From Hindu to Christian

Interview with a Christian husband and wife
Varanasi


[“V” begins.] Previously we were both Hindus. We became Christians in 1992. We were married in 1987. My father was a professor at BHU and my mother was a housewife. We are four sisters and one brother. We had an academic atmosphere in our home. Of course, my father was a professor, so we were also brought up in that way. Education was emphasized. So I am a Ph.D. Then I got a job and now I’m teaching in a college. I teach English literature. I met my husband when I was working at the medical institute. That’s how we got married. This is my second marriage.

When we were Hindus we didn’t worship any one deity. We worshipped Shiva, Durga, Krishna, Ram, and all the Hindu gods. Because my father comes from the academic world, he doesn’t believe much in the rituals of Hinduism. Even though he is a Hindu, he has never gone to any temple or taken part in anything. He believed in reading the Hindu scriptures by himself at home. Whether it was the Gita or the Ramayana. But my mother was a traditional Hindu woman, and she believed in the traditional things. She took part in rituals and went to temples. We had idols in our home.

I also didn’t like the rituals. There were so many rituals and superstitions about certain things. I had my education in a convent. So that was one of the reasons I turned to Christianity. Right from my childhood, I was influenced by my teachers who were nuns. And as I grew up, I could compare. Somehow I found more sincerity in Christianity and I was more attracted to it than to Hinduism. Jesus appeared to me as a person who has no faults. Speaking about Hinduism, especially in Varanasi, culture and tradition play a very important role in the system.

My family still doesn’t know about my conversion to Christianity. So at this point, there is no question of an adverse reaction. If they were to know about it, I’m not sure if there would be any conflict or not. There might or there might not be. My mother has already passed away. My father is still alive and he’s pretty liberal, so he doesn’t interfere. Our marriage, also, was very untraditional and controversial. I belonged to a different community, a different caste. But they didn’t object. They supported us. My family background is totally different from the traditional norm. All my sisters are working. They are all in the field of education. So I don’t think my family would object much to my Christianity. They might be neutral. Or if they don’t like it, they probably wouldn’t say anything. The worst they would do is to keep silent.

There have been changes in my life since I became a Christian. I have more self-control. Before, if somebody tried to harm me, I always wanted to get revenge. I was easily irritated. So I have more control, of my emotions especially. The changes are more internal than outward.

[“A” begins.] My father is a traditional priestly brahmin. My forefathers were priests of the king. My city was the capital of a kingdom. So the king brought some brahmins and gave them a village of their own to stay in. That city is in Bihar. I grew up in that brahmin village. Each of us had a certain deity in our house. My family had Kali. The worship of Kali is a tantrik kind of thing. We worshipped Kali every day with mantras. We would recite those mantras at least 108 times every day. Then there were many pujas every month, such as the satyanarayan puja. There were many religious festivals as well, so my mother would make me fast and all those things. So I was doing everything, reading shlokas, such as Durga Sarasvati, which is the book of Durga, and one chapter of the Gita every day.

I also had to recite a two-line mantra called the gayatri mantra. Gayatri is supposed to be the power of the sun. I had to recite this mantra at least 108 times a day. I also had to recite other mantras relating to Shiva, Vishnu, and Ram. The purpose of these mantras was nothing. They don’t know. They just have to do it. A child’s head is shaved at three years of age, and after reaching the age of eight, he takes the sacred thread ceremony. From then on, it is his duty to do all these things. The religion is very much tied to the culture. They don’t really have significant faith or belief in anything. They do it for the sake of doing it, and to get money. Their lives are miserable. They are not happy. They are poor people. So they want something which can shape their hopes.

My upbringing was alright, but when I saw the society around me, I was not satisfied with the way it was. I started reading books. All of the Hindu gods have been born of various ascetics and saints. For most of them, birth usually involved something unusual, such as coming through an illicit relationship, or from a horse or a cow, something like that. These gods are involved in doing bad things, like Shiva going for a woman, and Indra going for a woman or raping a woman. And people imitate this. The people of my village do this. They also drink palm wine, and they take any woman they want. They would say these people were untouchables and they wouldn’t eat with them or drink with them. But at night, the old brahmins would go and have sex with them. It’s still done, it’s a business kind of thing.

