India Explosion

In January I went to India on a reporting trip, and now finally my report is out in Christianity Today Magazine. I think it’s a remarkable story of an explosion in the Indian church. The social context of Indian society is changing dramatically. Caste and all that goes with it are under assault. In the newly emerging Indian world, a person can choose to become something different. Many are choosing to become Christians.

Here’s a digital link to the issue. When you first open you’ll see, on the left, a small photo of me doing some interviews. If you click on that you’ll hear me giving a short description of my experience, while seeing some photos (including some of the first-ever published photos of me interviewing). The article itself is there too.

http://christianitytoday.imirus.com/Mpowered/book/vchto11/i7/p2

Haves and Have-Nots

It’s dangerous for an American to write about caste in Indian society, but I hope I will be forgiven for taking a stab at it. We all have a stake in India, one-sixth of the world’s population, and one of the most dynamic economies in the world. And for most of us, it’s a mysterious world.

Until my visit in January I thought of caste as a fading relic of India’s past, almost quaint and mostly harmless. No more. On this trip I sought out Dalits, members of the untouchable castes, and heard that caste is alive and well in Indian villages, which comprise two thirds of the population. And even in the cities, among the educated elite, many Indians told me that caste remains a dominant social force. It permeates social relations, it permeates business and politics, and it’s highly oppressive. According to Pavan Varma in Being Indian, caste explains how a democratic country can be largely untroubled by such a stark divide between the fabulously rich and the destitute.

Caste prejudice is unique to India, but it has close relatives elsewhere. There’s ethnic prejudice based on your gene pool, or race prejudice based on the color of your skin. Class prejudice is based on your family’s income, and also the culture associated with manual work.

Caste has elements of all these. The lower castes are often darker in skin and poorer in income, and they do specific kinds of menial work, such as cleaning up crap. (There are few toilets in Indian villages. Dalits form the Indian sewage system.)

But caste is fundamentally metaphysical. It derives its legitimacy, I am told, from some of the oldest Hindu writings. If you are on top, a Brahmin, you did something in a previous life to deserve it; if you are on the bottom, a Dalit, you too deserve your fate. One’s caste always embodies justice, by this Brahminical understanding.

And caste is indelible. You can bleach your skin, get a PhD and make a million dollars as a physicist, but you will always be a Dalit, as will your children. One can ascend in the metaphysical realm of reincarnation, but for life as we observe it on planet Earth, one can neither ascend nor descend. One is what one is, world without end Amen. And so are your grandchildren.

In modern, urban India, even while caste endures (most educated Indians would not marry outside their caste, or let their sister do so) caste is being shaken up hard. People still live by it, but they don’t necessarily believe in it. On my trip I checked out Indian newspapers and magazines every chance I got. I found articles critical of caste in nearly every one. That wasn’t so a few years ago.

Why now? The most barefaced explanation is that global economics enable so many to gain wealth by other means. Varma claims that Indians, far from being naturally otherworldly and simple in lifestyle, are intensely materialistic. The upper castes used caste as a primary way to acquire and retain wealth. Now other ways have trumped caste.

This is the theme of the Booker-Prize-winning The White Tiger. The story is told through a series of letters addressed by a young Bangalore entrepreneur to Chinese premier Wen Jiabao on the occasion of his visit to India. Jiabao wants to learn about Indian entrepreneurship. Balram, aka The White Tiger, offers himself as a primary example. He tells his simple story: how he was a poor orphan boy in the village, destined for poverty, when he managed to get a job as the driver to one of the area’s elite families. From the driver’s seat Balram carefully studied the ways of his masters. Then, when the time was right, he murdered his master in cold blood, taking the satchel of cash that his master was carrying to bribe a government minister. Armed with this cash Balram fled to Bangalore, where he bribed the police to put another taxi service out of business and install him in its place. This, Balram says, is the proud story of Indian entrepreneurship. It is not a story of merit or education or reform. It is not a story of democracy in action. It is a story of simple men using duplicity and murder to replace others who used duplicity and murder to win their positions.

Surely this is a twisted version of success in modern India. The point is, caste has become irrelevant, almost as irrelevant as morality (symbolized in the novel by ubiquitous statues of Gandhi).

