The Hand of God

Though the results of the recently concluded General Elections may have come as a shock or surprise to many people, yet, many Christians like Joseph D'Souza, president of the All–India Christian Council (AICC), sees in the results, a demonstration of the power of God and praised the Hindu majority among the voters for rejecting the fanaticism of an extreme fringe among their coreligionists.

For India's tiny Christian minority, as for the Muslims, the surprising defeat of the Hindu nationalist BJP may bring the end of a long nightmare, in which fanatics massacred minorities, murdered priests and pastors, razed churches and ancient mosques, burned holy books and disrupted religious services.

The perpetrators were "neo–Nazis," as Dr. John Dayal, General Secretary of AICC, called the miscreants of two organizations closely linked to the outgoing BJP–led NDA Government. In fact, in an interview given to an ecumenical news agency a few years ago, Dr. Dayal had compared their members to Hitler's storm troopers. These groups, called RSS and VHP, are the Hindu fundamentalists partly funded by Indians living overseas.

Many Catholic bishops observe that these extremists are not representative of most Indian Hindus, who make up 80 percent of this huge country's population of over 1 billion. "Hindus are not generally like that; they are the salt of the earth," Archbishop Vincent Concessao, of the Archdiocese of New Delhi mused once.
Indeed, when in 1999 Hindu fanatics burned to death the Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children in Orissa, there was a massive uproar and outpouring of revulsion. The disgust expressed around the world grew when the chief perpetrator, Dara Singh, though sentenced to die, remained unrepentant with Hindu bigots hailing him as the "savior of Hinduism." This is the sad situation in a country where reportedly Apostle Thomas is believed to have brought Christianity to India in the 1st century A.D., hence the name of an ancient Indian denomination – "Mar Thomas Church."

What happened was the fulfillment of a 30–year old prophecy by the author Sir V.S. Naipaul, a Trinidadian of Indian ancestry. Alarmed by his observation that Indians were increasingly turning their backs on Mahatma Gandhi's thought, Sir Naipaul once predicted a particularly obtuse form of Hinduism would take its place – "a Hinduism that shakes off intellect whose necessity it denies."

Gandhi was of course a Hindu, albeit one who prayed the Lord's Prayer every day and said he would probably be a Christian if only he had ever met a real Christian in his life. But if he was a Hindu he certainly was not one of the BJP variety that "is reaching for the hydrogen bomb, complementing a program to save holy cows," as Naipaul quipped.
According to best–selling author Arundhati Roy, "The stench of fascism hung in the air," and Narayan Desai, the son of Mahatma's secretary, had once penned a poem titled, "Goodbye Gandhi" perhaps foreseeing the fanaticism that would replace the tolerance Hindus are well–known for.

At a time when militant Hindus strove to ban the right to religious conversion, and the BJP government stripped the Dalits, or untouchables, of their affirmative action rights if they became Christians or Muslims, can the mandate of the voters be said to be surprising?

Did they side with their coreligionists who transformed the Nazi slogan, "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer" (one people, one empire, one leader) into the motto, "one nation, one culture, one religion"? No. Instead they evidently sided with the 2.4 percent Christians and 12 percent Muslims who longed for religious freedom and ended a regime that practiced religious persecution and encouraged sectarian violence.

Was Desai wrong, then? Is Gandhi still around? Maybe. As the recent public mandate prove. This, said and done, reminds one of what Mahatma Gandhi once said, “No religion is above truth.” Indeed, Lord Christ Himself said, “The Truth will set you free” and the mandate of the minorities who have placed their trust and confidence in the new government may well set them free.

Surojit Chatterjee