Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Conversion and the True Freedom
Authors
Naveen Kumar Vadde, George Anthony Paul
Published
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Dr. B. R. Ambedkar
Conversion and the True Freedom
Naveen Kumar Vadde
George Anthony Paul
Copyright © 2025 Bible Answer
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Raktha Sakshi Apologetics Series: In the Blessed Memory of Christian Martyrs of India.
ISBN: 9798271280733
Cover design by: Arpan
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication {#dedication}
To the countless men, women, and children who have longed to breathe the air of true freedom—whose dignity was denied by caste, yet whose worth is eternal in the eyes of God.
To Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, whose courage to question injustice still echoes across generations, and whose search for equality reminds us that human liberation is incomplete without spiritual redemption.
To our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
the only One who breaks every chain,
who turns slaves into sons and daughters,
and whose truth alone makes all people truly free.
And to our families and friends—whose prayers, patience, and love have strengthened our hands for this work.
May every reader discover in these pages the freedom that no system can give and no power can take away.
Acknowledgments {#acknowledgments}
First and foremost, we bow in gratitude to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, whose grace and truth have been the guiding light of our lives and the heartbeat of this book. Every insight, every word, and every conviction expressed here exists to glorify Him who alone gives true freedom.
We thank Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, whose life and struggle continue to inspire reflection and dialogue on justice, equality, and human dignity. His relentless pursuit of liberation prompted us to explore the only freedom that endures—the freedom found in Christ.
To our families, whose love, patience, and encouragement have been our constant strength—thank you for standing with us through every late night and long discussion. To our parents, for nurturing faith and perseverance; to our spouses, for their unwavering support; and to our children, who remind us daily of God’s joy and purpose.
A special remembrance goes to our dear friend and brother, Praveen Pagadala, who finished his earthly race as a faithful defender of Christ. His life and witness continue to inspire us to boldly stand for the truth of the Gospel.
We also extend heartfelt thanks to the Sakshi Apologetics Network, whose vision, fellowship, and tireless defense of the Christian faith have shaped and strengthened our journey. The passion and commitment of this community to equip believers and engage the world with truth have been a continual source of encouragement.
We also express our appreciation to our friends and fellow believers whose prayers and encouragement sustained this work. Your fellowship in the Gospel is a treasure beyond measure.
Finally, to every reader who approaches this book with an open heart—thank you. May these pages not only inform your mind but transform your understanding of true freedom. To God alone be the glory—Soli Deo Gloria.
Table of Contents
When Did Broken Men Become Untouchables? 6
A Biblical Dialogue with Dr. Ambedkar's Quest 19
A Warning To The Untouchables 24
The Power That Truly Liberates: 29
A Biblical Response to Ambedkar's Warning 29
The Kinship That Truly Unites 58
The Solidarity That Truly Save 69
Christianizing The Untouchables 74
Flawed Messengers, Unfailing Message 98
The Condition Of The Convert 103
The Quest for Dignity: Ambedkar’s Conversion and the Clash of Visions 153
The Quest for True Dignity 169
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Defender of Conversions and a Friend of Christianity 174
Bible Indirect Impact On Indian Constitution 195
Borrowed Light, Sovereign Source 214
The Constitutional Rights And Penal Laws For The Protection Of Christians 219
The Servant State and the Sovereign King 236
Books By Naveen Kumar Vadde 241
Books By George Anthony Paul 242
When Did Broken Men Become Untouchables? {#when-did-broken-men-become-untouchables?}
The foregoing researches and discussions have proved that there was a time when the village in India consisted of a Settled Community and Broken Men and that though both lived apart, the former inside the village and the latter outside it, there was no bar to social intercourse between the members of the Settled Community and the Broken Men. When the cow became sacred, and beef-eating became taboo, society became divided into two — the Settled Community became a touchable community and Broken Men became an untouchable community. When did the Broken Men come to be regarded as Untouchables? That is the last question that remains to be considered.
There are obvious difficulties in the way of fixing a precise date for the birth of Untouchability. Untouchability is an aspect of social psychology. It is a sort of social nausea of one group against another group. Being an outgrowth of social psychology which must have taken some time to acquire form and shape, nobody can venture to fix a precise date to a phenomenon which probably began as a cloud no bigger than man’s hand and grew till it took its final all-pervading shape as we know it today. When could the seed of Untouchability be said to have been sown? If it is not possible to fix an exact date, is it possible to fix an approximate date?
An exact date is not possible. But it is possible to give an approximate date. For this the first thing to do is to begin by fixing the upper time-limit at which Untouchability did not exist and the lower time-limit at which it had come into operation.
To begin with the question of fixing the upper limit the first thing to note is that those who are called Antyajas are mentioned in the Vedas. But they were not only not regarded as Untouchables but they were not even regarded as Impure. The following extract from Kane may be quoted in support of this conclusion. Says Kane (Dharma Shastra Vol II. Part I. p. 165) “In the early Vedic literature several of the names of castes that are spoken of in the Smritis as Antyajas occur. We have Carmanna (a tanner of hides) in the Rig Veda (VIII.8,38) the Chandala and Paulkasa occur in Vaj. S., the Vepa or Vapta (barber) even in the Rig., the Vidalakara or Bidalakar (corresponding to the Buruda of the Smritis) occurs in the Vaj.S. and the Tai.Br.Vasahpalpuli (washer woman) corresponding to the Rajakas of the Smritis in Vaj.S. But there is no indication in these passages whether they, even if they formed castes, were at all Untouchables.” Thus in Vedic times there was no Untouchability. As to the period of the Dharma Sutras, we have seen that there was Impurity but there was no Untouchability.
Was there Untouchability in the time of Manu? This question cannot be answered offhand. There is a passage (Manu X. 4) in which he says that there are only four varnas and that there is no fifth varna. The passage is enigmatical. It is difficult to make out what it means. Quite obviously the statement by Manu is an attempt by him to settle a controversy that must have been going on at the time he wrote. Quite obviously, the controversy was about the status of a certain class in relation to the system of Chaturvarnya. Equally obvious is the point which was the centre of the controversy. To put briefly, the point was whether this class was to be deemed to be included within the Chaturvarnya or whether it was to be a fifth varna quite distinct from The original four varnas. All this is quite clear. What is, however, not clear is the class to which it refers. This is because Manu makes no specific mention of the class involved in the controversy.
The verse is also enigmatical because of the ambiguity in the decision given by Manu. Manu’s decision is that there is no fifth Varna. As a general proposition it has a meaning which everybody can understand. But what does this decision mean in the concrete application to the class whose status was the subject-matter of ontroversy. Obviously, it is capable of two interpretations. It may mean that as according to the scheme of Chaturvarna there is no fifth varna the class in question must be deemed to belong to one of the four recognized varnas. But it may also mean that as in the original Varna System there is no provision for a fifth varna the class in question must be deemed to be outside the Varna System altogether.
The traditional interpretation adopted by the orthodox Hindu is that the statement in Manu refers to the Untouchables, that it was the Untouchables whose status was in controversy and that it was then status which is the subject-matter of Manu’s decision. This interpretation is so firmly established that it has given rise to a division of Hindus into two classes called by different names, Savarnas or Hindus (those included in the Chaturvarna) and Avarnas or Untouchables (those excluded from the Chaturvarna). The question is, is this view correct? To whom does the text refer? Does it refer to the Untouchables? A discussion of this question may appear to be out of place and remote from the question under consideration. But it is not so. For if the text does refer to the Untouchables, then it follows that Untouchability did exist in the time of Manu— a conclusion which touches the very heart of the question under consideration.
The matter must, therefore, be thrashed out. I am sure this interpretation is wrong. I hold that the passage does not refer to the Untouchables at all. Manu does not say which was the fifth class whose status was in controversy and about whose status he has given a decision in this passage. Was it the class of Untouchables or was it some other class? In support of my conclusion that the passage does not refer to Untouchables at all I rely on two circumstances. In the first place, there was no Untouchability in the time of Manu. There was only Impurity. Even the Chandala for whom Manu has nothing but contempt is only an impure person. That being so, this passage cannot possibly have any ‘reference to Untouchables.
In the second place, there is evidence to support the view that this passage has reference to slaves and not to Untouchables. This view is based on the language of the passage quoted from the Narada Smriti in the chapter on the Occupational Theory of Untouchability. It will be noticed that the Narada Smritis peaks of the slaves as the fifth class. If the expression fifth class in the Narada Smriti refers to slaves, I see no reason why the expression fifth in Manu Smriti should not be taken to have reference to slaves. If this reasoning is correct, it cuts at the very root of the contention that Untouchability existed in the time of Manu and that Manu was not prepared to include them as part of the Varna System. For the reasons stated, the passage does not refer to Untouchability and there is, therefore, no reason to conclude that there was Untouchability in the time of Manu.
Thus, we can be sure of fixing the upper limit for the date of the birth of Untouchability. We can definitely say that Manu Smriti did not enjoin Untouchability. There, however, remains one important question. What is the date of Manu Smriti? Without an answer to this question, it would not be possible for the average to relate the existence or non-existence of Untouchability to any particular point in time. There is no unanimity among savants regarding the date of Manu Smriti. Some regard it as very ancient and some regard it as very recent. After taking all facts into consideration Prof. Buhler has fixed a date which appears to strike the truth. According to Buhler, Manu Smriti in the shape in which it exists now, came into existence in the Second Century A.D. (Buhler-Laws of Manu (S.B.E.) Vol. XXV. Int. CXN.). In assigning so recent a date to the Manu Smriti Prof. Buhler is not quite alone. Mr. Daphtary has also come to the same conclusion. According to him Manu Smriti came into being after the year 185 B.C. and not before.
The reason given by Mr. Daphtary is that Manu Smriti has a close connection with the murder of the Buddhist Emperor Brihadratha of the Maurya dynasty by his Brahmin Commander-in-Chief Pushyamitra Sunga and as even that took place in 185 B.C., he concludes that Manu Smriti must have been written after 185 B.C. To give support to so important a conclusion it is necessary to establish a nexus between the murder of Brihadratha Maurya by Pushyamitra and the writing of Manu Smriti by strong and convincing evidence. Mr. Daphatry has unfortunately omitted to do so. Consequently, his conclusion appears to hang in the air. The establishment of such a nexus is absolutely essential. Fortunately, there is no want of evidence for the purpose.
The murder of Brihadratha Maurya by Pushyamitra has unfortunately passed unnoticed. At any rate it has not received the attention it deserves. It is treated by historians as an ordinary incident between two individuals as though its origin lay in some personal quarrel between the two. Having regard to its consequences it was an epoch— making event. Its significance cannot be measured by treating it as a change of dynasty-the Sungas succeeding the Mauryas. It was a political revolution as great as the French Revolution, if not greater. It was a revolution— a bloody revolution-engineered by the Brahmins to overthrow the rule of the Buddhist Kings. That is what the murder of Brihadratha by Pushyamitra means.
This triumphant Brahmanism was in need of many things. It of course needed to make Chaturvarna the law of the land the validity of which, was denied by the Buddhists. It needed to make animal sacrifice, which was abolished by the Buddhists, legal. But it needed more than this. Brahmanism in bringing about this revolution against the rule of the Buddhist Kings had transgressed two rules of the customary law of the land which were accepted by all as sacrosanct and inviolable. The first rule made it a sin for a Brahmin even to touch a weapon. The second made the King’s person sacred and regicide a sin. Triumphant Brahmanism wanted a sacred text, infallible in its authority, to justify their transgressions. A striking feature of the Manu Smriti is that it not only makes Chaturvarna the law of the land, it not only makes animal sacrifice legal, but it goes to state when a Brahmin could justifiably resort to arms and when he could justifiably kill the King. In this the Manu Smriti has done what no prior Smriti has done. It is a complete departure. It is a new thesis. Why should the Manu Smriti do this? The only answer is it had to strengthen the revolutionary deeds committed by Pushyamitra by propounding philosophic justification. This interconnection between Pushyamitra and the new thesis propounded by Manu shows that the Manu Smriti came into being sometime after 185 B.C., a date not far removed from the date assigned by Prof. Buhler. Having got the date of the Manu Smriti we can say that in the Second Century A.D., there was no Untouchability.
Now to turn to the possibility of determining the lower limit to the birth of Untouchability. For this we must go to the Chinese travellers who are known to have visited India and placed on record what they saw of the modes and manners of the Indian people. Of these Chinese travellers Fah-Hian has something very interesting to say. He came to India in 400 A.D. In the course of his observations occurs the following passage (Buddhist Records in Western India by Bcal. Introduction p. xxxviii.) :— “Southward from this (Mathura) is the so-called middle-country (Madhyadesa). The climate of this country is warm and equable, without frost or snow. The people are very well off, without poll-tax or official restrictions. Only those who till the royal lands return a portion of profit of the land. If they desire to go, they go; if they like to stop, they stop. The kings govern without corporal punishment; criminals arc fined, according to circumstances, lightly or heavily. Even in cases of repeated rebellion they only cut off the right hand. The King’s personal attendants, who guard him on the right and left, have fixed salaries. Throughout the country the people kill no living thing nor drink wine, nor do they eat garlic or onion, with the exception of Chandalas only. The Chandalas are named ‘evil men’ and dwell apart from others; if they enter a town or market, they sound a piece of wood in order to separate themselves; then, men knowing they are, avoid coming in contact with them. In this country they do not keep swine nor fowls, and do not deal in cattle; they have no shambles or wine shops in their marketplaces. In selling they use cowrie shells. The Chandalas only hunt and sell flesh.” Can this passage be taken as evidence of the prevalence of Untouchability at the time of Fah-Hian? Certain parts of his description of the treatment given to the Chandalas do seem to lend support to the conclusion, that is, a case of Untouchability. There is, however, one difficulty in the way of accepting this conclusion. The difficulty arises because the facts relate to the Chandalas. The Chandala is not a good case to determine the existence or non-existence of Untouchability. The Brahmins have regarded the Chandalas as their hereditary enemies and are prone to attribute to them abominable conduct; hurl at them low epithets and manufacture towards them a mode of behaviour which is utterly artificial to suit their venom against them. Whatever, therefore, is said against the Chandalas must be taken with considerable reservations.
This argument is not based on mere speculation. Those who doubt its cogency may consider the evidence of Bana’s Kadambari (Kadambari (Ridding’s Translation) p. 204.) for a different description of the treatment accorded to the Chandalas. The story of Kadambari is a very complex one and we are really not concerned with it. It is enough for our purpose to note that the story is told to King Shudraka by a parrot named Vaishampayana who was the pet of a Chandala girl. The following passages from the Kadambari are important for our purpose. It is better to begin with Bana’s description of a Chandala settlement. It is in the following terms’ :— “I beheld the barbarian settlement, a very marketplace of evil deeds. It was surrounded on all sides by boys engaged in the chase, unleashing their hounds, teaching their falcons, mending snares, carrying weapons, and fishing, horrible in their attire, like demoniacs. Here and there the entrance to their dwellings, hidden by thick bamboo forests, was to be inferred from the rising of smoke of orpiment. On all sides the enclosures were made with skulls; (627) the dust-heaps on the roads were filled with bones; the yards of the huts were miry with blood, fat, and meat chopped up. The life there consisted of hunting; the food, of flesh; the ointment, of fat; the garments, of coarse silk; the couches, of dried skins; the household attendants, of dogs; the animals for riding, of cows; the men’s employment, of wine and women; the oblation to the gods, of blood; the sacrifice, of cattle. The place was the image of all hells.”
It is from such a settlement that the Chandala girl starts with her parrot to the palace of King Shudraka. King Shudraka is sitting in the Hall of Audience with his Chieftains. A portress enters the Hall and makes the following announcement (Kadambari (Ridding’s Translation) p. 6.) :— “Sire, there stands at the gate a Chandala maiden from the South, a royal glory of the race of that Tricamku who climbed the sky but fell from it at the order of wrathful Indra. She bears a parrot in a cage, and bids me thus hail your majesty: “Sire, thou, like the ocean, art alone worthy to receive the treasures of whole earth. In the thought that this bird is a marvel and the treasure of the whole earth, I bring it to lay at thy feet, and desire to behold thee. Thou, O king, hast heard her message, and must decide!” so saying, she ended her speech. The king, whose curiosity was aroused, looked at the chiefs around him, and with the words ‘Why not? Bid her enter’ gave his permission.
Then the portress, immediately on the king’s order ushered in the Candala maiden. And she entered.”
The King and the Chieftains did not at first take notice of her. To attract attention, she struck a bamboo on the mosaic floor to arouse the King. Bana then proceeds to describe her personal appearance. (Kadambari (Ridding’s Translation) pp. 8-10.) “Then the king, with the words, ‘Look yonder’ to his suite, gazed steadily upon the Candala maiden, as she was pointed out by the portress; Before her went a man, whose hair was hoary with age, whose eyes were the colour of the red lotus, whose joints, despite the loss of youth, were firm from incessant labour, whose form, though that of Matanga, was not to be despised, and who wore the white raiment meet for a court. Behind her went a Candala boy, with locks falling on either shoulder, bearing a cage, the bars of which, though of gold, shone like emerald from the reflection of the parrot’s plumage. She herself seemed by the darkness of her hue to imitate Krishna when he guilefully assumed a woman’s attire to take away the amrita seized by the demons. She was, as it were, a doll of sapphire walking alone, and over the blue garment, which reached to her ankle, there fell a veil of red silk, like evening sunshine falling on blue lotuses. The circle of her cheek was whitened by the earring that hung from one ear, like the face of night inlaid with the rays of the rising moon; she had a tawny tilaka of gorocana, as if it were a third eye, like Parvati in mountaineer’s attire, after the fashion of the garb of Civa. She was like Cri. darkened by the sapphire glory of Narayana reflected on the robe on her breast; or like Rati, stained by smoke which rose as Madana was burnt by the fire of wrathful Civa; or like Yamuna, fleeing in fear of being drawn along by the ploughshare of wild Balarama; or, from the rich lac that turned her lotus feet into budding shoots, like Durga, with her feet crimsoned by the blood of the Asura Mahisha she had just trampled upon. Her nails were rosy from the pink glow of her fingers, the mosaic pavement seemed too hard for her touch, and she came forward, placing her feet like tender twigs upon the ground.
The rays of her anklets, rising in flame-colour, seemed to encircle her as with the arms of Agni, as though, by his love for her beauty, he would purify the strain of her birth, and so set the Creator at naught. Her girdle was like the stars wreathed on the brow of the elephant of Love; and her necklace was a rope of large bright pearls, like the stream of Ganga just tinged by Yamuna. Like autumn, she opened her lotus eyes; like the rainy season, she had cloudy tresses; like the circle of the Malaya Hills, she was wreathed with sandal; like the zodiac, she was decked with starry gems; like Cri, she had the fairness of a lotus in her hand; like a swoon, she entranced the heart; like a forest, she was endowed with living beauty; like the child of a goddess, she was claimed by no tribe; like sleep, she charmed the eyes; as a Lotus pool in a wood is troubled by elephants, so was she dimmed by her Matanga birth; like spirit, she might not be touched; like a letter, she gladdened the eyes alone; like the blossoms of spring, she lacked the jati flower; her slender waist, like the line of Love’s bow, could be spanned by the hands; with her curly hair, she was like the Lakshmi of the Yaksha king in Alaka. She had but reached the flower of her youth, and was beautiful exceedingly. And the king was amazed; and the thought arose in his mind, ‘Ill-placed was the labour of the Creator in producing this beauty! For if she has been created as though in mockery of her Candala form, such that all the world’s wealth of loveliness is laughed to scorn by her own, why was she born in a race with which none can mate? Surely by thought alone did Prajapati create her, fearing the penalties of contact with the Matanga race, else whence this unsullied radiance, a grace that belongs not to limbs sullied by touch. Moreover, though fair in form, by the basenness of her birth, whereby she, like a Lakshmi of the lower world, is a perpetual reproach to the gods, she, lovely as she is, causes fear in Brahma, the maker of so strange a union.’ While the king was thus thinking the maiden, garlanded with flowers, that fell over her ears, bowed herself before him with a confidence beyond her years. And when she had made her reverence and stepped on to the mosaic floor, her attendant, taking the parrot, which had just entered the cage, advanced a few steps, and, showing it to the King, said: ‘Sire, this parrot, by name Vaicampayana, knows the meaning of all the castras, is expert in the practice of royal policy, skilled in tales, history, and Puranas, and acquainted with songs and with musical intervals. He recites, and himself composes graceful and incomparable modern romances, love-stories, plays, and poems, and the like; he is versed in witticisms and is an unrivalled disciple of the vina, flute, and drum. He is skilled in displaying the different movements of dancing, dextrous in painting, very bold in play, ready in resources to calm a maiden angered in a lover’s quarrel, and familiar with the characteristics of elephants, horses, men, and women. He is the gem of the whole earth; and in the thought that treasures belong to thee, as pearls to the ocean, the daughter of my lord has brought him hither to thy feet, O king! Let him be accepted as thine.’ On reading this description of a Chandala girl many questions arise. Firstly, how different it is from the description given by FaHian? Secondly Bana is a Vatsyayana Brahmin. This Vatsyayana Brahmin, after giving a description of the Chandala Settlement, finds no compunction in using such eloquent and gorgeous language to describe the Chandala girl.
Is this description compatible with the sentiments of utter scorn and contempt associated with Untouchability? If the Chandalas were Untouchables how could an Untouchable girl enter the King’s palace? How could an Untouchable be described in the superb terms used by Bana? Far from being degraded, the Chandalas of Bana’s period had Ruling Families among them. For Bana speaks of the Chandala girl as a Chandala princess (Kadambari (Ridding’s Translation) p. 204.) Bana wrote some time about 600 A.D., and by 600 A.D. the Chandalas had not come to be regarded as Untouchables. It is, therefore, quite possible that the conditions described by Fa-Hian, though bordering on Untouchability, may not be taken as amounting to Untouchability. It may only be extreme form of impurity practised by the Brahmins who are always in the habit of indulging in overdoing their part in sacerdotalism. This becomes more than plausible if we remember that when Fa-Hian came to India it was the reign of the Gupta Kings. The Gupta Kings were patrons of Brahmanism.
It was a period of the triumph and revival of Brahmanism. It is quite possible that what Fa-Hian describes is not Untouchability but an extremity to which the Brahmins were prepared to carry the ceremonial impurity which had become attached to some community, particularly to the Chandalas. The next Chinese traveller who came into India was Yuan Chwang. He came to India in 629 A.D. He stayed in India for 16 years and has left most accurate records of journeys up and down the country and of the manners and customs of the people. In the course of his description of general characters of the cities and buildings of India, he says (Wallers-Yuan Chwang Vol.I.p. 147.):— “As to their inhabited towns and cities the quadrangular walls of the cities (or according to one text of the various regions) are broad and high, while the thoroughfares arc narrow tortuous passages. The shops are on the highways and booths, or (inns) line the roads. Butchers, fishermen, public performers, executioners, and scavengers have their habitations marked by a distinguishing sign. They are forced to live outside the city, and they sneak along on the left when going about in the hamlets.”
The above passage is too short and too brief for founding a definite conclusion thereon. There is, however, one point about it which is worthy of note. Fa-Hian’s description refers to the Chandalas only while the description given by Yuan Chwang applies to communities other than the Chandalas. This is a point of great importance. No such argument can be levelled against the acceptance of a description since it applies to communities other than the Chandalas. It is, therefore, just possible that when Yuan Chwang came to India, Untouchability had emerged. On the basis of what has been said above we can conclude that while Untouchability did not exist in 200 A.D., it had emerged by 600 A.D. These are the two limits, upper and lower, for determining the birth of Untouchability. Can we fix an approximate date for the birth of Untouchability? I think we can, if we take beef-eating, which is the root of Untouchability, as the point to start from. Taking the ban on beef-eating as a point to reconnoitre from, it follows that the date of the birth of Untouchability must be intimately connected with the ban on cow-killing and on eating beef. If we can answer when cow killing became an offence and beef-eating became a sin, we can fix an approximate date for the birth of Untouchability.
When did cow-killing become an offence? We know that Manu did not prohibit the eating of beef, nor did he make cow-killing an offence. When did it become an offence? As has been shown by Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar, cow killing was made a capital offence by the Gupta kings sometime in the 4th Century A.D. We can, therefore, say with some confidence that Untouchability was born some time about 400 A.D. It is born out of the struggle for supremacy between Buddhism and Brahmanism which has so completely moulded the history of India and the study of which is so woefully neglected by students of Indian history.
Christ, the True Liberator {#christ,-the-true-liberator}
A Biblical Dialogue with Dr. Ambedkar's Quest {#a-biblical-dialogue-with-dr.-ambedkar's-quest}
A Righteous Quest for Dignity
Few figures in modern history have diagnosed the pathology of social oppression with the intellectual rigor and moral clarity of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. His lifelong battle against the Hindu caste system was not merely a political campaign but a righteous quest for the very soul of a people, a profound search for dignity, equality, and community for those deemed "Untouchable." This chapter seeks to engage respectfully and deeply with Dr. Ambedkar’s analysis and conclusions from a Biblical worldview. We will affirm his brilliant and irrefutable diagnosis of caste as a profound evil, while humbly presenting the Gospel of Jesus Christ not as a competing ideology, but as the ultimate and complete fulfillment of the very liberation he so desperately sought. Our purpose is not to debate, but to enter into a dialogue, demonstrating that the justice Dr. Ambedkar championed finds its truest foundation, its deepest critique of oppression, and its only lasting solution in the person and work of the ultimate Liberator.
Affirming the Diagnosis: The Moral Bankruptcy of a Man-Made Hierarchy
At the outset, we must agree: Dr. Ambedkar’s diagnosis of the caste system as a profound and indefensible evil is fundamentally correct. His piercing questions, posed to a system that had crushed his people for millennia, echo with the righteousness of an Old Testament prophet:
"Does Hinduism recognize their worth as human beings? Does it stand for their equality? Does it extend to them the benefit of liberty? ... Does it teach the Hindus that the Untouchables are their kindred?"
These are not mere rhetorical flourishes; they are a moral indictment of a system built on "graded inequality," a system that he rightly identified as a moral catastrophe.
This righteous anger against dehumanization aligns perfectly with the core tenets of a Biblical worldview. The Bible’s opening chapters declare the foundational truth upon which all justice rests: every human being, without exception, is created in the Imago Dei, the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). This is not a minor doctrine; it is the bedrock of human value. To be made in God's image means that every person possesses an intrinsic, equal, and non-negotiable dignity that is not granted by the state, earned by merit, or determined by birth. It is a direct gift from the Creator. Caste, therefore, is not just a social error; it is a theological blasphemy—an assault on the honor of God reflected in the people He has made.
God’s law consistently condemns oppression and calls His people to actively pursue justice for the vulnerable. The prophet Isaiah declared, "Seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause" (Isaiah 1:17). Jesus Himself modeled this principle, consistently breaking social and religious taboos to associate with and dignify the outcasts of His society—the tax collector, the leper, the Samaritan, the ritually unclean woman.
Dr. Ambedkar’s pursuit of justice, equality, and fraternity was therefore a noble one. However, it must be stated that these ideals are not self-evident truths that arise from an impersonal, godless universe. They are, in fact, "borrowed capital" from a Christian moral framework. The worldview of Hinduism, as he correctly identified, is explicitly hierarchical. The Buddhist concept of anattā (no-self), with its ultimate goal of extinguishing personal existence into an impersonal Nirvana, cannot provide a robust, objective foundation for the eternal worth of an individual person. In contrast, the Biblical worldview provides the only sure foundation for universal human dignity because it is grounded in the character of a personal, just, and loving Creator who declares all humanity to be His image-bearers. Dr. Ambedkar was, in essence, using Christian-rooted moral principles to judge and condemn the injustice of Hinduism.
Re-examining the Prescription: The Limits of Social and Political Solutions
While Dr. Ambedkar's diagnosis of the social evil is brilliant, his prescription of religious conversion as a primarily socio-political tool for liberation falls short of the Biblical understanding of humanity’s core problem and its ultimate solution. He viewed conversion as a strategic means to achieve social status, political power, and a new communal identity. He sought a religion that could "teach us to practice equality, fraternity, and liberty" as a social program.
From a Biblical perspective, this approach mistakes the symptom—social oppression—for the root disease. The Bible teaches that the fundamental problem of humanity is not a flawed social structure but a flawed and rebellious heart, a condition the Bible calls sin (Mark 7:21-23; Romans 3:23). Sin is the spiritual cancer that metastasizes as hatred, pride, greed, and oppression—the very things that create and sustain systems like caste. Therefore, changing a person's religious label or social community without addressing the sin in their heart is like repainting a house with a crumbling foundation. Any solution that remains on the horizontal, human-to-human level is ultimately insufficient because it fails to address the vertical dimension: humanity's broken relationship with a holy God.
The Gospel Alternative: Regeneration, Reconciliation, and a New Humanity
The Bible offers a solution that is far more radical and comprehensive than a mere change of social or religious labels. It addresses the root problem of sin through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
1. Spiritual Regeneration: The Gospel message is that God, in His love, sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin and to defeat the powers of evil and injustice. Through faith in Him, a person is not just relabeled but is spiritually reborn—made a "new creation" (2 Corinthians 5:17) with a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26). This is the only true and lasting solution to the human condition that fuels oppression. Social change is a consequence of changed hearts, not the other way around.
2. Radical Reconciliation: This spiritual transformation creates a new kind of community: the Church. In this community, all earthly distinctions that divide humanity are rendered obsolete. As the Apostle Paul declared, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). This is the true and ultimate fraternity Ambedkar sought—a spiritual kinship based not on social agreement or political strategy, but on being supernaturally adopted as sons and daughters into the family of God Himself. The cross of Christ is the only force powerful enough to break down the "dividing wall of hostility" between peoples (Ephesians 2:14), enabling both the oppressor and the oppressed to find forgiveness and be reconciled—first to God, and then to each other.
3. A Transcendent Identity: This Biblical alternative grants the oppressed a new identity as a beloved child of God—an identity that is secure, eternal, and cannot be diminished by any human system or social status. This provides an unshakable foundation for self-respect that is not dependent on the acceptance of the world, but on the unchangeable declaration of the Creator of the universe.
The Tragic Failure and the True Hope
Dr. Ambedkar was tragically right to critique Indian Christians for failing to live out this radical reality. Their failure to eradicate caste within their own ranks is a scandalous betrayal of the Gospel and a grievous sin. This failure, however, is not a failure of Christianity itself, but a failure of Christians to be true to Christ. The solution is not to abandon the perfect faith because of its flawed followers, but to call the Church to repentance and to a radical embrace of the revolutionary social implications of the Gospel.
In conclusion, Dr. Ambedkar’s lifelong quest for justice, equality, and fraternity was a righteous and deeply human longing for the world to be as it ought to be. While he rightly criticized the hypocrisy and failures of Christians, he mistook the flawed practice of believers for a flaw in the faith itself. The "kinship" he sought to create through social and political means finds its ultimate and most powerful expression in the spiritual family of God, where every dividing wall of hostility is broken down by the cross of Christ. The complete realization of Dr. Ambedkar’s noble vision—a community free from caste, rooted in love, and defined by equal dignity—is found not in a political strategy or a philosophical system, but in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the ultimate liberator of the human heart and the true architect of equality.
A Warning To The Untouchables {#a-warning-to-the-untouchables}
Revolt and rebellion against the Established order is a natural part of the history of the poor in all countries of the world. A student of their history cannot but be struck by the thought entertained by them, of the way victory would come. In the theological age, the poor lived by the hope that spiritual forces would ultimately make the meek inherit the earth. In the secular age, otherwise called modern times, the poor live by the hope that the forces of historical materialism will automatically
rob the strong of their strength and make the weak take their place. In the light of this psychology, when one begins to think of the Untouchables in their role of rebels against the Hindu Social Order one feels like congratulating them on their realization that neither spiritual forces nor historical forces are going to bring the millenium. They know full well that if the Hindu Social Order is to fall to the ground, it can happen only under two conditions. Firstly, the social order must be subjected to constant fire. Secondly, they can’t subject it to constant fire unless they are independent of the Hindus in thought and in action. That is why the Untouchables are insistent upon separate electorates and separate settlements.
The Hindus on the other hand are telling the Untouchables to depend upon the Hindus for their emancipation. The Untouchables are told that the general spread of education will make the Hindus act in a rational manner. The Untouchables are told that the constant preaching of reformers against Untouchability is bound to bring about a moral transformation of the Hindus and the quickening of his conscience. The Untouchables should therefore rely on the good will and sense of duty of the Hindus. No Untouchable believes in this facile proposition. If there are any who do, they are hypocrites who are prepared to agree to whatever the Hindus have to say in order that by their grace they may be put in places reserved for the Untouchables. They are a predatory band of Untouchables who are out to feather their nests by any means open to them.
The Untouchables are not deceived by such false propaganda and false hopes. It is therefore unnecessary to comment on it. At the same time, the propaganda is so alluring that it may mislead the unwary Untouchables into being ensnared by it. A warning to the Untouchables is therefore necessary. Two agencies are generally relied upon by the social idealists for producing social justice. One is reason, the other is religion. The rationalists who uphold the mission of reason believe that injustice could be eliminated by the increasing power of intelligence. In the mediaeval age social injustice and superstition were intimately related to each other. It was natural for the rationalists to believe that the elimination of superstition must result in the abolition of injustice. This belief was encouraged by the results. Today it has become the creed of the educationists, philosophers, psychologists and social scientists who believe that universal education and the development of printing and press would result in an ideal society, in which every individual would be so enlightened that there would be no place for social injustice.
History, whether Indian or European, gives no unqualified support to this dogma. In Europe, the old traditions and superstitions which seemed to the eighteenth century to be the very root of injustice, have been eliminated. Yet social injustice has been rampant and has been growing ever and anon. In India itself, the whole Brahmin community is educated, man, woman and child. How many Brahmins are free from their belief in untouchability ? How many have come forward to undertake a crusade against untouchability? How many are prepared to stand by the side of the Untouchables in their fight against injustice? In short, how many are prepared to make the cause of the Untouchables their own cause? The number will be appallingly small. Why does reason fail to bring about social justice? The answer is that reason works so long as it does not come into conflict with one’s vested interest. Where it comes into conflict with vested interests, it fails. Many Hindus have a vested interest in untouchability. That, vested interest may take the shape of feeling of social superiority or it may take the shape of economic exploitation such as forced labour or cheap labour, the fact remains that Hindus have a vested interest in untouchability. It is only natural that that vested interest should not yield to the dictates of reason. The Untouchables should therefore know that there are limits to what reason can do.
The religious moralists who believe in the efficacy of religion urge that the moral insight which religion plants in man whereby it makes him conscious of the sinfulness of his preoccupation with self and thereby of the duty to do justice to his fellows. Nobody can deny that this is the function of religion and to some extent religion may succeed in this mission. But here again there are limits to what religion can do. Religion can help to produce justice within a community. Religion cannot produce justice between communities. At any rate, religion has failed to produce justice between Negroes and Whites, in the United States. It has failed to produce justice between Germans and French and between them and the other nations. The call of nation and the call of community has proved more powerful than the call of religion for justice. The Untouchables should bear in mind two things. Firstly, that it is futile to expect the Hindu religion to perform the mission of bringing about social justice. Such a task may be performed by Islam, Christianity, or Buddhism. The Hindu religion is itself the embodiment of inequity and injustice to the Untouchables. For it, to preach the gospel of justice is to go against its own being. To hope for this is to hope for a miracle. Secondly, assuming that this was a task which Hinduism was fitted to perform, it would be impossible for it to perform. The social barrier between them and the Hindus is much greater than the barrier between the Hindus and their men. Religion, however efficacious it may be within a community or a nation, is quite powerless to break these barriers and (make)* them one whole.
Apart from these agencies of reason and religion the Untouchables are asked to trust the enlightened self-interests of the Hindu privileged classes and the fraternity of the Hindu proletarian. As to the privileged classes it be wrong to depend upon for anything more than their agreeing to be benevolent despots. They have their own class interests, and they cannot be expected to sacrifice them for general interests or universal values. On the other hand, their constant endeavour is to identify their class interests with general interests and to assume that their privileges are the just payments with which society rewards especially useful and meritorious functions. They are a poor company to the Untouchables as the Untouchables have found in their conflict with the Hindus. For Untouchables to expect to gain help from the Hindu proletariat is also a vain hope. The appeal of the Indian Communists to the Untouchables for solidarity with the Hindu proletariat is no doubt based on the assumption that the proletarian does not desire advantages for himself which he is not willing to share with others. Is this true ? Even in Europe the proletarian are not a uniform class. It is marked by class composition, the higher and the lower. This is reflected in their attitudes towards social change, the higher are *Inserted.—Ed. reformist and the lower are revolutionary. The assumption therefore is not true. So far as India is concerned it is positively false. There is very little for a common front. Socially, there is bound to be antagonism between them. Economically, there cannot be much room for alliance. What must the Untouchables strive for ? Two things they must strive for is education and spread of knowledge. The power of the privileged classes rests upon lies which are sedulously propagated among the masses. No resistance to power is possible while the sanctioning lies, which justify that power are accepted as valid. While the lie which is the first and the chief line of defence remains, unbroken there can be no revolt. Before any injustice, any abuse or oppression can be resisted, the lie upon which it is founded must be unmasked, must be clearly recognized for what it is. This can happen only with education.
The second thing they must strive for is power. It must not be forgotten that there is a real conflict of interests between the Hindus and the Untouchables and that while reason may mitigate the conflict it can never obviate the necessity of such a conflict. What makes one interest dominant over another is power. That being so, power is needed to destroy power. There may be the problem of how to make the use of power ethical, but there can be no question that without power on one side it is not possible to destory power on the other side. Power is either economic or political. Military power is no power today. Because it is not free power. The economic power of the working class is the power inherent in the strike. The Untouchables as a part of the working class can have no other economic power. As it is, this power is not adequate for the defence of the interests of the working class. It is maimed by legislation and made subject to injunctions, arbitrations, martial law and use of troops. Much more inadequate is the Untouchables’ power to strike. The Untouchable is therefore under an absolute necessity of acquiring political power as much as possible. Having regard to his increasingly inadequate power in social and economic terms the Untouchable can never acquire too much political power. Whatever degree of political power he acquires, it will always be too little having regard to the vast amount of social, economic and political power of the Hindus.
The Untouchable must remember that his political power, no matter how large, will be of no use if he depends for representation in the Legislature on Hindus whose political life is rested in economic and social interests which are directly opposed to those of the Untouchables.
The Power That Truly Liberates: {#the-power-that-truly-liberates:}
A Biblical Response to Ambedkar's Warning {#a-biblical-response-to-ambedkar's-warning}
The Pragmatism of Power
In his powerful manifesto, "A Warning To The Untouchables," Dr. B.R. Ambedkar performs an intellectual demolition of the false hopes offered to his people. With clear-eyed pragmatism, he dismisses the naive belief that the goodwill of the Hindu majority, the supposed enlightenment of reason, or the moral suasion of a compromised religion could ever lead to their emancipation. He concludes that for a people systematically oppressed, the only viable path to liberation is to become "independent in thought and action," unmasking the lies that sanction their oppression and, most critically, acquiring political power to challenge and destroy the power of their oppressors.
This chapter seeks to engage with this stark and pragmatic conclusion. We will affirm Dr. Ambedkar's exceptionally astute analysis of why moral and rational appeals so often fail in the face of entrenched injustice. His diagnosis is a perfect secular description of the Biblical doctrine of sin. However, we will then lovingly re-examine his prescription—to fight power with power—from a Biblical perspective. While acknowledging the necessity of confronting unjust power, we will present the Gospel's radically different understanding of power, one that offers a more permanent, profound, and complete liberation than any political victory can achieve.
Affirming the Diagnosis: The Stubborn Reality of Vested Interests
Dr. Ambedkar’s analysis of why appeals to reason and morality fail to produce justice is brilliant. His core insight cuts to the heart of the human condition:
"Reason works so long as it does not come into conflict with one’s vested interest. Where it comes into conflict with vested interests, it fails."
He correctly observes that education and intellectual enlightenment alone are insufficient to compel a privileged group to dismantle a system from which they benefit, pointing to the educated yet caste-bound Brahmin community as irrefutable proof. This is a profound observation, and it is a perfect sociological description of what the Bible calls sin.
The Bible teaches that the human heart, apart from God's transforming grace, is fundamentally self-serving, prideful, and "deceitful above all things" (Jeremiah 17:9). It is enslaved to its own "vested interests." This is precisely why Jesus reserved his most scathing condemnations for the scribes and Pharisees—the most educated and religious class of their day. They used their knowledge not to serve justice, but to create heavy burdens for others while maintaining their own power and prestige (Matthew 23:4). Dr. Ambedkar’s analysis correctly identifies the symptom: the failure of reason and morality. The Bible identifies the root cause: a sinful human nature that loves power more than justice and self more than neighbor.
This sober and realistic view of human fallibility is uniquely grounded in the Christian doctrine of the Fall. Secular rationalism, which Dr. Ambedkar rightly critiques, often maintains a naive faith in the power of education to perfect humanity. Hinduism's doctrine of karma can be twisted to justify the status of the privileged as a reward for past deeds, thereby sanctifying their vested interests. Only the Bible’s radical teaching that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)—the Brahmin and the Untouchable, the oppressor and the oppressed alike—provides a coherent explanation for why systems of injustice are so deeply entrenched and stubbornly resistant to mere intellectual or moral appeals. Dr. Ambedkar's correct diagnosis of the problem’s stubbornness points directly to its spiritual roots.
