REDEMPTION PRESS © 2011 by Paul Pathickal. All rights reserved. 2nd Printing 2015.

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ISBN 13: 978-1-63232-164-0 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2009912154 1

Dedication

In remembrance of my beloved grandparents, Mr. & Mrs. Pathickal Paily and Mr. & Mrs. Puthusserikudiyil Varkey, who were called from darkness to the marvelous light of His Son in their youth and who stood firmly for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ in the midst of persecution and suffering and have gone on to glory, this book is dedicated for the glory of God and for the advancement of His Kingdom. Appreciation I ‘The Cross and the Cow Belt of ’ is a very instructive and informative book. The strong contrast between Hinduism and the claims of Christ is convincingly and emphatically pointed out by the author, who lived in the region of the Cow Belt for over 15 years. As a graduate student and then as a college lecturer at his alma mater he came into intimate contact with the young people of the Cow Belt. He knows the heart felt hopes and aspirations of the people of this region. In spite of the outward actions of idol worship and going through the motions to please their elders, they are hungering after truth and eternity. Evangelical Christians must show this new generation of young Hindus that Jesus Christ is the only answer to their hopes and aspirations for eternal life. When they come to realize that Jesus Christ as the all sufficient God, who came down from heaven to redeem mankind, not to kill a few wicked kings, but the wicked ruler of this world, they will accept him. This study should be a required reading for Bible College and Seminary students and all the others who are interested in witnessing to Hindus. The excellent bibliography given at the end is useful for scholarly research. —Rt. Rev. Oommen Samuel Retired Missionary Bishop, Reformed Episcopal Church, Lalitpur, U.P. India.

Appreciation II The Cow Belt consists of most of the Hindi speaking areas of North India along with in the east, Gugarat and Maharashtra in the west and the northern parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Karnataka, in the south. This area is the birthplace of Hinduism as many of the incidents described in the ancient Hindu scriptures took place in this region. It is an area rich in history but long ruled by superstition, false idols, caste system and the pursuit of nirvana. Cow is considered a sacred animal and eating beef is prohibited. Cow dominates the economic, religious and political life of the people in this region. Evangelization of this region is very important to win the whole of India. A few Christians who live in this area are afraid to reveal their identity as persecution of Christians is prevalent. Yet in the midst of all these negative factors evangelical Christians must continue to preach the Gospel in word and deed to fulfill the Great Commission given by the risen Lord. The author insists that the Indian Church must overcome the negative factors created by history, geography, politics and caste divisions to spread the living Gospel. ”The indigenous principles self-support, self-government and self propagation seem to especially suitable for the Cow Belt”. Evangelical Christians must take advantage of the literary explosion taking place in India through newspapers, magazines, radio and television. What is significant about the book is that its author educates us with the details of Orthodox Hinduism and challenges us for the necessity of evangelizing the heart land of India. This scholarly work is an important resource for all those who take the Great Commission of the risen Lord seriously. This will be a useful tool for the missionaries, pastors, theological students and all those who are eager for doing mission. —Rev. Dr. Abraham Chacko Former Academic Dean, Jubilee Memorial Bible College, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 1

Contents

Appreciations ...... vi Preface...... ix Introduction ...... xi 1. The Cow Belt of India...... 1 2. Religion of the Cow Belt: Orthodox Hinduism...... 15 3. Hindu Scripture: Not Yet Complete ...... 25 4. Gods of the Cow Belt: Too Many ...... 33 5. Moral Order: Karma and Rebirth ...... 43 6. Social Order: The Caste System ...... 55 7. Cow: The “Presiding Genius” of the Cow Belt...... 67 8. Liberation and Salvation: Three Paths to Freedom. . . . .77 9. Evangelizing the Cow Belt: Linguistic, Historical, and Political Problems ...... 85 10. The Cross: Its Relevance...... 99 11. Missionary Strategy...... 109 12. Missionary Methods...... 125 13. Conclusion ...... 143 Selected Bibliography ...... 153 Glossary of Select Words in Hinduism...... 177 Endnotes...... 183 Index...... 195

