Religion and Society
Religious conversion sometimes has the added bonus of
upward social mobility. But for many in South Africa's Indian community it had
the opposite effect.
Image
credit: Rajesh Jantilal/AFP
Friday,
July 8th 2016
The
first group of Indian indentured labourers arrived in South Africa in 1860. The majority
settled in Natal because they were originally requested by local farmers. Like
India, Natal was a British colony. Most of them were Hindus, although not
exclusively so. The 19th century immigration of Indian labourers brought two
types of immigrants – “indentured” workers and “passenger”
Indians. The latter group came at their own expense. They were largely traders
and over time became an economic force to reckon with.
South
Africa’s Indian population currently stands at 1,286,930
(2.5% of the overall population). The Indian community can be culturally
divided into four broad groups along linguistic lines: Tamil, Telugu, Hindi and
Gujarati. They are divided along the following major religions: Hindu (41.3%), Muslim (24.6%) and
Christian (24.4%).
The
interplay between Hinduism and Christianity in the predominantly Hindu Indian
community, and in particular the contentious issue of conversion, has been the
subject of great debate and intense research. In this second article of a two
part-series, Professor Pratap Kumar, of South Africa’s University of
KwaZulu-Natal, assesses whether the mainly Pentecostal conversions of South
Africa’s Indian community provided a new social identity to the converts.
It
isn’t just the doctrines of South Africa’s mainstream and Pentecostal churches
that differ. The way they have been trying to convert members of the South
African Indian community to Christianity since the early 20th century has
contrasted widely.
Back
then, the mainstream Christian churches provided clinics, hospitals and
schools. Yet these material benefits yielded hardly any converts, as is evident
from the low percentage of Christians (4% of the total Indian community) in the
mid-19th and early 20th centuries.
The
Pentecostals had a different approach. Instead of being involved in community
service, they placed emphasis on critiquing Hindu belief systems and caste
practices. They also focused on healing and exorcism. It paid off. Between 1925
and 1980 the Indian membership of the Pentecostal churches grew larger than all
the other Christian denominations put together.
There
were three main Pentecostal groups active in the
Indian community in the earlier part of the 20th century:
·
the
United Pentecostal Church;
·
the
Apostolic Faith Mission; and
·
the
Assemblies of God.
Making Hinduism more attractive
In
response, Hindu reform organisations worked hard to make Hinduism more attractive to their own
followers.
Many
of these organisations, such as the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna
Centre and the Divine Life Society, have emphasised the
departure from old ritual belief systems to a more philosophical understanding
of Hinduism.
These
neo-Hindu movements believed that ordinary Hindus lacked the more enlightened
understanding of Hinduism – an understanding, they maintained, that was present
only in the sacred texts of Hindu philosophy. These texts emphasised the
oneness of divinity. They also dismissed worship of multiple gods in temples,
saying it was based on ignorance.
In research conducted by JH Hofmeyr and GC
Oosthuizen in 1981, a shift towards a more philosophical approach to Hinduism
was visible. More than 88% of Hindus affirmed a monotheistic understanding of
God in Hinduism as opposed to only about 11% admitting to polytheistic notions.
Pentecostal inroads
Despite
the Hindu reform efforts, the Indian Christian number grew from 4% in 1925 to
24.4% in 2011, with the Pentecostals making the most significant inroads. For a
comparative perspective on the different dogmas’ performance, let’s take three
churches from each of the two different persuasions as per South Africa’s 2011
national census. There were 8,520 Indian members of three mainstream churches, the
Anglican Church, the Lutheran Church and the Methodists, together.
It is
a different story on the thriving Pentecostal side of the pew. Indians in the
Full Gospel Church, the Apostolic Church and the International Fellowship of
Christian Churches (an umbrella body of charismatic churches, including the
prominent Rhema church) together constituted 36,371 members.
The
penetration of the Pentecostal movements into Hindu society is felt especially
in the KwaZulu-Natal Indian townships. According to the Hofmeyr and Oosthuizen
survey, the majority of Hindus in the Durban township of Chatsworth seemed to
acknowledge that “Jesus was the only son of God.”
In
other words, they seemed to know the claim by Christians that Jesus is the only
son of God and hence the path to salvation. The authors tempered their analysis
by suggesting that “assent to the belief did not imply consent to the
exclusivist claim of Christianity”.
Still,
the Hindu religious life based on rituals in temples and shrines continued to
flourish. It continues to be evident during the festivals of fire-walking
rituals at which some Hindus illustrate affirmation of their faith in their
deities. In more recent times the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, now the official
organ under which all Hindu associations in the country fall, has held
conferences on Hinduism to educate the faith’s youth.
Absence of caste
In
South Africa, Indians who were Christian largely came from the barracks and
mill stations during the colonial period. It is commonly perceived that they
belonged to a lower order of society.
In the
case of Indian Anglicans in Natal, Arun Andrew John in his doctoral thesis argued that the converts were
more interested in a change of social identity. They hoped that the conversion
would bring them from being lower-caste groups to social equality. However, it
must be noted that neither in India nor in South Africa was a significant
change in social identity visible as a result of conversion to Christianity.
It is
important to note that a new social identity, which the converts to
Christianity sought through conversion to escape social discrimination, did not
seem to have come to fruition.
Old
social disparities continue to plague the local Indian community, despite the
absence of caste as an organising social unit. The discrimination now seems
based on religious distinctions as well as class.
Within
the Indian community it is difficult to separate religious and class
distinctions, as most Christians happen to be from economically disadvantaged
backgrounds. Therefore, Christian identity implicitly follows the status of a
lower rung.
Conversely,
not all Hindus may be economically better off. But there seems to be a sense
inherent in the Indian society that those who became Christian through
conversion were not only poor but also socially inferior. And this perhaps has
to do with the remnants of caste consciousness that prevails even after its
formal demise as a social unit.
In
addition to this, Christians feel that the majority Hindu community has
hijacked the linguistic identity. The result is that they keep Christians of
the same linguistic background on the periphery. For example, the Andhra Maha Sabha
in South Africa is an organisation of the Telugu-speaking community. Yet it is
solely Hindu in its orientation, notwithstanding its linguistic signification.
Likewise, the Tamil
Federation of South Africa is Tamil only in name, and is Hindu
inherently.
All of
this points to cultural alienation of one group, as Gerald Pillay writes. It offers ample opportunity
to the alienated party to find social identity elsewhere, which is to affirm a
Christian identity.
For as
long as this tendency to monopolise linguistic identity by the Hindu majority
persists in the Indian community in South Africa, the issue of conversion will
remain a thorny one both for the Hindu and the Christian communities.
P. Pratap Kumar, Emeritus Professor, School of
Religion, Philosophy and Classics, University of KwaZulu-Natal.
This
article first appeared on The Conversation.
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