A TALE OF TWO (AND MORE) ‘CHURCHES’

Many would have heard of the horrific incidents of vandalism involving two churches in Delhi in the last few weeks. While the first church was clearly a victim of full-fledged arson, the second had some of its window panes stoned. Being in Delhi at the time of these two incidents, I was very upset. What was also appalling and egregious to note was that the ‘national’ media and public intellectuals were slow in reporting and condemning the incidents. I naïvely expected ‘national’ outrage. But, as we know, nothing of that sort happened.

Fortunately, the Archbishop of the Delhi Diocese, Fr. Anil Couto, minced no words. To quote from a news report, “Archbishop Couto said that the arson in St. Sebastian’s church was condemnable not just because it was an act of sacrilege and hate against the community and its faith, but [because] it could happen in the national Capital which is recovering from a series of communal incidents. Also distressing is the sense of police impunity [that is, impunity seen in police inaction]. Long hours were lost, and possible evidence destroyed, before the police finally came”.

Once I reached Goa after the winter break had commenced at my University, I declared to my friends on Facebook that while I was glad to be back in Goa, I was also relieved to be away from a city that burns and stones its churches. Kaustubh Naik, one of my friends, pointed out quite astutely that although I was away from a city where churches were being burnt and stoned, I had come back to a place where people were happily signing petitions against the church. He was referring to an online petition asking the Prime Minister of India to send the mortal remains of St. Francis Xavier back to Portugal (as if Xavier had been a native of Portugal) and the exposition stopped permanently, for it constituted a grave insult to the Indian nation. The petition rather uncritically linked Xavier with “inhuman crimes” of the Inquisition, and further argued that India had always preached and practiced ahimsa. I realized that the relief I had felt in being back in Goa was rather misguided.

To be very honest, it did not occur to me even then that these two episodes, in Delhi and Goa, were linked. To me the people who drafted the petition and those few who signed it were at best angry at the loss of Hindu cultural purity. Thinking about these events now, I am convinced that they are intimately linked. In fact, we need to view the arson in Delhi and the petition in Goa as a continuum that includes other events of the last three or four weeks involving Christians and Muslims in various parts of India.

Hindutva has of late stepped up its attacks on Adivasi, Christian, Dalit, and Muslim communities. Starting from November, the online news portal scroll.in reported how VHP and Bajrang Dal workers under the garb of ‘ghar wapasi’ were working hard to forcibly convert the Adivasis of Bastar in Chhasttisgarh. These Adivasi communities would frequent evangelical churches in the hope of spiritual healing. These evangelical churches or ‘prayer groups’ provide other amenities such as health care and education that successive governments there had failed to provide. What is important here is to note that originally these communities were never Hindu, but followed various different Adivasi faiths.

In December, the RSS presided over the ‘ghar wapasi’ of some 57 Muslim families and also threatened that come Christmas day, they would also (forcibly) convert 5000more Muslims and Christians. As if this was not enough, there was more salt waiting to be rubbed on the wounds of communities like the Muslims and Christians. The central government just a week or so before Christmas issued a circular to CBSE (and all its affiliated schools) to observe Christmas day as ‘good governance day’ in order to celebrate the birthdays of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Hindu Mahasabha leader Madan Mohan Malaviya. Students were required to attend school on Christmas, the circular demanded. Although the circular was retracted soon, following some outrage in the press, the message conveyed was very clear: non-Hindu and ‘western’ practices are not welcome here. To put it very simply, they wanted to take away Christmas from all people of India, irrespective of religion.

The link in this whole tale of two and more ‘churches’ in various parts of India is the problem that Indian nationhood has with conversion. I would like to go a step further and suggest that if there is a rapid increase in vandalizing churches and oppressing shudra and untouchable Christian and Muslim communities in India, it is due to the failure of the secular-liberals in understanding the history and potential of conversion. Throughout the history of modern India and particularly the national freedom movement, conversion to Christianity and Islam was viewed as violating the very soul of the Indian nation. One does not need to go far, but look at the rhetoric that animated the Konkani language agitation and the MoI controversies. Always lurking beneath the surface was the accusation that Christianity was illegitimately westernizing people. It is this understanding that today legitimizes violent acts like the ‘ghar wapasi’. After all, the RSS and its affiliates claim that ‘ghar wapasi’ is necessary to wean people away from non-Indian cultural practices.