1

Preface

am not a native of India’s Cow Belt. I come from a different Icommunity and culture within the vast subcontinent of India. My community boasts of being Christian from the very beginning of , and I was burdened even from my adolescence that my own community was doing precious little to claim the subcontinent for Christ. Many other nations in Asia and Africa, and many tribes and ethnic groups within India, have come under the lordship of Christ. However, the Cow Belt, the heartland of India and the birthplace of the third most important religion in the world in terms of numerical strength, still marches to the tune of other gods and goddesses. Even though I am not a native of the Cow Belt, I have lived there for fifteen years. During that time, I have gained intimate knowledge of the customs, manners, and religion of the area. In my work as a college lecturer, I have had occasions to come into close contact with the young people of the region. I have had the good opportunity to defend my faith in the midst of a large community that consisted entirely of Hindus of different castes and sub-castes of the region. The following pages represent my effort to study the region to see why Christianity has not been able to penetrate it, and to

ix The Cross and the Cow Belt of India wrestle with the problems that stand in the way of evangelizing it. I sincerely pray that this study will contribute to the task of evangelizing this important region of the world. I also sincerely hope that this study will challenge the evangelical Christians of India, especially my own community, to go out and claim the Cow Belt for Christ. I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to those who have helped in the preparation of this study. I am indebted to my grandparents and parents for inculcating in me the basics of the evangelical faith. I am grateful to the late Dr. Edmund Clowney, former President and Professor of Practical Theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the late Dr. Harvie M. Conn, Professor of Missions and Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary, for their valuable help and insights. I thank my wife, Mary, and my precious daughters, Lovely and Betsy, for their affection and love during the preparation of this manuscript. I am also indebted to my nephew, Bobby John, for his help in preparing the bibliography and endnotes, and for assisting me with many computer-related applications. Above all, I am grateful to “the only God our Savior……(To Him) be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen” (Jude 25).

x 1

Introduction

n Indian maxim says that whoever controls India’s Gangetic APlain controls the whole of India. The Gangetic Plain, the nerve center of India, is the riverbed region through which the Ganges River flows from the Himalaya Mountains eastward and eventually falls into the Bay of Bengal. This maxim results from centuries of observation. India’s history is one of foreign invasions, starting with the Aryans from central Asia four millennia ago and (hopefully) ending with the British domination from 1858 until 1947. India then achieved independence from Great Britain under the leadership of Mohandas Gandhi, popularly known as Mahatma (great soul) Gandhi, using the weapons of ahimsa (nonviolence) and Satyagraha (search for truth). The application of these concepts, as practiced by Mahatma Gandhi and others who followed him (including Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Martin Luther King, Jr., of the United States), involves civil disobedience against a governmental authority until the legitimate demands are met. All of these invaders, from the Aryans to the British, tried to cap- ture the Gangetic Plain. Whoever succeeded in capturing this area could seize the whole of India without much trouble, while those who failed to capture this area were typically driven out. The last

xi The Cross and the Cow Belt of India invaders, the British, were able to capture the Gangetic Plain and, consequently, the rest of India, but their religion—Christianity— failed to take hold in this region. Although Christianity made some impact in the south, in the east and, to some extent, in the west, it failed to penetrate into India’s heartland. For this reason, Christianity has been unable to make any appreciable impact in India as a whole. According to various historical and traditional sources Apostle Thomas, the disciple of Christ, was the first to bring the gospel to India, making two successive journeys to the northwestern and southern regions by land and by sea to make disciples for the Lord. A strong tradition and some historical records in Kerala State in the southwest corner of India suggest that the apostle Thomas came to the Malabar Coast in ad 52, establishing seven churches and converting numerous Brahmin (upper caste, priestly) families.1 Regardless of whether it was the apostle Thomas or someone else who first carried the gospel to India, evidence from secular history shows that a Christian church has existed in southern India from the beginnings of Christianity. Travelers such as Cosmas Indicopleustes in the sixth century, Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, and Jordanus and Marignotte in the fourteenth century testify to the continued existence of the church in Malabar. (Malabar was a name used for the entire coast of Kerala; at the time it stretched from Cape Comorin in the south to just the south of Mangalore in the north in Karnataka State. Today it is the northern part of Kerala.2) Similarly, unconfirmed and often vague stories attest to the existence of a Christian community in the Punjab region from the first century of the Christian era. Some claim that the apostle Bartholomew was the founder of that church, while others claim that the apostle Thomas founded it during his first missionary journey through the land from adjacent Persia (present-day Iran). Arguing for or against these theories is unnecessary, as the missions did not penetrate into the heartland of India, the focus of our study. These churches established by the apostles were confined to the remote corners of India.

