Book proposal

INVISIBLE MINORITIES: REPRESENTATIONS OF ZOROASTRIANS AND

CHRISTIANS IN SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH, 1900-2000.
By
Rochelle Almeida.

NEH Institute

“Religion and Politics in India: Culture, History and the Contemporary Experience”

East-West Center in Manoa, Hawaii

June 7 to July 9, 2004.

INVISIBLE MINORITIES: REPRESENTATIONS OF ZOROASTRIANS AND
CHRISTIANS IN SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH, 1900-2000.
By Rochelle Almeida.

This inquiry has been inspired by the NEH Institute on “Religion and Politics in
India: Culture, History and the Contemporary Experience” that I attended at the East-
West Center in Manoa, Hawaii, from June 7 to July 9, 2004. Lectures on religious
polarities on the Indian sub-continent brought home to me the various ways in which
religious minorities have identified and affiliated themselves through the centuries.
Academic discourse on the position of Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians (Parsees) and
Christians on the Indian sub-continent from the very time when these religions made their
presence felt within the social and cultural milieu has helped me understand the complex
issue of co-existing in an environment in which the mainstream might be hostile towards
or ignorant about the religious and cultural mores of its minority segments.

It is clear that issues of religious affiliation became increasingly stronger on the

Indian sub-continent at the end of the nineteenth century. By the time the twentieth
century began—a time that coincided with the rise of nationalism—religious reformism
had already swept through Islamic, Sikh and even Hindu practices of worship (as Peter
van der Veer has pointed out in his article). At a time when the Congress was chanting
the mantra of Secularism, minority communities were becoming both acutely conscious
of their religious creeds as well as confused about the side with which they ought to seek
affiliation. On the one hand, there would have been a profound desire to remain on the
side of liberal, progressive secularist ideals, while, on the other hand, there would have
appeared for the first time, the danger of giving in to the ideals of Hindu hegemony at the
risk of compromising their own minority concerns. This dilemma has been ably
articulated by Ayesha Jalal with regards to the Muslims in India at the turn of the century.
But the same polarities that characterized Muslim identity might also have confronted
other minority religious groups on the sub-continent, such as the Anglo-Indians (some
Anglicans, but mostly Roman Catholics), and the Sikhs (whose request for a separate
Khalistan met with a firm refusal from Congress leaders). In like manner, Parsees, though
not immediately embroiled in the traditional rivalry between Hindus and Muslims, were,
nonetheless, equally bewildered by the question of where their loyalties should lie,
particularly as many of them were perceived as close allies of the British administrators.

I am keen on exploring the manner in which two minority communities positioned

themselves, politically and culturally, as the century marched on. While a great deal is
known about the Muslim and Sikh stand and their impact on the Partition of India, its
Constitution, etc. it seems as if the Christians and the Parsees were treated not just as
minorities, but indeed as invisible minorities. Not much information seems readily
available about their approach to nationalism, their attitude towards Independence and
their anxieties about the achievements of Independence. Can we make any definitive
statements about their cultural identity in colonial times? If so, what are these? And then,
when World War II ended, and the question of India’s Independence became a fait
accompli, how were their positions altered? And when the Partition of India was
eventually made known to her people, how were these two minority religious groups
affected and how did they react?

My understanding, from attending lectures during the Institute, is that through the first
half of the twentieth century, these communities were perceived as unimportant, even
insignificant, because their numbers were so miniscule. But, while it might have been
inconvenient to ignore their concerns at the time of Independence and for a long while
after it, suddenly, one of these communities, namely the Christians, have swollen into
prominence as their policies of conversion, a controversial issue even under British rule,
has become a huge bone of contention in the RSS-led campaign against all religious
minorities in India. Suddenly, those small numbers that were thought fit to be ignored for
the better part of the twentieth-century, have become significant enough to merit serious
attention, indeed even persecution, in some parts of India. It seems to me that when it
suited the Hindu mainstream to consider their numbers small, they were ignored. When
those same small numbers affected the Hindutva agenda of the ruling party, throughout
the nineties, they were considered large enough to become alarming to the cause of
national identity. It is also of interest to me to explore the current huge exodus of
Christians out of urban Indian cities such as Bombay, Bangalore, Chennai, etc. towards
Australia and, particularly, New Zealand, where opportunities for immigration have
recently opened. What I am observing is a voluntary exodus of young, educated,
professional Christians out of India in a move that is uncannily similar to the voluntary
exodus of Pakistani Christians out of Pakistan to Canada in the early 1980s when Zia-Ul-
Haq assumed power in Pakistan and introduced the Sharia Law there in his attempts to
‘Islamize’ Pakistan. I sense the unease and discomfort of Christians in India and a feeling
of insecurity about their future and the future of their children in a country that is
becoming blatantly communal. Many of them have expressed to me their helplessness
and their disappointment at the lack of mobilization among the Christian clergy to take up
cudgels on their behalf. The result is the loss of religious diversity in urban centers and a
sense of disillusionment at being let down by the guarantees provided by the Indian
Constitution.

Since my field of critical inquiry is South Asian Writing in English, I would like to
approach an examination into the position of these religious minorities from a
historiographic angle in such a way as to examine the manner in which these groups have
been represented in the literature in English that has emerged in the last one hundred
years from South Asia, which is to say in the countries of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and
Sri Lanka.

