Karma yoga is the way of Jesus

There are many differences still, 62 years after 1947, between those whose families strove in the three British Presidencies (Madras, Bombay and Calcutta) and those who throve in the rajwaras of the Erstwhiles.

There are many differences still, 62 years after 1947, between those whose families strove in the three British Presidencies (Madras, Bombay and Calcutta) and those who throve in the rajwaras of the Erstwhiles.

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One such difference, with due apologies to those who do remember Bapu’s inspiration and are not freaked out by fear, is the Presidency Hindu’s relationship with Christianity. It has generally been more comfortable.

Jesus-and-Mary’s tender, wistful portraits are not uncommon in a Presidency puja room. The Presidency Hindu is usually less paranoid about Christians and Christian missionaries because he’s known them for four centuries now, and in Kerala even longer. They hold no terror for him, indeed there’s considerable fondness because of the Church’s fabulous work in health and education.

There are South Indians whose inter-faith family friendships go back three generations or more. Sometimes they marry each other. Hindu grandfathers and parents went to the “best” colleges which were/are mission colleges. Christian doctors delivered many of our parents into the world.

But the hardcore Plains Hindu is often scared and suspicious of Christians, especially of a South Indian Christian who is doubly ‘foreign’. And if this ‘foreigner’ is joined in his/her work by another ‘foreigner’ from the north-east, bas, khattam. Mr Plains Hindu fears the worst. In-your-face evangelical Christian TV programmes on religious channels don’t help the cause of inter-faith peace in India. And those who want reservation for ‘Dalit Christians’ are seen as greedy.

However, would suspicious Plains Hindus consider asking their fellow-Hindus in Bengal and South India about Christians? You know, something blunt like, “Are you friends with Christians? Do they try to convert you? Do they bribe the poor?”

The answers will vary. Jehovah’s Witnesses are a much-discussed menace to South Indian society, ringing Hindu doorbells and telling them to convert and Be Saved.

“The impertinence of it!” say Hindus crossly.

A South Indian Hindu is likely to tell a Jehovah’s Witness and other aggresive denominations to mind their manners. He will invite the Syrian, the Catholic and the Protestant home and go to their homes with zest and warmth, because they have far too much class to be waving lassos at his soul. Besides, many were Hindus once. They have their own baggage to deal with. And they know he knows that. They also know exactly where he went to school and college. It’s deeply mutual.

Net-net: Christians are as different from each other as Muslims and Hindus are and there are busybodies in each religion, don’t we all know that?

But why not see for yourself what drives some Christians to risk life and limb in the jungles of Central India and the Plains and elsewhere? It is the spirit of seva that energizes the Bible, surely a visceral connect with the Hindu concept of finding God through karma yoga (service to the world):

“What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food…and ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” (James 2:14-16).

“For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” (James 2: 26).