xii Introduction

Jesuits made another attempt to bring Christianity to India in the sixteenth century, during the Counter-Reformation. The famous Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama had commanded one of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India, circling the southern tip of the Cape of Good Hope in Africa and arriving at the Indian shore in 1498. By 1575, the Catholics were also fairly well established in Goa, located a few hundred miles up the western coast from Kerala. Akbar, the great Mughal king and ruler of the Gangetic Plain at the time, became dissatisfied with the Islamic faith of his fathers and asked the Jesuits of Goa to send a mission to Delhi, his capital. The Jesuit fathers went to the court of Akbar in 1579 and stayed for almost thirty-six years—without success at converting the populace.3 The first two attempts at bringing the gospel to India had failed because the missionaries had been unable to penetrate the Gangetic Plain and establish a stronghold there. In the third attempt, British Protestant missionaries sought to evangelize the nation during the rule of the British Raj (Empire). These missionary efforts were only a nuisance to the high officials of the British Raj, who were more interested in trade and empire building than in religious expansion. Often, the British India government and its masters in London not only discouraged missionaries but also opposed religious conversion on the grounds that such conversions would threaten peace and, consequently, British rule itself. For example, William Carey, an English Baptist minister known as the “father of modern missions,” was not allowed to establish his printing press in Calcutta, but was forced to move his headquarters a few miles up the Hugli River to Serampore, which was then a tiny Danish colony. Stephen Neill, an Anglican bishop, stated the following about the attitude of the British Indian officials toward the missionary work of William Carey: “The Danes did not share the hostility of the British to missions; in Serampore missionaries would be free from the constant harassments and uncertainties of life on British Indian soil.”4 Thus, the missionaries had to work under unfavorable conditions to win a few souls for Christ in India.

xiii The Cross and the Cow Belt of India

All three attempts to evangelize India over the centuries failed because the efforts did not penetrate India’s heartland. Let us now study in detail the geography, history, politics, and religion of the so-called heartland of India to see why the cross has no appreciable number of servants in this region.

xiv 1Chapter 1

The Cow Belt of India

he Gangetic Plain, the region in which the “Cow Belt” Tlies, stretches across the central region of India. It begins in eastern , Haryana, and Delhi; passes through the states of , , , and ; and ends with Bengal in the east (see maps on page 2 and 16). This vast plain has been the cradle of civilization from time immemorial. The Ganges River, holy to the Hindus, flows through this region, making it fertile for agriculture. Wheat, barley, rice, and many other crops also contribute to the area’s agricultural attractiveness. Today, many consider the region to be backward and the people illiterate compared to the southern, western, and eastern regions of the country.

Birthplace of Hinduism The dominant religion of the plain is Hinduism. In fact, the Gangetic Plain could be called the birthplace of Hinduism, because most of the incidents described in ancient Hindu scriptures took place in this region. In addition, two important sites lie in this plain: Ayodhya (or Oudh), once the kingdom of Rama, one of the two most important Hindu avatars (or descents) of Vishnu, the god who saves or preserves; and Mathura, the birthplace of the 1 The Cross and the Cow Belt of India

2 The Cow Belt of India other important descent, Krishna. Indraprastha, the kingdom of the Pandavas (victors of the epic war in the Mahabharata), lies somewhere near modern Delhi. The famous Kurukshetra, the site of the cosmic war between the good Pandavas and their wicked cousins, the Kauravas (in which Krishna aided the good Pandavas), lies in the periphery of this region.

