Converted to the cause The sangh parivar?s orchestrated tirade against Christian missionaries is as ill informed as it is unfair. I will not dwell on the lifelong dedication to alleviating the conditions of the most backward of our fellow citizens neglected by our own religio-social organisations?Hindu, Muslim and Sikh ? but only on one Englishman who came to India to convert tribals to Christianity and ended up by converting himself to a tribal and a Buddhist. He was Verrier Elwin, author of over a dozen definitive books on the tribes of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Assam. Elwin was the son of an Anglican bishop. Many members of his family had gone to Africa on proselytizing missions. He chose the same career for himself. After getting a first class from Oxford University, he got a doctorate in theology. He decided to work in India ? as an act of reparation: that from my family should go to give instead of to get, to serve with the poorest people instead of ruling them, to become one with the country that we had helped to dominate and subdue.? He joined the Christa Sewa Sangh to work with lepers. Soon after his arrival in Maharashtra, he went to see M. K. Gandhi and spent a week in Sabarmati ashram. In his words, he became ?an ardent disciple of the Indian national movement ? it was as if I had suddenly been reborn as Indian on Indian soil.? He became a charkha spinner and wore khadi, but did not buy bapu?s abstinence from alcohol and sex, both of which he relished. Elwin befriended Shamrao Hivale; the friendship lasted his lifetime. The two were sent to work among the Gonds. After surveying several villages they selected Karanjia in Mandla district and with their bare hands set up an ashram cum school cum clinic. The ashram flew a saffron flag with a cross above it. The teaching was along nationalist lines. They did not try to make any conversions. On the contrary, Elwin formally severed his connection with the church. He also rejected Gandhian puritanism and was charmed by the Gonds? carefree life: they took their sex partners as casually as they took mahua; they married, had extramarital affairs and divorced their spouses by a simple ceremony of breaking a pot and snapping a twig in two in the presence of their elders. Elwin fell in love with the tribal way of life and felt that they needed to be protected from the so called civilizing intrusions of do gooders who wanted to put them in clothes, impose prohibition and chastity on them. Elwin married a Gond girl, Kausalya (Kosi), and had a son by her. Kosi had an affair with a Muslim shopkeeper and bore him another son whom he adopted. He confessed that both he and Kosi were polygamous by nature and had many casual liaisons. Ultimately because Kosi preferred her lover to staying with Elwin, he divorced her. At his next ashram at Sarvachappar he married a Pardhan tribal, Lila, who bore him three sons. Meanwhile a stream of books on the different tribes among whom he lived, their sons and styles of living were published in India and abroad. That won him many admirers including J.R.D. Tata, the Wadias, Khaitans and above all, Jawaharlal Nehru. It was panditji who picked him as his adviser on tribal affairs and sent him to Assam. Based in Shillong, Elwin researched and wrote on the tribes of the region. He was honoured with a Padma Bhushan, and after his death, with a posthumous award for literature by the Sahitya Akademi. He died in Delhi and was cremated by Buddhist rites. Did Verrier Elwin convert any Indian to Christianity? Not one. He gave himself, heart, soul, body and worldly wealth to India and Indians. He was by no means the only foreign born Christian missionary to do so. The moral is clear: those who resent Christian endeavour in India have to do better than Christian missionaries in sewa ? service to the poor ? and not by abusing them, assaulting them and burning their churches. If you want to know more about this remarkable man. I suggest you read Ramachandra Guha?s Savaging the civilized: Verrier Elwin, his tribals, and India, recently published by Oxford University Press. It is well researched, well written, and makes fascinating reading. Liberty, equality, promiscuity What do Indian women want? They are not quite sure themselves. Reservation of a third of the seats in the two houses of Parliament and vidhan sabhas will only benefit the educated urban elite women. Working women want equal sharing of domestic drudgery and care of children. The modern girl wants to have the same privileges of being promiscuous as boys. However, one thing that stands in her way to achieving her ambition is that they also cherish the traditional image of Indian women being as chaste as Sita while their liberated instincts make Draupadi their role model. Sandhya Mulchandani writes: ?An expanding world...with its expansive needs, and too many varying expectations, only adds to the growing impression that marriage is not what it is touted to be. Marriage used to be a relatively simple arrangement ? he got a housekeeper and a child bearer, she a breadwinner. But look at the new vocabulary that?s crept into marriage ? communication, space, freedom, quality time, equality and, more important, divorce: words that are edging out commitment and compromise.? ?Now both partners expect a multiplicity of roles ? fulfilling needs beyond housekeeping and economic support. What?s expected today is that both will be expert and willing lovers, efficient co-workers, sources of emotional support as well as rewarding companions, with anything falling short of these expectations leading to a break up.? ?Specially because marriages are the one venue where India is truly getting integrated, breaking through the barriers of creed, caste and other parochial considerations requires adjustments and compromises that are sadly missing. Has India stepped into the minefield of mixed marriages without the maturity that it takes to make this transition? Given the relative freedom with which people choose their partners today, shouldn?t marriages be more equitable or were parents right when they said that horoscopes, the right social background and families were what mattered?? ?Today?s youth express concern and anxiety that arises over realistically bridging the gap between their own expectations and those of their parents. Also, sensing the extent of despondency that pervades an overwhelming number of marriages today, the younger generation males opt for the well trodden path in the belief that the girls whom their mothers choose may be the right ones after all.? Mulchandani in the recently published book, The Indian Man: His True Colours, labours in vain to prove that the Indian male continues to be besotted with his mother and it is his mother fixation that makes him treat his wife unfairly and ruins his marriage. In short the mother in law is the witch incarnate. If Mulchandani is correct, every other Indian, male or female, is unfaithful to his or her spouse. She quotes: ?After all, if men are having affairs, they are having it with women. If 60 per cent of men are having affairs, so are 60 per cent of the women. If this is not true, the obverse is that one woman is having an affair with five men, which makes them much more immoral. Women are not the paragons of virtue and fidelity that they pretend to be.? The Indian Man makes very pleasant light reading. The author has used the modern technique of making her point through interviews with people from different social strata and occupations and citing the opinion of psychiatrists, and sex therapists. People who are facing difficulties in their married lives will find solace in her conclusions. Passing the buck A?hunting we?ll go, thought the two Khans, Bail petition rejected was only Salman?s; Saif said, ?I?m not cheating, The bucks died of over eating, Shooting with camera is all I do, ask my fans. If a hunk you aim to hook, Wear the new perfume called Shah Rukh; And to patao a bimbo You need no arrow or bow, A dash of the same stuff her goose will cook. (Contributed by Prabhat Vaidya, Mumbai) BY ARRANGEMENT WITH THE HINDUSTAN TIMES