Re-examining the Prescription: The Idol of Political Power
While the diagnosis is brilliant, the proposed solution, while politically pragmatic, is ultimately incomplete. Dr. Ambedkar’s final answer to oppression is the acquisition of countervailing power. He states, "What makes one interest dominant over another is power. That being so, power is needed to destroy power." The entire struggle is framed within a horizontal, human-to-human context of power dynamics.
The Bible would not deny the necessity of confronting unjust power. The Exodus story is a paradigm of God acting in history to break the political and economic power of an oppressor nation. The prophets consistently speak truth to power. However, the Bible teaches that placing one's ultimate hope in political or economic power is a form of idolatry. It is a worldly solution that fails to address the vertical dimension of the problem: humanity's alienation from a holy God, which is the source of all horizontal conflict. A strategy that relies solely on human power to seize power cannot heal the brokenness of the human heart that created the injustice in the first place. Political power is fleeting; today's liberator can easily become tomorrow's tyrant.
The Gospel Alternative: Power Made Perfect in Weakness
The Bible presents a radically different understanding of power. God’s ultimate victory over evil, injustice, and oppression was not accomplished through a political coup or a military victory, but through the apparent weakness and humiliation of the cross. Jesus, the Son of God, defeated the cosmic powers of sin and death not by raising an army, but by laying down His life. The power of the Gospel is a power that is "made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). This Biblical alternative is fundamentally superior to a solution based solely on a political power struggle for three crucial reasons:
1. It Offers a Permanent Solution. Political power is temporary and corrupting. A heart transformed by the Holy Spirit, however, is an eternal change that breaks the cycle of oppression from the inside out. It addresses the root cause, not just the symptoms.
2. It Liberates from Bitterness. A struggle for power, even when justified, can consume a person with hatred and a spirit of vengeance. The Gospel frees the oppressed to fight for justice without being spiritually destroyed by the fight. Because their ultimate worth is secure in Christ and their ultimate vindication rests with God, they can work to dismantle unjust systems with courage, perseverance, and even love for their enemies.
3. It Creates True Fraternity. Dr. Ambedkar rightly observed that religion often fails to bring justice between communities. But the Gospel creates a new, supernaturally-formed community—the Church—where worldly barriers of caste, race, and status are meant to be annihilated. In Christ, there are no Brahmins or Untouchables, only brothers and sisters, united not by a temporary political alliance, but by the eternal blood of Christ (Galatians 3:28). This is a unity that political maneuvering can never achieve.
The Power at the Foot of the Cross
Dr. Ambedkar's "Warning" is a masterpiece of clear-eyed social and political analysis. His intellectual demolition of the false hopes offered by secular rationalism and a morally bankrupt Hinduism is both necessary and correct, perfectly echoing a Biblical diagnosis of the power of sin and vested interests.
However, his prescription—to fight power with power—while understandable, remains on the surface of the problem. It is a humanistic solution for a profoundly spiritual disease. The liberation Dr. Ambedkar so desperately sought for his people finds its ultimate and complete fulfillment not in the halls of parliament, but at the foot of the cross. True and lasting power to overcome injustice is found not in seizing control of worldly systems, but in surrendering to the King who laid down His life to break the chains of sin and death for all people. Dr. Ambedkar's noble fight for justice points beyond itself to the only truly just one, Jesus Christ, in whom alone is found the power for ultimate liberation.
Away From The Hindus {#away-from-the-hindus}
A large majority of Untouchables who have reached a capacity to think out their problem believe that one way to solve the problem of the Untouchables is for them to abandon Hinduism and be converted to some other religion. At a Conference of the Mahars held in Bombay on 31st May 1936 a resolution to this effect was unanimously passed. Although the Conference was a Conference of the Mahars (The Conference was confined to Mahars because the intention was to test the intensity of feeling community wise and to take soundings from each community), the resolution had the support of a very large body of Untouchables throughout India. No resolution had created such a stir. The Hindu community was shaken to its foundation and curses imprecations and threats were uttered against the Untouchables who were behind this move. Four principal objections have been urged by the opponents against the conversion of the Untouchables:
(1) What can the Untouchables gain by conversion ? Conversion can make no change in the status of the Untouchables.
(2) All religions are true; all religions are good. To change religion is a futility.
(3) The conversion of the Untouchables is political in its nature.
(4) The conversion of the Untouchables is not genuine as it is not based on faith.
It cannot take much argument to demonstrate that the objections are puerile and inconsequential. To take the last objection first. History abounds with cases where conversion has taken place without any religious motive.
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The typed pages with Sr. Nos. from 279 to 342 have been found in this script which is titled as Chapter XX under the heading ‘Away from the Hindus’. The whole script consists of 64 pages.—Ed.
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What was the nature of its conversion of Clovis and his subjects to Christianity ? How did Ethelbert and his Kentish subjects become Christians ? Was there a religious motive which led them to accept the new religion ? Speaking on the nature of conversions to Christianity that had taken place during the middle ages Rev. Reichel says: (The Sea of Rome, pp. 143-45.) “One after another the nations of Europe are converted to the faith; their conversion is seen always to proceed from above, never from below. Clovis yields to the bishop Remigius and forthwith he is followed by the Baptism of 3,000 Franks. Ethelbert yields to the mission of Augustine and forthwith all Kent follows his example; when his son Eadbald apostatises, the men of Kent apostatise with him. Essex is finally won by the conversion of King Sigebert, who under the influence of another king, Oswy, allows himself to be baptised. Northumberland is temporarily gained by the conversion of its king, Edwin, but falls away as soon as Edwin is dead. It anew accepts the faith, when another king, Oswald, promotes its diffusion. In the conversion of Germany, a bishop, Boniface, plays a prominent part, in close connection with the princes of the country, Charles Martel and Pepin; the latter, in return for his patronage receiving at Soissons the Church’s sanction to a violent act of usurpation. Denmark is gained by the conversion of its kings, Herald Krag, Herald Blastand and Canute, Sweden by that of the two Olofs; and Russian, by the conversion of its sovereign, Vladimir. Everywhere Christianity addresses itself first to kings and princes; everywhere the bishops and abbots appear as its only representatives. Nor was this all, for where a king had once been gained, no obstacle by the Mediaeval missionaries to the immediate indiscriminate baptism of his subjects. Three thousand warriors of Clovis following the example of their king, were at once admitted to the sacred rite; the subjects of Ethelbert were baptised in numbers after the conversion of their prince, without preparation, and with hardly any instruction. The Germans only were less hasty in following the example of others. In Russia, so great was the number of those who crowded to be baptised after the baptism of Vladimir, that the sacrament had to be administered to hundreds at a time.” History records cases where conversion has taken place as a result of compulsion or deceit. Today religion has become a piece of ancestral property. It passes from father to son so does inheritance. What genuineness is there in such cases of conversion ? The conversion of the Untouchables if it did take place would take after full deliberation of the value of religion and the virtue of the different religions. How can such a conversion be said to be not a genuine conversion ? On the other hand, it would be the first case in history of genuine conversion. It is therefore difficult to understand why the genuineness of the conversion of the Untouchables should be doubted by anybody. The third objection is an ill-considered objection. What political gain will accrue to the Untouchables from their conversion has been defined by nobody. If there is a political gain, nobody has proved that it is a direct inducement to conversion.
The opponents of conversion do not even seem to know that a distinction has to be made between a gain being a direct inducement to conversion and its being only an incidental advantage. This distinction cannot be said to be a distinction without a difference. Conversion may result in a political gain to the Untouchables. It is only where a gain is a direct inducement that conversion could be condemned as immoral or criminal. Unless therefore the opponents of conversion prove that the conversion desired by the Untouchables is for political gain and for nothing else their accusation is baseless. If political gain is only an incidental gain, then there is nothing criminal in conversion. The fact, however, is that conversion can bring no new political gain to the Untouchables. Under the constitutional law of India every religious community has got the right to separate political safeguards. The Untouchables in their present condition enjoy political rights similar to those which are enjoyed by the Muslims and the Christians. If they change their faith the change is not to bring into existence political rights which did not exist before. If they do not change, they will retain the political rights which they have. Political gain has no connection with conversion. The charge is a wild charge made without understanding. The second objection rests on the premise that all religions teach the same thing. It is from the premise that a conclusion is drawn that since all religions teach the same thing there is no reason to prefer one religion to other. It may be conceded that all religions agree in holding that the meaning of life is to be found in the pursuit of ‘good’. Up to this point the validity of the premise may be conceded. But when the premise goes beyond and asserts that because of this there is no reason to prefer one religion to another it becomes a false premise.
Religions may be alike in that they all teach that the meaning of life is to be found in the pursuit of ‘good’. But religions are not alike in their answers to the question ‘What is good ?’ In this they certainly differ. One religion holds that brotherhood is good, another caste and untouchability is good.
There is another respect in which all religions are not alike. Besides being an authority which defines what is good, religion is a motive force for the promotion and spread of the ‘good’. Are all religions agreed in the means and methods they advocate for the promotion and spread of good ? As pointed out by Prof. Tiele (Quoted by Crowley, ‘Tree of life’, p. 5.), religion is: “One of the mightiest motors in the history of mankind, which formed as well as tore asunder nations, united as well as divided empires, which sanctioned the most atrocious and barbarous deeds, the most libinous customs, inspired the most admirable acts of heroism, self-renunciation, and devotion, which occasioned the most sanguinary wars, rebellions and persecutions, as well as brought about the freedom, happiness and peace of nations—at one time a partisan of tyranny, at another breaking its chains, now calling into existence and fostering a new and brilliant civilization, then the deadly foe to progress, science and art.”
Apart from these oscillations there are permanent differences in the methods of promoting good as they conceive it. Are there not religions which advocate violence ? Are there not religions which advocate nonviolence ? Given these facts how can it be said that all religions are the same and there is no reason to prefer one to the other. In raising the second objection the Hindu is merely trying to avoid an examination of Hinduism on its merits. It is an extraordinary thing that in the controversy over conversion not a single Hindu has had the courage to challenge the Untouchables to say what is wrong with Hinduism. The Hindu is merely taking shelter under the attitude generated by the science of comparative religion. The science of comparative religion has broken down the arrogant claims of all revealed religions that they alone are true and all others which are not the results of revelation are false. That revelation was too arbitrary, too capricious test to be accepted for distinguishing a true religion from a false was undoubtedly a great service which the science of comparative religion has rendered to the cause of religion. But it must be said to the discredit of that science that it has created the general impression that all religions are good and there is no use and purpose in discriminating them.
The first objection is the only objection which is worthy of serious consideration. The objection proceeds on the assumption that religion is a purely personal matter between man and God. It is supernatural. It has nothing to do with social. The argument is no doubt sensible. But its foundations are quite false. At any rate, it is a one-sided view of religion and that too based on aspects of religion which are purely historical and not fundamental.
To understand the function and purposes of religion it is necessary to separate religion from theology. The primary things in religion are the usages, practices and observances, rites and rituals. Theology is secondary. Its object is merely to nationalize them. As stated by Prof. Robertson Smith: (The Religion of the Semites, p.) “Ritual and practical usages were, strictly speaking the sum total of ancient religions. Religion in primitive times was not a system of belief with practical applications; it was a body of fixed traditional practices, to which every member of society conformed as a matter of courage, Men would not be men if they agreed to do certain things without having a reason for their action; but in ancient religion the reason was not first formulated as a doctrine and then expressed in practice, but conversely, practice preceded doctrinal theory.” Equally necessary it is not to think of religion as though it was super-natural. To overlook the fact that the primary content of religion is social is to make nonsense of religion. The Savage society was concerned with life and the preservation of life, and it is these life processes which constitute the substance and source of the religion of the Savage society. So great was the concern of the Savage society for life and the preservation of life that it made them the basis of its religion. So central were the life processes in the religion of the Savage society that everything which affected them became part of its religion. The ceremonies of the Savage society were not only concerned with the events of birth, attaining of manhood, puberty, marriage, sickness, death and war but they were also concerned with food. Among the pastoral peoples the flocks and herds are sacred. Among agricultural peoples seedtime and harvest are marked by ceremonies performed with some reference to the growth and the preservation of the crops. Likewise, drought, pestilence, and other strange irregular phenomena of nature occasion the performance of ceremonials. As pointed out by Prof. Crawley, the religion of the savage begins and ends with the affirmation and consecration of life. In life and preservation of life therefore consists the religion of the savage. What is true of the religion of the savage is true of all religions wherever they are found for the simple reason that constitutes the essence of religion. It is true that in the present-day society with its theological refinements this essence of religion has become hidden from view and is even forgotten. But that life and the preservation of life constitute the essence of religion even in the present-day society is beyond question. This is well illustrated by Prof. Crawley, when speaking of the religious life of man in the present-day society he says how: “man’s religion does not enter into his professional or social hours, his scientific or artistic moments; practically its chief claims are settled on one day in the week from which ordinary worldly concerns are excluded. In fact, his life is in two parts: but the moiety with which religion is concerned is the elemental. Serious thinking on ultimate questions of life and death is, roughly speaking, the essence of his Sabbath; add to this the habit of prayer, the giving of thanks at meals, and the subconscious feeling that birth and death, continuation and marriage are rightly solemnized by religion, while business and pleasure may possibly be consecrated, but only metaphorically or by an overflow of religious feeling.” Students of the origin and history of religion when they began their study of the Savage society became so much absorbed in the magic, the tabu and totem and the rites and ceremonies connected therewith they found in the Savage society that they not only overlooked the social processes of the savage as the primary content of religion, but they failed even to appreciate the proper function of magic and other supernatural processes. This was a great mistake and has cost all concerned in religion very dearly. For it is responsible for the grave misconception about religion* which prevails today among most people. Nothing can be a greater error than to explain religion as having arisen in magic or being concerned only in magic for magic sake. It is true that Savage society practises magic, believes in tabu and worships the totem. But it is wrong to suppose that these constitute the religion or form the source of religion. To take such a view is to elevate what is incidental to the position of the principal. The principal thing in the religion of the savage are the elemental facts of human existence such as life, death, birth, marriage, etc., magic, tabu and totem are not the ends. They are only the means. The end is life and the preservation of life. Magic, tabu, etc. are resorted to by the Savage society not for their own sake but to conserve life and to exercise evil influence from doing harm to life. Why should such occasions as harvest and famine be accompanied by religious ceremonies ? Why are magic, tabu and totem of such importance to the savage ? The only answer is that they all affect the preservation of life. The process of life and its preservation form the main purpose. Life and preservation of life is the core and centre of the religion of the Savage society. That today God has taken the place of magic, does not alter the fact that God’s place in religion is only as a means for the conservation of life and that the end of religion is the conservation and consecration of social life.
* The word ‘religion’ inserted here is not in the original MS.—Ed.
The point to which it is necessary to draw particular attention and to which the foregoing discussion lends full support is that it is an error to look upon religion as a matter which is individual, private and personal. Indeed, as will be seen from what follows, religion becomes a source of positive mischief if not danger when it remains individual, private and personal. Equally mistaken is the view that religion is the flowering of special religious instinct inherent in the nature of the individual. The correct view is that religion like language is social for the reason that either is essential for social life and the individual has to have it because without it he cannot participate in the life of the society.
If religion is social in the sense that it primarily concerns society, it would be natural to ask what is the purpose and function of religion. The best statement regarding the purpose of religion which I have come across is that of Prof. Charles A Ellwood (“The Religious Reconstruction”, pp. 39-40). According to him: “religion projects the essential values of human personality and of human society into the universe as a whole. It inevitably arises as soon as man tries to take valuing attitude toward his universe, no matter how small and mean that universe may appear to him.
Like all the distinctive things in human, social and mental life, it of course, rests upon the higher intellectual powers of man. Man is the only religious animal, because through his powers of abstract thought and reasoning, he alone is self-conscious in the full sense of that term. Hence, he alone is able to project his values into the universe and finds necessity of so doing. Given, in other words, the intellectual powers of man, the mind at once seeks to universalise its values as well as its ideas. Just as rationalizing processes give man a world of universal ideas, so religious processes give man a world of universal values. The religious processes are, indeed, nothing but the rationalizing processes at work upon man’s impulses and emotions rather than upon his precepts. What the reason does for ideas, religion does, then, for the feelings. It universalizes them; and in universalizing them, it brings them into harmony with the whole of reality.” Religion emphasizes, universalizes social values and brings them to the mind of the individual who is required to recognize them in all his acts in order that he may function as an approved member of the society. But the purpose of religion is more than this. It spiritualizes them. As pointed out by Prof. Ellwood : (“The Religious Reconstruction”, pp. 45-46) “Now these mental and social values, with which religion deals, men call ‘spiritual’.
It is something which emphasizes as we may say, spiritual values, that is, the values connected especially with the personal and social life. It projects these values, as we have seen, into the universal reality. It gives man a social and moral conception of the universe, rather than a merely mechanical one as a theatre of the play of blind, purposeless forces. While religion is not primarily animistic philosophy, as has often been said, nevertheless it does project mind, spirit, life, into all things. Even the most primitive religion did this; for in ‘primitive dynamism’ there was a feeling of the psychic, in such concepts as mana or manitou. They were closely connected with persons and proceeded from person, or things which were viewed in an essentially personal way. Religion, therefore, is a belief in the reality of spiritual values, and projects them, as we have said, into the whole universe. All religion—even so-called atheistic religions—emphasizes the spiritual, believes in its dominance, and looks to its ultimate triumph.” The function of religion in society is equally clear. According to Prof. Ellwood (“The Religious Reconstruction”, pp. 42-43.) the function of religion: “is to act as an agency of social control, that is, of the group controlling the life of the individual, for what is believed to be the good of the larger life of the group. Very early, as we have seen, any beliefs and practices which gave expression to personal feelings or values of which the group did not approve were branded as ‘black magic’ or baleful superstitions; and if this had not been done it is evident that the unity of the life of the group might have become seriously impaired. Thus, the almost necessarily social character of religion stands revealed. We cannot have such a thing as purely personal or individual religion which is not at the same time social. For we live a social life and the welfare of the group is, after all, the chief matter of concern.”
Dealing with the same question in another place, he says (“Society in its Psychological aspects” (1913), pp. 356-57) : “the function of religion is the same as the function of Law and Government. It is a means by which society exercises its control over the conduct of the individual in order to maintain the social order. It may not be used consciously as a method of social control over the individual. Nonetheless the fact is that religion acts as a means of social control. As compared to religion, Government and Law are relatively inadequate means of social control. The control through law and order does not go deep enough to secure the stability of the social order. The religious sanction, on account of its being supernatural has been on the other hand the most effective means of social control, far more effective than law and Government have been or can be. Without the support of religion, law and Government are bound to remain a very inadequate means of social control. Religion is the most powerful force of social gravitation without which it would be impossible to hold the social order in its orbit.” The foregoing discussion, although it was undertaken to show that religion is a social fact, that religion has a specific social purpose and a definite social function it was intended to prove that it was only proper that a person if he was required to accept a religion should have the right to ask how well it has served the purposes which belong to religion.
This is the reason why Lord Balfour was justified in putting some very straight-questions to the positivists before he could accept Positivism to be superior to Christianity. He asked in quite trenchant language. “what has (positivism) to say to the more obscure multitude who are absorbed, and well-nigh overwhelmed, in the constant struggle with daily needs and narrow cares, who have but little leisure or inclination to consider the precise role they are called on to play in the great drama of ‘humanity’ and who might in any case be puzzled to discover its interest or its importance? Can it assure them that there is no human being so insignificant as not to be of infinite worth in the eyes of Him who created the Heavens, or so feeble but that his action may have consequences of infinite moment long after this material system shall have crumbled into nothingness? Does it offer consolation to those who are bereaved, strength to the weak, forgiveness to the sinful, rest to those who are weary and heavy laden?”
The Untouchables can very well ask the protagonists of Hinduism the very questions which Lord Balfour asked the Positivists. Nay the Untouchables can ask many more. They can ask: Does Hinduism recognize their worth as human beings? Does it stand for their equality? Does it extend to them the benefit of liberty? Does it at least help to forge the bond of fraternity between them and the Hindus? Does it teach the Hindus that the Untouchables are their kindred? Does it say to the Hindus it is a sin to treat the Untouchables as being neither man nor beast? Does it tell the Hindus to be righteous to the Untouchables? Does it preach to the Hindus to be just and humane to them? Does it inculcate upon the Hindus the virtue of being friendly to them? Does it tell the Hindus to love them, to respect them and to do them no wrong. In fine, does Hinduism universalize the value of life without distinction? No Hindu can dare to give an affirmative answer to any of these questions? On the contrary the wrongs to which the Untouchables are subjected by the Hindus are acts which are sanctioned by the Hindu religion.
They are done in the name of Hinduism and are justified in the name of Hinduism. The spirit and tradition which makes lawful the lawlessness of the Hindus towards the Untouchables is founded and supported by the teachings of Hinduism. How can the Hindus ask the Untouchables accept Hinduism and stay in Hinduism? Why should the Untouchables adhere to Hinduism which is solely responsible for their degradation? How can the Untouchables stay in Hinduism? Untouchability is the lowest depth to which the degradation of a human being can be carried. To be poor is bad but not so bad as to be an Untouchable. The poor can be proud.
The Untouchable cannot be. To be reckoned low is bad but it is not so bad as to be an Untouchable. The low can rise above his status. An Untouchable cannot. To be suffering is bad but not so bad as to be an Untouchable. They shall someday be comforted. An Untouchable cannot hope for this. To have to be meek is bad but it is not so bad as to be an Untouchable. The meek if they do not inherit the earth may at least be strong. The Untouchables cannot hope for that. In Hinduism there is no hope for the Untouchables. But this is not the only reason why the Untouchables wish to quit Hinduism. There is another reason which makes it imperative for them to quit Hinduism. Untouchability is a part of Hinduism. Even those who for the sake of posing as enlightened reformers deny that untouchability is part of Hinduism are to observe untouchability. For a Hindu to believe in Hinduism does not matter. It enhances his sense of superiority by the reason of this consciousness that there are millions of Untouchables below him. But what does it mean for an Untouchable to say that he believes in Hinduism ? It means that he accepts that he is an Untouchable and that he is an Untouchable is the result of Divine dispensation. For Hinduism is divine dispensation. An Untouchable may not cut the throat of a Hindu. But he cannot be expected to give an admission that he is an Untouchable and rightly so. Which Untouchable is there with soul so dead as to give such an admission by adhering to Hinduism. That Hinduism is inconsistent with the self-respect and honour of the Untouchables is the strongest ground which justifies the conversion of the Untouchables to another and nobler faith.
The opponents of conversion are determined not to be satisfied even if the logic of conversion was irrefutable. They will insist upon asking further questions. There is one question which they are always eager to ask largely because they think it is formidable and unanswerable; what will the Untouchables gain materially by changing their faith ? The question is not at all formidable. It is simple to answer. It is not the intention of the Untouchables to make conversion an opportunity for economic gain. The Untouchables it is true will not gain wealth by conversion. This is however no loss because while they remain as Hindus, they are doomed to be poor. Politically the Untouchables will lose the political rights that are given to the Untouchables. This is, however, no real loss. Because they will be entitled to the benefit of the political rights reserved for the community which they would join through conversion. Politically there is neither gain nor loss. Socially, the Untouchables will gain absolutely and immensely because by conversion the Untouchables will be members of a community whose religion has universalized and equalized all values of life. Such a blessing is unthinkable for them while they are in the Hindu fold. The answer is complete. But by reason of its brevity, it is not likely to give satisfaction to the opponents of conversion. The Untouchables need three things. First thing they need is to end their social isolation. The second thing they need is to end their inferiority complex. Will conversion meet their needs ? The opponents of conversion have a feeling that the supporters of conversion have no case. That is why they keep on raising questions. The case in favour of conversion is stronger than the strongest case. Only one does wish to spend long arguments to prove what is so obvious. But since it is necessary to put an end to all doubt, I am prepared to pursue the matter. Let me take each point separately.
How can they end their social isolation ? The one and the only way to end their social isolation is for the Untouchables to establish kinship with and get themselves incorporated into another community which is free from the spirit of caste. The answer is quite simple and yet not many will readily accept its validity. The reason is, very few people realize the value and significance of kinship. Nevertheless, its value and significance are very great. Kinship and what it implies has been described by Prof. Robertson Smith in the following terms (“Religion of the Semites”, p. 273.) : “A kin was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they could be treated as parts of one common life. The members of one kindred looked on themselves as one living whole, a single animated mass of blood, flesh and bones, of which no member could be touched without all the members suffering.” The matter can be looked at from the point of view both of the individual as well as from that of the group. From the point of the group, kinship calls for a feeling that one is first and foremost a member of the group and not merely an individual. From the point of view of the individual, the advantages of his kinship with the group are no less and no different than those which accrue to a member of the family by reason of his membership of the family. Family life is characterized by parental tenderness. As pointed out by Prof. McDougall (“Introduction to Social Psychology”, p.): “From this emotion (parental tenderness) and its impulse to cherish and protect, spring generosity, gratitude, love, pity, true benevolence, and altruistic conduct of every kind; in it they have their main and absolutely essential root, without which they would not be.”
Community as distinguished from society is only an enlarged family. As such it is characterised by all the virtues which are found in a family, and which have been so well described by Prof. McDougall. Inside the community there is no discrimination among those who are recognized as kindred bound by kinship. The community recognizes that everyone within it is entitled to all the rights equally with others. As Professors Dewey and Tufts have pointed out : “A State may allow a citizen of another country to own land, to sue in its courts, and will usually give him a certain amount of protection, but the first-named rights are apt to be limited, and it is only a few years since Chief Justice Taney’s dictum stated the existing legal theory of the United States to be that the Negro ‘had no rights which the white man was bound to respect’. Even where legal theory does not recognize race or other distinctions, it is often hard in practice for an alien to get justice. In primitive clan or family groups this principle is in full force. Justice is a privilege which falls to a man as belonging to some group—not otherwise. The member of the clan or the household or the village community has a claim, but the Stranger has nothing standing. It may be treated kindly, as a guest, but he cannot demand ‘justice’ at the hands of any group but his own. In this conception of rights within the group we have the prototype of modern civil law. The dealing of clan with clan is a matter of war or negotiation, not of law; and the clanless man is an ‘outlaw’ in fact as well as in name.”
Kinship makes the community take responsibility for vindicating the wrong done to a member. Blood-flood which objectively appears to be a savage method of avenging a wrong done to a member is subjectively speaking a manifestation of sympathetic resentment by the members of the community for a wrong done to their fellow. This sympathetic resentment is a compound of tender emotion and anger such as those which issue out of parental tenderness when it comes face to face with a wrong done to a child. It is kinship which generates, this sympathetic resentment, this compound of tender emotion and anger. This is by no means a small value to an individual. In the words of Prof. McDougall : “This intimate alliance between tender emotion and anger is of great importance for the social life of man, and the right understanding of it is fundamental for a true theory of the moral sentiments: for the anger evoked in this way is the germ of all moral indignation and on moral indignation justice and the greater part of public law are in the main founded.” It is kinship which generates generosity and invokes its moral indignation which is necessary to redress a wrong. Kinship is the will to enlist the support of the kindred community to meet the tyrannies and oppressions by the Hindus which today the Untouchables have to bear single-handed and alone. Kinship with another community is the best insurance which the Untouchable can effect against Hindu tyranny and Hindu oppression.
Anyone who takes into account the foregoing exposition of what kinship means and does, should have no difficulty in accepting the proposition that to end their isolation the Untouchables must join another community which does not recognise caste. Kinship is the antithesis of isolation. For the Untouchables to establish kinship with another community is merely another name for ending their present state of isolation. Their isolation will never end so long as they remain Hindus. As Hindus, their isolation hits them from front as well as from behind. Notwithstanding their being Hindus, they are isolated from the Muslims and the Christians because as Hindus they are aliens to all—Hindus as well as non-Hindus. This isolation can end only in one way and in no other way. That way is for the Untouchables to join some non-Hindu community and thereby become its kith and kin.
That this is not a meaningless move will be admitted by all those who know the disadvantages of isolation and the advantages of kinship. What are the consequences of isolation? Isolation means social segregation, social humiliation, social discrimination and social injustice. Isolation means denial of protection, denial of justice, denial of opportunity. Isolation means want of sympathy, want of fellowship and want of consideration. Nay, isolation means positive hatred and antipathy from the Hindus. By having kinship with other community on the other hand, the Untouchables will have within that community equal position, equal protection and equal justice, will be able to draw upon its sympathy, its good-will. This I venture to say is a complete answer to the question raised by the opponents. It shows what the Untouchables can gain by conversion. It is however desirable to carry the matter further and dispose of another question which has not been raised so far by the opponents of conversion but may be raised. The question is : why is conversion necessary to establish kinship? The answer to this question will reveal itself if it is borne in mind that there is a difference between a community and a society and between kinship and citizenship. A community in the strict sense of the word is a body of kindred.
A society is a collection of many communities or of different bodies of kindreds. The bond which holds a community together is called kinship while the bond which holds a society together is called citizenship. The means of acquiring citizenship in a society are quite different from the means of acquiring kinship in a community. Citizenship is acquired by what is called naturalization. The condition precedent for citizenship is the acceptance of political allegiance to the State. The conditions precedent for acquiring kinship are quite different. At one stage in evolution of man the condition precedent for adoption into the kindred was unity of blood. For the kindred is a body of persons who conceive themselves as spring from one ancestor and as having in their veins one blood. It does not matter whether each group has actually and in fact spring from a single ancestor. As a matter of fact, a group did admit a stranger into the kindred though he did not spring from the same ancestor. It is interesting to note that there was a rule that if a stranger intermarried with a group for seven generations, he became a member of the kindred. The point is that fiction though it be, admission into the kindred required as a condition precedent unity of blood. At a later stage of Man’s Evolution, common religion in place of unity of blood became a condition precedent to kinship. In this connection it is necessary to bear in mind the important fact pointed out by Prof. Robertson Smith (The Religion of the Semites. Lecture II. Prof. Smith makes this distinction as though it was a distinction between ancient society and modern society. It is of wider importance.
In reality, it is a distinction which marks off a community from a society.) that in a community the social body is made not of men only, but of gods and men and therefore any stranger who wants to enter a community and forge the bond of kinship can do so only by accepting the God or Gods of the community. The Statement in the Old Testament such as those of Naomi to Ruth saying : “Thy sister is gone back into her people and unto her gods” and Ruth’s reply “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” or the calling of the Mobites the sons and daughters of Chemosh are all evidences which show that the bond of kinship in a community is the consequence of their allegiance to a common religion. Without common religion there can be no kinship. Where people are waiting to find faults in the argument in favour of conversion it is better to leave no ground for faultfinders to create doubt or misunderstanding. It might therefore be well to explain how and in what manner religion is able to forge the bond of kinship. The answer is simple. It does it through eating and drinking together (On this subject see Smith, The Religion of the Semites, pp. 270-71. 2 Ibid., pp. 271-72.). The Hindus in defending their caste system ridicule the plea for inter-dining. They ask: What is there in inter-dining? The answer from a sociological point of view is that is everything in it. Kinship is a social covenant of brotherhood. Like all convenants it required to be signed, sealed and delivered before it can become binding. The mode of signing, sealing and delivery is the mode prescribed by religion and that mode is the participation in a sacrificial meal. As said by Prof. Smith:
“What is the ultimate nature of the fellowship which is constituted or declared when men eat and drink together? In our complicated society fellowship has many types and many degrees; men may be united by bonds of duty and honour for certain purposes and stand quite apart in all other things. Even in ancient times—for example, in the Old Testament—we find the sacrament of a common meal introduced to seal engagements of various kinds. But in every case the engagement is absolute and inviolable; it constitutes what in the language of ethics is called a duty of perfect obligation. Now in the most primitive society there is only one kind of fellowship which is absolute and inviolable. To the primitive man all other, men fall under two classes, those to whom his life is sacred and those to whom it is not sacred. The former are his fellows; the latter are strangers and potential foemen, with whom it is absurd to think of forming any inviolable tie unless they are first brought into the circle within which each man’s life is sacred to all his comrades.”
If for the Untouchables mere citizenship is not enough to put an end to their isolation and the troubles which ensue therefrom, if kinship is the only cure, then there is no other way except to embrace the religion of the community whose kinship they seek. The argument so far advanced was directed to show how conversion can end the problem of the isolation of the Untouchables. There remain two other questions to be considered. One is, will conversion remove their inferiority complex? One cannot of course dogmatize. But one can have no hesitation in answering the question in the affirmative. The inferiority complex of the Untouchables is the result of their isolation, discrimination and the unfriendliness of the social environment. It is these which have created a feeling of helplessness which are responsible for the inferiority complex which cost him the power of self-assertion. Can religion alter this psychology of the Untouchables? The psychologists are of opinion that religion can effect this cure provided it is a religion of the right type; provided that the religion approaches the individual not as a degraded worthless outcastes but as a fellow human being; provided religion gives him an atmosphere in which he will find that there are possibilities for feeling himself the equal of every other human being there is no reason why conversion to such a religion by the Untouchables should not remove their age-long pessimism which is responsible for their inferiority complex. As pointed out by Prof. Ellwood (The Reconstruction of Religion, pp. 40-41.) : “Religion is primarily a valuing attitude, universalizing the will and the emotions, rather than the ideas of man. It thus harmonizes men, on the side of will and emotion, with his world. Hence, it is the fee of pessimism and despair. It encourages hope, and gives confidence in the battle of life, to the savage as well as to the civilized man. It does so, as we have said, because it braces vital feeling; and psychologists tell us that the reason why it braces vital feeling is because it is an adaptive process in which all of the lower centres of life are brought to reinforce the higher centres. The universalization of values means, in other words, in psychophysical terms, that the lower nerve centres pour their energies into the higher nerve centres, thus harmonizing and bringing to a maximum of vital efficiency life on its inner side. It is thus that religion taps new levels of energy, for meeting the crisis of life, while at the same time it brings about a deeper harmony between the inner and the outer.” Will conversion raise the general social status of the Untouchables ? It is difficult to see how there can be two opinions on this question. The oft-quoted answer given by Shakespeare to the question what is in a name hardly shows sufficient understanding of the problem of a name. A rose called by another name would smell as sweet would be true if names served no purpose and if people instead of depending upon names took the trouble of examining each case and formed their opinions and attitudes about it on the basis of their examination. Unfortunately, names serve a very important purpose. They play a great part in social economy. Names are symbols. Each name represents association of certain ideas and notions about a certain object. It is a label. From the label people know what it is. It saves them the trouble of examining each case individually and determine for themselves whether the ideas and notions commonly associated with the object are true. People in society have to deal with so many objects that it would be impossible for them to examine each case. They must go by the name that is why all advertisers are keen in finding a good name. If the name is not attractive the article does not go down with the people.
The name ‘Untouchable’ is a bad name. It repels, forbids, and stinks. The social attitude of the Hindu towards the Untouchable is determined by the very name ‘Untouchable’. There is a fixed attitude towards ‘Untouchables’ which is determined by the stink which is imbedded in the name ‘Untouchable’. People have no mind to go into the individual merits of each Untouchable no matter how meritorious he is. All untouchables realize this. There is a general attempt to call themselves by some name other than the ‘Untouchables’. The Chamars call themselves Ravidas or Jatavas. The Doms call themselves Shilpakars. The Pariahs call themselves Adi-Dravidas, the Madigas call themselves Arundhatyas, the Mahars call themselves Chokhamela or Somavamshi and the Bhangis call themselves Balmikis. All of them if away from their localities would call themselves Christians. The Untouchables know that if they call themselves Untouchables they will at once draw the Hindu out and expose themselves to his wrath and his prejudice. That is why they give themselves other names which may be likened to the process of undergoing protective discolouration. It is not seldom that this discolouration completely fails to serve its purpose. For to be a Hindu is for Hindus not an ultimate social category. The ultimate social category is caste, nay sub-caste if there is a sub-caste. When the Hindus meet ‘May I know who are you’ is a question sure to be asked. To this question ‘I am a Hindu’ will not be a satisfactory answer. It will certainly not be accepted as a final answer. The inquiry is bound to be further pursued.
The answer ‘Hindu’ is bound to be followed by another; ‘What caste ?’. The answer to that is bound to be followed by question : “What sub-caste ?” It is only when the questioner reaches the ultimate social category which is either caste or sub-caste that he will stop his questionings. The Untouchable who adopts the new name is a protective discolouration finds that the new name does not help and that in the course of relentless questionings he is, so to say, run down to earth and made to disclose that he is an Untouchable. The concealment makes him the victim of greater anger than his original voluntary disclosure would have done. From this discussion two things are clear. One is that the low status of the Untouchables is bound upon with a stinking name. Unless the name is changed there is no possibility of a rise in their social status. The other is that a change of name within Hinduism will not do. The Hindu will not fail to penetrate through such a name and make the Untouchable and confer himself as an Untouchable. The name matters and matters a great deal. For, the name can make a revolution in the status of the Untouchables. But the name must be the name of a community outside Hinduism and beyond its power of spoliation and degradation. Such name can be the property of the Untouchable only if they undergo religious conversion.
A conversion by change of name within Hinduism is a clandestine conversion which can be of no avail. This discussion on conversion may appear to be somewhat airy. It is bound to be so. It cannot become material unless it is known which religion the Untouchables choose to accept. For what particular advantage would flow from conversion would depend upon the religion selected and the social position of the followers of that religion. One religion may give them all the three benefits, another only two and a third may result in conferring upon them only one of the advantages of conversion. What religion the Untouchables should choose is not the subject matter of this Chapter. The subject matter of this Chapter is whether conversion can solve the problem of untouchability. The answer to that question is emphatically in the affirmative. The force of the argument, of course, rests on a view of religion which is somewhat different from the ordinary view according to which religion is concerned with man’s relation to God and all that it means. According to this view, religion exists not for the saving of souls but for the preservation of society and the welfare of the individual. It is only those who accept the former view of religion that find it difficult to understand how conversion can solve the problem of untouchability. Those who accept the view of religion adopted in this Chapter will have no difficulty in accepting the soundness of the conclusion.
The Kinship That Truly Unites {#the-kinship-that-truly-unites}
A Biblical Response to Ambedkar's Call to Leave
The Search for a New Family
In his essay "Away From The Hindus," Dr. B.R. Ambedkar constructs a powerful and deeply personal case for the mass conversion of the Untouchables. He argues that the core problem they face is not merely poverty or social disadvantage, but a profound and religiously sanctioned social isolation that results in a crippling inferiority complex. To remain within the Hindu fold, he contends, is to remain perpetually segregated, dehumanized, and denied the basic dignity of belonging.
His solution is a radical one: religious conversion, framed not as a matter of abstract theology, but as a social and existential necessity. Conversion is the only path to gaining what he calls "kinship" with a new, supportive, and egalitarian community—the ultimate antidote to isolation. This chapter will engage with Dr. Ambedkar's brilliant reasoning. We will affirm his incisive critique of the shallow religious pluralism that seeks to avoid hard questions of truth and justice. We will then explore his central argument about the purpose of religion, contrasting his sociological view with the Biblical revelation that the kinship he so rightly sought is a beautiful fruit of a much deeper, spiritual reality: adoption into the family of God through Jesus Christ.
Affirming the Diagnosis: The Moral Necessity of Choosing Truth
A significant point of agreement lies in Dr. Ambedkar’s brilliant and incisive critique of the premise that "all religions are true; all religions are good." He rightly rejects this as an intellectually lazy and morally bankrupt position used to avoid examining the actual content and real-world consequences of religious belief. His argument is a call for intellectual and moral seriousness:
"Religions may be alike in that they all teach that the meaning of life is to be found in the pursuit of ‘good’. But religions are not alike in their answers to the question ‘What is good ?’ In this they certainly differ. One religion holds that brotherhood is good, another caste and untouchability is good."
This insistence on judging a religion by its moral fruits is absolutely correct. This stance aligns perfectly with the Bible's own claims. The Bible does not present itself as one option among many equally valid paths to God. On the contrary, it consistently calls for discernment between truth and falsehood, between the worship of the one true God and the worship of man-made idols. Jesus Christ made the most exclusive claim in history when He declared, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). The prophets and apostles repeatedly warned God's people against being deceived by empty philosophies and false teachings (Colossians 2:8; 2 Peter 2:1). Dr. Ambedkar’s demand that religions be held accountable for their truth claims is, in principle, a profoundly Biblical one.
Furthermore, his demand for a universal, objective standard of "good" by which to judge religions implicitly points toward a transcendent Lawgiver. If "good" is merely a product of social evolution or cultural preference, then there is no objective basis for declaring the "brotherhood" of one religion to be morally superior to the "caste" of another. They are simply different social arrangements. The Biblical worldview, however, grounds the definition of "good" in the unchanging, holy character of God Himself. Goodness is not a social preference; it is a reflection of God's eternal nature. Therefore, Dr. Ambedkar’s correct insistence that truth matters and that religions must be judged by a genuine standard of goodness finds its only solid foundation in the existence of the God of the Bible.
Re-examining the Prescription: The Purpose of Religion
While Dr. Ambedkar's reasoning about the need to evaluate and choose a religion is sound, his foundational premise about the purpose of religion diverges significantly from the Biblical view. He frames religion as a primarily social tool for human flourishing. His argument rests on a view where "religion exists not for the saving of souls but for the preservation of society and the welfare of the individual." For him, conversion is a strategic means to a social end: ending isolation, gaining a new identity, and establishing kinship. God and theology are secondary to this primary social function.
