UNDERSTANDING CHRISTIAN FAITH AND FREEDOM IN SOUTH ASIA
Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, The Maldives
Christianity came to the Indian subcontinent in three waves.
Firstly: tradition has it that the Apostle Thomas arrived in south India in around 52 CE and, that after establishing churches in the region, was martyred and buried there. Many churches in south India trace their origins back to the “Thomas Christians” of the first century. Similarly, India’s numerous Syriac Orthodox churches can trace their origins back to missionaries from the Assyrian/Syriac Church of the East, who arrived during the first centuries of the Common Era. As such, the history of the Church in India is as old as Christianity itself.
Commencing in the late 13thC, the next wave brought Roman Catholicism, initially via Franciscan and Dominican missionary monks and adventurous priest, and subsequently from 1498, via the arrival of the Portuguese long-distance mariners. By the 16thC Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries from all orders were serving in India and the Roman/Latin Catholic Church being firmly established there.
The third wave started with the arrival of imperial Britain in the 17thC, but really took off after the Protestant missionary movement was founded in London 1795. The arrival in India in 1793 of Protestant missionary William Carey heralded the dawn of Protestant Christianity in India. A true man of the Protestant Reformation, William Carey translated the Bible into Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit. He also translated portions of scripture into 29 other languages and dialects. Committed to the Biblical principle that all human beings are created by God in the image of God, Carey fought tirelessly against the cruel and inherently racist, systemically discriminatory Hindu caste system.
Imperial Britain – which ruled the subcontinent from 1858 to 1947 – brought trade, organisation and constitutional parliamentary democracy to India. However, it was Christian missionaries (Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant) who, as followers of Jesus – who taught the masses, healed the sick, fed the hungry, and up-lifted the down-trodden – introduced education, health care, humanitarian aid and human rights advocacy.
Most of the subcontinent’s leading politicians were born in Church-run hospitals with the aid of Christian midwives before being educated in Church-run schools. Despite their vulnerability, marginalisation and minority status, South Asian Christians are still massively over-represented in the fields of teaching, nursing, humanitarian aid delivery and human rights advocacy; which is another reason why religious liberty is so critically important.
During the 1980s-90s, several 20thC trends converged to produce a “perfect storm” of escalating religious intolerance and persecution across the subcontinent.
Trend 1): The rise of religious nationalism.
Religious nationalism – specifically Hindu nationalism – emerged in the subcontinent in the context of British colonial rule and was promoted by revolutionaries as a means to rally the Hindu masses against the enemy, i.e. the colonial power.
[Note: while Islam is inherently political, it is also supra-national, the emphasis being on the Ummah (the global community). Only recently, and for strategic and tactical reasons, has al-Qaeda shifted its focus to nationalist causes; a move strongly rejected by Islamic State.]
It was only after independence (1947) that religious nationalism came to pose an existential threat to the region’s religious minorities. It was in this new context – in newly independent emerging democracies – that ambitious politicians realised they could play the religion card for political gain.
Religious nationalists exploit religion and use religious nationalism as a tool to dragnet the votes of the majority in what is essentially politics by other means.
While the religious majority are rallied, wooed and privileged, religious minorities are demonised and vilified as threats to social cohesion and national security. The result is religious discrimination and persecution.
Religious nationalism has brought immense suffering to South Asia’s religious minorities.
Trend 2): The revival of fundamentalist Sunni Islam.
Since the 1980s, South Asia’s Muslim majority countries and communities have been massively impacted by the revival of fundamentalist Sunni Islam, facilitated by the dedicated efforts of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi religious establishment.
Through the 1980s the USA and Saudi Arabia backed Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, primarily with the aim of hemming in and weaking the new revolutionary Shi’ite regime in Tehran. Similarly, the USA and Saudi Arabia backed the Sunni mujahideen in Afghanistan in their civil war against Soviet-backed Afghan government forces. While Saudi Arabia’s primary aim was to hem in revolutionary Shi’ite Iran, the US was absorbed in a proxy war against the Soviets, and was using the Afghan and transnational jihadists as its proxies. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq – who, in July 1977, had seized power military coup – was transforming Pakistan into and Islamic state and, with the backing of or the USA and Saudi Arabia, a jihadi-factory. Wahhabi fundamentalist Sunni Islam, Islamic jihadism and Islamic Sharia law have brought immense suffering to religious minorities living in Muslim South Asia.
Trend 3): The phenomenal growth of Christianity – in particular, evangelical Protestant Christianity.
In 1960, around 70 percent of all Christians around the world were white, Western and middle class. But by the year 2000, around 80 percent of Christians in the world were coloured, non-Western and poor. This is not because the Church in the West has collapsed, for it hasn’t. For while liberal Christianity is in decline throughout the West, Biblical Christianity is growing.
The statistics have reversed because Christianity has been growing explosively throughout developing world. Furthermore, this growth is not due to birth rate, but due to conversions, for this trend corresponds with the emergence of indigenous missions.
Until recently, the story of Christian mission was “the West to the rest”. However, since around 1960, churches born of Western mission – that is, churches planted by Western missionaries 50, 100 and 200+ years ago – are now sending out their own missionaries. While the American Church still sends out more missionaries than any other, most Christian missionaries spreading the Gospel, planting churches, and serving communities throughout the world today are not Americans or even Westerners. Rather, they are Indians, South Koreans, Brazilians, Nigerians, Ethiopians, the Filipinos . . . and this has changed everything!
Also of critical importance, has been the phenomenal work of Bible translators (a fruit of the Protestant Reformation) who have translated the Bible and scripture portions into thousands of mother-tongue languages, preserving a multitude of languages in the process.
Among all the world religions, Christianity is uniquely universal.
Convergence: By the year 2000 these trends had converged to produce today’s “perfect storm” in which religious minorities – millions of whom are converts to Christianity – living counter-cultural lives face ever increasing marginalisation, discrimination, vilification, repression, lawfare – in particular anti-conversion and anti-blasphemy laws – and violent persecution. Indeed, for Christians across South Asia today, systematic discrimination, repression, lawfare and violent persecution with impunity has become the order of the day.
Recommended news sources reporting Christian persecution in South Asia (general):
Morning Star News, https://morningstarnews.org
Christian Solidarity Worldwide https://www.csw.org.uk
Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com/