promote religious pluralism he regards Brahminic thought very highly. Nonetheless he is aware that his involvement with Dalits resulted in broken relations with some caste Hindus. Andrews had a typically essentialist view of caste: The pariah remains a pariah and can never hope to rise. The Brahman remains a Brahman.17

Andrews felt that the Church in India was irrevocably westernised, even where agencies had handed over the caretaker role to indigenous leadership. Others too rush to the defence of the converts, Henry Whitehead, during the 1930s, gives the reader an insight into the tension created by a survey of his district, when the surveyor criticised Dalit Christians for their lack of morality: ‘I reminded him that in a Christian country like England there were jails filled with lapsed and failed Christians.’18 In effect, this is a criticism of the racist tendency of missionaries. This assessment makes the work of Lucas, Hoyland, Heindrich and Whitefield although more stark: theirs was the same political and religious climate as other missionaries yet they managed to assemble some sort of liberationist theology between them. All of the Western missionaries described above share a desire to work out a liberation theology long before Latin American liberation theology came into vogue. Unlike Dalit theologians of today, they are not restricted by an anti-Gandhian bias or by the parameters of classical Liberation theology as J.C. Heindrich, ‘Depressed Classes and the Inferiority Complex’, in United Church Review, July 1930, pp. 203–4. 17 Charles F. Andrews, The Renaissance in India (London: Young Peoples’ Missionary Movement, 1912), pp. 178– 83. 18 Henry Whitehead, ‘The Surveyors Come to Aurangabad, Western India’, in CMS Mass Movement Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 3, September 1938, p. 32. 16

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imported from Latin America. Because of this freedom, they are able to struggle openly with the relationship between revolution and violence and between religion and empire. Catholics Causing Controversy: Roman Catholic Responses to Dalit Oppression and Hindu Nationalism The present Bishop of Ahmedabad, Right Revd Thomas Macwan, was born and brought up in Nadiad and is the first Gujarati bishop the diocese has had. Macwan sees the Church as a ‘consultative body’ which has a ‘love affair’ with its clergy, understanding them as representative of the missionaries who treated them as humans, rather than according to their caste. When asked, in interview, whether the laity extended the same courtesy to Dalits that they were given he said that the precariousness of their social status made Christians afraid to do so. In addition, it would be impossible for Roman Catholic Christians to mix with some Dalits because they eat carrion or work with human excrement. Incredibly the Victorian prejudice persists, the Roman Catholic Church, not normally inclined to nationalism, fears association with the Dalits. Macwan overtly implicates Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi with instigating communal violence lobbies for assurance of safety for Christians in the city and the rest of the state. The Roman Catholic Bishop’s rationalising of caste prejudice in the Church may stem from his strong inter-faith links with Brahminical Hinduism; he clearly sees integrating the Church with the Brahminical culture as part of its mission. To illustrate this he exemplifies the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Rajkot that the Church built to mimic a classical Hindu-temple style and attracts many Hindus to attend ‘Christian Pooja’ there. Like the Protestant Church, the Roman Catholic hierarchy fail to see beyond the ideology of the nation state. On the other hand, Bishop Macwan is uncompromising on the need for Christians to propagate their faith: ‘If your Guruji told you, in his final address, to do something would you make every effort to do it?’ The Roman Catholic Church has helped to bring Muslims, Hindus and Christians together during the riots to help and defend one another; St John’s Church and St Mary’s School have both opened up to shelter Muslims during riots. In both Nadiad and Anand the Roman Catholic Church worked with Hindus to offer discrete aid to victims of the riot in 2002. Bishop Macwan explains the missionary role of the Church as one of transmitting the ‘values of Christ’ rather than the Christian religion to society: a humanistic approach to the Kingdom of God: ‘making them good human beings.’ According to Macwan, the Roman Catholic mission is a humanistic social enterprise aimed at syncretising Christian values with Hindu practice. This does disservice to Hindu values as much as to Christian practice. But most of all it reveals a lack of theological satisfaction on the part of the Church that comes with being and feeling, unwelcome and foreign in perpetuity.

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Martin Macwan illustrates aspects of Alinsky’s forms of protest. His NGO, the Navsarjan Trust (NST), has had measurable success in the upliftment of Karamcharis in Ranpur.19 For centuries high caste elders forced this community to go beyond their occupational remit and clear human waste, ‘night soil’ as one Dalit put it: ‘Carrying shit on our heads. It dripped on our clothes, our hair.’ Without violence or fuss the Dalits formally refused to continue this work (which is constitutionally illegal to force upon people). As a result the authorities suspended their pay. However, this gave the community the opportunity to highlight the injustice in the courts; they were no longer fighting only the injustice of shit shovelling, which was officially denied, but the withholding of wages, which was patently, provably happening. ‘NST was behind us, filed a court case for us, bought rice, wheat and oil for us.’ The work of NST does more than shame the Panchayat who forced the indignity on a section of community; it begs the question: why had the Church not already done such a simple thing? Thekaekara notes that, in India, campaigns for equality should not aim primarily at religious groups. However, this does not negate the responsibility of religious groups to initiate political campaigns. Macwan offers some cause for hope for the Roman Catholic Church, although his links with the same are increasingly tenuous. Nevertheless, he shows a genuine valuing of the Dalit modes of organising and reflecting. A better example of a liberative but authentically Roman Catholic approach would be that of Cedric Prakash and his organisation Prashant. Based in Ahmedabad, the Jesuit priest Cedric Prakash boldly embodies these principles in Gujarat today. Prakash is the director of Prashant. The Prashant centre is largely involved in advocacy and human rights training. It works at three levels: reactive to violations, pro-active in education and interactive with other religious and political groups. When I spoke to him in February 2004, he had recently organised a Kite flying protest: each Kite had slogans written on it, directly challenging Narendra Modi and his human rights record. This protest was peaceful, creative and fun: it used cultural symbols that the people recognised, since the Kite festival is an established Gujarati tradition. He referred to a previous protest, ‘white ribbon day’, an annual peace protest. Prakash believes that protests should have a snowballing effect, drawing more participants by capturing the imagination. ‘The Sangh Parivar are setting the agenda for us’ he claims, a concern echoed by Lancy Lobo when I spoke to him later that month who said that ‘The Church, by and large, was taken unaware but eventually the fundamental reaction was the reporting and documentation of atrocities.’ Prakash, through his organisation, has represented both Christians and Muslims to the Hindu political authorities in Ahmedabad for the last 15 years, illustrating his priority, not for Christians but for those with whom Jesus identified in his ministry: the oppressed. For Prakash it is the parable of the Good Samaritan that informs his ministry and the challenge of asking, in every context, ‘What would Jesus do?’ 19 T.M. Mhekaekara, Endless Filth: The Saga of the Bhangis (Bangalore: Books for Change), 2003.

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Prakash’s optimism reflects that of Walter Wink who uses simple analysis of recent revolutions around the world to show that nonviolent revolution is not only possible but also plausible. Furthermore it is less bloody and longer lasting than violent revolutions in most cases. Wink claims that it is impossible for the Church to stay neutral in a conflict where one group oppresses another. Lack of action on behalf of the oppressed amounts to consent to the use of fear and violence by the dominant Powers and leaves the Church ‘straddling a pseudo-neutrality made of nothing but thin air’. This means that the Church must both forgive oppressors and forgo vengeance, but also demand confession and repentance before reconciliation can take place. Cedric Prakash is a regular critic of the Mother India and her violence. He acts deliberately beneath the state and on the margins of the nation in order to subvert its message of homogeneity and the dystopian monolithic culture of Hindutva, or indeed Christendom. Unveiling and the Hermeneutical Key to Radical Christianity in India With both the pre-liberationist missiologists of the 1930s and the Roman Catholic reformers of the twenty-first century, Indian theology can draw inspiration from surprising resources. It is M.K. Gandhi, rather than B.R. Ambedkar who provides the ideological and practical tools for the subversion of the colonial mindset. It is unsurprising that Gandhianism has converted Christianity back to the radical Christian tradition. Gandhi was directly and deeply converted by that tradition himself and was engaged in dialogue with the Churches generally and C.F. Andrews personally. Also he was in correspondence with Leo Tolstoy and shared his understanding of the Sermon on the Mount. Furthermore it is through a respect for the Dalits and their distinctive cultural and political place in Indian society that these radical Christian voices find themselves in solidarity with the marginalised and able to view the systemic oppression built into the current postcolonial statist ideology. This vantage of the oppressed creates a dilemma for the radical: she or he takes a position that agrees with what the critics say about Christianity in India – that it is disloyal to the national interest. The disloyalty of the Church to Mother India is based not in its Western patronage but its solidarity with those ‘outside the city walls’ who have no place of honour in Mother India, only a place of servile dependence. Dissenting voices among Roman Catholics in Gujarat today have shown that it is possible to be in solidarity with the Dalits and oppose the state without alienating the pluralism in India’s wider religious milieu – they have refused to play into the hands of any hegemonic dualism between Dalits and Hindus or Hindus and Muslims seeing rather the violence in the system as the cause of oppression and injustice.

Chapter 5

Fathers of the Nation: The Gandhi and Ambedkar Controversy

[T]hough the great religious teachers of Brahmanism, Buddhism and above all Christianity, foreseeing such a perversion of the law of love (namely, the enduring of injuries, insults and violence of all kinds without resisting evil by evil) people continued – regardless of all that leads man forward – to try to unite the incompatibilities: the virtue of love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence.1

Architects of the State Two figures stand out in Pre-constitutional India as the architects of state and most represent the controversy over Dalits political engagement: B.R. Ambedkar and M.K. Gandhi. Ambedkar, a Dalit born in central India, studied and struggled out of poverty and took a position of leadership within his community and among Dalit nationally. He became a solicitor and was the British choice in representing Indian opinion when talks began about an Indian constitution in 1930. Gandhi, also a solicitor and peace activist had developed his own model of political engagement that directly challenged the British through popular protest movements and Hindu reform. Gandhi was not a Dalit; he was a high-caste Hindu from a privileged family on the southern coast of Gujarat. Nonetheless, his experience of social injustice disturbed and challenged him to campaign on issues of forced child marriage, temple entry for Dalits and an end to the practice of untouchability. Both Gandhi and Ambedkar attempted to be the pioneers of national ideology and theology. Both offered a consort to the Mother India: Hinduism and Atheistic Buddhism respectively. Both religions included a concept of the redeeming state, as illustrated by the drama outplayed in Poona, discussed below. In Gandhi’s theosophy we find an inclusiveness that takes theology half way to polycentric monotheism and his nonviolent resistance, having its roots in Leo Tolstoy’s theology, resonates with Christian anarchist theology, so adaptable to the Dalit condition. Ambedkar too has leaning toward a lessening role for the state but part of his propaganda is to prove Buddhism as the ‘national’ religion of India thus empower the state more than the Dalits themselves since it is to the state that he looks for approval. 1 Leo Tolstoy, Recollections and Essays (translated by A. Maude) (London: OUP, N.D.), p. 421.

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While many Dalits look to Gandhianism and accept the title he has given them, Harijan, many more reject him outright. Dalits feel that Gandhi betrayed them for his caste ideal of socially pre-ordained Dharma or Duty. Ambedkar rejected the concept of Duty, focusing instead on the need for social justice. While justice was vital to Gandhi, his commitment to the unity of national unity of Hinduism comprised his appreciation of Dalit distinctiveness. There is more to these political giants than the conflict of ideology centred on the ‘Poona Pact’. Dalit reading of the Poona pact is subjectively biased against Gandhi – he was childish and stubborn – and in favour of Ambedkar – brave and unyielding. As a result, there is little engagement with Gandhianism among Dalits. As we shall see, this has important implications for Dalit theology. Rajkumar sets Dalit theologians the challenge of having a ‘willingness to learn from the Other’ and in that willingness finding ways to ‘transform caste relationships’.2 The work below on Gandhi’s potential contribution to the Dalit Christian struggle is a response to that invitation. Ambedkar the Lawgiver B.R. Ambedkar (1891–1956) announced in 1935 that he was planning to convert out of Hinduism, but it was not until 1956 that he made his final choice of Buddhism. He was looking for a religion that teaches human equality and did not subject them to humiliating ritual. Ambedkar asserted that only Buddhists follow the real national religion of India not Hindus. The deistic faiths were unlikely to satisfy his pragmatic humanistic outlook. His abhorrence of subjection to a religious representative of God, in the Brahmin caste, made him suspicious of both priest and any divinity that appears to lessen the value of personhood. He rejected Christianity because of its indifference, its powerlessness and the apathy of missionaries toward Dalits. Furthermore, caste prejudice in Churches disgusted him and lack of change in religious practice of many Christian converts disappointed him. Ambedkar campaigned for the right of Dalits to enter Hindu temples to worship, although his conversion to Buddhism negated the importance of these for many. The naivety of this approach goes unchallenged – by demanding access to temples Ambedkar was effectively inviting co-option into the oppressive system. While John the Baptist took the people away from the temple to the ‘desert’ and Jesus made the country a locus for most of his ministry and rejected the idea of a state-sponsored temple (John 4: 1–42), Ambedkar begins by reinforcing the Brahminic hegemony and forcing entry into temples. Ambedkar’s methodology evolved throughout his life as he dealt with the issue of finding a just focus for power in the emerging postcolonial nation. Therefore, while he might write that religion is nothing merely an instrument of governments he also claims that the state cannot exist without being violent and religion propping it up. Ambedkar Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation, p. 171.

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flirted with the ideas of anarchy but saw rather a wedding of the moral principles of religion and federalism as India’s’ ideal format. An interesting insight from Ambedkar is to recognise the theological significance of statism and vice versa. Paramountcy [of the Crown] is like the Trimurti of Hindu Theology. It is Brahma because it has created the States. It is Vishnu because it preserves them. It is Shiva because it can destroy them.3

Here we see a developed theology of resistance to the Powers. Ambedkar names the gods of state. He recognises the theological implications of statism and the political implications of a reformed Hindu religion. Ambedkar rejected the concept of ‘Hinduism’ as nothing more than abstract propaganda – there is no underlying unity, or Hindu consciousness, no sense of affiliation between castes but rather a nebulous mass of communities. For Ambedkar there is a natural moral order binding humanity and the precepts of the Buddha, as an expression of this order, should unite a federated India. Ambedkar was not proposing conversion as a means of concealing caste identity but rather making that identity a thing of pride. He was concerned about the possible cultural homogenisation of either territorial or cultural nationalisms. Indeed, Ambedkar was critical of the Christians and their negative attitude towards Dalit identity: They don’t care a snap of their fingers what becomes of their former caste associations … indeed their chief concern with reference to their old caste associations is to hide the fact that they were in the same community. I don’t want to add to the number of such Christians.4

Ambedkar’s approach to caste identity is fundamentally different to that of the missionaries; the choice given is between conversion and Dalit identity or conversion and alternative identity. However, the majority of Gujarat Dalits, for instance, have chosen neither. Only about 10 per cent of Dalits in Gujarat have converted to Christianity. Dalits look for ways to struggle together in solidarity based on the commonalities found in oppression and poverty, despite their differences. Ideological loyalties provide the vehicle for unity. Those who followed Ambedkar and still follow his ideals today, did so not because of his Buddhism, or his regionalism, but because of his ability to unite various agendas and inspire Dalits with his story of his personal and political success. Ambedkar’s ideals, skills and leadership attracted people to him and gave them the hope that he could lead them into the economic 3 Bimrao R. Ambedkar, Federation versus Freedom (Bombay: Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, 1939), p. 131. 4 Ambedkar quoted in P. Arockiadoss, ‘The Significance of Dr Ambedkar for Theologising in India’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, p. 307.

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and social freedom he found. Ambedkar’s life was the Indian equivalent of the great ‘American Dream’, he appeared to represent liberation but really represented an assimilation into the values and ambitions of colonialists and Brahmins. Growing awareness of oppression relegation to the margins of local and national polity has led Dalits to reject Hinduism and convert to another religion. Coupled with this was growing national awareness and an acute sense of having missed the boat – Hindus had already largely begun formulating a national identity and Christians came with one ‘ready made’ from Europe. It is precisely the awareness of the possibility of spiritual or nationalistic value, or both, that has led many Dalit communities, en masse, to seek out members of another religious community to provide an exodus from oppression. The process often begins with a growing awareness among Dalits of their lack of place within the Hindu fold. Moon shows how a sense of alienation from Hinduism can create a spiritual void, or an absence of religious identity. In the study classes of the [Sanata Sainik] Dal, Keshavrao Patil told us, ‘In one village a Brahman gave his daughter in marriage to a Mahar school teacher. The village Hindus couldn’t stand for this … On the day of Holi the Hindus set the couple on a Ghan monkey, a structure made of a column set into the ground with another piece set crosswise. They put the Brahman girl and the Mahar teacher on either end of the crosspiece and whirled it continuously until they fell unconscious. Then they burned them alive in the Holi fire. Holi is not our festival.’ We listened to such stories. That year Holi fires were stopped … No one in the community threw colours.5

There are plenty of proselytising religions in India: Sikhism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism particularly that have provided Dalits with the opportunity for conversion. Ambedkar’s attempts to motivate Dalits to claim higher status than previously afforded them, along with their new found power as voters and state intervention through special provisions went a long way to conscientising the mass of Dalits in both rural and urban constituencies. Vasant Moon’s autobiographical account of living in a Dalit community: ‘Whether it was a Hindu-Muslim riot or a HinduMahar quarrel, the Weavers would always come out to defend the Hindu side.‘ It takes time and effort for a change of consciousness for this community of weavers to see themselves as Other to the dominant caste community. However, rising consciousness makes protest possible, as Moon illustrates.

5 Vasant Moon, Growing Up Untouchable in India: A Dalit Autobiography (Oxford: Rownan & Littlefield, 200), p. 44.

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But see how time takes its revenge! The same Weavers who rose up to oppose reserved seats of Dalits were ready in 1946 to massacre Mahars are the ones who are now demanding reservations for themselves.6

The possibility of social upliftment and a growing sense of resentment encouraged this community of weavers to find a new sense of identity through solidarity with those that they consider socially inferior, instead of those that they wish they were. To simplify the tension one would say that in order to identify with a group one admires the usual course is replication; however, the most dynamic course is the opposite, rejection of the dominant culture and solidarity with the poor. Ambedkar was not necessarily a great liberator of the Dalits; he was a reformer of law, an apologist of Dalit rights, but more a symptom than a cause of the Dalit struggle. He chose Buddhism and many Dalits approved of his selection but more did not, he entered temples and many Dalits joined him but more did not. In a country as big as India, it is impossible to have a national movement but all too easy to lay claim to one. This Ambedkar did. When Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism, on 14 October 1956, in Nagpur, he took with him 300,000 followers. Ambedkar took good advantage of the dawning realisation among the minority faiths that he could potentially bring sixty million people into their religion through his personal decision. Although Ambedkar was the leader of the largest mass movement of Dalits in Maharashtra, his call to convert to Buddhism made little impact amongst the Dalits of Gujarat, for example. By converting to Buddhism, Ambedkar changed the face of Indian religious diversity and re-shaped Dalit ideology. Between 1951 and 1961 Buddhists in India increased in by around 2267 per cent. The atheist and pragmatist Dalit – Ambedkar – found greatest resonance for Dalit ideology in that of the Buddha and it is in the context of Buddhist philosophy that many Dalits now search for identity. With an emphasis on justice for the poor, Ambedkar’s philosophy has a wide appeal. V.T. Rajshaker, a Shudra Buddhist and editor of Dalit Voice, echoes the Liberation theology of the Latin American Liberation theologian José Bonino in seeing solidarity with the poor as the sole means of achieving unity among the poor. Both Rajshaker and Bonino go beyond doctrine to focus on praxis. Bonino identifies the cosmic Christ as God’s suffering servant and as such a model for the Church to, relinquish self-defence and the struggle for power and to offer themselves, in solidarity with the oppressed.7 Of course, for Rajshaker, this social imperative exchanges Bonino’s Christological implications for an Ambedkarist perspective. Religion, language and territory are not enough to bind different communities and forge them into a nation. All these factors may contribute to making a

Ibid., p. 44. Jose M. Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphia:

6 7

Fortress, 1975), p. 123.

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Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism community a nation-state. What is more important than these three factors to unite a people is the ‘willingness to suffer together’.8

Dalits might identify the source of strength or pathos for this willingness but Ambedkar provides the imperative for Neo-Buddhists have to be willing to suffer for the sake of the liberation of the poor. Rajshaker sums up a nationalistic Dalit fundamentalism: he is an extremist who eats beef on principle; he is a Buddhist because he believes Buddhism is the rightful religion of India; he hates Brahmins and any who sympathise with them, passionately. However, he is not himself a Dalit. What Rajshaker illustrates is Ambedkarism taken to its logical conclusion: just another statist fundamentalism, a group seeking a theological and rational mandate to rule over other people. This is why Christian theology should provide a critical comment on Ambedkarism but does not because its own statist agenda forces it to ignore the anarchic potential of Dalit theology. Ambedkar provided himself as an alternative national icon and his own version of the state and its religion. In so doing, he was asking the Dalits to choose an alternative taskmaster whose only merit was having come from their own in a very loose and broad sense. As such, Ambedkar did not offer anything any more radical than peculiar socialism. Ambedkar Parts the Red Sea Ambedkar rejected Christianity in favour of Buddhism and so did his followers. This means there is a pressure on Dalit theologians to search out what it is about Ambedkar, his life and teachings, so attractive to Dalits. Dalit theology affords Ambedkar uncritical admiration and a prophet-like status. This attention does not reflect the reality of communities: most Dalits have not become Christians, or Ambedkarites. Only a vocal minority have converted at all. Moreover, most Christians ignore both the epithet ‘Dalit’ and the tradition and ideology of Ambedkar. The majority of Dalits have rejected all forms of institutional politics and religion – every statist ideology. Following Webster’s lead, three Dalit theologians provide the key Christian theological reflections on B.R. Ambedkar: Arvind P. Nirmal, M.E. Prabhakar and P. Arokiadoss. I will conclude with a fourth: Anthony Thumma, who borrows from Arokiadoss the motif of Ambedkar as Moses. Moses is not the archetypal liberator since he is both personally and prophetically violent and oppressive. The people were liberated by a violent God who killed innocent children (the first-born sons of Egypt) to assure their release from captivity and offered them legislation which was exclusive, sexist and oppressive – the Levitical law. Ambedkar, a constitutional father to the Dalits, was as much enthralled of the Western model of state-based social democracy as his high caste peers in politics and, as Thumma points out, 8 V.T. Rajshaker, Caste, A Nation within a Nation: Recipe for a Bloodless Revolution (Bangalore: Books for Change, 2002), pp. 82–3.

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considered violence a justified means of fighting the class/caste war. Nonetheless, Ambedkar is the darling of the Dalits and no less so of Dalit theology. Nirmal draws on Ambedkar’s thought to help define Dalit ‘Pathos’, Prabhakar has tried to prove that Ambedkar’s priorities are essentially liberationist: dignity, justice, equality, freedom, but it is Arokiadoss who provides the most dramatic reading of Ambedkar’s life and work. Ambedkar’s rejection of Christianity and his harsh criticism of it has provided much need fuel for the fire of those within the Churches determined to reform it to a liberationist agenda, such as P. Arokiadoss. A Jesuit priest, Arokiadoss understands Ambedkar as a prophet who should be co-opted into a Christian Dalit understanding of God’s purposes in India: ‘God’s liberating actions became present in Ambedkar’s liberative praxis’,9 comparing him to Moses at the same time. By doing so, Arokiadoss connects Ambedkar with the popular liberationist motif of the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. He celebrates Ambedkar’s revolutionarily overt commitment to the Dalit cause over and above the national interest. In a context beset by competing nationalistic ideologies this is an important difference in approach from Ambedkar and one with practical consequences in his struggle for a separate Dalit electorate. Arokiadoss also draws an exclusively Dalit perspective for ‘doing theology in India’ from Ambedkar’s approach. There are problems with Arokiadoss’s approach. Firstly, if Ambedkar has rejected Christianity as oppressive then is it honest for Christians to appropriate, posthumously, an Ambedkar as their own. Second, if Ambedkar is the Moses of the Dalits then God’s redemption is no better than that of the state since it too relies on violence. Yet unlike Moses (or the state, or the God of the Hebrews) Ambedkar did not rely directly on violence. Ambedkar’s reliance on constitutional reform does not allow for the communitarianism found among the Dalits – it encourages the upliftment of individual Dalits as much as the representation of communities because politicians and students are individuals removed from their source context. It is still useful to look at Arokiadoss’s theologising of Ambedkar’s Liberationism, since this has practical implications. Assuming Jesus represents the ‘crucified people’, he claims that: Ambedkar helps us to realize that in India the Dalits and their likes, are the crucified people; they are the suffering servants of God who struggle to take away the sins of the world; they are the messianic people who would bring salvation to this country.10

Ambedkar, in his attempts to conscientise Dalits, identified the ‘demonic Powers of the world’ against which the Dalits should aim their struggle for salvation. Furthermore, in seeking to promote protest and solidarity among the Dalits, 9 Pieres Arockiadoss, ‘The Significance of Dr. Ambedkar for Theologising in India’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, pp. 291–301. 10 Ibid., p. 298.