From a Biblical perspective, this gets things precisely backward. True religion is not about humanity using God to fix its social problems; it is about God redeeming humanity to create a new, redeemed society. The primary purpose of faith is to glorify God and to reconcile sinful people to a holy Creator. The profound social benefits—kinship, dignity, justice, and community—are the beautiful and necessary fruits of that reconciliation, but they are not the root. To seek the social benefits of Christianity without first seeking Christ as Lord and Savior is to desire the warmth of the fire without wanting the fire itself.
The Gospel Alternative: The Ultimate Kinship
The Bible teaches that the deepest isolation a person experiences is not social, but spiritual. It is the separation from God caused by our sin (Isaiah 59:2). The ultimate "stinking name" we bear is not "Untouchable," but "sinner," which places every one of us under the just judgment of a holy God. The Gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ came to solve this fundamental problem. Through His death and resurrection, He offers forgiveness for sin and, most relevant to Dr. Ambedkar's quest, adoption into God's own family (John 1:12; Galatians 4:4-7).
This spiritual adoption provides the very things Dr. Ambedkar sought, but on an infinitely deeper and more secure level:
1. True Kinship: The kinship he longed for—what he called "a single animated mass of blood, flesh and bones"—is powerfully and supernaturally realized in the Church. In the Church, believers from every caste, tribe, and nation become true brothers and sisters, part of the one spiritual body of Christ, united by the Holy Spirit. This is a family whose bond transcends all earthly divisions.
2. A New Name and Identity: Conversion to Christ gives a new identity, "child of God," which is not merely a "protective discolouration" to hide a former status, but a profound, internal reality. It bestows an eternal dignity that no human prejudice can erase because it is declared by the Creator Himself.
3. A Cure for the Inferiority Complex: The Gospel addresses the root of shame not with social acceptance, but with divine acceptance. The knowledge that one is unconditionally loved, chosen, forgiven, and valued by the Creator of the universe is the only permanent and unshakeable cure for an inferiority complex.
This Biblical alternative is superior because it addresses the root spiritual problem, and in doing so, provides a more robust and lasting foundation for the social solutions Dr. Ambedkar desired. A community built on a shared social agenda can fracture when that agenda changes or when internal power struggles emerge. A community built on a shared identity as redeemed children of God has an eternal and unbreakable bond.
Finding Our Family in the Father
Dr. Ambedkar’s argument in "Away From The Hindus" is a brilliant and compelling case for leaving a system that is spiritually and socially bankrupt. His search for a community of kinship that offers dignity, protection, and a new identity is a righteous and deeply human quest.
However, in defining religion as a tool primarily for social preservation, he seeks the fruits of Christianity without embracing its root. The true and ultimate kinship that ends all isolation is not found by strategically joining a different social group, but by being supernaturally adopted into the family of God through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the only conversion that provides a new identity that cannot be stripped away, a community whose bond is eternal, and a power that can truly transform the human heart from the inside out. The social liberation Dr. Ambedkar rightly sought is the commanded and inevitable result of this spiritual regeneration. Therefore, the ultimate answer to his profound search for kinship is found not just in becoming a member of a new religion, but in becoming a child of the living God.
Caste And Conversion {#caste-and-conversion}
(Originally published in the ‘Telugu Samachar Special Number’, Nov. 1926.)
The instinct of self-preservation is responsible for the present upheaval in the Hindu Community. There was a time when the elite of the society had no fear about its preservation. Their argument was that the Hindu community was one of the oldest communities that has withstood the onslaught of many adverse forces and therefore there must be some native strength and stamina in its culture and civilization as to make it survive. They were therefore firm in their belief that their community was destined ever to survive. Recent events seem to have shaken this belief.
In the Hindu-Muslim riots that have taken place all over the country in recent times it has been found that a small band of Muslims can beat the Hindus and beat them badly. The elite of the Hindus are therefore reflecting afresh upon the question whether such a kind of survival in the struggle for existence is of any value. The proud Hindu who always harped upon the fact of survival as a proof of his fitness to survive never stopped to think that survival was of many types and not all are of equal value. One can survive by marching against the enemy and conquering him. Or one can survive by beating a retreat and hiding oneself in a position of safety. In either case there would be survival. But certainly, the value of the two survivals is measures apart. What is important is not the fact of survival but the plane of survival ? Survive the Hindus may, but whether as free men or slaves is the issue. But the matter seems so hopeless that granting that they manage to survive as slaves it does not seem to be altogether certain that they can survive as Hindus.
For they are not only beaten by the Muslims in the physical struggle, but they seem also to be beaten in the cultural struggle. There is in recent days a regular campaign conducted vigorously by the Muslims for the spread of Islamic culture, and by their conversion movement, it is alleged, they have made vast additions to their numerical strength by winning over members of the Hindu faith. Fortunately for the Muslims there is a large mass of non-descript population numbering about seven crores which is classed as Hindus, but which has no particular affinity to the Hindu faith and whose position is made so intolerable by that faith that they can be easily induced to embrace Islam. Some of these are going over to Islam and yet more may go. This is sufficient to cause alarm among the elite of the Hindus. If with a superiority of numbers, the Hindus are unable to face the Muslims what would be their fate if their following was depleted by conversions to Islam ? The Hindus feel that they must save their people from being lost to them and their culture. Herein lies the origin of the Shudhi Movement or the movement to reclaim people to the Hindu faith. Some people of the orthodox type are opposed to this movement on the ground that Hindu religion was never a proselytising religion, and that Hindu must be so by birth. There is something to be said in favour of this view. From the commencement of time to which memory or tradition can reach back, proselytism has never been the practising creed of the Hindu faith. Prof. Max Muller, the great German Savant and Oriental Scholar in an address delivered by him in the name of the Westminster Abbey on the 3rd of December 1873 Day of Intercession for Missions, emphatically declared that the Hindu Religion was a non-missionary religion. The orthodoxy which refuses to believe in expediency may therefore feel well grounded in its opposition to Shudhi, as a practice directly opposed to the most fundamental tenets of the Hindu faith. But there are other authorities of equally good repute to support the promoters of the Shudhi movement, for it is their opinion that the Hindu Religion has been and can be a missionary religion. Prof. Jolly in an article ‘DIE AUSBREITUNG DER INDISCHEN FULTUR’, gives a graphic description of the means and methods adopted by the ancient Hindu Rulers and Priests to spread the Hindu Religion among the aborigines of the country. The late Sir Alfred Lyall who wrote in reply to Prof. Max Muller also sought to prove that the Hindu religion was a missionary religion. The probability of the case seems to be definitely in favour of Jolly and Lyall. For unless we suppose that the Hindu Religion did in some degree do the work of proselytization, it is not possible to account for its spread over a vast continent and inhabited by diverse races which were in possession of a distinct culture of their own. Besides, the prevalence of certain YAJNAS and YAGAS cannot be explained except on the hypothesis that there were ceremonies for the Shudhi of the Vratya. We may therefore safely conclude that in ancient times the Hindu religion was a missionary religion. But that owing to some reason it ceased to be so long back in its historical course.
The question that I wish to consider is why did the Hindu religion cease to be a missionary religion. There may be various explanations for this, and I propose to offer my own explanation for what it is worth. Aristotle has said that man is a social being. Whatever be the cogency of the reasons of Aristotle in support of his statement this much is true that it is impossible for anyone to begin life as an individualist in the sense of radically separating himself from his social fellows. The social bond is established and rooted in the very growth of self-consciousness. Each individual’s apprehension of his own personal self and its interest involves the recognition of others and their interests, and his pursuit of one type of purposes, generous or selfish, is in so far, the pursuit of the other also. The social relation is in all cases intrinsic to the life, interests, and purposes of the individual; he feels and apprehends, the vitality of social relations in all the situations of his life. In short, life without society is no more possible for him than it is for a fish out of water.
Given this fact it follows that before a society can make converts, it must see to it that its constitution provides for aliens being made its members and allowed to participate in its social life. It must be used to make no difference between individuals born in it and individuals brought into it. It must be open to receive him in the one case as in the other and allow him to enter into its life and thus make it possible for him to live and thrive as a member of that society. If there is no such provision on conversion of an alien the question would at once arise where to place the convert. If there is no place for the convert, there can be no invitation for conversion nor can there be an acceptance of it. Is there any place in the Hindu society for a convert to the Hindu faith ? Now the organisation of the Hindu society is characterized by the existence of castes. Each caste is endogamous and lives by antogony. In other words, it only allows individuals born in it to its membership and does not allow any one from outside being brought into it. The Hindu Society being a federation of castes and each caste being self-enclosed there is no place for the convert for no caste will admit him : The answer to the question why the Hindu Religion ceased to be a missionary religion is to be found in the fact that it developed the caste system. Caste is incompatible with conversion. So long as mass conversion was possible, the Hindu Society could convert for the converts were large enough to form a new caste which could provide the elements of a social life from among themselves. But when mass conversions were no more and only individual converts could be had, the Hindu Religion had necessarily to cease to be missionary for its social organisation could make no room for the incoming convert.
I have not propounded this question as to why the Hindu Religion ceased to be missionary simply to find an opportunity for obtaining credit for originality of thought by offering a novel explanation. I have propounded the question and given an answer to it because I feel that both have a very important bearing upon the Shudhi movement. Much as I sympathise with the promoters of that movement, I must say that they have not analysed the difficulties in the way of the success of their movement. The motive behind the Shudhi movement is to increase the strength of the Hindu Society by increasing its numbers. Now a society is strong not because its numbers are great but because it is solid in its mass. Instances are not wanting where a solid organised band of fanatics have routed a large army of disorganised crusaders; Even in the Hindu-Muslim riots it has been proved that the Hindus are beaten not only where they are weak in numbers, but they are beaten by the Muslims even where the Hindus preponderate. The case of Moplahs is in point.
This alone ought to show that the Hindus suffer not from want of numbers but from want of solidarity. To increase solidarity of the Hindu Society one must tackle the forces which have brought about its disintegration. My fear is that mere Shudhi, instead of integrating the Hindu Society, will cause greater disintegration and will annoy the Muslim Community without any gain to the Hindus. In a society composed of castes, Shudhi brings in a person who can find no home and who is therefore bound to lead an isolated and separate existence with no attachment or loyalty to any one in particular. Even if Shudhi were to bring into the Hindu fold a mass like the Malkana catch of Shradhanand, it will only add one more caste to the existing number. Now the greater the castes the greater the isolation and the greater the weakness of the Hindu society. If the Hindu society desires to survive it must think not of adding to its numbers but increasing its solidarity and that means the abolition of caste. The abolition of castes is the real Sanghatan of the Hindus and when Sanghatan is achieved by the abolishing of castes, Shudhi will be unnecessary and if practised, will be gainful of real strength. With the castes in existence, it is impossible and if practised would be harmful to the real Sanghatan and solidarity of the Hindus. But somehow the most revolutionary and ardent reformer of the Hindu society shies at the idea of abolition of the caste and advocates such puerile measures as the reconversion of the converted Hindu, the changing of the diet and the starting of Akhadas. Someday it will dawn upon the Hindus that they cannot save their society and also preserve their caste. It is to be hoped that that day is not far off.
The Solidarity That Truly Save {#the-solidarity-that-truly-save}
A Biblical Response to 'Caste and Conversion' The Anatomy of a Flawed Strength
In his 1926 essay "Caste And Conversion," Dr. B.R. Ambedkar turns his incisive, analytical gaze upon the Hindu Shudhi (purification/re-conversion) movement. He diagnoses the movement not as a spiritual revival, but as a panicked reaction born from an "instinct of self-preservation" after the Hindu community found itself losing ground in both physical and cultural struggles. With surgical precision, he argues that the entire project is fundamentally flawed and doomed to fail because it mistakes the nature of true strength. The true weakness of Hinduism, he contends, is not a lack of numbers but a profound lack of internal solidarity, a problem created and perpetuated by the very structure of caste.
This chapter will engage with Dr. Ambedkar's sociological masterclass. We will affirm his core insight—that a religion's social structure dictates its ability to be missionary and that a system built on exclusion cannot create true unity. We will demonstrate how this principle finds its ultimate expression in the Christian faith, where a radically inclusive theology necessitates a radically inclusive community. However, we will then lovingly critique the framework through which Dr. Ambedkar analyzes the problem—that of socio-political survival—and present the Biblical alternative: a mission motivated not by self-preservation, but by divine love, creating a solidarity rooted not in earthly power, but in the spiritual unity of the body of Christ.
Affirming the Diagnosis: A House with No Room for a Guest
Dr. Ambedkar’s core sociological insight is brilliant and fundamentally correct: a religion's social structure dictates its ability to be missionary. He argues powerfully that "before a society can make converts, it must see to it that its constitution provides for aliens being made its members and allowed to participate in its social life... If there is no place for the convert, there can be no invitation for conversion nor can there be an acceptance of it."
This is the fatal flaw he identifies in Hinduism. Because its society is a federation of rigid, self-enclosed castes, there is literally no social "place" for a new convert to be integrated. A convert cannot be born into a caste, and no existing caste will admit him. Therefore, simply adding numbers through Shudhi without addressing this structural problem will not create strength; it will only create more isolated individuals or, at best, another isolated caste, leading to greater disintegration rather than solidarity.
This principle is at the very heart of the Christian faith and the nature of the Church. The Great Commission given by Jesus Christ is a universal mandate to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). This was not a mere suggestion; it was a command that would define the very essence of the new community. Consequently, the defining feature of the early Church was its radical inclusivity. The first major theological crisis it faced, resolved at the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, was precisely about this issue: how to incorporate Gentile (non-Jewish) converts. The revolutionary conclusion, guided by the Holy Spirit, was that faith in Christ alone, not adherence to Jewish cultural or ceremonial law, was the sole requirement for full membership in the people of God.
The Apostle Paul builds his entire theology on this truth, declaring that Christ has "broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility... that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two" (Ephesians 2:14-15). By its very divine design, the Church must have a place for the convert. Christianity's ability to be a universal, missionary religion is not a sociological accident but a theological necessity. Because salvation is offered as a free gift of grace through faith, it is inherently available to every person, regardless of ethnicity, social status, or past. The unity of the Church is based not on bloodline, but on a shared spiritual rebirth and adoption into the family of God. Dr. Ambedkar correctly identifies that a religion’s social "constitution" determines its missionary capacity; the Bible reveals that Christianity’s inclusive constitution flows directly from the universal nature of the Gospel itself.
Re-examining the Prescription: A Mission of Love, Not Fear
While his analysis of the structural problem is flawless, Dr. Ambedkar frames the entire discussion within the realm of socio-political survival and communal strength. He analyzes the Shudhi movement's motives as a panicked response to losing a "physical struggle" and "cultural struggle" to Muslims. His proposed solution, the abolition of caste, is prescribed as the path to "real Sanghatan and solidarity" so that Hindu society can "survive" and achieve "real strength."
From a Biblical perspective, this reduces religion and conversion to tools in a struggle for earthly power and cultural preservation. This is a profound misreading of the Christian mission. The motivation for Christian evangelism is not an "instinct of self-preservation" or a desire to build a more solid demographic bloc to "beat" a rival community. The Christian impetus for conversion comes from a place of love—first, a love for a holy God who desires to be known and worshipped by all peoples, and second, a love for lost neighbors who are separated from Him and facing an eternity apart from His goodness. The goal is not to strengthen one's own community for earthly conflict, but to invite all people, including one's enemies, into God's eternal kingdom.
The Gospel Alternative: The Solidarity of the Body of Christ
The Bible presents the Church not as a "solid mass" for cultural warfare, but as the "body of Christ," a diverse and unified spiritual family drawn from every tribe, tongue, and nation (Revelation 7:9). Its strength lies not in its political solidarity or numerical superiority, but in its spiritual unity and total dependence on Christ as its head. This vision provides the very solidarity Dr. Ambedkar seeks, but on a much deeper and more enduring level.
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A Higher Motivation: A mission based on self-preservation is inherently self-serving. It seeks to use people as a means to an end—the survival of the group. The Christian mission is God-glorifying and other-serving, driven by a desire for the eternal well-being of others. This is a motivation that cannot be corrupted by political expediency.
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A Deeper Solidarity: The "solidarity" Dr. Ambedkar desires is for social cohesion and political strength. The solidarity of the Church, the New Testament concept of koinonia, is a spiritual fellowship created by the Holy Spirit. It is a supernatural bond that compels believers to love, serve, and bear one another's burdens (Galatians 6:2) out of a shared identity in Christ that is far deeper than any earthly alliance.
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A Redefined "Survival": Dr. Ambedkar is rightly concerned with whether a community survives as "free men or slaves" in a temporal sense. The Gospel is concerned with a far greater liberation—freedom from the ultimate slavery of sin and death. It offers the promise of eternal life, a "survival" that is secure even in the midst of earthly persecution or defeat.
True Sanghatan is Found in Christ
Dr. Ambedkar’s essay "Caste And Conversion" is a sociological masterclass. He flawlessly demonstrates that a social structure built on exclusion is incompatible with a mission of inclusion, and that true strength comes from internal solidarity, not mere numbers. His conclusion that Hinduism cannot have both survival and its caste system is logically unassailable.
However, in analyzing the problem solely through the lens of communal survival, he evaluates religion by its utility in a worldly power struggle. The Biblical vision offers a far more profound purpose for a welcoming, missionary faith. It agrees wholeheartedly that a true religion must have a "place for the convert," but it declares that this place is not just a slot in a new social order, but a permanent, secure, and honored seat at the table in the family of God. The "abolition of caste" that Dr. Ambedkar rightly demands for social solidarity is, in Christianity, a non-negotiable theological command flowing directly from the Gospel, which creates one new, unified humanity in Jesus Christ. The true Sanghatan is the spiritual unity of the body of Christ, and it is the only solidarity that truly saves.
Christianizing The Untouchables {#christianizing-the-untouchables}
I. Growth of Christianity in India. II. Time and money spent in Missionary effort.
III. Reasons for slow growth.
I
How old is Christianity in India ? What progress has it made among the people of India ? These are questions which no one who is interested in the Untouchables can fail to ask. The two questions are so intimately connected that the endeavour for the spread of Christianity would be hopeless if there were not in India that vast body of untouchables who, by their peculiar circumstances, are most ready to respond to the social message of Christianity.
The following figures will give some idea of the population of Indian Christians as compared with other communities in India according to the Census of 1931.
It is true that during the 1921 and 1931 Christianity has shown a great increase. From the point of growth Sikhism takes the first place. Christianity comes second and Islam another proselytizing religion comes third. The difference between the first and the second is so small that the second place occupied by Christianity may be taken to be as good as first. Again the difference between the second and the third place occupied by Islam is so enormous that Christians may well be proud of their having greatly outdistanced so serious a rival.
With all this the fact remains that this figure of 6,296,763 is out of a total of 352,818,557. This means that the Christian population in India is about 1.7 p.c. of the total.
II
In how many years and after what expenditure ? As to expenditure it is not possible to give any accurate figures. Mr. George Smith in his book on “The Conversion of India” published in 1893 gives statistics which serve to give some idea of the resources spent by Christian Nations for Missionary work in heathen countries. This is what he says :
“We do not take into account their efforts, vigorous and necessary, especially in the lands of Asia and North Africa occupied by the Eastern Churches for whom Americans do much, nor any labours for Christians by Christians of a purer faith and life. Leaving out of account also the many wives of missionaries who are represented statistically in their husbands, Rev. J. Vahl, President of the Danish
Missionary Society gives us these results. We accept them as the most accurately compiled, and as almost too cautiously estimated where estimate is unavoidable. In Turkey and Egypt only work among the Musalmans is reckoned.
We abstain from estimating in detail the results for 1892, as they are about to appear, and still less for the year 1893, but experts can do this for themselves. This only we would say that the number of native communicants added in those two years has been very large, especially in India. Allowing for that, we should place them now at 1,300,000 which gives a native Christian community of 5,200,000 gathered out of all non-Catholic lands.
Dean Vahl’s statistics are drawn from the reports of 304 mission societies and agencies in 1891, beginning with Cromwell’s New England Company, for America, in 1649. On the following page the details are summarised from seventeen lands of Reformed Christendom. The amount raised in 1891 by the 160 Mission Churches and Societies of the British Empire was £ 1,659,830 and by the 57 of the United States of America £786,992. Together the two great English speaking peoples spent £2,446,822 on the evangelisation of the non-Christian world. The balance 302,518 was contributed by Germany and Switzerland, Netherlands, Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden, Finland and in Asia.” It is not possible to give any idea of the resources now utilized in the cause because they are not published. But we have sufficient data to know how many years it has taken to produce these 6 millions of converts.
Of the first missionary to India who came and sowed there the seed of Christianity there is no record. It is believed that Christianity in India is of apostolic origin, and it is suggested that the apostle Thomas was the founder of it. The apostolic origin of Christianity is only a legend notwithstanding the existence of what is called St. Thomas’s Mount near Madras which is said to be the burial place of the Apostle. There is no credible evidence to show that the Gospel was even preached in India during the first Century. There is some evidence to show that in the second century the Gospel had reached the ears of the dwellers on the Southern Indian Coast, among the pearl fishers of Ceylon and the cultivators on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. This news when brought back by the Egyptian Mariners spread among the Christians of Alexandria. Alexandria was the first to send a Christian Missionary to India, whose name is recorded in history. He was Pantoenus, a Greek stoic who had become a Christian and was appointed by Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria as the principal and sole catechist of the school of the Catechumens, which had been established for the instruction of the heathen in the facts and doctrines of Christianity. At some time between the years 180 and 190 the Bishop of Alexandria received an Appeal from the Christians in India to send them a Missionary and Pantoenus was accordingly sent. How long he was in India, how far inland he travelled and what work he actually did, there is no record to show. All that is known is that he went back to Alexandria, and took charge of his school and continued to be its principal till 211 A.D.
Little is known of the progress of the Gospel on Indian soil through the third century. But there is this fact worthy of notice. It is this that when the Council of Nicaca was held in 325 A.D. after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine Johannes, one of the Assembled prelates described himself as “Metropolitan of Persian and of the Great India”. This fact seems to indicate that there was at that time a Christian Church of some bulk and significance planted on the Indian Coast.
On the other hand, this probably implied little more than an episcopal claim to what had always, as in the Book of Esther, been considered a province of the Persian Empire. The scene shifts from Alexandria to Antioch and from the beginning of the third to the end of the fifth century. It is Antioch which took the burden of Christian enterprize upon its own shoulder. The sixth century was the last peaceful year for Christian propaganda. This seems to mark the end of one epoch. Then followed the rise of the Saracens who carried the Koran and Sword of Mahammad all over Western Asia and Northern Africa, then threatened Europe itself up to Vienna and from Spain into the heart of France. The result was that all the Christian people were distracted, and their Missionary effort was held up for several centuries.
The voyage of Vasco de Gama in the year 1497 to India marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of Christian Missionary effort in India and the most serious and determined effort commenced with the arrival of the great Missionary Francis Xavier in the year 1542. The Portuguese were the first European power in the East and the earliest efforts of modern times in the direction of Christianizing the natives of India were made under their auspices. The conversions effected under the auspices of the Portuguese were of course conversions to the Roman Catholic faith and were carried out by Roman Catholic Missions. They were not, however, left long without rivals. The Protestants soon came into the field. The earliest Protestant propaganda was that of the Lutherans who established themselves in Tranquebar in 1706 under the patronage of the King of Denmark. The able and devoted Schwartz, who laboured in Trichinopoly and Tanjore throughout the second half of the 18th Century was a member of this mission, which has since, to a great extent, been taken over by the Society for the propagation of the Gospel.
Next came the Baptist Mission under Carey who landed in Calcutta in 1793. Last came the Anglican Church which entered the Missionary field in 1813 and since then the expansion of Missionary enterprize was rapid and continuous. Thus, Christian propaganda has had therefore a long run in India. It had had four centuries before the rise of the Saracens who caused a break in the Mission Activity. Again, after subsidence of the Saracens it has had nearly four centuries. This total of six millions is the fruit gathered in eight centuries. Obviously, this is a very depressing result. It depressed Francis Xavier. It even depressed Abbe Dubois who, writing in 1823 some three hundred years after Xavier, declared that to convert Hindus to Christianity was a forlorn hope. He was then criticized by the more optimistic of Christian Missionaries. But the fact remains that at the end of this period there are only about 6 million Christians out of a total population of about 358 millions. This is a very slow growth indeed and the question is, what are the causes of this slow growth.
III
It seems to me that there are three reasons which have impeded the growth of Christianity. The first of these reasons is the bad morals of the early European settlers in India particularly Englishmen who were sent to India by the East India Company. Of the character of the men who were sent out to India Mr. Kaye, an Appologist of the Company and also of its servants speaks in the following terms in his “Christianity in India”: “Doubtless there were some honest, decent men from the middle classes amongst them . . . .. But many, it appears from contemporary writers, were Society’s hard bargains—youngsters, perhaps, of good family, to which they were a disgrace, and from the bosom of which therefore they were to be cast out, in the hope that there would be no prodigals return from the ‘Great Indies’. It was not to be expected that men who had disgraced themselves at home would lead more respectable lives abroad.
* * *
“There were, in truth, no outward motives to preserve morality of conduct, or even decency of demeanour; so from the moment of their landing upon the shore of India, the first settlers cast off all these bonds which had restrained them in their native villages; they regarded themselves as privileged beings—privileged to violate all the obligations of religion and morality and to outrage all the decencies of life. They who went thither were often desperate adventurers, whom England, in the emphatic language of the Scripture, had spud out; men who sought those golden sands of the East to repair their broken fortunes; to bury in oblivion a sullied name; or to bring, with lawless hand from the weak and unsuspecting, wealth which they had not the character or capacity to obtain by industry at home. They cheated; they gambled; they drank; they revelled in all kinds of debauchery. Associates in vice, linked together by a common bond of rapacity, they still often pursued one another with desperate malice, and few though they were in numbers, among them there was no fellowship, except a fellowship of crime.”
“All this was against the newcomer; and so, whilst the depraved met with no inducement to reform the pure but rarely escaped corruption. Whether they were there initiated, or perpetrated in destructive error, equally may they be regarded as the victims of circumstance. How bad were the morals and behaviour of the early Christians can be gathered from the following instances quoted by Mr. Kaye.
“The Deputy-Governor of Bombay was in 1669 charged as under:
That he hath on the Sabbath day hindered the performance of public duty to God Almighty at the accustomary hour, continuing in drinking of health; detaining others with him against their wills; and whilst he drank, in false devotions upon his knees, a health devoted to the Union, in the time appointed for the service belonging to the Lord’s day, the unhappy sequel showed it to be but the projection of a further disunion.
“That to the great scandal of the inhabitants of the island, of all the neighbours round about, both popists and others that are idolators, in dishonour of the sobriety of the Protestant religion, he hath made frequent and heavy drinking meetings, continuing sometimes till two or three of the clock in the morning, to the neglecting of the service of God in the morning prayers, and the service of the Company in the meantime had stood still while he slept, thus perverting and converting to an ill private use, those refreshment intended for the factory in general.”
On these charges he was found guilty. In the factories of the East India Company there was enough of internecine strife and the factors of the Company committed scandalous outrages in general defiance both of the laws of God and the decencies of man. They fought grievously among themselves; blows following words; and the highest persons in the settlement settling an example of pugnacity with their inferiors under the potent influence of drink.
The report of the following incident is extracted from the records of the Company’s factory at Surat (Quoted by Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 106.) :
“We send your honours our consultation books from the 21st of August 1695 to 31st December 1696, in which does appear a conspiracy against the President’s life, and a design to murder the guards, because he would have opposed it. How far Messrs. Vauxe and Upphill were concerned, we leave to your honours to judge by this and depositions before mentioned. There is strong presumption that it was intended first that the President should be stabbed, and it was prevented much through the vigilance of Ephraim Bendall; when hopes of that failed by the guards being doubled, it seems poison was agreed on, as by the deposition of Edmund clerk and all bound to secrecy upon an horrid imprecation of damnation to the discoverer, whom the rest were to fall upon and cut off.” In the same document is recorded the complaint of Mr. Charles Peachey against the President of the Council at Surat— “I have received from you (i.e. the President) two cuts on my head, the one very long and deep, the other a slight thing in comparison to that. Then a great blow on my left arm, which has enflamed the shoulder, and deprived me (at present), of the use of that limb; on my right side a blow on my ribs just beneath the pap, which is a stoppage to my breath and makes me incapable of helping myself; on my left hip another, nothing inferior to the first; but above all a cut on the brow of my eye.”
Such was the state of morality among the early English Settlers who came down to India. It is enough to observe that these settlers managed to work through the first eighty years of the seventeenth century without building a Church. Things did not improve in the 18th Century. Of the state of morality among Englishmen in India during the 18th Century this is what Mr. Kaye has to say— “Of the state of Anglo Indian Society during the protracted Administration of Warren Hastings, nothing indeed can be said in praise ..... those who ought to have set good example, did grievous wrong to Christianity by the lawlessness of their lives ….....Hastings took another man’s wife with his consent; Francis did the same without it …… It was scarcely to be expected that, with such examples before them, the less prominent members of society would be conspicuous for morality and decorum. In truth, it must be acknowledged that the Christianity of the English in India was, at this time, in a sadly depressed state. Men drank hard and gamed high, concubinage with the women of the country was the rule rather than the exception. It was no uncommon thing for English gentlemen to keep populous zenanas. There was no dearth of exciting amusement in those days. Balls, masquerades, races and theatrical entertainments, enlivened the settlements, especially in the cold weather; and the mild excitement of duelling varied the pleasures of the season. Men lived, for the most part, short lives and were resolute that they should be merry ones.”
* * *
The drunkenness, indeed, was general and obstrusive. It was one of the besetting infirmities—the fashionable vices—of the period….... At the large Presidency towns—especially at Calcutta—public entertainments were not frequent. Ball suppers, in those days, were little less than orgies. Dancing was impossible after them and fighting commonly took its place. If a public party went off without a duel or two, it was a circumstance as rare as it was happy. There was a famous club in those days, called Selby’s Club, at which the gentlemen of Calcutta were wont to drink as high as they gamed, and which sometimes saw drunken bets of 1,000 gold mohurs laid about the merest trifles. Card parties often sat all through the night, and if the night chanced to be a Saturday, all through the next day.
* * *
Honourable marriage was the exceptional state ….... The Court of Directors of the East India Company ….... were engaged in the good work of reforming the morals of their settlements; and thinking that the means of forming respectable marriages would be an important auxiliary, they sent out not only a supply of the raw material of soldiers’ wives, but some better articles also, in the shape of what they called gentle women, for the use of such of their merchants and factors as might be matrimonially inclined. The venture, however, was not a successful one. The few who married made out indifferent wives, whilst they who did not marry,—and the demand was by no means brisk,—were, to say the least of it, in an equivocal position. For a time, they were supported at the public expense, but they received only sufficient to keep them from starving, and co it happened naturally enough that the poor creatures betook themselves to vicious courses, and sold such charms as they had, if only to purchase strong drink, to which they became immoderately addicted, with the wages of their prostitution.
The scandal soon became open and notorious; and the President and Council at Surat wrote to the Deputy Governor and Council at Bombay, saying : “Whereas you give us notice that some of the women are grown scandalous to our native religion and Government, we require you in the Honourable Company’s name to give them all fair warning that they do apply themselves to a more sober and Christian conversation : otherwise, the sentence is that they shall be deprived totally of their liberty to go abroad, and fed with bread and water, till they are embarked on board ship for England.” (Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 106.).
How bad were the morals and behaviour of the early Christians can be gathered from the three following instances which are taken from contemporary records.
Captain Williamson in his ‘Indian Vade Mecum’ published about the year 1809 says—
“I have known various instances of two ladies being conjointly domesticated, and one of an elderly military character who solaced himself with no less than sixteen of all sorts and sizes. Being interrogated by a friend as to what he did with such a member, “Oh”, replied he, ‘I give them little rice, and let them run about’. This same gentleman when paying his addresses to an elegant young woman lately arrived from Europe, but who was informed by the lady at whose house she was residing, of the state of affairs, the description closed with ‘Pray, my dear, how should you like to share a sixteenth of Major ?” Such was the disorderliness and immorality among Englishmen in India. No wonder that the Indians marvelled whether the British acknowledged any God and believed in any system of morality. When asked what he thought of Christianity and Christians an Indian is reported to have said in his broken English—“Christian religion, devil religion; Christian much drunk; Christian much do wrong; much beat, much abuse others”—and who can say that this judgment was contrary to facts?
It is true that England herself was not at the relevant time overburdened with morality. The English people at home were but little distinguished for the purity of their lives and there was a small chance of British virtue dwarfed and dwindled at home, expending on foreign soil. As observed by Mr. Kaye (Kaye, Christianity in India, p. 44) “The courtly licentiousness of the Restoration had polluted the whole land. The stamp of Whitehall was upon the currency of our daily lives; and it went out upon our adventurers in the Company’s ships, and was not, we may be sure, to be easily effaced in a heathen land”. Whatever be the excuse for this immorality of Englishmen in the 17th and 18th Century the fact remains that it was enough to bring Christianity into disrepute and make its spread extremely difficult.
The second impediment in the progress of Christianity in India was the struggle between the Catholic and Non-Catholic Missions for supremacy in the field of proselytization. The entry of the Catholic Church in the field of the spread of Christianity in India began in the year 1541 with the arrival of Francis Xavier. He was the first Missionary of the new Society of Jesus formed to support the authority of the Pope. Before the Catholic Church entered this field there existed in India particularly in the South a large Christian population which belonged to the Syrian Church. These Syrian Christians, long seated on the coast of Malabar, traced their paternity to the Apostle Thomas, who it is said “went through Syria and Cilicia conforming the Churches”. They looked to Syria as their spiritual home. They aknowledged the supremacy of the Patriarch of Babylon. Of Rome and the Pope, they knew nothing. During the rise of the Papacy, the Mahomedan power, which had overrun the intervening countries, had closed the gates of India against the nations of the West. This had saved the Syrian Churches in India from the Roman Catholic Church.
As to the question whether the Christianity of the Catholic Church was the true form of Christianity or whether the Christianity of the Syrian Church was the true form I am not concerned here. But the facts remain that the Portuguese who represented the Catholic Church in India were scandalized at the appearance of the Syrian Churches which they declared to be heathen temples scarcely disguised. The Syrian Christians shrank with dismay from the defiling touch of the Roman Catholics of Portugal and proclaimed themselves Christians and not idolators. The other is that the Malabar Christians had never been subject to Roman supremacy and never subscribed to the Roman doctrine. The elements of a conflict between the two Churches were thus present and the inquisition only gave an occasion for the conflagration.
The inquisitors of Goa discovered that they were heretics and like a wolf on the fold, down came the delegates of the Pope upon the Syrian Churches. How great was the conflict is told by Mr. Kaye in his volume already referred to.
The first Syrian prelate who was brought into antagonism with Rome, expiated his want of courage and sincerity in the dungeons of the Inquisition. The second shared the same fate. A third, whose sufferings are more worth of commiseration, died after much trial and tribulation in his diocese, denying the Pope’s supremacy to the last. The churches were now without a Bishop, at a time when they more than ever needed prelatical countenance and support; for Rome was about to put forth a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm. Don Alexis de Menezes was appointed Archbishop of Goa. It was his mission less to make new converts than to reduce old ones to subjection; and he flung himself into the work of persecution with an amount of zeal and heroism that must have greatly endeared him to Rome. Impatient of the slow success of his agents, he determined to take the staff into his own hand.
Moving down to the South, with an imposing military force, he summoned the Syrian Churches to submit themselves to his authority. The Churches were under an Archdeacon, who, sensible of the danger that impended over them, determined to temporize, but at the same time to show that he was prepared to resist. He waited on the Archbishop. An escort of three thousand resolute men who accompanied him on his visit to Menezes, were with difficulty restrained, on the first slight and delusive sign of violence, from rushing on their opponents and proving their burning zeal in defence of their religion. It was not a time for Menezes to push the claims of the Romish Church. But no fear of resistance could divert him from his purpose, and he openly denounced the Patriarch of Babylon as a pestilent schismatic and declared it a heresy to acknowledge his supremacy. He then issued a decree forbidding all persons to acknowledge any other supremacy than that of the Roman Pontiff, or to make any mention of the Syrian Patriarch in the services of their Church; and, this done, he publicly excommunicated the acknowledged head of the Syrian Churches and called upon the startled Archdeacon to sign the writ of excommunication. Frightened and confused, the wretched man put his name to the apostate document; and it was publicly affixed to the gates of the church.
This intolerable insult on the one hand—this wretched compromise on the other—roused the fury of the people against the Archbishop, and against their own ecclesiastical chief. Hard was the task before him, when the latter went forth to appease the excited multitude. They would have made one desperate effort to sweep the Portuguese intruders from their polluted shores; but the Archdeacon pleaded with them for forbearance; apologised for his own weakness; urged that dissimulation would be more serviceable than revenge; promised, in spite of what he had done, to defend their religion; and exhorted them to be firm in their resistance of Papal aggression. With a shout of assent, they swore that they would never bow their necks to the yoke, and prepared themselves for the continuance of the struggle.
But Menezes was a man of too many resources to be worsted in such a conflict. His energy and perseverance were irresistible; his craft was too deep to fathom. When one weapon of attack failed, he tried another. Fraud took the place of violence; money took the place of arms. He bribed those whom he could not bully, and appealed to the imaginations of men when he could not work upon their fears. And, little by little, he succeeded. First one Church fell, and then another. Dangers and difficulties beset them. Often had he to encounter violent resistance, and often did he beat it down. When the strength of the Syrian Christians was too great for him, he called in the aid of the native princes. The unhappy Archdeacon, weary of resistance and threatened with excommunication, at last made submission to the Roman Prelate. Menezes issued a decree for a synod; and, on the 20th June 1599, the Churches assembled at Diamper. The first session passed quietly over, but not without much secret murmuring. The second, at which the decrees were read, was interrupted at that trying point of the ceremony where, having enunciated the Confession of Faith, the Archbishop renounced and anathematized the Patriarch of Babylon. The discontent of the Syrians here broke out openly; they protested against the necessity of a confession of Faith and urged that such a confession would imply that they were not Christians before the assembling of the Synod. But Menezes allayed their apprehensions and removed their doubts, by publicly making the confession in the name of himself and the Eastern Churches. One of the Syrian priests, who acted as interpreter, then read the confession in the Malabar language, and the assembled multitude repeated it after him, word for word, on their knees. And so the Syrian Christians bowed their necks to the yoke of Rome.
Resolute to improve the advantages he had gained, Menezes did not suffer himself to subside into inactivity, and to bask in the sunshine of his past triumphs. Whether it was religious zeal or temporal ambition that moved him, he did not relax from his labours; but feeling that it was not enough to place the yoke upon the neck of the Syrian Christians, he endeavoured, by all means, to keep it there. The Churches yielded sullen submission; but there were quick-witted, keen-sighted men among them, who, as the seventeenth century began to dawn upon the world, looked hopefully into the future, feeling assured that they could discern even then unmistakable evidences of the waning glories of the Portuguese in the East. There was hope then for the Syrian churches. The persecutions of Menezes were very grievous—for he separated priests from their wives; excommunicated, on trifling grounds, members of the churches; and destroyed all the old Syriac records which contained proofs of the early purity of their faith.
The irreparable barbarism of this last act was not to be forgotten or forgiven; but, in the midst of all other sufferings, there was consolation in the thought, that this tyranny was but for a time. “Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy,” writes Gibbon, “were patiently endured, but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted with vigour and effect the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power they had abused. The arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants; and the Indian Archdeacon assumed the character of Bishop till a fresh supply of Episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the Patriarch of Babylon”. Such briefly narrated, were the results of the oppression of Menezes. In the course of six months that ambitious and unscrupulous prelate reduced the Syrian church to bondage, and for sixty years they wore the galling chains of Rome. But Menezes trusted in his own strength; he came as an earthly conqueror, and his reliance was on the arm of temporal authority. “His example,” writes Mr. Hough, “should be regarded as a beacon to warn future Christian missionaries from the rock on which he foundered. Without faith and godliness nothing can ensure a church’s prosperity. Failing in these, the prelate’s designs, magnificent as they were deemed, soon came to nothing; and it deserves special remark, as an instructive interposition of Divine Providence, that the decline of the Portuguese interest in India commenced at the very period when he flattered himself that he had laid the foundation of its permanency.”
There was no such open conflict between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Missionaries. There was however sufficient rivalry between them to prevent cooperation and conceited activity the lack of which also prevented a rapid growth of Christianity.
The third reason which is responsible for the slow growth of Christianity was the wrong approach made by the Christian Missionaries in charge of Christian propaganda. The early Christian Missionary started his campaign by inviting public disputations with learned Brahmins on the comparative merits of the Christian and the Hindu religions. This was a strange way of going about his task. But there was a plan behind it. The Christian Missionary felt that his task of converting the masses would be easy of achievement if he succeeded in converting the Brahmin and the higher classes of Hindus. For they and the Brahmins held sway over the masses. And the easiest way of converting the Brahmin was to defeat in disputation and to show him that his religion was an error. The Christian Missionary wanted to get at the Brahmin. Nothing can explain why the Missionaries started so many schools, colleges, hospitals etc., except this namely the Christian Missionary wanted to establish a contact with the Brahmin. That the Christian Missionary has been deceived is now realized by many.
The Brahmin and the higher classes have taken full advantage of the institutions maintained by the Christian Missions. But hardly any one of them has given any thought to the religion which brought these institutions into existence. There is nothing strange in this. The pursuit of the Brahmin and the higher classes of Hindus by the Christian Missionaries was doomed to fail. There would be no common ground for the disputation between Hinduism and Christianity and where there is a common ground the Hindu could always beat the Christian.