Throughout the last few decades the secular-liberals failed to see that Christianity and Islam had an innate promise of allowing one an escape from caste, whereas rituals like the ‘ghar wapasi’ tries to extend the stranglehold of caste. While I acknowledge that caste persists in both Islam and Christianity in India, what needs to be recognized is that the theological systems of these faiths uphold the equality of believers in principle. Thus, even though caste prejudice may exist, these prejudices can be attacked from within the theological framework of these faiths, unlike Hinduism. At the risk of stretching my argument ad absurdum, I think part of the problem of why the Delhi churches were vandalized, and why the response of the ‘national’ media and public intellectuals to this was slow, might lie in the faulty understanding of conversion to Christianity and Islam. Secular-liberals in India have never given any serious thought to how churches and mosques (and even dargahs) could pose an effective challenge to the power of Hindutva.

So, on Christmas eve, let us sincerely hope and pray that in the years to come fewer and fewer Adivasis, Christians, Dalits, and Muslims are oppressed in India and the emancipatory potential, both from caste and Hindutva, that these structures represent be recognized.

Have a joyous and blessed Christmas!

(First published in  O Heraldo, dt: 24 December, 2014)

ST. FRANCIS XAVIER AND THE HEALTH OF THE PORTUGUESE EMPIRE

The symbolic importance of St. Francis Xavier to the people of Goa need not be repeated every time we discuss his miracles, or every ten years when his mortal remains are thrown open for public veneration and display. Venerated as Goencho Saib, the importance of his incorruptible body for the colonial as well as the post-colonial administration of Goa (for purposes of tourism) can also be clearly seen.

His importance as someone who watches over Goa, has clearly outlived the colonial times. As I write this column, the preparations for this year’s Exposition seem to be slowly progressing: hopefully, from Old Goa looking like a “war zone”, in the words of a friend, to being orderly and organized. While many of the stories surrounding the miracles of Xavier are fairly commonly known in Goa with more emphasis placed on the religious and spiritual efficacy, they are rarely told as stories that had a particular historical context. What else, other than the healing and efficacious powers of the saint, can these miracles tell us?

While dwelling upon the symbolic importance of Xavier through time, let me refer to Pamila Gupta’s essay, “‘Signs of Wonder’: The Postmortem Travels of Francis Xavier in the Indian Ocean,” to locate the miraculous powers of Xavier in a particular historical context. Through her reading of biographies and/or hagiographies of Xavier written by his fellow Jesuits, largely around the time when the drive for his canonization was gaining momentum, Gupta argues that these ‘signs of wonder’ or miracles (in common parlance) associated with the remains of Xavier tell us about alternate networks of circulation of trade and colonialism in Portuguese Asia.  As such these networks of circulation and stories associated with Xavier’s incorruptible body were not directly linked to imperialism and colonialism emerging from European centers. Rather, they opened up new experiences of colonialism through travel by sea, Christianization, and the patterns of monsoon winds.

Gupta broadens her field of analysis to view Xavier’s incorruptible body as simultaneously “a commodity, a gift, a relic, a person, and a thing” that allows her to see how the mortal remains were treated in Sancian, Malacca, and Goa against the backdrop of the reach of Portuguese commercial and political power, and the success of Jesuit missionary activities in these regions. These three places are not simply associated with the mortal remains in Xavier’s postmortem travels, but they were also actively part of his travels and missionary activities while he was alive.

After Xavier’s death in Sancian, his mortal remains could not be fully appreciated there “because of the limits of Portuguese statehood – Sancian was less a colonial outpost than a temporary safe haven for commercial traffic at this time” that necessitated the transfer of his incorruptible body to Malacca. Though, Xavier’s mortal remains did show miraculous signs in Sancian, the Portuguese settlers there failed to honor him with a proper burial. Moreover, though there was an absence of a “sustained church and state activity”, Xavier still exhibited numerous signs of incorruptness and sanctity.

In Malacca, however, Xavier’s mortal remains were received with a greater honour. His mortal remains were taken out in a procession in that city, where immediately some people were healed. Xavier also rid Malacca of an ongoing plague, his sanctity “rubbing off onto this colonial outpost [that is, Malacca] in a way reminiscent of European relics which often acted to protect and secure its new community”. But during the five months that Xavier’s mortal remains were kept in Malacca, they were damaged yet again due to the grave being too small. Moreover, the burial in Malacca happens in the absence of his fellow Jesuits (like in Sancian) and the Governor of Malacca, suggesting an absence of the powers of the church and the state. Gupta states that “in the end, Xavier’s poor treatment during his internment here exposes the vulnerabilities of church, state, and [Portuguese] public, thus prompting his subsequent removal from Malacca”.

