Irony of FCRA regulation: Foreign funds in Christian orgs benefited elites the most

The anti-Christian agenda of the RSS and BJP Government, by adopting various measures like the FCRA Bill, anti-conversion laws, and other forms of systemic attacks, is to ensure that the Dalit, Adivasi, and Shudra communities do not get education and global connectivity on par with the Brahmin, Bania, and other upper castes. 

The RSS and BJP assessment is that earlier only the Brahmin, Bania and other upper caste youth benefited from Christian education and health institutions, though built and run with the help of foreign money. But now they have their own private English-medium educational institutions and private hospitals. Even in earlier regimes headed by the Congress, they only benefited from the best Christian education and health institutions. The Christian institutions also ignored the role of the caste system in denying SC/ST/OBCs access to their top institutions, as they did not adopt any caste-based reservation policy.  

In the early modern period India did not have great non-Christian medical institutes like Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH, established in 1900) and St. Stephen’s College of Delhi, established in 1881. Even in the early days of Independence for best modern English-medium education and allopathic health treatment the upper castes depended on the Christian institutions.

Delhi University was established only in 1922. The All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi was established only in 1956. The rich upper castes depended on these world-class private Christian missionary institutions. They too were willing to serve them. Though they were collecting fees, it was never like the present upper caste owned private institutions. Even now there is a difference between the Christian and non-Christian fee structures in private education and health institutions. That was because they were/are subsidising the income from foreign donations through FCRA, and before FCRA was enacted, they were governed by the Indian tax laws. But the money was coming very much legally.

However, for a long time, the Indian Christians—particularly Catholics—served the same upper castes who became anti-Christian now, not the poor lower castes. Only in the recent past did they diversify their educational and health services. For example, colleges like St. Stephens and CMC Vellore did not implement reservation for SC/ST/OBCs. They only gave some seats to privileged Christians.

If only one could calculate the sheer number of Brahmins and Baniyas who studied in Christian institutions and got treatment in their hospitals, almost free of cost, they would outnumber any other caste persons. The point is that this was made possible because of foreign money coming to these institutions to subsidise education and health from Christian Western governments, churches, and individual families thinking that it is a mission charity to serve in a poor country like India. 

The conversion question 

Why are they saying only the poor get converted by force using FCRA-related money? The rich and privileged were also vulnerable to forced conversion in Christian schools, colleges, and hospitals. What would have happened if conversion were made a precondition to study in a Christian institution or get treated in our hospitals? 

Though Islam existed in India for about a thousand years, the rulers had maintained great fraternal relations with the Brahmin, Bania and other savarna Hindus. Though Muslim rulers did not give them great education or health science, more upper castes got converted to Islam. They embraced the caste system and did nothing to reform the social conditions in India. During this period, neither the rulers nor the Islamic clergy established any institutions to serve the populations who have come to be listed as Dalits/OBCs/Adivasis. 

Without establishing any institutions that served outside the fold of their faith, the Hindu and Muslim ruling classes served only elites. Even as both collaborated to keep the caste system alive, they also created communal conflicts in competition with each other. As the ruling Hindus and Muslims played their deadly games, the food-producing Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis suffered illiteracy and poverty. In the latest stage of this ancient game, the RSS/BJP is preparing the ground for pushing the productive communities to primitive stages. Modern English education alone can help them to overcome their historical backwardness.

Empowered SC/ST/OBCs threaten RSS/BJP

Did Indian Christians create religious and communal conflict ever since Christianity became the source of Indian education and health science? Why this RSS/BJP animosity towards Indian Christianity? The main reason behind it is that over the last few decades, Christian institutions increasingly started educating the SC/ST/OBC communities too in their English-medium schools. 

The fear is that if the Christian institutions are allowed to educate Dalit, Adivasi and Shudra youth with some amount of subsidised fees, they will fight against the caste system, monopoly exploitation, and compete in all spaces, including media. Using this draconian FCRA law, the poor Dalit, Adivasi, and Shudra forces could be controlled.

As Abhijeet Dipke, Convenor of the Cockroach Janta Party, rightly said, these people are against the poor getting educated. In reality, RSS and BJP forces are against the Dalit, Adivasi, and Shudra (the poor) getting educated because they challenge the control of the Brahmin-Bania forces. They want to be more cautious after seeing Dipke’s own example of emerging as a leader of youth, being a Dalit himself. 

Christianity as cultural buffer

All the Christians in the world must know that before Christianity opened schools and hospitals, the majority productive communities—Shudras, Dalits, and Adivasis—were treated worse than cows. They worshipped cows but did not even touch the Dalits. 

The first secular schools in the subcontinent were opened by Christian and colonial establishments where anybody could study irrespective of their caste, gender or religion. This stress on imparting mass education was a direct consequence of the period of enlightenment in Europe and impelled Christian missionaries to establish printing presses, scientific institutions, schools, colleges and hospitals. This secular Christian education helped Muslims and Brahmins to modernise themselves. Rajaramohan Roy and Sir Sayyad Hammed are outstanding examples of such modernisation. These institutions here and in England helped many freedom fighters to understand the world through the lens of secular democracy.  

Until the British established the Department of Public Instruction in 1855 and opened the gates of mass education, Hindus and Muslims ran institutions that were exclusively for elites of their own communities in Urdu and in regional languages. The ancestors Shudra/Dalit/Adivasis were not allowed to read and write till the British, by all means, with a Christian communion arrived in India. Indeed, it is only with these radical changes that the first generation of educated social and political reformers emerged from our communities.

Without caring for Brahminic values of human untouchability and the indignity of labour, they opened schools, though very few, for all Indians. Because of that, through the policy of education for all, a great couple, Jyothiba Phule and his wife, Savitribai, the first Shudras, got basic school education. They became the first slave liberators in the mid-19th century. This is the kind of secular educational path RSS is uncomfortable with. These kinds of changes are not acceptable in the Brahmanic tradition.

Now the RSS and BJP want to close down all those educational institutions and health centres, like early hospitals, including the Christian Medical College Hospital, Vellore, over a period of time with a carefully crafted legal system.

Through education and health, in fact, the Christian institutions helped more upper castes than the Dalit, Adivasi, and Shudra till recent years. Opening such public institutions for SC/ST/OBCs is slowly creating an awakening in them.

The new FCRA laws do not affect the Muslim public institutions much because they do not have any significant educational or health institutions that were established with foreign money. Importantly, they rarely have secular institutions which provide services to all communities.

These laws will not touch the Hindu institutions either. In any case, they mainly serve the upper castes by charging huge payments. There is no charity help in Ambani or Adani schools or in universities like Ashoka or any other such private universities. In Hindu private hospitals, there is no charity-based cheap treatment for the poor. But the Christian institutions did that earlier and continue to do so. This seems to be the RSS/BJP combine’s main concern, particularly in the education sector.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a Political Theorist, Social Activist and writer. His latest books are A Shudra Life – Autobiography and Harappa – God's City of Civilisation. Views expressed are the author's own.