That there could be no common ground for disputation between Hindus and Christians is due to the fact that the two have a totally different attitude to the relations of theology to philosophy. As has been well observed by Mr. Burn, (Census of India, 1901 Vol. XVI, N. W. Pandbudh. Report Part I, p. 98.) “The Educated Hindu, when he considers religious questions, refuses to separate theology from philosophy and demands what shall appear to him a reasonable cosmogony. It has been shown in dealing with Hinduism that its prevailing tendency is pantheistic, and although for at least two thousand years sects have constantly been forming which asserted the duality of God and Spirit, there has always been a tendency to relapse into pantheism, and to regard the present world as an illusion produced by Maya. The average Christian however gets on with very little philosophy and regards that as a rule as more speculative than essential to his religious beliefs. The methods of thought which a man has been brought up to regard, inevitably affect the conclusions at which he arrives, and it appears to me that this forms one of the reasons why to the majority of educated Hindus the idea of accepting Christianity is incredible. To take a single concrete example, the ordinary educated Hindu laughs at the belief that God created the Universe out of nothing. He may believe in a creation, but he also postulates the necessity for both a material cause, matter and an efficient cause, the creator. Where his belief is purely pantheistic, he also has no regard for historical evidences. A further difficulty on a fundamental point is caused by the belief in transmigration, which is based on the idea that a man must work out his own salvation and thus conflicts entirely with the belief in Divine atonement.”
Thus, the Hindu speaks in terms of philosophy and the Christian speaks in terms of theology. There is thus no common ground for evaluation, or commendation or condemnation. In so far as both have theology the Christians with their God and Jesus as his son and the Hindus with their God and his Avatars, the superiority of one over the other, depends upon the miracles performed by them. In this the Hindu theology can beat the Christian theology is obvious enough and just as absence of philosophy in Christianity is responsible for its failure to attract the Brahmin and the Educated Hindu. Similarly, the abundance of miracles in Hindu theology was enough to make Christian theology pale off in comparison. Father Gregory a Roman Catholic priest seems to have realized this difficulty and as his view is interesting as well as instructive, I give below the quotations from Col. Sleeman’s book in which it is recorded. Says Col. Sleeman (Rambles and Recollections Vol. 1, Ch. 53. p. 407.). “Father Gregory, the Roman Catholic priest, dined with us one evening, and Major Godby took occasion to ask him at table, ‘What progress our religion was making among the people’ ? “Progress” ? said he, “why, what progress can we ever hope to make among a people who, the moment we begin to talk to them about the miracles performed by Christ, begin to tell us of those infinitely more wonderful performed by Krishna, who lifted a mountain upon his little finger, as an umbrella, to defend his shepherdesses at Govardhan from a shower of rain. “The Hindus never doubt any part of the miracles and prophecies of our scripture—they believe every word of them and the only thing that surprises them is that they should be so much less wonderful than those of their own scriptures, in which also they implicitly believe. Men who believe that the histories of the wars and amours of Ram and Krishna, two of the incarnations of Vishnu, were written some fifty thousand years before these wars and amours actually took place upon the earth, would of course easily believe in the fulfilment of any prophecy that might be related to them out of any other book; and, as to miracles, there is absolutely nothing too extraordinary for their belief. If a Christian of respectability were to tell a Hindoo that, to satisfy some scruples of the Corinthians, St. Paul had brought the sun and moon down upon the earth, and made them rebound off again into their places, like tennis balls, without the slightest injury to any of the three planets (sic), I do not think he would feel the slightest doubt of the truth of it; but he would immediately be put in mind of something still more extra-ordinary that Krishna did to amuse the milkmaids, or to satisfy some sceptics of his day, and relate it with all the naivete imaginable.”
As events in India have shown this was a wrong approach. It was certainly just the opposite to the one adopted by Jesus and his disciples. Gibbon has given a description of the growth of Christianity in Rome which shows from what end Christ and his disciples began. This is what he says— “From this impartial, though imperfect, survey of the process of Christianity, it may, perhaps seem probable that the number of its proselytes has been excessively magnified by fear on one side and by devotion on the other. According to the irreproachable testimony of Origen, the proportion of the faithful was very inconsiderable when compared with the multitude of an unbelieving world; but, as we are left without any distinct information, it is impossible to determine, and it is difficult even to conjecture, the real numbers of the primitive Christians. The most favourable calculation, however, that can be deduced from the examples of Antioch and of Rome will not permit us to imagine that more than a twentieth part of the subjects of the empire had enlisted themselves under the banner of the cross before the important conversion of Constantine. But their habits of faith, of zeal, and of union seemed to multiply their numbers; and the same causes which contributed to their future increase served to render their actual strength more apparent and more formidable.
“Such is the constitution of civil society that, whilst a few persons are distinguished by riches, by honours, and by knowledge, the body of the people is condemned to obscurity, ignorance and poverty. The Christian religion, which addressed itself to the whole human race, must consequently collect a far greater number of proselytes from the lower than from the superior ranks of life. This innocent and natural circumstance has been improved into a very odious imputation, which seems to be less strenuously denied by the apologists than it is urged by the adversaries of the faith; that the new sect of Christians was almost entirely composed of the dregs of the populace, of peasants and mechanics, of boys and women, of beggars and slaves; the last of whom might sometimes introduce the missionaries into the rich and noble families to which they belonged. These obscure teachers (such was the charge of malice and infidelity) are as mute in public as they are loquacious and dogmatical in private. Whilst they cautiously avoid the dangerous encounter of philosophers, they mingle with the rude and illiterate crowd, and insinuate themselves into those minds, whom their age, their sex, or their education has the best disposed to receive the impression of superstitious terrors.
“This favourable picture, though not devoid of a faint resemblance, betrays, by its dark colouring and distorted features, the pencil of an enemy. As the humble faith of Christ diffused itself through the world, it was embraced by several persons who derived some consequences from the advantages of nature or fortune. Aristides, who presented an eloquent apology to the emperor Hadrian, was an Athenian philosopher. Justin Martyr had sought divine knowledge in the schools of Zeno, or Aristotle, of Pythogoras, and of Plato, before he fortunately was accosted by the old men, or rather the angel, who turned his attention to the study of the Jewish prophets. Clemens of Alexandria had acquired much various reading in the Greek, and Tertullian in the Latin language; Julius Africanus and Origen possessed a very considerable share of the learning of their times; and, although the style of Cyprian is very different from that of Lactantius, we might almost discover that both those writers had been public teachers of rhetoric. Even the study of philosophy was at length introduced among the Christians, but it was not always productive of the most salutary effects; knowledge was as often the parent of heresy as of devotion, and the description, which was designed for the followers of Artemon may, with equal propriety, be applied to the various sects that resisted the successors of the apostles. ‘They presume to alter the holy scriptures, to abandon the ancient rule of faith, and to form their opinion according to the subtitle precepts of logic. The science of the church is neglected for the study of geometry, and they lose sight of Heaven while they are employed in measuring the earth. Euclid is perpetually in their hands. Aristotle and Theophrastus are the objects of their admiration; and they express an uncommon reverence for the works of Galen.
Their errors are derived from the abuse of the arts and sciences of the infidels, and they corrupt the simplicity of the Gospel by the refinements of human reason.’
“Nor can it be affirmed with truth that the advantages of birth and fortune were always separated from the profession of Christianity. Several Roman citizens were brought before the tribunal of Pliny, and he soon discovered that a great number of persons of every order of men in Bithynia had deserted the religion of their ancestors. His unsuspected testimony may, in this instance, obtain more credit than the bold challenge of Tertullian, when he addresses himself to the fears as well as to the humanity of the proconsul of Africa, by assuring him. that, if he persists in his cruel intentions, he must decimate Carthage, and that he will find among the guilty many persons of his own rank, senators and matrons of noblest extraction, and the friends or relations of his most intimate friends. It appears, however, that about forty years afterwards the emperor Valerian was persuaded of the truth of this assertion, since in one of his rescripts, he evidently supposes that senators, Roman knights, and ladies of quality were engaged in the Christian sect. The church still continued to increase its outward splendour as it lost its internal purity; and in the reign of Diocletian the palace, the courts of justice, and even the army concealed a multitude of Christians who endeavoured to reconcile the interests of the present with those of a future life.
And yet these exceptions are either too few in number, or too recent in time, entirely to remove the imputation of ignorance and obscurity which has been so arrogantly cast on the first proselytes of Christianity. Instead of employing in our defence the fictions of later ages, it will be more prudent to convert the occasion of scandal into a subject of edification. Our serious thoughts will suggest to us that the apostles themselves were chosen by providence among the fishermen of Galilee, and that the lower we depress the temporal condition of the first Christians, the more reason we shall find to admire their merit and success. It is incumbent on us diligently to remember that the kingdom of heaven was promised to the poor in spirit, and that minds afflicted by calamity and the contempt of mankind cheerfully listen to the divine promise of future happiness; while, on the contrary, the fortunate are satisfied with the possession of this world; and the wise abuse in doubt and dispute their vain superiority of reason and knowledge.”
Similarly, Hallam in his ‘History of the Middle Ages’ speaks of the class from which the early Christians were drawn. The reason why Christianity became the religion of all citizens of Rome i.e. of the higher classes as well was because of two extraneous reasons. The first reason was the making of Christianity state religion which meant the proscribing every other religion. The second reason was the change in the law of inheritance by the Roman Emperors after they became converts to Christianity a preferential right to inherit the property of the parents over a child which had remained pagan. This only shows that the people to whom Christianity made a natural appeal were the poorer classes and it is among them that Christianity first spread without the help of law or other extraneous advantage.
The early Christian Missionary began by reversing this natural order of things. I call it natural because it befits human psychology. Prof. Thorndyke (Psychology, Vol. 1.) a great authority on Psychology says—“That a man thinks is a biological fact. But What he thinks is a sociological fact”.
This profound observation, the early Christian Missionary absolutely overlooked. Every kind of thought is not agreeable to every person. This is evident from the fact that capitalism appeals to the rich and does not appeal to the poor. On the contrary socialism appeals to the poor but does not appeal to the rich. This is because there is a very intimate connection between the interests of a man and the thoughts which have an adverse effect on his interests. He will not give them any quarters in his mind. Applying this analysis of the working of the human mind it is clear that the Brahmin and the higher classes could never be receptive to the Christian doctrine. It preaches brotherhood of man and when applied leads to equality of man. Now the interests of the Brahmin and the higher classes is to maintain the system of Chaturvarna—which is a system based upon inequality and which in the scale gives them a higher rank, greater opportunity to dominate and exploit the others. How can they be expected to accept Christianity ? It means a surrender of their power and prestige. To have pursued them has been a vain effort and if the pursuit had been continued, I am sure there would have been no Christians in India at all. The number of Christians we see in India today is due to the fact that some Christian Missionaries saw the futility of this. If they had not realized this error and started to win over the lower classes, there would have been no Christians in India at all. Even today hundreds and thousands of high caste Hindus take advantage of Christian schools, Christian colleges and Christian hospitals. How many of those who reap these benefits become Christian? Every one of them takes the benefit and runs away and does not even stop to consider what must be the merits of a religion which renders so much service to humanity.
Flawed Messengers, Unfailing Message {#flawed-messengers,-unfailing-message}
A Biblical Response to 'Christianizing The Untouchables'
A Mission Derailed
In "Christianizing The Untouchables," Dr. B.R. Ambedkar turns his critical eye from the failings of Hinduism to the historical record of Christianity in India. He poses a simple yet devastating question: Why, after centuries of effort and immense investment, has the growth of Christianity been so slow? His answer is a three-part indictment that lays bare the historical impediments to the Gospel's progress. He argues forcefully that the Christian mission was catastrophically undermined by the abysmal morals of early European colonists, crippled by internal conflicts between rival denominations, and misguided by a fundamentally flawed "top-down" strategy of trying to convert the Brahmin elite first.
This chapter will engage with Dr. Ambedkar's courageous and insightful analysis. We must, with humility, affirm the truth of his historical critique. His righteous condemnation of the hypocrisy of so-called Christians and their flawed, worldly strategies is a mirror that the Church itself desperately needed, and still needs, to see. We will explore how the Bible itself is the sharpest critic of the very behaviors he condemns. However, we will also gently challenge his interpretation of the spiritual dynamics at play, arguing that the ultimate obstacle to the Gospel is not merely social or political, but the spiritual pride that the Cross of Christ offends. The tragedy Dr. Ambedkar documented was not that the Christian message failed, but that its messengers so often and so grievously failed to live and proclaim it faithfully.
Affirming the Diagnosis: A Righteous Rebuke
Dr. Ambedkar’s historical critique is sharp, well-documented, and, in large part, absolutely correct. His condemnation of the hypocrisy and wickedness of the early European colonists is a necessary and righteous judgment. The debauched, violent, and rapacious behavior of men sent by the East India Company was, as he notes, a catastrophic witness. The poignant observation of an Indian who concluded, "Christian religion, devil religion; Christian much drunk; Christian much do wrong," is a shameful testament to this failure.
Furthermore, his insight that the original missionary strategy of targeting the elite was the very "opposite to the one adopted by Jesus and his disciples" is a profoundly accurate theological and historical observation. He correctly identifies that the natural starting point for the Gospel is not among the powerful and self-sufficient, but among the humble, the marginalized, and those who know they are in need of a savior.
The Bible itself provides the strongest possible condemnation of the behavior Dr. Ambedkar describes. Jesus reserved His most scathing rebukes for those who professed faith but whose actions denied it, calling them "whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness" (Matthew 23:27). The Apostle Paul, lamenting the hypocrisy of his own people, quoted the prophet Isaiah, writing that "the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (Romans 2:24)—a verse that could have been written specifically about the East India Company officials.
Moreover, Dr. Ambedkar is correct about the pattern of Jesus's ministry. Jesus's inaugural address in his hometown synagogue was a declaration of "good news to the poor... liberty to the captives... and to set at liberty those who are oppressed" (Luke 4:18). God’s method, as revealed throughout Scripture, is to consistently choose the "foolish things of the world to shame the wise" and the "weak things... to shame the strong" (1 Corinthians 1:27), precisely because the Gospel is a rescue for those who know they are drowning, not a reward for those who believe they are strong swimmers.
The very fact that Dr. Ambedkar can judge the actions of these Europeans as un-Christian proves that Christianity contains within itself a transcendent moral standard that condemns the behavior of its own adherents. He is using the moral framework of the faith—love, humility, sobriety, peace—to critique the failure of its followers. His critique, far from invalidating Christianity, actually affirms the truth and goodness of its core moral claims.
Re-examining the Prescription: The Offense of the Cross
While Dr. Ambedkar's analysis of the sociological and historical failures is brilliant, his understanding of the spiritual dynamics of conversion is incomplete. He attributes the Brahmins' rejection of Christianity almost entirely to their desire to protect their social power and prestige—their "vested interest" in the caste system. While this is undoubtedly a massive factor, it overlooks the deeper, more universal spiritual reason for rejecting the Gospel.
From a Biblical perspective, the primary obstacle to faith among the proud and the powerful—and indeed, among all people who trust in their own goodness—is not just the threat to their social standing, but the offense of the Cross itself. The Gospel message is an affront to human pride. It demands that every person—Brahmin and Dalit, rich and poor, educated and uneducated—must come to God on the same level ground: as a helpless sinner. It requires that we humble ourselves, confess our sin, and admit that we can do absolutely nothing to save ourselves. This message is, as the Apostle Paul wrote, "a stumbling block" to the religious who trust in their own righteousness and "foolishness" to the wise who trust in their own intellect (1 Corinthians 1:23). The core problem is not just that Christianity threatens a Brahmin's social status; it is that the Cross demolishes his spiritual pride.
The Gospel Alternative: An Inside-Out Transformation
The Bible reveals that the Gospel is a universal call to all people, regardless of their social standing. It does not employ a "top-down" or "bottom-up" strategy but an "inside-out" one, aiming to transform the heart of each individual through the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit.
To the poor and marginalized, it offers a transcendent dignity as a child of God and an eternal inheritance that far surpasses any earthly status. To the rich and powerful, it offers a stern warning against pride and a radical call to repentance, humility, and justice, as seen in Jesus's encounter with the rich young ruler (Mark 10:17-22).
This biblical approach is superior because it avoids the error of writing off any group of people. While Dr. Ambedkar is correct about the extreme difficulty of the elite coming to faith—Jesus Himself said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:25)—the Gospel insists that "with God all things are possible" (Mark 10:27). The power of God can break the pride of a Brahmin just as surely as it can heal the heart of a Dalit. The Bible is filled with examples of powerful, wealthy, and educated converts, from Nicodemus the Pharisee to the Apostle Paul, the brilliant scholar and persecutor of the church. The goal is not simply to win over one social class, but to build a new community, the Church, where former oppressors and former oppressed can stand side-by-side as forgiven and transformed brothers and sisters at the foot of the cross. This is the only path to true and lasting social reconciliation.
Returning to the Source
Dr. Ambedkar’s historical critique in "Christianizing The Untouchables" is a courageous, insightful, and invaluable analysis. His righteous condemnation of the hypocrisy of so-called Christians and their flawed, worldly strategies is a mirror that the Church must be willing to look into. The failures he identifies are real and shameful.
However, it is crucial to recognize that these are the failures of Christians, not the failures of Christianity. The Bible itself is the sharpest critic of the very behaviors Dr. Ambedkar condemns. The true Christian mission, modeled by Jesus Christ, was never a strategic plan to win over the elite for social influence, but a radical, universal call to all sinners to find forgiveness, new life, and true equality in Him. The tragedy Dr. Ambedkar documented was not that the Christian message failed, but that its messengers so often failed to live it. The solution, therefore, is not to dismiss the message because of the flawed messengers, but to return to the pure, powerful, and truly liberating Gospel of Jesus Christ, which remains the only hope for India and the world.
The Condition Of The Convert {#the-condition-of-the-convert}
I. Gandhi and his opposition to Christianity. II. Christianity and social service. III. Christianity and Paganism. IV. Christianity and the spirit of the Convert. V. Christian Community and its social standing.
I
In 1928, there was held a meeting of the International Fellowship, a body devoted to promoting fellow feeling among persons of different faiths. It was attended by Christian missionaries as well as by Hindus and Moslems. Mr. Gandhi was also present. At this meeting the question was raised as to how far the fellowship could remain true to its ideal, if those who belonged to it wished to convert others to their own faith. In the debate that followed, Mr. Gandhi spoke. His friend Mr. C. F.
Andrews, writes concerning the discussion as follows (“The Basis of Inter-Religious Fellowship” by C. F. Andrews in “The Young Men of India, Burma and Ceylon.” June 1928, Vol. XI, No. 6.) : “At the back of this question, there was a definite challenge to the whole Christian Missionary position in India. Missionaries of a liberal type of mind had been finding great joy in the Fellowship ……..... Then came Mahatma Gandhi’s declaration. He stated that in doing so, or in joining the Fellowship, if there was the slightest wish, or even the slightest thought at the back of the mind, to influence, or convert, any other member of the Fellowship, then the spirit of the movement could be destroyed. Anyone who had such a wish ought to leave the Fellowship”.
On being further questioned by Christian Missionaries ‘Whether if they possessed the greatest treasure in the World, they would be wrong in wishing to share it’, Mr. Gandhi was quick to rebuff their presumption. Mr. Andrews says—“he was adamant”. “Even the idea of such a desire was wrong”, he said emphatically; “and he would not move from that position at all”.
Mr. Gandhi’s opposition to Christian conversion is by now quite well known. And since 1936 he has become quite a virulent adversary of all missionary propaganda. He particularly objects to the missionaries spreading the Christian Gospel among the Untouchables. His antagonism to Christian Missions and the conversion of Untouchables to Christianity is based on certain propositions which have been enunciated by him in quite unmistakable terms. I think the following four propositions may be taken to sum up his position. I give them in his own words. He says :
I. “My position is that all religions are fundamentally equal. We must have the same innate respect for all religions as we have for our own. Mind you, not mutual toleration but equal respect.” (Harijan, 1936, p. 330)
II. “All I want them (the Missionaries) to do is to live Christian lives, not to annotate them (Harijan, 1936, p. 353.). Let your lives speak to us. The blind who do not see the rose, perceive its fragrance. That is the secret of the Gospel of the rose. But the Gospel that Jesus preached is more subtle and fragrant than the Gospel of the rose. If the rose needs no agents, much less does the Gospel of Christ need agents” (Harijan, April 1937. p. 86.). As to the work of the Christian Missions he says :
III. “The social work of the missions is undertaken not for its own sake, but as an aid to the salvation of those who receive social service (Harijan for 1937, p. 137.).
While you give medical help, you expect the reward in the shape of your patients becoming Christians (Harijan, 18th July 1936, p. 178.).”
As to the Untouchables he says—
IV. “I do maintain …. . . . that the vast masses of Harijans and for that matter of Indian humanity, cannot understand the presentation of Christianity, and that, generally speaking, conversion, wherever it has taken place, has not been a spiritual act in any sense of the term. They are conversions of convenience (Harijan for 1936, pp. 140-41.). They (the Harijans) can no more distinguish between the relative merits (words omitted ?) than can a cow. Harijans have no mind, no intelligence, no sense of difference between God and no-God (Harijan for 1936, p. 360.).”
Gandhi advises the Christian Missions in the following somewhat offensive terms as to what would be proper for them to do. He says— “If Christian Missions will sincerely play the game ……....They must withdraw from the indecent competition to convert the Harijans ….... “Just ….... forget that you have come to a country of heathens and (to) think that they are as much in search of God as you are; just …..... feel that you are not going there to give your spiritual goods to them, but that you will share worldly goods of which you have a good stock. You will then do your work without mental reservation and thereby you will share your spiritual treasures.
The knowledge that you have this mental reservation, i.e. you are expecting a man to be a convert in return for service, creates a barrier between you and me.” “The history of India would have been written differently if the Christians had come to India to live their lives in our midst and permeate ours with their aroma, if there was any.”
This hostility of Mr. Gandhi to Christian Missions and their work is of very recent origin. I do not know if it can be traced beyond the Yeola Decision. It is as recent as it is strange. I do not know of any declaration made by Mr. Gandhi expressing in such clear and determined manner opposition to the conversion of the Untouchables to Islam. The Muslims have made no secret of their plan to convert the Untouchables. The plan was given out openly from the Congress platform by the late Maulana Mohomed Ali when he presided over the annual session of the Congress held at Coconada in 1923. In his Presidential address the Maulana pointed out in clear terms that :
“The quarrels (between Hindus and Musalmans) about Alams and pipal trees and musical processions are truly childish; but there is one question which can easily furnish a ground for complaint of unfriendly action if communal activities are not amicably adjusted. This is the question of the conversion of the suppressed classes, if Hindu Society does not speedily absorb them. The Christian missionary is already busy and no one quarrels with him. But the moment some Muslim missionary society is organized for the same purpose there is every likelihood of an outcry in the Hindu press. It has been suggested to me by an influential and wealthy gentleman who is able to organize a (Muslim) missionary society on a large scale for the conversion of the suppressed classes, that it should be possible to reach a settlement with leading Hindu gentlemen and divide the country into separate areas where Hindu and Muslim missionaries could respectively work, each community preparing for each year, or longer unit of time, if necessary, an estimate of the numbers it is prepared to absorb, or convert. These estimates would, of course, be based on the number of workers and funds each had to spare and tested by the actual figures of the previous period. In this way each community would be free to do the work of absorption and conversion, or rather of reform, without chances of collision with one another”.
Nothing can be more explicit than this. Nothing can be more businesslike, and nothing can be more materialistic than this pronouncement from the Congress platform. But I am not aware that Mr. Gandhi has ever condemned it in the way in which he now condemns the endeavour of Christian Missions to convert the Untouchables. Nobody from Gandhi’s camp protested against this outrageous suggestion. Probably they could not because the Congress Hindus believed that it was their duty to help the Musalmans to fulfil what they regarded as their religious duty, and that conversion is a religious duty with the Musalmans nobody can deny. At any rate the Hindu leaders of Congress, as stated by George Joseph in 1920, held “that it was the religious duty of the Hindus to help Muslims in the maintenance of the Turkish Khilafat over the Arabs in the Jazirut-al-Arab because Muslim theologians and political leaders assured us that it was their religious duty. It went against the grain because it meant the maintenance of a foreign Government over Arabs; but Hindus had to stomach it because it was urged on them as part of the religious duty of the Hindus (Harijan, 8th February 1936, p. 415). If this is true, why should Gandhi not help the Christians to carry on conversion because conversion is also a fulfilment of their religious duty. Why there should be a different measuring rod today because it is the Christians that are involved is more than one can understand.
Mr. George Joseph was well within bounds when he said :
“The only difference is that there are 75 millions of Muslims and there are only 6 millions of Christians. It may be worth-while making peace with Muslims because they can make themselves a thorn in the side of Nationalism : Christians do not count, because they are small in numbers.”
That Mr. Gandhi is guided by such factors as the relative strength of the Musalmans and Christians, their relative importance in Indian politics, is evident from the terms he uses in condemning what he calls “propaganda by vilification”. When such a propaganda emanates from Christian missionaries, he uses the following language to condemn it. (Quotation is not there in the MS.—Ed.).
On the other hand, when he comes out against a propaganda emanating from the Muslim all that he says (Harijan, August 8, 1936.): “It is tragic to see that religion is dragged down to the low level of crude materialism to lure people into mission which the most cherished sentiments of millions of human beings are trodden under foot.
“I hope that the pamphlet has no support from thoughtful Musalmans who should read it to realize the mischief such pamphlets can create. “My correspondent asks me how to deal with the menace. One remedy I have applied, viz, to bring hereby the vilifying propaganda to the notice of the responsible Muslim world. He himself can claim the attention of the local Musalmans leaders to the publication. The second and the most important thing to do is purification from within. So long as the position of untouchability remains in the Hindu body it will be liable to attacks from outside. It will be proof against such attacks only when a solid and impregnable wall of purification is erected in the shape of complete removal of untouchability.” The ferocity of the former and the timidity and softness of the latter are obvious enough. Surely Gandhi must be regarded as an astute “respecter of persons”.
But apart from this difference in his attitude towards Muslim and Christian propaganda, have Mr. Gandhi’s arguments against Christian Missions, which I have summarized above, any validity ? They are just clever. There is nothing profound about them. They are the desperate arguments of a man who is driven to wall. Mr. Gandhi starts out by making a distinction between equal tolerance and equal respect. The phrase “equal respect” is a new phrase. What distinction he wants to make thereby is difficult to recognize. But the new phraseology is not without significance. The old phrase “equal tolerance” indicated the possibility of error. “Equal respect” on the other hand postulates that all religions are equally true and equally valuable. If I have understood him correctly then his premise is utterly fallacious, both logically as well as historically. Assuming the aim of religion is to reach God—which I do not think it is—and religion is the road to reach him, it cannot be said that every road is sure to lead to God. Nor can it be said that every road, though it may ultimately lead to God, is the right road. It may be that (all existing religions are false and) the perfect religion is still to be revealed. But the fact is that religions are not all true and therefore the adherents of one faith have a right, indeed a duty, to tell their erring friends what they conceive to be the truth. That Untouchables are no better than a cow is a statement which only an ignoramus, or an arrogant person, can venture to make. It is arrant nonsense. Mr. Gandhi dares to make it because he has come to regard himself as so great a man that the ignorant masses will not question his declarations, and the dishonest intelligentsia will uphold him in whatever he says. Strangest part of his argument lies in wishing to share the material things the Christian Missions can provide. He is prepared to share their spiritual treasures provided the Missionaries invite him to share their material treasures “without obligation”.* (What he minds is an exchange.) It is difficult to understand why Mr. Gandhi argues that services rendered by the Missionaries are baits or temptations, and that the conversions are therefore conversions of convenience. Why is it not possible to believe that these services by Missionaries indicate that service to suffering humanity is for Christians an essential requirement of their religion ? Would that be a wrong view of the process by which a person is drawn towards Christianity ? Only a prejudiced mind would say, Yes. All these arguments of Mr. Gandhi are brought forth to prevent Christian Missionaries from converting the Untouchables. No body will deny to Mr. Gandhi the right to save the Untouchables for Hinduism. But in that case, he should have frankly told Missions “Stop your work, we want now to save the Untouchables, and ourselves. Give us a chance !” It is a pity that he should not have adopted this honest mode of dealing with the menace of the Missionaries. Whatever anybody may say I have no doubt, all the Untouchables, whether they are converts or not, will agree that Mr. Gandhi has been grossly unjust to Christian Missions. For centuries Christian Missions have provided for them a shelter, if not a refuge.
This attitude of Mr. Gandhi need not deter either the missionaries or the Untouchables. Christianity has come to stay in India and, unless the Hindus in their zeal for nationalism misuse their political, social and economic power to suppress it, will live and grow in numbers and influence for good.
II
What Christianity has achieved in India therefore becomes a proper subject for examination from the points of view both of Christian Missions and of the Untouchables.
That Christian Missions have been endeavouring to provide the corpus sanum for the people of India and to create the Mens Sana among those who have entered the fold is undeniable. It would be difficult in this place to describe all the activities carried on by Christian Missions in India. The work done by the Missionaries falls under five heads :
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among children,
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among young men,
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among the masses,
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among women and
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among the sick.
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The work done is vast. The following figures will give an idea of the scale on which the work for education and relieving sickness is being carried on.
I. Christian Medical Work In India Burma and Ceylon
II. Christian Education In India
What have the Hindus to show as against this? Historically speaking, service to humanity is quite foreign to Hinduism and to Hindus. The Hindu religion consists primarily, of rituals and observances. It is a religion of temples. Love of man has no place in it. And without love of man how can service to man be inspired ? This is well reflected in the purposes and objects for which Hindu charities are given. Very few people, even in India, know the extent to which caste determines the scope and objects of charities provided by the Hindus.
It is difficult to get full and precise facts relating to Hindu Charities. However, data collected several years ago, in the City of Bombay, throws a flood of light on the subject. (Data not typed in the MS.)
That caste can influence doctors in the ministration to the sick was a charge made among certain doctors in Bombay in 1918 during the influenza epidemic. Comparatively speaking, the achievements of Christian Missions in the field of social service are very great. Of that no one except a determined opponent of everything Christian can have any doubt. Admitting these great services, one may raise two questions. Are these services required for the needs of the Indian Christian Community? Are there any needs of the Indian Christian Community which have not been attended to by Missions?
It is necessary to bear in mind that Indian Christians are drawn chiefly from the Untouchables and, to a much less extent, from low ranking Shudra castes. The Social Services of Missions must, therefore, be judged in the light of the needs of these classes. What are those needs? The services rendered by the Missions in the fields of education and medical relief are beyond the ken of the Indian Christians. They go mostly to benefit the high caste Hindus. The Indian Christians are either too poor or too devoid of ambition to undertake the pursuit of higher education. High schools, colleges and hostels maintained by the Missions are, therefore, so much misplaced and misapplied expenditure from the point of view of the uplift of Indian Christians. In the same way much of the medical aid provided by the Missions goes to the Caste Hindus. This is especially the case with regard to hospitals. I know many missionaries realize this. None the less this expenditure is being incurred from year to year. The object of these services is no doubt to provide occasion for contact between Christian Missionaries and high caste Hindus. I think it is time the Missionaries realized that the pursuit of the Caste Hindus in the hope of converting them to Christianity is a vain pursuit which is sure to end in complete failure. Mr. Winslow, I think, is correct when he concludes his survey of the attitude of the intelligentsia of India towards Christianity by saying:
“Whilst the work of Duff and the Serampore Missionaries resulted in some notable conversions and it seemed for a time as though English education were going to lead to many and rapid accessions to the Christian Church from amongst those who received it, a reaction soon set in and the movement died down. Its place was taken by the Theistic Samajes, and in particular by the Brahmo Samaj in Bengal, which enabled those Hindus who through the influence of Western thought had become dissatisfied with idolatry and caste to surrender these without forfeiting entirely their place within the Hindu system. For many years Christian missionaries hoped and believed that the Brahmo Samaj would prove a half-way house to Christianity and that many of its members would in course of time become dissatisfied with an intermediate position and accept the Christian Faith, but this hope has in the main been disappointed, though a few notable converts have come from the rank of the Samajes.
* * * * *
What then, does the educated Indian of today, more particularly the Brahman, think of Christ? It is perhaps foolish to try to generalize ….. Yet there are certain broad features in the picture which may be safely described ….. There is a wide-spread acceptance of the main principles of Christ’s teaching, particularly of His ethical teaching. It would be generally conceded that the Sermon on the Mount, while not necessarily containing anything which might not be paralleled from other sources, is unsurpassable as a directory for human conduct ….. Side by side with this widespread acceptance of Christ’s teaching goes a very general reverence for His life and character ….. On the other hand, the claim that Christ was, and is, in a unique sense divine is not one which the majority of Hindus, even of those deeply attracted by His life, would be prepared to accept ….. (They) would set Him side by side with (their) own great Prophet, the Buddha. But the Christian claim that He, and He only, is God Incarnate, and that salvation is to be won through faith in Him, and Him alone, (they) reject as exclusive and narrow ….. Thus the Christian claim to possess the one way of salvation arouses in India an almost instinctive repugnance ……. The characteristic religious attitude of the educated Hindu to day (is) still, whilst he greatly reverences Christ, and accepts the main principles of His teaching, he is quite content to remain a Hindu.” I have no doubt that this correctly sums up the position. If this is so, then the money and energy spent by the Christian Missions on education and medical relief is misapplied and do not help the Indian Christians.
The Indian Christians need two things. The first thing they want is the safeguarding of their civil liberties. The second thing they want is ways and means for their economic uplift. I cannot stop to discuss these needs in all their details. All I wish to point out is that this is a great desideratum in the social work the Christian Missions are doing in India.
While what has been accomplished by Christian Missionaries in the field of education and medical aid is very notable and praiseworthy there still remains one question to be answered. What has Christianity achieved in the way of changing the mentality of the Convert? Has the Untouchable convert risen to the status of the touchable? Have the touchable and untouchable converts discarded caste ? Have they ceased to worship their old pagan gods and to adhere to their old pagan superstitions? These are far-reaching questions. They must be answered, and Christianity in India must stand or fall by the answers it can give to these questions.
The following extracts taken from the memorandum submitted by the Christian Depressed Classes of South India to the Simon Commission throw a flood of light on the position of the Untouchables who have gone into the Christian fold so far as the question of caste is concerned.
“We are by religion Christians, both Roman Catholics and Protestants. Of the total population of Indian Christians of the Presidency the converts from the Depressed Classes form about sixty per cent. When the Christian religion was preached in our lands, we, the Pallas, Pariahs, Malas, Madigas, etc., embraced Christianity. But others of our stock and origin were not converted and they are known to be the Hindu Depressed classes, being all Hindus or adherents to the Hindus in religion. In spite, however, of our Christian religion which teaches us fundamental truths the equality of man and man before God, the necessity of charity and love for neighbours and mutual sympathy and forbearance, we, the large number of Depressed class converts remain in the same social condition as the Hindu Depressed Classes. Through the operation of several factors, the more important of them being the strong caste retaining Hindu mentality of the converts to Christianity, and the indifference, powerlessness and apathy of the Missionaries, we remain today what we were before we became Christians—Untouchables—degraded by the laws of social position obtaining in the land, rejected by caste Christians, despised by Caste Hindus and excluded by our own Hindu Depressed Class brethren. “The small proportion of the Christians of South India, whose representatives are found in the Legislative Council, say, in Madras, are caste Christians, a term which sounds a contradiction, but which, unfortunately, is the correct and accepted description of high caste converts from Hinduism, who retain all the rigour and exclusiveness of caste. Particularly in the Mofussil parts and the villages, they who ought to be our fellow Christians follow all the orthodox severity and unreason of caste exclusion; they damn us as “Panchamas or Pariahs” and ignore our Christian claims and in the fulness of their affluence, power, prestige and position exclude us poorer Christians from society, …… Frequent outbursts of anti-Panchama activity are the scandal of the South Indian Christian life, and the least attempt on our part to better our lot, forward our progress and assert our elementary rights call down the wrath and fury of every man—official and non-official—Christian or Hindu, who claims a foolish superiority of birth. Denying the very foundations of Christianity, contrary to all love and charity and brotherhood, our “fellow-Christians” treat us even in the Churches as Untouchables and Unapproachables and relegate us to separate accommodation removed from their precincts and barricade their portions by means of iron rails and walls and fencings. There are several such churches. “In the matter of reception of sacraments, a most ridiculous segregation is practised to avoid pollution; our claims to educate our children and train them for life are ruthlessly denied and through sheer prejudice our children are denied access to schools, convents, hostels, boarding houses, or if admitted, are assigned an ignominious separate accommodation. Tracing his descent from high caste Hindu progenitors the caste Christian looks for social status and position and finds favour in the eyes of his fellow caste-men, the Hindus.
He treats the Depressed Class Christians in the same way as the Hindu Depressed Classes are treated by the Hindu Caste people”. What is stated here in general terms may be made concrete by reference to the two following incidents. (Incidents not mentioned in the MS.—Ed.).
This is a terrible indictment. It is a relief to know that it does not apply to all parts of India, nor does it apply to all denominations of Christians. The picture is more true of the Catholics than of the Protestants. It is more true of Southern India than it is of the Northern or even Central India. But the fact remains that Christianity has not succeeded in dissolving the feeling of caste from among the converts to Christianity. The distinction between touchables and untouchables may be confined to a corner. The Church School may be open to all. Still there is no gainsaying the fact that caste governs the life of the Christians as much as it does the life of the Hindus. There are Brahmin Christians and Non-Brahmin Christians. Among Non-Brahmin Christians there are Maratha Christians, Mahar Christians, Mang Christians and Bhangi Christians. Similarly in the South there are Pariah Christians, Malla Christians and Madiga Christians. They would not intermarry, they would not inter-dine. They are as much caste ridden as the Hindus are. There is another thing which shows that Christianity has not been effective in wiping paganism out of the converts. Almost all the converts retain the Hindu forms of worship and believe in Hindu superstition. A convert to Christianity will be found to worship his family Gods and also the Hindu gods such as Rama, Krishna, Shankar, Vishnu, etc. A convert to Christianity will be found to go on a pilgrimage to places which are sacred to the Hindus. He will go to Pandharpur and make offerings to Vithoba. He will go to Jejuri and sacrifice a goat to the blood-thirsty god, Khandoba. On the Ganesh Chaturthi he will refuse to see the moon, on a day of eclipse he will go to the sea and bathe—superstitions observed by the Hindus. It is notorious that the Christians observe the social practices of the Hindus in the matter of births, deaths and marriages. I say nothing about the prevalence of the Hindu social practices among the Christians. In as much as these social practices have no religious significance it matters very little what they are. But the same cannot be said of religious observances. They are incompatible with Christian belief and Christian way of life. The question is why has Christianity not been able to stamp them out?
The answer is that the Christian Missionaries although they have been eager to convert persons to Christianity have never put up a determined fight to uproot paganism from the Convert. Indeed, they have tolerated it. The retention by the Converts to Christianity of Paganism is primarily the legacy of the Jesuit Missions which were the earliest to enter the field in modern times. The attitude of the Catholic mission towards paganism has come down from the outlook and the ways and means adopted by the Madura Mission. This Mission was founded by an Italian Jesuit Father Robert de Nobili. He came to India in 1608. Having learned of the failure of Francis Xavier he worked out a new plan. He decided to follow the footsteps of the Apostle Paul who observed that he must bring all things to all men that he might save some. Fortified with this belief he went to the Court of Ferumal Naik King of Madura and founded the famous Madura Mission. The way he started is graphically told by Dr. J. N. Ogilvie in his ‘Apostles of India’ in the following passage: “Through Madura there ran one day a striking piece of news. It was told how a strange ascetic from some far land had arrived, drawn to the holy city by its great repute, and that he had taken up his abode in the Brahman quarter of the city. Soon visitors flocked to the house of the holy man to see what they should see, but only to find that the Brahman’s servants would not permit their entrance. ‘The master,’ they said, ‘is meditating upon God. He may not be disturbed.’ This merely helped to whet the people’s desire and increase the fame of the recluse. The privacy was relaxed, and daily audiences were granted to a privileged few. “Seated cross legged on a settee the Sanyasi was found by his visitors, conforming in everything to Brahman usage. Over his shoulder hung the sacred cord of five threads, three of gold to symbolise the Trinity, and two of silver representing the body and soul of our Lord, and from the cord was suspended a small cross.
Conversation revealed the Sanyasi’s learning, and observation and keen inquiry certified to this frugal and holy life. One meal a day, consisting of a little rice and milk and acid vegetables, was all his food. Soon not only ordinary Brahmins came to see him, but nobles also; and a great bound in his reputation took place when, on being invited to the palace by the King, the Sanyasi declined the invitation lest on going forth the purity of his soul should be sullied by his eyes lighting upon a woman! Never was a holier saint seen in Madura. Where the life bore such testimony to his holiness, how could his teaching be other than true! His statement that he was a “Roman Brahman” of the highest caste was accepted, and to remove any possible doubts that might linger, an ancient, discoloured parchment was produced, which showed how the “Brahmans of Rome” had sprung direct from the god Brahma, and were the noblest born of all his issues. To the genuineness of the document the Sanyasi solemnly swore, and with open minds the people listened to his teaching. “Book after book was written by the able and daring writer, in which he grafted a modified Christian doctrine on the Hindu stem. Most notable of all such efforts was the forging of a “Fifth Veda” to complete and crown the four Vedas received by Brahmans as direct revelations from heaven. It was an amazing piece of daring as bold and hazardous as it would be for a Hindu to forge for Christian use a fifth Gospel. Yet the forgery held its place for one hundred and fifty years.”
