My Trip to Meghalaya

 

In February of this year, on an in-flight travel book, I read about Cherrapunjee.  I now know that the original name is Sohra which the British changed to Cherra. The land of the heaviest rains, the land of dense forests. It was on my mind since February to explore this North Eastern part of India.

I had this great urge to walk/trek/hike amongst dense forests in heavy rainfall. From what I read, that was ideal at Sohra in Meghalaya, 2 hrs drive from Shillong and 6 hours’ drive from Guwahati in Assam, where my plane landed.

But this article is not a tourist update. I do have lots to describe about this place and my amazing trip. Sohra is so beautiful with the most amazing and lush waterfalls. But I leave it to you to explore her someday.

I write to try and understand the ongoing religious conversion in the region, from what I gathered during my visit there, especially from my driver of 4 days (who spoke good English).

He asked me one day “ Madam, you Hindu no?” I said “yes, Hindu but you too are Hindu right.” He said “ No Madam I am catholic.” He said his grandfather was a Hindu priest but he converted to Catholic some years back.

One understands from ground realities that there are so many angles to conversion.

I was shocked more so because he comes from a family of Hindu priests. Why would he convert? I asked him if he gets some regular income which helps in his children’s education that lured him to convert. That is what my maid working at my place in Mumbai told me many years back. Obviously, there must be some motivation. He said no, I did not convert for money. He does not get any perks for conversion, so he says. But then why I asked. He had to think. The answer did not come immediately. That meant either he had to dive deep within himself to answer his own reason for conversion or was he trying to play safe with me? Majority of the Sohra population have converted to Christianity. Religion conversion in the North East has been a hot news topic.

But the question has always been “Is this conversion through inducement or allurement of some sort?”

My driver denied it. Again, the next day I probed - but why did you want to convert? He then said “I like the way Catholics live, how they behave with other humans, the culture and values they teach. Besides, a lot of Hindus in Sohra were doing black magic with the locals to take away our land.”

It may be his version, true or false, I do not know. 

I read from news articles - The United Christian Forum (UCF), a civil society organisation focused on Christian issues, had released a statement last year highlighting the rise in attacks against the community. It pointed out that there had been 525 attacks against Christians in India just in the first eight months of 2023. The group had cautioned that if the trend were to continue then 2023 would prove to be one of the most violent and difficult years the Christian community in India has ever seen, breaking the recent record set by 2022, and 2021 before that.

Christian leaders say threats to Christianity and missionary activities have increased in recent years in the entire northeast India region after Hindu groups began to push cultural nationalism. The Hindu groups have succeeded in portraying Christianity as a diabolical force to destroy Hindu native culture and to convert Hindus to Christianity, the UCA report said.

In Assam, Christians make up 3.74 percent of the population, exceeding the national average of 2.3 percent.

Coming to the rest of India, if we were to talk of Christian influence, a lot of us in the cities are products of convent education. Neither our parents nor us saw it as anything religious. In school, they never preached Christianity. Yes, we did recite the Catholic prayer but that was it. I still follow all my Hindu rituals and beliefs and yet I am the product of a great convent education, great school, great teachers.

The few remaining Hindu homes at Sohra identify themselves by putting the rooster sign outside their home. Sohra has been a highly spiritual place where everything revolves around nature. For them nature is God and God is in nature. When I was a doing a hike amongst the forests, there is a place which is considered sacred and if anyone touches or destroys the trees around it, he will be punished by the villagers. There is a tourist walk called the Sacred Groves or Sacred Forest, where for years, Hindu religious practices used to be conducted deep inside the forest. Tourists are taken to the spot and it is believed that if one makes a wish here, it comes  true. Sacred Groves were found all over India in Vedic times. 

Such strong Hindu and Hinduism beliefs, yet the people choose to convert.

There could be many reasons. The Khasi region has been influenced by the British culture, as Sohra was the first capital of the British Raj in the Khasi and Jaintia Hills from 1835 to 1866. Their language Khasi is based on the Roman script (as the original script was lost). When I heard my driver speak the Khasi language, I found it sounding so European. It is only later I came to know of the Roman connection. While they do have a Chinese similarity in looks, many have a strong European look too. 

Add to that conversion in North-East and Sohra happens despite the strong existence of Hindu missionaries like the Ramakrishna Mission in the entire North-East. Ironically, this alongside the Thomas Jones missionary has uplifted the literacy in this region. To be noted Cherrapunjee is a zero-crime state.  It has an average literacy rate of 74%, equal to the national average of 74.5%. Male literacy rate is 72.4% and a female literacy rate is 73.9%. Aside this – They follow a matrilineal lineage and the youngest daughter looks after the family and is the inheritor of a larger share of the property. Women have an important place in the society.

My driver said “ Madam, last 2 years (post COVID) no foreigners coming. Before that we had a lot of foreigners.” I asked why is that. He did not know. I asked his boss; he dismissed it by saying foreigners do come but are lesser in numbers.

In my own speculation, foreign tourists could have decided to stay away from this place due to the threats of the Indian government to foreign missionaries.

I do not support conversion in any form. It is the need of the hour to research and understand why conversion happens in this strong Hindu region. Rather than break churches or stop convent schools, let us understand what drives these locals to conversion. Threats and violence can boomerang to many more becoming anti-Hindu. That in turn attracts politicians / opposition to take undue advantage to gain power as is happening now, where Hindutva is seen in a bad light and everything else bad is an outcome of too much Hindutva.

Point here is to understand what we are doing wrong and correct that.