According to The White Tiger, India hasn’t necessarily become a better place. It’s just that the old social bonds have been loosened, and things are busting out all over. One change I witnessed, though, seems good to me. In every place I visited, I found people becoming Christians at an unheard of rate. India has had Christian witness for thousands of years, without much penetration.  Now, at least for the time being, change has come. And it seems to relate closely to the breakdown in caste. It’s a new thing to think that an individual can decide what he wants to be. Destiny is not written at birth. You can conceive of other options.

Dr. M.A. Raju

M.A. Raju is a man of striking appearance: a deep dark Indian face surrounded by a flowing fringe of pure white hair. He could pass for a sadhu. Raised in a family of medical doctors in southern India, Raju now presides over a rambling, dilapidated hospital at Mujwa, in U.P., the heartland of Indian poverty and Hindu fundamentalism. Started by missionaries over 100 years ago, Mujwa is now less notable as a hospital than as a center for community transformation, with one million people in its orbit. The work being done is as multi-faceted and spontaneous as Raju himself.

Though raised a Christian, Raju went searching for reality as a young Indian medical student. He studied Hindu philosophy, practiced yoga, did a stint working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta, and later pursued Islam. But his biggest influence came through Francis Schaeffer.  He read him in medical school and later spent a summer at l’abri, Schaeffer’s retreat center. While working in a mission hospital in Israel Raju met his Scottish wife, Rani, and committed himself to following Christ.

In England he became a very successful consulting physician in neurology. Four children were born there, and Raju developed a reputation for integrating psychology and faith. Nevertheless he was drawn back to India, ultimately resigning his prestigious position to move to northern India. After twelve years supporting Indian missions, he stepped in to save Mujwa, which was on the verge of closing.

Rani and Raju arrived at the run-down hospital seven years ago, just as a wave of spiritual revival was breaking out. A hundred years of missionary work had yielded few results, but in the past five years, thousands of Indians have been baptized and thousands of house churches launched, particularly targeting the poorest caste groups. In addition to offering basic medical services, Mujwa starts schools, encourages self-help groups, offers vocational training (a course in air conditioning has so far had 100% placement), and provides leadership courses up to a master’s level. Several times fundamentalist mobs have broken into the compound with threats and violence, but Mujwa has grown stronger and better protected by local people who appreciate its influence.

Raju presides over it all. He has a brilliant mind for strategy and philosophy, and enjoys connecting people and presiding over innovations. My last day in Mujwa may serve as an example of his style. Raju volunteered to take my colleague Gary and me on a tour of Varanasi, the holiest of Indian cities, on our way to the airport. We visited two Hindu temples and observed people making puja on the shores of the Ganges. All the time Raju was giving a 16-point disquisition on Hinduism, which he quizzed us on at the end. As we fought our way through traffic jams he was on the phone, first calling friends and friends of friends to get Gary a hotel room in Delhi, where we were heading, then calling our airline to see if the plane was on time and to get us seats; incidentally consulting on various concerns of the Mujwa hospital.

I asked Raju whether he ever missed England. His answer was slightly ambivalent but clear. However comfortable life had become in England, he would have been bored compared to the constant stimulation and excitement of working in India.

The Selfishness of Prayer

I’ve lately been struck by short, little-regarded Psalm 67. It begins with a classic, generic prayer:

May God be gracious to us and bless us

And make his face shine upon us.

All the basics are there: a longing for God’s gracious forgiveness, for his blessing, and for a sense of his shining, personal presence. That’s what I pray for when I don’t know what to pray, when I’m lonely or discouraged or confused. “God bless us.”

I’m sure I’m not alone in wondering what right I have to pray that way, me out of all the needy people on the face of the earth. We are naturally selfish when we pray, as this psalm shows: “be gracious to US and bless US and shine upon US.” We pray for others but we pray most fervently and spontaneously for ourselves. I may pray for your children, but not as much as I pray for mine.

What makes the psalm so magnificent is what comes next:

“So that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.”