“Brahman disciples were soon freely won; baptisms became fairly numerous, though the identity of the rite with the baptism administered by earlier European Missionaries was disguised; and so far as outward tokens went, the new Missionary method was proving a success. Without a doubt progress was greatly facilitated by the highly significant concessions that were made to Hinduism, especially in connection with Caste. According to de Nobili, caste had little signification. To him it was in the main a social observance, and so regarding it he saw no reason for compelling his converts to break with their caste fellowship or observances. His converts retained the ‘Shendi’ or tuft of hair which marked the caste Hindu, they wore a sacred cord indistinguishable from that of their Hindu neighbours, and they bore an oval caste mark on their brow, the paste composing or being made of the ashes of sandalwood instead of as formerly of the ashes of cow dung. “For forty years de Nobili lived his life: a life of daily hardship, sacrifice and voluntary humiliation, such as has seldom been paralleled. On February 16, 1656, he died, having reached his eightieth year. Nearly one hundred thousand converts have been attributed to him, directly or indirectly, and allowing for much exaggeration their number must have been very great. “In 1673, John de Britto, belonging to one of the noblest families of Portugal, sailed for India. He is now a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. William Robinson of the London Missionary Society and belonging to our own day said of him, “His eminence as a disciple, intrepid, selfless and enduring in all great qualities that add to the vigour of the Christian life, is assured.
“He and the Christian converts, after the disruption of the Kingdom of Madura and the establishment of petty Kingdoms, were mercilessly persecuted. “Yet in spite of all that enemies could do, the worker went steadily on with his accepted duty, and wherever he journeyed the same tale of success was told. To the power of the message was added the charm of the messenger, and his converts were numbered by thousands. When by his hands a prince of Marava, Tadia Tevar, was baptized, measures were quickly taken to secure de Britto’s death. He was mercilessly done to death on February 4, 1693. “Father Joseph Beschi, an Italian priest and successor to de Britto, reached India in 1707. Beschi adhered to the policy of the “Roman Brahmans,” but in his missionary practice differed considerably from his predecessors. De Nobili, so long as it had been possible, acted the part of a devout recluse, a holy Guru; de Britto had been chiefly the wandering Sanyasi, the holy pilgrim and in their personal life both had practised the greatest asceticism and simplicity. But Father Beschi followed a new line. If Hinduism had its ascetics, it had also its high priests, who lived in luxurious comfort, and whose outward surroundings were marked by pomp and circumstance. This was the line chosen by Beschi by magnificence he would dazzle the people. When he travelled it was a costly palanquin. In advance went an attendant bearing an umbrella of purple silk, at each side ran servants with gorgeous fans of peacock’s feathers, and in the palanquin, upon a splendid tiger skin and clad in rich and picturesque robes, reclined the mighty Guru! But Beschi was no empty headed poseur. His method was adopted with a full understanding of the people and with many it worked well. Nor does his fame rest on these extravagances; it is based upon his wonderful scholarship. A born linguist he attained so complete a mastery over Tamil that he became the ablest Tamil scholar of his time. No native scholar was his equal. “High” Tamil as well as “Low”, the Tamil of the scholarly Brahman as well as the colloquial language of the people, were equally familiar to Beschi. Dictionaries, grammars, works of poetry and treatises in prose issued from his busy pen, and they are read and valued to the present day. When first issued they delighted the native world of Southern India. So charmed with his learning was Chanda Sahib, the Nabob of Vellore, that he appointed him to high office in the State, and for his support presented him with four villages in the Trichinopoly district, which brought in a revenue of 12,000 rupees. All this fame and material prosperity Beschi loyally used for the furtherance of the Mission. Its palmiest days were in his time, and its rapid decline, leading to its ultimate collapse, dates from about the period of Father Beschi’s death, which occurred in 1742.” These Madura Missionaries, in their anxiety to present Christianity to the convert free from any Western customs that might give offence had tolerated among their converts several Hindu Customs as concessions to the converts. Among these concessions were the retention of the sacred thread and the mark on the forehead; the marrying of children before they attained puberty; the refusal of the sacraments to females at certain times, bathing as a ceremonial purification, and other points; and the refusal to marry and dine outside caste. These were called the “Malbar Rites”. They were abrogated on 12th September 1744, by the Bull Omnium sollicitudinum issued (Krishna District Manual, p. 282.) By Pope Benedict XIV and since then every Roman Catholic Missionary is required to take an oath to obey this, Bull. All the same the tradition remained that pagan ways and pagan beliefs were not incompatible with Christian faith. It is no doubt true that a great obstacle in the way of the Missionaries in the 16th Century was not only the evil example shown by bad Europeans but also the dislike with which European customs were viewed by Hindus and Musalman alike. A wicked European of course caused Scandal, but a devout European, who ate beef and drank spirits, offended against Brahmanical and Mohammadan tenets and shocked native prejudices. Thus, Christianity was despised as the religion of the ‘Feringis’ as Europeans were contemptuously termed. To have cleansed the Christian Missionaries of these impurities and infirmities was very necessary and not only justifiable but commendable. But it was quite shameful and sinful for these Jesuit Missionaries in their zeal for conversion to have gone to the length they did namely, not to mind what the convert thought and did and how he lived so long as he was ready to be baptized, acknowledge Jesus as his saviour and call himself a Christian.
What was the attitude of the Lutheran Mission which came into the field soon after the Madura Mission to this great question. Swartz the greatest missionary in India who by his piety became the peace maker between warring kings was not a protagonist of the view adopted by the Madura Mission. But did he believe that Caste and Christianity were two incompatible things and that a true Christian could not believe in Caste much less could he make it a plan of his life ? Whatever was his view of the question he certainly did not carry on a campaign in support of it.
What about the Protestant Missions? What attitude did they take towards this question ? They have first of all an excuse on their side to plead if they wish to. That they came late on the scene. So far as history goes there is truth behind the assertion that they were prevented from joining the field until 1813. This is due entirely to the attitude taken by the East India Company towards Mission work in their territories in India.
The attitude of all the European powers who went to India were in the beginning of their career greatly fired with an enthusiasm for the conversion of the Indians to the Christian Faith. Speaking of the Portuguese they were of course the most resolute in their propagation for Christianity and suppression of paganism.
Albuquerque suppressed Suti within Portuguese India in 1510 and anticipated William Bentick by fully three hundred years. As soon as Francis Xavier called out in despair the aid of John III of Portugal for forcible conversion it was given. In the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch Government, which was a protestant power, similar enthusiasm was displayed and strong, if not drastic, measures were adopted.
The principle of state aid for Christian propaganda was accepted in Ceylon right from 1643 when the Dutch occupied that island. The erection of temples and pagan pilgrimages were forbidden, Government appointments were reserved for Christians and non-attendance at religious schools treated as state offence. By 1685, 3,20,000 Cinhalese had yielded to these methods. The same religious fervour was shown by the East India Company. In 1614, an young Indian had been brought to London by the Captain of the Company’s ship. The Company educated him at its own expense ‘to be an instrument in converting some of his nation’.
His baptism was performed at Poplar. The Lord Mayor of London and the Directors of the Company attended the baptism. King James, I chose for him the name of Peter and the priest who baptised him presented him to the Audience as ‘the first fruit of India’. In 1617 there took place in Surat the conversion of a Mahomedan. Thus, the career of the Company began with conversions at both ends. In 1657 the Directors applied to the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford for a Chaplain ‘the Company having resolved to endeavour the advance and spreading of the Gospel in India’. In 1698 the Company very readily accepted a clause in her Charter which required the Company’s Chaplains ‘should apply themselves to learn the languages of the countries, the better to enable them to instruct the Gentoos, who should be the servants of the Company or their agents, in the Protestant religion’.
Suddenly after 1698 the attitude of the Company seems to have undergone a significant though gradual change. While the Portugal and the Dutch Governments were going on with top speed the East India Company was slowing down. In the very year the Company seems to have been of two minds on this question. While it accepted an obligation to train its chaplains in vernaculars of India so as to make them potent instruments of propaganda it allowed a prayer to be drawn up for the Company which said ‘that, we adorning the Gospel of our Saviour in all things, these Indian natives among whom we dwell, beholding our good works, may be won over’. This prayer continued to be offered, certainly till 1750. A close scrutiny of the wording of the prayer suggests if it does not avow the complete abandonment of the original idea of active proselytising. This attitude of the Company soon became a matter of controversy. Friends of conversion were waiting for an opportunity to force the Company to give up this attitude. The Regulating Act of 1773 and Pitt’s East India Act had put an end to a ‘State disguised as a Merchant’ and brought the Company the chartered agent of Parliament to carry on the Government of the Indian Territories. It was provided under the Act that the charter of the Company should be only for 20 years and should be renewed thereafter. The year 1793 was of immense importance since the revision of the charter of the Company was to fall due in that year. To those who favoured the diffusion of Christian knowledge the task seemed quite easy. Wilberforce, who was in charge of the matter had secured the support of important persons in Parliament. He had obtained Archbishop Moore’s blessing, and still more important he had won a promise of support from the minister in charge of the East India Company’s Charter Bill. As a preliminary to the passing of this Bill matters to be incorporated in the charter were put in the form of resolutions to be passed by the House of Commons. One of the resolutions passed ran as follows:
“That it was the peculiar and bounden duty of the British Legislature to promote, by all just and prudent means, the interest and happiness of the inhabitants of the British Dominions in India; and that for these ends such measures ought to be adopted as may generally tend to their advancement in useful knowledge and to their religious and more improvement.” “Be it therefore further enacted, that the said Court of Directors shall be and are hereby empowered and required to appoint and send out, from time to time, a sufficient number of fit and proper persons for carrying into effect the purposes aforesaid, by acting as schoolmasters, missionaries, or otherwise every such person, before he is so appointed or sent out, having produced to the said Court of Directors, a satisfactory testimonial or certificate from the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London for the time being, or from the Society in London for the promotion of Christian Knowledge, or from the Society in Scotland for propagating Christian Knowledge, of his sufficiency for these purposes. And be it further enacted that the said Court of Directors are hereby empowered and required to give directions to the governments of the respective presidencies in India, to settle the destination and to provide for the necessary and decent maintenance of the persons to be sent out as aforesaid; and also to direct the said governments to consider of and adopt such other measures according to their discretion, as may appear to them most conducive to the ends aforesaid.”
It was largely due to the support of Dundas that the House accepted the resolution without demur. Wilberforce was deeply moved. ‘The hand of Providence’, he wrote in his journal, ‘was never more visible than in his East Indian Affair.’ This confidence was premature. Because, on the third reading of the Bill, the clause was struck out with the consent of Dundas. Wilberforce wrote his friend Gisborne “My clauses thrown out ….., Dundas most false and double.”
This change of front was brought about by the Directors of the East India Company. The East India trade was a monopoly of the Company, and no Englishman could enter the territories of the East India Company in India without license from the Directors of the Company and any Englishman found in the territories of the Company without a license was liable to be deported. The Company did not take long to realize what the effect of the new clause would be. It knew that the clause would require them to open the gates of India to the flood of the Missionaries and their propaganda. Should the Missionaries be allowed a free hand, was the question of the hour. As was natural this became a subject of a most interesting, instructive and bitter controversy and those who care to know it in its details may usefully refer to the pages of the Edinborough Review and the …....of the day. There were three parties to this controversy. There were the Directors of the East India Company whose primary interest was to protect its shareholders who were clamouring for dividends. The second party to the controversy was the English Middle Class which was living on the East India trade and whose sons were finding new avenues for lucrative careers in the territories. Thirdly there was the Church Missionary Society formed in the year …….for the purpose of spreading the Christian faith. The interests of the first two coincided. They were for the maintenance of the Empire and therefore wanted peace and tranquillity. The third did care for peace but was keen on the substitution of Indian superstition by the Christian faith. The first made a powerful combination and obliged all the forces against the third. The result was that they triumphed, and the Church Missionary Society lost. The arguments advanced by the controversialist on the triumphant side are of course the most important and the most instructive part of the controversy.
To the argument that the propaganda in favour of the Christian faith should begin at once, that it was wrong to hold that the truth though sacred should be doled out in such a way and in such bits as to avoid all risk, the reply given by Sydney Smith was a stunning reply. This is what he said :
“When we consider for how many centuries after Christ, Providence allowed the greater part of mankind to live and die without any possibility of their attaining to the knowledge of the sacred truths by any human exertion, we must be satisfied that the rapid and speedy conversion of the whole world forms no part of the scheme of its Almighty Governor, and that it can give no offence in His eyes if we do not desert our domestic duties and expose the lives and worldly happiness of multitudes of our fellow countrymen to hazard in our attempt to their conversion.”
“The Directors would be doing their duty neither to the shareholders nor the British Nation if they allowed ‘itinerant tinkers to preach the natives into insurrection….. The natives must be taught a better religion at a time and in a manner that will not inspire them with a passion for political change.’ ….. Our duties to our families and Country are set before us by God Himself. We are not at liberty to desert them in order to give a remote chance of conferring greater benefits on strangers at a distance.” It is arguments such as those which prevailed with Parliament and led to the rejection of the Clause in 1793. Wilberforce twitted members of Parliament by reminding them with, their Christianity was not a religion of convenience, but it was a religion established by law. But as has been well pointed out, “for the major portion of those ‘counted’ in the eighteenth century the religion accepted by the State and Society as a convenience was something to be used with fact and discretion at home. There was no need to diffuse it recklessly abroad. The general atmosphere, as has often been pointed out, was remarkably like that of Augustan Rome. To the statesman, thinking imperially, all religions were equally useful, each in its proper place(Mayhew- Christianity and the Government of India, p. 51.).”
The attempt to open the door to the Missionaries failed and the Missionary was shut out from India till 1813. Not only was he shut out, but the Company’s Government kept a strict vigil upon the activities of such stray missionaries who contrived to go to India without their license.
In 1793 Dr. Carey went as an interloper without license. As he was not allowed to enter Calcutta being without license, he made Serampore, 14 miles away from Calcutta as his base of operation. Serampore was a Danish settlement, and the Danes had placed no restrictions on missionaries or mission propaganda. On the contrary the Governor of Serampore actively helped them. Carey and his Mission was always suspect in the eyes of the Company’s Government. In 1798 the Serampore Mission decided to engage four missionaries who arrived in the year 1800. They went to reside in the Danish settlement of Serampore. As a matter of fact the Governor General had nothing to do with them. But the unconcealed residence of those unlicensed enthusiasts was too much for the Company’s Governor General and Lord Wellesley wrote to the Governor of Serampore, “Would His Excellency see to the expulsion of these interlopers who might at any moment violate the territories of the British East India Company”, to which the Danish Governor replied that he would do nothing of the kind (J. C. Marshman. Life & Times of Carey, Marshman and word. Vol. 1, p.). Similar action was taken in 1806 when Captain Wickes brought two more Missionaries in the ‘Crieterion’ which anchored off Calcutta. Sir George Barlow was then the Governor General. He took a most extra-ordinary action to prevent the landing of these two missionaries. He ordered that the Captain be not given his clearance papers unless he agreed to take back the two missionaries. Although they had gone to live in Serampore and were in fact under the protection of the Danish Crown. This was not only a more unreasonable attitude towards missionaries, but it was also an attitude which could not but be regarded as hostile (J. C. Marshman. Life & Times of Carey, Marshman and word. Vol. 1, p.307.).
The Vellore Mutiny among Indian Soldiers which took place in 1806 was quite erroneously attributed to missionary propaganda and Sir George Barlow in a panicky condition proceeded to put the following restrictions on the activities of the Serampore Missionaries:
1. The Missionaries remain at Serampore.
2. They must not preach openly in the bazar.
3. Native converts might preach provided they are not sent forth as emissaries from Serampore.
The vehemence with which the Government of Bengal came down upon the Serampore Mission in 1807 for issuing a tract on Islam in which quite inadvertently the prophet Mahomed was called an imposter also furnishes further evidence of the attitude of hostility which Government of the Company bore towards the Missionaries. The Government of Bengal refused to be satisfied with the apologies of Dr. Carey and insisted upon the transfer of the Press from Serampore to Calcutta in order that Government may be in a better position to control the literature issued therefrom. The news caused dismay for it meant the disruption of the mission. As usual, the Governor of the Danish settlement came to their rescue and told the frightened Serampore Missionaries that he would fight their battle if the Government of Bengal forcibly removed the Press to Calcutta. Subsequently matters were settled and the order was withdrawn3. But the fact remains that the Government of the Company was not a friend of the Missionaries. So much for the excuse which they can legitimately plead. But what attitude did they take when they were allowed after 1813 to operate in the field ? Did they take the line that caste must go from the thought and life of the Convert? The earliest pronouncement of a Protestant Missionary does not warrant an affirmative answer.
Missionaries in tolerating caste : Dr. Heyne in 1814 wrote :
Missionaries, in many instances, have fallen into a mistake of a very injurious nature to their rapid or even ultimate success. In converting a Hindu to Christianity, they oblige him to adopt a line of conduct by which he loses his caste; this, in India is considered such a disgrace, that it must present a powerful obstacle to conversion.
But the political division of the Hindus is no part of their religious tenets, though it has been so mistaken by the most enlightened. In giving to the Hindus the Christian religion, allow them to retain their caste, and they could be found to embrace it without reluctance, and in considerable numbers (Krishna District Manual, p. 282.).”
But I do not wish to judge the attitude of the Protestant Missions to so important a question from so stray a pronouncement of a solitary individual. There is evidence to show that the Protestant Missions were once early in their career called upon to make up their mind on this important issue so that it can be said that the view maintained by the Protestant Mission is a considered view. The time when this issue was discussed seriously was the time when Rev. Heber was appointed the Bishop of Calcutta. He assumed his duties in the year 1823. During his episcopate he toured extensively in the whole of India and in Ceylon. In the course of his tour, he became aware of the sharp conflict of opinion among Protestant Missionaries to the question of toleration of caste among converts. He decided to resolve this difference. How he went about the business is told in the words of Mr. Kaye who has succintantly narrated it:
“There was strife, therefore, among the missionaries, which Heber was anxious to allay. The question had been brought before him, before he quitted Bengal. He had there sought to arm himself with all the information that he could obtain, respecting not only the practice of the earlier Protestant missionaries, but the true nature of the institution of Caste. There was then in Bishop’s College a Christian convert, known as Christian David. He had been a pupil of Schwartz; and was truly a remarkable man. No less distinguished for his intelligence than for his piety, he was regarded by the good Bishop as the one of all others to whom he might most expediently refer for the solution of his doubts. Heber drew up, therefore, a series of questions, which he submitted to the native Christian, and received from him a series of replies, stated not only in excellent English, but with a force and precision which could not be easily surpassed. “First, with regard to the nature of Caste, it was declared by Christian David, that it was, among the natives of Southern India, “purely a worldly idea”— “not connected in their minds with any notion of true or false religion,” that the native converts, drawn from the higher castes, were disinclined to intercourse With low caste proselytes, not on religious or superstitious grounds, but simply for social reasons; that there were certain distinctions between high-caste and low-caste persons not by any means ideal, and that these distinctions were not to be gilded over merely by the acquisition of worldly wealth. He specially set forth that low caste people indulged habitually in an unseemly mode of speech—frequently using coarse or indecent expressions very revolting to the feelings of high-caste men; and that they were altogether less decorous and self-respectful in their way of life. Learning, he said, might elevate them; and if a Pariah became learned he was called a pundit, and respected by the Church; and then his brother converts would associate with him, but still, they would not “from worldly fear or pride” eat with him from the same dish. From the days of Ziegenbalg downwards they had been wont to sit at Church in two separate divisions, and had communicated separately at the Lord’s table, drinking out of the same cup, but the high-caste converts drinking first. As a proof, however, that these were regarded as merely worldly distinctions, Christian David said that high-caste and low-caste, among the Christian congregations of the South, were buried in a common burial ground, and took part promiscuously in the funeral ceremonies, “as if with the consciousness, contrary to the heathen nations, that death levelled all distinctions.” “Rather by mild remonstrance and persuasion than by the enactment of any stringent rules, which might have proved great obstructions to Christianity, the elder missionaries had sought to mitigate the evil; and Christian David declared that under the ministration of Schwartz the evil had considerably diminished. But Mr. Rhenius, of the Church Missionary Society, a truly conscientious and devout Christian, had taken other views of the duties of Christian teachers, and had gained over to his opinions the younger missionaries in the South; so that they agreed, as I have said, among themselves, to make the total repudiation of Caste, even in its mere social aspect, an essential condition of admittance to the Christian Church; and they had, moreover, spoken and preached against the elder missionaries—even the most venerated of their predecessors—denouncing them as “corrupters of the Gospel” for having permitted such things to soil the purity of Christianity. Of all this Christian David spoke with profound regret. His own opinions were naturally inclined towards the doctrine and the practice of his old master Christian Schwartz. The mild interference and affectionate advice of the Bishop might, he thought, dispose the hearts of the younger missionaries towards greater toleration and forbearance.
“Very earnestly and very conscientiously did Heber revolve this important subject in his mind. It is in accordance with all that we know of the character of the man, that he should have inclined towards the more conciliatory practices of the elder missionaries. But he deferred any final decision, until the opportunity should arrive for the collection of further information and the delivery of a sounder and fuller judgment on the spot. When, therefore, he visited the Southern Presidency, he wrote letters of inquiry to some of the principal missionaries and instituted a select committee of the Christian Knowledge Society for the purpose of making further investigation into the subject. From one letter written to the Rev. D. Schrievogel, though little more than a series of questions, the bent of his opinions may be derived. It appeared to him, after much deliberate consideration, that Caste, as represented to exist among the Christian converts on the Coast was in reality an institution differing little in its essential features from the social exclusiveness prevailing in Christian countries.
Is there no such thing, he asked himself, as Caste in Europe? Is there no such thing as Caste in America? Do not the high and the low sit apart in our English churches ? Do not our well-dressed high-caste folks go up first to the altar to communicate? Do high and low sit down to meat together—do their children attend the same schools? Are there no Pariahs amongst us? In other civilized countries, is there not a prevailing sense of Caste, apart from all associations of worldly distinction? Does not the Spanish hidalgo wear his Caste bravely beneath his threadbare cloak? Is the wealthiest mulatto fit companion for the poorest white? It may be called blood, or anything else in another; but in its essential features the one thing differs but little from the other. It is an intelligible and appreciable Christian principle that all men in the sight of God are equal. But it is equally certain that all are not equal in the sight of Man; and it is a fair presumption that God never intended them to be equal. Social distinctions exist everywhere; and if, argued the Bishop, the distinctions which exist among the converts on the Southern coast are merely social distinctions, why should we endanger the success of our efforts by endeavouring to enforce a law of equality, which is maintained among no other classes of men?
“In this wise thought Bishop Heber. He had said from the first, that if he could be of any service to the Christian cause in India, it would be as a moderator—that by a conciliatory course, smoothing down the asperities of the over-zealship, he might hope to do much good as the chief missionary; and now he believed that it was his duty to cast in the weight of his authority upon the side of those who had resolved not to. pour too much of new wine into the old bottles.” This view was more forcefully expressed by another Protestant Missionary Rev. Robert Noble who came out to India in 1841 and was in charge of the Church of England Mission Work in Masulipatam made it a rule to exclude Pariahs, leather workers and scavengers from his school. Defending himself against the charge of introducing caste in the Christian fold he defended himself in the following terms: “The humblest and most pious Christian parents in England would not allow their sons, much less their daughters, to be educated with their footmen, with their cooks and their scullery maids. Perhaps I was punished oftener by my pious father for stealing away to play with the boys of the village than on any other account; while in the best ordered Christian family I have ever seen; the children were not allowed to converse with the servants or to descend the second step of the stairs into the kitchen. My father would not have allowed us to mix with the” cook’s or stable boy’s children; norcan I see it right to require of Brahmins that before we will teach them the Gospel, they must sit down on the same form with the pariah and the sweeper. The requirement is to me unreasonable and unchristian.” It is true that many wise and devout Christians since Heber’s time believed that he was altogether wrong; and that Bishop Wilson at a later period reversed his decision emphatically pronouncing against all toleration for the inequities of caste on the ground that it was an ingrained part of Hindu religion. But the fact remained not only the official but also the general view of the Protest Missions’ in India regarding the place of caste in Indian Christianity.
Thus, all Missionaries agreed that Christianity should be made easy in order that it may spread among India. On this point there seems to be difference of kind among Catholics, Lutherners or Protestants. Such difference as exists is one of degree. If there exists Caste and other forms among Christian converts it is the result of this policy— 1An exception must however be made in favour of the Protestant Missionaries of America. In July 1847 the American Missionaries passed the following resolution regarding this question—
“That the Mission regards caste as an essential part of heathenism, and its full and practical renunciation, after instruction, as essential to satisfactory evidence of piety: and that renunciation of caste implies at least readiness to eat. under proper circumstances, with Christians of any caste.”, policy of making Christianity easy. In adopting this policy the Missionaries never thought that someday, somebody would ask them ‘What good is Christianity for a Hindu if it does not do away with his Caste’. They misunderstood their mission and thought that making a person Christian was the same thing as making him a follower of Christ.
V
Let us take the second part of the question. Has Christianity been able to save the convert from the sufferings and the ignominy which is the misfortune of everyone who is born an untouchable? Can an untouchable after his conversion to Christianity take water from a public well? Are his children admitted to a public school? Can he enter a hotel or tavern which was not open to him ? Can he enter a shop and buy things from inside? Will a barber shave him? Will a washerman wash his clothes? Can he travel in a bus? Will he be admitted in Public offices without compunction ? Will he be allowed to live in the touchable quarters of the village? Will the Hindus take water from him ? Will they dine with him ? Will not the Hindu take a bath if he touches him ? I am sure the answer to every one of these questions must be in the negative. In other words, conversion has not brought about any change in the social status of the untouchable convert. To the general mass of the Hindus the untouchable remains an untouchable even though he beomes a Christian. The question is, why has Christianity not succeeded in raising the status of the untouchable convert? What are the reasons for this failure? I am not sure that my reasons will be accepted by all those who are interested in the problem. But I will state them for what they are worth. To understand and appreciate what I am going to say I must begin by pointing out that a change in the social status of the convert Can be the result of a two-fold change. There must be a change in the attitude of the Hindus. Secondly there must be a change in the mentality of the convert. Status is a dual matter, a matter inter se between two persons and unless both move from their old position there can be no change. What has been done by those who are in charge of Christian endeavour to make the parties move on? A consideration of this question will enable us to understand why Christianity has failed to raise the status of the untouchable convert. Let us consider the question in parts. What has Christianity done to make the Hindus move on? I find they have done nothing. They seem to be depending upon an idea doing the miracle. The faith in an idea doing the work has been well expressed by the late Duke of Argyle when he said:
“There is no method of reform so powerful as this. If alongside any false or corrupt belief, or any vicious or cruel system, we place one incompatible idea,—then without any noise of controversy or clash of battle, those beliefs and customs will wave an idea. It was thus that Christianity, without one single word of direct attack, killed off one of the greatest and most universal curses of the pagan world,—the ever deepening curse of slavery (Quoted by C. F. Andrews. Christ and Labour, p. 25.).” Whatever may be the importance of an idea, I am sure, history does not bear out the conclusion of the Duke of Argyle. It is debatable question whether the end of slavery in the Roman Empire was due to the influence of Christianity. It is beyond doubt that serfdom continued in Europe although Christianity was an established institution for several hundred years. It is an incontrovertible fact that Christianity was not enough to end the slavery of the Negroes in the United States. A civil war was necessary to give the Negro the freedom which was denied to him by the Christians.
The dependence of those in charge of Christian endeavour upon planting of an idea and leaving it to work a miracle is therefore one of the reasons why the untouchable has remained an untouchable notwithstanding his Christian faith. Let me take the other part of the question. Does Christianity inspire the untouchable to move on ? I am constrained to say that (it)does not. So far as I am able to see, Christian preaching to the untouchable is less centred on ‘practical’ reforms and more centred around the development of Christian social attitudes. Christians who desire the conversion of the untouchables insist on regarding Christianity as purely “spiritual”. To teach that Christians have an obligation to love others is no doubt very valuable. But to stop there and argue that spiritual life expressed in a social attitude is quite unrelated to material life and Christians can have nothing to do with it, is in my judgment to preach an empty doctrine. What is the use of a daily exhortation to a wrong doer to be good and just if the exhortation is not followed by action to make the wrong doer just and good. The Christian Missionaries have never thought that it was their duty to act and get the injustice that pursues the untouchables even after his conversion to Christianity removed. That Missions should be so inactive in the matter of the social emancipation of the untouchable is of course a very sad thing. But far more painful is the inaction of the untouchable who becomes a convert to Christianity. It is the saddest thing. He continues to suffer from the Hindus the same disabilities which were his lot before conversion. It is an extraordinary thing that the movement for the redress of wrongs is carried on by the untouchables who have not become converts to Christianity. I have never noticed the untouchable Christians meeting in Conferences for the redress of their social wrongs. That they have grievances is beyond question. That there are many who are educated enough to lead them in their struggle is also well known. Why is it then there has been no movement for the redress of their wrongs? I see three reasons why the Christian untouchables have failed to raise a movement.
The first reason is to be found in the complete absence of desire on the part of the educated among the Christians to take up the cause of the community and fight for it. This is due in my judgment to the fact that within the Christian Community the educated class and the mass has no kinship. The Christian Community is a composite community. In some places it is divided into touchables and untouchables. In all places it is divided into high class and low class. The educated class is largely drawn from the touchable or the higher class. This educated class being detached from the lower or the untouchable class of Christians is not charged with the wants, the pains, cravings, desires, aspirations of the latter and does not care for their interest. The untouchable Christians are therefore leaderless and therefore unable to mobilize for the redress of their wrongs.
The second reason why there is no movement among the untouchable Christians is due to certain faults in the mental make-up of the convert. The mental make-up of the untouchable Christian is characterized by a complete absence of any urge to break his bonds. What is the reason for this absence of any urge in the untouchable Christian ? It seems to me that there are two reasons which account for this. One reason is to be found in the antecedent of the untouchable who becomes a Christian. An untouchable becomes a Christian for some advantage, or he becomes a Christian because he likes the teaching of the Bible. But the case is very rare of an untouchable becoming a Christian because of a positive discontent or dislike of the Hindu religious teachings. The result is that Christianity becomes only an addendum to his old faith. It does not become a substitute for his old faith. He cherishes both and observes them on occasions appropriate to each. The second reason for the absence of any urge is due I am afraid to the teachings of the Christian Church. The Christian Church teaches that the fall of man is due to his original Sin and the reason why one must become Christian is because in Christianity there is promise of forgiveness of sins. Whatever may be the theological and evangelistic basis of this doctrine there is no doubt that from a sociological point of view it is a doctrine which is fraught with disaster. This Christian teaching is a direct challenge to sociology which holds that the fall of man is due to an unpropitious environment and not to the sins of man. There is no question that the sociological view is the correct view and the Christian dogma only misleads man. It sets him on a wrong trail. This is exactly what has happened with the untouchable Christians. Instead of being taught that his fall is due to a wrong social and religious environment and that for his improvement he must attack that environment he is told that his fall is due to his sin. The consequence is that the untouchable convert instead of being energized to conquer his environment contents himself with the belief that there is no use struggling, for the simple reason that his fall is due to the sin committed not by him but by some remote ancestor of his called Adam. When he was a Hindu, his fall was due to his Karma. When he becomes a Christian, he learns that his fall is due to the sins of his ancestor. In either case there is no escape for him. One may well ask whether conversion is a birth of a new life and a condemnation to the old.
VI
Does the Indian Christian Community count in India? What importance, what influence does it have in settling the affairs of the country. It ought to have importance and influence both in the country and society. It is undoubtedly the most educated and enlightened community in India. Not only the percentage of literacy among Indian Christians is relatively larger than in many other communities in India but the University Graduate, Doctors, lawyers are far in excess than can be found in communities which are vastly superior to them in number. Not only the men are educated but also women are educated. With all this light and learning the Christians as a community, it must be said, counts for very little—if at all—in the affairs of India. There may be difference of opinion on this. But this is the conclusion I have arrived at after as close and as impartial a study as I have been able to make. My opponent might say that I am mistaken or that I am misrepresenting. But I take comfort in the fact that there are some Indian Christians who share my view and also my regret. Here are two letters which I take from Young India.
The first is from an Indian Christian to Mr. Gandhi and published in the Young India, August 25, 1921. This is what he says:
“I am sorry to say that you do not take us Indian Christians as the people of India, as I have seen many times Young India mentioning Musalmans, Hindus, Sikhs, etc., but omitting the Christians. “I should like you to believe that we Indian Christians are also people of India and take much interest in India’s own affairs.” The following is the comment made by Mr. Gandhi on this letter. He says:
“I assure the correspondent and other Indian Christians that non-cooperation is no respector of creeds or races. It invites and admits all to its fold. Many Indian Christians have contributed to the Tilak Swaraj Fund. There are some noted Indian Christians as non-cooperators in the front rank. There is constant mention of Musalmans and Hindus, as they have hitherto regarded one another as enemies. Similarly, there always has been some cause when any race has been specially mentioned in these columns.” Apart from the question whether it is true that many Indian Christians have contributed to the Tilak Swaraj Fund and whether it is true or not that noted Christians were front rank non-cooperators, the answer given by Mr. Gandhi to the main question of the correspondent is incorrect if not misleading. If Musalmans are mentioned only because they regard the Hindus as their enemies why were Sikhs mentioned? Surely, they did not regard the Hindus as their enemies. Why were they mentioned? The Sikhs were not only mentioned but were treated as an important party without whose active cooperation, it was felt that the struggle for Swaraj could not be carried on. And be it remembered that the cooperation given by the Sikhs was not given unconditionally. As is well known the Sikhs had put down two conditions in return for their cooperation (Young India. Aug. 4. 1921.). One condition was that in designing a national flag for India the Sikh colour which they said was black should find a place in it. Their second demand was that they should be guaranteed by the Congress representation in the legislature. It is thus clear that Sikhs were not mentioned but placated. But the Christians were not even mentioned. Now there are only two explanations for not mentioning the Indian Christians. Either they were with the Congress in the struggle for Swaraj or that they were not worth mentioning as being too insignificant. That they were not with the Congress in this struggle for Swaraj cannot be gainsaid. The following letter written by an Indian Christian written to the Editor of the Indian Social Reformer and reproduced in the Young India expresses the attitude of the Indian Christians to Swaraj:
“We have positive evidence to show that as early as the second century of Christian era there were Christian settlements in India. Such being the case, Christians in India can claim to have existed in India some centuries earlier than the very birth of Islam. How comes it then that the Indian Christian born and bred on the soil of India and of ancestry purely Indian, has not learnt to cherish the ancient history of this country, its culture and to look upon its people, however different in their religious persuations, as his bone and of his flesh ? Whence is it that unlike him Hindu or Mahomedan fellow citizen he has not watched for, aspired to and eagerly welcomed every stage that adds a cubit to the cultural, social or political statute of his motherland. Why is it that Vande Mataram is a national outpouring of the Hindus and Mahomedans only and till now ignored by the Indian Christian ? Again, how comes it that both Hindus and Mahomedans regard the Indian Christian sentiment towards their aspirations as lukewarm if not positively hostile and conversely why is it that the ever-growing height of the national spirit in India makes the Indian Christian feel dwarfed and helpless and suspicious of his security in the future.” (Young India. 21st Dec. 1922.) Notwithstanding Mr. George Joseph, K. T. Paul, and Dr. S. K. Datta there is no doubt that the Indian Christian Community far from taking active part in the struggle for Swaraj was really afraid of it and that this letter depicts truly the prevailing attitude of the Indian Christians. The reason why the Indian Christians were not mentioned along with the Musalmans, and the Sikhs is therefore clear. The omission to mention them is certainly not due to their being friends of Swaraj. The only conclusion that one can draw for such a omission is that they did not count. It is a sad thing that so enlightened a community should have no importance and no influence in the affairs of the country. What can be the reasons for such a position ? The most obvious reason is of course, the smallness of its numbers. The weight of its numbers is too small to make its existence felt as a force in public life as can be the case with the Musalmans or with the Depressed Classes. But this cannot wholly account for their insignificance. There must be other factors to account for this. I see two. One is this. The Indian Christians are living in sheltered waters. They are, at any rate, a large majority of them are living in the laps of the missionaries. For their education, for their medical care, for religious ministration and for most of their petty needs they do not look to Government. They look to the Missions. If they were dependent upon Government they would be required to mobilize, to agitate, educate, and organize their masses for effective political action. For without such organization no Government would care to attend to their needs and their requirements. They are not in the current and not being in the current they care not for public life, and therefore no recognized place in the public.
The second reason is that the Indian Christian is a disjointed—it is a better word than the word disunited Community. All that it has in common is a common source of inspiration. Barring this one thing which they have in common everything else tends to keep them apart. Indian Christians like all other Indians are divided by race, by language and by caste. Their religion has not been a sufficiently strong unifying force as to make difference of language, race and caste as though they were mere distinctions. On the contrary their religion which is their only cement is infected with denominational differences. The result is that the Indian Christians are too disjointed to have a common aim, to have a common mind and to put a common endeavour. To an Indian Christian from Tamil, a Hindu from Tamil is much nearer than an Indian Christian from the Punjab; An Indian Christian from U.P. feels greater kinship for a Hindu from U.P. than he does for an Indian Christian from say Maharashtra.
In short, the term Indian Christian is just a statistical phrase. There is no community feeling behind this phrase. Indian Christians are not bound together by what is consciousness of kind which is the test of the existence of a community. I do not know what Indian Christians will think of what I have said of the weaknesses which infect their life. One thing I can say. It is this—I am deeply interested in Indian Christians because a large majority of them are drawn from the untouchable classes. My comments are those of a friend. They are not the strictures of an adversary. I have drawn attention to their weaknesses because I want them to be strong and I want them to be strong because I see great dangers for them ahead. They have to reckon with the scarcely veiled hostility of Mr. Gandhi to Christianity taking its roots in the Indian Social structure.
But they have also to reckon with militant Hinduism masquerading as Indian Nationalism. What this militant Hinduism will do to Christians and Christianity can be seen from what happened at Brindaban very recently. If newspaper reports are true (Indian witness.) a crowd of mild Hinduism quietly went and burned down the Mission buildings in Brindaban and warned the missionary that if he rebuilt it they would come and burn it down again?! This may be the solitary instance of misguided patriots or this may be just a piece of what the Hindus are planning to get rid of Christians and Christianity. If it is the shadow of events to come then Indian Christians must be prepared to meet them. How can they do that except by removing the weaknesses I have referred to? Let all Indian Christians ponder.
Ambedkar Warns Christians Lagged Behind Politically
“Dr. B. R. Ambedkar made important speech on 1st January 1938 in Sholapur. The local Christians were eager to hear his views on religion. So, he addressed a meeting of the Christians under the Presidentship of the Rev. Gangadhar Jadhav.” Dr. B. R. Ambedkar said that since the day he declared his intention to abjure Hindu religion, he had become a commodity for bargain or a source of comedy. He referred to the comedy, Vande Bharatam, written by Acharya P. K. Atre, a well-known playwright in Maharashtra, who had ridiculed the idea of conversion in his play. Yet he stated that he was firm in his resolve. From his study of comparative religion, he could say that two personalities could captivate him. They were the Buddha and Christ. He further said that he wanted a religion which instructed people how they should behave with one another and prescribed for man his duty to another and relation with God in the light of equality, fraternity and liberty.
He told the Christians that their co-religionists in Southern India observed caste system in churches. Besides they lagged behind politically. If the Mahar boys became Christians, they lost their scholarships. Thus, there was no economic gain in their being Christian. Moreover, the Indian Christians, he remarked, as a community never fought for the removal of social injustice (Keer, Pp. 299-230.).
Speaking to Christians at Sholapur in January 1938, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar declared that he could say from his study of comparative religion that only two personalities had been able to captivate him – the Buddha and Christ. Here are some parts of the Dr. Ambedkar’s speech.
Excerpt from the speech delivered to Indian Christians of Sholapur and published in ‘Janata’ on 05.02.1938, reproduced from ‘Dnyanodaya’ – From the available religions and personalities in the world, I consider only two- Buddha and Christ for conversion. We want a religion for me and my followers which will teach equality freedom among men, and how man must behave with men and God, how a child should behave with father etc.
Missionaries feel they have done their duty when they convert an untouchable to Christianity. They do not look after their political rights. I find this is a big fault in Christians because they have not entered into politics until now. It is difficult for any institution to survive without political support. We, Untouchables, though are ignorant and illiterate, we are in movement. That is why we have 15 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Students are getting scholarships, there are government hostels. Such is not the case of Christian students. If an untouchable student getting scholarship gets converted, his scholarship is stopped though his financial status remains same. If you were in politics, things would have been opposed.