The city of Goa being the capital of the Portuguese presence in Asia, and a place whose importance is not just confined to the political and commercial, but also encompasses the symbolic, receives the would-be saint with much honour and celebration. Gupta makes a fine observation in this regard: “Unlike both Sancian and Malacca, where his corpse was intermittently valued and poorly treated, Xavier is fully appreciated in Goa. Moreover, the elaborately ritualized reception of Xavier’s holy relic in Velha Goa will be unlike either of the events that were staged in Sancian and Malacca; that Xavier intercedes in exposing a perfect balance of church, state, and public at this valued site also explains why his postmortem travels end here”.

If we try to reflect on Gupta’s view of the telling of Xavier’s remarkable story of postmortem travels as an act that bestows a different value on the object of the story – Xavier and his incorruptible body – we can appreciate how Xavier was simply not a missionary who wanted to convert people to Christianity, but as in life and death somebody who ‘performed’ miracles and exhibited ‘signs of wonder’ within a specific and definite historical context. In life and in death, Xavier emerges as a person who struggled against the Portuguese administration in Asia. Like Xavier, the Portuguese administration also struggled to maintain the health of its Empire.

Miracles do happen – perhaps even on an everyday basis – but it is important to also see them within a historical framework and not outside of it.

(First published in  O Heraldo, dt: 26 November, 2014)

REMEMBERING 'GOENCHO SAIB'

Every year, Goans from all walks of life celebrate the feast of St. Francis Xavier with great pomp and gaiety. The Saint is revered all around the world. Pilgrims come from distant lands, some even on foot, to pay their homage to the first Apostle of the Indies. Remembered for his simple spiritual life rather than the many miracles attributed to him, his relics survive even today and remind us of the true Christian spirit and the eternal values of humility and compassion.

The body of the Saint was brought from Malacca to Goa in 1554. However, it was only in 1624 that the mortal remains were transferred from the Church of St. Paul to the Bom Jesus Basilica, which were kept in a mausoleum at the southern extremity of the transept of the church.

José Nicolau da Fonseca, in his book, ‘An Historical and Archaeological Sketch of the City of Goa’, mentions that under the principal arch of the chapel at the southern extremity, there was a raised altar supporting a graceful silver image of the Saint. The Saint was seen with a staff in each hand. One was of silver, depicting the pilgrim’s staff, and the other of Indian cane, which was taken by the Governors of Goa as an emblem of authority and to invoke the protection of the Saint.

In this book, Fonseca informs of an incident when the then Viceroy, Count of Alvor, terrified at the impending evil of Sambhaji invading Goa, and as a last resort, invoked the protection of St. Francis. Deeply absorbed in prayer and having undergone voluntary flagellation by way of penance, the Viceroy deposited his staff, the letters patent relating to his nomination to the post of Viceroy and a petition written by him, in the name of the King; imploring the Saint to protect Goa, in the coffin of the Saint. Barely was the invocation finished, a powerful army of the Moghuls was seen descending the Western Ghats. The Marathas patched up a peace and retired.

Another similar incident is also shared by Mario Cabral e Sa, in his book ‘Goa’, with lavish photographs by Frenchman Jean-Louis Nou. “When Indian Air Force planes began to reconnoitre Goa in early December 1961, preparatory to the final liberational assault (launched at midnight of December 18, 1961), the Portuguese Governor-General Manuel Antonio Vassalo e Silva and the Patriarch of the East Indies Dom Jose Vieria Alvernaz, decided that the time had come to give up all pretence of invincibility and for better or worse entrust the destiny of the land in their jurisdiction to safer and more immaculate hands. They unlocked the casket of St. Francis Xavier and deposited in his sepulchre (as other Portuguese Viceroys and Governors had done in times of grave crisis) the Governor-General’s baton. Thenceforth, the Saint would do what was best, ‘in everyone’s interest…’”

In life as in death, St. Francis Xavier continues to touch the lives of millions of people all across the globe. Rajan Narayan, in his biography of the saint, Goencho Saib: the Life and Mission of St. Francis Xavier, writes, ‘He lived a life of severe austerity. He was ever ready to relieve pain and to share it; to lighten the burden of the poor after a day of heavy toil.’

Today, when the soul is easily sold at the altar of greed and falsehood, the life and teachings of St. Francis Xavier, the patron saint of Goa, need to be inculcated in our lives. 

(A Version of this article appeared on GOA PLUS, a weekly supplement of the Times of India and the Economic Times, dt: November 30- December 6, 2007)