Some questions that come to mind are:

--Zoroastrians (Parsees):
How are Parsees depicted in literature in English by a Pakistani writer such as Bapsi
Sidhwa, for instance? A delineation of the Parsee characters in Cracking India might
throw light on this query. Considered a “neutral” religious minority by both Islamic and
Hindu groups, they were left largely unaffected by the Partition and its aftermath and had
the privilege of remaining the most non-maligned of minority Indian groups. Yet, strictly
speaking, if ‘foreignness’ was the issue upon which a religious community’s loyalty to
the nation would be judged, then they were the most ‘foreign’ of the sub-continent’s
minorities having migrated to India from Persia over 1200 years ago. This is not to say,
however, that they were overlooked. Sidhwa’s novels bring out the poignant situation in
which they found themselves at the dawn of a new era. Similarly, in more recent times,
Rohinton Mistry’s novels such as A Fine Balance, Such a Long Journey and Family
Matters, together with his collection of short stories, Tales from Ferozeshah Bagh and
Other Stories present us with memorable portrayals of Parsee men and women who
became embroiled in the evil machinations of politicians (for example, Indira Gandhi’s
Emergency is the backdrop of A Fine Balance, while her intelligence agency, RAW (the
Research and Analysis Wing), and its involvement with the creation of Bangladesh,
features in Such a Long Journey.

--Christians (Goans, Mangloreans, Keralites):

What does Goan literature in English tell us about the position of Roman Catholics in
India after the exodus of the Portuguese? An examination of a novel by Margaret
Mascarenhas entitled Skin or one by Victor Rangel-Ribeiro entitled Tivolem might help
answer this question. Were they considered inconsequential because their numbers were
so miniscule? Were they ignored because their religion represented that of the colonizers
(both British and Portuguese)?

Indeed, what is of particular interest to me is to comparatively examine the national

affiliations of Christians in India and in that part of the sub-continent that became
Pakistan. It has been my personal observation that while Indian Roman Catholic
immigrants living in the West have a continued relationship with the country they have
left behind and experience the frequent pull towards the land of their birth, this is not true
at all of Roman Catholics who left Pakistan for Western shores. Not many of them have
ever returned to Pakistan even as visitors and few seem to have an interest in the political
affairs of Pakistan since their departure. It seems to me that the question of their ties to
their country of origin today has much to do with the manner in which these Christians
were perceived and in which they positioned themselves while they still lived on the
Indian sub-continent (whether this was in India or in Pakistan).

--More recent fiction, such as Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things has underlined
the caste consciousness that is prevalent among Indian Syrian Christians in the state of
Kerala. One wonders why a people that converted to Christianity so many centuries ago,
would still allow themselves to be dominated by Hindu caste prejudices in the 1960s in
India. Also interesting in this novel is the attitude of the Keralite Syrian Christian elite
towards the Naxalite movement that overtook the state of Kerala in that epoch.

--Anglo-Indians:
Another ethnic group that has, quite understandably, experienced the dilemma of
divided loyalties was the Anglo-Indians whose situation was doubly poignant, both by
virtue of their mixed race and their religious beliefs. In a current academic environment
that strongly favors post-colonial critiques of hybridity and transnationality, the Anglo-
Indians remain one ethnic community whose unique heritage leaves them naturally prone
to scrutiny. As products of inter-racial marriage and cross-cultural exposure, they remain
a living legacy of colonial presence on the Indian sub-continent. Yet, they were
marginalized precisely for reasons of racial ambiguity and cultural ambivalence. Fully
aware of the fact that the establishment of self- government in India would mean the end
of their privileges and employment quotas in government-run institutions such as the
Railways and the Post and Telegraph system, they were, nonetheless, urged by their
leaders such as Frank Anthony, to conform to Congress notions of secularism and join
forces with its leaders. The delicacy of their position in well brought out by novels such
as Bhowani Junction by John Masters. I will examine Masters’ work as well as that of
another Anglo-Indian novelist called Maud Diver to study the manner in which Anglo-
Indian conflicts are delineated through Indian Writing in English. Furthermore, I will
examine portrayals of Anglo-Indians in literature not written by their own people but by
other contemporary South Asian writers. For instance, Miss Mendoza in Kamala
Markandaya’s Two Virgins, is an Anglo-Indian schoolteacher who is caricatured in the
novel and even seen as the villain of the piece for her role in egging the young Lalita on
towards aspirations of stardom.

--Christians in Sri Lanka:

What about the position of Christians in Sri Lanka in the wake of the Tamil Tigers’
separatist movement? The novels of Romesh Gunasekere (Reef) or Shyam Selvadurai
(Funny Boy, Cinnamon Gardens) gives us an insight into the situation of Christians who
neither formed alliances with the rebellious Hindu Tamils nor toed the Sinhalese
government line. Indeed many of them emigrated to Western shores precisely to escape
the dilemma of political affiliation.

Since literature in English on the Indian sub-continent is a relatively recent

phenomenon, I would like to examine the work produced in the twentieth century, say
between 1900 to 2000, to discover how these religious minorities have situated
themselves within the context of Hindu hegemonic influences. I aim to see whether
portrayals of such minorities evolved as the century marched on, whether de-colonization
had any impact upon their creation and whether or not characters in minority literature
might be seen as accurate representations of these religious groups in the countries of
South Asia.