“Your society is educated. Hundreds of boys and girls are matriculated. These people have not agitated against this injustice, unlike the uneducated Untouchables. If any girl becomes a nurse or any boy becomes a teacher they are involved in their own affairs, they do not get involved in public affairs. Even clerks and officers are busy in their work, he ignores the social injustice. Your society is so much educated, how many are District judges or magistrates? I tell you; this is because of your neglect towards politics because there is nobody to talk of the fight for your rights. …” [Ganjare vol. III. p.142]
The Friend's Rebuke {#the-friend's-rebuke}
A Biblical Response to 'The Condition of the Convert'
A Painful but Prophetic Mirror
In "The Condition of the Convert," Dr. B.R. Ambedkar presents his most comprehensive and critical evaluation of Christianity as a lived reality in India. His analysis is a multi-pronged indictment, moving with relentless logic from the external political opposition to the internal spiritual decay he observed. He begins by dismantling Mahatma Gandhi's virulent and hypocritical opposition to Christian missions, exposing the double standards and logical fallacies undergirding the Mahatma's position. He then critiques the missionary strategy itself, arguing with compelling evidence that its vast resources in education and medicine were "misapplied expenditure." This monumental effort, he contends, primarily benefited the very upper-caste Hindus who would take the material advantages while rejecting the faith, tragically neglecting the core needs of the Dalit Christian community for the advancement of their civil rights and economic uplift.
The heart of his critique, however, is a piercing and unflinching look at the Indian Church itself. He argues that conversion had failed to truly and fully liberate the Dalit because the Church was plagued by three profound weaknesses: it had failed to eradicate the demonic influence of caste from its pews; it had failed to uproot paganism from the hearts of its converts; and it had failed to inspire a spirit of social and political activism, a passivity he incorrectly attributes to a deep misunderstanding of Christian doctrine. Consequently, he concludes, with a palpable note of sorrow and frustration, that the Christian community remains a politically insignificant and "disjointed" body, lacking the cohesive identity and moral force to effect change. He offers these rebukes not as an enemy bent on destruction, but as a "friend," a well-wisher who sees the immense, God-given potential of the community being tragically squandered. This chapter will receive Dr. Ambedkar's friendly rebuke with the seriousness and humility it deserves, affirming his painful yet accurate diagnosis of the Church's historical and ongoing failures, while offering a Biblical correction to his misunderstanding of the very doctrine that holds the key to the radical empowerment he so desperately sought.
Affirming the Diagnosis: The Scandal of a Divided House
Dr. Ambedkar’s critique of the Indian Church's failures is painfully sharp, largely accurate, and must be received by Christians not with defensiveness, but with humility and repentance. His charge that the Church in many places has failed to be the radical, caste-destroying community it is called to be is a righteous indictment from which we cannot hide. The evidence he cites of segregation within churches, the preservation of caste hierarchies among believers, and the persistence of caste identity—"There are Brahmin Christians and Non-Brahmin Christians... They would not intermarry, they would not inter-dine"—is a scandalous and heartbreaking betrayal of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His exposure of religious syncretism, where pagan rituals are blended with Christian worship, and the failure of many educated Christians to lead the fight for social justice for their own brothers and sisters are equally valid and necessary rebukes.
In this, Dr. Ambedkar is not an outside critic attacking the faith; he is, in effect, holding the Indian Church to its own Biblical standard and finding it shamefully wanting. The Bible itself provides the strongest possible condemnation of these failures. When the Apostle Paul publicly confronted the Apostle Peter in Antioch, it was for this very sin of social segregation. Peter, a leader of the Church, withdrew from table fellowship with Gentile believers for fear of judgment from a faction of Jewish Christians (Galatians 2:11-14). Paul condemned this not as a mere social misstep, but as a public denial of the truth of the Gospel—a direct and shocking biblical parallel to the sin of casteism. Likewise, the book of James explicitly forbids showing partiality and honoring the rich over the poor within the church, calling it a blatant transgression of God's "royal law" to "love your neighbor as yourself" (James 2:1-9). Scripture is also clear in its absolute prohibition of syncretism, commanding believers not to be "unequally yoked with unbelievers," asking the rhetorical question, "What fellowship has light with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14). Dr. Ambedkar's critique, therefore, does not invalidate Christianity; it powerfully validates the high, holy, and revolutionary standards that Christianity sets for itself, and in doing so, exposes the tragic gap between the Church's practice and its own stated faith.
Re-examining the Prescription: The Misunderstood Engine of Liberation
While his diagnosis of the Church's practical failures is devastatingly accurate, the most significant point of disagreement lies in Dr. Ambedkar's profound misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of original sin. He argues that, from a sociological perspective, this doctrine is "fraught with disaster" because it teaches the convert that his "fall is due to his sin" rather than his "unpropitious environment." He concludes that this leads to a fatalistic passivity, causing the convert to believe "there is no use struggling" because his miserable fate was sealed by a distant ancestor named Adam.
This interpretation, while understandable from a purely external viewpoint, is a complete inversion of the doctrine's true meaning and its historical and sociological effect. Dr. Ambedkar creates a false dichotomy between "sin" and "environment," failing to see the Bible's core teaching: sinful hearts are precisely what create unjust environments. The caste system is not an impersonal, "unpropitious environment" that simply exists like a natural disaster. It is the deliberate, historical, and ongoing creation of sinful human hearts motivated by pride, greed, and a lust for power. It is a system built by sinners to benefit sinners. To blame the "environment" is to ignore the architects of that environment and the sinful motivations that sustain it. The Bible goes to the root of the problem, diagnosing the disease of the human heart, not just the symptoms of a sick society.
The Gospel Alternative: The Empowering Truth of Universal Sin
The doctrine of original sin, rightly understood, is not a message of passivity but of radical, revolutionary empowerment. It is the great equalizer. It does not teach a Dalit that his poverty is his fault; it teaches that all humanity—the Brahmin and the Dalit, the oppressor and the oppressed, the king and the peasant—is born spiritually fallen, separated from a holy God, and in active rebellion against His law. It demolishes the pride of the upper-caste person, forcing him to admit that he stands before God as a helpless, condemned sinner in need of the exact same grace as the person he scorns. Far from being a doctrine of passivity, this is a doctrine of radical empowerment:
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It De-legitimizes the Oppressor: By stating that the Brahmin is a fallen sinner, the doctrine strips him of any inherent moral or spiritual superiority. His high status is revealed to be a social construct, not a divine right. The unjust caste system is not a reflection of cosmic order (dharma), but a wicked manifestation of his own sin, for which he is fully accountable to the righteous Judge of the universe. This truth breaks the psychological and spiritual power that the oppressor holds over the oppressed.
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It Liberates the Oppressed: It tells the Dalit convert that his ultimate, defining problem was never his social status but his spiritual status before a holy God. In Christ, through His death and resurrection, that problem has been definitively and eternally solved. He has been forgiven, justified, and adopted as a beloved child of the King of Kings, given an eternal, unshakeable dignity that no human system can bestow or take away. This frees him to fight for social justice, not out of a desperate, soul-crushing struggle for identity and worth, but from a secure and joyful position of already possessing ultimate identity and worth in Christ.
This Biblical understanding is superior because it correctly identifies the root cause of injustice (sin) and provides a more robust and enduring motivation for social action. The great Christian social reformers like William Wilberforce, who fought the horrors of the slave trade for decades, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who confronted the evils of racial segregation, were not hindered by the doctrine of sin; they were fueled by it. They understood that because all people are made in God's image, systems of oppression are a grievous and intolerable offense against God Himself. And because their ultimate hope was secure in Christ, they were empowered to fight injustice with breathtaking courage, unwavering perseverance, and even a supernatural love for their enemies. This is the very opposite of the passivity Dr. Ambedkar rightly condemned.
Heeding a Friend's Warning
Dr. Ambedkar's essay "The Condition of the Convert" serves as a painful but prophetic mirror for the Church in India. His critiques of Gandhian hypocrisy, misdirected missionary efforts, and the Church's own scandalous failures regarding caste and social justice are largely correct and must be heeded with sober self-examination. He was a true "friend," as he claimed, whose rebukes were aimed at strengthening the community he saw as a potential home for his people, a community he rightfully expected to be a beacon of true equality and justice.
However, his analysis is critically flawed by his sociological misreading of the doctrine of original sin, which he wrongly identified as a source of passivity rather than the very engine of Christian social action. The historical failures of the Indian Church are not a product of its theology but a tragic and consistent failure to live up to its own radical, revolutionary theology. The solution to the passivity and disjointedness of the Dalit Christian community is not a less theological, more sociological faith, but a deeper, more courageous, and more consistent embrace of the revolutionary implications of the Gospel. True and lasting liberation is found when a convert understands that because Christ has freed them from the ultimate bondage of sin and death, they are now truly and eternally free to fight against every lesser bondage on earth, for the glory of God and the good of their neighbor.
The Quest for Dignity: Ambedkar’s Conversion and the Clash of Visions {#the-quest-for-dignity:-ambedkar’s-conversion-and-the-clash-of-visions}
In October 1956, at Deeksha Bhoomi in Nagpur, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the architect of India’s Constitution and a towering Dalit leader, led lakhs of followers in a historic conversion to Buddhism. This act was not merely a religious shift but a radical rejection of Hinduism’s caste hierarchy, which Ambedkar deemed irreformable. His decision, announced two decades earlier in 1935 at Yeola with the words, “I was born a Hindu, but I will not die a Hindu,” sent shockwaves through India’s socio-political landscape. Hindu nationalist leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha and Dalit figures like Jagjivan Ram engaged with Ambedkar, seeking to dissuade him from abandoning Hinduism. These interactions, marked by ideological clashes and failed negotiations, reveal a profound struggle over the future of Dalits in India: reform within Hinduism versus emancipation through conversion. This chapter explores Ambedkar’s conversion discussions with Hindu Mahasabha leaders and Jagjivan Ram, illuminating the competing visions for Dalit liberation in a transformative era.
The Roots of Ambedkar’s Disillusionment
Ambedkar’s journey toward conversion was rooted in his lived experience of caste oppression. Born in 1891 into the Mahar caste, deemed “untouchable” by Hindu orthodoxy, Ambedkar faced systemic exclusion despite his academic brilliance. His education at Columbia University and the London School of Economics equipped him with the intellectual tools to challenge caste, but it was his encounters with indignity—being denied water, housing, and temple access—that fueled his resolve. By the 1920s, through movements like the Mahad Satyagraha (1927) and the Nashik Temple Entry Movement (1930), Ambedkar sought to secure basic rights for Dalits within Hinduism. Yet, resistance from upper-caste Hindus and tokenistic reforms convinced him that Hinduism’s caste structure was immutable.
In 1935, at the Yeola Conference, Ambedkar declared his intent to renounce Hinduism, arguing that caste was not a social construct but a religious one, sanctified by Hindu scriptures like the Manusmriti. He began exploring alternative religions—Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, and Buddhism—seeking a faith that upheld equality and dignity. His announcement alarmed Hindu leaders, who feared that mass Dalit conversions would erode their demographic and political strength, especially amidst the communal tensions of pre-independence India.
Negotiations with the Hindu Mahasabha
The Hindu Mahasabha, a Hindu nationalist organization founded in 1915, advocated for a unified Hindu identity to counter Muslim and colonial influences. Leaders like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Balakrishna Shivram Moonje, and Madan Mohan Malaviya viewed Dalits as essential to Hindu numerical strength but were divided on caste reform. Ambedkar’s threat of conversion posed a crisis, prompting a series of negotiations that revealed the Mahasabha’s strategic priorities over genuine reform.
The Masurkar Maharaj Meeting (1935)
Following the Yeola declaration, N.D. Savarkar, brother of V.D. Savarkar, arranged a meeting between Ambedkar and Masurkar Maharaj, a Hindu preacher who had initiated thousands of Dalits into Vedic rituals. The Mahasabha hoped Masurkar’s inclusive approach would persuade Ambedkar to remain within Hinduism. However, Ambedkar rejected this overture, viewing such rituals as superficial gestures that failed to address caste’s structural roots. His insistence on systemic change over symbolic inclusion underscored his growing disillusionment.
The Moonje–Ambedkar Pact (1936)
In 1936, B.S. Moonje, a former Hindu Mahasabha president, proposed a bold compromise: mass conversions of Dalits to Sikhism. Moonje argued that Sikhism, with its egalitarian ethos, could offer Dalits dignity while keeping them within the broader “Hindu culture” to bolster Hindu political unity. Ambedkar, who had studied Sikhism favourably, engaged in serious discussions, as documented by historian Keith Meadowcroft. However, the proposal faltered due to opposition from orthodox Sikhs, who feared diluting their identity, and Ambedkar’s insistence on a religion free from any Hindu cultural baggage. The failure of this pact highlighted the Mahasabha’s inability to reconcile its nationalist agenda with Dalit aspirations.
Savarkar’s Contradictory Stance
V.D. Savarkar, the ideological architect of Hindutva, initially supported Ambedkar’s anti-untouchability campaigns, recognizing their potential to unify Hindus. However, he opposed Ambedkar’s rejection of Hinduism, arguing that Dalits should reform the faith from within. Their correspondence, though limited, reveals a fundamental clash: Savarkar’s vision of Hindu unity prioritized numerical strength, while Ambedkar demanded equality as a prerequisite for allegiance. The Mahasabha’s alarm was evident in its 17th session in Poona (1935), where leaders strategized to counter “denationalizing” conversions, reflecting their fear of losing Dalits to other faiths.
The Hindu Code Bill Fallout
As India’s first Law Minister, Ambedkar’s push for the Hindu Code Bill (1947–1951), which sought to reform Hindu personal laws on marriage, inheritance, and women’s rights, reignited tensions with Hindu nationalists. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, a Mahasabha leader and founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, joined the RSS in opposing the bill, labeling it an attack on Hindu traditions. The bill’s failure and the ensuing backlash deepened Ambedkar’s conviction that Hinduism resisted egalitarian reform, prompting his resignation in 1951 and reinforcing his turn toward Buddhism.
Jagjivan Ram: The Counterpoint
Jagjivan Ram, a prominent Dalit leader and Congress stalwart, offered a contrasting vision to Ambedkar’s radicalism. Born in 1908 into the Chamar caste, Ram rose through the Congress ranks, serving as Labour Minister in Nehru’s first cabinet. A follower of the Ravidas tradition, which revered the 15th-century saint Ravidas and emphasized spiritual equality within Hinduism, Jagjivan Ram believed in reforming Hinduism through social integration and temple entry rather than abandoning it.
Ideological Divide
Ambedkar and Jagjivan Ram’s differences crystallized during the Poona Pact of 1932, a compromise between Ambedkar and Gandhi that replaced separate electorates for Dalits with reserved seats. While Ambedkar signed under pressure, Jagjivan Ram supported the pact, aligning with Congress’s reformist agenda. This marked the beginning of their ideological rift. Ambedkar saw Hinduism as inherently oppressive, arguing in Annihilation of Caste (1936) that caste was sanctified by scripture. Jagjivan Ram, however, believed that political and social reforms, backed by Congress and Gandhi’s Harijan campaign, could dismantle caste within Hinduism.
The Lucknow Conference and Mumbai Meeting
In 1936, the All Religious Conference in Lucknow invited leaders of various faiths to present their religions to Dalits, a response to Ambedkar’s conversion threat. Ambedkar could not attend, but Jagjivan Ram argued passionately against conversion, advocating for temple entry and access to public resources as solutions. In a separate meeting in Mumbai during the 1930s, Jagjivan Ram met Ambedkar to dissuade him from advocating mass conversions, emphasizing Hindu reform. The meeting was inconclusive, as Ambedkar rejected incrementalism, insisting that only a new religious identity could liberate Dalits.
Jagjivan Ram also opposed B.R. Ambedkar’s consideration of conversion to Christianity, reflecting their broader ideological divide over Dalit emancipation. Following Ambedkar’s 1935 Yeola declaration that he would not die a Hindu, Jagjivan Ram met him in Bombay (circa 1935–1936) to dissuade him from advocating mass Dalit conversions, particularly to Christianity, which Jagjivan Ram viewed as a “foreign” religion tied to British colonialism. Rooted in the Ravidas tradition, Jagjivan Ram argued for reforming Hinduism through temple entry and social integration, believing Dalits could achieve dignity within the faith, as evidenced by his stance at the 1936 All Religious Conference in Lucknow. Ambedkar, however, rejected this reformist approach, insisting that Hinduism’s caste system was irreformable, though he ultimately chose Buddhism in 1956, partly addressing concerns like Ram’s about non-Indian faiths (Indrani Jagjivan Ram, Milestones: A Memoir, Penguin India, 2010; “Reassessing Religion and Politics in the Life of Jagjivan Ram,” MDPI, 2020).
This opposition to Christianity underscored Jagjivan Ram’s fear that such conversions would alienate Dalits from India’s cultural identity, a similar concern (which we discuss more at the end of this chapter) Ambedkar himself noted in Annihilation of Caste (1936). While the Bombay meeting failed to sway Ambedkar, Jagjivan Ram’s arguments may have influenced his eventual preference for Buddhism, an Indian-origin religion, over Christianity. Their clash highlights a pivotal moment in Dalit history: Jagjivan Ram’s integrationist vision versus Ambedkar’s radical pursuit of a new religious identity for liberation (Keer, Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission, Popular Prakashan, 1971; Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Volume 5, Government of Maharashtra).
A Complex Relationship
Despite their differences, Jagjivan Ram’s wife, Indrani, later claimed that Jagjivan recommended Ambedkar’s inclusion in Nehru’s cabinet to Gandhi, suggesting a pragmatic respect. Both leaders served in the cabinet (1947–1951), but their approaches remained divergent. Jagjivan Ram’s support for the Hindu Mahasabha’s 1935 resolution demanding temple and water well access for Dalits, backed by Madan Mohan Malaviya, aligned him with Hindu reformers, further distancing him from Ambedkar’s revolutionary path.
The Great Conversion and Its Legacy
After two decades of deliberation, Ambedkar chose Buddhism, drawn to its emphasis on rationality, equality, and rejection of caste. On October 14, 1956, he and his wife, Savita, took the 22 vows of Navayana Buddhism at Deekshabhoomi, followed by lakhs of Mahars and other Dalits. These vows, which renounced Hindu deities and rituals, were a deliberate break from Hindu orthodoxy, establishing a distinct Dalit Buddhist identity. The conversion alarmed the Hindu Mahasabha, which saw it as a blow to Hindu unity, and disappointed reformists like Jagjivan Ram, who continued to advocate for Dalit integration within Hinduism.
Ambedkar’s conversion reshaped the Dalit movement, particularly in Maharashtra, where Navayana Buddhism became a symbol of resistance. However, its impact varied regionally; in Uttar Pradesh, Jagjivan Ram’s influence and the Ravidasi tradition retained stronger Dalit allegiance to Hinduism. The Hindu Mahasabha’s failure to address caste substantively weakened its appeal among Dalits, while Congress’s reformist policies, backed by Ram, offered a partial but limited alternative.
The claim that Dr. B.R. Ambedkar said - 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 or Islam 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 "𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢-𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥" or goes "against India" does not directly come from Ambedkar’s writings. Instead, it’s often a misinterpretation or exaggeration of his statement that conversion to Christianity or Islam would "𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬" (Pakistan or the Partition of India, 1940). This is actually a false narrative by RSS / Hindutva Extremists / Pseudo Ambedkarites. To some extend the reference to this can be seen in the Hindu Mahasabha’s 17th session in Poona (1935), where leaders strategized to counter “denationalising” conversions, is primarily drawn from Keith Meadowcroft’s 2006 academic paper, “The All-India Hindu Mahasabha, untouchable politics, and ‘denationalising’ conversions: the Moonje–Ambedkar Pact”, published in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. This paper discusses the Hindu Mahasabha’s concerns about B.R. Ambedkar’s threat of mass Dalit conversions following his 1935 Yeola declaration and their efforts to prevent the loss of Dalits from the Hindu fold, which they termed “denationalising” conversions.
Now 𝐋𝐞𝐭’𝐬 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐟𝐲: 𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫’𝐬 𝐀𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭:
Ambedkar argued that conversion to non-Indic religions like Christianity or Islam would disconnect the Depressed Classes from India’s cultural and historical identity, aligning them with foreign religious powers (e.g., British Christianity or Islamic nations). He saw this as a risk to their cultural rootedness in India and, by extension, to the unity of the emerging Indian nation, given their large population.
𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐚𝐲 converts become "anti-national" or act "against India" in a treasonous sense.
𝐖𝐡𝐲 "𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐢-𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥" 𝐢𝐬 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠
Ambedkar’s term "𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞" refers to 𝘢 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘺𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘳 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘭𝘰𝘺𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘐𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘢. He was concerned about 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚’𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘯𝘦𝘮𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦.
Labelling pconversion as "anti-national" adds a charged, modern political connotation 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐮𝐬𝐞. His focus was on the social and cultural implications for the Depressed Classes, 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘣𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘴 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴.
𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐡𝐢𝐦𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐭 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 (e.g., during the 1930s, as seen in his speeches at the Yeola Conference, 1935) but ultimately 𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐁𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐢𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. This shows he viewed conversion pragmatically, not as inherently anti-Indian.
𝐇𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬:
In the 1930s–1940s, India was under British rule, and Ambedkar worried that Christian converts might align with colonial powers, just as he feared Muslim converts might strengthen separatist movements (e.g., the Pakistan demand). 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐜—𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬’ 𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐞𝐝, 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚—𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐯𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐲𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐬 "𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢-𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥."
𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐇𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐬:
The term "𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘻𝘦" can be misread today as implying disloyalty, especially in 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 where conversion is sometimes equated with _rejecting Indian identity_.
However, Ambedkar’s focus was on cultural identity and national unity, 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.
Saying conversion to Christianity is "against India" or "anti-national" is 𝐚 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫’𝐬 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬. He said it would 𝐃𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐞𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞 by severing their cultural ties to India, potentially weakening the nation’s unity, but 𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐞𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢-𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚 and this is RSS / Hindutva Extremists / What's App University Graduates doing. 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐬 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐮𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧. If this narrative is being pushed, it’s likely due to selective or anachronistic readings of his work.
Beware of 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐭𝐯𝐚 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 who are spreading false narratives part of their divide and rule strategy as these are 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐢-𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐬.
𝐃𝐫 𝐁.𝐑. 𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐲 warned Christians 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐦 which these 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐭𝐯𝐚 𝐄𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐚𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦 in his Writings & Speeches in Volume 5 Page No. 476 - "But they have also to reckon with 𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦. What this militant Hinduism will do to Christians and Christianity can be seen from what happened at Brindaban very recently."
𝐁𝐮𝐭 Dr. B.R. 𝐀𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐝𝐤𝐚𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮 𝐑𝐚𝐣 of which these Hindutva Extremists are dreaming - “If 𝐇𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐮 𝐑𝐚𝐣 does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be t𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲.… Hindu Raj must 𝘣𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 at any cost,” wrote B.R. Ambedkar in Pakistan or the Partition of India (1946, pages 354-355).
Ambedkar And Missionary Narratives: A Sensitive Exploration
Dhananjay Keer’s Dr. Ambedkar: Life and Mission (Popular Prakashan, 1971) describes B.R. Ambedkar as a “devote student of the Bible,” reflecting his rigorous study of Christianity during the 1930s as he sought a religion to liberate Dalits from caste oppression, following his 1935 Yeola declaration to renounce Hinduism and also Dr. Ambedkar Compared himself with Moses of the Bible.
Rev. James Weathrall: Ambedkar's attestation towards Christianity was because of friendship with the Late Rev. James Weathrall, who was the vicar of St. James Church. Rev James recalled that Ambedkar made several visits to him in the month of December and January in 1952 and 1953. It was possible for Ambedkar because his house at 26, Alipur Road, New Delhi (which is now a museum) is located very close to the church. Vicar advised him for the alternative proposed prayer book, and Ambedkar insisted to read the 1662 prayer book which contained around 39 articles of Anglican Faith. He used to read it in the lady chapel of the church and sometimes sitting in his car. (Rev. Weathrall in a conversation, at his residence the Brotherhood House, 7-Court Lane, Rustamji Sehgal Marg, Delhi -54.)
Rt. Rev. Bishop Waskom Pickett: Bishop Waskom Pickett was the bishop of the Methodist church in India. He recorded in his diary that Dr. Ambedkar twice asked him for Baptism. "Ambedkar was born into a low-caste Hindu family but leaped into prominence after advanced study in England and America. He returned to India with an overpowering desire to free his people from age-long oppression. He traveled across the country, holding mass meetings among members of the lower castes. He denounced Hindu gods as immoral and urged his people to renounce Hinduism, which, he claimed, was the cause of their poverty and social stigma. "I was born a Hindu," he shouted, "but I will not die a Hindu." (John T. Seamands, 'The Legacy of J. Waskom Pickett', International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 1989, p. 123.).
Just at this time Waskom Pickett was elected bishop and appointed to the Bombay area, where Dr. Ambedkar served as president of the Law College. The two men became close friends and often prayed together. One day Ambedkar asked Bishop Pickett to baptize him as a Christian but, afraid it might ruin his political career, he wanted it done in secret. Bishop Pickett refused and insisted that he should openly confess Christ as Lord and Savior. This, Ambedkar was not willing to do. Sometime later, after he had become minister of law in Prime Minister Nehru's cabinet, he took the oath to Buddhism along with 75,000 of his followers. During Ambedkar's last conversation with Bishop Pickett, he asked the bishop if he had lost hope for his acceptance of Christ. The bishop replied, "No, I am still praying for you." To this Ambedkar said, “Please keep it up. I am not yet satisfied and may still ask you to baptize me and admit me to the Methodist Church." Shortly afterward, however, Ambedkar died of a heart attack (Pickett, 'My Twentieth Century Odyssey', India Gospel Literature Service, Bombay, 1980, p.156.).
Bishop Samuel Azariah: Bishop Vedanayagam Samuel Azaria was the first Indian bishop in the churches of the Anglican Communion, serving as the first bishop of the diocese of Dornakal. A pioneer of Christian ecumenism in India, Azariah had a complex relationship with Mahatma Gandhi, who at least once called him postcolonial Indians' "Enemy Number One." Azariah as a missionary was working among the poor Dalits in the Dornakal area of Andhra Pradesh. Gandhi unjustly criticized his work of converting people but refused Azariah's invitation to come and see for himself. At the same time, B.R. Ambedkar, the champion of Dalit liberation and opponent of Gandhi embarrassed Gandhi and caste Hindus by deciding to quit Hinduism along with his thousands of followers. He was considering the options for the new religion they should join. Azariah had a personal interview with Ambedkar in 1936 'which deeply embarrassed and disturbed' him, and 'plunged him back into renewed efforts at ecumenism and reform within the church'.
Ambedkar criticized the church for denominational disunity and for the persistence within it of caste prejudice. Azariah recalled later that Ambedkar asked him the question: 'If we become Christians can we be all united in one Church wherever we live? And will we be entirely free from all caste prejudice?' To which Azariah responded: 'I have never felt so ashamed in my life because I couldn't say YES to either question - I could only come away in disgrace. Azariah often recalled Ambedkar's criticism of Christianity when seeking support in his later years for the unification of churches in South India (S.B. Harper, ‘In the shadow of the mahatma: Bishop V.S Azariah and the travails of Christianity in British India, William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000, pp.291-351.).
Ms. Mildrer Drescher : In 1945, Ambedkar published his punishing analysis of Gandhi, Congress policies towards untouchability and the impossibility of reform within Hinduism towards these issues, religion being precisely the ideological basis of exclusion, in his book What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables. Gandhi, of course, did not want a split within Hinduism and had argued strenuously that 'Harijans' (his term) were part of the total and totalizing Hindu family. For them to leave Hinduism would, for Gandhi, be to fracture the very cement that held majority of Indians together. This position was slightly ingenuous given his subsequent, if reluctant, agreement to Partition. Ambedkar deconstructed these arguments in his book and with the help of his American Methodist missionary friend Mildred Drescher, a US edition was published under the title, People at Bay. Ambedkar had, of course, studied in the US at Columbia
University and had corresponded with the leading black American thinker, writer and activist W.E.B. Du Bois; it is equally unlikely that he was ignorant of the existence and work of Dr. King, although he does not refer to him in his own writings in their collected form extending to seventeen volumes. We have, then, an interesting case of parallel lives, Ambedkar in the States and aware of the situation of black Americans at the time, and himself a 'person of color' studying at an almost totally white, academically if not socially, elite institution. King at a slightly later date somewhat to the geographical South, had embarked on a program of liberation not unlike that of 'untouchable' struggles in India of which he was clearly aware by 1956 – the theme had begun to surface in his sermons – and may well have been a motivating factor in his desire to go to India (John Clammer, 'King, and Ambedkar: a pregnant absence, I HAD A DREAM' a symposium on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr', December 2018.).
Speaking to Christians at Sholapur in January 1938, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar declared that he could say from his study of comparative religion that only two personalities had been able to captivate him – the Buddha and Christ. Here are some parts of the Dr. Ambedkar’s speech. Excerpt from the speech delivered to Indian Christians of Sholapur and published in ‘Janata’ on 05.02.1938, reproduced from ‘Dnyanodaya’ –
So, what did he mean when in 1938 he said that Jesus Christ had made a great impact on his mind? As a matter of fact, he never explained what this impact was. Keeping in view that in 1932 he had entered the Poona Pact with Gandhi promising not to do anything that would harm the interest of the Hindus he had distanced himself from Christians. However, after his disagreements with Mahatma Gandhi resurfaced in 1947, it can well be that in the years following 1932, he changed his thinking. If on the one hand, he recovered his appreciation of Christianity, then on the other he disapproved of some of its aspects. There is no evidence of any impact except that in passing which is a line in his article ‘Reformers and their Fate’ of 1956 where he wrote, ‘[Buddha’s] time was divided between feeding the lamp of his own spiritual life by solitary meditation, just as Jesus spent hours in lonely prayer. …’[B.R. Ambedkar. ‘Reformers and their Fate’ (1956), Writings and Speeches Vol-3*.* Mumbai, 1987. p.166.]
The mention of Jesus praying in seclusion for long hours is in the gospel of Mark 6.46. this indicates that Dr. Ambedkar was reading the gospels. But we do not know how long he was doing this. Obviously, the seclusion of Jesus in prayer struck him as resonating with the solitariness of Buddha in meditation. The reason for him to read the gospel was to acquaint himself with its style with the intent to recast the Buddhist scriptures for the Neo-Buddhists. This he did and called the book “The Buddha and his Gospel” but later renamed it “The Buddha and his Dhamma”.
Christianity continued to inspire Dr. Ambedkar even after he had decided to reinvent and embrace Buddhism. To no other religious sources, he went to find models and ideas except Christianity. The length of this article does not permit us to go into details of this, but from what is evident we can say that Dr. Ambedkar derived ideals, values, and inspiration not only from the bible but from the larger Christian tradition as well. His ideals were social, and he aimed to make them relevant and beneficial to society. This is evident from his insistence that justice was another name for liberty, equality, and fraternity. For him, these were not words of the French revolution but were biblical. The point for us to learn from Dr. Ambedkar is that religion and their scripture have an important role in establishing a society. The social structure of society can be just or unjust. If the society is established on egalitarianism, it is just. Conversely, if it is hierarchical, it is unjust, and the caste system is the worst form of it. This depends on what is the worldview of the dominant religion. Dr. Ambedkar had grasped that Bible propounded egalitarianism as the foundation of society which was fundamental for justice. One reason for this should be to reckon with the fact that Christianity is the oldest minority in South Asia with a continuous history. It is, therefore, the right of every South Asian to be informed about this faith. Babasaheb Dr. B.R. Ambedkar had three Gurus Buddha, Kabir, and Phule but his Hero was only one the great prophet ‘Moses’, he struggled like Moses in the modern era, He was the most educated and most degree holder in the entire cabinet of Modern India, he was alone who stood for women’s emancipation in his times when entire parliament stood against him for women’s rights he resigned from his position as a first law minister of modern India with integrity and self-respect. In his childhood, he was refused to sit in the classroom because of his Caste, but he emerged as the one who penned the bible of governance for the land known as India. In order to take his people out of the slavery of the web of Brahminism/Caste system, He marched with his people into a spiritual Jordan river ( neo- Buddhism) and left this world with the hope that one day there will be a time when his people reach the land of promise the enlightened India which is still in making, By coining the term ‘We the People ‘ which is ‘etched’ in the constitution of India, he gave the dream for all his people to get out of the wilderness, but still, we are in the wilderness marching around Jordan river, eagerly waiting for the ‘Lord who Saves’ to cross it and enter into the ‘land of Promise’, we are still pondering, seeking the truth, debrahminizing the myths and creating ways to march into the land of promise. Yes indeed, he was criticized that he looks like a ‘colonial hero’ because he wears a coat and tie. His simple reply was, if being half-naked like Gandhi is ‘nationalism’ then my people have been living the same for thousands of years, and none of them has gotten any certificate of patriotism. None of them can be proud of this so-called nation nor I have any ‘homeland’. He wears a blue coat and Tie, inspired by the emancipation proclamation, He says he is Republican, Brother of Christians, but still, Christians and other minorities continue to ignore and stand by the outdated icon Gandhi who has done tremendous damage, especially to religious minorities, that’s the greatest irony of the era of decolonization. It’s not time for others, it’s time for religious minorities, especially Christians to Remember their mission and mandate, Repent and Repair the system, correct the historical wrongs, like Colonialization. Christendom is history and it’s time to ‘DEBRAHMINIZE’ your own faith and narratives that will be the greatest honour to the legacy of Dr. Ambedkar.
Conclusion
Ambedkar’s conversion discussions with Hindu Mahasabha leaders and Jagjivan Ram reflect a pivotal moment in India’s social history, where the quest for Dalit dignity collided with competing visions of reform and unity. The Mahasabha’s negotiations, driven by nationalist anxieties, failed to address Ambedkar’s demand for structural equality, revealing the limits of Hindu unity. Jagjivan Ram’s reformist approach, rooted in faith and pragmatism, offered a counterpoint but could not bridge the gap with Ambedkar’s radical vision. The Great Conversion of 1956 was both a personal triumph for Ambedkar and a collective assertion of Dalit agency, challenging India to confront its caste legacy. As Ambedkar declared, “Religion is for man, not man for religion”—a principle that continues to resonate in the ongoing struggle for justice.
The Quest for True Dignity {#the-quest-for-true-dignity}
A Biblical Response to Ambedkar's Final Choice
The Crossroads of Liberation
The life of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was a relentless "quest for dignity" waged against the seemingly immovable mountain of the Hindu caste system, a system he rightly identified as an "irreformable" religious order designed to perpetuate oppression. After decades of failed attempts at internal reform, his 1935 declaration to renounce Hinduism ignited a two-decade-long search for an alternative spiritual home for himself and his people. This journey brought two competing visions for Dalit liberation into sharp conflict: Dr. Ambedkar's radical conviction that true emancipation required a complete religious, social, and psychological break from Hinduism, versus the reformist vision of figures like Jagjivan Ram and the Hindu Mahasabha, who sought to integrate Dalits within a reformed Hindu fold.
This chapter explores that historic clash of visions. It will affirm the profound justice of Dr. Ambedkar's quest while examining the ultimate criteria that shaped his final decision. His disillusionment with the political posturing of Hindu nationalists was justified, and his demand that any new faith must be built on the bedrock of equality was a righteous standard. Yet, his ultimate choice of Buddhism was shaped by pragmatic and strategic considerations of national identity, subordinating the question of ultimate truth to the question of cultural expediency. While compelling missionary narratives reveal a man wrestling honestly with the claims of Christ, he was tragically held back by these earthly calculations and, most grievously, by the shameful failure of the Indian Church to live out its own revolutionary faith.
Affirming the Diagnosis: The Righteousness of the Quest
Dr. Ambedkar's fundamental reason for his quest is profoundly just and correct: any religious system that divinely sanctions and perpetuates the dehumanization of a group of people is morally bankrupt and must be rejected. His powerful declaration, “Religion is for man, not man for religion,” is a truth that resonates with the very heart of Jesus's ministry. It rightly affirms that religious practice must serve to uplift and dignify humanity, not to crush it under the weight of oppressive and soul-destroying traditions.
This principle aligns perfectly with Jesus's own teachings. When He declared, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), He was making the exact same point: religious laws and systems must serve the well-being of people and glorify God, not become ends in themselves or tools for oppression. The prophets of the Old Testament consistently decried religious ritual that was divorced from social justice, with God declaring through the prophet Amos, "I hate, I despise your feasts... But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:21, 24). Dr. Ambedkar's rejection of a religion that failed to affirm the dignity he knew he possessed was a just and biblically-consistent act.
Indeed, the very standard by which he judged and rejected Hinduism—the standard of universal, equal human dignity—is an ideal that finds its deepest and most secure roots in the Biblical doctrine of the Imago Dei. Without a personal, transcendent Creator God who declares all humanity, without exception, to be made in His image, the concept of "dignity" can easily become a subjective preference or a mere social construct, liable to change with the political winds. Dr. Ambedkar’s lifelong quest for a faith that guaranteed equality was, in its essence, a search for a truth that is the very cornerstone of the Christian worldview.
Re-examining the Prescription: The Idolatry of Nation
While the premise of his quest was righteous, the primary point of disagreement is with the ultimate criteria that shaped Dr. Ambedkar's final decision. The text makes it clear that a major factor in his rejection of Christianity and Islam was his concern that conversion to a "non-Indic" religion would "denationalize the Depressed Classes," severing their cultural and historical ties to India. His choice of Buddhism was, in large part, a pragmatic and strategic decision to find a faith that offered equality while still being of "Indian-origin."
From a Biblical perspective, this elevates a secondary concern—national and cultural identity—to the level of a primary, decisive factor in a matter of ultimate truth. It subordinates the paramount question of, "What is true about God, humanity, and salvation?" to the political and cultural question of, "What is most expedient for our national identity?" The Bible teaches that allegiance to Jesus Christ as the one true King transcends and reorders all earthly allegiances, including national and cultural ones. To choose a faith based on its geographic origin or its perceived cultural fit is to miss the point of faith altogether. It is to place the nation, a created thing, in the place of the Creator as the ultimate arbiter of truth.
The Gospel Alternative: A Kingdom That Transcends All Borders
The Bible presents a faith that is radically trans-national and trans-cultural. The Christian faith is not "foreign" to any people group, because its scope is the entire world. Its founder, Jesus, was born into a specific culture, but His Great Commission was to "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19). The ultimate community the Bible describes is a heavenly multitude composed of people "from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9), all united not by a shared geography or culture, but by their shared worship of Christ the King. This vision offers a profound and complete solution to the problem of identity that Dr. Ambedkar wrestled with. This Biblical alternative is superior to his final choice for three key reasons:
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It Offers a Truly Universal Identity: Instead of being tied to a national identity, which can itself become a source of pride and exclusion, Christianity offers a new, primary identity "in Christ." This does not erase one's cultural heritage but places it in its proper perspective under a higher, universal citizenship in the Kingdom of God (Philippians 3:20). This is the ultimate answer to the divisions of caste, race, and nation, creating a new humanity where our unity in Christ is more fundamental than any earthly distinction.
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It Provides a Definitive Break from Caste: Because Christianity's source of authority—a sovereign God who stands outside of and judges all human systems—is "foreign" to the Indian context, it offers a complete and permanent break from the Hindu philosophical and religious framework that created and sanctified caste. An "Indian-origin" religion always runs the risk of being re-absorbed or syncretized into the dominant cultural system, as has often happened. The exclusive claim of Christ to be the only way to God allows for no such compromise; it dynamites the very foundation of caste and replaces it with a new foundation built on grace alone.
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It Addresses the Root Problem: Dr. Ambedkar's choice of Buddhism was based on its rationality and its ethical system. However, the Bible teaches that the root cause of caste is not a lack of knowledge or a faulty ethical framework, but the sin of pride in the human heart. The Gospel is not merely a new set of ethics to follow; it is the supernatural power of God to create a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26). It offers not just a new philosophy for the mind, but a new spiritual life from God.
The Liberator at the Gate
"The Quest for Dignity" movingly portrays Dr. Ambedkar's righteous journey away from an oppressive system and his sincere search for a faith that could offer true liberation. The accounts of his deep engagement with Christianity reveal a man wrestling honestly with the claims of Christ, who was tragically held back by earthly political calculations and, most grievously, by the shameful failure of the Indian Church to live out its own revolutionary faith.
Ultimately, Dr. Ambedkar’s quest for dignity finds its truest and most complete fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ. The radical break from the past, the new and unshakeable identity, and the new, unified family he sought are all core tenets of the Gospel. While he rightly identified the deep and scandalous flaws in the church, he missed seeing the flawless Savior to whom the church is called to bear witness. The liberator he sought—a greater Moses who could lead his people out of bondage into a promised land—is Jesus Christ, who breaks every spiritual and social chain and leads all who trust Him into the true promised land of eternal life and perfect justice.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Defender of Conversions and a Friend of Christianity {#dr.-babasaheb-ambedkar:-defender-of-conversions-and-a-friend-of-christianity}
I am deeply interested in Indian Christians because a large majority of them are drawn from the untouchable classes. My comments are those of a friend. They are not the strictures of an adversary. I have drawn attention to their weaknesses because I want them to be strong and I want them to be strong because I see great dangers for them ahead. They have to reckon with the scarcely veiled hostility of Mr. Gandhi to Christianity taking its roots in the Indian Social structure. But they have also to reckon with militant Hinduism masquerading as Indian Nationalism wrote Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar more than half a century ago. Excerpts from his writing ‘Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability- Religious’.