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Ambedkar, like liberation theologians, saw the ideology of the poor, rather than the of the privileged, as the basis of praxis. As a Buddhist he was committed to nonviolent protest, to ‘tolerance, love, self-discipline and reconciliation’. Ambedkar also provides the impetus of pain-pathos reflection in Dalit theology, the unabashed emotional response of Dalits to their suffering ‘soaked in raw anger’ which theologians would use to ‘call a spade a spade and a devil a devil’. It will be hot with emotions and concrete in descriptions. It will be merciless in naming and denouncing the oppressors and their injustice. It will have no respect of fear for the mighty and their mammon.11

Arokiadoss draws this assessment of Ambedkar from the latter’s approach to Gandhi, a national hero denounced by Ambedkar for his paternalism and caste prejudice. There is plenty of evidence for Dalit pathos and for Ambedkar’s stubborn sense of justice in contrast to Gandhi’s value of duty. In Dalit movements, self-representation appears essential after centuries of being represented by caste communities. This emphasis often is expressed, in political terms, as representation by Dalit leaders like Ambedkar who ‘represent’ the voice of the oppressed even if what they say doesn’t reflect the opinions of the oppressed entirely. However, Ambedkar helped the Dalits find an identity of their own, something beyond the means of caste reformers like Gandhi. Moses was the lawgiver. Manu also was the law-giver. Dr. Ambedkar, the champion of the Dalits, also gave the law. But when Jesus came, he nullified all laws and gave us Grace and his grace saved mankind from death and degradation.12

Ambedkar neither parted the Red Sea nor led the Dalits out of captivity; he enthralled them to the state, as might any other politically ambitious leader. Dalit theologian Anthony Thumma also tries to apply the Mosaic mantle to Ambedkar, referring to him as a ‘modern Moses’.13 More than Arokiadoss he tries to fit Ambedkar to the purposes of Dalit theology: an Ambedkar who is liberator of the Dalits and eschews violence. Thumma confuses Gandhian method with that of Ambedkar, referring to the latter’s ‘Struggles and Satyagrahas’ while in the next breath conceding that Ambedkar condones class war. All this goes to show the problem inherent in an uncritical acclamation of Ambedkar and an unrelenting rejection of Gandhi instead of a balanced critique of both. Ambedkar Ibid., p. 301. J.H. Anand, ‘Law Versus Grace: Theological Aspects of Dalit Poetry’, in J. Palmury

11

12

(ed.), Doing Theology with the Poetic Traditions of India: Focus on Dalits and Tribal Poems (Bangalore: PTCA/SATHRI, 1996), p. 82. 13 Anthony Thumma, Springs from the Subalterns: Patterns and Perspectives in People’s Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999).

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was a statist, albeit a reluctant one, as such could not be completely nonviolent or promote a completely libertarian vision but he did create opportunities for the conscientisation of Dalits and the promotion of their cause nationally that was unprecedented. Indeed Ambedkar’s criticism of Gandhi that ‘the politician stands in the way of the Saint’ could easily be turned back on him: his national platform diluted his religious and political idealism. Ambedkar was at pains to insist that Dalits and Buddhism were the natural heirs of India and that all other claimants – pretenders. He refused foreignness and in so doing he became dependent on his own brand of cultural nationalism. M.K. Gandhi as a Controversial Figure in Dalit Resistance In South Africa, Gandhi began insisting that everyone in his household do chores normally reserved for Dalits. Returning to India, he outraged his patrons by welcoming a Dalit family into his ashram. Gandhi called untouchability a ‘curse upon Hinduism’ and said that untouchability was unjustifiable. His approach to untouchability was an uncompromising revulsion, calling on caste Hindus to both desist in practising it and atone for its practice. Gandhi was not simply a patron of the oppressed but sought to bring them into solidarity with one another, conscious of the injustice against them and of their ability to find their own solutions to their poverty. Gandhi broke religious and cultural taboos by forcing access to temples for Dalits on caste communities and by taking up tasks traditionally considered defiling, such as weaving, sweeping and removing human waste. Gandhi articulated God’s preferential option for the poor by giving them the name ‘Harijan’, children of God: ‘in his opinion the weak and helpless are the children of God’. He was an egalitarian, opposing the idea of hierarchy but celebrating the differences of identity within the Varnas: ‘His was an attempt to seek their integration into a more inclusive institutionalised structure of the state and nation.’ Like Ambedkar, Gandhi saw the Dalit struggle as one of wrestling some power from the caste Hindus as part of a wider reform of both state and religion. Gandhi opposed purity-pollution in thought, life-style and political action – he encouraged the full involvement of Dalits in civic life. The potency of Gandhi’s preference for the poor, by volition, as opposed to Ambedkar’s vertical mobility away from his Dalit practices is lost on the Dalit movement – clouded over by his other prejudices and theirs. Gandhi’s prejudices stem from his theosophy and his background in the British legal system and its statist approach: if India was to deem itself worthy of independence it must grow into its own national moral identity based on Varnashramadharma, Satyagraha and secular democracy. The theosophical prejudice was a tendency toward dualism: on the one hand he was able to subvert politics because he always saw himself as a self-conscious outsider to the ‘sensible’ world of politics against the spiritual realm, on the other hand he was inclined to divide national and religious politics as though one were temporal and the other not.

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Gandhi’s means of achieving statehood was nonviolent resistance, a concept borrowed from one of his theosophical heroes – Leo Tolstoy – who, not incidentally, opposed the state and eschewed all involvement in it. Tolstoy was only on the edges of Russian theosophical practices, a contemporary of its co-founder Helena Blansky but not inclined to its peculiar nationalistic tendency. Gandhi had read Tolstoy’s arguments on the state as having an insurmountable predilection for violence yet chose to adopt his nonviolent resistance selectively to ignore this deeply unpopular conclusion. Instead he fought to be the locus of religious and secular power in emerging India – he was its unofficial monarch and interpreted his secularism through the lens of moderate theosophical Hinduism like many reformers before him. It is little wonder then that he clashed with Ambedkar on the tricky issue of religion and the state. This issue was never resolved in Gandhi’s own mind, if it were he would have had to reject either his commitment to state or nonviolent resistance rather than live with their incompatibility. Gandhi comes close to this: Would there be State power in an ideal society or would such a society be Stateless? I think the question is futile. If we continue to work towards the building of such a society, to some extent it is bound to be realized and to that extent people would benefit.14

Whether for Gandhi this question is futile or inconvenient, he sees the full implication of Satyagraha is inconsistent with the existence of the state and therefore inconsistent with the state’s intervention in matters of faith. It is unsurprising that he clashed with Ambedkar on the matter of special considerations for Dalits as is discussed below. Duty-bound Harijans Dalit theology has been largely critical of Gandhi and his role in caste reform, to the extent that popular writers such as the Shudra, V.T. Rajshaker will claim ‘killing Gandhianism is as good as killing Brahmanism’.15 Antipathy towards Gandhi may stem from the stand off between him and Ambedkar over the issue of a separate electorate for Dalits. Ambedkar favoured this on grounds of social justice; Gandhi opposed it on grounds of cultural unity. However, the term that Gandhi ‘chose’ for the Dalits – Harijan (sons, not of Brahma, but of Krishna) – and the fact that he was a Kshatriya and part of the Congress elite have added to cynicism regarding Gandhi within Dalit movements.

R. Iyer, The essential writings of Mahatma Gandhi (Delhi: OUP, 1991), p. 406. V.T.Rajshaker, Weapons to Fight: Counter Revolution (Bangalore: Dalit Sahitya

14 15

Akademy, 2004), p. 35.

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Thus, when Ambedkar, from his Dalit perspective, was demanding separate electorates for the untouchables in view of their political empowerment, Gandhi, from his elite perspective was opposing it as a plot to divide and destroy Hinduism, even with his infamous fast unto death.16

Gandhi was someone who failed to please any of the interest groups in India during and after independence. His eventual assassin was by proponents of the Vedic God – Hindu cultural nationalists; he opposed the Muslim Left and their calls for partition and the Dalit movement has rejected him. Yet Indian consensus honours him as a ‘Father of the Nation’ because of his immense contribution to the formation of an Indian nation state and his commitment to his own outworking of justice and duty. Indian Liberation theologian T.K. John, reflecting on Gandhi’s conception of Satyagraha, deeply influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, is ‘struck by the great similarity’ between Liberation theology and Gandhian dharma. John recognises Gandhi’s dual commitment to the poor and to meaningful praxis in the context of spiritual as well as material motivations. Satyagraha, or ‘Truth force’ is as a method of fighting injustice, hope for the oppressed, promotion of ethics, orthopraxis and the value of spirituality in transforming political reality. In terms of Gandhi’s theosophy it is a matter of holding together essentials of all religions: ‘to unify the teaching of the Gita, The Light of Asia [theosophical epic poem] and the Sermon on the Mount. ‘That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly,’ he said of his time in England and this remained the foundation of his development of Satyagraha in South Africa and its implementation in India. The Light of Asia, a seminal poetic text based on a Western understanding of Buddhism but drawing on Islamic, Hindu and Christian traditions challenged Gandhi’s perception of his own religion. This is the doctrine of the KARMA. Learn! Only when all the dross of sin is quit Only when life dies like a white flame spent Death dies along with it. Say not ‘I am’, ‘I was’, or ‘I shall be’, Think not ye pass from house to house of flesh Like travellers who remember and forget, Ill-lodged or well-lodged. Fresh.17

Dalit theologians recognise Ambedkar’s Buddhist as having used Buddhist and socialist principles to reform nationalism whereas they do not register Gandhi’s reliance on Buddhist philosophical ideals to challenge Hindu ideas of duty and reincarnation and encourage a political renunciation of the self. Gandhi went on to Arockiadoss, ‘The Significance of Dr Ambedkar for Theologising in India’, p. 294. Edmund Arnold, The Light of Asia (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1891).

16 17

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read Hindu scriptures through this optic of renunciation and nonviolent resistance of evil through which he attempted to read the Baghvad Gita. In a sense Gandhi did for Hindu texts what Tolstoy did for the Bible: they both reinterpreted their scriptures using a hermeneutic of resistance to create a paradigm that challenge preservation of self through the protection of the state. John sees Satyagraha as a means of propagating the ideal of sacrificial love, the value of the transcendent soul and genuine humility. He is correct; moreover, Gandhi inspired Tolstoyan reading of the Sermon on the Mount in the formation of his own theology. Gandhi’s concept of Satyagraha unites Brahminic, Liberationist and Western philosophies in the liberationist ‘preferential option for the poor’ in a way that has yet to be fully exploited in Dalit theology because it is free of the liberationist motif which is violent and statist. The reasons Gandhi can maintain this perspective is rooted in the theosophical belief in the mutuality of all existence but at the same time its negation as ethereal: ‘I have no desire for the perishable kingdom of earth. I am striving for the Kingdom of Heaven’, which echoes Tolstoy’s ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you’ and re-works it for himself: ‘To attain my end it is not necessary for me to seek the shelter of a cave. I carry one about me, if I would but know it.’ It is ironic then that the person now acclaimed as a ‘father of the nation’ eschewed all forms of patriotism and saw himself as a ‘foreigner’ in the spiritual sense. Indeed it is because he saw himself as foreign to India he was able to give so much toward its liberation from the colonial lie: statism and redemptive violence. Gandhi and Jesus: Common Approaches to the Powers It must be made explicit that commonality between Gandhian and an anarchic or Dalit oriented approach to Jesus is no coincidence. Letters exchanged between Gandhi and Tolstoy show that the latter deeply influenced the theology and ideology of the former. Tolstoy was convinced of the need for the overthrow of British government in India by means of nonviolent resistance. Tolstoy was also adamant that people should not receive money for anything that is in essence a religious undertaking. He expressed this to Gandhi in a letter sent around 1910 while he was in South Africa and before he had a row with his wife on this very issue. Tolstoy was an anarchist in all but name: he was anti-state, anti-welfare, anti-violence and anti-authoritarian and wrote a strong pacifist Christian apologetic in later writing. It is on Tolstoy’s ‘Nonviolent resistance to evil’ that Gandhi based his own ‘Satyagraha’. He applies Tolstoy’s critique to colonial Christianity. Gandhi’s concept of God was primarily as a cosmic and unknowable abstraction. Not even a being, as such, although he does not deny the possibility of beingness in divinity. Gandhi refers to God mostly using abstractions such as ‘Love’, ‘Unseen Power’, ‘the root’, ‘Law-giver’ and ‘Law’, common examples taken from his writings in Young India and Harijan. However, Gandhi is also devoutly ‘Hindu’ and staunchly Indian. It seems contradictory that Gandhi was an Indian internationalist but he did think in terms of the colonial bounded territory and the

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boundless territory of Love the Unseen Power. Implicitly Gandhi had embraced foreignness as rooted in the religion of his nation. This confusing subversion of language and ideology allowed Gandhi to both inspire the Satyagrahis that followed his method of resistance and help him disturb his Western friends and enemies. His is a polycentric-monotheism commonly understood in this thesis. The ‘Supreme God’ is known ‘by a thousand name (sic.). He is one and the same to us all’. This free understanding of the cosmic God he explains in that there are as many definitions of God ‘as there are men and women’. An argument that he restates as: ‘There are as many religions as minds.’ It should follow that there are as many governments as there are minds and Gandhi wavers on this point revealing not a little of an autocratic tendency: ‘If I were dictator’ he claims, ‘religion and state would be separate.’ He at once sees the state as a pragmatic part of the divine plan indeed sees Congress as an agency of God and at the same time looks forward to an ideal state with no coercion, violence, or government whatsoever. In other words what he calls ‘enlightened anarchy’. Indeed Gandhi shows awareness that an ideology of non-violence leads inevitably toward theological and political anarchism. In terms of nationalism or patriotism this approach leaves Gandhi with a dilemma since he is a patriot who makes use of propounds and supports the ideals of Congress – an Independent India with its own culture, constitution and national identity. Gandhi often refers to India with emotive, graphic images of motherhood: ‘I cling to India like a child clings to its mother’s breast, because I feel that she gives me the spiritual nourishment I need’; ‘Our mortal mother who gives us birth is entitled to reverence and worship.’ Gandhi refers to his loyalty in ‘marriage’ to his religion of non-violence and his commonality with humanity around the world as greater still than that to his country. In so doing he reflects his theology in his politics: there is the local and there is the universal; universal takes precedent. It is interesting then that, as Ambedkar claims, he stops short of egalitarianism, although he claims to be enthusiastically for it. He approaches this caveat on inequality both softly: ‘all men are not equal either in talents or the measure of their needs’ and directly ‘I do most emphatically maintain that man is not made to choose his occupation’. Therefore, he deems that while caste-based vocation is essential to Indian political and religious life – the Brahmin reads, the Municipal Cleaner cleans – it does not mean that one is cleaner or better than the Other. So Gandhi does not dispense with the Varnic image of castes being likened to body parts but rather insists on the equality of those body parts, perhaps echoing 1 Corinthians 12: 12–26 when he writes: If we are children of the same God, how can there be any rank among us? The very mention of Varna in the Vedas likens the four Varnas to the four main parts of the body. Is the head superior to the arms, the belly and the feet, or the feet

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superior to the other three? … The Law of Varna is one of absolute equality among all creatures of God. It is the basis of all religions of the world.18

Gandhi adds further insult to the Dalits, not part of this fourfold ‘equality’ when he claims that a Dalit is ‘merely the victim of ignorance’. Gandhi does not mean that Dalits have not suffered physically, emotionally and in other ways but he consistently downplays the suffering of the poor. He even romanticises poverty: ‘The poor man … prefers his hut to the rich man’s palace. He even takes pride in it. Though he is poor in material goods, he is not poor in spirit.’ Both Gandhi and Jesus were born into a context of foreign occupation, ‘rebellions, massacre, terror, class conflicts, religious fanaticism, official corruption, assaults and robberies’. Both dealt with the violent social order with a spiritual revolution against the principalities and Powers. Walter Wink lists 17 ways in which Jesus offers an alternative, ‘A Third Way’ (the list is taken from that of US activist Saul Alinsky) to the two popular responses to violence, passivism and counter-violence. Jesus’ Third Way 1. Seize the moral initiative. 2. Find a creative alternative to violence. 3. Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person. 4. Meet force with ridicule or humour. 5. Break the cycle of humiliation. 6. Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position. 7. Expose the injustice of the system. 8. Take control of the power dynamic. 9. Shame the oppressor into repentance. 10. Stand your ground. 11. Force the Powers to make decisions for which they are not prepared. 12. Recognise your own power. 13. Be willing to suffer rather than to retaliate. 14. Cause the oppressor to see you in a new light. 15. Deprive the oppressor of a situation where a show of force is effective. 16. Be willing to undergo the penalty for breaking unjust laws. 17. Die to fear of the old order and its rules.19

V. Rodrigues (ed.), The Essential Writings of B.R. Ambedkar (Oxford, OUP, 2002),

18

p. 22.

19 Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A third way (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), pp. 27–8.

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Rules for Resistance 1. Power is not only what you have but also what the enemy thinks you have. 2. Never go outside the experience of your people. 3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. 4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. 5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. 6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. 7. Pick the target, freeze it and personalise it.20 A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. 8. Keep pressure on. 9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself. 10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. 11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside. 12. The price of successful attack is a constructive alternative. Like Gandhi, Wink calls this alternative non-violence or militant nonviolent resistance. Each is a challenge to the αρχη or rulers of this world. Simplifying Winks’ list of Jesus’ stance on non-violence to six principles, instead of Wink and Alinsky’s 13. In simplifying the list I have brought together some of Alinsky’s rules under one heading and noted that the examples that Jesus and Gandhi give overlap several of the rules. Gandhi and Jesus’ tactics for resistance 1. Find joy in discovering alternatives to violence, with dignity, as an equal to the enemy. 2. Continue to value and love your enemy while boldly declaiming his violence. 3. Recognise your own power and be confident of your moral position. 4. Be pro-active instead of reactive, use surprise as a weapon. 5. Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate and face penalties rather than uphold unjust laws. 6. Die to fear of your enemy to take the sting out of his violence and to make him ashamed of his actions. Firstly, find joy in discovering alternatives to violence, as an equal to the enemy, with dignity. Gandhi was adept at creative protest that caught the imagination 20 Saul Alinsky, Rules for radicals: A pragmatic primer for realistic radicals (New York: Vintage Books, 1872), pp. 127–30.

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of people across the demographic. His Salt March, ending in April 1930 with his arrest, inspired teachers, professors and students across India to court arrest themselves by making salt. Before that his insistence on protestors making their own clothes was both visionary and affirming for poor rural India. In his speeches he would encourage his audiences to make efforts to become self sufficient through the khadi movement. He insisted that, ‘The pledge of nonviolence does not require us to cooperate in our own humiliation [or] to crawl on our bellies …’ even encouraging Indians, in the light of the Amritsar massacre, to ‘laugh at the might of the tyrant’, an audacious challenge to bravery without violence. Jesus encouraged tyrannised Palestinians to turn the other cheek when struck. As Wink points out, this forces the enemy to either use the left hand (taboo) or to strike with the back of the hand, which in that context would make his ‘victim’ an equal in status and force the oppressor to deal with the humanity of the victim. Even in teaching his followers to give both their outer garment and their tunic to their debtor, they are able to find not shame, but a way of shaming the violence of someone who would leave a poor man naked rather than cancel his debt. Second, continue to value and love your enemy while boldly declaiming his violence. This is only possible if, as Gandhi counselled, the resister can both organise public opinion against the violence of the enemy yet deal honestly with what good one finds in the character of the enemy. In other words the aim should always be to redeem the enemy, not damn him. Leo Tolstoy and Walter Wink reject the translation of Matthew 5: 39, ‘Do not resist an evildoer’, preferring a more literal yet radical reading, ‘Don’t strike back at evil (or, one who has done you evil) in kind’. This better fits Jesus’ teaching to love our enemy but to resist temptation. This love is active and participative in the redemption of the enemy not passive kindness. Third, recognise your own power and be confident of your moral position. Gandhi urged resisters to be model prisoners if arrested for civil disobedience and to accept arrest, yet he also taught them to resist anyone who took property entrusted to them. He maintains this tension through a certainty that surrender takes more courage than fleeing or flailing. Jesus reflects this confidence throughout his dealings with his aggressors both Jewish and Roman and summed up in his response to Pilate, ‘You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above…’ (John 19: 11a). Fourth, be pro-active instead of reactive; use surprise as a weapon. When arrested in South Africa, Gandhi asked for the maximum sentence, one that the judge could not bring himself to impose. By doing this Gandhi highlights the absurdity of the charge the injustice of the law against the authentic judgement of the marginalised. Jesus urged occupied citizens to carry the pack of an occupying soldier an extra mile thus voluntarily extending their own suffering. A soldier could impress a civilian to carry his pack one mile only; to force the civilian farther carried with it severe penalties under military law. … Now

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you have forced him into making a decision for which nothing in his previous experience has prepared him.21

Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan shows the active love of the enemy as an exemplary ethic. The marginalised Samaritan not only helps the suffering enemy but also goes as far as possible to help him, taking every opportunity to love him and show him acts of mercy. Likewise Gandhi asks his supporters not only to avoid violence but to defend their enemies from the violence perpetrated by others: an act of self-sacrificing love for the enemy. Fifth, be willing to suffer rather than retaliate and face penalties rather than uphold unjust laws. Both Gandhi and Jesus recognise that surrender to the desire to match violence invites domination. So Gandhi advises, ‘put up with assaults from the opponent, never retaliate’, Jesus offers the ultimate illustration of willingness to suffer, one which offers the cornerstone of the nonviolent paradigm in Luke 17: 33. Here also the cross is the model: we are liberated, not by striking back at what enslaves us – for even striking reveals that we are still controlled by violence – but by a willingness to die rather than submit to its command.22

The enemy, in reality, is the desire to control others through violence, but equally through the threat of violence. This means that a soldier who holds a gun is as culpable as one who fires it, since both perpetuate the myths that superior force equals moral rightness. Finally, die to fear of your enemy to take the sting out of his violence and to make him ashamed of his actions. This is evidenced both in non-compliance with unconscionable laws and refusing to react violently to those who impose them. Gandhi, in one breath, urges Indians neither to salute the Union Jack, nor insult the Colonial agents. Holding these values together allows the person resisting evil to maintain her humanity in the face of evil. In the context of General Dyer’s massacre of protesters in Amritsar, he wrote: The might of the tyrant recoils upon himself when it meets with no response, seen as an arm violently waved in the air suffers dislocation.23

By refusing to cower the Dalit community frustrate the posturing of their enemy. Throughout his Satyagraha, Gandhi held one objective in mind, the ‘conversion’ of the enemy, through non-violence to repentance. Again, this is an attitude reflecting that of Jesus, who taught his disciples to use the shame of having their outer garment taken by richer debtors, to bring to their attention the horror of what they are doing to another human being. Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence, pp. 24–5. Wink, The Powers that Be, p. 93. 23 Ibid., p. 57. 21 22

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This unmasking [give him your tunic as well] is not simply punitive, however; it offers the creditor a chance to see, perhaps for the first time in his life, what his practices cause and to repent.24

The only aim of nonviolent resistance is the conversion of the enemy; this comes prior to liberation of the poor. If the enemy is subdued, rather than converted, then one form of violence replaces another and the Kingdom of God is no closer. Ranly puts it thus, ‘Only the victim in God’s good time can come to experience how in Christ God also loves the oppressor…’ If the enemy is converted to God’s preferential option for the poor then the poor are liberated from the fear of violence and the temptation to be violent. Gandhi illustrates the means by which Jesus unmasked Powers not dissimilar to either the British Empire or the Mother India. Gandhi and Jesus: Ahimsa and Exousia J.C. Naluparayil compares the exousia of Jesus as illustrated in Mark’s gospel (Mark 1: 21, 27) to the Ahmisa of Gandhi.25 Ahmisa is the refusal to give in to the violent urge and allow anger to dominate over spiritual self-sacrifice and exousia is defined as the freedom to self-determined action and absolute authority according to the highest office. Naluparayil sees Jesus’ exousia as something that he obtains through his suffering and death and his role as the divine Son. However, it is something he makes available to his followers as they take up their own suffering and follow him. Exousia and ahimsa are both viewed as ‘spiritual forces’ that oppose, directly, the use of physical force. Wink and Naluparayil recognise in both Jesus and Gandhi the ability to act apart from the Principalities and Powers rather than in reaction to them. What neither Ranly or Wink explicitly acknowledge in their theologising of Gandhi is his meta-reliance on Tolstoy and the theosophy of Annie Besant. Theosophy and nonviolent resistance of evil underpin everything positive that Gandhi is remembered for; his own prejudices and seduction by the violent ideology of the state represent the negative things he is remembered for. In other words, while Gandhi put into practice some admirable notions, ideologically he was always at the whim of others – he offered nothing new. Christ’s exousia is much more constructive and directed to an alternative means of creating society – the Kingdom of God – whereas Gandhi’s ahmisa is about the removal of oppression but not its replacement with the exousia of invitation, inclusion and service, virtues which steep the concept of the Kingdom of God. Ahimsa illustrates exousia in an Indian context and exousia would take ahimsa to its Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence, p. 20. J.C. Naluparayil, ‘Self-sacrificing Exousia of Jesus and Ahimsa of Ghandiji’, in

24 25

A.Thottkara (ed.), Indian Interpretations of the Bible (Bangalore: Dharmaram, 2000), p. 422.

