Anti-Christian Violence in India - Books by Chad Bauman

Chad Bauman is an American scholar who has written books on contemporary Christianity in India. Some of his books are  Christian Identity and Dalit Religion in Hindu India 1868 1947, The Routledge Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, Constructing Indian Christianities: Culture, Conversion and Caste.  While the state of present day Indian Christianity and Indian Christians is an interesting topic in itself and would need a separate write-up, this review is of two books that Bauman has written on Anti-Christian violence in India. These two books are Pentecostals, Proselytization, and Anti-Christian Violence in Contemporary India and Anti-Christian Violence in India. Many of the themes and thoughts of Chad Bauman overlap in these two books, which made me think, that it would be fit to write a single review. Another important reason for writing this review, is that in this current period of increasing Hindu aggressiveness and rampant misinformation, a seriously researched book is an invaluable help for giving right thinking people an understanding of issues which is for most people "far-off".

          Since Anti-Christian violence in India is for the most part, targeted against "Pentecostals" and "Pentecostalized Evangelicals", it is on this subgroup of Christianity that he focuses on in this book. Before delving into the specifics, he provides a brief overview of the origins and history of Pentecostalism in India. For readers who are interested in knowing more about the history of the Pentecostal movement in India, much of the information in this chapter is taken from "The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century" by  Michael Bergunder. For a lay reader like me, who thought that the modern Pentecostal movement started with the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles of the early 20th century, it was revealing to know that there are documented early Indian revival meetings having displays of Pentecostal experience in 1860. Also interesting to know was the role played by Pandita Ramabai and her Mukti Mission in the global spread of Pentecostalism.

    It is also in the first chapter, that he tries to distinguish Pentecostalism and delineate it from both Mainstream Protestant and Catholic denominationalism, as well as the more problematic 'Evangelical' Christianity in the Indian context. For many of us who have witnessed Pentecostal worship, it is characterized by boisterous loudness and  shared affectivity in the congregation. Many Pentecostal services also feature "glossolalia" and speakers making "Prophecies". In simple terms, there is a lot of importance given to the "Holy Spirit" and its manifestation, as part of congregational worship. Putting it in layman's term, you would be able to name it when you see it. In the Indian context according to Baumann, even evangelical groups that are involved in missionary work too display many characteristics that are seen in Pentecostal worship. Baumann calls these groups "Pentecostalized  Evangelicals". For a book exploring Anti-Christian violence in India, elaborate exposition on the nature of Pentecostalism by using Durkheimian or (William) Jamesian line of enquiry is simply too trite. These theoretical and theological meanderings occupy too many pages of the book without really advancing any line of thought towards the purpose of the book, which is to show a light on Pentecostalism and Anti-Christian violence. I had a strong feeling that these elaborations were included to make the book look more academic. While these belaboring's distract, the book does move forward by asking interesting questions. One interesting question is, why does evangelical Christianity in India become Pentecostalized. Baumann gives two answers to this question. Pentecostal forms of worship and preaching have become so widespread through mass media (TV shows and musical CDs), that they have attained a sort of normality of worship style in evangelical Christian circles. The second reason is the Indian milieu that encourages ecstatic worship and religious activities like healing and divination. Evangelical activity becomes Pentecostalized because congregations demand spirit-filled worship and healing. So while Baumann is not able to clearly get any clear delineating boundary between Evangelicals and Pentecostals in worship or doctrine, I thought at least in the South Indian context I could spot a difference in terms of their relationship with other Christians. In South India, my casual observation has been, that there is a subtle hostility and not much personal relationship (at least at the leadership level) between ideological Pentecostal churches and mainstream Protestant churches. But this is not so with evangelical churches. Many of the indigenous evangelical mission organizations are sponsored by members of mainstream Protestant denominations,and while their churches in the mission fields may have a predominantly Pentecostal form of worship, the missionaries and leaders continue to maintain a relationship with the institutional church. There is continuous shared use of resources and people happening in informal ways. This may not be true in North India, where Baumann mentions the proportion of Christians is too small, that denominational walls are fluid, and cross-overs continuously happen.