The Importance of the Ganges River More important than all these places, however, is the Ganges River itself, from which the plain derived its name. To the Hindus, the Ganges is no ordinary river. According to legend, the river flowed from heaven to earth as the result of the tapas (deep meditation) of an ascetic, who renounced all worldly pleasures. Therefore, the sacred Ganges River possesses the power to absolve sins for those willing to take a dip in its waters. The Sangham (Triveni, the tri-junction of the river), where the Ganges and its tributary Jamuna meet to form the Ganges River, is a holy place that attracts millions of people during the Kumbh Mela festival. During this festival, millions of people, who have often traveled for hundreds of miles, take a dip in the holy tri-junction of this river.

Holy Temples Many majestic holy temples are also located in this region. Varanasi (also known as Kashi or Banaras), the religious capital of India, is located on the banks of the Ganges. This temple is as vital to Hindus as Mecca is to Muslims and Jerusalem is to Jews and Christians. Just as it is important for Muslims to go to Mecca for the Haj pilgrimage at least once during their lifetime, it is equally important for Hindus to go to Varanasi at least once during their time on earth. As previously mentioned, Mathura, where Krishna (the most important of the ten avatars of Vishnu) was born, lies in this plain. Ayodhya, the birthplace and kingdom of Rama, also lies in this region. In the 1990s, a dispute broke out when Hindu militants wanted to destroy the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya and build a temple in honor of Rama. The Hindus maintained that an ancient temple in

3 The Cross and the Cow Belt of India honor of Rama had stood there and that the Mughal emperor Babur had destroyed it to build the present mosque. When the Hindus began concocting this plan, millions of militant Hindu kar sevaks (volunteers) from all over India came to destroy the mosque as if it were a religious duty. Other innumerable temples and places of religious significance, such as Prayag (Allahabad) and Haridwar, lie on this plain as well. Therefore, the region possesses great religious significance to the Hindus as the religious nerve center of India. Commenting on the region’s importance to Hindus, noted historian Percival Speer writes:

Returning to the north we came to the people of the Jamuna and Ganges basins who constitute the core of modern Hinduism; here lives the tradition of the Hindu epics, for here stood the capitals of their hero kings, here are all the sites of their legendary conflicts, and here the holy cities of Mathura and Banaras. From here come many of the leaders of the modern Hindus…This region is the essential Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, the home of the modern Hindi tongue.5

Cow Politics During the freedom struggle for independence from Great Britain and immediately afterward, the Indian National Congress Party, led by men such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, held sway in the region. Since their deaths, however, Hindu fundamentalists have made great inroads into this region. In fact, many states, such as Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, and Chattisgarh, are in their hands. Today, the politics of the region is always to the right of center. Leftists, such as socialists, communists, and Marxists, do not have a foothold in this region; therefore, they and other left-wing politicians in India often derisively refer to this region as the “Cow Belt.” The left-wing politicians’ use of this term is similar to how liberal politicians use the term “Bible Belt” in America. In the United States, the Bible Belt lies to the south of the Mason-Dixon

4 The Cow Belt of India

Line, an imaginary line running east to west along the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland.6 From 1763 to 1767, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon surveyed this imaginary line with the intention of separating the southern states from the northern ones. At the time, the northern states had abolished slavery, while the southern states had upheld the practice of enslaving those of African descent. After Abraham Lincoln formally abolished slavery and the Union won the Civil War in 1865, slavery ceased to be the criteria separat- ing the North from the South. Today, many southerners revere the Bible as the Word of God, which sometimes has a place in the lives of even nominal Christians. Although many northerners revere the Bible, most people consider the northern states to be liberal. Hence, northerners and liberals call the South the Bible Belt of America. Of course, differences exist in any comparison. No one can draw a straight line to separate the Cow Belt from the rest of India. What one can draw is something akin to a circle—a circle in which liberal or left-wing politicians cannot make inroads, because the area is very conservative. For example, Hindus living inside the circle do not eat beef, because they consider the cow to be sacred; they cannot even slaughter the animal in this region. For obvious reasons, this makes beef unavailable in the Cow Belt, and many religious riots have sprung up in this area because Hindus heard that Muslims had slaughtered a cow. On the other hand, Hindus allow buffalo to be slaughtered; however, Muslims often secretly kill cows as if they were buffalos so that they can hoodwink the Hindus and eat beef. Hindu leaders in this region wanted to pass legislation in the Indian Parliament to ban cow slaughter from India altogether, but some states, like Kerala and West Bengal, not to mention Muslims and Christians all over India, protested such a prohibition.