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proper conclusion if only the statist paradigm can be subverted by Dalit theology. Both concepts are rooted in a deeply spiritual sense of belonging that is opposed to both territorialism and nationalism and sees loyalty as either to the internationale or commonwealth of God. Gandhi and Ambedkar’s Thrall to the State Gandhi saw untouchability as an exclusive Hindu issue and one to be thought through only in terms of orthodox (Vedic) Hindu philosophy. He defended the independent identity of modern Hinduism over human rights when confronted by friends and colleagues at Round Table Conferences in London. Gandhi was opposed to British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s proposal of separate representation for Dalits in Parliament and interpreted the idea as an attempt to divide the Hindu community. The impression Gandhi gave to the British government and the Indian public, through speech and letter, was of a Congress that represented every Indian even though its membership was predominantly high caste. Gandhi presented himself as spokesperson for temple and state; included in this representation was the Dalits, since the removal of untouchability was central to a Congress manifesto. What Gandhi fails to acknowledge is that Congress promotes a structure of society that he so eschews in his nonviolent approach to liberation. This suggests that Gandhi’s concept of nonviolence is incomplete as it has a weakness when it comes to deference to Mother India who is permitted to use violence for pragmatic reasons. Ambedkar insisted the majority Hindu community did not exist anywhere but the Hindu mind. He was adamant that there must be reserved seats in any parliament to ensure that Dalits were represented – otherwise they would be threatened or outvoted out of future government. Ambedkar recognised that western representative democracy does not work and only administrates the tyranny of the majority. However, rather than reject it for an anarchic Dalit approach to self-organising, Ambedkar, steeped in British law and flattered by British attention, could only attempt to stamp his own character on this foreign, unwieldy and unjust system, while Gandhi envisioned an egalitarian caste system based on the reformation of the oppressors’ mindset, which included the Dalits and brought them into temple life, Ambedkar insisted that caste inequality must be reversed through social reform and positive discrimination. Both believed that Mother India would redeem and civilise Indian society. Both appealed to Mother India for affirmation of the Indianness of their cause to further empower the state, not any concept of God or cosmos, as the supreme power, saviour and arbiter. While imprisoned in Yeravada jail, Pune, Gandhi began a ‘fast unto death’ in order to defend Hinduism from positive discrimination for Dalits. This despite accepting electoral reservation for other religious minorities: Christians, Muslims and Sikhs. Gandhi’s fast horrified the political classes and caught the imagination of many such that the press turned almost violently against Ambedkar as the Dalit

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whose stubbornness was killing the ‘Father of the Nation’. Ambedkar fought back, claiming that Gandhi had referred to the problem of the Dalits as ‘an appendix to the book of India’s constitution’. The unspoken point of contention was not their variances of approach to untouchability but the clash of Gods and ideologies as consort for the state. Ambedkar was a neo-Buddhist fundamentalist, insisting that Buddhism was the rightful national religion of India, Gandhi, although not a fundamentalist, was conservatively Hindu – however much he clothed his approach to religion in language of inclusion, it was always assimilation that he was after. The matter seemed irresolvable, Gandhi wanted Dalits to be represented in government by the Hindus, Ambedkar insisted separately by the Dalits. With Gandhi on the point of death in prison and Ambedkar in frantic negotiation between Dalits and Hindus, both sides made concessions and a creative short-term solution was found. There would be 171 separate Dalit seats in the provincial legislature but the Hindus would vote together when deciding the final candidate. The Dalits would have primary elections to decide a panel of four candidates for general election. All this would be reviewed in just five years anyway. The final agreement between Gandhi and Ambedkar, September 1932, supported by the British government, became known as the ‘Poona Pact’ or ‘Yeravada Pact’. In Indian political history it was a critical moment. For many in the Dalit movement it was a turning point, not because of what they gained but because of what they nearly lost. The supporters of Gandhi were encouraged by this to step up their campaign against untouchability and discrimination against Dalits entering temples. They were determined to reform varnashramdharma, ‘caste-religious-duty’. Ambedkar and his followers reacted differently. They rejected Hinduism far more explicitly as anti-Dalit religion and Congress as an anti-Dalit organisation. Ambedkar’s decision to announce his conversion away from Hinduism three years later and the formation of the Independent Labour Party a year after that illustrate the ideological divergence. Ambedkar’s social and religious movement was a foil to that of Gandhi. The controversy at Poona played out on the national stage and debated intensely on both sides show them as one another’s nemesis. Dalits were not looking for a national leader except that everyone else had one: Ambedkar was both an idealised hero and a necessary evil for the neo-Buddhists. He was an icon of all he opposed more than for what he personally stood for which explained why he remains beyond criticism even today. Through the influence of the Liberation theology it is inevitable that Dalit theologians marry the concepts of Moses and Ambedkar as parallel icons of liberation but Ambedkar would not have recognised in himself the reliance on a violent God who wants to create a nation with laws of purity and impurity upheld by violence and oppression. Contrary to popular opinion Ambedkar is not useful for theologising at least until the Dalit community is willing to demystify him. Gandhi, for the Dalits at least is subject to scrutiny and therefore, paradoxically, of use to Dalit theology because his thought and practice can be assessed more

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honestly and without romance. Dalit theology can redeem Gandhi by resolving his dilemma posthumously and asserting the contradiction between the nation state and nonviolent resistance of evil. If theology comes from the poor and disenfranchised, whose Gods have never claimed national sovereignty and are free of such pretensions, it will be free from statist ambition. The real problem with Gandhianism was not its paternalism or bias to caste Hinduism so much as his personal inability to follow his philosophy of struggle to its logical conclusion among the anarchic Dalit communities. Dalit theologians make no effort to rehabilitate Gandhi; I argue that such a process is both possible and useful. According to D.R. Nagaraj’s study of the Dalit Movement, the ‘firm rejection’ of the Gandhian approach to untouchability is foundational to it.26 However, anti-Gandhianism has shaped the Dalit movement in so far as it has created unhelpful boundaries to thought and practice. Of course a critique of Gandhianism was necessary; it was neither ‘for’ nor ‘by’ the Dalits and however many Dalit followers his ideology had, Gandhi’s way was not theirs. Nonetheless, there is enough in Gandhianism that Ambedkar was able to reflect some of it in his later thinking and vice versa. This is so important when important historical figures have written so much that is assumed to stand for their complete and constant opinion on a matter, making no allowance for development of thought. This is reason enough to revisit Gandhianism from a Dalit perspective and challenge Dalit theology from a Gandhian point of view. If only Gandhi could be divested of his statism, his feudalism, his patriarchy, he would have more to offer Dalit thinking. Dalit theology has largely ignored or rejected Gandhi and his teachings, because of his approach to caste and his conflict with Ambedkar. However, an anarchic, or liberationist, comparison highlights the ways in which Gandhi’s essential message fits with Dalit theology and draws out important ideas: his approach to power, violence and suffering are intrinsically anarchic. Therefore it is possible, indeed necessary to rehabilitate Gandhi for Christian Dalits. Despite Gandhi’s contribution to the Dalit struggle and his solidarity with the poor, the identity he offers to Dalits and the ideology that comes with it has been rejected by Dalit movements. The term Harijan has been discarded as either patronising or even a pejorative euphemism for ‘bastard’. It seems more important that the phrase ‘Harijan’ is overtly Brahminic. The Dalits do not want to be considered the children of Hari (Krishna) a god of the pantheon of the oppressors. It follows that there are few attempts amongst Dalit theologians to reflect on the philosophies and practices of Gandhi, not wanting to be drawn back in to a caste agenda. Gandhi had a universalistic approach to Indian faith: ‘All religions are equal and they are founded on the same faith.’ The subtext of what he meant was all religions are equally subsumed into Hindu theosophy and compatible with secular 26 D.R. Nagaraj, The Flaming Feet: A Study of the Dalit Movement in India (Bangalore: South Forum, 1993), pp. 1–9.

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nationalism – which, if stated so bluntly is self-evidently wrong. While Gandhi was a ‘ceaseless’ critic of untouchability, he romanticised the Vedas and the caste system in its abstract religious conceptualisation, indeed he was a ‘champion of the caste system’. Gandhi saw division of labour by heredity as a healthy religious approach to society and counselled the merging of sub-castes into larger Vedic castes for clarity of position. From his attitude to reservation policy and his didactic patronage of Dalits, in his ashram and through his newsletter, Harijan – even the use of the term Harijan to describe Dalits, which many now find offensive, it’s clear that Gandhi’s exclusivist practice overran his pluralism in principle. Gandhi’s faith in the divine origins of caste distinction was immovable. Yet he maintained stern disapproval of untouchability and a belief that the Dalits had all that they needed within themselves to bring about their liberation. Gandhi even set up a society Harijan Sarak Sangh that deliberately excluded Dalits from membership. Naïvely, he wrote in Harijan in 1947, ‘Religion is a personal matter which should have no place in politics’. Evidently he saw caste as a distinctly cultural rather than religious matter and ignored the way it relied on the violence of the ritual purity-pollution ideology of Brahminism to perpetuate it. Gandhi shared Roy’s belief that Hinduism, in its purest form, matched other religions in their purest forms. Gandhi had a massive following in Gujarat and based himself, largely, at his ashram in Ahmedabad. Gandhi’s legacy imploded after his death because Gandhi created a ‘following’ and a following relies on a person to be its leader. Without Gandhi’s personal example and drive his Satyagraha movement lost its momentum; his ashram, for example, is now a museum and theatrical light show. Gandhi has failed to overcome the Hindu identity given to the poorest and most excluded, because of his paternalism and loyalty to Hinduism as a religion of national identity, rather than colonial manipulation. However, view of the caste system altered considerably between the 1920s and the mid 1930s. He became more disillusioned with the way the varnashramdharma was being played out in ordinary lives; more quick to condemn practices that he had previously condoned, like exclusivity at meals and endogamy. Proponents of Gandhianism uphold his ideals and his practical humanitarianism; critics of Gandhi do not look beyond the ‘Poona Pact’ Gandhi’s campaign against the Dalits. Those who have approached Gandhi from a radical or Liberative perspective have found him replete with liberationist motifs. It is necessary for Dalit theology to redeem Gandhian thought and practice for the wider Dalit movement and for the Church. In many ways Gandhi’s approach subverted Casteism and is an ally of Dalitism. In other ways Gandhi was bound to his prejudice, but his Vedic approach offers a neglected point of mutual reference between the Dalits and their oppressors. Refusing to engage with ‘the Powers’, being excessively defensive (fearful) only generates long-term defeatism. There is nothing misplaced about finding a common language in attempting to convert the oppressor to solidarity with the poor.

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In contrast, Dalit theologians need to take a step back from the uncritical stylising of B.R. Ambedkar and unmask the statist Powers behind his fine words and actions. Ambedkar was a superficial critic of Christianity, whereas Gandhi allowed himself to be transformed by his interaction with its writers and practitioners. Ambedkar’s own life-story is deceptively simplified and plays into a caste agenda of blaming the Dalits for their own situation; that is, if Ambedkar can drag himself out of the untouchable quarters and sit with world leaders then the rest have no excuse. Ambedkar did not bring about the Dalit movement; he gave voice to some of its pathos and played down its radical elements to his own ends. Most importantly, Ambedkar’s particular socialist approach, if taken to its conclusion, leads to another fundamentalist chauvinism. Any ideology that competes on a national level mistakes the natural organising tendencies of indigenous peoples. Any ideology that is statist relies ultimately on violence, oppression and the tyranny of one group over another, justifying the moral superiority of the great pressure exerted. Attempts to portray Ambedkar as a Mosaic figure are useful because Moses too was a violent man who used violence to free a people, create a tribal identity and justify his own agenda. Ultimately, it is the attraction of personal power that prevented both Gandhi and Ambedkar from seeing what was common in their ideologies and coming to the important conclusion that they were actually ‘foreigners’ to the concept of statehood. Nationalism did not fit comfortably with Gandhi’s sense of duty or Ambedkar’s sense of justice and yet neither saw their way out of the lure to power. Embracing foreignness would have provided the key and can be understood in reference to ‘the Kingdom of God’ and its challenge to the ‘arches’ or Powers.

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Part III Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism: A Subversive Synthesis

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Chapter 6

Resistance from the Margins

We are happy that Dalit Theology has come of age and will grow in strength reaching new frontiers.1

Ascribing Dalitness Dalit theologians have made much of the idea of Dalit identity, its linguistic and experiential importance; ways of expressing or discovering it; means of challenging oppressive or paternalistic concepts of who the Dalits are. Identity is neither private nor subsumed in the communal. An exploration of what may affect linguistic identity and how anarchists, Dalits and theologians explain identity follows. A broad introduction to Western priorities for understanding of identity draws out the impact of the oppressive Other. A brief etymological study of the choice of the word ‘Dalit’ and its historical usage, as well as the alternatives suggests why ‘Dalit’ has become such a politically expedient term, yet one that is far from universally celebrated. An anarchic understanding of ego and superego will suggest a model for the way humans relate one to another in a dialectical opposition that is always in flux; gravitating toward justice or oppression, but never in utopian equilibrium. This relationship between ‘being’ and ‘propensity’ draws out the issue of morality; this is important because the different actors in modern Indian history, the missionaries, the Brahmins and the Dalits, understood morality differently. For the Dalits in post-modern India it is appropriate to reflect on ‘multipleidentities’ rather than try and pin the Dalits to a single defining and controlling identity. Dalits exist in thousands of small communities spread over the South Asian subcontinent with no conscious idea of being ‘Dalit’ or part of any cultural group. Indeed there is little commonality between all Dalits save the tragedy of their circumstances. Is there any need for a Dalit identity and can identity change with every given circumstance? This depends on whether there is something intangibly secure about our ‘being’ or whether it is entirely a social functioning. Some Dalits call themselves, Harijans, others claim to be Scheduled Caste, or Backwards Class and still others refuse to acknowledge caste heritage, seeing it as failure to rid themselves of prejudice. It was Jyotirao Phule (1827–90), social reformer, who first applied the word Dalit to the outcaste communities. A theologian may struggle to distinguish the Dalits in the Church, while easily defining the Devasahayam (ed.), New Frontiers in Dalit theology, p. xv.

1

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term. The term remains academic in most Christian contexts. Nonetheless, Dalit theology makes self-naming paramount. In order for the community and the individual to have freedom at any level it must be at the level of choosing their own name. Even for the sake of practical convenience, theologians cannot refer to all those who necessarily fit into the bracket of Dalit as Dalits. Universally applying the term would undermine the process of self-naming, more important than the actual name that is chosen. Self-naming initiates but also reviews the process of creating a Dalit identity of protest. In a sense this thesis ascribes this identity, since the Dalits identify themselves in terms of what others have done to them. However, in protesting against what was done to them they accuse caste Hindus of oppression and violation of Dalit identity. If a Dalits identity is passively ascribed she allows others to give her meaning and purpose, or allows herself to be defined only in terms of other peoples sense of identity. If a person asserts her identity, she becomes an active agent in choosing her own meaning, a liberating and empowering experience, which allows the individual to examine her own potential and worth. The etymological meaning of the word ‘Dalit’ is important to academics and often frames an article or provides the introduction to a book on the subject. The etymological meaning of ‘dalit’ has theological implications, which is another reason for its utility and potency for Dalit Christians. The term Dalit is popularly understood to be a Sanskrit term meaning ‘crushed, oppressed, broken’ and refers to the state that the Dalits find themselves in, on abstract and physical levels equally. Jyotirao Phule, Bhim Rao Ambedkar and countless Dalit communities and academics have used it with this meaning. However, it has a Marathi meaning with is very different, according to some scholars, ‘of the soil and earth’. As with any form of Liberation theology, the challenge comes in identifying the crushed people of the soil. However, any linguistic identity has limitations and amount in the end to a mask of describers which can be interpreted and re-interpreted endlessly. One might legitimately ask: who cares? Some theologians obviously do care what the word Dalit means and it has provided many essays with a nice introduction to the topic. It has not, however, illuminated either the reality or the reflective possibilities of being Dalit or being a Dalit Christian. The term Dalit is an empty vessel; self-ascription does not necessarily lead to self-definition or liberation. Anarchism acknowledges both the transcendent and the contextual flux of human temperament. Humans are a part of their circumstance, but can equally rise above it; it is a matter of latency. Central to an anarchist understanding of the transcendent ‘I’ is a universal ‘notion of a will to Power’: egoism. However, egoism is counterbalanced by an equally innate inclination toward ‘sociability’. Contemporary anarchists like Dave Morland go as far as calling these inclinations ‘propensities which may be said to lead to good or evil’.2 This appears a somewhat 2 David Morland, ‘Anarchism, Human Nature and History: Lessons for the Future’, in J. Purkis and J. Bowen (eds), Twenty-first Century Anarchism: Unorthodox Ideas for a New Millennium (London: Cassel, 1997), pp. 13–16.

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deontological observation for anarchism but illustrates that an external concept of wrongness and an internal consciousness of it is not at odds with it. The human capability to goodness and evil equally challenges the Augustinian idea of a fallen humanity, whose every inclination is evil. Augustinian wrote as apologist not only for the Church but also for the state, seeing the former as morally faithful to the latter and dependent on it until the coming of God’s kingdom. Acknowledging these two propensities makes it incumbent upon the anarchist to see society perpetually allowing of either good or evil. Furthermore it challenges the Augustinian dichotomy of sacred and secular and the modern Indian competition between religions to be the consort of the state. There is a seamless link between anarchist ontology and social theory: a constant contest between libertarianism and authoritarianism that goes on internally and communally. The Vedic concept of sin is related closely to duty and honour. So abandonment of duty is a sin: breaking with traditional roles in the village, for example. The Dalit communities have adopted this dharmic moralising from their caste oppressors. Since there is protest in Dalit theology there must be a corresponding concept of sin, of evil. This evil tends to be located corporately or in circumstances, so that the caste system is evil, purity-pollution laws are evil and proscribing duty is evil. But as this thesis goes on to explore Dalit narrative and theology, it will become clear that morality, in the Victorian sense, is something alien to the Dalit community. Any attempt to reinterpret history in Dalit terms, or using a Liberationist hermeneutic is in danger of leading to ‘Dalit fundamentalism’. For an identity to become fundamental it will tend to be dependent on a polemic and on a rarefied creed of being. Samuel Jayakumar affirms the position that it is the transcendent identity of Dalit Christians, as promoted by protestant missionaries of the early nineteenth century, which leads to an authentically liberating identity for the Dalits. Liberation theology transforms the word ‘Dalit’ in the Christological setting so that when Jayakumar speaks of the Dalit he is, paradigmatically, talking about Christ. Therefore, Christ is not relegated to second place. Examples of Dalit Christology, such as published by Gurukul Lutheran College and by pastors such as M.R. Arulraja,3 make this clear. M.E. Prabhakar, developing a doctrine for Dalit Christology, insists that Jesus’ ‘… dalitness is the key to the mystery of his divine human identity’. To be ‘in Christ’, necessitates being Dalit because Christ is a Dalit and his Dalitness is ‘symbolised in the cross’.4 The suffering of Christ has become a parallel symbol for the suffering of the Dalits. It should follow that the heroicness of Christ becomes a parallel for the selflessness of the Dalit Christian but Dalit theology does not address the difference between the passive acceptance of being crushed that the Dalit suffers, historically and the voluntary association with The Crushed Ones that the Christ represents. The Dalits protest through their 3 M.R. Arulraja, Jesus the Dalit: Liberation theology by victims of untouchability, an Indian version of apartheid, Secunderbad: Jeevan Institute of Printing, 1996. 4 M.E. Prabhakar, ‘Christology in Dalit Perspective’, V. Devasayaham (ed.) Frontiers of Dalit Theology, Chennai: ISPCK/Gurukul, 1997, p. 414.

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suffering but their protest is confined to their own suffering and not the system that allows it. The Dalit quest for identity will continue because it has such momentum. However, it will not be satisfactorily resolved beyond some intransigent concepts of the abstract potential for a community to be constructive or destructive. A Dalit Christology does as much to illuminate Christology as Dalitism, as will be outlined below. Understanding a Dalit Christology leads theologians to issues of power and violence because these are embedded in the experience of the Dalits and because they are so anarchic in their communal organising. Etymology matters only to theologians with little else to say about Dalit identity, it is a dead end and a dull approach to understanding identity. It is also a logos-centred approach to identifying a pathos-centred people. This contradiction is lost on James Massey, perhaps because he is a theologian and therefore a wordsmith by trade. A more satisfactory approach is needed than a simple matter of ‘finding the words’ to pin down the Dalits. The Dalit movement came into ascendency in the 1970s as both a militant and literary movement of political and cultural resistance. By and large the Dalit movement has been a nonviolent propaganda war that has involved much sacrifice on the part of many activists and an incredible amount of advocacy and hard work from its leaders. It is a formidable and fomenting movement in India and there has been strong and violent reaction from Gods. As we begin to understand what has been happening in the Dalit movement and hear the voices of dissent and protest we see a culture emerging from the shadows of political life. For the Church this provides an important listening opportunity. This is why, after outlining some of the historical moments in the movement and the Churches’ responses to it I turn to Dalit literature for a deeper understanding of who is resisting the oppression of the caste system and how they are doing so. Dalit literature has a form and content quite distinct from caste Hindu culture and proudly so. Not only does it illustrate a particular world but it does so with much pathos and few flourishes: its directive narrative form is reminiscent of those other primitive texts: the gospels. Its implications are no less important. Like Dalit theologians Sathianathan Clarke and Appavoo and sociologist Lancy Lobo we will explore the often hidden religious world of the Dalits – Dalit forms of worship and approaches to conversion. In these we will discover communities well equipped with the tools to resist nonviolently the violence of the state. We will discover that there is much to be gained by a grass roots and unorthodox reimagining of Christian faith from a Dalit perspective that will haul the Church out of her thrall to state and to the religious assumptions of her Victorian legacy. Only indigenous practice can redeem the Church from the Church.

