Missionary Agenda

“The early Christian missionaries who settled at Goa and other Portuguese merchant communities had soon let it be known in Europe that extensive religious conquests were about as unlikely as great territorial acquisitions….(p.337-338) India, it was generally realized, was going to be a hard nut to crack”, [Donald F. Lach, India in the eyes of Europe: The sixteenth Century, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, (1965), First Phoenix Ed. 1968,@ ]. What was written by the early missionaries sometime 500 years back, still remains true today and will continue to remain all the time in future also. Because, Missionary agenda always remained not only, “according to the waves of Western theological trends’ (we can also include political to this) but also “still remain as ornamental pieces of controversial fame or antique objects which are commissioned to decorate the living rooms of our religious thought for impressing visitors from abroad,” says  Plamthodathil S. Jacob, [The Experiential Response of N. V .Tilak, CLS, Madras, 1979, p. ix].  Of course Jacob wrote this in a different context of, “indigenous Christian ideas” which tried to reject, “the coloured glasses of imported denominational doctrines provided by Western Christian Missions in India”, (ibid. p. ix) but the Mission continues to fail.  Well this is not the subject matter of this article.

In my recent visit to the North I found that the same trend is going on every effort attempted by few Indian bhaktas of the Lord is controlled by the Western theological trends and to decorate the living rooms of visitors from abroad.  When one young man was taking me to a sat-sangh arranged in his house, he asked me one question: “how to answer to those Missionaries from the West who indirectly [or sometimes directly] tell us that all these contextualization that we try to do is only a means to the end., viz., to bring Indians to their denominational church’ through ‘conversion’”.  He asked this in Hindi.  Before answering I asked him whether he is a Full Time Worker receiving money through that Missionary agency from the West.  He with much hesitation and shyness said, “yes”.  Then with a smile I said, “already you know the answer and you cannot do anything to change their AGENDA.  This is what is going on from the beginning.  There is a stiff competition among various Mission Agencies in the West, particularly in North America to claim who HOLDS THE FINAL AUTHORITY ON CONTEXTUALIZATION and who is more QUALIFIED to take it further in India.  And people like you are merely an  instrument in their hands to carry their AGENDA.  But remember one thing clearly, all these so-called ‘Indianisation; indigenisation; acculturation; inculturation; contexutalisation’ etc. etc. are nothing but Western AGENDA  to selectively use our Indian worldviews that will serve their purpose.  As a Hindu bhakti of the Lord I don’t need any of them to exercise my bhakti in the Lord as a Hindu. They will think, re-think and re-re-think as an outsider, insider, alongsider and might take many more new avataras when they come to India.  But they too cannot do much as their mission AGENDA was decided by the ‘the waves of Western theological trends…. which are commissioned to decorate the living rooms of visitors from abroad’.  Unless you manage to come out and stand on your own leg to allow the Good News to incarnate in our land, there is no solution for this.

Long back when I was taking classes for the so-called Indigenous Mission Organization dominated predominantly by South Indians I clearly told them, ‘unless the Mission administration and leadership is handed over to the North Indians, you will continue to do the same what the White Missionaries were doing in the past. Only the skin colour and nationality changed but the Mission never could change its AGENDA.  To my surprise even in some Western dominated Organizations working in India, most of the top leadership rests in the hands of White Men, though he is much junior to other Indian leaders who are working in the same Organization for a long time.  Though like that young man I too was irritated by this, still I live with the hope that Indian will continue to remain ‘a hard nut to crack’ and I am happy about it, though some of us failed to change the Mission, our worldview continue to remain the real antidote for the Mission.

@ This book is an exact reproduction of Part III, Chapter VI, from Volume, I, of the author’s Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago and London, 1965).  So the page numbers are as per the original and not in this book.–db 

DB, Gurukulam, 24-5-2023