Who is
afraid of Cooper?
By A. J. Philip
"We want missionaries
of Christ. Let such come to India by the
hundreds and thousands and bring Christ's life to us, and let it
permeate the very core of society. Let Him be preached in every
village and corner of India."
THIS is what Swami Vivekananda
said during his visit to the United States as mentioned in an editorial
in the Detroit Evening News on August 28, 1894. Readers who would like
to read the full editorial can find it in Swami Vivekananda In Contemporary
Indian News (1893-1902) - Volume 1 published by the Ramakrishna Mission
Institute of Culture, Kolkata. Hundred and nine years after the Swami's
exhortation to Christian missionaries to come to India, an evangelist
from the US was not only beaten up but also ordered to leave the country
even before he could recuperate his health. What's worse, the perpetrators
of the ghastly incident are the ones who are never tired
of quoting the Swami to justify their version of Hinduism.
American evangelist Joseph
W. Cooper was beaten up by RSS
workers when he was returning from a meeting of Pentecostals at
Kilimanoor in Thiruvananthapuram district in Kerala. The RSS
leadership in the state promptly denied that their organisation was
involved in the attack though the attackers belonged to the RSS. We
could have given the RSS the benefit of the doubt, if they had left
the matter at that. Instead, they mounted a campaign to have the arrested
RSS workers released while levelling all kinds of allegations against
the missionary from proselytizing to denigrating the Hindu religion.
So successful were the RSS
men in their campaign that the
A.K. Antony government succumbed to their tactics and asked the evangelist
to leave the country within a short period. The police were not even
prepared to check with the doctors of the Kerala Institute of Medical
Sciences where Cooper was admitted whether he was in a proper condition
to take the long flight back to the US. In the end, he had to leave
the country with one of his hands still in bandage. Antony's police
behaved as if the heavens would have fallen and the ancient Hindu religion
would have been in peril if he had stayed in the hospital till his wounds
were fully healed.
The District Superintendent
of Police who ordered Cooper to
leave the country claimed that he had violated the visa rules. The
tourist visa under which he was allowed to travel in the country did
not permit him to "preach". So what kind of visa should he
have
obtained before he could have legally "preached"? As it is,
the
Government of India gives five kinds of visas to foreigners visiting
the country. They are 1) Transit visa for those who are passing
through India to some other country; 2) Tourist/entry/business visa
for six months; 3) Tourist/other/business visa for one year; 4)
Tourist/other/business visa for more than one year and 5) Student
visa. The fact is none of these visas permit a visitor to "preach"
in
the country.
So how do the foreigners
who preach at the famous Maramon
Convention manage to do so? They take a special permission from the
External Affairs Ministry through the "good offices of influential
people like former Union Minister P.J. Kurien". The rule prohibiting
foreigners from "preaching" was introduced in 1995. But in
the case of Cooper, what was he doing? He was speaking at a meeting
of the Pentecostal Church to which he belongs. In other words, he was
only addressing his own people who are all converted or, to use the
evangelical expression, "born again". By no stretch of the
imagination can it be called "preaching" and a serious violation
of the law inviting summary deportation from the country. In any case,
Cooper had a valid visa and had been visiting the country quite often.
The police action appeared
to be aimed at pleasing the RSS
and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leaders, who had been demanding even the
arrest of the evangelist. One of them, Kummanam Rajasekharan, even claimed
that it was under the orders of the Union Home Ministry that the state
police had served the "quit" notice on Cooper. The campaign
against Cooper's presence proved beyond a shadow of doubt
that the attack was engineered with a clear political motive. All
this was nothing surprising from organisations, which take pride in
killing nearly 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat and winning an election on a
vicious hate campaign.
But what was surprising
was the clean chit Union Minister O.
Rajagopal gave to those who attacked Cooper. He said the people were
forced to take action because the police were inactive. The minister
had forgotten that he had taken an oath to adhere to the Constitution
in both letter and spirit. Under the Constitution, what should prevail
in the country is the rule of law, which does not permit RSS cadres
to take the law into their own hands. Rajagopal was worried about the
violation of the visa rules by Cooper. But does he remember that it
is through a clear violation of the rules that he continues as a minister
in the Vajpayee government?