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Dalit Political Movements The Dalit movement became a national and international concern with pressure from activists and literati from Maharashtra, initially under the banner of the Dalit Panthers. The Dalit Sangarshan Samithi (DSS), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Dalit Sena, the Dravida Movement, Sanata Sairik Dal, the Scheduled Caste Federation and others worked to conscientise the Dalits, international agencies and religious bodies to the suffering of those crushed under the racist caste system. It was the Dalit Panthers, in their short-lived ascendancy, who popularised the term ‘Dalit’ for ordinary people.5 The Dalit Panthers, inspired by the Black Panthers of the USA and driven by a popular base of Neo-Buddhists, Communists and middle-class poets and writers from Shudra and Tribal backgrounds formed in 1972, under the leadership of Namdeo Dhasal and J.V. Pawar. However, the group split four times in just five years and failed to find a consensus of approach or inspire the very poorest sections of the Dalit communities.6 Nonetheless, their assertions helped conscientise the masses and inspired the many political and student groups that followed. The choice of name ‘Dalit Panthers’ gives a hint of what this movement was responding to. The Black Panthers, conscious of their humiliating route into America as slaves were reacting to a society that had chosen to ignore their continuing low status. Likewise in India, Dalits were realising that, despite Ambedkar, conversion movements (to Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism) and reservation policy they were still on the margins of political life. Originating in Bihar, the Dalit Sena, formed by Ram Vilas Paswan, claims inspiration from both ends of the political spectrum. Firstly, the right wing theorist, Colonel Amoss, whose fear of communism in sixties America, led him to propose ‘phantom cells’ as a form of leaderless resistance to communist infiltration. Second, the American revolutions’ ‘Committees of Correspondence’ of the second half of the eighteenth century who acted independently, but often communicated freely with other small groups: ‘Each committee was a secret cell that operated totally independently of the other cells – an excellent example of “Leaderless Resistance”’.7 Paswan’s expression of resistance reflects disillusionment with forms of protest that mirror that of the oppressive political elite and are vulnerable to corruption and ‘infiltration’. ‘Leaderless resistance’, is an anarchic and attractive model, however it appears naïve to suppose, firstly, that Paswan does not behave as its leader, second, that a cell system, frees itself from control by society’s media elite, or its own media network. Meanwhile Paswan engages the mainstream democratic process in Gujarat: ‘[Dalits and Muslims] form the most powerful electoral group. If these 5 S. Jayakumar, Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion: Historical Resources for a Contemporary Debate (New Delhi, ISPCK, 1999), p. 5. 6 ‘Murugkar, L., ‘Dalit Panthers: A Militant Movement in Maharashtra’, in James Massey, Indigenous People; Dalits (Delhi, ISPCK, 1998), pp. 98–102. 7 www.dalitstan.org/sena/.

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two communities get united, they can form a Ministry of their own’, he claimed in November 1997 as the Dalit Sena began to catch the imagination of more and more Gujarati Dalits, both rural and urban.8 However, neither, Paswan, nor the BSP, a political wing of the Dalit Parivar, claims to direct, or even approve, individual cells. Anarchic political action resonates with some Dalit groups. By admission, there are militant aspects to the Dalit Parivar.9 The Dalit Parivar, mirrors its nemesis, the Hindu Parivar, by making use of the more violent aspects of Indian politics. Partisan politics, at its most successful, begins at grassroots level. For example, the Sanata Sairik Dal and the Scheduled Caste Federation, whose unity is symbolised by a blue flag decorated with stars and a white sun (symbolising Ambedkar).10 We will give our life for the blue flag Millions will bow before the blue flag If you still plan to fight us, think about it, We will sacrifice all for the blue flag! Whatever Bhim [Ambedkar] wants we will do, We will see our blood flow for the blue flag!11

The hyperbolic language, but simplistic symbolism and commitment among the membership to education and social change, helped conscientise many Dalits. Many of the reformers of the last century have become powerful icons of the ideas that they represented. It is necessary to explore the role of national political ideology in the modern Dalit movement and especially Ambedkar’s role as pioneer and icon of this movement. Ambedkar is assumed to be an authentic voice of Dalit nationalism, because he was a Dalit and committed to his ‘untouchable’ community. However, it may be argued that if Dalit nationalism itself is an oxymoron then Ambedkar represents nothing of Dalits but rather the agenda that pacifies and oppresses them. Dalitness has been abstracted from the community and projected onto the national stage just like many other facets of the South Asian subcontinent – if such an approach lacked credibility when taken by the colonialists there is no reason to suppose that it is a legitimate approach for the colonised or those who suffered the greatest historical oppression before, during and post colonialism.

8 K.S. Shekar, Peshwan Eyes Gujarat: Positions his Dalit Sena as third force, in Indian Express, Thursday 13 November, 1997. 9 www.dalitstan.org/sena/. 10 Moon, Growing Up Untouchable in India, p. 65. 11 Ibid., p. 65.

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Christian Responses to the Dalit Movement The Christian response to the Dalit movement became recognisable in the late 1970s and Dalit theology reached its zenith of popularity between the 1980s and 1990s. It was the RC laity who pioneered the idea that Dalit Christians should legitimately protest against injustice, not from society, but from the Church. Caste discrimination is more overt in RC Churches than Protestant. Among the Protestants Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and the Indian Society for the Propagation of the Gospel have played important roles. From the point of view of the RC Church it was the diocese in Tamil Nadu and Jesuit scholars who have often paved the way. The south Indian Church followed closely after the Dalit Movement asserting an affirming identity for Dalit Christians and the mass of landless Dalits throughout India. The process of developing a Dalit theology formally began in June 1978 when the first National Consultation on the plight of the Christians of Scheduled Caste Origin met in Bangalore. This conference of 200 members represented major protestant denominations as well as Mar Thoma and Roman Catholic leaders. It was the Roman Catholic Bishop’s Conference held soon after that appears to have given permission to the Churches in India to own up to their part in the practice of Caste discrimination and failure to give priority to the poor.12 Stanislaus claims that neither Liberation theology nor any socialist movement inspired the Dalit Christian Liberation Movement. Rather it was the product of amassing protest at local Church level. Latin American Liberation theology, a people’s theology of the 1970s and early 1980s, was the inspiration for much of the theologising to come out of Gurukul Lutheran Theological College (GLTC) during the 1980’s and 1990’s. By the 1990’s Liberation theology stopped being a reflection of a ‘vibrant and organised theological movement’ and individual theologians became engrossed in a detached academic outworking of Liberationist orthodoxy.13 The sudden downturn in Liberationist exegesis is due in part to the lauded success of free market economics; the Marxist critique struggled to keep up, the ‘intellectual climate was no longer favourable to the meta-narrative of liberation’.14 However, I would argue that another source of stagnation for Liberation theology is its unwillingness to take the next step: seeing either violence or development as the only option and ignoring the anarchic nonviolent resistance of Christ. Liberation theology has chosen the wrong biblical motif, the Exodus story and is stuck with a Roman Catholic feudalism that does not allow for such a radical critique without a great deal of momentum in this direction. While Liberation theology is a legitimate source for theologising in India it is not the only tradition effecting Indian theology. Its social and material context is Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, p. 177. Ibid., p. 275. 14 Ibid., p. 278. 12 13

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different too; this widens the gap between Latin American Liberation theology and Dalit theology. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity provides a key starting point for Latin American Liberation theology. The human community, made in the image of God, is meant to be an egalitarian, loving community. Dalit theology, through the work of S. Clarke,15 M.R. Arulraja,16 and others, concentrates on Christology as a means of understanding Dalit experiences of Suffering. A theology of the Holy Trinity forces Dalit theology to look beyond itself and to look beyond ‘The Son’, to relationships with others. The human community is also meant to reflect the attributes of the persons of the Trinity: Dalit theology focuses on Christology and self-renunciation, rather than trinitarianism. Indeed, the concept of the trinity could be rejected in a Dalit context in favour of a polycentric theism – but this may be a step too brave for the conservative theological context of most Dalit theology. Sin is understood in a corporate way by liberationists; it is structural not moral or private. This provides a real contrast to evangelical piety and has more in common with Christian anarchism that focuses on redeeming ‘structures’ and ‘Powers’ rather than individuals. The Dalit Christian Liberation Movement founded in 1987 by Antony Raj was an amalgamation of Dalit Christian protest movements. Dalits were organising hunger strikes, processions and petitions to various dioceses in the Catholic Church to protest against discrimination within the Church. Most dramatically, many hundreds of Dalits were converting to Islam or Hinduism as an ultimate protest against the inertia built up over generations in the Church.17 Rt Revd Masliamani Azariah (Madras), claims that Dalit Theology is an ‘Indian brand of Liberation theology’ rejecting both Western and Hindu categories and theological concepts and a ‘genuine theology of the people’.18 Azariah who has led Dalit protests and become a leading political figure in the Dalit Christian struggle, hopes for an ‘All India National Party of Dalits’ to empower the Dalits in national politics.19 Seminars, conferences, pamphlets and hundreds of books on Dalit Theology were produced during the 1980s and 1990s.20 Gurukul Lutheran Theological College (GLTC), Chennai and the Indian Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (ISPCK), based in New Delhi, have been on the forefront of producing novel theology and bringing exponents of Dalit theology together. GLTC have organised conferences, beginning in 1989 with national seminars on Dalit ideology, which led to the publication of Arvind Nirmal’s Towards a Common Sathianathan Clarke, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation theology in India (New Delhi: OUP, 1998). 16 M.R. Arulraja, Jesus the Dalit: Liberation theology by victims of untouchability, an Indian version of apartheid (Secunderbad: Jeevan Institute of Printing, 1996). 17 L. Stanislaus, The Liberative Mission of the Church Among Dalit Christians (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999), pp. 123–5. 18 Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, p. 174. 19 Stanislaus, The Liberative Mission of the Church Among Dalit Christians, p. 330. 20 Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, p. 180. 15

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Dalit Ideology.21 Since then Summer Institutes at GLTC have led to publications on issues such as Dalit Women’s theology, Ecology, Fundamentalism and dialogue.22 ISPCK, under the editorship of James Massey has published the works of Massey on history and identity of the Dalits and of John Webster on Dalit Christianity. Massey has since set up his own centre for Dalit studies in New Delhi. GLTC and ISPCK are by no means the limit of Dalit theological discourse in India at present but represent guiding concepts and paradigms of Dalit theology. Dalit theology emerged as a dominant hermeneutic for interpreting and applying scripture in the 1980’s and 1990’s. The Christian Dalit Liberation Movement was formed in the midst of this theological turning point, in 1984 in Madras.23 According to Bishop Azariah, ‘the emerging Dalit theology is genuinely a theology of the people’,24 not the construction of foreigners or of an Indian elite, but of the Dalits themselves and for the Dalits themselves, in the tradition of Liberation theologies across the globe. As Franklyn J. Balasundaram, a Dalit convert, has pointed out, Latin American Liberation theology is an imported theology so cannot reflect the caste factor of the Indian context without emerging as a new theology in India.25 Former Pastor to Dalits, J. Webster, identifies three categories of Dalit theology: theology about, theology for and theology from the Dalits.26 The former two appear in greatest volume, the latter in least because it relies on the prior conscientisation and literacy of the Dalits. Dalit theology contributes uniquely to the family of Liberation theologies in that it deals in the context of caste rather than Marxian class terms.27 However, Bishop Azariah maintains that it is still a Liberation theology and part of a wider family of majority world theologies.28 Many Dalits have already experienced Marxist politics, particularly in the southern states, like many social movements, caste bias holds Marxism back from creating significant social change for the very poorest.29 In other words, because Marxism does not take caste into consideration, it cannot address the revolutionary needs of the outcastes. 21 Arvind P. Nirmal (ed.), Towards a Common Dalit Ideology (New Delhi: GLTC/ ISPCK, N. D.). 22 Devasahayam (ed), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, p. ix. 23 D. Rasquinha, ‘A Brief Historical Analysis of the Emergence of Dalit Christian Theology’, in Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection, Vol. 66, No. 5, May 2002, p. 357. 24 Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, p. 174. 25 F.J. Balasundaram, ‘Dalit Theology and Other Theologies’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, p. 255. 26 James Webster, ‘From Indian Church to Indian Theology: An attempt at Theological Construction’, in Nirmal (ed.), A Reader in Dalit Theology, p. 106. 27 Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, p. 174. 28 Ibid., p. 176. 29 Abraham Ayrookuzhiel, ‘Dalits Move Towards The Ideology of Nationality’, in Nirmal (ed.), A Reader in Dalit Theology, p. 172.

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M. Azariah highlights key Dalit theologians and their themes, the late Rev. Dr. A.P. Nirmal, the Rev. Fr. Anthony Raj, the late Rev. Dr. A.M. Abraham Ayrookzhiel, the Rev. M.R. Arul Raja and himself.30 The emphases of each of these theologians, respectively, are, Hermeneutics and Pathos, Disobedience, Dalit Culture, Dalit Christology and Dalit History. Azariah’s contribution to the Church of south India is his success in turning this theology into practice and the exposition of a certain Dalit nationalism inspired by Ambedkar. While Azariah identifies himself as a leading writer on Dalit history he mentions more prolific writers, Nirmal, Ambedkar, Webster and Massey,31 who have formulated the basic assumptions of Dalit theology. Latin American Liberation theology, with an emphasis on grass roots hermeneutics; God’s preferential Option for the poor; a commitment to view poverty as a scandal; and its biblical motifs have proved useful points of departure for Dalit Christian academics. Some Christian theologians began to record and interpret Dalit readings of the Bible and generate a Dalit Christology, numerous Bible Studies and a theological understanding of Dalit worship. However, In Latin America a grass roots theology has not fully emerged. Writers like Boff have systematised theology according to the dominant themes of his tradition and sought to codify Liberation theology. The emphasis on continuous reflexivity – the hermeneutic circle – has been lost to the Western logo-centric approach. Developmentalism and globalisation has also affected the popularity of a Marxian critique such as Liberation theology. While Liberation theology has had an incredible impact on social and theological priorities around the world it has served out its purpose and stagnated. Critics of Liberation theology have rejected its Marxian approach and its tendency to support violent change – its central motif, the Exodus from Egypt, supports a thesis of redemptive violence. Dalit Narratives In Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra cultural translation of identity found its expression through literature, novels and short stories. Some Dalits are re-inventing the media, especially high cultural forms of it and by doing so are protesting against high caste measures of cultural value. The Dalit does not have to rely on external approval for her literature because Dalit identity allows the oppressed community to approve their own understanding of what constitutes Dalit literature. The reinvention of history and literature can only be legitimised by its assessment by the communities of the oppressed. As such Dalit literature is anti-authoritarian – anarchic – because it challenges in both form and content the right of the other to rule. Dalit Protest literature first emerged in Maharashtra in the 1970s. One of the founders of the Dalit Panthers, Arjun Dangle, edited one of its most influential anthologies, Homeless in my Land: Translations from Modern Marathi Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, pp. 182–3. Ibid., p. 178.

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Short Stories. More recently Vasant Moon, who has edited much of Ambedkar’s writings and Bama, a Dalit-turned-Nun who rejected the hypocrisy of the Church, have written much acclaimed biographies of Dalit experience. All of these are discussed below, drawing out the authentic concerns and visions of Dalit writers. S. Anand defines Dalit literature as that produced ‘by Dalits in a conscious, defined, modern sense’.32 However, novelist and political polemicist, Arundhati Roy, who is not a Dalit, cautions that Dalit literature should go beyond ‘Dalits finding a voice’ so that Dalit experience should inform normative realism in all Indian literature.33 Most Dalit literature is autobiographical34 as would be expected of a ‘newly literate community’35 but the style, or genre, of Dalit autobiography has shrunk away from formalisation. This tendency is a strength of authentically subversive literature, affirming heterogeneity, refusing to close down debate, again a criteria for anarchist literature.36 More important than a codified style of Dalit writing is its understood purpose, or reflection on its impact on literature and politics. Foreign students (especially of Indian origin) may worry about its negative portrayal of the homeland;37 some high-caste readers reject its form, or its content; a few feel guilty. Dalit readers may be empowered, ashamed, or critical – reflecting internalised high-caste values.38 While Dalit literature is making headway in formal college courses it is not a fashionable option;39 perhaps the most common reaction to Dalit literature is to ignore it. There are still limits to the Dalitness of Dalit literature: autonomous Dalit publishing has yet to emerge,40 it excludes the poorest Dalits – the illiterates: their stories are not yet heard. In that it violates literary conventions, Dalit literature is often a subversive genre: Bama’s thematic approach, the hyperbole in some Marathi tales and the prominence of thought and emotion. Literary Anarchist, John Moore writes that subversive literature must not be ‘severed from subversive practice’.41 Presently, Dalit literature is linked to the international Dalit movement; originally it was associated with the militant group – the Dalit Panthers. Whether Dalit literature, entering the mainstream and English press, remains a counterculture prophetic, praxis-related device remains to be seen. How much Dalit literature relies on academic acceptance as a yardstick of success will dictate 32 S. Anand, ’Introduction’, in S. Anand (ed.), Touchable Tales: Publishing and Reading Dalit literature (Cennai: Navayana, 2003), p. 1. 33 A. Roy, in Anand (ed.), Touchable Tales, pp. 17–18. 34 Ravikumar in Anand (ed.), Touchable Tales, p. 7. 35 Ibid., p. 7. 36 John Moore, ‘Public Secret: Fredy Perlman and the Literature of Subversion’, in Purkis & Bowen (eds), Twenty-first Century Anarchism, p. 128. 37 A. Mukherjee and A.P. Mukherjee in Anand (ed.), Touchable Tales, p. 18. 38 Ibid., p. 18. 39 K. Satyanarayana in Anand (ed.), Touchable Tales, p. 15. 40 Ravikumar in Anand (ed.), Touchable Tales, p. 8. 41 J. Moore, ‘Public Secret: Fredy Perlman and the Literature of Subversion’, p. 130.

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whether it remains safe from domestication. Dalit literature is shocking but there is scope for it to realise more anger and greater horror – to defy the liberal media to publish it. Maharashtran Dalit Narrative Maharashtran Dalit short stories reflect the ideological priorities of Dalits in both rural and urban communities. A selection edited by Arjun Dangle offers some such narratives for study. The Poisoned Bread, by Bandhumadhar, offers an explicit critique of the relationship between the landless labouring community and the exploitative landowners. It is rich with pathos: ‘My heart bleeds like a wounded bird as I recall’, says the narrator.42 The payment for a day labourer by a young boy and his grandfather becomes a symbol of the responsibility of the Dalits to take responsibility for their own emancipation from the relationship. The piece of mouldy bread, begged from the animals is gratefully received by the grandfather, but quickly kills him off. In his final moments the grandfather is made conscious of the full horror of his exploitation, as if for the first time, ‘The poisonous bread will finally kill the very humanness of man …’43 By accepting the protection of the landowner the Dalits have also learned to accept the perpetual right to violence against them at his whim. The boy plays the part of mouthpiece for Ambedkarism: ‘But why should it go on? Even a lion locked in a cage all is life forgets how to hunt. … What achievement can we ever boast of? All that comes from begging is more begging.’44 As is often the case in these tales, the innocence of the young gives them a superior, more revolutionary perspective than their elders. Youth and disobedience are celebrated. The Storyed House, by Waman Hoval, again shows how the younger generation represents hope for the Dalit movement. When family elder Bayaji retires to his village with enough money to build a two-storeyed house he is dissuaded from doing so by the caste Patils of the village. Nonetheless, he builds a concealed temporary first floor to the new home. The enraged Patil’s torch the new house and Bayaji dies in the fire, trying to save his pictures of the Buddha and B.R. Ambedkar. Again, in his final breath, the senior Dalit regrets his lack of resolve and expresses his regret. At the funeral service his sons set about rebuilding the house as a monument to their father and to their own hopes for liberation from Casteism. ‘We’re starting on a house, not one with a concealed first floor but a regular twostoreyed house’, replied the eldest son of Bayaji. And the six brothers resumed with determination the work of digging the foundation of a two-storeyed house.45

44 45 42 43

Bandhumadhar, ‘The Poisoned Bread’ in Dangle (ed.), Homeless in My Land, p. 1. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 5. W. Haval, ‘The Storeyed House’, in Dangle (ed.), Homeless in My Land, p. 16.

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The right to property and the responsible control and use of property is affirmed in this narrative. Indeed, private property becomes the central symbol of hope and protest in the story. Promotion, by Arjun Dangle, is the story of an urban Dalit family man, Waghmare, who has been promoted in civil administration ahead of his caste peer because of his reservation status. He is portrayed as someone who is sensitive about the means of his promotion and tends to apologise for it by letting his caste juniors take advantage of him. Since his promotion he has tried to play down his role in protest movements and considers changing his surname to hide his Dalit identity. As an example of how far he will go to conceal his Dalitness, the story relates his frustration when he discovers that his wife invited poorer relatives to their house while he was at work, thus shaming them in front of the neighbours. Again it is a child who conscientised the adult in the story. When his son tells of being shoved for drinking from a caste boys water pot he sees it as the last straw and ‘crashes helplessly’ into despair.46 The story relates Dalit ambivalence to the reservation system as a means of social upliftment. Rather than celebrating his right to preferential promotion, Waghmare is stigmatised further by it. His social condition is improved but the concession further indebts him to his caste peers and to the state. Vasant Moon’s Marathi Dalit autobiography illustrates the values of an urban Dalit community. Like other Dalit novels, Moon takes a thematic approach as much as chronological. The narrative wends its way through time, rather than moving directly through stages of life. Physical, geographical, even meteorological environment appear primary locators of identity in this novel. As the translator, Eleanor Zelliot points out, ‘every tree, every fruit, every nook and cranny of the world around the vasti [settlement]’, plays a part in the story.47 But if nature, harsh and nurturing, is central to a Dalit worldview, so is violence. Whether it is the playful violence of children,48 the political violence of a Dalit politician, struggling for his democratic rights,49 or gangs of Dalit Samata Sainik Dal (SSD) youths deciding to ‘permanently settle’ a petty dispute with RSS youth by beating them with sticks and swords.50 A characteristic of the vasti that Moon returns to during the novel is the love of wrestling and the value, in men, of physical strength and presence. Women were generally subject to domestic violence to the point that it became an integral part of marriage arrangements to discover if a wife could cope with her husband’s meanness.51 Yet women were able to hold high

48 49 50 51 46 47

A. Dangle, ‘Promotion’ in Dangle (ed.), Homeless in My Land, pp. 22–6. Eleanor Zelliot, ‘Introduction’, Moon, Growing Up Untouchable in India, p. ix. Moon, Growing Up Untouchable in India, p. 4. Ibid., Ch. 7. Ibid., pp. 73–4. Ibid., p. 163.

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positions in politics: Radhabai, a barely literate Dalit woman, became one of the most respected political speakers and debaters known to Moon and his friends.52 The anti-hero becomes legend in the context of a Marathi vasti: stories often centre on peculiar personalities and achievements, jokers, or strange behaviour and form.53 Those who subverted the rules became legends beyond their achievements. The thieves of this settlement were famous. The name of Nagya the Bandit was known through the whole of Madhya Pradesh for great bravery. The police would throw Nagya in jail with his arms in shackles. But he would disappear during the night. Only the chains would be found.54

Yet fun and feasting were major sources of solidarity too. The Dalits would celebrate the festivals of all the religions of their neighbours until they made a political decision not to support Hindu festivals. Groups would travel the small area of the vast singing, playing drums, challenging others to sing also.55 Food would be shared equally between the different families and sub-castes, through the organisation of the panchayat.56 Growing up Untouchable in India does not come across as protest literature, rather literature of a community that has learned to protest. There are few examples of caste violence against the Dalits in this novel. They are always underplayed set against the affirming stories of Dalit pride and self-worth. The Dalits of Moon’s upbringing is indignant rather than impassioned. The novel is a celebration of collective action, under the banner of Ambedkarism, leading to resurgence in conscientisation among the downtrodden, but by no means crushed, community. Tamil Dalit Literature Bama, a Dalit woman brought up in a poor rural community, published her first book, Karukku in 1992. It is autobiographical, although chapters are thematic not strictly chronological. Karukku is an exposé of the oppression of the Dalits by the Church and by high-caste communities. A Karukku is a leaf, serrated on both side and represents, among other things, the two edged sword of Hebrews (Heb. 4: 10) as it penetrates between truth and lies.57 Bama’s village and surrounding area is introduced, primarily, as an ecology: only disrupted by the ‘better off castes’ with their ‘fields and boundaries’ and ‘fishing rights’.58 Bama shows how Dalitness is at odds with this privatisation of 54 55 56 57 58 52 53

Ibid., p. 70. Ibid., pp. 4, 5, 50 and 52. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 80. Bama, Karukku (Mumbai: Macmillan India Limited, 2000). Ibid., pp. 1–3.