So I started reading books and thinking. I thought, “This is not fair.” I used to go on a pilgrimage every year, traveling on foot 70 kilometers to a Shiva temple, through mountains, forests and rivers in Bihar. I would walk barefoot on the road. On the way, I would see that some people would be traveling along, looking at women and having bad thoughts about them. There were many saints who would take advantage of the situation on the way to the Shiva shrine. Then I thought that God was not affecting them. He was not helping them. In fact, he was not helping me. I would also do bad things. Even though I did everything like chanting the Gita and so on, still I was getting into smoking and drinking, and thinking about women. So God was not helping me.

I first heard of Christianity by means of an ad in the paper which offered a correspondence course to learn the Bible. So I filled out the form and sent it in. They started sending me literature. I like music, and I used to keep a radio with me all the time. I used to listen to the radio while studying. I would get up every morning about 4:30 or 5. So one morning around 6 o’clock, I was listening to the shortwave radio and I heard some songs. At first I thought it was Hindu, because the words were in Hindi, and I liked the songs. But then I heard them saying things about learning the Bible.

I began to listen regularly, and whatever I learned I tried to practice in my village. So people didn’t like me. Even my parents hated me. My mother said, “Oh, he’s a Christian.” I didn’t know the meaning of this word kristan. I thought it was something bad that they were calling me. So she predicted that I would become a Christian. The villagers used to notice that I would eat with untouchables. Our maid-servant was an untouchable, and yet I would ask her to bring me some water. I wouldn’t ask my mother or my sister.

When I read the Bible I found that it was very practical. You can achieve those things and you won’t have any problem, like feeling dissatisfied. Suppose I am angry and then I have to sit for a puja, like the time when my grandmother died, my father’s aunt. He appointed me as the lighter of the funeral pyre, and I was supposed to listen to a reading of one of the Puranas, which talks about ghosts and what happens to the one who died. I was to do this for nine or ten days. At that time I was young, only 15 years old.

There was a woman there who loved me. I was not in love with her, but she loved me. So she would sit there in the group while I was listening to the pandit chanting the puran about the spirit and what happens. And while I was listening, my thoughts would be on that woman. She was there in my mind. So then I thought it was not helping me, listening to this stuff. It should help me and change me, so I wouldn’t do these things. So then the Bible helped me, and slowly I started getting rid of these things. It was not my fault, but they would make use of me, these women and girls. I never went for them. I was the sort of person who would say yes every time, no matter what a person said to me. I would accept it and believe it. This is my weakness, even now. When a stranger comes and says, “Oh, I will do this for you and that for you,” I tend to believe it. Then I get cheated.

In 1977 when I was 18, my father was seriously ill, and there was no one to go to him. I did not know his address, so I could not correspond with him. Then I said that if all I had been reading is true, and Jesus is really there, then I should pray to him every day. So I said, “Okay, if you are there, tonight you must listen to my prayer and help my father.” Then I heard the news that my father had been alright for three days, and I thought, “This is wonderful.”

The average Hindu thinks that Christianity is bad. They admit that Jesus is God, that He is a good god. But at the same time, they don’t want another person’s god. They want their own god to dominate. They like Jesus, but they don’t like Christians. That’s the problem. They know that if they accept Christians, then those Christians will turn good Hindus into good Christians. Many Hindus are not really Hindus. My friends and people I know are not really Hindus. They’re not doing anything to make them Hindu. It’s just by caste and living in society, and by their surname, that they are Hindu. If these people are taught well, they can become Christians. Hindu tradition is like that. They want supremacy and dominance over others. So that’s why they accepted Buddha as the eleventh incarnation of Vishnu, just so they could absorb Buddhism into Hinduism. Christianity is not yet incorporated into Hinduism, because it came from foreign countries. Buddha was from India. There is a book written in Hindi which says that Christianity is krishna-niti — the policies of Krishna. It was written by a well-known historian. He says that foreigners cannot pronounce krishna-niti, so that’s where they get Christianity.