Cow Worship I do not use the term “Cow Belt” derisively here, as left-wing politicians in India do. I use the term only to denote an existing fact. It is a fact, for example, that the cow is a sacred animal to the majority of the people of this region; the cow may almost be called 5 The Cross and the Cow Belt of India the “presiding genius” of the area, as it dominates the economic, political, and religious life of the people.7 Cow worship, according to Mahatma Gandhi, the father of modern India, “is the central fact of Hinduism, the one concrete belief common to all Hindus.”8 People from other countries and regions cannot understand the extraordinary sanctity that the Hindus attribute not only to the cow but also to cow products. Hindus consider the cow to be the most sacred of all animals. Its body as well as its products are holy. Therefore, no particles of the cow may be thrown away as impure. Cow urine as well as cow dung are not only useful but they are also holy as they sanctify every thing they touch. Cow dung is used to plaster the mud floors of the Hindu households to make them clean as it has the power to transform the filthiest place to be cleansed immediately and make it holy. Hindu hermits use the ashes form burning cow dung to sprinkle their body as it has the power to turn him into a saint instantly’.9 On certain occasions, Hindus bestow divine honors on cows and treat them as if they were real and present deities. They put garlands on them, pour water over their feet, place oil and yellow powder on their foreheads, and lay costly pieces of cloth on their backs. If one is guilty of grave social and religious offenses, the offender swallows the “penitential pill,” which consists of the cow’s five products: milk, curd, butter, dung, and urine.10

Other Views of the Cow On the other hand, in areas such as the Muslim-populated West Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the Christian-populated eastern hill states and southwestern Kerala, people view the cow as just an ordinary animal, and Hindus in those regions have even begun eating beef. Many of them argue that the Vedas and the Upanishads are silent about cow worship; those sacred books, in fact, do not forbid the eating of beef. Some even say that beef was a common food during the Vedic age.11 Hindus living in western, eastern, and southern regions do not object if others kill cows or eat beef, even

6 The Cow Belt of India if they themselves refrain from doing so. The lower castes, which have never had any qualms about eating beef, argue that the Aryans imported cow worship to India when they settled there. No one today can say that Aryans alone inhabit the Cow Belt. Various types of people—such as the dark-skinned Dravidians, the fair-skinned Caucasians, and the yellow-skinned Mongolians—have mingled and re-mingled into this region for such a long time that no group can be identified as strictly Aryan or non-Aryan. The people of this region, however, continue to possess this particular trait of considering the cow to be a sacred animal and forbidding the slaughtering of cows and the eating of beef. Therefore, the term “Cow Belt” denotes an existing fact about the perception of cows in this region. The use of this term has many added advantages as well.

Other Possible Terms We could use three other terms to describe the plain, but each presents its own difficulties. The first, the term “Gangetic Plain,” has certain limitations. First, the Gangetic Plain does not encompass the entire region of the Cow Belt. States such as Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, as well as the southern parts of Madhya Pradesh, , and Orissa, cannot be included in the Gangetic Plain, even though they are part of the Cow Belt. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa also contain large and sparsely populated hills and intractable jungles and forests, which makes travel through this area very difficult. Aboriginal hill tribes still occupy this region, and the people in the area are probably some of the most illiterate and backward in India. The first railway line between Delhi and Madras (Chennai) through this region wasn’t constructed until 1928 because of the difficult-to-navigate jungle, which was infested with gangs of violent robbers. These areas and states are integral parts of the Cow Belt. Furthermore, Bengal, though part of the Gangetic Plain, cannot be included because it is not part of the Cow Belt. Bengal’s history, geography, and politics are also different from those of the Cow Belt.