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resources that should benefit everyone and how such things are one of the many sources of high-caste control and suppression. Land ownership is something foreign to the Dalit experience; they have only the privilege of working on the land of others, or scavenging from it. The response of the Dalit community is to re-appropriate: secretly stealing fish, flowers and other goods. Those most adept at stealing are held up as legends within the Dalit community and the act is made a virtuous indulgence: ‘there is a special taste to food snatched by stealth’.59 Through the example of thief and food, Bama introduces and celebrates the archetypal anti-hero.60 Christian names are usurped by the community; displaced by cruel or silly nicknames, many of these tell stories of the individual’s antics or physical peculiarities: And so I could go on with names like Black-mouth, Nezhuchaan (Staggerer), Belly-button, Kaaman (Jack of all trades), Bandan (Snatcher), Vidvi (Idiot), Naadodi (Wanderer), Idiot and Half-ear.61

Some of the stories are dark and brutal, reminding the reader how commonplace violence is in the Dalit experience. Bama shows how violence can be state-sponsored as well as spontaneous inter-caste prejudice. Police harassment: beatings, theft, imprisonment, bribery and misogyny, show how this supposedly protective institution traps the modern Dalit. Bama’s own education involves a constant struggle against low expectations within her own family and among the high-caste schools and college communities. The Roman Catholic Church is shown to use and abuse the Dalits too: they are beaten by the nuns, forced to attend meetings and give offerings, taught to fear their own immorality and the wrath of God and his agent – the Devil. At the same time they are sent away empty handed by the priests when most in need. So Bama gradually rejects through her narrative, the fundamental social institutions of state: protective,62 educational,63 and religious.64 Her commentary on the RC institutions is embittered, as she experiences the attitudes ingrained in convent life from the perspective of a novice Nun and closet Dalit: ‘they were truly whited sepulchres; as Jesus said’.65 A novel written by a Tamilian Dalit also typifies the generational gap between younger and older Dalits. Beasts of Burden, by Imayam, narrates the struggles of a Roman Catholic washerwoman who has grown up working giving her ritual and functional services for payment in kind. Her status is almost impossibly low, 61 62 63 64 65 59 60

Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., pp. 4–11. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., chapter 3. Ibid., chapter 2. Ibid., chapter 7. Ibid., p. 89.

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she lives outside the Dalit colony which itself is outside the village; she not even allowed in to other Dalit homes. As cash and commercialisation begin to alter even rural society her sons seek ways of greater autonomy, while their mother goes to the Church for representation. Translator, Lakshmi Holmstrom, in her introduction to the novel, explains the central theme of the novel. The worst oppression of the caste system, Imayam suggests, is that his protagonists are made totally dependent upon it or their living. Thus he presents Arokkyam as trapped within the dilemma of her changing times. She has neither the skills nor the economic independence that would enable her to take risks and to take the responsibility to change.66

The priority for Dalit liberation is presented as freedom from dependence on others in order to achieve freedom to be equal to the rest of her community. The tale even parodies her dependency on the divine, with her regular and hopeful petitions to Saint Anthony to return her to her dependent and subservient status and meagre rights to ritual and occupational handouts.67 The real trap for Arokkyam is her belief that the caste system which oppresses her is necessary to sustain and protect her. Literature of Subversion: The Dalit Struggle From a few translations of Dalit literature into English currently available certain themes are already emerging as prominent: the integral relationship between the community and their historic environment; the potency and awesomeness of nature as something that both gives and takes away life; an understanding of social boundaries that are always in reference to other people – so that private property is both a security and infringement. Villains, tricksters and oddities are the stuff of legend and respect in Dalit lore. This emphasis on the greatness of the antihero illustrates how much Dalits see subversion as a positive moral value. Time is neither chronological nor cyclical in Dalit narrative, it is somewhere between these two. Both Bama and Moon choose to organise their novels according to themes running generally from past to present but not exclusively. Children are regularly the voice of wisdom in Dalit literature, urgently protesting or conscientising the dulled adult mind. Children are so highly respected specifically because of their willingness to subvert the adult world. Women are guardians of myth in the family, yet objects of patriarchy and violence: worshipped by their sons, maltreated by their husbands yet a strong voice in Dalit society. Violence against and on behalf of the Dalits is a repeated theme in Dalit narrative: both domestic and communal violence are accepted as part of the frustration of being Dalit and responding to poverty. Dalit narrative is passionate and hyperbolic at times, coldly prosaic at other points. Suffering is an essentially Dalit experience and protest is born of that. L. Holmstrom, ‘Introduction’, in Imayam, Beasts of Burden, p. iv. For example: Imayam, Beasts of Burden, 159, 161, 162.

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Politics has become increasingly centred on identity and community – communalism. Dalits have become aware of the opportunity afforded them by modern democracy to vote and act according to their communal identity. It follows that politicians have become aware of the Dalit as a valuable vote-bank and therefore attempted to co-opt them. People outside the social systems: living beyond village boundaries, generally isolated, are exposed to external pressures to fill the identity vacuum with the agenda of the Other. Modern secularisation has driven an increasingly localised sense of identity and made defining and identifying the community more important than ever. The Other has become overwhelming, the Self has become overbearing to compensate. Thus there has been an increasing in ‘re-conversion’ a loaded term used by Hindutva to suggest that Dalits, who have become Buddhists, Muslims, or Christians, once were ‘Hindus’ and they should return to their proper place in the Hindu community. Sanskritisation of Dalits and Tribals through education, media and politics has eroded the Dalit franchise to some extent as they give up their identity to further a right-wing Brahminic agenda. Dalits are subverting Hinduism through conversion to other religions while subverting other religions by holding onto Hindu symbols and claims to Hindu identity. At the same time conversion to Buddhism, Islam and Christianity has continued, as has the secularisation of Dalits. Most radically the attention to Dalitness has given the poor and marginalised a self-ascribed notion of identity that is flexible and empowering. Dalit identity has become organised into fractures of political communities, literary protests, violence and development. An increasingly influential anarchic group – the Dalit Sena has illustrated the resonance of de-centralised, grass roots movements with Dalit communities. The BSP has shown how a party that intends to represent the Dalits, cannot hope to do so without making concession to the BJP and thus failing the Dalit communities. Conversion to Christianity has been problematic and has alienated Christian Dalits from the Dalit struggle. Christians have experienced both social upliftment and political discrimination as a result of their conversion. By refusing to acknowledge their Dalitness they have reinforced the sense of shame at being Dalit that caste prejudice allows. Dalit history is primarily a political tool and as such has failed to go far beyond the polemical anti-Brahminic Aryan Invasion Theory. Dalit historical analysis has not moved forward since the 1940s while Hindutva history with funding and political force both in India and the USA is gaining momentum and some credibility. Political involvement has not empowered the Dalits but reinventing politics, through leaderless resistance, shows how some Dalits have subverted the entire model of government. Dalit narrative is being translated into more languages and is becoming fashionable among students in the USA and Europe. There are few Dalit stories in English but plans for many more make this a useful form for international protest against untouchability. Dalit narrative shows the importance of ecology, community and subversion in Dalit thinking. This suggests that Dalitness has an affinity with anarchism. However, as will become evident it does not have great

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correspondence with much of Dalit theology. However, the Dalit Rights movement has forced the Church to begin to put its own house in order. Dalit Christians have joined the struggle for liberation and have a wealth of untold narrative showing Christianity to have failed to deliver the freedom the first converts sought. Dalit Christian leaders discovered the need to look around for a model of Christianity that could answer the protests of the members; Latin American Liberation theology seemed the most useful paradigm for Dalit Christian theology. Attitudes to religious affiliation, politics and to the written and spoken word reveal the communitarian and subversive spirit of Dalitism. Dalits are naturally communitarian anarchists, rather than Marxist-socialists. Dalit Worship as Acted Resistance Some of the most useful anthropological work on studying Dalit worship has been done by contemporary progressive Indian Christians. Dalit Christians are going through the process of discovering the radical roots of both primitive Christianity and primitive Dalit religion. Dalit theologians J.T. Appavoo and Sathianathan Clarke are examples. Clarke asserts the exclusivist conservatism of rural Dalit congregations to be a show of orthodoxy for the pastor’s benefit. He sought to understand Dalit religion in its own right in order to better understand Dalit Christians and their relation to it. Appavoo is a Dalit Christian who, as priest, re-visited Dalit religion as a source of his own spirituality. Worship is an important socio-theological and therefore eschatological expression in Dalit communitarianism but the logocentric Western approach to theology impoverishes this.68 The central act in Dalit worship is fellowship around food. The Dalit approach to fellowship around food challenges the sociotheological implications of both Brahminic Prashad and conservative models of the Eucharist: while prashad is ‘begged from god’, the Dalit community meal brought as an offering to the community. Equal sharing and classless participation are consistent hallmarks of Dalit worship.69 Again in contrast to the Church model where difference of power and purity are often reinforced rather than broken down in the celebration and distribution of the Eucharist. No priest officiates at Dalit fellowship around food and all models of leadership are service-oriented. Once I asked a Dalit, why they had postponed the worship. He said that one member of the community had very important business. I said, ‘Why don’t you leave that person and worship?‘ He said, ‘That will be like cutting our fingers.‘

68 James Theophilius Appavoo, ‘Dalit Ways of Theological Expression’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, p. 283. 69 Ibid., p. 284.

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Thus the Dalits when they worship are one family with an organic unity. Their Deity is the mother of that family.70

This organic unity gives a clue to the theological polycentrism of Dalit theology. The community is indivisibly ‘One’ but with many centres, similarly to God. While the statist religions moved to a greater homogenisation of God to reflect the centralisation of government Dalit worship often does the opposite thus celebrating the decentralisation of both God and politics. Dalit worship emphasises local kinship without reference to national kinship. This is worship with a radical antipatriotic and prophetic voice. A Paraiyar Dalit can select, switch and combine devotion to a number of deities during her lifetime. The devotion to a deity need not be fenced in to bounded loyalty which continues regardless and need not be rationalised.71 Furthermore, festivals are both cyclical and spontaneous, arising out of need or agreement.72 All this gives rise to a religion in which renewed order is constantly arising and being pulled down by the whole community. It is both a religion of continuity, respecting the traditions of ancestors and a religion of spontaneity which is therefore self-subverting. Centralised control and codified morality are alien to this fluid joyful form of celebration of divine community. Mother India has no place at the Dalit feast. Dalit mutuality in worship is an important reminder that local cohesion comes about partly in the constant revisiting and rehearsing of the symbolic together and that, without the whole communities’ presence in some way, such a re-narration is weakened. All communities have ritual symbols that either reinforce the atomisation of society or its cohesion in different ways. Atomisation leads to exploitation but cohesion along the lines of a Dalit community leads to the possibility of liberation because the community is liberative. Patriarchy is rife even among rural Dalit communities. Like all patriarchal societies women are not actively considered to be human in the same way that men are and so the process of dehumanisation of the most marginalised goes on even within a marginal community. Nonetheless the Dalit community has its own internal resources with which to challenge patriarchy once named as a social evil. Anarchist theorist Beltrán Roca points out that ‘the enlightenment placed the individual at the centre of its concept of “rights”’.73 Religion often plays an important role in serving the oppressed classes in their desire to subvert illegitimate power. In reinforcing collective acting, play-acting and decision making, Dalit worship subverts the individualism of enlightenment systems helping safeguard

Ibid., p. 286. Sathianathan Clarke, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation

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Theology in India (Delhi: OUP, 1998), p. 73. 72 Ibid., p. 73. 73 Beltrán Roca, ‘The Shadows of the Enlightenment: Some Foucaultian Perspectives on the French Law and the Veil’, Anarchist Studies 14, no. 1 (2006), p. 33.

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communities from the tyranny of the charismatic or otherwise powerful individual or sub-group. Charismatic spontaneity is evident and located in particularly gifted Saamiyaars74 or in randomly gifted dancers or Saamiyaadis75 at cultic festivals. The latter is most pertinent since it does involve a permanent priestly role of translator of a divine will but can be any member of the community for a brief moment. Devotees are ‘transitorily possessed’ by the goddess and under her influence dance and utter oracles to the community.76 Appavoo points out that the Dalit deity is not ‘chained to the “symbol”’77 because of its transitory mode of visitation onto random community members: ‘[For Sanskrit religion] the deity is the possession of the priest, whereas in the Dalit religion the worshippers are in the possession of the deity.’78 Since Clarke does not detail the content of these oracles it is useful to compare this event with those described by theologian Aloysius Pieres. Pieris takes seriously the need to theologise from a Buddhist perspective. While Pieris’ study is based on a Buddhist village in Sri Lanka it provides material for theologising from an explicitly Dalit Buddhist perspective as well. Pieris tells the story of an exorcism he witnessed in a rural Buddhist community. The aim of the elaborate rite was to expose a deception against the community. In this instance the priest reveals that a local grocer has been cheating people by selling them damaged milk cartons at full price – the money-demon is ridiculed and the injustice is exposed, ‘calling the devil by its name’.79 Although the grocer is not present, simply by naming the sin the community is set free from its power. Appavoo also confirms that there is often room for protest in Dalit ritual as the people use the oracular event as opportunity to denounce oppression.80 This role of mediator of sanction is spontaneous and de-linked from centralised power. Barclay makes this important distinction between two types of religions: ‘those religious sanctions which require human mediation and those which are “automatic”’.81 Dalit religion operates sanctions that fall into the latter category and, according to Barclay’s 74 Saamiyaars are individual charismatic oracles not elected or hereditary but discerned by the community in response to a sense of vocation. 75 Saamiyaadis perform the same role, or similar, to the Saamiyaars but may only perform this function at a single event in their lives. One is a Saamiyaadi briefly in a moment of ritual ecstasy. 76 Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, pp. 87–8. 77 Appavoo, ‘Dalit Religion’, in Massey (ed.), Indigenous People: Dalits (New Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), p. 117. 78 Ibid., p. 117. 79 A. Pieris, ‘Prophetic Humour and Exposure of Demons’, Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection, 60, no. 5 (May 1996), pp. 311–14. 80 Appavoo, ‘Dalit Religion’, p. 118. 81 Harold Barclay, People without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy (London: Kahn and Averill, 1990), p. 30.

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measure are compatible with a direct challenge to the nation state model. Add to this the example of the Madiga priestess who, when possessed by the goddess Matangi ‘rushes about spitting on those who in ordinary circumstances would almost choose death rather than to suffer such pollution’ while she curses them for their enslavement of her community.82 Rajkumar, using a radical interpretation of the story of Jesus exorcising the Gerasene demoniac points out that this sort of resistance through demon possession is limited because it isolates the individual from the rest of the oppressed community and the behaviour is co-opted into the traditions of the oppressor. He argues that such practices need to be re-thought in ways that lead to communal transformation and resistance in ways that articulate permanent change.83 At the end of a major Dalit festival the entire community joins together in spontaneous play, throwing coloured water on each other, eating and generally messing around. There is no respect for age or sex in this play and it serves to unite the colony in unruly mischief.84 Throwing colourful water is also part of Hindu tradition at the time of Hori. There is spontaneity, ritual and some of the virtue of carnival that Mikhail Bakhtin reminds us of: the use of mutually mocking play and discord to temporarily suspend all forms of gender, sub-caste and economic disparity allows Dalits to momentarily hold up a vision of a ruler-less and joyful future. Again we see the prophetic voice through a moment of joyful, worshipful and corporate acting out of resistance to the state something rarely present in the Christian major festivals of Easter and Christmas yet present in their gospel narrative if only an appropriate hermeneutic were used. Clarke proposes that theology offers the critique for interaction that goes on between the Dalit community and the Divine.85 This approach takes the emphasis of construction of theology far from the theologian and places it with the particular community.86 Clarke emphasises ‘living collectively under the Divine’.87 Corporate responses to God’s involvement with the community create Dalit Theology. The response affirms God’s active involvement in the community and the community’s desire to express its relationship with God. This affirmation contradicts the Vedic tradition that the Dalits are beneath God’s interest and have no license to interact with the Divine. God as matriarch – a dominant female personality – is evident in Dalit theology and makes sacred the ideals of extended family and mutual responsibility. The consort-free femaleness of God also acts to some extent as an antidote to the 82 Wilber Theodore Elmore, Dravidian Gods in Modern Hinduism: A Study of the Local and Village Deities of Southern India (Madras: CLS, 1925), p. 25, quoted in Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation, p. 132. 83 Rajkumar, Dalit Theology and Dalit Liberation, pp. 132–6. 84 Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, p. 84. 85 Ibid., p. 2. 86 Ibid., p. 28. 87 Ibid., p. 28.

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otherwise patriarchal tendency of Dalit life. God, in turn, is both female and male; God is both parent and child. Priesthood is alien to this idea of community a mediator between parent and child would not make sense. Appavoo claims there is ‘no priestcaste’88 among Dalits but this is too generous a position. However, the assertion that the priestly function is often performed on rotation and by men and women equally suggests a model of leadership that deliberately protects the community from centralisation of cultic power. Although Clarke often refers to the role of a priest in religious ritual it is important to note that what is meant is very different from the Christendom schema of Priest as executor of the divine will of the state. The priest in the Dalit context is shaped in his actions entirely by the will of the community and holds a status either beneath or equal to the community as a whole. Furthermore, animal sacrifices are shared equally between all members of the community rather than given to a cultic leadership as was the case with temple-Judaism. Major Dalit festivals are funded collectively89 and organised by consensus90 of the whole colony. Where particular roles are assigned they are roles that are subservient to the corporate will of the colony. A ‘priest’ is directed constantly during ceremonies by well-meaning heckling community members.91 Ward contrasts this emerging orderliness with western expectations of how order is rather maintained. There is an order imposed by terror, there is an order enforced by bureaucracy (with the policeman in the corridor) and there is an order which evolves from the fact that we are gregarious animals capable of shaping our own destiny. When the first two are absent the third is infinitely more human and humane form of order and has an opportunity to emerge.92

This means that meaning and practice are constantly being negotiated and the shape and meaning of the colony is the product of the whole community’s spiritual and political sense of well-being. In this process we find an example of Proudhon’s principle that liberty, not the state legislature, is the mother of order. Meanwhile, theologian George Oomen notes that the ‘witch doctors’ of the Pulaya Dalits used their powers of sorcery primarily to bring harm to landlords and bosses: Pulayas believed in the all pervasive dominion of the spirits on human affairs and held the sorcerers in awe and esteem. The upper castes dreaded these agents of the demons and the ghosts. Some social control over the excesses of the

90 91 92 88 89

Appavoo, ‘Dalit Religion’, p. 120. Ibid., p. 120. Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, p. 125. Ibid., pp. 81–4. Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action (London: Freedom Press, 1982), p. 37.

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high caste landlords was exercised through the threat of Pulaya black magic in Travancore.93

For these Dalits the spiritual and political are integral to one world view and an act of dissent in one dimension equates entirely to an act of rebellion in the other. Importantly, their oppressors make the same equation. The question of how far these acts of supernatural revolt can be pushed remains open. The use of magic as a means of theatrically or covertly sourcing power back from a ruling community offers an inviting source of creative resistance for any community. The Dalit Drum offers just an icon of creedal dissent. For Clarke, the Drum ‘depicts the core of [Dalit] religious activity’ and is a symbol of ‘emancipatory theography’.94 In other words, it connects the Dalits with the divine and with the heritage of pre-Hindu spirituality. It is at the service of both outcaste and caste community, but it is also an exclusively Dalit symbol of relationship with the feminine divinity.95 As a tool of social and spiritual cohesion the Drum is used, with different rhythms in various settings: for auspicious processions; to signify blessing and the benediction of the goddesses’ presence; to invoke and inspire the goddess to display and manifest her power among the devotees; to communicate news to neighbouring villages; to drum up a party atmosphere.96 This is especially typical of south Indian Paraiyars, but it illustrates how Dalit symbols can go beyond the visual and verbal and can express more than a reconstructive history of the Dalits ever could. Clarke makes two suggestions regarding the relevance of this theographic enterprise: the beating Drum is not concerned with apologetics and semantics of creeds and formulas of faith yet it is a concrete affirmation of a Divine concern for the Dalits. Furthermore, in its ambiguity, the use of the Drum allows for myriad interpretations; it is pluralistic in intent.97 Clarke claims that the ‘resistance and contestation of the religious legitimacy of the dominant caste communities’ is in evidence in Dalit worship but that this is done in a way that communicates ’Compliance’.98 In other words, Dalits give the impression of passive acceptance of religious homogenisation while subverting and reclaiming their own myths and structures. He goes on to argue that ‘overt mimicking’ of the religion of the oppressors can act both as ‘fertile ground for the germination of resistive strategies’. Perhaps by this Clarke means that satire and subversion of the text of oppression is incorporated into the religion of the Dalits. 93 George Oomen, ‘Re-reading Tribal and Dalit Conversion Movements: The Case of the Malayarayans and Pulayas of Kerala’, Religion-Online, http://www.religion-online.org/ showarticle.asp?title=1120 (accessed October 1, 2008). 94 Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, p. 109. 95 Ibid., p. 119. 96 Ibid., pp. 113–18. 97 Ibid., pp. 198–9. 98 Ibid., pp. 129–30.

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Comparable evidence can be seen in early Christian documents that subvert the language of the Roman Empire but in the latter case it was rarely covert. Dalit worship reinforces leaderless mutuality through normative yet fluid rites and spontaneous mystic experiences. The relationship between religion and land also suggests that private ownership of property is anathema to the indigenous rural Dalit community. The need for the whole community to be present for corporate worship underlines the responsibility of the group to the individual and vice versa and since worship and shared food fellowship are integral to one another the total corporeality of worship equals an economic corporate being that subverts modern economic and competitive models of both belonging and resourcing. The role of the mystic in worship acts both to signify the availability of oracular knowledge to the whole community and as a means of funnelling messages that challenge imbalances of power that may have crept into the life of the community. Religious Conversion as Resistance to Co-option Dalits have a complex, liberal and fluid set of loyalties to deities and religions based largely on aesthetics, an understanding of the efficacy of the God and a neighbourly loyalty to the other as well as to kin.99 The arithmetic of Dalit cosmology is not for rationalising either. Clarke finds that if a Dalit is asked how many deities there are the same will reply variously ‘one’, ‘seven’ or list any number of named Gods.100 The goddess is both one and all in all; rather than rely on a systematic theology Dalits have complex narratives and ambivalent language and action with which to move their notions of spiritual meaning. This is an exciting and deviant approach to theology that refuses to be contained by the more controlled theology of the village and its Brahminic text-based hegemony.101 No one tells a Dalit how to worship, she is led by both kin loyalty and personal preference. This local yet multivalent approach to worship and loyalty feeds into a particular approach to conversion that is alien to the western mindset – prejudiced as it is by Christian models of conversion. The most conspicuous form of religious phenomena with a deliberately political intention in the Indian context remains mass conversion of the Dalits. Converts have adopted religious systems, which have [e]quality as their profession of faith; initially Buddhism and Islam and later Sikhism and Christianity.102

Conversion raises many issues of event and intent. Commentators are unclear as to why Dalits convert and as to what has taken place in the process of conversion Ibid., pp. 72–3. Ibid., pp. 71–2. 101 Ibid., p. 125. 102 Sanjay Vairal, ‘Religious Conversion and Dalit Identity’, in Ambrose Pinto (ed.), 99

100

Dalits: Assertion for Identity, (New Delhi: Indian Social Institute, 1999), p. 129.

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on both a social and a religious level. Statistics on Dalit conversion are unreliable because the government offers preferable welfare and rights to Dalits who register as ‘Hindu’ on the grounds that Dalit is a Hindu term and therefore non-Hindu Dalits are no longer Dalits at all. If the phenomenon of conversion is to be used for the purpose of this chapter to join the conversation between Dalit religion and anarchism it must first be clarified as to whether conversion is a religious event: an outworking of the religious mindset of the Dalit community. In other words, is conversion an act of dissent rooted in the Dalit religious tradition? The fact that conversions happen – and they usually happen corporately – is telling of the Dalit understanding of her relationship with socio-spiritual existence. We have already found that Dalits as individuals are liable to worship more than one God and even give loyalty to the God of the Hindu village to which they are indebted and by whom they are marginalised. We have also found that Dalits may be casual about the number of Gods they refer to and alter their loyalties: Dalit religion allows for magical mobility. Conversion therefore does not necessary mean a change of religion, worldview, or even allegiance and can be often based on aesthetics and the perceived efficacy of a deity at a given time. It is wrong to assume that Dalit conversion means conversion from Hinduism to another religion. For Dalits are neither automatically Hindu (a ‘catch all’ term with no accurate meaning) nor of another religion since conversion is more present and fluid than such a model would allow. Conversion for Dalits does not mean the same as conversion in orthodox Christianity. The false assumption that conversion implies a leaving off entirely of a cultural and religious worldview in favour of an alien one was promoted as a paradigm by readings of Paul’s autobiographical accounts of conversion in which he considers all things as loss compared to knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8).103 Western anthropology, where it does not examine its methodology in the light of postcolonialism, remains in danger of reading religion through the Christendom lens so it is vital to highlight this difference of meaning at the outset. However, even when Dalits convert on their own terms the initiative is sometimes taken off them by religious groups ideologically predisposed to individualism and subordination to the state. Paul Chambers’ dualism between ‘religions of Power’ and ‘religions of revolt’ is useful here.104 According to sociologist Lancy Lobo, rather than being emancipated, the Dalit converts to Christianity specifically were domesticated by a passive and political conservative theology received from missionaries;105 little wonder so few saw conversion to Christianity as an attractive proposition. The Christian missionaries, with their Philippians 3: 8 (New Revised Standard Version). Paul Chambers, ‘Anarchism, Anti-clericalism and Religion’, Anarchist Studies 14,

103 104

no. 1 (2006), p. 38. 105 Lancy Lobo, Religious Conversion and Social Mobility: A Case Study of the Vankars in Central Gujarat (Surat: Centre for Social Studies, 2001), p. 42.