If you are a Christian then you have to do certain things. You have to be a man of action. You cannot just say, “Don’t steal, don’t cheat,” while at the same time you are taking money out of people’s pockets. That is Hinduism. The thing is just in the mouth not in the heart. As a Christian one has to go against the patterns and traditions of the society, against superstition and the worshipping of a god who will let you do whatever you want. Like going to a temple and offering flowers, water and other things, and then going out and cheating and murdering. Dacoits, for example, who are robbers, are worshippers of the goddess Kali. They kill someone and they say, “Jay Kali.” In her name they kill. It is convenient to get help from gods in doing bad things. Some Hindus think that if you take the name of a god, you can do anything. But I don’t think that’s true. Hindus realize that Christ is perfect, but they still want something else, some idol.

Living here is not a problem for Christians. Hindus accept whatever you are or wherever you have come from. But Muslims will not accept you. You cannot live next door to a Muslim if you are a Hindu or Christian. But Christians and Hindus can live alongside each other, as long as the Christians don’t interfere with the Hindus or tell them that what they are doing is bad. If you let them do whatever they want, they won’t say anything. A Christian can have some kind of witness to Hindus, but you see, most Hindus are uneducated. Even if they have a Ph.D., they are uneducated. They know their own subject, political science or sociology, but they don’t know the reality, what things are there, the truth. It’s good to try to be a role model for them. The people I meet, every time I tell them I am a Christian and they accept it, they try to ask why I became a Christian. The thing is that they are earning their livelihood because of being a Hindu, so it’s difficult. They don’t live like me. The shopkeeper may know I’m right, but if he stops being a Hindu, then people will not go to his shop. They’ll say, “Oh, this is a Christian shop.”

The culture and fear are what keep Hindus from turning to Christ. They don’t know what happens after death, if they become Christian. Then there is the love for money. These are the three things. No Hindu can think about anything without money. Everything is in terms of money. I am able to talk to Hindus because I know the right language to use. In witnessing to Hindus, lifestyle and the way of worship are important. But I don’t think they can be separated. See, life means everything — prayers and thoughts, etc. Otherwise we would be animals, eating, drinking and living in a house, trying to be successful.

If someone is really a true Christian, then there is no difficulty. The problem with Indians is that when they become Christians, they don’t lose their Hinduity. Those features are there. That’s why people think, “What’s the difference between this Christian guy and any Hindu?” But if you are a Christian in your actions and your thoughts, then you won’t have any problems. I don’t have any problems, not at all. You need to go to a God who can change you and also change your society. And you need a God who will accept you as you are, rather than saying you have to be something, and then you will be accepted. Hindus know this because they go to temples, and when they do, they have to wear clean clothes and take flowers in their hands. If you have no money, the priest will not like it. But if you give good donations, arti and dakshina, then you will be accepted in the temple. So money is the way.

Ninety percent of Hindus say they are spiritual because they are doing certain things and following traditions. They don’t have faith. That’s why they have so many stories and books. If they were real Hindus and were really spiritual, it would be different. Many persons go to offer Ganga jal to Shiva. On the way they may find a donkey who is dying of thirst. It would be a rare person who would think that, “Oh, our holy books say that God is everywhere, so God is in the donkey too. So I should take some of my Ganga water and give it to the donkey. In this way I can satisfy Shiva. Then I can go and offer my Ganga jal to the deity.” But very few people think that way. That’s why there’s a story in one of the holy books about Shiva coming in the incarnation of a donkey, and testing people to see if they would give their water to him when he was in need. But most of the people failed. So only one or two percent of Hindus were that way. And that’s still true, only one or two percent of the people are like that.

There are good things in Hinduism, but the priests and people who have vested interests have changed it. Popular Hinduism is a corrupted system. It’s a free-for-all. Whatever you want, you do. If you have money you are successful and good. You worship sinners and rich robbers, who don’t carry life and are not truly spiritual. That’s why I think that Hindus don’t believe in God. They believe in these material things. In the ashram where we went yesterday, I saw one of the sadhus driving a Maruti car. They have cars, bank accounts and motorcycles. So you’re a sadhu just to have these things.