ELECTIONS '98
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Why I Am Not A Member

Persuaded by my name alone that I would nod my head in agreement with what he was going to say, this man I had never met before leaned closer. "We Catholics are known," he began, "known for our honesty, for loyalty, for doing" -- and here he paused to smack a fist emphatically into a palm -- "a good day's work!"

He sat back with a satisfied smile on his face. As for me, for some inexplicable reason I found my cousin swimming into focus in my mind. My builder cousin, the man who once tried to cheat his own uncle and then topped that by trying to swindle his own mother. And when we wrote him a letter asking for an explanation for some of this shadiness, he called in panic: "Please, please don't put these things in writing!" A regular at Sunday mass, to boot, my own cousin: honesty, loyalty and a good day's work personified. And I'm the Crown Princess of Easter Island.

I also remembered the time my wife and I went flat-hunting in Bombay, before we were terrified by the prices. After looking over a hole-in-the-wall a Catholic had for sale, we asked him our usual question: would he take a cheque for the entire amount? He looked at us as if we had committed some horrible blasphemy. "Why, you're from some Church group or what?" I'll leave you to tease out all the intricate implications of that little question.

"We Catholics" was the wrong start, but the man who leaned over to me couldn't have known that, so I let it pass. But the rest of what he said was just smug nonsense. Catholics are not particularly "known" for any of those qualities he listed. They would know so quickly if they only cared to ask a few non-Catholics. Besides, enough Catholics are steeped in all sorts of murky skullduggery, from cheating on taxes on up. Or down. They are about as steeped as the rest of India is: which really should have left this man -- I met him at a seminar -- no room to feel in the least superior. But that's what he felt anyway. He was convinced, poor fellow, that the faith he professed made him a better human being than those around him.

Of course, that's the way religions are: they make you feel good. In essence, they all teach you the same nice things. Couched in different words, perhaps; not particularly followed, perhaps; but generally the same stuff. So if you are at all inclined to thinking and questioning, you might just ask yourself: if it's the same goods on sale everywhere, why should I belong to this religion and not to that one?

Ah, and that's where, and why, religions must generate for their followers the kind of smug superiority I heard from my seminar acquaintance. "I'm Christian, so I'm more honest than you." "I'm Hindu, so I'm more tolerant than you." Sentiments on those lines. You have to be persuaded that yours is the best faith. For if you cannot believe it is so, why would you stay in it? Why would you not hop over to the neighbour's religion which preaches in much the same language?

If you stop to think about it rationally -- though I'll admit rationality is not to be applied to religion -- there's only one reason: that you come to believe in yours being better. Besides, it feels so good! Wouldn't you want to think you belong to the best club going?

Now cultivating a feeling of superiority is one thing. If that's all it is, I might even make a case that it is somewhat harmless, though laughable. But vital to feeling superior is that the other clubs, sorry religions, must be run down. That must be done, preferably, with the vilest possible insinuations, stereotypes and accusations. You see, if those other guys are the scum of the earth, why, then I must certainly be the cat's whiskers!

And if you look at some of these efforts, they make your blood curdle.

In the November-December 1994 issue of something called Mission Frontiers ("The Magazine for Serious Disciples Who Want to Change the World for Jesus Christ"), a man called Ralph Winter writes: "Hinduism is characterized by demonic oppression, spiritual perversion and philosophical confusion or deception, all mixed together. Practically all of Hinduism is invaded by the demonic." Eloquent words, and they speak most eloquently for the kind of Christian Winter is: one Jesus Christ himself would find despicable.

Take what a young Pakistani student said at a panel discussion I was part of in Austin several years ago. Islam, he averred, is an extremely tolerant religion. Muslims are quite willing to live with people of every other faith, respecting those faiths fully. There's just one problem, though. Islam cannot abide all that hateful idol worship. And so, said my Pakistani colleague, "we simply cannot have a Hindu temple with its idols near a mosque." I see, I said. "Apart from this," he reiterated, "Islam is very tolerant." The Muslims in our audience nodded their heads approvingly, clapped their hands enthusiastically. Clearly, they agreed with this ringing exposition of Islamic tolerance. Clearly, they had no idea how profound the man's ignorance of the concept of tolerance was.

Take the sly garbage organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have poured into our minds for some years now. Indian Christians and Muslims, the VHP's president Ashok Singhal told Outlook magazine, are "like the fox, a symbol of cunning", and those religions have "no place for nonviolence." Even worse, Christians and Muslims have "extra-territorial loyalty." Now Section 153B of the Indian Penal Code prescribes "imprisonment to three years or fine or both" for those who label people traitors by virtue of their religion, but that hasn't slowed down Singhal and his sidekicks. Why should it? Their entire reason for being is the effort to make Hindus hate Christians and Muslims -- and what smoother way to do that than to call them unfaithful to India?

And even as I write these paragraphs, I know they will be read by Hindus, Christians and Muslims whose hackles will rise indignantly, who will wave off these things as aberrations from the real, the real, greatness of their religion. That in itself makes my case: that to flourish, every religion must feel itself superior to every other. A simple credo, but it explains a lot. In the real world, it translates best into rubbishing every other faith.

That rubbishing means that religion's greatest contribution to mankind, so it seems to me, is the way it has made us hate and distrust each other. They preach brotherhood and love and all things nice, but they drive us into burning and killing. I would like to see the devout keep faith with the essence of their faiths, but any random slice of history will tell me that is a futile hope. It's far easier to be derogatory, to speak too easily of "demonic Hindus", or "anti-national Christians", or "Mosies" and "landyas."

The result of all this stoked hatred, left unchecked, is clear today. Rioting in Bombay, Sikhs massacred in Delhi, monthly caste bloodbaths in Bihar, a missionary aflame in Orissa, Kashmiri Hindus murdered and driven from their homes, on and on and on. Unimaginably sickening stereotypes come to be respectable dining table conversation, only to be topped by even worse ones. Lines are drawn as never before to divide us, to turn us against one another. On and on and on.

And in this my own home, for the first time, I know: a day will come when my name alone will be a sentence against me, my family. That's where we are heading. Something of a change from the time a man assumed my name alone meant I was loyal, honest and addicted to doing a good day's work.

That may explain why I feel much like Groucho Marx did when he once cancelled a club membership. "I do not care to belong to any club," he wrote and I paraphrase, "that would admit me as a member."

Dilip D'Souza