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religion of power took the initiative away from the Dalits with their religion of revolt and transformed Dalit Christianity into another domestic enlightenment religion. Yet, within primitive Christianity and primitive Dalit religion there lays the seeds of revolt. Thus the engagement between religions at the point of Dalit conversion can be catalyst for deviancy/subversion. Those who first converted and stimulated mass conversion had no direct material motive for doing so, although they had seen the material advantages of allegiance to this novel religion. It may be that second generation field workers had as many material reasons as spiritual ones for joining themselves to the work and may have frustrated missionaries, whose zeal caused them to leave their homeland. Missionaries wrote in surprise or suspicion of mass conversion, the former while the phenomenon took place, the latter when trying to make pastoral sense of it.106 For Dalits, conversion is an act of corporate dissent. B.R. Ambedkar, political and religious leader for hundreds of thousands of Dalits, believed that the abolition of caste required the conscious rejection of Hinduism.107 Ambedkar saw in modern Hinduism the integral partnership between emerging religious hegemony and the emerging nation state. Ambedkar was rarely brave enough to consider the possibility of an anarchist society, although his writings occasionally explicitly endorsed an anarchist country with noncoercive police and decentralised leadership. He was aware of anarchism as a political idea but appears wary of its practicality and perhaps his legal training as a barrister prevented him from properly considering anarchic modes of social transformation. Ambedkar was a man in a hurry and constitutional provision for the poor seemed to him the quickest way to bring about reform, alongside deliberate protest through mass conversion. When B.R. Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism, on 14 October 1956, in Nagpur, 300,000 Dalits converted with him.108 Many thousands of Dalits have converted to Buddhism since and continue to do so. This is telling of how Buddhist thought and practice resonates with Dalit religiosity and how important conversion is as part of Dalit religious experience. Furthermore, conversion is demonstrably a corporate, public and political act of protest. It is a deviant act of defiance against the homogeneity of so-called Hinduism. V.T. Rajshaker, a Shudra Hindu who converted to Ambedkarite Buddhism, complains that not all converts eat beef as a part of their conversion ceremony.109 The eating of beef in

A. Copley, Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late Colonial India (Delhi: OUP, 1997), p. 54. 107 Gail Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India (New Delhi: Sage, 1994), pp. 224–58. 108 Indian Bibliographic Centre, Christianity and Conversion in India (Varanasi: Rishi Publications, 1999), p. 204. 109 V.T. Rajshaker, Caste, A Nation within a Nation: Recipe for a Bloodless Revolution (Bangalore: Books for Change, 2002), p. 81. 106

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such a public and symbolic way is an unambiguous act of defiance against Hindu religious purity-pollution systems and even deliberately offensive to Hindus. B.R. Ambedkar announced in 1935 that he was planning to convert out of Hinduism and began his search for an alternative. Notably he was not interested in considering indigenous Dalit religion. He was looking for a religion that treats all humans as equal and did not subject them to any form of humiliation. B.R. Ambedkar asserted that only Buddhists follow the real national religion of India not Hindus. The deistic faiths were unlikely to satisfy his pragmatic humanistic outlook. His abhorrence of subjection to a religious representative of God, in the Brahmin caste, made him suspicious of both priest and any divinity that appeared to lessen the value of personhood. He rejected Christianity on the basis of its indifference, its powerlessness and the apathy of missionaries toward Dalits. Furthermore he was disgusted by the caste prejudice he observed in Churches and disappointed by a lack of change in religious practice of many converts away from worship of images.110 John Webster notes that Dalit communities do not ostracise converts to other religions but neither does mass conversion of the whole group follow automatically.111 Mass movements were and continue to be the unsolicited initiative of members of the converting community. The role of missionaries, in regard to mass conversions to Christianity, was always after the event and, as Clarke has shown, limited in its attempts to conform their religion but as Lobo has shown, effective in pacifying their political expectations. The Dalit movement has worked tirelessly to reform Indian national democracy through the Panther movement, Ambedkar’s socialism and many other means. However, always the assumption that it is through the state government’s mercy that justice will come prevails. This has been true for the Church that should no better because it has the biblical witness about the ambivalence of secular power in matters of justice. Yet the Church, as is often the case in the modern world, does not imagine a solution unless it comes from above and mediated by violent government. Dalit literature shows us that there is a world of creativity and colour that cannot be represented or controlled by legislation and national reform. Dalit worship reminds us that indigenous Indian communities have been managing their own affairs with confidence and ability long before magistrates and police came along to protect the interests of the few against the interests of the many. Dalit conversion shows us that Dalits are willing and able to re-write the rules without permission from any of the Gods and live between the margins of the powerful ideologies subverting all expectations. What we know is that a hermeneutic of resistance is already in play in the lives of Dalits and in the Church and that this may well continue to emerge.

Ibid., p. 206. Webster, From Indian Church to Indian Theology, pp. 55–8.

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Chapter 7

Dalit Theology and the Powers That Be

[I]f the [D]alit Christians were to break away from the hierarchial (sic.) domination and create history, where they can celebrate their human dignity, they can do so only through disobedience.1

Dalit Theology and the Powers To consider the Indian situation as one class oppressing another is too simple. That there is oppression of the Dalits is rightly assumed, that there are those who gain from this oppression is also clear. The perpetuation of the oppression of the Dalits needs the consensus of the Dalits and the caste groups. If caste groups do not need Dalit consent to their own subjugation then their conscientisation would not be an essential step in their liberation. That being the case, the Dalits are unwilling co-agents of their own oppression. The difficulty lies in identifying the source of oppression: a theology of the Powers, lacking in Liberation theology, can be identified in Dalit theology. It is necessary to know what structural oppressions there are that crush, not only the Dalits, but all humanity since, as anarchists claim, no one is free until we are all free. Dalit theologians like V. Devasahayam oppose the privatised gospel (personal redemption), pressed on the Indian Churches by evangelical missionary agencies. He prefers to focus on ‘the sinful demonic structures … of oppression such as caste, class, patriarchy, etc’.2 Communitarian anarchism promotes freedom of the community and individual responsible to it. Dalit theology promotes anarchic values: liberty, equality, fraternity, freedom, community. Devasahayam understands Christian praxis as the universal liberation of creation. The most monolithic oppressive structural power oppressing Indian society is the state, yet it is often seen as a means of redemption if it is justly reformed and reorganised. Before looking at Dalit theology, the context can be best illustrated by a Shudra well known for his views on state hegemony in India. Kancha Ilaiah, a Shudra apologist and critic of Brahminic hegemony, believes that Brahmins maintain dominance by structuring power relations in their favour in any given context: land ownership, rural governance, national governance, party politics. 1 Anthony Raj, ‘Disobedience: A Legitimate Act for Dalit Liberation’, in Nirmal (ed.), Towards a Common Dalit Ideology, p. 50. 2 V. Devasahayam, ‘Doing Dalit Theology: Basic Assumptions’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, pp. 276–82.

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Brahminism extends a theological dualism between moral-male-spiritual and amoral-female-material to the family and wider society. The rural Patel system (administrative local security and judiciary; appointed) traditionally excludes the Dalits and is dominated by Brahmins, as is the Panchayat system (elected or appointed elders). Agricultural land, in southern India, is owned by Kshatriyas but they are co-opted into the Brahminic hegemony in order to keep a safe political distance between the Dalits and the Brahmins. These high-caste Kshatriyas have embraced the patriarchal authoritarianism of Vedism maintaining Hindutva’s ideological hegemony over Hinduism and the Dalits. Since the Brahmins were the traditional knowledge keepers of Indian society, the literate class, they have, since the arrival of bureaucratic-statist British imperialism, been given the upper hand in all things relating to social management. None of this is controlled by any individual or administrative group but the collective Powers that have been developed as the nation has formed and gained clarity have allowed all this to take place. The Powers are not only national, they are also institutional, especially in relation to the type of institutions that typically reinforce statism: those to do with welfare, protection, education and religious belonging. High-castes dominate state politics and develop controlling ideologies and technologies. Dalit Christians remain largely excluded from power politics and are completely absent from the state executive and judiciary. Power bases in the regions are now controlled on numerical strength, rather than land control or ritual status. Caste Hindus have used communal politics to work the electing majority in their favour. Education has already been referred to as an institutional form of statism: as well as in schools, the Powers emphasise caste prejudice through the media. Transnationals, the state and the media are becoming more powerful and less accountable. Dalits are still excluded from most of the media. Hinduism continues to dominate the religious festivals, spaces and rites, symbolising the ‘puritypollution values’ of Vedism. In Gujarat, Dalit gods and goddesses are afforded low status in Hindu pantheons and Dalit inferiority is reinforced by religious practices in villages. In the Roman Catholic Church, there are still several dioceses where the high-caste minorities hold office over the Dalit majority. Hindutva reinforces and preserves neo-conservative Brahminic power structures at state and local levels from the panchayat to the State Assembly. Ambedkar led many Dalits to conversion from Hinduism to Buddhism, claiming it to be the historical precursor of Hinduism, his followers are often known as ‘Neo-Buddhists’ even now. Recently theologians like Aloysius Pieris have been taking seriously the need to theologise from a Buddhist perspective. This is a process that can help to move Dalit theology forward in its understanding of orthopraxis. While Pieris’ study is based on a Buddhist village in Sri Lanka it provides material for theologising from a Neo-Buddhist perspective as well. Pieris tells the story of an exorcism he witnessed in a rural Buddhist community. The aim of the elaborate rite was to expose a deception against the community. In this instance the priest reveals that a local grocer has been cheating people by selling them damaged milk cartons at full price – the money-demon is ridiculed and the

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injustice is exposed, ‘calling the devil by its name’.3 Although the grocer is not present, simply by naming the sin the community is set free from its power. Pieris compares the cosmogony of this Buddhist village with that outlined by Walter Wink who he says ‘made a break through in the understanding of the whole language of preternatural Powers (stoicheia) in the world of Christian Scriptures’. Pieris notes that the Buddhist concept of a cosmic power under which all other Powers are made subordinate parallels the Pauline theology of the ‘Cosmic lordship of Christ’. It is the prophetic mission of the Church to free those who ‘worship the Powers that crucify them’. Dalit theology, when drawing on the Buddhist perspective of its most influential leader, Ambedkar, illustrates Dalit ideology in terms of this confrontation, both spiritual and physical of the unjust Powers. M.R. Arulraja, a Jesuit priest who reflects on theology done by Dalit youth from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, uses the narrative of Jesus’ exorcism of the demoniac (Mark 5: 1–20) in particular and his authority over the forces of nature and the supernatural generally (Mark 4:41; 5:15, 20, 33, 42) to construct a Dalit theology of the Powers. Arulraja’s hope is that the Dalits defeat oppressive demonic Powers in the struggle that Jesus initiated in his own mission. In the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the first stage in taking authority over the oppressive force was in asking for its name: ‘locating the very origin of the malady of the victim of the possession’. For Arulraja the demonic power is clearly located in the social oppression of the people. ‘Legion’ is the ‘collective anxiety’ caused by colonisation by the Romans, ‘ruling the lives of simple folks’: like the demoniac. Jesus’ authority to exorcise the demon lies in his affirmed son-ship (Mark 1: 10– 11; 9: 7) and his ‘close association with the victims of anti-kingdom values’. In other words, the Dalitness of God the Father and God the son gives Jesus the mandate to exorcise the Powers of anti-Dalitness. Dalit cosmogony is a source of reflection that can aid Dalit Christians in expressing the protest of the Dalits in meaningful terms as well as suggesting a means of reacting to the Powers that oppress. Dialogue between Dalit Buddhists and Christians would help the Dalits to name the Powers that oppress them and exorcise them efficiently. Dalit theology is a theology in the context of oppressive Powers. While Dalit theology often addresses, quite graphically, the suffering and passionate feelings of the Dalits it only indirectly reflects on structural oppression and rarely sees it as a universal (rather than exclusively Dalit) problem. However, Dalits theologians are aware of the exegetical and political implications of structural oppression, expressed in both spiritual and temporal terms – as illustrated by Arulraja, Pieris and Devasahayam above. Where Dalit theology addresses the myths and mechanisms that prop up the oppressive structures is a key to understanding the very dilemma of caste oppression. The state is one of these structures, by challenging the theological legitimacy of the nation state the Dalits will be able to 3 A. Pieris, ‘Prophetic Humour and Exposure of Demons’, in Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection, Vol. 60, No. 5, May 1996, pp. 311–22.

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liberate their theology from statist concepts of justice and social ordering – only then will theology be truly of the Dalits rather than for the Dalits. Dalit Protest and Solidarity We know that Dalit theology owes much to Liberation theology, but there are clashes of context that must be resolved. While Liberation theology sits more comfortably with the idea of a violently liberative God, Dalits (who are no strangers to violence) live in a context where nonviolence is prized and seen as a higher virtue. After all, it was a nonviolent struggle in recent history that led to the liberation of India from direct British rule. The evidence of Liberation theology’s inclination to violence is in its biblical proof text. Liberation theology now has certain biblical texts predominantly associated with it and illustrative of its key themes: the Exodus from Egypt (theme of God’s involvement in liberation); the judgement of the Sheep and Goats (theme of the Church’s responsibility to the poor); the Beatitudes (theme of God’s perspective on poverty). Each text courts controversy in its own way. Firstly, the Exodus narrative, while popular in Liberation theology depicts a God who justifies violent means for moral ends. Second, the judgement of the Sheep and Goats is as ambiguous as any parable. Third, the Beatitudes, with two versions of ‘Blessed are the poor/poor in spirit’ require careful exegesis. For Gustavo Gutierrez, Matthew’s’ ‘judgment day’ (Matt. 24) summarises the ‘essence of the gospel message’,4 because it locates the Christ, not among the wealthy and apparently blessed but among the destitute. It focuses Christian experience, worship and responsibility in the service of the poor. Furthermore this apocalyptic scene insists on concrete actions, on ‘the revelation of the human mediation necessary to reach the Lord’. Again, the emphasis is shifted from ministry of the preached Word to ministry of the manifestation of the word in acts of charity, thus expressing the character of the triune God whose unity is a manifestation of the same practice of love. Poverty, in A Theology of Liberation is neither sentimentalised nor canonised of a social class, it is a ‘scandalous condition … contrary to the will of God’. Gutierrez provides three related types of poverty, each with a scriptural precedent: material and social poverty; spiritual poverty; solidarity with the poor. Material poverty, as mentioned above, is condemned and routing it out is the primary mission of God. Spiritual poverty seems unrelated to material poverty but its place among the Beatitudes shows how it is part of God’s priorities, contradicting those of a society which values control over others. ‘Poor in Spirit’ is taken to be an attitude of brokenness before God and dependence on God. The spiritual poor person is a ‘client of Yahweh’, and as such is open to the third definition of poverty: solidarity with the poor through suffering and protest. Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, pp. 112–72.

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The taking on of the servile and sinful human condition, as foretold in Second Isaiah, is presented by Paul as an act of voluntary impoverishment: ‘For you know how generous our Lord Jesus Christ has been: He was rich, yet for your sake became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8: 9). … He does not take on the human sinful condition to idealize it. It is rather because of love for and solidarity with others who suffer in it. It is to redeem them from their sin and to enrich them with his poverty. It is to struggle against human selfishness and everything that divides persons and allows that there be rich and poor, possessors and dispossessed, oppressors and oppressed.5

Determining the methodology, or orthopraxis of solidarity is the means by which liberationist determine the Missio Dei, the mission of God. Orthodoxy is the affirmation of this mission by recognising, in Christ, scripture, reason and tradition, God’s ‘Preferential Option for the Poor’. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer maintains that the Exodus narrative is replete with the violence of God on behalf of the poor. The writers of the book of Exodus paint a picture of God as a violent, murderous, genocidal land thief. … Neither bloody history nor the biblical accounts themselves allow us to see the Exodus as a story of God united with the oppressed against the evil oppressors.6

Like Wink, Nelson-Pallmeyer (who studied with Gustavo Gutiérrez but has since abandoned his central liberationist themes) sees in the doctrine of atonement the justification for violent revolution that is unsupported in the actions or teachings of Jesus or Paul, but finds precedent in both the Jewish Bible and the New Testament. Ellul also admits that a holistic reading of scripture presented contradictions on the subject of violence, as an attempt to derive a ‘biblical’ perspective on anything might. … if we want to find out what the Christian attitude toward violence should be, we cannot proceed by deducing the consequences of Christian principles or by enumerating biblical texts. The Bible does frequently condemn violence, but it defends violence just as frequently – even in the New Testament.7

To say, on the one hand that God loves even the most detestable and on the other hand, God destroys whole communities, indiscriminately, as he did to the Egyptian first-born sons and soldiers and ‘every living thing’ in the Promised Land is rationally untenable. Ellul acknowledges that, since violence is natural to the individual, it has become inevitable for the protective agency of the state: Gutiérrez. A Theology of Liberation, p. 172. Nelson-Pallmeyer, Jesus against Christianity, p. 40. 7 Ellul, Violence, p. 81. 5 6

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‘violence is the general rule for the existence of societies – including societies that call themselves civilized but have only camouflaged violence’. Nelson-Pallmeyer scathingly summarises the doctrine of a vicarious death thus: ‘a loving God killed his son so “God” would no longer go on killing us’. Dalit theologian J. Susaimanickam points out in her Dalit re-reading of Job, of addressing the Western canon of scripture from a Dalit perspective. Susaimanickam claims ‘God is silent so that Job may protest’.8 In the same way, through the passion of the cross, God is silent so that Jesus may protest through his suffering and death. And, for Job, when God finally speaks, it is with darkened skies, earthquakes and the resurrection of the Christ. To make a formula of Job’s parabolic relationship with God is dangerous but Susaimanickam is drawing out a theme: God leaves gaps for human protest in suffering; it is up to the initiative of the crushed to rail against the injustice for them. There are serious challenges to the Exodus motif in Latin America and Europe and India. Both Gandhi and Jesus were sensible to the problem of fear in the attempt to find nonviolent solutions. The Christian community, where it challenges the myth of redemptive violence, needs to be equally sensitive to this human dilemma. But then Gandhi is held in such contempt by many Dalits so as to be an unlikely external influence at present, which is an evident disability in the Christian Dalit movement. Aruna Gnanadason suggests that the Church in India, rather than challenging the dominant institutions, has used her minority status to excuse her political inaction.9 She blames this lack of confidence on legitimate grievances but also the Church’s singular commitment to its own interests. However, she suggests, this voluntary isolationism can be overcome through the Church’s decision to take the initiative ‘when as Christians we immerse ourselves in the day to day lives of people’. In this vocation, Gnanadason claims, the Church finds her Indian identity. A.P. Nirmal frames Dalit theology in the text of Deuteronomy 26: 5–12, rather than the Exodus narrative of Latin American Liberation theology. In this text he finds reference to pathos, ‘affliction’, (v. 7) and protest, ‘terrifying display’ (v. 8). The former should ‘give birth’ to the latter. Christian Dalit theology should be ‘full of pathos’ without being passive.10 Sathianathan Clarke, a theologian, who has researched and reflected on Dalit religion and its implications for theology, follows the ‘father of Dalit theology’ A.P. Nirmal insisting, ‘pathos is prior to praxis’. Pain-pathos is the extra cog that must be added to the hermeneutic circle. Dalit theologians develop the hermeneutic circle, a central paradigm of Latin J. Susaimanickam, ‘An Indian Problem of Evil: The Caste System: A Dalit Reading of the Book of Job’, in A. Thottkara (ed.), Indian interpretation of the Bible (Bangalore: Dharmaram, 2000), pp. 197–8. 9 Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Become an Indian Christian Church Today’, in Peoples’ Reporter, Vol. 17, No. 3, Mumbai, Feb 10–25, 2004, pp. 2–3. 10 Arvind P. Nirmal, ‘Towards a Christian Dalit Theology’, in Nirmal (ed.), A Reader in Dalit Theology, pp. 60–62. 8

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American Liberation theology, to include awareness of emotional suffering as the overwhelming reality of the poor. As we have seen, Rajkumar has highlighted the danger of an overly pathological Dalit identity. In the context of the Indian church, the Dalits still operate outside the loop of the hermeneutic circle because the theology is either done by caste Christians, of whom there are few or by Dalit academics. Dalit theology is not a ‘Peoples’ theology’ and as such is not Liberationist in its hermeneutical approach. There are some theologians, like M.R. Arulraja who gather Dalits into groups to reflect on scripture but this is not a movement centred on base communities, it is an academic pursuit. Aruna Gnanadason believes that Dalit theology has now recognised the right of Dalits but has kept them to the periphery of theology, when their pain-pathos-protest should be the central theme of Indian Christian life and thought.11 Dalit theology has not captured the imagination of the church, since it has not arisen from the congregation as Liberation theology did in Latin America. Nonetheless, the concept of pathos enhances the Liberationist hermeneutic circle and makes attempts to record the pain as experienced by Dalits far more than praxis alone. The Conversion from Hinduism to other religions has been, to a degree, liberating for Dalits but it can create an added barrier between communities and the lack of common identity among Dalits is compounded by it. Dalits across India have hundreds of identities making it difficult for them to struggle together for justice. This observation comes from a Christian and the multiplicity impacts on Christian involvement in a wider solidarity movement. While Dalits make up the majority among Indian Christians, Christians remain a minority among Dalits. Solidarity with the poor, in any transforming practical way is rare, regardless of the values held by a community or individual. Latin American Liberation theologian, Jose M. Bonino criticises liberalism for using a doctrine of ‘reconciliation’ to ‘conceal the brutal fact of class and imperialist exploitation’.12 And acknowledges Lenin’s axiom that ‘the goal of revolution is the removal of violence’ not the replacement of one form of domination with another. Bonino also makes two important stands. First, the Christian struggle is no ‘divine war’ or ‘specifically Christian struggle’, rather that God calls Christians to struggle on behalf of all who are oppressed. Second, that any struggle against domination and violence is a long and painful one that involves voluntarily opting for suffering. Bonino warns against the ‘appropriation of the Christian doctrine of reconciliation’ by those who wish to conceal class exploitation. In order to understand the reparations that High Caste communities need to make to the Dalits they must have a proper understanding of Dalit suffering otherwise repentance would lack context – a vague wrong, vaguely righted. Communities in India need to choose solidarity with the poorest of the poor: to Gnanadason, ‘Shifts in Mission Thinking: Emerging Paradigms of Mission’, p. 38. Jose M. Bonino, Doing Theology in a Revolutionary Situation (Philadelphia:

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‘offer themselves, with the oppressed and on behalf of the poorest of the poor’. If the poor oppress one another on the one hand, oppressing women and children in their own community and those communities that they fear to be identified with, while violently opposing their oppressors on the other, then they perpetuate a system of abuse and oppression. The gospel offers an alternative: ‘The Way of the Cross’. Bonino reminds Liberationists of what Lenin believed but failed to see: that the objective of any revolution should be that violence is removed, not replaced. Gnanadason expresses evangelism as being in solidarity with all religions and offering them the unique message of Jesus that God is in covenant with ‘all those who are vulnerable’.13 Liberationist aims cannot be achieved by violence, rather than by the ‘painful and long process of history’. The pathos and protest of Dalit theology, perseveres and conscientises the Dalits. Provokingly, Anthony Raj holds up the disobedience of Adam and Eve as an exemplary archetype of those ‘who rebelled for liberation’.14 Taking his lead from political theorist John Locke, Raj asserts that, while there is unjust caste bias on the part of the government of India, the government lacks legitimacy; Dalits have ‘no obligation to obey’. Thus, for Raj, Dalit theology supports a theology of disobedience, modelled by ‘our first parents’ and by Jesus. While I agree that disobedience is key to a Dalit hermeneutic and that this point can be drawn from Genesis 2–3,a hermeneutic of resistance would give a reading of that narrative that is more authentic to the text and less ‘strained’. The Adam and Eve narrative should be understood as a political theology in a creation language rather than a creationist theology. Therefore the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil should be understood in political terms. The hinge of the narrative is in the Serpent’s misrepresentation of God. The purpose of the knowledge of good and evil is not to make informed choice but rather to make informed judgements on the Other. In terms of the Adam and Eve narrative the role of judge is taken up by God who pronounces punishments on Adam, Eve and the Serpent. It is the power to control and punish that is desirable in the tree of knowledge of good and evil: the power to bring about obedience. Therefore, for the Dalit, the act of disobedience from the one who would judge, popularly legitimated in the state, is an act of turning away from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and back to the tree of life. Furthermore, the act of disobedience to the law is a rejection of the God of violent retribution, the God of the same narrative. Raj is wrong then to identify Adam and Eve as the first to rebel against oppression: rather they are models of a desire to oppress. Theology by Dalits should involve finding ways and examples of disobedience in scripture, in wider mythology and history and using those examples as a stimulus for disobedience against the Church and the state, whenever it is warranted. Raj consciously goes further than those who call for Dalit protest, calling for mass civil Aruna Gnanadason, ‘Shifts in Mission Thinking’. Anthony Raj, ‘Disobedience: A Legitimate act for Dalit Liberation’, in Nirmal

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(ed.), Towards a Common Dalit Ideology, pp. 49–50.