The Israelites were not particularly famous for thinking of other tribes. They were a tiny nation surrounded by enemies, and their thinking more often went: “God bless us and defeat our enemies.” In this psalm, however, another view leaks out. “Bless us so that our enemies will see and know what kind of God you are—gracious and full of blessing.”

The prayer goes on:

“May the peoples praise you, O God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad, and sing for joy…..”

Not content that the surrounding nations observe God’s goodness to Israel, the psalmist asks that the nations come to praise; furthermore, that all the nations be glad and sing for joy. The picture is of blessing spreading to the ends of the earth, leading to praise and delight in God’s good and just reign. The blessing will fill the whole world. They will sing for joy together.

This vision is not new to the psalmist; God’s call to Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) contains the same dynamic, blessed to be a blessing. But Psalm 67 is our plea, not God’s proclamation, and it helps redeem the selfishness of prayer. We ask God to bless us, but that is just the beginning. Through blessing us, we pray, God can show himself to others—and so ultimately they will sing for joy, matching our songs in a chorus throughout the universe.

In India I saw this worked out in practical ways. I interviewed many new Indian Christians, mostly poor. Many had come to Christ when they prayed for healing, and saw results. Many had gained life-changing help in the form of good schools planted in their village. In various ways they had experienced God’s goodness, and their neighbors saw. That led to the spread of faith. One reason that Christianity is growing rapidly in India is that faith in Jesus improves people’s lives. It’s visible. Beginning with selfishness–bless US– it leads to the breakdown of selfish barriers as more and more tribes and peoples join in.

Under the Radar

In a recent posting I mentioned how encouraging it was to be at the Lausanne Movement’s Cape Town 2010 meetings, outside the USA’s celebrity culture. A good case in point is Finny Philip.

I had corresponded with Finny about a trip I was planning to India. I knew only that he had his Ph.D. from Durham University, and that he taught at Filadelfia Bible College in Udaipur, India—a school I knew nothing about.

When I met him in Cape Town he wanted to pick my brain about starting a magazine. I asked him about the Bible College.

He proceeded to describe its origins. In 1981 Finny’s father-in-law, Thomas Mathews, attended a conference led by the missiologist Donald McGavran. Mathews and some of his evangelist co-workers began to pray fervently about reaching people who had never heard the gospel. While they were praying they became convinced God wanted them to go a remote place in Maharashtra state—where they knew no one and had no contacts.

When they arrived after a long journey, a man approached them at the bus station. He asked whether they were the people who were coming from Rajasthan. They said yes, but how did he know? He explained that he had had a vision telling him that five men were coming from Rajasthan—though he had no idea where Rajasthan was. He had come to the bus station to look for them, and recognized them by their suitcases.

This very simple man welcomed them into his home, where they stayed for the next several months. By the end of 1981 they had baptized 500 new believers, most of whom had no background in Christianity and knew next to nothing about the Bible. Beginning an informal educational program, Mathews began to train pastors and leaders. The program has grown as the church has grown, to the point where Filadelfia Bible College became an accredited school offering programs up to a Masters degree. Finny is the principal.

A few days ago I got an email from Finny in which he mentioned that their church had just completed its annual convention. 45,000 people attended for 6 days of worship and study on the theme, “Your Kingdom Come.”

“Very refreshing,” Finny commented.

If such a thing happened in Florida, we would all know about it. Thomas Mathews would have his own TV show, his books on miracle faith would be best sellers, and many pastors from all denominations would be attending his week-long church planting seminar in Orlando. (Special Disney World discounts included in registration fee.)

I have never met Thomas Mathews and I barely know Finny, so I can’t vouch for these stories. I can tell you that one hears such tales all the time at an event like Cape Town 2010. God’s church is vital. Most of its life happens without publicity and without much if any western involvement. It makes me happy to be part of it.

The Vitality of India

This week’s Economist Magazine features a rough economic comparison between India and China, suggesting that India may be a better bet long term. That’s largely for two reasons: India has a young population, whereas China’s is beginning to turn old. And India is a democracy, able to adapt to changing conditions in a way that is difficult for a dictatorship.

Of all the places in the world I’ve visited, there is no place like India for standing on a street corner and staring. It’s an extraordinarily complex place, and a lot of the complexity is on display in any traffic jam. How can people live cheek by jowl for a thousand years and yet remain so utterly unmixed?

