With a little help from a clinic, faiths coexist peacefully

RAJASTHAN, India — On the world stage, India is seen as a country where religious persecution runs rampant. 

In a rural village in Rajasthan, Christians, Hindus and Muslims live in mutually beneficial harmony.

In April, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom placed India on its watch list for "the government's largely inadequate response in protecting its religious minorities" in response to recent violence against Christians and Muslims. 

But in Kanakheri, a rural farming village in the Indian state of Rajasthan, a Christian woman sits on the floor kneading flattened bread while her husband sits in the courtyard with their close friend, a Hindu, engaging in conversation surrounded by their goats lying in the shade and green stalks swaying in their fields. 

In another part of the village, a woman tends to cows at her husband's family farmhouse, her face covered by a luminescent gold-colored veil. She was born Hindu, yet accepts the Christian god as her husband does. 

But the Christian community assiduously avoids proselytizing within the community. As one villager comments, "we all pray to different gods, but have similarities in morals and faith, no matter which one."

In 2008, the Rajasthan Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government passed an anti-conversion law, the Religious Freedom Bill, reflecting a politicized animosity within the state and throughout India of the Hindu right towards minority Christians and Muslims. 

The BJP, a Hindu nationalist political party, was the incumbent state political faction until the March 2009 elections. The Christian church’s connection with the lower classes made the church a source of friction in the eyes of the BJP. The BJP needed the votes of the tribal communities, and sought to undermine the Christian church to obtain votes and gain power. Throughout Rajasthan and India, outbreaks of violence and discrimination towards Christian institutions have occurred.

In Kanakheri, the Catholic church is located on the periphery of the village, surrounded by open fields nearby and  the Aravalli Mountain range in the distance. Kanakheri is a Hindu-majority village, with approximately twenty Christian families interspersed throughout. 

On the road to attend church, Christian worshipers peacefully pass by the homes of their friends and extended family, both Christian and Hindu. Before the church was built fifty years ago, worshippers had to travel to another village, Bhavnikera, to attend services. 

While the remnants of traditional rural Indian life are everywhere within Kanakheri, the village has slowly modernized with the introduction of paved roads, television and satellite installations. A few shops and the area's first private school were created out of renovated farm buildings, and the number of water wells within the village has increased. These changes align with the improvements the church has instituted, from jumpstarting health services to spreading the value of education. According to one villager, "the church brings peace of mind and increases morals of people within the village."

The role and awareness of education has become increasingly prevalent in the lives of younger villagers. Although the majority of elders are illiterate, the first generation of literate-majority villagers are now in their thirties. "I was of the first generation of women in this village to be educated," boasts Sharma, a Christian villager who is 35. She works as a teacher and her husband is an IT worker at a technology company in a nearby town. Her children, ages 8 and 12, attend a boarding convent school in another region. 

Sharma’s sister, who lives in the same house, has two daughters, one age 5 and another 1 month. Sharma’s oldest daughter attends the newly instituted private school in the village where students are admitted through a series of entrance tests. While preparing for school in the morning, the daughter joyfully identifies words from her school workbook, actively pointing out passages to her family members. "When she is older, I want for her to have the possibility to be whatever she wants,” Sharma says. "The Christian church prizes education. If I was not Christian, I'd less likely have felt the importance to go to school and would have worked in the fields."

An AIDS clinic was built four years ago on the church property. The patients come from throughout the region. The clinic acts as the only sustaining force in the lives of the patients, who are often incredibly poor have no other resources. The church is nondiscriminatory, turning a blind eye to the religion of the patients. As a result, the patients are a combination of Christian, Hindu, and Muslim. Although no one is forced to attend, all the patients show up at the daily prayer meetings to paintings of Jesus Christ and in altar ceremonies.  

The villagers live in a calm, fully integrated religious syncretism; the Christian church does not proselytize and appears to have a nominal impact on those who do not seek it out. No villagers can recall the church trying to convert those who were not Christian.

The presence of the church is a boon, as the church and the services it provides aid in the development of Kanakheri and needs of the villagers. "It does not matter if these people are Hindu or Christian,” said Rev. Anthony Fernandez of Ajmer. “The issue is about human rights, and that these people are being helped."