Under the Constitution,
a Rajya Sabha member should "ordinarily be a resident" of
the state from which he is elected to the Upper House. He has to give
an affidavit to that effect when he is elected. Can Rajagopal hold the
Bhagavat Gita in
his hands and say that he is "ordinarily a resident" of Madhya
Pradesh from where he was elected to the Rajya Sabha? To be fair to
him, he is not the only violator of this rule. He has an excellent companion
in Arun Shourie, who was elected from Uttar Pradesh, though he has always
lived in one of the posh localities of New Delhi. Perhaps, Rajagopal
was making the point that while the votaries of Hindutva were above
the law, foreigners like Cooper should strictly follow the rules.
Rajagopal is a great follower
of Mata Amritanandamayi
or `Mother of Immortal Bliss'. He can even take credit for bringing
her to Delhi and introducing her to the rulers of the time. I still
remember the public reception the then Delhi Chief Minister had
organised for her in March 1997. Since then she has been visiting the
Capital at least once a year. There is nothing wrong about it. Why I
mention "Amma" as she is popularly called here is to make
a contrast. When I read about the Kerala police serving a notice on
Cooper, I remembered how the New York police treated "Amma".
At that time New York city
was being led by Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani, a Catholic school-bred Republican politician who gained a
reputation for cracking down on anything resembling deviant
behaviour, and giving broad licence to the police to be the same way.
Rescuing New York City from the criminals was good politics, and the
law of the land essentially became arrest first, ask questions later.
Readers would recall that Giuliani became more famous following the
September 11, 2001 incident, when he gave exemplary leadership to the
city to cope with its aftereffects.
Judith Cornell, who has
written the biography of Mata
Amritanandamayi, titled Amma: A Living Saint (Penguin), begins her book
with "Amma's" encounter with the New York police. "Police
officers William La Pough and Juan Colon were driving their unmarked
patrol car through Central Park at 12.45 a.m. They found the park, like
the tepid night air, to be quiet and tranquil. As they drove up Central
Park West and passed the Museum of Natural History, they saw a large
group of shoeless people dressed in white who were congregating outside
the Universalist Church on the corner of West Seventy-sixth street.
In New York this can only mean one thing: homeless people, so the officers
decided to stop.
"What's going on?"
they asked the people who were standing
outside the church. "The
people explained that Amma, a greatly respected saint from a poor remote
village in southern India, was in New York City as part of her yearly
world tour to the United States. "As a way of blessing people,
Amma gives hugs of unconditional love. In the last three days she has
given thousands of hugs to people coming to this Universalist Church",
one man told them.
"William and Juan stepped
into a mass of people jammed into a
church too small to hold them. Once inside, they heard the melodious
and joyful sounds of sacred South Indian chants - chants composed by
Amma herself." New York Times reporter Corey Kilgannon, who was
present at the meeting, had this to say about the arrival of the police:
"My heart raced as I wondered if New York's Finest were actually
going to handcuff the "Hugging Saint". Had the year's most
bizarre news story suddenly fallen into my lap? Maybe a hug from Amma
was paying early dividends for this ambitious, young reporter".
But the officers never reached for the cuffs. Instead, they kneeled
down before Amma, who, dressed in her silver crown and white sari, smiled
broadly and pulled the burly officers to her chest and whispered her
blessings into their ears. As it turned out, it wasn't these cops' first
brush with spirituality. Officer La Pough met Mother Teresa
during a New York visit, and officer Colon guarded the Pope in 1995.
The point is they could
have asked "Amma" whether she had the
requisite "visa" to preach. Alternatively, they could have
asked them to disperse for a meeting at that time was not permissible.
But nothing of the kind happened. "Amma's" is not a solitary
case. There are hundreds of Indian swamis and gurus who visit the Western
countries, set up ashrams or collect funds all in the name of "spirituality".
Here it would be pertinent to quote from an
editorial in The Hindu (December 18, 1896): "Swami Vivekananda
is reported to have written to a friend in Madras that "his interests
are international and not Indian alone". To advance these international
interests, it is the intention of the Swami to
establish two centres of missionary training in India, one in
Calcutta, and the other in Madras, first Calcutta being the scene of
Sri Ramakrishna's work, and Madras afterwards... At these and other
centres that may be established in course of time, it is proposed to
train Hindu missionaries and send them to different parts of the world
to preach the truths of Hindu religion.