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disobedience. He strains for a reading of the text that justifies protest but cannot see beyond statism to read the text as one who is a foreigner: one barred from the tree of knowledge of good and evil for the most part. Subversive theology sanctions the act of rebellion (responsible disobedience) as a humanising act for the Dalits because it celebrates the authority of the individual over the official or state laws. Dalit theology is developing the liberationist motif away from violence and towards disobedience. This means that it is choosing its own proof texts focusing almost always on Jesus but also on selective texts from elsewhere in the canon of scripture. The theologian Nirmal has left as his legacy the virtue of Dalit pathos as a hermeneutic starting point but it is a praxiological one too. To feel is to be human, to be human is to be in rebellion if you are a Dalit and considered to be of less value than animals by the rest of society. Disobedience also means creative vandalism, taking religious symbols and beliefs and dismantling them in order to recycle them for liberative ends. The creeds and power structures of Western theology and ecclesiology are beginning to experience the critique of a Dalit theology that is still largely restrained by conservatism but beginning to be aware of the imperative to radical new theologising. Dalit Pluralism as Resistance to Hegemony Dalit Pluralism in the Worshipping Community Dalits are marginalised by religious belief and practice; they are ‘outside the temple’ but they are also often ‘outside the Church’ too. Ironically, if modern political democracy has done anything for the Dalits it has made them a valuable vote bank and the mass movements of the early twentieth century have meant that it is thanks to Dalits that the Church is of any numerical significance at all in India. What is an appropriate Dalit response to this unnatural relationship with dominant religious communities? Pluralism: a fluid, creative response that refuses to fit the mold while appearing to fit every mold there is. Dalit theologians can address the shortfalls of Western modes of worship and belief and turn sacraments to their liberative advantage. Dalit theologians who do this successfully begin rather with indigenous patterns of worship and use them to critique Western Christian patterns, rather than the other way around. Dalits may sometimes prefer Western Sacraments to Brahminic symbols and practices however Christian rites can be equally alienating. The Eucharist, for example: a powerful symbol of food fellowship and social responsibility or an historical example representing the negation of both? Indian practice tends to interpret the Eucharist automatically in a Vedic sense – exclusive and priestly – rather than fellowship, being the ethos of the meal. It does this either through partitioned rooms, separate seating, or the convenience of denominationalism. The Eucharist and other ‘alienating’ symbols, should not be discarded, but renewed. The narrative and practice of Food Fellowship provides an integral social and

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religious tool in Christian faith when not rendered foreign and exclusive. A Pauline understanding of the Eucharist is one of covenant between the individual and Christ and the individual and other followers of Christ. The Eucharist is a sacrament that recognises unity not in commonality but in the restored relationship with God. Sharing, offering and receiving meals are characteristic of the Jesus of the Gospels, in teaching and practice. If Dalit Christian communities choose these narratives, the Last Supper and the entire theme of eating together, is liberating. Dalit theology can identify the kerygma of the sacraments, re-expressing them in Indian ways. Whereas eating illustrates political boundaries in ‘virtually every culture’ Jesus uses table fellowship to have ‘the opposite effect’. Reinterpretation of the Eucharist, in the context of the oral culture of the Dalits would potentially activate Dalit myth and symbol as well as responding to Judeao-Christian texts. However, in order for it to transform the Indian church into an egalitarian one, this reinterpretation would need to be in the light of Jesus’ attitude. In so doing, a dialogue could be opened up between Dalit and caste Christian, because of the common Christian narrative. Pluralism can be affirmed through the ‘Cosmic Christ’, that is the Saviour of the World, who ‘belongs to all and all religions’. The Dalit Cosmic Christ is understood less in terms of the person of Jesus but the mandate of the Christ to bring about a just and loving Kingdom. God cannot be hemmed in; Jesus ‘cannot exhaust fully the mystery and depth of God’. Such a cosmic Christology better reflects the religious experience of Dalits in reality rather than the abstractions of exclusive metaphysics that shapes so much of traditional Indian theology and preaching. Plurality and Biblical Narrative While having a sense of ownership of the Bible may be liberating for Dalits, excluded from sharing in the Vedas, it would only oppress them further to have the Bible imposed on them in a meaningless way by Vedic or Western understandings of scripture. The role of scripture itself is open to interpretation and tells us as much about the ‘user’ as it does about the text. The Dalits do not share in the Vedic tradition making them no closer to these Brahminic hermeneutics than to those of the Protestant missionaries. Abstract objects (which the Bible is, if one is illiterate) can only be of religious use as a fetish. The magical notion of the Bible was a practical response of nonliterate communities to the problem of a Holy book. Clarke gives anecdotal illustration of the level of detachment Dalits still feel towards text, even when it is read in corporate worship. Clarke read the text aloud then quizzed congregations on its content and got no response. He then re-told the story without reference to the book and found that the congregation had completely engaged in the narrative. An illiterate congregation formulates faith both from above and below. Orthodox and controlling values on the one hand with responsive and anarchic responses on the other. While literacy may lead to a greater sense of ownership

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of the texts among Dalit Christians it may lessen the likelihood of paternalistic and externally imposed exegesis; a Reformation. However, the strong tradition of ‘oral discourse’ among many Dalit communities means that Dalit Christians empower themselves by refusing to let ‘predominantly text-bound’ cultures, whether Protestant or Brahminical, shape them. Arulraja suggests that when the Dalits re-work the written text into a form accessible by the oral community they understand Christian faith from an authentically Dalit perspective.15 Dalit Christians have greater self-determination if they choose their own narratives and re-code them orally in the Dalit context. For example, Dalit Christians often have an affinity with apocalyptic literature in the Bible because of its symbolism of evil, the immanence of the Divine and suffering of the marginalised. It is the ‘subversive elements, shaking up the dominant Powers’ that validate the Dalit worldview. Dalits find, in the texts that they select for themselves, the God of justice who speaks directly about the situation they find themselves in. The Liberative God of Dalit hermeneutics acts as a God of the oppressed, not of the European or Hindu oppressor. M. Gnanavaram asserts that a ‘liberation hermeneutics in India has to take note of the religio-cultural aspect of oppression’.16 Oral re-encoding by an empathic revision of stories provides this hermeneutic because the Dalits select the stories that reflect their religious and cultural understanding of life. Altering the canon is not a desacralisation of scripture but shows that scripture is sacred because it can be actively engaged. Dalit hermeneutics subvert Christendom theology, with its restrictive locus of telling of the tale, by allowing instead for as many stories as tellers and listeners. The Biblical narratives often sanction both violence and the state. However, they reject both with equal firmness. There is no coherent biblical message – something conservative theologians down the ages have refused to acknowledge – the Dalits have an approach to the written word far healthier than that of either the modernist evangelical or the Latin American Liberation theologian. They are comfortable with the fluidity and functionality of the telling of the tale. Plurality and the Drum Understanding pluralist theology necessitates a theology that celebrates ambiguous signifiers. Symbols that refuse to be tied to a particular belief that can be stated in words, signed by its members and criticised by its opponents. The Dalit Drum offers just such an icon of creedal dissent. Clarke calls for an Indian-Christian theology to allow for the Dalit ‘mode of expressing’,17 their reflections, not necessarily word/logo-centric but through ‘music, painting, dance, weaving, song, architecture, etc’. So ‘theo-graphia’ (iconography) and ‘theo-phonia’ (aural/oral A.M. Arulraja, ‘Some Reflections on a Dalit Reading of the Bible’, pp. 336–9. M. Gnanavaram, Some Reflections on Dalit Hermeneutics, p. 332. 17 Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, pp. 22–7. 15 16

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media) are included in the Dalit God-talk. Collective worship provides the ideal opportunity for the Indian church to construct its theology because it can be used to create space for theographic and theophonic expressions of particular relationship with the divine. The re-invention of the Eucharist and the use of instruments (the drum, in the case of the Paraiyars) and craft allow Dalits to express their identity and in so doing explore and invent their Dalit Christian identity. For Clarke, the drum ‘depicts the core of [Dalit] religious activity’ and is a symbol of ‘emancipatory theography’.18 In other words, it connects the Dalits with the divine and with the heritage of pre-Aryan spirituality. It is something used by both outcaste and caste community, but it is also an exclusively Dalit symbol of relationship with the feminine divinity. As a tool of social and spiritual cohesion the drum is used, with different rhythms in various settings: for auspicious processions; to signify blessing and the benediction of the goddesses’ presence; to invoke and inspire the goddess to display and manifest her power among the devotees; to communicate news to neighbouring villages; to facilitate merry-making. The context is especially south Indian Paraiyars but illustrates how symbols can go beyond the visual and verbal and can express more than a speculative history of the Dalits ever could. Clarke takes the symbol of the Drum and turns it into a mode of signifying the presence of Jesus and asserting particular beliefs about him. The Drum summons the Dalits to join with Jesus as the ‘concrete echo of ceaseless Divine vibrations’ and the call to deviance against the Powers. In appropriating the Drum in this way it becomes a reminder of the value of orthopraxis for Dalit theology, as a theology of Liberation. Clarke makes two suggestions regarding the relevance of this theographic enterprise: The beating drum is not concerned with apologetics and semantics of creeds and formulas of faith yet it is a concrete affirmation of God’s concern for the Dalits. Furthermore, in its ambiguity, the use of the drum allows for myriad interpretations; it is pluralistic in intent.19 By interpreting the Drum as ‘Christic’, Clarke is, to some extent, taking away from its ambiguity but this is something that any academic theology will do: being a snapshot of religious life. Such an anarchic approach to theology makes an attempt to interpret the symbols of spirituality immediately out of date. However, this is all part of the Dalit protest; there is a refusal to be pinned down to a set of beliefs and symbols that can be exploited by others. Exploitation has forced the Dalits to the margins of society, in the margins they are able to freely and enigmatically define their own spirituality. Clarke’s theologising should certainly be accredited amongst the most pioneering and Dalit-centred of contemporary Dalit theologies. He defines his theological mandate and provides a tool for measuring theological usefulness in the Indian context. He proposes that theology offers the critique for interaction that goes on between the Dalit community and the Divine. This approach takes the emphasis of construction of theology far from the theologian and places it, not Ibid., pp. 109–18. Ibid., pp. 198–202.

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with the individual Christian, or their priestly representative, but with the particular community. Clarke emphasises ‘living collectively under the Divine’. Corporate responses to God’s involvement with the community create Dalit Theology. The response affirms God’s active involvement in the community and the community’s desire to express its relationship with God. This affirmation contradicts the Vedic tradition that the Dalits are beneath God’s interest and have no license to interact with the Divine. Clarke criticises the Church for allowing Dalits to conceive of their relationship with God only in the context of external theologies, ‘more esteemed and venerated than their own tradition’, and sees Dalit (pre-Christian) theology as the ‘appropriate nexus’ for reclaiming their history and conversionfaith.20 Such an Indian-Christian theology creates space for Dalits to explore their identity, not only as something new, as something historical. Jesus the Dalit Jesus Growing in Wisdom: From Cultic to Inclusive Faith Here we deal with the dichotomy between cultic and mystic religion; or between those who use blood sacrifice as a means of worship and those who do not. For Arulraja this distinction exists between the priestly tribe and the prophetic tradition in Judeo-Christian narrative, but in parallel between the priestly castes and the Dalits. Arulraja uses the narrative of the gospels (particularly the synoptic gospels) to show how Jesus was ‘increased in wisdom’ (Luke 2: 52)21 and therefore in understanding of the religious and social systems of the world (sin) and his mission (salvation) in relation to those systems. For Arulraja Jesus is the Dalit par excellence so it is unsurprising that he describes, in Jesus, a process of conscientisation and protest although Arulraja does not explicitly make parallels between those processes in the Dalit movement and in the gospel narrative. What Arulraja does parallel is the context of Jesus as a Jew living in a world of Purity laws and economic and military oppression with the Dalit context in India. Jesus, like Phule, or Ambedkar, becomes aware of the oppression of the Samaritans and the exclusion of the Gentiles by the Jews and widens his message of salvation accordingly. However, what Arulraja doesn’t deal with, is the fact that Jesus, although a Galilean, was not impure by birth. Jesus was not a ‘Dalit’ but rather one who was in solidarity with the Dalits by action and ethical priority for the poor. He was more like Gandhi than Ambedkar. The Christology and Dalit-centred hermeneutic of Arulraja begins with the emotional reality (pain-pathos) of all Dalits in contemporary Indian and he reads the Bible in the light of their experience. He has published many examples of the Dalit theology. M.R. Arulraja begins with an honest appraisal of untouchability Ibid., pp. 2–44. Arulraja, Jesus the Dalit, pp. 54–9.

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in the Bible. This appraisal is an important way of bringing balance to Christian theology which often decries the inequalities and violence of books like the Manusmrti while ignoring it in the Bible. The Levitical purity law, echoing that of Brahminism marks the point of divergence, from God’s revealed justice. He notes that contact with dead animals made the Hebrews unclean yet, unless they just left them to rot where they died, someone must have been allocated to clear them away. Thus he makes a parallel with the vocation-oriented purity laws inherent in the Vedic tradition. Arulraja dismisses such laws for two reasons: first, they oppress sections of the community; second, prophets in the Old Testament (Jer 7) and Jesus and Paul, from the New Testament, reject them. Jesus chooses the prophetic of the priestly concept of God – condemning the ritualistic religion as having arisen from the vested interests of the priestly tribe and intellectual classes. In effect, Arulraja rejects any portions of scripture that act against the Dalits – he re-invents the canon. He takes much of his theology from the corporate reflections of Dalit Christians, ‘when given a chance to read the Bible critically and in groups’. It falls into Webster’s third category of Dalit theology – theology by the Dalits, but also theology of and about the Dalits. This makes it a credible Dalit theology. So Jesus was confronted by two different readings of God: the bloodthirsty god of the priestly elite and the caring father of all who loves restorative justice. Arulraja claims that Jesus must have gone through a period of confusion as he ‘grew in wisdom’ but eventually opted for Jeremiah’s reading and rejecting that of the Levitical law. The latter only served the interests of the priests, not of God. Arulraja traces a development in Jesus’ teaching from Judeo-temple centred to humanity-justice centred Missio Dei. Like Jesus, the apostles went through the same process of developing mission from exclusive to inclusive, as the Holy Spirit led them. While Arulraja looks at the baptism, teaching and practices of Jesus and his disciples at great length, it is interesting that he does not make use of the passion narrative in his Jesus the Dalit. Nor does Arulraja treat Jesus as a divinity in the orthodox sense but rather as one adopted and infused by divinity in his baptism. It is the humanness of Jesus that provides the essential elements of Arulraja’s understanding of Jesus in Dalit theology. A Dalit Passion Narrative Professor of Indian theology, Fr Dr Anthony Thumma, like other Dalit theologians before him, affirms the Dalitness of Jesus’ life and death. 22 What Thumma adds to the debate is the affirmation of an anarchic social ordering, intrinsic to Jesus’ approach. He illustrates that, by sacrificing his life on the cross, rather than satisfying a vengeful God, Jesus empowers humanity in opposition to the Powers 22 Anthony Thumma, ‘Springs from the Subalterns: Patterns and Perspectives in People’s’ Theology, pp. 22–7.

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of his time: ‘Jesus, thus, deprives the priests, the Sanhedrin and the elders of their religious power by which they enslave the people.’ He supports this approach by extending the observation backwards from Jesus’ death to his ministry that was inclusive of the poor and overwhelmingly a movement of the ‘backward communities’. However, then Thumma seems to lose the distinction between a society where the poor subvert the authority of the rich and a socialist society where the rich distribute their wealth among the poor. Because Thumma is not explicitly anarchist in his approach he does not recognise the radicalism of his own exegesis, thus failing to draw from it the logical conclusion of anti-statism as opposed to social democratic elitism (soft capitalism) that has failed the Dalits for the last 50 years. V. Devasahayam, a key theologian at GLTC, takes up the passion narrative and its theological implications for the Dalits. Like Arulraja he rejects the Western understanding of God as a ruthless and sacrifice-hungry judge, ‘demanding an eye for an eye’.23 Devasahayam claims that Jesus expected his death not because of divine revelation, rather because his confrontation with injustice made it inevitable and made him a role model for Dalits. Devasahayam broadens the Hellenic understanding of a cosmic battle between God and Satan beyond the Western individualism and over-spiritualising of sin. For Devasahayam, the caste system is Satan and the cross of Jesus needs to be ‘reinterpreted as the revelation of counter-consciousness’ of the Dalits. The cross is a signifier of Christ’s struggle and sacrifice and a way-marker for those who are his disciples. Devasahayam also makes eisegetical use of the words attributed to Jesus on the cross in the various gospels. By forgiving his oppressors he empowers the oppressed and reverses the accusation of sinner and righteous. By promising paradise to the thief on the cross, Jesus made his identification with the oppressed total. By making sure his mother was cared for he showed the importance of gender rights. By saying that he was thirsty he was humble enough to expose his humanity to his oppressors and search for community even with those by whom he was sinned against. By saying ‘It is finished’ he proved that a life lived in service of others is one without regrets. By commending his spirit to this Father God he does not allow death to take him, rather he goes to meet it by his own empowered volition. At times Devasahayam pushes the boundaries of biblical criticism but he does so conscious of the fact and for a specific purpose. The passion narrative is clearly understood as a didactic rather than epistemological story. Devasahayam draws on his experience of listening to rural Dalit Christians for whom the Bible is their most prized possession and whose faith is expounded almost exclusively in its narrative sections.

23 V. Devasahayam, ‘The Cross as Countering the Caste Consciousness’, in Devasahayam (ed.), Frontiers of Dalit Theology, pp. 53–66.

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Jesus and the Temple M. Azariah gives an excellent example of this Christological hermeneutic when looking at Jesus’ attitude, in John’s gospel, to the Samaritan woman (and all the Samaritans by association): ‘the foundational paradigm for any Dalit theology’.24 Because of their exclusion from the temple and their social and economic marginalisation by the Jewish population, Jesus’ contact with them shows a conscious decision to associate with the untouchables and present God’s spiritual omnipresence and therefore his universal message of liberation (John 4: 42). The Caste Hindus often bar Dalits from temples, keep them outside the villages and exclude them from festivals, except to serve. Dalits find good news in God’s availability beyond the places and times ordained by others. Furthermore, Jesus approached a woman who stood alone at the well ‘in the middle of the day’ because her actions separated her even from her own community. Caste Hindus force Dalits into isolation in rural India, with separate cups or wells. Jesus is the ‘saviour and liberator’ of the Samaritan Woman and the Dalit alike. For both Azariah and Arulraja Jesus by choice, of word and deed, identified with the Dalit. Therefore Jesus lived as the archetypal Dalit and to be a follower of Christ means living as a Dalit or in solidarity with the Dalits. Sathianathan Clarke adds emphasis to this Christology by calling Jesus ‘deviant’ defined in two ways; one who has ‘immanent solidarity’ with the Dalits and one who ‘sets into motion the resistive forces’ by challenging prejudice in his own society.25 Clarke’s IndianChristian theology develops that of Nirmal and of Dalit Liberation theology generally to give greater emphasis to praxis, or at least, a more concrete direction for praxis. He bases his theology in the context of an actual Dalit community – the Paraiyars. He is critical of the lack of reference to Dalit religion in Dalit Christian theology, which describes pathos-praxis in vagaries or generalities. Rather he sees the religion of the Dalits as a ‘site for locating knowledge about the Divine’. This approach strongly affirms the pre-conversion identity of the Dalits by maintaining continuity of world-view between Dalit and Christological meaning.

Azariah, A Pastor’s Search for Dalit Theology, pp. 174–5. Clarke, Dalits and Christianity, 1998.

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Chapter 8

Jesus the Foreigner From Dalit Liberationism to Dalit Christian Anarchism The emergence of the Dalit Panthers and the Latin American Liberation theology movement in the 1960s–70s coincided with an increased agitation felt by many Christians, particular Roman Catholic Dalits in South India, against prejudice in the Church. Liberation theology had remarkable resonance with the mood of the Dalit Christians and theologians from key schools were quick to take up the cause of Dalit Liberation theology. Nonetheless, political conservatism has held back the radical potential of Dalit theology. The non-Christian Dalit movement has shown itself to be subversive and revolutionary and in some instances explicitly anarchic, for example the early years of the Dalit Sena. Yet Dalit theology remains caught between a conservative evangelical background and an ailing liberationist hermeneutic. Only by rejecting statist ideologies can Dalit theology break away from Christian conservatism. By accepting an anarchic critique, Dalit history will more explicitly protest against Anglo-Vedic state making and Casteism. A subversive Jesus and anarchic theology is implicitly emerging within Dalit Christian writings but fear of being labelled foreign or unpatriotic immobilises Dalit hermeneutics. In this respect Dalit theology has become a reiteration of the ideas of its first important writers: Massey, Nirmal, Azariah, Webster and a few others, without seriously addressing the implications of Arulraja’s ‘Jesus the Dalit’. However, a new generation of Dalit theologians are taking a more radical approach to both hermeneutics and praxis. A Paradigm Shift Toward Subversive Foreignness Theology in India has been shaped by the colonial statist agenda from the outset. Missionaries had a vision of the Church as the sole consort of the emerging Indian nation. This a priori nationalistic approach has shaped both the secularist left and the religious right in mainstream Hindu politics. The Hindu right also see their religion as the only consort to Mother India. The most popular Dalit response has been developed by Ambedkar who offered yet another religion as consort for the state in the form of socialist Buddhism. The Missionary God, the Vedic God and socialist Buddhism are all restricted by the belief that the state exists for the good of the people it serves. Each God courts and lobbies Mother India for favour and protection sometimes empowering both themselves and the state but disempowering the Other. However, both Gandhi

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and Ambedkar showed an awareness of the limitations of the Western model of a nationalist democratic state and the need for local organising and subversion. Tolstoy, a Christian anarchist, directly inspired Gandhi, although he never referred to Tolstoy in published work. Both Gandhi and Ambedkar alluded to the ideal of a stateless society but worked for an ever more powerful and constitution-based nation state. Despite their profound disagreements, Gandhi and Ambedkar are not each other’s nemesis. Both were, to some extent, aware of the unnatural foreignness of the entire project to which they committed so much of their energies. They did not have the indigenous resources to challenge the authority of the colonial metanarrative: that the nation state will use limited violence for the common good. Dalit cultures are not naturally nationalistic. Nor are they modernist: seeking to impose a homogenous will on others. They are not inclined to enter the competition to have the biggest, strongest or uncontested god. However, individuals and communities of Dalits have entered this competition through conversion to nationalistic religions. Dalit religion is based around polycentric monotheism: worshipping feminine deities, boundary deities, corporate spirituality and respect for the ecosystem. Dalits share this worldview with Tribals and with primitive religions from beyond the subcontinent including primitive Hebrew religion. It follows that these communities are not poor because they are weak or stupid but because they are naturally anarchic and nonviolent and these virtues have been exploited by protectionism and domestification respectively. Dalit theology has begun to challenge the Powers both implicitly and directly but has not gone as far as Dalitism would allow. Christian anarchism provides Dalit theology with the tools to express its latent anarchic anti-statist tendency. So, while minorities and homogenised majorities vie to be Mother India’s consort, the Dalits have the theological resources to subvert the overwhelming assumption of the quest for power over the Other. Dalits can move towards a sense of noncompliance with a state and co-dependence on the Other, seeking reconciliation and justice. Dalit Christians can completely embrace an otherworldly foreignness that liberates them from the tireless defence of their patriotism in the Indian political context. The Church can and should desist in its unhelpful and dishonest practice of claiming to be ‘Indian’. If it is truly Indian then it rejects such a term – for patriotism is a colonial imposition. The Dalit Christ is an anarchist. A subversive foreignness frees the Dalit to be a good neighbour rather than a good citizen and to challenge increasing dependency on the Other. Indian Christianity is beset by theological and identity-based problems. Many Indian Christians struggle with the contradiction of being registered Hindu but up to fourth generation Christian. Furthermore, because indigenisation of Christianity has been problematised by the racist statism of missionaries, Christians are stigmatised by an identity that is seen as superficial (rice Christians) and un-Indian. Christianity has been associated with moral superiority, passivity, bribery, exploitation of the poor, meat-eating, alcoholism and disloyalty to the national good. However, it is rarely associated with subversion and political transformation of a community. Christians in Gujarat have failed to side with the oppressed communities – Muslims