    The second chapter discusses how, during British rule, a Hindu identity grew in opposition to what it saw as "foreign" Muslim and Christian identities. But first, he discusses the overall peaceful coexistence that has existed for a 1000 years between Christians and Hindus in Kerala. A mention of Syrian Christians is an often compulsory topic in any discussion on Indian Christianity. This book too is no exception and it takes its references from "Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present" by Michael Frykenberg. Syrian Christians before the advent of the Europeans were considered a ritually pure and "high ranking" community of warriors and traders. As was common in medieval South India, achieving ritual high status needed participation in the temple "honors" system and the privilege to be able to give sacrificial gifts to deities. To be so highly integrated into the existing Hindu socio-religious cultural system, makes the very claim of Syrian Christian "Christianness" highly suspect. Understanding this makes the whole claim of the ancientness of Christianity in the Sub-Continent, which both Baumann and Frykenberg make in their books contentious. While this is a digression from the main topic of anti-Christian violence, the history of Syrian Christians reveals certain motivations that drive anti-Christian violence, a theme which I will discuss later. The remainder of the second chapter examines the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the present post-independence age, during which a Hindu identity antagonistic to the west and, by extension, its religion grew. For students of history, the events and narratives mentioned here are familiar and have been covered exhaustively by very many works of scholarship. I summarize them in the rest of this paragraph. Some of these significant events include the arrival of more missionaries in 1813 after the East India Company granted them permission to work in India, the social and religious reforms (such as the abolition of Sati) that they helped to bring about, and their advocacy for policy changes that favored lower castes, peasants, and Christians. Many attacks on native converted Christians occurred during the Great Rebellion of 1857, which historians now believe was sparked by perceived British intrusions into the religious and social lives of Indian elites. The association between Christians and British rule was being made by the early and mid-nineteenth century at least in the formerly Muslim ruled North India. The later part of the nineteenth century saw the decennial census and Swami Dayanand Saraswathy's "Shuddi" movement. The 20th century saw Gandhi equating conversion to "denationalization" and normalizing anti-conversion discourse with his famous words "If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all Proselytizing ..". While the post-independence era of Nehruvian nation building saw a temporary truce in public expressions of Anti-Christian conversion sentiments, an ambivalence on Christian conversions has always continued to exist amongst the opinion making middle classes ( read upper castes). This has been especially buttressed by the Niyogi report on conversions in Madhya Pradesh which blamed "force, fraud, and allurements". The post-liberalization era saw a significant increase in Anti-Christian violence with major riots in Dangs and Kandhamal. It is also in this period that violence against Christians became "routinized" in the sense that it has become so "everyday", that it no longer warrants the mainstream attention.