"From these two points,
the Swami says, "we will invade not
only India but (the first duty) send our bands of preachers to every
country in the world". This is a noble mission and this will appeal
with telling force to the national pride of the Hindus." The
editorial endorsed the Swami's programme and appealed to the readers
to contribute to the cause. The Ramakrishna Mission is not the only
Hindu order, which sends its missionaries to the West. Even the VHP
takes pride in mentioning the number of branches it has outside India.
Centuries before Swami Vivekananda
exhorted Hindus to send
their own missionaries to every corner of the world, people from
India had travelled to far-off places to spread their
religion. "Tradition unanimously ascribes the conversion of Ceylon
to Mahendra (in Pali, Mahinda), the son or in some sources the brother,
of Asoka, who had become a Buddhist monk. Though the relationship of
the apostle of Ceylon to Asoka is very doubtful, there can be no doubt
of his historicity, or of that of King Devanampiya Tissa, his first
convert.
"By this time, a few
Indian merchants had probably found their way to Malaya, Sumatra, and
other parts of Southeast Asia. Gradually they established permanent
settlements, often, no doubt, marrying native women. They were followed
by Brahmans and Buddhist monks, and Indian influence gradually leavened
the indigenous culture, until, by the 4th century AD, Sanskrit was the
official language of the region, and there arose great civilisations,
capable of organising large maritime empires, and of building such wonderful
memorials to their greatness as the Buddhist stupa of Borobodur in Java,
or the Saivite temples of
Angkor in Cambodia. Other cultural influences, from China and the Islamic
world, were felt in Southeast Asia, but the primary impetus to civilization
came from India." (The Wonder That Was India by A.L. Basham).
How many of these missionaries
had obtained the right visa
when they travelled to those countries? The poet's poet Rabindranath
Tagore was invited to deliver the Hibbert Lectures at Oxford in 1930.
On his lectures, the Manchester Guardian commented, "no series
of the Hibbert Lecture has aroused more public interest than the present
one." The series, titled The Religion of Man (Rupa) was an extensive
and commanding exposition of Tagore's understanding of the meaning
and significance of religion in the cultural history of man. Some
Christian organisations could have at that time accused him
of "preaching" Hindu religion by misusing the provisions of
the visa regime and the British Police could have asked him to return
to India in three days.
In the marketplace of spirituality,
every religion should
have the freedom to propagate its doctrine. At a time when his
supporters were hounding out Cooper, Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani,
was busy telling the authorities in Qatar the need for
religious freedom in that country. Maybe Advani had obtained prior permission
to "preach" the virtues of religious freedom to his
counterparts in the Arabian Kingdom which currently heads the
Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC). Anjali Modi of The Hindu who
accompanied Advani on this trip has quoted the minister as
saying, "Allowing the freedom to choose was the hallmark of
civilization" (January 23). Perhaps, Advani could not have put
it
better.
But how does this square
with his colleague O. Rajagopal's
demand that there should be a Freedom of Religion Bill in Kerala like
the one Tamil Nadu has recently enacted? (It is the height of
euphemism to call it the Freedom of Religion Bill!) Rajagopal's is
not an empty threat as Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi has
already asked his officers to prepare a draft Bill to be presented in
the next session of the Legislative Assembly.
There is no guarantee that
if the Sangh Parivar pursues the programme in right earnest, A.K. Antony
will not succumb to the pressures. It would be in the fitness of things
if India seeks a patent on "preaching" so that the Advanis
and Ammas can preach all over the world and we can send back guests
like Cooper. What a pity Cooper had to undergo so much trouble in a
country, which believes in the concept of athithi devo bhava (guests
are like gods). The Advanis and Rajagopals will do well to remember
Manu's stern warning: "If the King did not inflict punishment untiringly
on evil-doers, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish upon a
spit." This has happened in Gujarat and it will happen in Kerala.
The writer can be reached
at [email protected]