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especially – for fear that criticising the conservative minority caste Hindus will reinforce the media-projected belief that they are foreign. It is not possible for Indian Christians to refute the accusation of foreignness for at least ten unavoidable reasons. 1. Christianity is not an indigenous South Asian religion. 2. Christianity has often been unreasonably critical of India’s cultural heritage. 3. Conversion to Christianity can have a domesticating effect and lead to dependence on Western modes and Western money. 4. Western literature and financial incentive continues to inform Indian theology of worship and mission far more than lay involvement. 5. Most Anglo-Indians are Christian. 6. Most land owned by Christian denominations was a legacy of Western agencies. 7. Many Indian Christians have Judeao-Christian names. 8. Attempts to Indianise Christianity have often further alienated Indian Christians. 9. New charismatic or Pentecostal movements further aggravate and highlight US-oriented foreignness and leave the Church open to renewed criticism as ‘rice Christians’ with new incentives like motorbikes and salaried evangelists paid on results. There is nothing mainstream Churches can do to halt this trend. 10. The Dalit movement both Christian and otherwise actively seeks international support for its struggle against human rights abuses. Given that the Church is irrevocably foreign it has only two options: live with the psychosis of pretence or subvert the accusation of foreignness and use it to proclaim the kingdom of God as an alternative to national identity. To subvert the accusation is political. It allows the Church to draw on the nonviolent resistance of Jesus and Gandhi to bring about real change in political perceptions and the formation of the worshipping community. By accepting the enemies’ insult as a virtue the Church would recognise its own power and be confident of its moral position; by refusing the protection of the state and refusing to join in with the demonisation of Muslims as foreigners the Church can stand alongside all minorities who feel marginalised by nationalism and show a willingness to suffer rather than uphold unjust laws. Subversive foreignness means laws, which discriminate against Christians, lose all potency because they apply only to nationals and not to foreigners. In other words the Hindutva argument that Christians should lose their citizenship and be subject to discriminating conversion laws can be shown up as a political contradiction that exposes itself as unjust. Finally, only by refusing to look to the state for protection and sustenance

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and look instead to the community of heaven can the Church die to fear of political sanction and violence. By embracing subversive foreignness as the key to understanding the Dalit predicament, Dalit theologians will more clearly exegete Gospel and New Testament texts by drawing parallels between the first century Palestinian poor, including Samaritans and the Dalits in terms of their spiritual and political separation from the client kings, priestly elite and colonial gods. So for a Dalit, a Dalit politician is no longer a ticket to greater citizenship but a client king for an imperial power. Dalits will be able to see principalities and Powers more clearly as false forms of redemption and Christian theologians will be positioned to offer the alternative vehicle of redemption in the community of God the cosmic king of foreigners – the Christ. In the nearly 60 years of Indian independence it has been illustrated over and again that governments are not threatened even by the most militant or organised lobby; members continue to use the ballot box as the primary means of change and thereby surrendering their mandate to a barely accountable administrative body. When Dalits lobby for a reform agenda they themselves are co-opted and exploited as a vote bank to propel others into power and privilege, rather than bringing autonomy to the Dalits themselves. But governments are threatened by wanton self-disenfranchisement and its accompanying subversive propaganda. The Jesus movement was not a Dalit movement – the first century Palestinians were crushed long before Jesus called together his disciples – it was a movement of the wantonly dispossesed, of the one who said, ‘foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’ (NIV, Luke 9: 58). Dalits who embrace this subversive foreignness are embracing Christ and are welcomed as prodigal sons who have been temporarily seduced by the world and to the extent that they ate food given to unclean animals, they were so hungry. The historical analysis of modern mission in this thesis has shown that nationalism has a direct consequence on the way theological reflection is done; concepts of God and community are shaped by wider political perspectives and the inherent racism of the missiology of most Western agencies shows that this is not the sort of foreignness Dalit theology should celebrate. Subversive foreignness means foreignness from all nations that is therefore free to interact with all cultures from the vantage of ‘welcoming the alien’. Embracing the polycentric-monotheism of Dalit experience re-directs the discourse away from competing theological statism to an understanding of Mother India as diverse and liberated from statist agendas: Nobody owns mother India or partners her, she is provisionally understood, powerful in diversity and intimately local. The traditional geographical location of Dalit communities – outside the camp – illustrates the theological position of subversive foreignness. It creates an alternative centre for doing and being human and de-bunks the sacred-secular divide created by exclusive sanctuaries of power and religion controlled by those within the camp. Statist theology tends to implicitly view the kingdom of God as a model that is supplementary to kingdoms of humans, but an anarchist theology

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sees the two as mutually exclusive. Because the kingdom of God is a prophetic and critical alternative to the human polis, confrontation becomes inevitable. The theological premise of subversive foreignness is to be found in the practice of some Christians in India at various times and places. Bernard Lucas picked up on this confrontation of Powers in 1907 when he published ‘Empire of Christ’ and wrote of the imperialist dogmatism of missiology at the turn of the century. Cedric Prakash has shown that practising a subversive missiology has put his life in danger and led him into a place of conflict with the state of Gujarat. Perhaps the greatest potency held in embracing foreignness is that the foreigner is under no obligation to create utopia for the Other. Subversive foreignness is a temporal space of permanent liminality whereby the new community is created in the shell of the old not in the structures of the old. Gandhi and Ambedkar show signs of this anti-state perspective but failed to communicate this widely. There is evidence in Dalit fiction and theology that the resources for a subversive foreignness are available to the Church in India and would give its Missiology the integrity that modern mission and TNEs have guided them away from. To embrace a subversive foreignness is to ridicule the propaganda of nationalism at the extremes of the Hindutva agenda. To accuse Christians of something they proudly and mockingly proclaim shifts the power over political language from the oppressor to the oppressed. When oppressed groups identify their marginalisation as ‘foreignness’, solidarity in resistance to the rules and language of the powerful becomes irresistible. Subversive foreignness allows the Dalits to confront the final taboo – the state – and work outside of the oppressive structures of colonial and postcolonial ideology. We began with a comprehensive critique of the consorts of Mother India. The Vedic God and the Missionary God in particular have been in a polemical dual for the right to partner the new nation state. Dalit movements, such as that of Ambedkar, tend to fit into this model as well by insisting that Buddhism – not Hinduism or Christianity – is the rightful religion of India and the authentic India choice. This competition has not relieved the oppression of Dalits, Adivasis, or the caste poor and it has fuelled anti-minority communal politics such as the riots of February 2004 in Gujarat that left up to 2,000 people dead, most of whom were Muslims. The language of nationalism is a tool of oppression or a means of political stagnation no matter how it is adopted. The only way to subvert the language of nationalism is for Dalits to return to the pre-colonial concept of bounded, corporate and localised identity but to renew this against the background of nationalism and develop liberative themes of subversive foreignness.

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Index

Adivasi see Tribal AIT, see Aryan Invasion Theory Ambedkar, B.R. 3, 4, 16, 82, 83–105, 110, 113–14, 118–20, 122, 134, 135, 139, 149, 153, 154, 157 Ambedkarite 88, 134 and, conversion and, Moses 4, 88–90, 102, 105, and, Neo-Buddhist 88, 102, 113, 138 see also Poona Pact anarchic 8–12, 20, 31, 41, 54, 58, 59, 72, 88, 94, 101, 103, 109, 112–18, 125, 134, 137, 146, 148, 150, 153, 154 anarchism 2, 3, 7–13, 18–21, 39n, 95, 110, 111, 116, n119, 125, 133, 134, 153, 154 and, Ambedkar 84–5, 134 Christian/Christi-anarchy 3, 7–13, 18–21, 116, 153, 154 collectivist 8–10, 21, 24, 78, 127, 129, 130, 149 communist 137, see also communism; Marx, Marxism Dalit 125, 128–9, 133 and, Gandhi 95 individualist 8, 21 mutualist 9, 21, 22n, 127, 129, 132 and, religion 8, 10, 95, 133 syndicalist 9 anarchy 8–12, 18n, 24n, 59n, 85, 95, 128, 130n Andrews, Charles F. 1, 71, 79, 82 Andrews, Dave 11, 12 Anglican 1, 37, 39n, 40, see also Church Missionary Society Appavoo, James Theophilus, 112, 126, 128, 130 Arulraja, M. see Raja, Maria Arul Aryan/s 35, 45, 125 Invasion Theory 45, 125

Pre-Aryan 148 Arya Samaj 45 asia 7, 93, 109, 114, 155 atheism 83, 87 Azariah, M. 22, 115n, 116–18, 152, 153 Bahujan Samaj Party 113, 114, 125 Bakunin, Michael 8, 17, 18, 21 Base Ecclesial Communities 60, 72, 143 Bhangis 39, 81n Bharatiya Janata Party 43, 45, 49, 50, 51, 56, 57, 125 bible see scripture BJP, see Bharatiya Janata Party Bonino, Jose M. 87, 143, 144 Boyd, R. 40, 53 Brahmanic 35, 79, 83, 85, 86, 92 British 2, 13, 19, 20, 23–8, 32, 33, 37, 38, 43, 44–6, 56, 74, 83, 91, 94, 100–102, 138, 140 BSP, see Bahujan Samaj Party Buddhism 26, 44, 83–91, 93, 102, 113, 125, 128, 132, 134, 135, 138, 139, 153, 157, see also Ambedkarite; Neo-Buddhist carrion 39, 80 caste system 9, 20, 25, 33, 38, 39, 56, 57n, 101, 104, 111–13, 124, 142, 151 casteism 26, 28, 37, 38, 44, 46, 47, 61, 62, 80, 84, 104, 120, 153 Christian anarchism, see anarchism Christendom 3, 20, 33, 36, 42, 82, 130, 133, 147 Christi-anarchy, see anarchism Christology, Dalit 2, 77, 111, 112, 116, 118, 146, 149, 152 church mainstream 3, 20, 52, 55, 57–9, 113, 119, 153, 155

168

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism

Pentecostal 3, 20, 45, 53, 55, 58, 62, 64, 155 Roman Catholic 3, 20, 33–5, 59, 62, 63, 66, 71, 72, 80–82, 115, 123, 138, 153 of North India 37n, 39n, 42, 51–5, 59, 61–7 of South India 59, 118, Church Missionary Society 37, 38–40, 65, 72, 79n Clarke, Sathianathan 4, 112, 116, 126–32, 135, 142, 146–9, 152 CMS, see Church Missionary Society CNI, see Church of North India colonialism 2, 3, 7, 13, 16, 19, 23, 25–8, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 47, 55, 56, 64, 69, 71, 73, 74, 77, 82, 86, 94, 99, 104, 114, 134, 153, 154, 156, 157 colony administrative 3, 19 missionary 66 rural Dalit 124, 129, 130 communitarian 8, 11, 12, 35, 89, 126, 127, 129, 137 Congress Party 25, 57, 61, 92, 95, 101, 102 consensus 9, 10, 93, 113, 130, 137 conversion 28, 34, 36–41, 45, 49, 50n, 55, 56, 59, 62, 63, 66, 72–6, 84–6, 99–102, 112, 113, 125, 131–5, 138, 143, 149, 152, 154, 155 cosmic Christ 87, 146 God/s 19, 64, 67, 95 CSI, see Church of South India culture 1, 2, 20, 23, 25n, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44–7, 51, 53, 61, 63, 73, 80, 82, 87, 95, 112, 118, 119, 146, 147, 154, 156 cultural nationalism 25, 26, 33, 43, 44, 47, 56, 71, 85, 91

drum 122, 131, 147, 148 Jesus 111, 139, 149, 150, 153 liberation theology see Dalit theology literature 118–36 movement 4, 7, 10, 27, 45 ,54, 90–93, 102–5, 112–15, 119, 120, 134, 135, 142, 149, 153, 155, 156, 157 Panthers 113, 118, 119, 153 Sena 113, 114, 125, 153 theology 7, 32, 78, 111n ,142–56, worship 13, 46, 84, 112, 118, 124, 126–9, 131–3, 135, 139–40, 145–149, 154 Dangle, Arjun 118, 120, 121 demonology 23, 60, 89, 128–30, 137–9 Devasahayam, V. 109n, 117n, 137, 139, 151, 160n dialectics 12, 15, 109 dialogue 1, 8, 17, 53, 55, 71, 74, 82, 117, 139, 146 disobedience 98, 118, 120, 137, 144, 145 Dravidianism 113, 129n

Dalit Christian/s 2, 9, 32, 56, 59, 61, 64, 72, 79, 84, 110, 111, 115–18, 126, 134, 138, 139, 146–8, 150–54 community 86, 99, 102, 111, 121, 123, 126, 127, 129, 132, 133, 148, 152

Gandhi, M.K. 3, 4, 9, 13, 25, 57, 71, 72, 77–9, 82–105, 142, 149, 153–5, 157 Goddess 128–32, 138, 148 government 84, 94, 95, 101, 102, 125, 127, 133, 135, 144, 156

ecology 117, 122, 125 electoral politics 10, 49, 51, 56, 89, 92, 93, 101, 102, 113, 138 Ellul, Jacques 12–15, 22n, 23, 32, 59, 141 endogamy 33, 104 enlightenment 7, 8, 18, 19, 26, 127, 134 Eucharist 126, 145, 148 Europe 7, 18–20, 24, 26, 33–5, 41, 42, 50, 55, 74, 86, 125, 142, 147 eschatology 10, 14, 21, 22 essentialism 46, 79, 95 ethics 9, 93 exodus 2, 4, 15, 16, 31, 33, 71, 72, 86–90, 102, 105, 115, 118, 140–42 famine 10, 36–41, 62, 76 foreignness 4, 38, 58, 61, 73–6, 91, 95, 105, 153–7

Index Gujarat 3, 24–7, 34, 37, 39, 40, 43–5, 49–52, 54–8, 61–6, 71, 78–87, 104, 113, 114, 134n, 138, 154, 157 Gutierrez, Gustavo 14–17, 21, 78, 140, 141 hermeneutics circle 3, 11, 14–16, 22, 118, 142, 143 dalit 2, 11, 12, 22, 111, 117, 118, 144, 147, 153 liberationist 12, 15, 111, 118, 129, 143, 144, 145, 147 , 149, 152, 153 of resistance 3, 4, 10, 13–18, 29, 32, 33, 39, 59, 94, 135–6, of suspicion 15, 16 hierarchy 46, 53, 61, 66, 80, 84, 91 Hindutva 25–8, 33, 43–6, 54, 56, 58, 82, 125, 138, 155, 157 Hollis, M. 42, 66 homogenisation 20, 23, 27, 32, 33, 42, 43, 47, 63, 82, 85, 127, 131, 134, 154, see also Sanskritisation Hoyland, J.S. 71–3, 76–9 identity 11, 27, 31, 32, 36, 43, 47, 53, 56, 61–3, 66, 72, 79, 85–7, 90, 91, 95, 101–5, 109–12, 115, 117, 118, 121, 125, 132, 142, 143, 148, 149, 152, 154, 155, 157 Ilaiah, Kancha 27, 137 indigenous 3, 8, 18, 25–7, 32, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44–7, 51–3, 79, 105, 112, 113, 128, 132, 135, 145 154, 155 individualism 1, 8, 9, 21, 37, 38 58, 65, 127, 133, 151 Indology 27, 34, 43, 44 International/ism 13, 43, 55, 64, 94, 101, 113, 119, 125, 155 Islam 26, 27, 34, 43–5, 49, 50, 54, 56, 57, 62, 64, 65, 80–82, 86, 93, 101, 113, 116, 125, 132, 154, 155, 157 Kappen, Sebastian 25n, 53 Kingdom of God 10–14, 17, 22, 23, 80, 100, 105, 155–7 Kropotkin, Peter 9, 18n, 22 liberation theology Dalit 7, 32, 78, 111n, 116n, 152, 153

169

Indian 1, 79 Latin American 4, 15, 16, 71, 79, 115–17, 126, 142, 153 literacy 24, 117, 146 Lucas, Bernard 71, 73–9, 157 Lobo, Lancy 27, 28, 44, 45, 50, 63, 81, 112, 133–5 magic 131, 133, 146 Malaviya, Vinod M. 37, 39, 65, 66 Manu, Manusmrti 14, 27 56, 90, 150 Marx, Marxism 8, 11, 12, 15–18, 20, 76, 115, 117, 118, 126 mass movement 36, 37, 72, 73, 79, 87, 132–5, 145 Massey, James 128n, 153, 112, 113n, 117, 118 Methodist 55, 63, 72, 73 missio dei 141, 150 missiology 3, 34, 41, 71, 73, 74, 156, 157 missionaries 3, 13, 16, 19, 20, 24–28, 31–47, 51–6, 58, 62–7, 71, 71–80, 84, 85, 109, 111, 134, 135, 137, 153, 154, 157 Modi, Narendra 56, 57, 80, 81 Moon, Vasant 86, 114n, 119–24 Mother India 3, 4, 19, 23–5, 27, 29, 32, 33, 36, 45–7, 56, 67, 82, 83, 100, 101, 127, 153–7 Missionary God 3, 19, 24, 25, 28, 31–7, 40, 41, 46, 47, 56, 64, 67, 76, 153, 157 myth/s 19, 32, 34, 37, 60, 99, 124, 131, 139, 142, 144, 146 nation, nationalism 1, 3, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 19, 20, 24–8, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 43–7, 50–54, 46, 62, 63, 67, 71, 73, 76–80, 82–95, 101–5, 113–18, 127, 129, 134, 135, 137–9, 153–7 National Volunteer Corps, see Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Navsarjan Trust 57n, 81 Nelson-Pallmeyer, J. 13, 17, 141, 142 NGO, see Non-Governmental Organisation Nirmal, Arvind P. 22, 88, 89, 116, 117n, 118, 137, 142, 144, 152, 153

170

Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism

nonviolence 13n, 61n, 96n, 98, 99n, 100n, 101, 149 see also violence notions of purity and pollution 39, 66, 80, 91, 102, 104, 111, 126, 129, 135, 138, 149, 150, 156 occidentalism, see western oppression 2, 3, 7, 11, 15–17, 28, 32, 54, 57n, 59, 66, 72, 73, 80, 82, 85, 86, 100, 102, 105, 109, 110, 112, 114, 122, 124, 128, 131, 137, 139, 144, 147, 149, 157 panchayat 9, 10, 39, 81, 122, 138 patriotism 4, 11, 24, 28, 33, 43, 47, 49, 58, 63, 94, 95, 127, 153, 154 Pentecostal 3, 20, 45, 53, 55, 58, 62, 64, 155 Phule, J. 109, 111, 149 pluralism 79, 82, 104, 131, 145–8 polycentric-monotheism 9, 20, 33, 83, 95, 116, 127, 154 polytheism 58, 67 Poona Pact 84, 102, 104 possession 61, 128, 129, 139 postcolonial 1–3, 5, 10, 13, 15, 18, 25, 33, 38, 46, 47, 69, 82, 84, 133, 157 Prabhakar, M.E. 52, 88, 89, 111 Prakash, Cedric 81, 82, 157 Praxis, orthopraxis 2, 11, 17, 23, 32, 72–4, 76, 78, 87, 89, 90, 93, 119, 137, 138, 141–3, 148, 152, 153 priest 1, 14, 20, 31–3, 35, 40, 64, 75, 78, 81, 84, 89, 123, 126, 128–30, 133, 138, 139, 145, 149–51, 156 Principalities and Powers 3, 11–19, 22, 23, 28, 31, 32, 59, 60, 72, 76, 77, 82, 85, 89, 94, 96, n99, 100, 104, 105, 116, 130, 137–9, 148, 154, 156, 157 protest 2, n13, 17, 54, 62, 63, 73, 81, 83, 86, 89, 90, 97, 98, 99, 110–13, 115, 115, 118, 121, 122, 124–8, 134, 139, 140, 142–6, 148, 149, 153 Raja, Maria Arul 4, 51n, 111, 136, 139, 143, 147, 149–53 Rajkumar, Peniel 2, 22, 31, 84, 129, 143 Rajshaker, V.T. 87, 88, 92, 134, 135n

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 26, 43–5, 49, 121 resistance 3, 4, 7, 10, 13–18, 29, 31–3, 39, 59, 70, 71, 73, 83, 85, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 100, 103, 109, 112–115, 125, 126, 129, 131, 132, 136, 144, 145, 155, 157 rice-Christians 54, 81, 154, 155, rite/s 61, 128, 132, 138, 145 Roman Catholic see church Roman Empire 59, 65, 74, 98, 132, 139 RSS, see Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh rural 36, 41, 50, 52, 59, 61–6, 86, 98, 114, 120, 122, 124, 126–8, 132, 137, 138, 151, 152 Salvation Army 41, 55, 62, 63, 66 Sanskrit 27, 110, 128 Sanskritisation 27, 28, 45, 125 Sarvodaya Movement 9–10 satyagraha 9, 71, 77n, 78, 90–94, 99, 104 Scheduled Castes 47, 56, 109, 113–15 scripture 19, 32, 34, 139, 141, see also Hermeneutics Dalit readings 117, 118, 142–7, 149–51 and, Hinduism 35, 56, 71, 94, 95, 100n, 104, 146, 150 and, missionary 35, 150 symbolic use 146 solidarity 27, 28, 41, 45, 46, 62, 76–8, 82, 85, 87, 89, 91, 103, 104, 122, 140, 141, 143, 144, 149, 152, 157 soteriology 1, 2, 9, 10, 19, 36, 41, 72, 76, 89, 90, 149 Srinivas, M.N. 27, 79 Stanislaus, L. 115, 116n state, statism 1, 3, 4, 7–26, 28, 32–6, 38–40, 42–4, 46, 47, 49, 51, 52, 54–6, 62, 63, 65–7, 69, 71, 73–8, 80, 82, 83–6, 88–95, 100–105, 110–12, 117, 121, 123, 129, 130, 133–5, 137–9, 141, 144, 145, 147, 151, 153–7 structuralism 9–12, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 28, 31, 32, 45, 54, 60, 72, 86, 91, 101, 116, 131, 137–9, 145, 157, see also principalities and powers; Wink, Walter

Index subaltern/s 16n, 20, 90n, 116n, 127n, 150n subversive 4, 12, 18, 71, 76, 107, 119, 126, 145, 147, 153–7 Theertha, S.D. 28, 31n, 46 Theosophy 72, 83, 91, 93, 100, 103 Tolstoy, Leo 3, 13–16, 82, 83, 92, 94, 98, 100, 154 Tribal 27, 38, 39, 40, 45, 46, 50, 51, 52, 54, 58n, 61, 62, 90, 105, 113, 125, 131n, 154, 157 Trinity, Trinitarian theology 77, 116, 139, 151 urban 41, 46, 52, 58, 61, 63, 65, 86, 114, 120, 121 Vedas 35, 95, 104, 146 Vedic God 19, 25–8, 31 –3, 36, 41, 43, 45–7, 93, 153, 157, VHP, see Vishva Hindu Parishad Vincent, Andrew 8, 9n

171

violence 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12–17, 19–23, 31–4, 37, 43–5, 47, 49–51, 54, 56–62, 64, 75, 80–83, 89, 90, 92, 94–105, 112, 115, 118, 120, 121–5, 140–45, 147, 150, 154, 156, see also nonviolence Vishva Hindu Parishad 28, 43, 45, 50, 52 Webster, James 88, 117, 118, 135, 150, 153 western 3, 9, 11, 12, 20, 26, 28, 33, 37, 38, 40–42, 45, 47, 51–3, 55, 58, 62, 64, 66, 72–6, 78, 79, 82, 88, 93–5, 101, 109, 116, 118, 126, 130, 132, 133, 142, 145, 146, 151, 154–6 Wink, Walter 3, 7, 13, 19, 23, 33, 60, 82, 96–100, 139, 141 worship 1, 23, 28, 29, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 45–8, 51, 61, 66, 84, 95, 112, 118, 124, 126–35, 139, 140, 145, 146, 148, 149, 154, 155 Whitehead, Henry 36, 71, 72, 79