7 The Cross and the Cow Belt of India

The second term we could use to describe this area is “North India”; however, North India covers a much wider area, usu- ally including Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and even Mumbai (Bombay) and Bengal. Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Mumbai, and Bengal cannot be considered part of the Cow Belt, as the politics, culture, and religion of these areas are much different. Also, the slaughtering of cows and the eating of beef are not unusual in these regions, even though militant Hindus object to it. A third term we could use is “Hindi-speaking areas,” but again we find problems. While it is true that most of the Cow Belt lies within Hindi-speaking areas, some parts lie outside of this language group. For instance, the language of Maharashtra is Marathi, the language of Gujarat is Gujarati, the language of Orissa is Oriya, and the language of the northern part of Karnataka is Kannada. All of these areas are part of the Cow Belt but do not strictly contain Hindi speakers. Therefore, the best term to denote all areas covered by this study seems to be “Cow Belt.” Geographically, this central part of India lies in the midst of three other important regions. To the south lie the education- ally advanced Dravidian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala. To the east lie Bengal, Assam, and the hill states of Nagaland, Mizoram, Tripura, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh. To the northwest lie Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. I have omitted these latter two states from this study because Jammu and Kashmir is predominantly Muslim, while the Punjab is predominantly Sikh. (Sikhism is a religion founded in the early sixteenth century to fight against Muslim invaders; it has roots in Hinduism but has become a separate religion with its own gurus and temples.) As mentioned earlier, the most important feature of the Cow Belt is the Ganges River and the plain it has developed along its vast banks. Foreign settlers, from the Aryans to the British, came to the fertile valley, conquered it, and never left willingly. This, then, is the Cow Belt of India, where the Cross has not made any appreciable mark.

8 The Cow Belt of India

Statistics Showing Christian Influence The following statistics amplify the importance of this region and the failure of Christianity to penetrate its teeming millions of people. According to the religious demography of India based on the official government of India Census Bureau estimates of 2001, the total population of India was 1,028,610,328, and the number of Christians was 24,080,016. Christians represent only a tiny 2.34 percent of the total population.12 Twenty-four million Christians is a large number by anyone’s reckoning, but it is small when compared to a total population of more than one billion. For a comparative study, let us now look at the three regions of India and the total number and percentage of Christians in each. Note that for the purposes of this analysis, the term “Christian” includes Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox Christians. It is also inclusive of nominal as well as “born-again” Christians.

Table 1: The Cow Belt

State General Christian Christians population population (%) Bihar 82,998,509 53,137 0.06 Chattisgarh 20,833,803 401,035 1.92 Delhi 13,850,507 130,319 0.94 Gujarat 50,671,017 284,092 0.56 Haryana 21,144,564 27,185 0.13 Himachal Pradesh 6,077,900 7,687 0.13 Jharkhand 26,945,829 1,093,382 4.06 Madhya Pradesh 60,348,023 170,381 0.28 Maharashtra 96,878,627 1,058,313 1.09

9 The Cross and the Cow Belt of India

State General Christian Christians population population (%) Orissa 36,804,660 897,861 2.44 Rajasthan 56,507,188 72,660 0.13 Uttar Pradesh 166,197,921 212,578 0.13 Uttaranchal 8,489,349 27,116 0.32 Total 647,747,897 4,435,746 0.68

From the above table, we see that only 0.68 percent of the people living in the Cow Belt are Christians. In other words, only 68 out of 10,000 people are Christians. Let us now go to the other two regions. Table 2 shows the population of various states in the south and the comparative strength of Christians in that region.

Table 2: The South

State General Christian Christians population population (%) Andhra Pradesh 76,210,007 1,181,917 1.55 Goa 1,347,668 359,568 26.68 Karnataka 52,850,562 1,009,164 1.91 Kerala 31,841,374 6,057,427 19.02 Lakshadweep 60,650 509 0.84 Pondicherry 974,345 67,688 6.95 Tamil Nadu 62,405,679 3,785,060 6.07 Total 225,690,285 12,461,333 5.52

In the south, 5.52 percent of the population is Christian. In other words, only 552 out of 10,000 people are Christians. However, there are 8.2 times more Christians living in this area than in the Cow Belt. Table 3 shows the comparative strength of the northeast region. 10 The Cow Belt of India