As Christians we may or may not agree with Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar on many metaphysical issues. We may disagree with his some of his analysis on social issues. We may even critique his life and works. But we should do all these things as friends of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar. Among all the luminary leaders of our nation, Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar was one genuine friend of Indian Christians for whose work we should thank God. Here in this article, we bring excerpts from Babasaheb Ambedkar’s writing ‘Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability-Religious’ under three subheadings:
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar- Defender of Conversion
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar- Refuting the Opposition of Gandhiji to Christian Conversion
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar- Critique of the Church Policies as its Well-Wisher
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar- Defender of Conversion
** **Babasaheb Ambedkar takes the arguments against conversion heads on and refutes them in his own way. Ambedkar writes:
“Four principal objections have been urged by the opponents against the conversion of the Untouchables:
(1) What can the Untouchables gain by conversion? Conversion can make no change in the status of the Untouchables.
(2) All religions are true; all religions are good. To change religion is a futility.
(3) The conversion of the Untouchables is political in its nature.
(4) The conversion of the Untouchables is not genuine as it is not based on faith.”
Ambedkar analyses and demonstrates that these arguments are based on fallacious assumptions and empty evidences. The arguments that Babasaheb Ambedkar gave are worth reading and in fact when adapted will make powerful cases against the critiques of conversion.
**Refutation for the Charge 4: **The conversion of the Untouchables is not genuine as it is not based on faith.
Ambedkar cites many historical precedents where the citizens got converted following the conversion of the King. He cites the European cases where thousands were baptized because the King was first converted. He then argues that compared to those conversions, the current conversions are genuine.
Ambedkar writes: “Today religion has become a piece of ancestral property. It passes from father to son so does inheritance. What genuineness is there in such cases of conversion? The conversion of the Untouchables if it did take place would take after full deliberation of the value of religion and the virtue of the different religions. How can such a conversion be said to be not a genuine conversion? On the other hand, it would be the first case in history of genuine conversion. It is therefore difficult to understand why the genuineness of the conversion of the Untouchables should be doubted by anybody.”
**Refutation for the Charge 3: **The conversion of the Untouchables is political in its nature.
Ambedkar writes: The third objection is an ill-considered objection. What political gain will accrue to the Untouchables from their conversion has been defined by nobody. If there is a political gain, nobody has proved that it is a direct inducement to conversion. The opponents of conversion do not even seem to know that a distinction has to be made between a gain being a direct inducement to conversion and its being only an incidental advantage. This distinction cannot be said to be a distinction without a difference. Conversion may result in a political gain to the Untouchables. It is only where a gain is a direct inducement that conversion could be condemned as immoral or criminal.
Unless therefore the opponents of conversion prove that the conversion desired by the Untouchables is for political gain and for nothing else their accusation is baseless. If political gain is only an incidental gain, then there is nothing criminal in conversion. The fact, however, is that conversion can bring no new political gain to the Untouchables. Under the constitutional law of India every religious community has got the right to separate political safeguards. The Untouchables in their present condition enjoy political rights similar to those which are enjoyed by the Muslims and the Christians.
Note: Under the current provisions of the Indian constitution, Dalits stand to lose if they convert to Christianity. They will lose the reservation, and they face the persecution from Hindu terrorists.
**Refutation for Charge 2: **All religions are true, all religions are good. To change religion is a futility.
Ambedkar points out that: The second objection rests on the premise that all religions teach the same thing. It is from the premise that a conclusion is drawn that since all religions teach the same thing there is no reason to prefer one religion to other. It may be conceded that all religions agree in holding that the meaning of life is to be found in the pursuit of ' good '. Up to this point the validity of the premise may be conceded. But when the premise goes beyond and asserts that because of this there is no reason to prefer one religion to another it becomes a false premise. Religions may be alike in that they all teach that the meaning of life is to be found in the pursuit of ' good '. But religions are not alike in their answers to the question 'What is good?' In this they certainly differ. One religion holds that brotherhood is good, another caste and untouchability is good.
Further Ambedkar argues: In raising the second objection the Hindu is merely trying to avoid an examination of Hinduism on its merits. It is an extraordinary thing that in the controversy over conversion not a single Hindu has had the courage to challenge the Untouchables to say what is wrong with Hinduism. The Hindu is merely taking shelter under the attitude generated by the science of comparative religion. The science of comparative religion has broken down the arrogant claims of all revealed religions that they alone are true and all others which are not the results of revelation are false. That revelation was too arbitrary, too capricious test to be accepted for distinguishing a true religion from a false was undoubtedly a great service which the science of comparative religion has rendered to the cause of religion. But it must be said to the discredit of that science that it has created the general impression that all religions are good and there is no use and purpose in discriminating them.
Note: At this point, though we disagree with Ambedkar that the science of comparative religion has ‘broken down the arrogant claims of all revealed religions that they alone are true’ (as we think the charges of comparative religion has been clearly answered by Christian apologists from time to time), we agree with Ambedkar that each religion has to be examined on its merits and should not be dismissed under the statements that ‘all religions are true’.
**Refutation for Charge 1: What can the Untouchables gain by conversion? Conversion can make no change in the status of the Untouchables. **Ambedkar writes: The first objection is the only objection which is worthy of serious consideration. The objection proceeds on the assumption that religion is a purely personal matter between man and God. It is supernatural. It has nothing to do with social. The argument is no doubt sensible. But its foundations are quite false. At any rate, it is a one-sided view of religion and that too based on aspects of religion which are purely historical and not fundamental.
Ambedkar then examines the origin of religion from his own perspective and the role of religion in the society. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Indian constitution and the one of the important figure in the Indian history who organized Dalits politically, quotes Prof. Charles A Ellwood:
The function of religion is the same as the function of Law and Government. It is a means by which society exercises its control over the conduct of the individual in order to maintain the social order. It may not be used consciously as a method of social control over the individual. Nonetheless the fact is that religion acts as a means of social control. As compared to religion, Government and Law are relatively inadequate means of social control. The control through law and order does not go deep enough to secure the stability of the social order. The religious sanction, on account of its being supernatural has been on the other hand the most effective means of social control, far more effective than law and Government have been or can be. Without the support of religion, law and Government are bound to remain a very inadequate means of social control. Religion is the most powerful force of social gravitation without which it would be impossible to hold the social order in its orbit.
After examining the role of religion in the society, Ambedkar compares Christian faith with Hinduism.
Ambedkar writes: This is the reason why Lord Balfour was justified in putting some very straight-questions to the positivists before he could accept Positivism to be superior to Christianity. He asked in quite trenchant language: " what has (positivism) to say to the more obscure multitude who are absorbed, and well-nigh overwhelmed, in the constant struggle with daily needs and narrow cares; who have but little leisure or inclination to consider the precise role they are called on to play in the great drama of 'humanity' and who might in any case be puzzled to discover its interest or its importance? Can it assure them that there is no human being so insignificant as not to be of infinite worth in the eyes of Him who created the Heavens, or so feeble but that his action may have consequences of infinite moment long after this material system shall have crumbled into nothingness? Does it offer consolation to those who are bereaved, strength to the weak, forgiveness to the sinful, rest to those who are weary and heavy laden?"
The Untouchables can very well ask the protagonists of Hinduism the very questions which Lord Balfour asked the Positivists. Nay the Untouchables can ask many more. They can ask: Does Hinduism recognize their worth as human beings? Does it stand for their equality? Does it extend to them the benefit of liberty? Does it at least help to forge the bond of fraternity between them and the Hindus? Does it teach the Hindus that the Untouchables are their kindred? Does it say to the Hindus it is a sin to treat the Untouchables as being neither man nor beast? Does it tell the Hindus to be righteous to the Untouchables? Does it preach to the Hindus to be just and humane to them? Does it inculcate upon the Hindus the virtue of being friendly to them? Does it tell the Hindus to love them, to respect them and to do them no wrong? In fine, does Hinduism universalize the value of life without distinction?
Ambedkar then progresses to examine one more charge of opponents of conversion by saying the opponents of conversion are determined not to be satisfied even if the logic of conversion was irrefutable. They will insist upon asking further questions.
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar- Refuting the Opposition of Gandhiji to Christian Conversion
**Ambedkar points out: **
Mr. Gandhi's opposition to Christian conversion is by now quite well known. And since 1936 he has become quite a virulent adversary of all missionary propaganda. He particularly objects to the missionaries spreading the Christian Gospel among the Untouchables. His antagonism to Christian Missions and the conversion of Untouchables to Christianity is based on certain propositions which have been enunciated by him in quite unmistakable terms. I think the following four propositions may be taken to sum up his position. I give them in his own words. He says:
1. " My position is that all religions are fundamentally equal. We must have the same innate respect for all religions as we have for our own. Mind you, not mutual toleration but equal respect." (Harijan, 1936, pg 130).
II. " All I want them (the Missionaries) to do is to live Christian lives, not to annotate them. [Harijan, 1936, P. 353] Let your lives speak to us. The blind who do not see the rose, perceive its fragrance. That is the secret of the Gospel of the rose. But the Gospel that Jesus preached is more subtle and fragrant than the Gospel of the rose. If the rose needs no agents, much less does the Gospel of Christ need agents". ([Harijan, 1936, P. 86). As to the work of the Christian Missions he says:
III. "The social work of the missions is undertaken not for its own sake, but as an aid to the salvation of those who receive social service. [Harijan, 1936,pg 137] . . . .. While you give medical help, you expect the reward in the shape of your patients becoming Christians." [Harijan, 18th July 1936, P. 178]
As to the Untouchables he says—
IV. " I do maintain . .. .. that the vast masses of Harijans and for that matter of Indian humanity, cannot understand the presentation of Christianity, and that, generally speaking, conversion, wherever it has taken place, has not been a spiritual act in any sense of the term. They are conversions of convenience. [Harijan, 1936, pg 140-141] They (the Harijans) can no more distinguish between the relative merits (words omitted?) than can a cow. Harijans have no mind, no intelligence, no sense of difference between God and no-God." [Harijan 1936, P. 130]
**Babasaheb Ambedkar then points out the double standard of Gandhiji: **
It is as recent as it is strange. I do not know of any declaration made by Mr. Gandhi expressing in such clear and determined manner opposition to the conversion of the Untouchables to Islam. The Muslims have made no secret of their plan to convert the Untouchables. The plan was given out openly from the Congress platform by the late Maulana Mohomed Ali when he presided over the annual session of the Congress held at Coconada in 1923.
**Babasaheb Ambedkar wonders as to the reasons for this obvious double standard of Gandhiji and then writes: **
Why there should be a different measuring rod today because it is the Christians that are involved is more than one can understand. Mr. George Joseph was well within bounds when he said: “The only difference is that there are 75 millions of Muslims and there are only 6 millions of Christians. It may be worth-while making peace with Muslims because they can make themselves a thorn in the side of Nationalism: Christians do not count, because they are small in numbers."
**Ambedkar then refutes Gandhiji: **
But apart from this difference in his attitude towards Muslim and Christian propaganda, have Mr. Gandhi's arguments against Christian Missions, which I have summarized above, any validity ? They are just clever. There is nothing profound about them. They are the desperate arguments of a man who is driven to wall. Mr. Gandhi starts out by making a distinction between equal tolerance and equal respect. The phrase "equal respect " is a new phrase. What distinction he wants to make thereby is difficult to recognize. But the new phraseology is not without significance. The old phrase "equal tolerance" indicated the possibility of error. " Equal respect " on the other hand postulates that all religions are equally true and equally valuable. If I have understood him correctly then his premise is utterly fallacious, both logically as well as historically. Assuming the aim of religion is to reach God— which I do not think it is—and religion is the road to reach him, it cannot be said that every road is sure to lead to God. Nor can it be said that every road, though it may ultimately lead to God, is the right road. It may be that (all existing religions are false and) the perfect religion is still to be revealed. But the fact is that religions are not all true and therefore the adherents of one faith have a right, indeed a duty, to tell their erring friends what they conceive to be the truth.
That Untouchables are no better than a cow is a statement which only an ignoramus, or an arrogant person, can venture to make. It is arrant nonsense. Mr. Gandhi dares to make it because he has come to regard himself as so great a man that the ignorant masses will not question his declarations, and the dishonest intelligentsia will uphold him in whatever he says. Strangest part of his argument lies in wishing to share the material things the Christian Missions can provide. He is prepared to share their spiritual treasures provided the Missionaries invite him to share their material treasures "without obligation".* (What he minds is an exchange.) It is difficult to understand why Mr. Gandhi argues that services rendered by the Missionaries are baits or temptations, and that the conversions are therefore conversions of convenience. **Why is it not possible to believe that these services by Missionaries indicate that service to suffering humanity is for Christians an essential requirement of their religion ? Would that be a wrong view of the process by which a person is drawn towards Christianity? Only a prejudiced mind would say. Yes. **(Emphasis ours)
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar- Critique of the Church Policies as her Well-Wisher
Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar then proceeds to critically examine the policies of Church and one of her doctrines. While we certainly disagree with his critique on the doctrine, for which we will cite some of the reasons, we think the Church will hugely benefit from his critique on certain practical problems faced by the Church. We therefore start with his doctrinal critique which we respectfully disagree.
**Doctrinal Critique of Original Sin: Ambedkar writes- **
The second reason for the absence of any urge is due I am afraid to the teachings of the Christian Church. The Christian Church teaches that the fall of man is due to his original Sin and the reason why one must become Christian is because in Christianity there is promise of forgiveness of sins. Whatever may be the theological and evangelistic basis of this doctrine there is no doubt that from a sociological point of view it is a doctrine which is fraught with disaster. This Christian teaching is a direct challenge to sociology which holds that the fall of man is due to an unpropitious environment and not to the sins of man. There is no question that the sociological view is the correct view, and the Christian dogma only misleads man. It sets him on a wrong trail. This is exactly what has happened with the untouchable Christians. Instead of being taught that his fall is due to a wrong social and religious environment and that for his improvement he must attack that environment he is told that his fall is due to his sin.
Note: Here we wish to point out that the doctrine of original sin does not rule out wrong doings of environment or establishment. In fact, the concept of original sin (i.e. all human beings are sinners) necessitates the Christians to work for an environment or establishment where power is decentralized and distributed across society (democracy with different branches of executive, judiciary and legislative) as it mistrusts one single individual (monarchy or caliph) or caste or group (aristocracy) to hold the entire power. In fact, the concept of original sin gives much more power in the hand of Dalits to work against Brahmanism than Buddhism. For example, the concept of original sin assumes that all human beings are created equally, all human beings have fallen equally, and all human beings have equal access to salvation which is direct contradiction with the Hindu concept that Brahmins are created superior, Brahmins are not fallen like Dalits and Brahmins have greater access to salvation. Christianity destroys the root cause of caste system unlike Buddhism which continues to accept the root cause of caste system (Karma and reincarnation) though it denies the caste system itself.
**Christian Service Reaches Caste Hindus More than to Communities of Indian Christians: **
Ambedkar points out that: ** **It is necessary to bear in mind that Indian Christians are drawn chiefly from the Untouchables and, to a much less extent, from low ranking Shudra castes. The Social Services of Missions must, therefore, be judged in the light of the needs of these classes. What are those needs? The services rendered by the Missions in the fields of education and medical relief are beyond the ken of the Indian Christians. They go mostly to benefit the high caste Hindus. The Indian Christians are either too poor or too devoid of ambition to undertake the pursuit of higher education. High schools, colleges and hostels maintained by the Missions are, therefore, so much misplaced and misapplied expenditure from the point of view of the uplift of Indian Christians. In the same way much of the medical aid provided by the Missions goes to the Caste Hindus. This is especially the case with regard to hospitals.
Note: This is a point which we must examine ourselves and if true, requires a realignment of our resources for the communities that most Christians belong. We must recall the words of inspired author James in the context: “Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonoured the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? (James 2: 5-7). This is quite true in case of caste Hindus too.
**Tolerating Paganism among Christian Communities: **Ambedkar writes:
There is another thing which shows that Christianity has not been effective in wiping paganism out of the converts. Almost all the converts retain the Hindu forms of worship and believe in Hindu superstition. A convert to Christianity will be found to worship his family Gods and also the Hindu gods such as Rama, Krishna, Shankar, Vishnu, etc. A convert to Christianity will be found to go on a pilgrimage to places which are sacred to the Hindus. He will go to Pandharpur and make offerings to Vithoba. He will go to Jejuri and sacrifice a goat to the blood-thirsty god, Khandoba. On the Ganesh Chaturthi he will refuse to see the moon, on a day of eclipse he will go to the sea and bathe—superstitions observed by the Hindus. It is notorious that the Christians observe the social practices of the Hindus in the matter of births, deaths and marriages. I say nothing about the prevalence of the Hindu social practices among the Christians. In as much as these social practices have no religious significance it matters very little what they are. But the same cannot be said of religious observances. They are incompatible with Christian belief and Christian way of life. The question is why has Christianity not been able to stamp them out? The answer is that the Christian Missionaries although they have been eager to convert persons to Christianity have never put up a determined fight to uproot paganism from the Convert. Indeed, they have tolerated it.
Note: This is again something we must insist on all Christians. There cannot be any compromise in uprooting paganism from the Christian faith. Speak openly against such pagan practices among any Christians. If we have fewer friends due to that, so be it.
**Tolerating the Evil Caste System among Christian Communities: **Ambedkar points out those missionaries who advocated caste system among Christian communities under the false grab of making gospel acceptable to Indian communities.
Ambedkar quotes: Dr. Heyne in 1814 wrote: Missionaries, in many instances, have fallen into a mistake of a very injurious nature to their rapid or even ultimate success. In converting a Hindu to Christianity, they oblige him to adopt a line of conduct by which he loses his caste; this, in India is considered such a disgrace. that it must present a powerful obstacle to conversion. But the political division of the Hindus is no part of their religious tenets, though it has been so mistaken by the most enlightened. In giving to the Hindus the Christian religion, allow them to retain their caste, and they could be found to embrace it without reluctance, and in considerable numbers."
Note: While the general attitude of the Christians towards the caste system have changed after realizing that it is not another social system but a false doctrine that opposes the Gospel of Jesus (i.e. all are created equal, all have fallen and all have equal access to Salvation through Jesus), caste system in some form still prevails in some Christian communities. We must resolutely oppose any form of caste system in any Church and make it a point not even to entertain those who, if any, preach caste in Christianity under the pretext of making Christianity easier. We must oppose it publicly as Apostle Paul opposed when there was a division between Jews and Gentiles.
**Lack of Christian Movements against Untouchability: **Ambedkar writes:
The first reason is to be found in the complete absence of desire on the part of the educated among the Christians to take up the cause of the community and fight for it. This is due in my judgment to the fact that within the Christian Community the educated class and the mass has no kinship. The Christian Community is a composite community. In some places it is divided into touchables and untouchables. In all places it is divided into high class and low class. The educated class is largely drawn from the touchable or the higher class. This educated class being detached from the lower or the untouchable class of Christians is not charged with the wants, the pains, cravings, desires, aspirations of the latter and does not care for their interest. The untouchable Christians are therefore leaderless and therefore unable to mobilize for the redress of their wrongs.
The second reason why there is no movement among the untouchable Christians is due to certain faults in the mental make-up of the convert. The mental make-up of the untouchable Christian is characterized by a complete absence of any urge to break his bonds. What is the reason for this absence of any urge in the untouchable Christian ? It seems to me that there are two reasons which account for this. One reason is to be found in the antecedent of the untouchable who becomes a Christian. An untouchable becomes a Christian for some advantage, or he becomes a Christian because he likes the teaching of the Bible. But the case is very rare of an untouchable becoming a Christian because of a positive discontent or dislike of the Hindu religious teachings. The result is that Christianity becomes only an addendum to his old faith. It does not become a substitute for his old faith. He cherishes both and observes them on occasions appropriate to each.
Note: We have already answered Ambedkar’s critique of Christian doctrine of original sin which is the second reason in the second part which he cites. However, it is for the benefit of the Christian community to examine the other reasons what Ambedkar cites.
**Final Word: ** Ambedkar concludes his essay by what seems to have been a prophetic voice which we must makes ponder at some of his points.
He wrote:
I do not know what Indian Christians will think of what I have said of the weaknesses which infect their life. One thing I can say. It is this–I am deeply interested in Indian Christians because a large majority of them are drawn from the untouchable classes. My comments are those of a friend. They are not the strictures of an adversary. I have drawn attention to their weaknesses because I want them to be strong and I want them to be strong because I see great dangers for them ahead. They have to reckon with the scarcely veiled hostility of Mr. Gandhi to Christianity taking its roots in the Indian Social structure. But they have also to reckon with militant Hinduism masquerading as Indian Nationalism. What this militant Hinduism will do to Christians and Christianity can be seen from what happened at Brindaban very recently. If newspaper reports are true a crowd of mild Hinduism quietly went and burned down the Mission buildings in Brindaban and warned the missionary that if he rebuilt it they would come and burn it down again?! This may be the solitary instance of misguided patriots, or this may be just a piece of what the Hindus are planning to get rid of Christians and Christianity. If it is the shadow of events to come then Indian Christians must be prepared to meet them. How can they do that except by removing the weaknesses I have referred to? Let all Indian Christians ponder.** **(Emphasis ours).
Christ the Sovereign {#christ-the-sovereign}
The True Foundation for a Liberated Society
The All-Encompassing Nature of Injustice
The collection of texts detailing Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's lifelong struggle presents a powerful and tragic narrative. He correctly identifies the Hindu caste system not as a mere social flaw, but as a divinely sanctioned religious order of "graded inequality" that is both irreformable and fundamentally destructive to human dignity. His exhaustive analysis leads him to the inescapable conclusion that for the Untouchables, true liberation is impossible within the Hindu fold. The only viable path, he argues, is a radical break through religious conversion—an act of social, political, and psychological emancipation to gain a new identity and join a new community defined by equality.
This chapter seeks to engage with Dr. Ambedkar's profound analysis, affirming his brilliant diagnosis of the problem while offering a more foundational and comprehensive solution. His searing indictment of caste as a monstrous distortion of human society is a work of profound social critique. His core insight that religion is not a "purely personal matter between man and God" but is a "powerful force of social gravitation" that shapes the entire social order is absolutely correct. Religion, rightly understood, has implications for every aspect of life. However, while Dr. Ambedkar identified the right battle, he misidentified the ultimate combatants. The liberation he sought finds its ultimate fulfillment not in a better human system, but in the all-encompassing Lordship of Jesus Christ over every aspect of creation.
Affirming the Diagnosis: The Tyranny of a Collapsed Creation
Dr. Ambedkar’s ability to see and so brilliantly articulate the systemic, all-of-life nature of the injustice of caste is a gift of God's grace, which allows even those who do not acknowledge Him to discern foundational truths about His world. His description of the caste system, where a religious hierarchy dictates and absorbs every aspect of a person’s existence—their vocation, their family, their social standing, and their legal rights—is a perfect illustration of a gross violation of God's created order.
The Bible teaches that God, in His wisdom, ordained various domains, or spheres, of life. He designed human society to flourish through the distinct yet interconnected functions of the family, the church, the state, the market, and the academy. Each of these spheres has its own unique authority and responsibility, standing directly under the sovereignty of Christ. No single sphere has the right to tyrannically dominate or absorb the others. The family has its authority in nurturing life, the state in administering public justice, the church in proclaiming the Gospel, and so on.
Caste represents an idolatrous collapse of these distinct spheres into one unholy, static hierarchy. It is a system where one sphere—a corrupt and man-made religious structure—unlawfully seizes total authority, placing a human system in the place of God's dynamic and diverse created order. It dictates to the family whom one can marry, to the market what work one can perform, and to the state who is and is not worthy of justice. Dr. Ambedkar’s cry for freedom from this all-encompassing system was a righteous and deeply resonant demand for the restoration of creational justice—a cry for society to be structured as its Creator intended. Only a worldview that recognizes God as the Sovereign Creator of these distinct spheres can fully explain why caste is not just socially inconvenient but a fundamental rebellion against the very architecture of human society.
Identifying the True Conflict: A Battle of Kingdoms, Not Philosophies
Dr. Ambedkar correctly identified that there is an antithesis—a fundamental, irreconcilable conflict—between the core principles of Hinduism (graded inequality) and the principles of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" that he so passionately championed. However, he located this antithesis as a struggle between competing human philosophies and social systems. His proposed solution was therefore to replace one faulty human system (Hinduism) with what he perceived as a better one (Buddhism), based on its rationality and ethical teachings.
Herein lies the loving disagreement. Dr. Ambedkar identified the right battle but mistook the ultimate combatants. The true antithesis is not between Hinduism and Buddhism, or between one social system and another. It is a spiritual antithesis that cuts across every sphere of life, a battle between two all-encompassing, life-and-death principles: the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rebellion of the fallen human heart. The very ideals of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" that Dr. Ambedkar cherished are not free-floating concepts discoverable by reason alone; they are the historical and theological fruit of a Christian worldview, flowing directly from the truth that a Sovereign God created all people in His image and that in Christ, all human distinctions are rendered secondary. In seeking these ideals while rejecting their source, Dr. Ambedkar sought to harvest the fruit while severing it from its root.
The Gospel Alternative: Every Square Inch for Christ
The Biblical alternative is not simply to choose a "better religion" as a tool for social improvement, but to bow the knee to the Lordship of Jesus Christ over every square inch of existence. There is not a single aspect of human life, from the halls of parliament to the marketplace, from the artist's studio to the scientist's laboratory, over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not declare: "This is Mine!" This means that Christian conversion is not an escape from the world into a private spiritual realm; it is the enlistment into Christ's army to reclaim every sphere of life for His glory. This has radical and concrete implications for the social, political, and economic order that Dr. Ambedkar sought to reform:
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Socially: It demands the creation of a visible, counter-cultural community—the Church—where caste is not merely frowned upon but is actively and joyfully annihilated as a direct denial of our spiritual unity as one new family in Christ (Galatians 3:28). This new community serves as a signpost to the world of what true humanity looks like under the reign of its true King.
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Politically: It demands that Christians work for a just state that understands its God-given, limited role. As a distinct sphere, the state's task is to uphold public justice, defend the weak, punish evil, and protect the God-given rights and freedoms of all its citizens, including the right to convert and worship freely (Romans 13:1-7). It is a servant of God for the good of the people, not their master.
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Economically: It demands the pursuit of an economic life where every person is treated as an image-bearer of God, possessing the dignity to work, create, and provide for their families, free from the fatalistic bondage that assigns them a degrading economic function from birth.
This vision is superior because it is more foundational and comprehensive. It doesn't just replace one set of social rules with another; it transforms the root principles upon which all social structures are built. It provides a theological mandate for justice in every sphere that is not dependent on political pragmatism or social advantage, but on the unchangeable character and decree of the Sovereign God. It motivates action not merely for human liberation, but for the glory of Christ the King.
The King and His Kingdom
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was a brilliant diagnostician of India's social pathology, a gift of God's grace to his nation. His searing indictment of caste as a tyrannical system that violates human dignity is profoundly true, and his insight that religion has all-of-life consequences is a vital truth.
However, in his quest for liberation, he saw the great spiritual war of history as a conflict between competing human systems. He sought to embrace the political and social fruits of the Christian worldview—liberty, equality, fraternity—without submitting to their root: the absolute and all-encompassing Lordship of Jesus Christ. The historic failures of the Indian Church, which he so accurately documented, tragically obscured the perfection of its King.
The ultimate fulfillment of Dr. Ambedkar's quest for dignity is found in the recognition that every square inch of Indian society—its politics, its markets, its families, and its social order—belongs to Christ. The abolition of caste is therefore not just a desirable social project but a non-negotiable demand of the Kingdom of God. True conversion is not a mere change of community for social gain, but the beginning of a joyous, lifelong mission to bring every sphere of human existence into loving submission to the rule and reign of its rightful King, Jesus Christ, who alone is the source of all true justice, dignity, and liberation.
Bible Indirect Impact On Indian Constitution {#bible-indirect-impact-on-indian-constitution}
The Constitution of India's preamble, as amended up to July 2024, reads as follows:
WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC and to secure to all its citizens:
JUSTICE, social, economic and political.
LIBERTY of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship.
EQUALITY of status and of opportunity.
and to promote among them all FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity and integrity of the Nation.
IN OUR CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY this twenty-sixth day of November 1949, do Hereby Adopt, Enact And Give To Ourselves This Constitution
The "Fraternity" in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution refers to a sense of brotherhood, unity, and solidarity among the people of India. It emphasizes promoting a collective spirit that transcends differences of caste, creed, religion, or region, fostering social cohesion and mutual respect.
Dr B.R. Ambedkar, On Why is Fraternity essential? Fraternity is the name for the disposition of an individual to treat men as the object of reverence and love and the desire to be in unity with his fellow beings. This statement is well expressed by Paul when he said, ‘Of one blood are all nations of men, There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female; for yet are all one in Christ Jesus.’ Equally well was it expressed when the Pilgrim Fathers on their landing at Plymouth said: “We are knit together as a body in the most sacred covenant of the Lord .... by virtue of which we hold ourselves tied to all care of each other’s good and of the whole.” These sentiments are of the essence of fraternity. Fraternity strengthens socialites and gives to each individual a stronger personal interest in practically consulting the welfare of others. It leads him to identify his feelings more and more with their good, or at least with an even greater degree of practical consideration for it. With a disposition to fraternity, he comes as though instructively to be conscious of himself as being one who of course pays a regard to others. The good of others becomes to him a thing naturally and necessarily to be attended to like any of the physical conditions of our existence. Where people do not feel that entireness of sympathy with all others, concordance in the general direction of their conduct is impossible. For a person in whom social feeling is not developed cannot but bring himself to think of the rest of his fellow-beings as rivals struggling with him for the means of happiness when he must endeavour to defeat in order that he may succeed in himself (Dr B.R. Ambedkar Writings & Speeches Vol. 7, P. 97-98.).
It is an acceptable fact with shreds of evidence that the Western Constitutions partly inspired the Indian constitution (we lent the concept of the Rule of Law from Britain, Fundamental Rights from the United States, and so on). Even after independence, our Constitution retained certain statutory provisions that were created during the British regime (The Indian Penal Code (1860), The Indian Evidence Act (1872), The Civil Procedure Code (1908), etc.). The other way around, the Constitution of the West was inspired by Biblical Laws. It's palpable that our constitution unswervingly or meanderingly has the influence of Biblical laws. This chapter efforts to narrow down the attention on certain laws of the Indian constitution thus comparing them with Biblical laws and drawing resemblances between them.
Indian Constitution is among the world's well-written and finely crafted constitutions. It holds the prestigious record for being the longest written constitution in the world with 1,46,385 words. India's diverse culture, tradition, language, and practices made the constitutional framing more challenging.
No other country in the world is diversified like India (Mishra & Kumar, 2014). To fit this nation of diversity under a single constitutional setup was like pulling a large mammoth and the chief architect of our constitution DR. B.R. Ambedkar has gloriously pulled it. DR. B.R. Ambedkar invested his knowledge and time and risked his health to complete the grandeur and historically significant constitution (Keer, 1954). Because of the sacrificial efforts of DR. B.R. Ambedkar and his team members, we were able to receive the Indian constitution which has been standing for ages. The constitution was written considering the past, meeting the needs of the present with a wide futuristic approach. This is the reason, for the Constitution written in the middle of the 20th century to stand tall still with reliability and validity in this 21st-century AI era and judge the Indians with integrity.
In the 1st century A.D. Christianity started to spread to the world. The teachings about Jesus Christ, healing, and miracles performed by the disciples and apostles in the name of Jesus made people believe in Christ and convert from Polytheism to Christianity (MacMullen, R. (1983). Two Types of Conversion to Early Christianity. Vigiliae Christianae, 37, 174-192.). The early Middle Ages, which started in the 5th century A.D and continued till the 10th century A.D witnessed the widespread of Christianity across Western countries through Monks, Missionaries, Nuns, and even common people (Fletcher , R. . (1999). The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (1st ed.). University of California Press). The teachings from both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible influenced the peoples of the West in their culture, way of living, family values, traditions, morals, and ethics. Biblical laws have become an integral and undeniable part of the day-to-day life of the people of the West (Mangalwadi, V. (2012). The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. Thomas Nelson Publishers.). Eminent personalities like John Locke, and Samuel Rutherford, among others who lived during that time, were inspired by the Bible and their philosophies that influenced the people had Biblical values in them. In addition to this, the Judeo-Christian traditions were deeply rooted in the societies of the West at that time (Is there a Judeo-Christian Tradition? A European Perspective (Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts Book 4), 2016). Generally, while framing up a constitution for any nation, the culture, values, tradition, history, societal structure, belief system of the people, rituals, people’s expectations, and demands will be considered by the framers of the constitution. For many centuries, western societies were full of Christians, and nearly all the countries of the West were regarded as Christian nations. Thinktanks, philosophers, politicians, administrative/government officials, businessmen, common people, and even the framers of the Constitution were almost Christians, and their lifestyle and values were constructed upon Biblical teachings. So Biblical laws were naturally blended with the Western constitution while framing it up. The launching credentials of Western countries have references to God and Divine Law, thus crediting their faith in Christian God. For example, the US Declaration of Independence mentions “The Laws of Nature and Nature’s God” (Vile , 2018).
For two centuries India was under British rule and even before the framing of the constitution, India and its people were habituated to the governmental system of the British colonial legacy (Austin, 1973). Legendary leaders of New India like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and others mostly had their higher educations in Western countries and their ideologies were heavily inspired by the West. The chief architect of our constitution DR. B.R. Ambedkar did his higher studies in Western countries. He had a bundle of world knowledge and politicized his followers with progressive and thought-provoking ideologies. His knowledge of Western society and politics also influenced the Indian constitution (Stroud , 2023).
The framers of the Indian Constitution wanted the Constitution to meet the needs and expectations of the Indian people and at the same time to compete with other nations’ constitutions with a global standard. They never hesitated to compare, study, analyse, and adapt the best from other nations’ constitutions in terms of concepts, philosophies, and laws (Basu , 2015). When compared to other nations, the constitutions of the West were well-written and excellent. They were equipped with a well-established and tested mechanism, and they executed the law in a detailed and systematic manner. The framers found them to be useful and were more heavily inspired by the West than other nation’s constitutions. For example, the system of parliament was inspired by the British Constitution, the Irish Constitution gave Directive Principles of State Policy, and the US Constitution gave Fundamental Rights (Basu , 2015) (Austin, 1973).
Let us look at THE BIBLE'S GREAT CLAIM "Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the LORD my God commanded me, that ye should do so in the land whither ye go to possess it.
Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?" (Deuteronomy 4:5-8).
Several things stand out plainly in the above text quoted from the Holy Bible:
1) The Bible is not only a spiritual book dealing with things above. It has statutes and judgments revealed upon its pages, which enables its adherents to live a meaningful life of wisdom and understanding here on earth.
2) The laws and statutes taught in it are unique and superior to the laws governing any other nations of the world. This must be so if the Bible is the sole written revelation from the one and only God.
3) The wisdom and understanding acquired by virtue of these Statutes and Judgments is obvious to anyone who considers them carefully.
As rightly pointed out by some of the old commentators upon the above text:
"'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people'.-- Almost all the nations in the earth showed that they had formed this opinion of the Jews, by borrowing from them the principal part of their civil code. Take away what Asia and Europe, whether ancient or modern, have borrowed from the Mosaic laws, and you leave little behind that can be called excellent" (Adam Clark).
"Now there was not any nation then in being, nor any since, to be compared with the nation of the Jews, for the wise and wholesome laws given unto them; no, not the more cultivated and civilized nations, as the Grecians and Romans, who had the advantage of such wise lawgivers as they were accounted, as Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, and others; and indeed the best laws that they had seem to be borrowed from the Jews" (Dr. John Gill).
If the Bible is the Word of God, then the legal system it provides must be unique and incomparably superior to what mere human minds could devise. Every other nation must be able to objectively discern this uniqueness. This paper seeks to examine this great claim made by the Bible and find-out whether we as Indians can verify this claim in the context of the Indian Jurisprudence.
Let us see how THE BIBLE'S GREAT CLAIM PROVED IN THE INDIAN CONTEXT
The Indian legal system is a blessing bestowed upon this nation by the Holy Bible. This may sound like an exaggeration or a claim from an extreme bigot. But the call is to take this claim only as a hypothesis and examine the truth of it with a candid mind. The primary purpose of this paper is to demonstrate this claim within the limited scope of the Indian Constitution, proving that there is no God to whom this country owes as much an incalculable debt for its legal system, as its indebtedness to the God of the Bible. Besides establishing the clear and unmistakable nexus between the Biblical precepts and the legal principles, there will be a careful attempt to also negate the possibility of any contribution from any alternate religious sources in shaping the civil life of this country. It is arguable that the religions which are so mutually exclusive could not have been the collective sources or contributories to a legal system that reflects the ideals of just one of them to the derogation of the others.
When India became independent, we chose to continue using several statutory enactments made by the British during their regime. The Indian Penal Code 1860, The Indian Contracts act 1872, The Indian Evidence Act 1872, The Civil Procedure Code 1908, etc. are some of the prominent examples of such statutes. But more importantly, Any standard textbook dealing with the sources of our Constitution will inform us that we chose to borrow the basic principles of our constitution from the west. For instance, we borrowed the "Rule of law" from Britain, fundamental rights from the United States, The ideals of "republic, liberty, equality and fraternity" in the preamble from France, the list goes on and is too big to be incorporated here. It is a known fact that the reformation movement in the west which was completely based on the Bible became the chief contributor to the legal system in the Western Civilized Nations, since the Protestant reformation began to influence the socioeconomic and political lives of its followers. Since India chose to be a beneficiary to this Biblical legacy by borrowing from the west, the principles underlying its legal system is bound to reflect the standards taught in the Bible, more than that of any indigenous religious literature. Any unbiased mind will freely admit that the Bible governs the Indian Jurisprudence more than the Vedas, or the Manusmriti or any other book of note. This serves as one of the several instances to prove the Biblical claim that there is no nation which has laws comparable to its own laws, which argues for the divine revelation of the Bible. The great contribution of the Bible in making the Indian legal system can be adequately demonstrated from any branch of the law, but we will now confine our attention only to certain fundamental features of our Constitution which serves to substantiate this great claim.
Sovereign Constitution:
The preamble of the Indian constitution lays down that our constitution is 'Sovereign'. This forms the basis for what is called the 'Rule of law'. Rule of law implies that the nation is to be governed not by the arbitrary authority of a man or a group of people, but by the established law. Though there will be a government in place, it has to act within the bounds determine by the constitution. No arbitrary power is to be usurped by any government in a way as to transgress the constitutional bounds. In other words, the king and the subjects are alike answerable to a system of laws to which they are equally under subjection. The government runs the constitutional mechanism but is not itself the constitution. hence, the actual sovereign is the Constitution, and the government is only its servant.
Now here is what the Bible says about constitutional sovereignty or the rule of law: "And it shall be, when he (the king) sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel." (Deuteronomy 17:18-20).
Thus, the king is in subjection to the law as much as anyone else as per the Bible. He is only to implement and abide by what the law has already determined and must not act arbitrarily or set himself above his subjects whom the Bible calls his 'Brethren'.
But contrast this with the Manusmriti which is supposed to be a primary source of ancient Indian jurisprudence.
Manusmriti 1: 93, As the Brahmana sprang from (Brahman's) mouth, as he was the first-born, and as he possesses the Veda, he is by right the lord of this whole creation.
Manusmriti 1: 107-108 In this (work) the sacred law has been fully stated as well as the good and bad qualities of (human) actions and the immemorial rule of conduct , (to be followed) by all the four castes (varna). The rule of conduct is transcendent law , whether it be taught in the revealed texts or in the sacred tradition; hence a twice-born man who possesses regard for himself, should be always careful to (follow) it.
The 2nd citation above may seem to suggest that the Manusmriti also commands adherence to its own rule. Why is this not constitutional supremacy or the rule of law? Because the 1st citation makes it plain that the Brahmana is by right the lord of the creation. It is evident from the perusal of the rest of the Manusmriti, that it is a mechanism to bring all other castes under the Brahmanic subjection. So, the Brahmanic accountability to the Manu made constitution is reduced to ensuring Brahmanic reign over the rest of the society. This is so unlike the Biblical rule of law, where the throne-sitter is to be no better than his fellow-subjects who are his 'brethren' and who is accountable before the law as much as any other subject thereof. Hence the Indian constitution finds the appropriate parallel to its principle of the Rule of law in the Bible, whereas in the indigenous religious books of India, we find the rule of a caste disguising itself as the rule of law.
Socialist Constitution:
The preamble further lays down that our constitution is socialist in nature. This implies the equality of all citizens to the total eradication of all forms of arbitrary discrimination. Articles 14-18 of the Indian constitution protects the right of all citizens to be treated equal before the law and entitles them all to the equal protection of laws. Going by the religious texts in India, the very idea of equality is foreign to this country. Could the Indian religious texts upholding the varna based inequalities contribute to the principle of equality, more than the Bible which teaches that man was created in the image and likeness of God? That is certainly no riddle to grapple with! just make note of and contrast the Biblical and the Hindu world-views on how man was brought into existence, which is a sufficient instance to demonstrate as to which of the two actually affords prospects of an egalitarian society.
Regarding the creation of man, the Bible says:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them" (Genesis 1:26-27).
Now we will contrast this with the Vishnu Purana Book 1: Chapter 4 PARA 3 (Which declaration is also upheld by Rig Veda Book 10: 90: 12, the Bhagavad Gita 4:13 etc):
"Formerly, oh best of Brahmans, when the truth-meditating Brahmá was desirous of creating the world, there sprang from his mouth beings especially endowed with the quality of goodness; others from his breast, pervaded by the quality of foulness; others from his thighs, in whom foulness and darkness prevailed; and others from his feet, in whom the quality of darkness predominated. These were, in succession, beings of the several castes, Brahmans, Kshatriya, Vaisyas, and Shudras, produced from the mouth, the breast, the thighs, and the feet of Brahma
The Hindu religious books not only showed discrimination between man and man based on its unfounded supposition of the origin of man, but also paved way for discrimination against woman to disrespect and exploit them along the same unfounded grounds. As seen from the Biblical citation above, not only man, but even the woman was created in the image and likeness of God. But how were women created according to the Hindu religious texts?
