There was one group of people whom both Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi were sure could never be converted: The women of India. And there was one group that the western sponsors of conversions deemed vital for the capture of India for Christianity: women again. Women formed a cordon that the religious invaders have always found a bit too strong to break through.
Conference after conference of bishops of various denominations held in various western countries at various times have expressed frustration over the resilience of the women of this ‘wretched land’ called Bharat and there are records of their exhortations to their own women warriors ‘to save their eastern sisters’, as ‘saving’ the women would mean saving the household itself — a wholesale harvest.
The Swami and the Mahatma, if alive, would shed tears of blood if they come to know that, today, this bastion is showing cracks, if not giving way, in the face of relentless assault by the persistent marauders. And they are not hammering at the superstructure in direct combat like honourable soldiers, but are insidiously digging away at the foundation in total stealth, as only cowards are wont to. The agency: NGOs. The weapons: Money and social stigma. Over to the genesis and modus operandi.
While an elected government looks at people as citizens, and the market sees them as consumers, the NGOs derive their legitimacy from their notion of people as civil society or the occupants of the ‘public sphere’. And to their credit, it must be unequivocally conceded that their role has been a pioneering and positive one in almost all sectors that they are active in.
But it is to the weeds in them that we must turn our critical gaze for they have the potential to vitiate the entire field and render the crop waste and in fact, enough poisonous seeds have already been sown. That the governments of the day rely heavily on them for information inputs as well as deployment of resources only adds to the magnitude of danger that a few of them pose to the same civil society that they purportedly serve.
While NGOs in general have been active in several areas in the social sector, it is the role played by them amongst the women to which I would like to draw special attention. And even here, it is the chaff, the ones with an evangelical motive, that needs to be segregated from the wheat –for whom service is truly the end.
An overview of how the system evolved and operates today is necessary. The main playground is the rural sector. Sometime in the eighties, when the IRDP of the central government came under severe flak, a few international organisations funded select NGOs and conducted pilot tests of what they called ‘Financial Intervention’ for poverty alleviation in some districts.
The method was simple: organise women into small groups and provide them training and capacity building to enable them develop and manage their own micro enterprises. The money from the international agencies or the government passed to them through the NGOs who retained a margin to cover their costs. There are a plethora of them in the fray. The lofty aims behind funding these women Self Help Groups(SHGs) as they are called, are poverty alleviation and gender equality. It is these noble ideals that have now become a convenient alibi for some ‘overzealous’ NGOs to cover up their sole objective: conversion.
There are NGOs whose names themselves announce their evangelical moorings. There are the subtler ones with lofty nomenclature that do not betray their motives, but still operate with clear religious goals. Then there are those who openly have parishioners on their board of trustees or in some important posts while many others employ them as consultants or volunteers.
And there is an army of them roaming the countryside. The self help groups of women are ideally placed and porous enough for these men to infiltrate. These rogue NGOs act as facilitators for the parishioners to make inroads into the SHGs, bringing the headcount for them to unleash their viles. These characters are well trained, not only in gospel but also in grassroots economics. Their ‘expertise’ in the field is a godsend to the illiterate women and slowly the predators gain acceptability, respectability and also the confidence of the women.
These merchants of faith form the women into groups, conduct regular meetings and organise feasts. And in such meets the foundation for the advent of the ‘true faith’ is laid with the sponsors carefully lacing the subjects of discussion with sermons. Sensible ones who see through the game are quietly left out of the next feast! Having thus softened and disarmed the targets, these snakes in the grass patiently wait for the opportunity to raise their hood and strike.
The opportunity normally comes in the form of default by a SHG or its members on the repayment commitment to the NGO. Financial default is a stigma in society, more so for the poor who may not get a second chance. Apart from the loss of face, their livelihood is now at stake, a truly desperate scenario for the women who are already oppressed. A classic case of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. They automatically turn to the parishioners, who, forearmed with knowledge of their distress, are conveniently at hand to help.These men of god are now all grace and concern for their plight, bettering even the crocodiles in tear-shedding.
The vicious debt-trap now turns into a diabolical religious trap. So much for empowerment and emancipation. These holies then, provide emotional succour, which is followed by subtle suggestions of some ‘saviour’ somwhere who may be able to help. The quid pro quo: conversion. And lo, the dues disappear. Either the repayments are covered up by the NGOs through refinance or the same is graciously written off as bad debts.The saviour can not only save, but foot your bill and also write off! The harvest is through, a bounty has been reaped out of distress and desperation.
Such conversions, which constitute a blatant subversion of social service, are rampant. Though this is a time-tested technique deployed among other groups like Dalits and tribals also, it is the women who are dicey targets by virtue of their oppression. And, women’s emancipation is a theme that few can object to on account of its political correctness, and no politician can afford to be seen as a stumbling block and would prefer to take a macro view, if not out of concern at least for the sake of chivalry in public.
But several hapless women fall prey owing to this collective blind eye to their ‘micro financial’ troubles.These carriers of culture, the pride of Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi, the impregnable walls of Hinduism, are today exposed to religious perversions at the hands of some unscrupulous NGOs and their holy footsoldiers. And it is also a moot point if these ‘social brokers’ could be brought under the purview of the law banning forcible conversions as no money has changed hands. Write offs and repayment refinance are perfectly legitimate business practices. But that does not preclude the possibility of identifying and bringing such NGOs under scrutiny. One does not need a ‘world vision’ to do that. Just a suspicious eye would suffice.