    The third chapter talks about the reason for the disproportionate targeting of Pentecostals. Baumann lists three inherent reasons in the nature of Pentecostalism that could cause violence against it. They are its (1) evangelical assertion and enthusiasm,(2) the greater presence and participation, within it, of marginalized and vulnerable peoples, and (3) its countercultural posture. This is the chapter that reveals the serious shortcomings of this book. The author seems to be so interested in developing theoretical frameworks and getting into the "nature" of things that he misses the serious casework needed to get a more definitive understanding. The only statement in this whole chapter that seemed fully empirical was a commonsensical one by John Dayal (Leader of the Ecumenical Christian Council), on the reason for Pentecostal churches being targeted, “The episcopal, mainline churches have withdrawn from the countryside. . . . They’re not there to be victimized. . . . You can’t drown on a mountaintop.”. As a reviewer attempting to fill this missing gap, I would like to add in this review, a localized Hindu-Christian conflict that I have had first-hand experience of, and which incidentally happened to be the first instance of Hindu-Christian violence in Post Independence India. This was the fatal Hindu-Christian riots of Mandaikadu in Kanyakumari district of Tamilnadu.Despite the fact that I did not conduct extensive research on this, I was able to form a causal narrative of the conflict based on incidents mentioned in casual conversations and distinct recollections of different people. And from what I gathered, Pentecostal Christians were very peripheral to the conflict, despite the fact that the Pentecostal movement was very vibrant in the district. The seeds of the fissures that would later blow up into a large scale riot and lead to an eventual Hindu political consolidation, started off as a power struggle in the political arena between emergent lower caste Nadar leaders in the secular Congress party. Hindu Nadar leaders felt that the Christian Nadar leaders used religion as a tool to marginalize and discriminate against them within the party. The general recollection among many people(both Christian and Hindu) is that Nadar Christians or at least a section among them, behaved in a very discriminating, snobbish, "looking down" sort of manner toward their Hindu brethren. This parochialism was fearfully amplified by the institutional power (Education, Medical and Political) that mainstream Christians held in Kanyakumari district. To what extent, Christianity can be implicated for this discriminating attitude is debatable. In the highly casteist, low-trust societies (my own subjective experience growing up there) of Travancore and Tamilnadu, this sort of snobbery and "looking down" is very normative and not "out of the ordinary". But what should have remained a vexing localised disagreement grew into something larger and more terrifying as a result of its ability to appropriate as its own narrative, tropes developed as part of the national "Hindu" identity somewhere else. Some of these ideas, as Bauman writes in the previously discussed second chapter, include conflating India with a "Hindu" identity, imagining Christianity and Islam as aggressive foreign entities that prey on a tolerant and vulnerable Hindu people, and so on. In addition to the above was the role played by organizations of the Sangh Pariwar, who in the words of Paul Brass, "there are active, knowing subjects and organizations at work engaged in a continuous tending of the fires of communal divisions and animosities ...". At least in Kanyakumari district then, Hindu-Christian conflict developed synchronously and in relationship to mainstream Catholic and Protestant denominations. Are Pentecostals then totally absent in this Hindu-Christian conflict?. In present-day Kanyakumari district, as in many other places, there has been a phenomenal growth of autonomous Pentecostal churches. While Christians were a significant minority, both at the time of independence and Mandaikadu riots(1982), they are a majority (est. 62%)now, thanks to this explosive growth of Pentecostal Churches. But this growth has not seen any large scale riots or violence("Routinized" violence, mostly verbal aggression against Pentecostals though is not uncommon. But these are mostly opportunistic crimes because Pentecostals do not hit back nor do they mostly complain to the police). While the main reason for this, is the ruling Dravidian parties' strong anti-communal leanings, Could there be other factors that miss our eye?. It is in questions like this, without any definitive answers and where facts are not easily forthcoming, that we have to turn into speculation about the "nature" of things and phenomena. My supposition would start from the argument, that in KanyaKumari district which has seen a historical Hindu political consolidation and where politically powerful and well connected organizations like "Hindu Munnani" have a widespread grassroots presence, it would have been virtually impossible for the mainstream denominations (Catholic and Protestant) to have grown as much, without a major violent blowback. This brings us to an intriguing corollary: how did the Pentecostal movement manage to do just that?. I for one, believe the answer to this lies in the very nature of Pentecostal religion. I would like to quote Bauman on this, "the Pentecostal emphasis on freedom in the spirit, and freedom to follow the spirit where it leads, creates a scenario in which Pentecostalism is always in a state of becoming, always emergent and yet-to-be-determined. Every Pentecostal generation is, as Everett Wilson points out, “the first generation.”". It is this nebulous nature of the Pentecostal movement, its inability to stand still and create something solid that bamboozles organized Hindu groups. The language of "Hindu" identity and aggression developed in cultures and places "far off" is superfluous when face to face with Pentecostal Christianity. 

    The fourth chapter is on what Bauman names as "recuperative conversions". These are conversions initiated by faith healing. According to Bauman, most conversions, or at least potential converts contact with Pentecostalized Evangelicals start with a request or a need for healing. In the words of one Pentecostal Pastor,"70% of the converts are converted because of physical or spiritual healing. The other 30% also get healed of something". What Bauman mentions here can be attested by anyone who is in touch with missionaries or mission organizations. Another interesting fact that Bauman mentions is not all faith-healings result in conversion. This is because, in the Indian context, people are always shopping for relief from physical and spiritual ailments. They could be visiting shrines, godmen, and magic practitioners one after another. Miraculous healing does not immediately result in change of religious identity or long-term association with the Prayer Group or Pastor. Typically according to Bauman, caste is one of the factors that plays a role here, with higher castes avoiding conversion because of the association Christianity has with lower castes. It is also in this chapter that Bauman contradicts the widely prevalent opinion that "force, fraud  and allurement" are behind Christian conversions, a view that was popularized by Gandhi and later the Niyogi report. According to the voluminous Niyogi report, Christian missionaries use the power and prestige of modern medicine for fraudulent conversion. The logic of faith healing is in direct contrast to the spirit of Western medicine, nor does it need its financial resources. Another observation that can be added, is that in current-day India, modern hospitals and medicines in rural India are no longer the preserves of Christians, unlike at the time of the "Niyogi report". 

