"Subversive" Christians

Israel was not the only place where Christian missions faced trouble. Another: the state of Madhya Pradesh in Central India. Of its 21 million inhabitants, more than two-thirds are Hindus, the rest Gonds, Bhils, Kukis and other primitive people who live in dense jungles, wear huge turbans, and often eat their departed relatives as a mark of respect. Some 9,000 of the tribesmen and Hindu untouchables have in recent years declared themselves Christians (mostly Roman Catholic), and they have provoked a storm that may spread through India.

Although India's constitution guarantees religious freedom, the political boss of Madhya Pradesh, 78-year-old Ravishanker Shukla, is crusading against the Christians. First he appointed a committee of five Hindus to smell out examples of Christian subversion and of conversion by force or fraud. The committee began combing the state for testimony about Christian "spying," Christian threats, mission "dens of immorality."

Last week, in the state capital of Nagpur, Politician Shukla brought the campaign to a climax. Behind a crowd-catching corps of dancing drummers and yellow-painted naked men wearing tails to look like tigers, a horde of Hindus danced past the twin-spired Anglican cathedral. They moved on to the great statue of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, round whose pachydermous head flared a halo of electric lights. Meanwhile, people crowded the hall of the legislative assembly to watch Christians trying to answer such needling questions as: "If a mission doctor prays to the Christian God before performing an operation on a Hindu patient, is that not insulting the patient's religion?"

The anti-Christian sparks have already spread to the neighboring state of Madhya Bharat, where a similar investigating committee has been appointed. In Assam, the Christians are currently accused of inciting local tribesmen to revolt; in Travancore Cochin, where 3,000,000 of India's 8,000,000 Christians live, they are being accused of plotting to make the area an "independent Christian state."

Says a spokesman for the Protestant National Christian Council of India: "Suspicion of foreign missionaries has reached the point where it undermines public confidence in their educational, social and humanitarian work."

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