The Bhagavad Gita 9: 32 For, O son of Prithâ! even those who are of sinful birth women , Vaisyas; and Shudras, likewise, resorting to me, attain the supreme goal. What then (need be said of) holy Brahmans and royal saints who are (my) devotees? Coming to this transient unhappy world, worship me. (Place your) mind on me, become my devotee, my worshipper; reverence me, and thus making me your highest goal, and devoting yourself to abstraction, you will certainly come to me.
Note that women are included among those of sinful birth unlike the Brahmins and the royal saints who are of a so called noble birth.
Manusmriti 9: 16-18 Knowing their disposition, which the Lord of creatures laid in them at the creation, to be such, (every) man should most strenuously exert himself to guard them. (When creating them) Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, and bad conduct. For women no (sacramental) rite (is performed) with sacred texts, thus the law is settled; women (who are) destitute of strength and destitute of (the knowledge of) Vedic texts, (are as impure as) falsehood (itself), that is a fixed rule .
When such is the indignity cast upon men of lower castes and the women of all castes in the Vedhic literature, how is it that the Indian constitution came to recognize the equality of all men and women and vows to protect it? How is it that it aligns more with the Bible than with Manu, or the Gita? The answer is not far to seek. When the Bible based equality influenced our constitution, the cast based atrocities came to be recognized as social evils, fit only to be prohibited and penalized by the law of this land. Why then may the Hinduthva fringe not hate the Bible which vanquished the basic structure of their sanathan barbarianism, which would have otherwise rendered the rest of India their footstool!!
Secular Constitution:
Not only does the Preamble of the Indian constitution provide for a secular constitution, but articles 25-28 of the constitution protects the religious freedom of all citizens to profess, practice and propagate any religion of one's choice. At the outset, this may seem to conflict with the Bible which commands adherence to itself and to no other faith system. But when we understand that our constitution also lays down certain reasonable restrictions to the religious freedom granted, the apparent conflict between the Bible and our constitution disappears at once.
The freedom allowed in Article 25 of the Indian Constitution is subject to 3 reasonable restrictions, namely public order, morality and health. the practice of any religion which violates any of these 3 restrictions is unconstitutional and must be prohibited. The Bible also prohibits adherence to any alternate faith system on the presupposition that the best moral framework shaped under its unique and supreme laws and statutes can be challenged by other faith systems which follow a substandard ethics (Leviticus 18:1-5,24-30, Deuteronomy 12:30-32).
This can even be verified within the Indian context today. Every deity that is presented in the Indian religious books stand condemned by the Indian penal Code. If taken seriously, they all set a bad moral precedence for humans to follow. There teachings violate many of the fundamental rights recognized and enforced under the Indian Constitution. We have good Hindus today because they do not adhere properly to their religious teachings on all things. They are unable to follow many of the precepts of their religious texts as our Constitution and our law has done an excellent job in prohibiting and penalizing what many Hindu texts prescribe. Atrocities on lower casts, practices derogatory to the honor of women, polygamy, offences against children, ideas threatening the life and liberty of fellow human beings, are just some of the many examples of such prohibitions. whatever is morally sound and healthy is either absent in the Indian religious books or is harmfully intermingled with hazardous teachings and dangerous precedence. Whatever can be found in these books conforming to moral values actually predates them and has their origin in the Holy Bible. Hence the religious freedom guarantied in Article 25 of our Constitution, if enforced in its true spirit would actually enforce the Biblical values alone, which may or may not have parallels in other religious teachings. The difference between the Biblical insistence for exclusivity and the limited religious freedom in Article 25 of our Constitution is not one of principle but rather of practice. In principle, they are one and the same.
Democratic Republic:
"When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother" (Deuteronomy 17:14-15).
This citation from the Bible plainly vests the power of choosing a ruler in the hands of the people. Though in practice, Israel failed to exercise it to the full, the principle is plainly recognized in the Bible. Moreover, this text suggests that the one chosen by the people to be their ruler must be a chosen one of God, implying that he must be an Israelite and not a stranger. This is in principle the true meaning of a republic, where the representative of a people must be chosen from among them.
The preamble of the Indian Constitution clearly defines India as a democratic republic. This however could not have found place in our Constitution if it were influenced by any indigenous religious sources. As we are well aware, all the Indian religious writings unanimously make the cast hierarchy the basis for determining the rulers and the ruled.
Manusmiriti 8: 20-21 A Brahmana who subsists only by the name of his caste (gati), or one who merely calls himself a Brahmana (though his origin be uncertain), may, at the king's pleasure, interpret the law to him, but never a Sudra. The kingdom of that monarch , who looks on while a Sudra settles the law, will sink (low), like a cow in a morass .
Manusmriti 4: 61 Let him not dwell in a country where the rulers are Sudras , nor in one which is surrounded by unrighteous men, nor in one which has become subject to heretics, nor in one swarming with men of the lowest castes.
These passages which reflect the general tenor of the Vedic literature prove that the Indian religious texts are high threats to a democratic republic framework.
Rule of law
Chief Justice Edward Coke from England who is the pioneer of the Rule of Law stated that a “king should be under God and Law” (Coke, S. E. (2002 ). The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England: Concerning the Jurisdiction of Courts. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., . ). This concept of the Rule of Law is adopted by many nation’s constitutions including India (Thiruvengadam , A. K. (2017). Constitution Of India : A Contextual Analysis. Hart Publishing India.).
A. V. Dicey gave three meanings to the concept of the Rule of Law,
1. Supremacy of law – law is supreme, everyone is below the law
2. Equality before Law – everyone is equal before the law
3. Judge-made constitution – constitutional principles and laws created by the Judiciary, especially by the High Court and Supreme Court (Dicey, A. V. (1885). Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution.).
Rule of law and sovereignty are closely associated terms because sovereignty sows the seed for the Rule of Law. The core ideology of the Rule of Law is that law is supreme, and both the leader and common people are equally same before the law and they will be judged with integrity irrespective of the position they hold, money, and other resources they possess. “When he becomes king, he is to have a copy of the book of God's laws and teachings made from the original copy kept by the Levitical priests. He is to keep this book near him and read from it all his life, so that he will learn to honour the Lord and to obey faithfully everything that is commanded in it. This will keep him from thinking that he is better than other Israelites and from disobeying the Lord's commands in any way” (Good News Translation, 1966, Deuteronomy 17:18-20). If we interpret these Bible verses by considering the core moralities of the Rule of law, it is identifiable that God’s law/Lord signifies the constitution (as we regard our Indian Constitution in high esteem equal to God) and King as the legislative, judiciary and administrative officials of a government. God and his laws are always superior. God judges both the kings and the common people based on their deeds in the same manner.
He doesn’t see favouritism, and all are one in the eyes of God. Likewise, the Indian constitution instructs the elected representatives to honour and obey the laws of the nation and warns them not to feel superior to common people because the constitutional laws are always ultimate, and all are equal before the constitution and will be judged in the same manner. The arbitrary actions of an individual or a group of individuals shouldn’t govern a nation, but an established law should. The government should only function within the realm of the constitution and shouldn’t go beyond that. The government executes the law of the constitution, but the government isn’t a constitution. Sovereignty is the constitution; the government is the servant (Basu , D. D. (2015). Introduction to the Constitution of India (22nd ed.). Lexis Nexis.).
In orientation with the Indian Constitution, Deuteronomy 16:18-20 stresses the governing authorities of a nation to be fair and just to the people and shouldn’t accept bribery. “Appoint judges and other officials in every town that the Lord your God gives you. These men are to judge the people impartially. They are not to be unjust or show partiality in their judgments; and they are not to accept bribes, for gifts blind the eyes even of wise and honest men and cause them to give wrong decisions. Always be fair and just, so that you will occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you and so that you will continue to live there” (Good News Translation, 1966). It is evident that the concept of the Rule of law and sovereignty explained in the Indian constitution aligns perfectly with the Biblical laws, they stand parallel and similar.
Directive Principles of State Policy (DPSP)
The concept of Directive Principles of State Policy was inspired by the Ireland constitution. In turn, the Irish constitution borrowed it from Spain. The Directive Principles of State policy is located in Part IV, Articles 36-51 of the Indian constitution. Creating a just society through socio-economic policies, guaranteeing impartiality through justice, and equality for all citizens are the foremost themes of DPSP.
DPSP is rooted in establishing a welfare state or in other words establishing economic and social democracy (Kumar, A. (2005). The Welfare State System in India. Welfare States and the Future, 336–363.) (Garland, D. (2016). Welfare State: A Very Short Introduction. OUP Oxford.). The equivalents of the notion of a welfare state (as mentioned in the constitution) and Biblical laws can be extracted using the following verses from the Bible. “When you harvest your fields, do not cut the grain at the edges of the fields, and do not go back to cut the heads of grain that were left. Do not go back through your vineyard to gather the grapes that were missed or to pick up the grapes that have fallen; leave them for poor people and foreigners. I am the Lord your God” (Good News Translation, 1966, Leviticus 19:9-10). “If in any of the towns in the land that the Lord your God is giving you there are Israelites in need, then do not be selfish and refuse to help them. Instead, be generous and lend them as much as they need” (Good News Translation, 1966, Deuteronomy 15:7-8).
These Biblical laws underline the importance of caring for the poor and vulnerable and making them an integral part of society rather than leaving them behind. It discusses inclusive politics where the government strives to work and develop all sections of society. Articles 36-51 of the Indian constitution from DPSP (Part IV) mark the details about ensuring the upliftment of socially and economically deprived sections of the society and safeguarding their needs and overall development. Further, the articles mandate equality and justice in society without prejudice or other arbitrary actions. Isaiah 1:17 from the Bible delivers the same impression, “and learn to do right. See that justice is done—help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights, and defend widows” (Good News Translation, 1966). As per the Indian constitution to establish a successful welfare state, community responsibility is mandatory where people cooperate and participate with the organization and other people for the benefit of the community they belong. Along with all other concepts of the welfare state, the Bible also includes community responsibility. The analogous for this statement is found in the New Testament. “There was no one in the group who was in need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the money received from the sale, and turn it over to the apostles; and the money was distributed according to the needs of the people” (Good News Translation, 1966, Acts 4:34-35). “Suppose there are brothers or sisters who need clothes and don't have enough to eat. What good is there in your saying to them, “God bless you! Keep warm and eat well!”—if you don't give them the necessities of life?” (Good News Translation, 1966, James 2:15-16).
Conclusion:
The constitution of India properly speaking is a document foreign to India. Had the indigenous religious sources framed our Constitution, we would not have spoken of the rule of law, but the rule of a caste. Equality would still have been a heresy punishable with banishments, lashes and death. Religious bigotry would have flushed aside secularism. Democratic republic would have been a concept of the Mlecchas.
When the fringe elements of Hindutva speak of a Hindu State, when they speak of Constitutional reforms, do not be carried away into thinking that they have a better Constitution to offer. They hate this Constitution which ruined the basic structure of Hinduism. The only way to regain what they lost is by Manuizing it on the pretext of reforms. They will continue to hate the Bible and its propagators, because they only can feel the immense damage caused by it to their inhuman and barbaric system, which they may choose to call Sanatan.
May this section serve as an impetus for much deeper research to bring out the bible hidden within our exemplary legal system, for the glory of Him who revealed such unique and supreme laws which were otherwise unknown to the nations of the world.
Borrowed Light, Sovereign Source {#borrowed-light,-sovereign-source}
The True Foundation of Constitutional Justice
From Whence Cometh Justice?
The preceding analysis of the Indian Constitution's foundations presents a compelling and largely accurate argument. The author has done a great service in demonstrating that the foundational principles enshrined in the nation's preamble—Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity—are not derived from India’s indigenous religious traditions, such as those found in the Manusmriti or the Vedas. Instead, he correctly traces the lineage of these ideals to Western legal and political thought, which was itself profoundly shaped by the moral and spiritual framework of the Holy Bible. The chapter powerfully contrasts the Bible’s teachings on the Rule of Law and the equal worth of all people with the hierarchical and discriminatory principles divinely sanctioned in Hindu scripture.
This chapter seeks to build upon that excellent historical diagnosis. We must affirm the author's discernment: the principles undergirding a nation's public life do not arise from a vacuum but flow from a deeper religious and philosophical spring. His argument that India’s constitutional ideals find no home in the soil of ancient Hindu texts is undeniably correct. However, while the author correctly traces the historical influence of the Bible, he speaks of it as an "indirect impact." This is where a crucial distinction must be made. The issue is not one of mere historical influence but of present and total Lordship. A nation cannot long sustain itself on borrowed moral capital. The Indian Constitution has embraced Christian principles without bowing the knee to the Christian’s King, and therein lies its point of future crisis and our point of loving critique.
Affirming the Diagnosis: Drinking from Wells Not Dug
It should be no surprise to one who understands God's providence that India's constitutional framers found their inspiration where they did. In His common grace, God has not left humanity in total darkness. He allows beams of His truth and justice to shine even in cultures and through individuals who do not formally acknowledge Him. The framers of India's constitution, educated in the West, drank from wells they did not dig. They drew upon a stream of thought concerning human dignity, the sinfulness of discrimination, and the limits of state power that flows directly from the fountainhead of Holy Scripture.
The idea that a ruler is under the law, not above it, is born from the unshakable biblical truth that there is only one ultimate Sovereign, God Himself, before whom all earthly kings and parliaments must bow. The principle of equality that so animated the framers is a direct, though perhaps unrecognized, inheritance of the biblical doctrine that all humanity is created in the Imago Dei. Indeed, as the previous chapter so astutely points out, even the great Dr. Ambedkar, in his own profound search for the meaning of Fraternity, turned instinctively to the words of the Apostle Paul to give it substance. This clear-eyed diagnosis of the moral poverty of indigenous texts and the superiority of the borrowed principles is a testament to the fact that God’s truth makes its own case. Yet, only a worldview that sees a Sovereign God as the Creator of a moral and social order can fully explain why principles like equality and the rule of law are not just useful, but are objectively good and true. Dr. Ambedkar and the other framers saw the social sickness; the Bible reveals that the sickness is a rebellion against God’s perfect design for human life.
Identifying the True Conflict: The Sovereignty of Man vs. The Sovereignty of God
While we affirm the historical analysis, we must lovingly press deeper to the foundational disagreement. The Indian Constitution, in its preamble, grounds its authority not in God, but in "WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA." This is the great error of the French Revolution, not the truth of the Protestant Reformation. It makes humanity the measure and source of all things. It declares that rights are grants from the constitution, which the State, representing the will of the people, in its wisdom, bestows upon its citizens.
But this is a foundation of sand. The principles of Justice, Liberty, and Equality are not neutral, free-floating ideas that a nation can simply borrow and employ as it sees fit. They are living expressions of the very character and will of the Triune God, revealed in His Word. To praise the principles while ignoring the Prince of Peace who embodies them, to admire the architectural beauty of the law while ignoring the Lawgiver, is to admire the light while closing one's eyes to the sun. If rights come from "the People," then "the People"—or the State acting in their name—can modify, redefine, or revoke those rights when they become inconvenient. A right grounded in popular consensus can be destroyed by a change in that consensus. There is a great antithesis, an irreconcilable conflict, between a system where Man is sovereign and one where Christ is Sovereign.
The Gospel Alternative: A Constitution Under Christ
The true path forward is not simply to acknowledge a historical debt to the Bible. It is to recognize that a nation's life is composed of many distinct God-ordained domains, or spheres: the family, the school, the arts and sciences, the marketplace, the church, and the state. Each of these was created by God with its own unique purpose and authority, and each stands directly under the Kingship of Jesus Christ.
The terror of the caste system, which this new constitution rightly seeks to abolish, was that one sphere—a corrupt religious hierarchy—unlawfully claimed total, tyrannical authority over all other spheres of life. The Indian Constitution has attempted to correct this by making the State the supreme sovereign. But this, too, is a form of idolatry, for only Christ is sovereign over all spheres. A truly just society is not one where the State is absolute, but one where the State humbly recognizes its own God-given, limited role: to uphold public justice for all, to punish evil and reward good, and to protect the freedom of every other sphere to flourish under the direct Lordship of Christ. The constitution is a good servant, but it makes a poor god. The nation must confess that its liberty and justice come not from a document, however well-crafted, but from the King of Kings.
This vision is superior because it provides a secure and unshakeable foundation for both liberty and order. When the state becomes the ultimate authority, it will inevitably begin to overstep its bounds, encroaching upon the family, the church, and the conscience. But when a nation recognizes Christ's sovereignty over every sphere, the state is put in its proper place. This provides a principled basis for true freedom—freedom of religion, freedom of thought, and freedom of the family—not as rights granted by the state, but as duties owed to God which the state is bound to protect. It is the only foundation for a justice that is not arbitrary and a liberty that does not descend into license.
Conclusion: From Borrowed Light to Acknowledged Lord
In conclusion, the previous chapter powerfully demonstrates that when India's founders sought a foundation for a just and modern nation, they could not find the necessary materials in the quarries of their native traditions. By God's common grace, they were led to borrow from a treasury built upon the bedrock of His Word. We should thank God for this measure of His goodness, which has provided the nation with a bulwark against the ancient tyranny of caste.
However, a nation cannot live long on borrowed principles. A building's foundation cannot be "indirect." The noble ideals of Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity enshrined in India's preamble will ultimately crumble into dust unless the nation acknowledges the true Architect and Sovereign from whom they flow. The task for those who love India is not merely to point out this historical influence, but to call the nation, in all its rich and varied spheres, to confess the living Source of its borrowed light: Jesus Christ, who is Lord of India, and Lord of all.
The Constitutional Rights And Penal Laws For The Protection Of Christians {#the-constitutional-rights-and-penal-laws-for-the-protection-of-christians}
The query seeks a detailed explanation of constitutional rights and penal laws protecting Christians and other minorities in India, with a focus on whether offenses under these laws are bailable or non-bailable. Below is a comprehensive response addressing the constitutional framework, relevant penal provisions, and the classification of offenses.
Constitutional Rights for Christians and Minorities in India
The Constitution of India provides robust protections for religious and cultural minorities, including Christians, under various provisions that ensure equality, non-discrimination, and freedom of religion. These rights are enshrined primarily in Part III (Fundamental Rights) and Part IV (Directive Principles of State Policy). Below is a detailed explanation of key provisions:
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Article 14: Equality Before Law
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Guarantees equal protection of laws to all citizens, including minorities like Christians.
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Ensures that laws are applied uniformly without discrimination based on religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth.
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Example: A Christian facing discrimination in employment or public services can seek remedy under Article 14.
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Article 15: Prohibition of Discrimination
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Prohibits discrimination by the State or citizens on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth.
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Article 15(1) ensures that Christians and other minorities are not denied access to public facilities or opportunities.
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Article 15(4) allows the State to make special provisions for socially and educationally backward classes, which can include minority communities.
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Article 21: Right to Life and Personal Liberty
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Protects the right to life and liberty, which includes the right to practice and propagate one’s religion freely.
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Courts have interpreted Article 21 to include the right to live with dignity, protecting minorities from violence or persecution.
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Example: Attacks on Christian places of worship can be challenged as violations of Article 21.
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Article 25: Freedom of Religion
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Grants all individuals the right to freely profess, practice, and propagate their religion, subject to public order, morality, and health.
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Christians can freely practice their faith, conduct religious services, and establish institutions like churches or schools.
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Limitations: The State can regulate activities associated with religious practices that affect public order (e.g., restrictions during communal tensions).
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Article 26: Freedom to Manage Religious Affairs
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Allows religious denominations, including Christian communities, to:
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Establish and maintain religious institutions.
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Manage their own affairs in matters of religion.
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Own and acquire property for religious purposes.
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Example: Christian denominations like the Catholic Church can autonomously manage their religious institutions.
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Article 29: Protection of Cultural and Educational Rights
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Protects the right of minorities to conserve their language, script, or culture.
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Ensures that Christians, as a religious and cultural minority, can preserve their traditions, such as liturgical practices or festivals.
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Article 30: Right to Establish and Administer Educational Institutions
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Grants minorities the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
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The State cannot discriminate in providing aid to such institutions.
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Example: Christian missionary schools and colleges operate under this provision, enjoying autonomy in administration.
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Article 51A(e): Duty to Promote Harmony
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Enjoins citizens to promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood, transcending religious differences.
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This fundamental duty indirectly supports the protection of minorities by fostering communal harmony.
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Directive Principles (Part IV)
- While not enforceable, provisions like Article 38 (promoting social justice) and Article 46 (protecting weaker sections) guide State policies to uplift minorities, including Christians.
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Other Constitutional Mechanisms
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The National Commission for Minorities (NCM), established under the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992, monitors the socio-economic and educational development of notified minorities, including Christians.
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Christians are recognized as a notified minority community alongside Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Parsis.
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Penal Laws for Protection of Christians and Minorities
The Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC) (now replaced by the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (BNS)), along with the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (CrPC) (now replaced by the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS)), contains provisions to protect minorities from violence, discrimination, and offenses targeting their religious sentiments. Below is a detailed analysis of relevant penal provisions, their nature (bailable or non-bailable), and their application to Christians and minorities.
Key Penal Provisions (Under BNS, 2023, and BNSS, 2023)
The BNS, effective from July 1, 2024, replaced the IPC, and the BNSS replaced the CrPC. The following provisions are relevant to protecting Christians and minorities, with their bailable or non-bailable status under the BNSS:
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Section 295 BNS (Section 153A IPC): Promoting Enmity Between Groups
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Description: Punishes acts that promote enmity, hatred, or ill-will between different religious, racial, or linguistic groups.
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Application: Applies to acts targeting Christians or other minorities to incite communal hatred (e.g., hate speeches or publications against Christians).
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 3 years, or fine, or both. If committed in a place of worship, imprisonment up to 5 years and fine.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable: Police can arrest without a warrant.
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Non-Bailable: Bail is at the court’s discretion, not a right.
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Non-Compoundable: Cannot be settled out of court.
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Example: Distributing pamphlets inciting violence against Christians is punishable under this section.
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Section 296 BNS (Section 153B IPC): Imputations Prejudicial to National Integration
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Description: Punishes assertions that any religious group cannot be loyal to India or should be deprived of rights.
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Application: Protects Christians from being unfairly targeted as “anti-national” due to their faith.
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 3 years, or fine, or both. If committed in a place of worship, up to 5 years and fine.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Non-Bailable.
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Public statements claiming Christians are disloyal to India fall under this section.
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Section 299 BNS (Section 295 IPC): Defiling a Place of Worship
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Description: Punishes acts that outrage religious feelings by defiling a place of worship with intent to insult a religion.
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Application: Protects Christian churches from vandalism or desecration (e.g., damaging a cross or altar).
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 2 years, or fine, or both.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Bailable: Bail is a matter of right under Section 479 BNSS (Section 436 CrPC).
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Breaking into a church and defacing religious symbols is an offense under this section.
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Section 300 BNS (Section 295A IPC): Outraging Religious Feelings
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Description: Punishes deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or beliefs.
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Application: Applies to derogatory remarks or publications targeting Christian beliefs (e.g., mocking Jesus Christ or the Bible).
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 3 years, or fine, or both.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Non-Bailable.
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Publishing a cartoon insulting Christian sacraments can be prosecuted under this section.
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Section 301 BNS (Section 296 IPC): Disturbing Religious Assembly
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Description: Punishes voluntarily disturbing a religious assembly lawfully engaged in worship.
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Application: Protects Christian congregations from disruptions during church services.
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 1 year, or fine, or both.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Bailable.
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Compoundable: Can be settled with the victim’s consent.
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Example: Shouting slogans during a Christian prayer meeting is an offense under this section.
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Section 302 BNS (Section 297 IPC): Trespassing on Places of Worship or Burial Grounds
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Description: Punishes trespassing on places of worship or burial grounds with intent to wound religious feelings or insult a religion.
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Application: Protects Christian cemeteries or churches from unauthorized entry or desecration.
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 1 year, or fine, or both.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Bailable.
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Vandalizing a Christian graveyard is punishable under this section.
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Section 351(2) BNS (Section 324 IPC): Voluntarily Causing Hurt by Dangerous Weapons
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Description: Punishes causing hurt using dangerous weapons or means.
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Application: Applies to physical attacks on Christians or minorities motivated by religious hatred.
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 3 years, or fine, or both.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Bailable (unless combined with other non-bailable offenses).
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Assaulting a Christian priest with a weapon during a religious dispute.
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Section 351(3) BNS (Section 325 IPC): Voluntarily Causing Grievous Hurt
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Description: Punishes causing grievous hurt (e.g., broken bones, permanent disfigurement).
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Application: Applies to severe attacks on Christians or minorities.
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 7 years and fine.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Bailable (noted as an exception under BNSS, despite the 7-year punishment).
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Beating a Christian missionary, causing permanent injury.
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Section 103 BNS (Section 302 IPC): Murder
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Description: Punishes killing with intent or knowledge that death will result.
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Application: Applies to religiously motivated killings of Christians or minorities.
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Punishment: Death or life imprisonment, and fine.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Non-Bailable.
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Lynching a Christian for alleged conversion activities.
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Section 148 BNS (Section 505 IPC): Statements Conducing to Public Mischief
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Description: Punishes statements or rumors intended to cause public alarm, incite offenses, or promote enmity.
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Application: Applies to false propaganda against Christians (e.g., rumours of forced conversions).
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Punishment: Imprisonment up to 3 years, or fine, or both.
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Nature of Offense:
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Cognizable.
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Non-Bailable (if it incites offenses against the State or public tranquillity).
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Non-Compoundable.
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Example: Spreading false news that Christians are planning to disrupt communal harmony.
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Bailable vs. Non-Bailable Offenses: Explanation
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Bailable Offenses:
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Defined under Section 2(1)(c) BNSS as offenses listed as bailable in the First Schedule or made bailable by other laws.
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Bail is a matter of right, and the accused can be released by the police or court upon furnishing a bail bond (with or without sureties).
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Typically involve less serious crimes with imprisonment less than 3 years or fine only.
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Examples relevant to minorities: Defiling a place of worship (Section 299 BNS), disturbing a religious assembly (Section 301 BNS), trespassing on burial grounds (Section 302 BNS).
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Non-Bailable Offenses:
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Offenses not listed as bailable in the First Schedule are non-bailable.
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Bail is not a right and is granted at the court’s discretion under Section 480 BNSS (Section 437 CrPC).
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Courts consider factors like the severity of the offense, risk of absconding, or tampering with evidence.
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Examples relevant to minorities: Promoting enmity (Section 295 BNS), outraging religious feelings (Section 300 BNS), murder (Section 103 BNS).
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Judicial Discretion:
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Even in bailable offenses, courts can deny bail if the accused violates bail conditions (e.g., failing to appear in court).
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In non-bailable offenses, bail may be granted to minors, women, or sick persons, or if there’s no reasonable ground to believe the accused is guilty of a serious crime.
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The principle of “bail is the rule, jail is the exception” (from State of Rajasthan v. Balchand, 1977) guides courts, emphasizing personal liberty unless public safety is at risk.
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Other Protective Laws
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Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989:
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While primarily for SCs/STs, it can apply to Christian converts from these communities facing caste-based violence.
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Offenses like atrocities or humiliation are non-bailable and cognizable.
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State-Specific Anti-Conversion Laws:
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States like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat have laws like the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, which regulate religious conversions.
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These laws often target alleged forced conversions by Christians, with offenses being non-bailable (e.g., imprisonment up to 7 years for unlawful conversion).
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Critics argue these laws are misused to harass Christians, but they are upheld to protect vulnerable communities.
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Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955:
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Addresses untouchability and discrimination, applicable to Christian converts from SC communities.
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Offenses are generally non-bailable for serious violations.
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Challenges and Judicial Interpretations
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Judicial Precedents:
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Rasik Lal v. Kishore (2009): The Supreme Court held that bail in bailable offenses is an absolute right, reinforcing protections for minor offenses against minorities.
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Mansab Ali v. Irsan (2002): Emphasized that bail decisions in non-bailable offenses must balance individual liberty and public safety.
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Gurbaksh Singh Sibbia v. State of Punjab (1980): Laid guidelines for anticipatory bail, which minorities can seek if apprehending arrest for non-bailable offenses.
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Challenges Faced by Christians:
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Misuse of Laws: Anti-conversion laws are sometimes misused to target Christian missionaries, leading to arrests for alleged forced conversions.
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Communal Violence: Christians face sporadic violence, especially in rural areas, with delays in FIR registration or inadequate police action.
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Blasphemy Allegations: While India does not have explicit blasphemy laws like Pakistan (as noted in), Section 300 BNS is used to address insults to religious sentiments, but it can be misused against minorities too.
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Human Rights Concerns:
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Reports from organizations like the US Commission on International Religious Freedom highlight concerns about religious freedom in India, including for Christians.
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The judiciary, however, remains a strong avenue for redress, with courts often upholding minority rights under Articles 25 and 26.
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Summary Table: Key Offenses and Their Nature
| Offense (BNS Section) | Description | Punishment | Bailable/Non-Bailable | Cognizable | Compoundable |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Section 295 (Promoting Enmity) | Inciting hatred between religious groups | Up to 3 years, or fine, or both | Non-Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 296 (Imputations Against Integration) | Assertions harming national unity | Up to 3 years, or fine, or both | Non-Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 299 (Defiling Place of Worship) | Damaging religious sites | Up to 2 years, or fine, or both | Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 300 (Outraging Religious Feelings) | Insulting religious beliefs | Up to 3 years, or fine, or both | Non-Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 301 (Disturbing Religious Assembly) | Disrupting worship | Up to 1 year, or fine, or both | Bailable | Yes | Yes |
| Section 302 (Trespassing on Worship Sites) | Trespassing with intent to insult | Up to 1 year, or fine, or both | Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 351(2) (Causing Hurt) | Hurt with dangerous weapons | Up to 3 years, or fine, or both | Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 351(3) (Grievous Hurt) | Causing severe injury | Up to 7 years and fine | Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 103 (Murder) | Killing with intent | Death or life imprisonment | Non-Bailable | Yes | No |
| Section 148 (Public Mischief) | Spreading rumours to incite | Up to 3 years, or fine, or both | Non-Bailable | Yes | No |
Conclusion
The Indian Constitution provides a strong framework for protecting Christians and other minorities through fundamental rights like equality (Article 14), non-discrimination (Article 15), and freedom of religion (Articles 25–26). Penal laws under the BNS, 2023, and BNSS, 2023, address offenses targeting minorities, ranging from hate speech to violence, with varying classifications as bailable or non-bailable based on severity. While bailable offenses (e.g., defiling a place of worship) allow bail as a right, non-bailable offenses (e.g., promoting enmity) require judicial discretion, ensuring a balance between liberty and public safety. Christians can seek judicial remedies for violations, supported by a robust judiciary, though challenges like misuse of laws and communal tensions persist.
The Servant State and the Sovereign King {#the-servant-state-and-the-sovereign-king}
The Machinery of Justice
Throughout our long and complex engagement with Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s quest for liberation, we have followed his righteous journey away from the spiritual tyranny of caste. We have affirmed his brilliant diagnoses, wrestled with his proposed solutions, and consistently sought to demonstrate that the ultimate fulfillment of his quest is found only in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Now, we arrive at one of the great legacies of his work: the legal framework of modern India. My examination of the Indian Constitution and its Penal Code reveals a thorough and commendable effort to establish a just society and protect its minorities, including the Christian community. The central argument emerging from this legal architecture is that the Indian state provides a "strong framework for protecting Christians and other minorities." This is a claim that warrants careful theological examination, for it brings us to the very heart of the matter: from whence does justice truly flow?
In this chapter, I seek to engage with this legal framework, affirming the goodness of civil justice while pressing deeper to its ultimate foundation. My analysis demonstrates a foundational truth that I have sought to uphold throughout this book: God, in His sovereignty, has instituted the state to be His servant for the public good, to punish evil and to protect the innocent. In His common grace, which extends over all mankind, God restrains the full force of sin and allows for a measure of civil justice to be established, even among nations that do not formally confess His name. This legal framework, however imperfect, is a clear manifestation of that grace. However, I will show that the fundamental error in this framework—and in the Indian Constitution itself—is not in what it affirms, but in what it fails to acknowledge as its ultimate source.
Echoes of Divine Justice in Human Law
I must begin by examining the specific laws of India through the lens of Scripture, for in many of them we see a faint but discernible echo of God's perfect justice. As believers, we can and should be thankful for every law that upholds order and protects the vulnerable, recognizing it as a gift of God’s benevolent providence.
On the Constitutional Rights of Equality and Life:
Articles 14, 15, and 21, which guarantee Equality Before Law, prohibit discrimination, and protect the Right to Life, stand as pillars of a just state. The principle that the law must be applied "uniformly without discrimination" is profoundly biblical. It flows from the very character of God, who is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). He commanded the judges of Israel, "You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike" (Deuteronomy 1:17). The protection of life is the most fundamental duty of the state because that right is not a grant from the state but from God Himself, in whose image we are all made (Genesis 9:6). When the state acts impartially to protect the lives of all its citizens, it is acting as a proper guardian of this sacred, God-given gift.
On the Constitutional Rights of Liberty and Conscience:
Articles 25, 26, 29, and 30—which protect the freedoms of religion, culture, and education—touch upon a vital biblical principle: the existence of different, God-ordained domains, or spheres, of life. As I have argued, human society is not a monolithic entity but a complex tapestry of spheres, each with its own God-given authority. The Church is a sphere with its own authority, distinct from the State. The family and the school are also distinct spheres. A just state recognizes that it has no authority or competence over the inner life of the Church, the curriculum of the family school, or the conscience of a man. Its God-given duty is not to grant these freedoms as privileges, but to protect them from encroachment, whether by the state itself or by a tyrannical majority. These articles are, therefore, a proper, if unintentional, acknowledgment of the state's limited jurisdiction under God.
On the Penal Laws:
The specific penal laws also reflect the state’s God-given role. Sections 103, 351(2), and 351(3), which punish murder and physical violence, are the most basic function of the magistrate: to "bear the sword" as "an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer" (Romans 13:4). Likewise, laws against defiling places of worship or disturbing religious assemblies (Sections 299, 301, 302) are a right exercise of the state’s power to protect the integrity of the various spheres of life from public disruption. Even laws against promoting enmity (Sections 295, 296) serve the state's legitimate function of maintaining public peace and order, restraining public expressions of hatred that could lead to violence. In all of this, we see the outworking of God's common grace, providing a framework for a relatively just and orderly society.
The True Conflict: The Idol of Popular Sovereignty
While we affirm these echoes of justice, we must now identify the foundational error upon which this entire edifice is built. The Indian Constitution, in its preamble, grounds its authority not in the unchangeable decree of Almighty God, but in the shifting will of "WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA." This is the great error of the French Revolution, not the truth of the Reformation. It makes humanity the measure and source of all things. It declares that rights are grants from the constitution, which the State, as the embodiment of the people's will, bestows upon its citizens.
But this is a foundation of sand. The rights to life, liberty, conscience, and worship are not given by any state or document; they are endowed by our Creator. The state does not create these rights; its sole legitimate function is to recognize and protect them as pre-existing realities given by God. By grounding its authority in "the People," the Constitution places itself on the throne of sovereignty. It becomes the god of the nation, and the rights it gives, it can also modify or take away. Here we find the great antithesis, the irreconcilable conflict, between a system where the State is sovereign and one where Christ is Sovereign.
The Gospel Foundation: The State as God's Servant
The better way—the only true way—is to confess that there is only one Sovereign, Jesus Christ, and that the state is but His servant, delegated with a limited authority for a specific task. A nation's constitution should not be the source of law, but an expression of its submission to God's higher law.
From this proper foundation, we see the laws in a new light. Equality (Art. 14, 15) is not a social goal we strive for, but a creational fact we must acknowledge: all are made in God's image. Freedom of Religion (Art. 25) is not a privilege granted by the state, but a duty owed to God by every soul. The state has no authority to interfere in this sphere, only to ensure that the practice of one's duty to God does not involve physical harm or public disruption to one's neighbor.
This brings me to the State-Specific Anti-Conversion Laws that plague the Indian landscape. From a biblical perspective, these laws are an act of profound tyranny. The state has no competence or authority to regulate the sphere of the conscience or to stand between a soul and its God. When the state dictates who can or cannot hear a religious message, or under what conditions a person may change their faith, it has abandoned its role as a minister of justice and has become a usurper of God's authority over the soul.
This biblical vision is superior because it provides a secure and unshakeable foundation for freedom. If rights come from the state, the state can take them away for reasons of "public order, morality, and health," as defined by whomever holds power. But if rights come from God, they are inalienable. A government that acknowledges God's sovereignty understands that it cannot legislate on matters of conscience and that its primary duty is to protect the God-given freedoms of all its citizens. It provides a principled basis for resisting the tyranny of the majority and the overreach of the state.
The Servant's Duty and the King's Authority
In my analysis of India's legal structures, I have endeavored to show how God's common grace is at work, providing a measure of order and protection for Christians. We can and should be thankful for these provisions and use them to seek justice.
However, we must never make the mistake of believing that a man-made constitution is the ultimate source or guarantor of our freedoms. These laws are but a faint reflection of a higher law, and the rights they protect are but a shadow of the true liberty given to us by God. Because this entire framework is built upon the sovereignty of Man ("We, the People") rather than the sovereignty of God, it is inherently unstable.
The only sure foundation for lasting justice and liberty for Christians, and for all people in India, is the public confession that Jesus Christ is King. The task for believers is not simply to appeal to the Constitution as our ultimate hope, but to call the nation and its magistrates to acknowledge the Sovereign from whom all authority is derived, and in whom alone true freedom and justice are found.
About Naveen Kumar Vadde {#about-naveen-kumar-vadde}
Naveen Kumar Vadde is first and foremost a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, called to proclaim God’s Word and expose falsehood for His glory alone. Born and raised in India, he carries a deep burden to see Christ exalted, Scripture defended, and people set free through the power of the gospel. Professionally, he serves as a Facility Management Professional, working with integrity “as unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). In ministry, Naveen is a Christian apologist and member of the Sakshi Apologetics Network, dedicated to equipping believers and engaging skeptics with biblical clarity and conviction. His earlier work, Vedas: Eternal or Made-Up, examines the origin and reliability of the Vedas in light of God’s Word, calling readers to the living truth of Scripture. Above all, Naveen’s heart beats for the Great Commission — to see souls saved, believers strengthened, and Christ exalted in every sphere of life.
Books By Naveen Kumar Vadde {#books-by-naveen-kumar-vadde}
Is Sanskrit Mother of All Languages? The Nationalist Lie
Christ and Caste: A Biblical Answer to India’s Struggle for Justice and Dignity
Caste in India: British Creation or Brahmin Tradition?
Who Were the Aryans?: Recovering the Truth
India’s Freedom Struggle Revisited:: Myths, Betrayals, and the Christian Contribution
The True Forge of India’s Soul: Why Hindutva Divides and the Gospel Unites
About George Anthony Paul {#about-george-anthony-paul}
George Anthony Paul is a sinner saved by grace, called to proclaim Jesus Christ and contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints (Jude 1:3). A founder of the Sakshi Apologetics Network, George seeks to glorify God by defending the gospel and pointing people to the only source of truth and salvation — the Lord Jesus Christ. Professionally, he is a management consultant with over two decades of experience in Compliance, Risk Management, and Project Management, striving to serve faithfully “as unto the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). In ministry, George is a teacher and author known for clear, biblical reasoning rooted in a presuppositional, Christ-centered worldview. He has engaged in dialogue with people of diverse faiths and worldviews, demonstrating that apart from Christ, all knowledge collapses into contradiction. His writings and teaching aim to show that every question finds its answer in the crucified and risen Lord. His passion is to see the church strengthened in truth, the lost drawn to repentance, and all glory given to the Triune God who alone is worthy.
Books By George Anthony Paul {#books-by-george-anthony-paul}
Muhammad: The Great Prophet of Islam
Who did Cain Marry?: The Bible’s Own Answer
Unshaken: Biblical Answers to Skeptics Questions
The Unborn: Is It Just My Body, Or Is It a Life?
Christian Epistemology: Without God, We Know Nothing
The False Order:: Hinduism’s Caste Apartheid vs. God’s equality and Justice for All
Holes in the Narrative: Examining the Quran’s Transmission
Christ Rules All Things: A Biblical Response to Hindu and Islamic Political Thought
The Qur’an’s Failed Claim to Clarity: Who’s Telling the Story—Qur’an or Bible?
The Logos of Logic: A Christian's Guide to Clear and Faithful Thinking
What Is Reality?: Cracking the Blueprint of Reality with the Bible
Blind Men and the Elephant : A Biblical Compass to Indian Philosophy
Creation Myths and The Bible: Did we get it all wrong?
Co-Authored
Is Sanskrit Mother of All Languages? The Nationalist Lie
Christ and Caste: A Biblical Answer to India’s Struggle for Justice and Dignity
Caste in India: British Creation or Brahmin Tradition?
Who Were the Aryans?: Recovering the Truth
India’s Freedom Struggle Revisited:: Myths, Betrayals, and the Christian Contribution
The True Forge of India’s Soul: Why Hindutva Divides and the Gospel Unites