    The fifth chapter is about mission organizations and their work. He debunks the popular notion believed by many people, that Christian missionaries are foreign missionaries. Most missionaries now are Indians. The book's general weakness of meandering, without getting to the point is visible here too. Take the topic of foreign funding for evangelical work. There is much information, on how much Americans contribute, the method and denominations that they contribute to, research on different manuals and magazines to find how much they contribute, strategies that foreign missions follow and so on, that it misses the essential question, which is, how important is foreign money to "effective" evangelical activity in India. The answer to this question is critical because it is widely assumed that foreign money drives Indian evangelical activity. To substantiate this assumption, would need a lot of fieldwork, which is unfortunately lacking. Since that is missing here, I would add my own experience of what I personally witnessed. A mainstream non-charismatic denomination called "Churches of Christ" as part of its evangelical mission started its outreach in Bangalore. In the 10 year period (from 1985 to 1995) that I witnessed its operation as an outside observer, I saw American missionaries being sent to Bangalore for extended periods of time, visiting groups of American missionaries holding gospel preaching meets in large costly auditoriums, children's retreats organized, a head office in Bangalore's CBD being taken on rent for worship service. Like any other rich American organization looking to expand in India, it attracted hanger-on's who offered their services for monetary help. It also attracted peripheral Christians who were drawn in by the novelty of the whole enterprise and, most likely, the opportunity to associate with American glamour. After spending millions of dollars through the years, it could not attract more than a handful of people, and that too a transient one. My experience from both hearsay and direct experience is, that there has to be a dedicated and strong local agency for a missionary organization to be successful. Some of the very successful evangelical organizations are indigenous for this very reason. The missionaries of these organizations at great personal cost(many of them leave secular jobs) work in remote areas(mostly tribal) separated from their children (who study in Dohnavur). Prayer leaders in missionary support areas (mostly South India) organize financial support for these missionaries and hold regular prayer meetings. Many families also sponsor missionaries, visiting them in their mission fields. If at all there is a Western influence in these evangelical missions, it is the example of early pioneering Christian missionaries like William Carey, Hudson, and Stanley, on whom they model their evangelical life. Bauman cites the example of overseas missionary support organizations like Spiritual Overseers Service International that speak in modern business terminology of "insuring a superior return for missionary investment". These organizations by their very nature attract "career-oriented" personality types and their resulting work is ephemeral too. Even though there might be a lot of American money flowing into evangelical networks, their effectiveness in proselytization is highly doubtful (cross-checked with missionaries in the field, many of whom expressed disdain).  Support for social services such as running children's homes, feeding poor children, building hospitals, providing medical services, and a plethora of other forms of social work is where American money is more effective. These have clearly defined metrics to evaluate and can be done in a cross-cultural environment. Other than these evangelical organizations, the explosive growth of Pentecostal Christianity is driven by people like Prakash and Satish whom Bauman cites (a welcome instance of fieldwork in the book),  as having received some miraculous healing, which they interpret as God's calling, and take up full-time ministry to plant house churches. These types of Pentecostal house churches are financially self-sufficient since their members offer tithe. In fact, as I write this review, ten years from the time of publication of this book, stringent FCRA regulations have ensured a severe curtailment of financial support from abroad for evangelical activities. This though has meant no signs of slowdown for Pentecostalized Evangelical activity. 