I’m currently planning a trip to India and reading Nine Lives, by one of my favorite writers, William Dalrymple. In it he chronicles individuals who embody the rich, religious, historic sensibilities of India, in a setting that is very rapidly modernizing.

I’ve read about a Jain nun who gently sweeps the path in front of her in order to avoid stepping on any living thing, and who is so dedicated to the via negativa that she takes the decision to starve to death—a common Jain practice.

Quite different are the dancers/performers of the gods, usually lowly Dalit workmen who for a few months of the year are worshiped. They wear extraordinary costumes and speak frankly of being taken over by the gods while they perform in all-night, outdoor festivals.

Then there are the devadasi, women who by an ancient tradition are dedicated to the gods at an early age so that they can become prostitutes. Driven from Hindu temples by 19th century reformers, they still carry on. There’s genuine religious sentiment and ritual, and more than a little pride among the devadasi at their superiority to ordinary women of the night.

Again, troubadors still make their living by performing epic poetry of the gods—reciting from memory (they are often illiterate) thousands and thousands of lines of poetry that may take several all-night sessions to declaim. Bollywood is cutting into their trade but they carry on, like medieval bards reciting Beowulf.

What’s clear is that some very ancient, very strange traditions survive side by side with skyscrapers and heart surgery and call centers. As horrible as some of these traditions seem to me, I can’t help admiring the remarkable survival of difference. Over the past decade we’ve all been told that China is the world’s future, but the future is very difficult to predict. (Ask Japan.) Is it possible that India, with its chaos and unpredictability, has the vitality and flexibility, indeed the creativity, to deal with the future?

The Discovery of a Lost Religion

I’ve been reading my way into the works of Charles Allen, one of those Brits who knows far more than anyone should about far too many things. My latest read is an arcane and fascinating book, The Search for the Buddha: the Men Who Discovered India’s Lost Religion.

When I mentioned this book to my brother-in-law he was appropriately puzzled. What do you mean, Buddhism “discovered?” Discovered by the West? But the sense of discovery is far more comprehensive. By the 18^th century Buddhism was almost entirely forgotten in India, the land of its birth. Curious Brits kept stumbling on ancient ruins, monuments and coins with inscriptions that no one could read. They had no idea what they were looking at, or what period these artifacts dated from, and neither did any of their sophisticated Indian informants. Eventually they learned that a few Buddhist monks from Burma and Sri Lanka retained some memory (and some manuscripts) from the past. Mostly, though, it was entirely unknown that Buddhism had any connection to India. Even the fact that Buddhism was shared by countries throughout Asia, including Tibet and Japan, was obscure. They had lost the once-strong links to each other and did not recognize each other as cousins. It took considerable patient and scholarly detective work for British scholars—who were essentially amateurs, using their spare time—to recognize that all these diverse traditions stemmed from one tree, that they were all Buddhists. Only over the course of decades was the history of Buddhism reconstructed and tied to the specific locations where Buddha lived, preached, and died, and where his followers (especially the emperor Ashoka) systematically set out to spread his message.

It’s a fascinating story, which matches up with the June National Geographic’s “Caves of Faith” (here). Hundreds of caves in Mogao, a treasure trove of Buddhist monuments in western China, lay buried in sand for centuries and then were found (and looted) by European scholar/explorers.

It’s hard to grasp how little people understood their history—even when they were living on top of monuments and ruins. Slowly, patiently, scientists and scholars have pieced it together. The process goes on in the attempt to understand human evolution by studying fossils and prehistoric tools.

Such historical inquiry is an often-neglected aspect of the Enlightenment. It shone light not only onto the physical world—geology, biology, astronomy, physics—but also into the past. As a consequence our lives have changed unimaginably. We can see.

We once lived in a single room where the candlelight barely reached the walls; now we are masters of a castle with a thousand glittering rooms. Our reach and our mastery have been vastly extended in many different directions. It’s a heady reality. Tempered, of course, by the stubborn facts that we are no better morally than we ever were, that it doesn’t make us happy, and that we all die. (I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes, too.)