Table 3: The Northeast

State General Christian Percentage population population (%) Andaman and Nicobar Islands 356,152 77,178 21.67 Arunachal Pradesh 1,097,968 205,548 18.72 Assam 26,655,528 986,589 3.70 Manipur (excluding 2,166,788 737,578 34.04 3 subdivisions) Meghalaya 2,318,822 1,628,986 70.25 Mizoram 888,573 772,809 86.97 Nagaland 1,990,036 1,790,349 89.97 Sikkim 540,851 36,115 6.68 Tripura 3,119,203 102,489 3.29 West Bengal 80,176,197 515,150 0.64 Total 119,310,118 6,852,791 5.74

Within this region lie a number of hill states such as Mizoram, Nagaland, and Manipur, as well as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which have become predominantly Christian through the work of European missionaries. Christians in the Northeast comprise 5.74 percent of the general population. In other words, 574 out of 10,000 people are Christians. There are 8.4 times more Christians living in this region than in the Cow Belt.

The Challenge of Penetration Note that the count of total Christians in general and those of the Cow Belt in particular is somewhat suspect for two reasons. First, a substantial number of Christians are located in Mumbai and the coastal areas of Maharashtra and Gujarat. The interior sections of

11 The Cross and the Cow Belt of India these states have fewer number of Christians, and the Christians who do live there are often afraid of reporting as Christians. Second, Dalit Christians (those in lower castes who have con- verted to Christianity) do not report their religion as Christianity because if they do, they will lose their caste-based reservation benefits, such as admission to higher education and professional colleges, grants and loans, employment opportunities, and the distribution of consumer goods at premium rates. The argument is that Christianity is a casteless religion; therefore, these individuals lose their caste status once they declare themselves Christians. As a result, converts often do not change their caste-based names or report that they have become Christians. Church leaders also do not wish to raise alarm bells by reporting a sudden increase in numbers. Therefore, even though the Christian population in India officially stands at 2.34 percent, information collected by the Joshua Project estimates that about 6 percent of the population is Christian.13 From a Christian standpoint, of course, these statistics are commendable; however, much mission work is conducted in the northeast and the south. Another reason that the Cow Belt region remains difficult to evangelize is that India, a secular nation, persecutes those who promote the Christian faith. Although the constitution guarantees freedom of religion, persecution of Christians in the Cow Belt is a fact of life. Christians in states such as Orissa and Gujarat have witnessed severe persecution, and the rape and murder of Christians have occurred in many parts of the Cow Belt. In one instance, the murder of Graham Staines, a medical missionary from , and of his two children, who were working in the leprosy colonies of Orissa, sent shock waves throughout the world and opened eyes to the plight of Christians in various parts of the Cow Belt. What gratitude India has shown to the missionary family of Graham Staines! His wife and daughter continue to live and work among the lepers of Orissa, forgiving his murderers and praying for them. They are truly disciples of Christ, following the example of their Master and Lord, who showed this kind of love to those who crucified Him.

12 The Cow Belt of India

The challenge of re-conversion is another problem. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a secularist, and he did not like to see people converting from one religion to another. However, he allowed foreign missionaries to stay in the country and work on humanitarian projects. He could muzzle militant Hinduism to some extent, but after his death in 1964, these groups have become increasingly bold. Influential, militant Hindu leaders have since been carrying out large-scale “re-conversions” to Hinduism. Reportedly, one Hindu militant leader, a member of the Indian Parliament, assembled Christian villagers in a few localities, poured out “holy water” from the Ganges River, and “reconverted” them to Hinduism under threat of murdering them or burning their houses. The poor villagers suffered silently through the ceremonies but never rejected their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Certainly someone who has “seen” the glory of the Lord and “tasted” His goodness will never forsake Him for worldly goods, even in the midst of suffering and persecution.

Examining the Problem This, then, is the Cow Belt of India today. In examining why Christianity has made only a minimal impact in this region, and what Christians can do amid the widespread persecution in this area, we must first note that the Cow Belt differs from other parts of India in terms of its history, geography, and culture, and that it possesses peculiar characteristics that set it apart. Of the one billion people living in the vast subcontinent of India, almost two-thirds live in the Cow Belt; however, the various regions are different in size, climate, culture, and various other factors, which mean that one program for evangelization will not work in all regions. In the following chapters, my purpose is to identify these peculiar characteristics of the region and suggest a strategy to achieve better results in reaching these needy people for Christ.

13