    The last and concluding chapter moralizes on Conversions, the naturalness of Anti-Christian violence, and argues on the question of culpability. This chapter is deeply problematic since the paradigm under which Bauman frames his answers is contestable. In Bauman's understanding of things, India is like America a secular democracy, Hinduism in India is a monolith like Christianity in America and then there are the intolerant religions like Islam or fundamentalist Christianity in America and Pentecostal Christianity in India, with the good, nice, secular people in both America and India having to manage these intolerant bigots who are using the very freedom provided by peaceful majorities to sabotage secular tolerance. The only condemnable part in Bauman's view is physical violence against Christians. While it is true, that the role of the state as enshrined in the Indian constitution, enjoining it to prevent violence and avoiding discrimination can be the only legitimate expectation from the Christian minority. It is also important that in places like India, where state institutions are weak and malleable, to confront world-views which inevitably cause eventual physical violence. One reason probably for Bauman's problematic world-view is because caste is not a lived experience for him, but something he theoretically tries to understand and incorporate into his logic. The second reason, is probably because since he is a Western, Christian, first world scholar parachuting to a third world nation, which brings with it all the attendant background noise of colonialism, racism and so on, he wants to appear even handed and appreciate what he thinks is the dominant culture of his hosts. But nevertheless we have to appreciate Bauman for venturing into an area that very few social science scholars do, and that is to give a personal opinion and solution on the subject that he is investigating.  

    To contest the unreasonableness of Bauman's worldview, I would like to continue with the story of Syrian Christians  that Bauman narrates here. Syrian Christians who were considered a ritually pure community began to lose their high-caste status when under the influence of the Portugese first and then the British moved away from participation in temple rituals. By mid nineteenth century, Upper Castes were treating them like a ritually polluting caste. Syrian Christians got back their high-caste standing since the late 19th century by cultivating ritual connection with their Hindu neighbors through the adoption of high-caste Hindu practices involving, among other things, temple festivals and lif-cycle rituals.According to Bauman this high caste status has given them protection from prevalent Anti-Christian sentiments. What does this imply?. Even in the pre-modern era , being alienated or having an identity that rejected temples (representing Hindu Brahmin religion) was not just ritually polluting but also ensued subsequent loss of economic and political power. Could we imagine then, this constructed "Hindu" identity of the modern era as a continuity from the pre-modern.The repercussions are just the same. Lack of participation in the "Hindu" identity that is conflated with the Indian identity makes Christians and Muslims "second-class" citizens with the concomitant loss of political and cultural power. It is here that Pentecostal Christians differ from votaries of mainstream "Hinduness". Pentecostal Christianity for all it's religious intolerance is not angling for political power and the resultant ability to marginalize people. Pentecostal Christian religion might call your "god" a man-made idol or still worse a demon, but it is not going to burn your house and throw you out. Anyone who doubts this, just has to google "Muslims and India". To find moral equivalence between two ideologies both vying for different things, incomparable in the social status of its practitioners (Priveleged uppercastes on the one hand and mostly untouchables and tribals on the other hand), with repercussions that are not at all comparable, is to me against all sense of fairplay and justice. Should we call it Cruel?. 

    To me, Bauman is fixated on asking the wrong questions "Are Pentecostals Provocative?". "Do Pentecostals invite the violence that befalls them?" and so on. Provocation is itself a loaded word with very subjective answers dependent on time and place. It is my personal belief that indigenous communities or castes will be able to solve their issues when left to themselves. Pentecostal Christianity with it's belief of the supernatural, demons, emotional meltdowns, miracles, corporate worship and healing is rooted in many ways closer to the psyche of people than we would acknowledge. As I mentioned before, it is the language of "Hindu" identity and aggression developed in cultures and places "far off", with national-level actors who bring to a localized conflict an edge and a sophistication that it would never have on its own, who seem to be the problem. To come back to Kanyakumari district, local Sangh workers faced with the failure of a vocabulary to effectively confront Pentecostal religion as well as the inability to use the power of the state, have started to critique Christianity. Some of their popular criticisms that I know are, "What God is he, if he cannot remove two nails and set himself free", "The Virgin birth of Jesus", comparing the boisterousness and happiness of Hindu temple worship against the crying and sadness of Pentecostal worship. This I believe is a healthy way of solving conflict. Words that are being replied with words and not violence. 

    This book for all its weaknesses is a very needed and useful one, setting up a template for further study. In this period of growing intolerance in India and deliberate propagation of misinformation, a book like this performs a valuable service.