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The Danger Is In The Numbers

Reading my newspaper blearily this morning, I ran across one of those bits of news that always seems to fire up my rudimentary mental arithmetic skills. This one was headlined "Papal visit will boost conversions." It reports that the Shankaracharya of Govardhan Math, Puri, the Swami Nischalananda Saraswati, is worried about the impending visit of the Pope to India. Why? Because his visit will "be a victory of the forces aiming to convert India into a Christian nation by the end of 2000 AD."

OK! Time to get those number-processing brain cells into top gear, all three of them! Now my understanding of India being "a Christian nation" is that an overwhelming majority of the country would be Christian. But for the sake of this calculation, let's assume we are talking about just half the country being Christian. That is, we need 500 million Christians in India by the end of the year 2000. That date is 430 days away as I write this. Also as I write this, there are between 20 and 25 million Christians in India. Let's say 25 million.

So we are looking for that number to rise by 475 million in 430 days. Now since the Christian population is rising at about 2% a year, natural increase alone will add about 600,000 Christians to the flock in those 430 days. Thus the rest of that increase -- 475 million minus 600,000, or 474.4 million -- will have to come from other sources. Presumably conversions.

Do the division yourself. You'll find that to take 474.4 million people to Christ's arms in 430 days, you have to convert 1,103,256 a day. Just under 46,000 an hour. 766 a minute, 13 every single second. (To put this in some perspective, there is about one baby born in India every second. One.)

I am astonished as I come up with these figures, astonished at how self-evidently absurd they are. So I am still more astonished, and distressed, that a major Hindu religious leader actually pronounces that this ludicrous fantasy is a real prospect. That he uses this as the basis of the thesis that political leaders and columnists and ordinary folks all over this land then pick up and repeat without pause: Hinduism is in grave danger. Thus it must be defended, and that by the likes of the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv Sena.

Calculations done, let's take this one step at a time.

First, danger. Oh yes, I too read with a growing disgust the stuff that's in the Southern Baptists' International Missionary Board's prayer book in the USA, the stuff about how Hindus are "slaves bound by fear and tradition to false gods", the "darkness in [Hindus'] hearts." This booklet is the first step in "an aggressive new proselytising campaign."

Now I read this, tapped my forehead and thought "What have these Baptists been drinking?" Yes, for they don't know and don't want to know the first thing about Hinduism.

But I also thought, how many of these people are there? Half as many as the 850 million Hindus in India? A third? A tenth? Well, I learn from an authoritative source on this very web-zine that Southern Baptists "are NOT a fringe group." Apparently, there are 15 whole million of these blokes and blokees in the USA. NOT a fringe group, but less than a fiftieth the number of Hindus in India. Now let's say you were somehow able to tear every single one of them, including Bill Clinton, away from their very comfortable lives in the USA -- and perhaps that same source will confirm that Southern Baptists are among the most wealthy congregations there -- to send on missionary duty to India. Let's say all of them, with their delightful booklets, do descend here to convert Hindus to the dubious merits of Baptism, or is it Baptisthood. Let's say each one tackles 50 Hindus.

Even if they succeeded instantly, even if they did so all by force, there would still be a tidy 100 million Hindus left to convert. That's how gargantuan the task is before those benighted Southern Baptists. That's the extent of yet another ludicrous fantasy that's being waved about.

And yet there are those who say they are "fretting" about this. About what? Can Hinduism, 850 million strong Hinduism, really be in danger from foolish booklets circulated to 15 million Baptists? Hindus are insulted and irritated by what's in those booklets, sure. Language as ignorant and offensive as that makes me sick and irate, and I have no religion at all. But to pretend the religion itself is under threat? Is this even a possibility, let alone being credible? To portray it that way is to watch a child build a mound of sand on a beach and then to scream in panic that soon, Everest will no longer be the world's tallest mountain.

How seriously can you take the people who try to peddle such a threat?

Apart from the numbers, there's this other aspect too. Can a religion that has flourished for thousands of years, that has grown to claim one of the world's largest religious followings -- can such a religion, such a massive institution, truly be threatened by a booklet? By whatever number of conversions happen every year in India?

But of course, there are indeed lots of people who pronounce that Hinduism is threatened by all this. Seems to me, then, there's only one possible conclusion to make about these fretters: they peddle a profoundly weak vision of this vast and ancient religion. Oh, they claim to be telling Hindus that they must "push back and fuss", that they must be virile and strong. But it is really weakness they offer. They seek to convince Hindus that their beliefs and values are so brittle, so unfounded, that some missionaries, or all of the USA's Southern Baptists, are about to overrun it all.

Luckily, I know enough Hindus, and I'm sure you do too, whose conception of their own religion is considerably stronger and sounder than that. They don't need to be told to fight off imaginary threats. Their confident faith is the true vibrancy, the real strength, of the religion.

Which brings me to the second step I mentioned above. Having made the case that Hinduism is in danger, there are all kinds of groups ready to defend it. Apparently the sole qualification such a group needs is to announce that it is defending Hinduism. That done, it can go right ahead with every other activity it was involved in all along, nefarious or otherwise. All of which will be overlooked or rationalized because, after all, these guys are defending Hinduism.

Take the Shiv Sena, among the country's loudest defenders of the faith. On another bleary morning just days ago, I read that a former MLA of the party, one Gurunath Desai, was arrested by the Juhu police for "allegedly demanding Rs 500,000 from a shopkeeper to settle a dispute." This is no flash-in-the-pan, as almost anyone in Bombay will whisper to you. As Julio Ribeiro, surely one of the country's most respected policemen, told Outlook magazine two years ago when the Sena was actually in power in Maharashtra: "The people belonging to the party in power are themselves into extortion."

So when did "extortion" qualify as "defending Hinduism"? What was the honourable Gurunath Desai doing, allegedly lining his pockets or allegedly defending a religion? (Naturally, "within minutes after he was taken to the police station, Mr Desai complained of chest pain and was admitted to Nanavati hospital." No doubt, despite his debilitating chest pain, he is busy defending the religion in hospital too.)

If Hinduism is indeed in danger, is it defended by people like this? Or is it desecrated by them?

Dilip D'Souza