Christian Subversion And Missionary Activities - 6

[Husky]

Archiving. History



publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft8r29p2r8;chunk.id=d0e7426;doc.view=print

Preferred Citation: von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph. Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1982 1982. ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8r29p2r8/



[...]

A novel source of dissension among Nishis who inhabit the hills adjoining the plains of Assam in the influence of Christian missions on young people educated in their schools in places such as North Lakhimpur and Tezpur. While numerous Hindu children go to such schools without being induced to change their religion, a good many Nishi youths have been converted to Christianity. This in itself need not have created any difficulty, for Nishis, like most tribals, are not greatly concerned about the religious beliefs of their fellow-tribesmen, and if the Christian converts had been equally tolerant their rejection of traditional Nishi religion might have been ignored by the great mass of conservative tribesmen. However, the converts seem to have

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been lacking in tolerance and tact, and educated young men of villages affected by the ideological split to whom I spoke in 1980 complained bitterly that Christians deliberately disrupted the harmony of community life. They allegedly refused to share the houses of adherents of the old faith, and this meant that old parents were abandoned by their converted children, who claimed that they could not stay in dwellings where "devils" were worshipped and the meat of sacrificial animals was consumed. My informants insisted that the missions encouraged the establishment of separate settlements for Christians, and that the Christians refused to participate in village festivals, thereby demonstrating their dissociation from the tribal community. It was alleged, moreover, that converts, not satisfied with this symbolic withdrawal from village life, went a step further by abusing and physically attacking priests as they invoked the gods in the performance of traditional Nishi rituals. Enraged by such interference with hallowed religious practices, some Nishi youths took the offensive and destroyed some huts used by Christians for their prayer meetings.



Nishi teachers at the government high school in Yazali, who were members of a youth organization formed to promote traditional tribal culture, told me how frustrated they were because they could not match the large sums lavished by the missions on propaganda which is undermining the old Nishi life-style. The missionaries concerned are Indian nationals, and though the Inner Line rules prevent them from entering Arunachal Pradesh for the purpose of proselytization, they allegedly pay young Nishis to spread Christianity in their home villages, and a commission of Rs 200 is said to be paid to any convert who induces another Nishi to embrace Christianity. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the case may be, it is widely believed that there are young Nishis who, after having left mission schools, live in comfortable circumstances without holding any official position or engaging in any normal occupation, such as farming, teaching, or running a business. Adherents of the traditional faith resent the subsidizing of such young people, whom they regard as hostile to their ancestral ideology and social customs.



(All the *very* same things that Hindu society complains about now. Christianism, having largely finished its project of converting the various heathen communities of India's Northeast, has now turned to focus pointedly on the larger body of Hindoos elsewhere in India. Applying all the same tactics. But on a larger scale, as a larger mass of people is involved.)



The conflict created by the impact of Christianity on the Nishis of the Subansiri District stands in striking contrast to the developments in the neighbouring Kameng District, where tribal groups such as the Khovas have come under the influence of Tibetan Buddhism. In their general life-style the Khovas, a tribe of shifting-cultivators adjoining Monpas and Sherdukpens, resemble Nishis in their economy and in the character of their traditional religion. Among the Khovas there is a spontaneous trend towards Buddhism; in two villages small gompa are under construction, and the villagers have invited Monpa lamas to

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(Not spontaneous at all. Buddhism - Tibetan Buddhism, not even native to India, but a refugee - is actually proselytising NE heathens. Buddhism even regularly invites itself into Bon space to continue proselytising Bon in India, not just Tibet.)



perform Buddhist rituals. A prominent headman of the last generation who was known to be a believer in Buddhism is said to have assisted in the establishment of a gompa in Bomdila. Unlike the Christian converts among the Nishis, those Khovas who are attracted to Buddhism do not opt out of the social life of their community and continue to participate in the traditional tribal rituals.



(Buddhism is still proselytising NE Indians. Akha converted to Buddhism - another set of Himalayan animist communities targeted by Buddhism also don't disrupt social life of the community, but Akha and other "Hill Tribes" still were on record objecting to the conversion of their people to Buddhism: as a form in itself of alienation from their ancestral views, replaced by other views.

Same as how Buddhism co-opting Shinto religion was not appreciated by Shintos, though Buddhism did worse than that among Shinto society.)



figure



[image] Monpa men of Sangti in Dirang Circle of Kameng District; they wear

rain-resisting caps made of yak hair.



In the same way the Sherdukpens combine their adherence to Mahayana Buddhism with the communal worship of tribal deities whose cult lies in the hands of priests entirely distinct from the lamas in charge of the large gompa furnished and decorated in the style of Tibetan gompa . Among the Monpas, too, elements of the ancient Bon religion coexist with the dominant Buddhist faith, and the parallel practice of both religions within the same communities has not sparked off any conflicts comparable to those which threaten to destroy the social fabric of Nishis affected by religious rivalries.



(Nevertheless, Bon has been subsumed by Buddhism and it seems to have been a long-term plan.

And meanwhile, adherents of Bon in Tibet still complain about persecution by Buddhism.

The Indian case may merely be because Buddhism is not the majority religion in India and is forced to get along with other minorities. Or that it can afford to wait, as it gradually swallows up Bon in India, which seems to be happening still.

Even among the Akha and other Himalayan populations, Buddhism is considered one of the missionary religions converting people out of the native religion. [See also FPCN/Friends of People Close to Nature, IIRC.] It is less predatory - now - but it's still a replacement theology, especially where animist and shamanist religions are concerned, doubly so in the Himalayan regions where it is still active. Though Buddhism will stomache more features of ethnic religions when it comes to inculturation and appropriation than christianism or islam will, Buddhism nevertheless ultimately replaces the head of each body of heathen religion with Buddhism. And like it has done with Bon now, with which it is still competing, Buddhism will eventually declare that all pre-existing/replaced heathen religions were actually Buddhism too, and thus rewrite the history of the converts.)