HOW CAN CONTEXTUAL
THEOLOGIES ASSIST ANGLO-INDIAN WOMEN IN UNDERSTANDING AND ARTICULATING THEIR
RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES?
By
Sheldon Fernandez
The following essay is an adaptation of a graduate essay on
‘contextual theology’ – a sphere of study that attempts to read the bible
through the eyes of marginalized people such as woman and minorities. This
piece accordingly examines the religious experiences of Anglo Indian woman
against new theologies and theoretical research.
—∞—
“Started by exploitation, ended by
assimilation”, might be the epigraph on the Anglo Indian grave, a people whose
abrupt extinction may have been predicted by its happenstance birth. The eulogy
of this obscure community will be a tale of irony, an unintentional species of
Western colonialism that was subsumed by the Western world four hundred years
later. Behind this sociological autopsy historians will find a proud people of
eclectic ancestry, a group who fused their divergent ethnic and cultural affiliations
into a distinctive ethos that has never been theologically characterized.
In what ways did the cultural makeup of the
Anglo-Indian community shape the religious experience of its women? Phrased
more purposefully, how can contextual theologies assist these women in
understanding and articulating their religious experiences? These are important questions because the
particulars of Anglo-Indian history allow its women to contribute uniquely to
the emerging voice of postcolonial feminist theology. A worthwhile starting
point in this conversation is to chart the relationship between colonialism and
the Anglo-Indian people to which it gave rise.
The origins of the Anglo-Indian community can
be traced to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when European explorers
colonized the areas of Asia known today as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Among the many ripples of the East-West clash were legitimate and illegitimate
sexual unions between European traders and indigenous women (Gaikwad, 13). The historical record on the latter point
speaks to the thorny qualities of Anglo-Indian identity, since any celebration
of its eclectic lineage must be counterbalanced by recognizing that some of the
first mothers of the community were coerced, raped, and slaved by its first
fathers (Gaikwad, 14).
The interracial unions that blossomed during
colonization gave rise to a number of mixed-ethnic groups throughout Southeast
Asia, which slowly coalesced into a single community eventually termed the
Anglo-Indians. In most respects this community of mixed-decent was accepted by
neither European leaders nor native locals, but were nevertheless favored by
the British rulers for coveted government positions because of their Christian
background, English fluency, and lighter skin color (Gaikwad, 63). Thus, for example, members of the community
were instrumental in the construction of the Indian railway system in the 19th
and 20th centuries (Gaikwad, 29).
The Anglo-Indian people experienced enormous
hardship when India obtained its independence in 1947, during which time the
country’s social hierarchy predictably flipped (Blunt, 12). In consolidating
their newfound authority and autonomy, the indigenous Indian population rapidly
marginalized their non-indigenous counterparts, and, as a result, approximately
half the Anglo-Indian community immigrated to the United Kingdom, Australia and
North America within a decade of Indian liberation (Gaikwad, 17).
The Anglo-Indian people comfortably migrated
to their new surroundings according to contemporary research (Gaikwad,
13). Undoubtedly, the Christian-English
heritage of the community’s forefathers was a key factor in easing this
integration, and statistics reveal that nearly 90% of the community now marry
outside it (Gaikwad, 19). This fact, when seen through the lens of Gaikwad’s
demanding definition of a social equal as “one that you will be willing to have
your son or daughter marry” (Gaikwad, 20), testifies to the completeness of
this assimilation and the degree to which the extinction of this community is
inevitable.
This brief historical recount
of the Anglo-Indian people brings to light two important theological points.
First, while the community underwent periods of exploitation and
marginalization throughout its history, the community itself was a direct
product of colonization. Second, the
interracial makeup of this obscure people places them at an interesting point
along colonialist axis, allowing for unique contributions to the postcolonial
theological discussion.
Any sincere reflection of the
religious experience of Anglo Indian females must begin by placing itself in
the shadows of colonialism. During this
time the Bible was used to justify European military conquests against foreign
lands and to promulgate Western notions of superiority against ‘heathen’
indigenous cultures (Kung, 11). The act of colonization became fused with the
ways in which it was theologically validated, and Westernization and
Christianization became largely synonymous.
Indigenous women fell prey to inexcusable transgressions such as rape
and murder in the name of the Gospel, and local girls were violently taken from
their homes and educated in white institutions.
While Christianity was intended to save such woman from exploitative native
practices, it significantly marginalized them in other ways (Kung, 27).
So sustained and vivid were the
forms of colonial oppression that pundits coined the word ‘kyriarchy’ to
describe it (Kwok, 56). This term points
to the unequal, exploitative and totalitarian rule of an emperor over his or
her subordinates, which in the case of colonialism gave rise to “comprehensive,
interlocking and multilayered” forms of repression (Kwok, 56). As African and Asian colonies moved towards
independence, it became clear that a distinct theology was needed to appraise
the centuries-long kyriarchies that such countries had endured.
Postcolonial theology attempts
to formulate a Christian understanding of the effects of colonialism using a
myriad of critical tools such as biblical exegesis, historical analysis and
contextual theological reflection. Because of the multilayered effects of
kyriarchical oppression, the theological themes of postcolonial persuasion
overlap with those found in liberation, critical, feminist, and black
theology. In specific, postcolonial
theology sets for itself the following goals (Kwok, 22):
-
It raises pointed
questions with regard to biblical interpretations that fueled colonial pursuits
and the complicity of religious scholars in tendering such interpretations.
-
It focuses its
exegesis on colonial concerns, such as the power differentials between biblical
communities and kyriarchicial modes of oppression.
-
It eschews
romantic pursuits for uncorrupted native cultures and instead argues that
indigenous people must ‘appropriate’ colonial realities into their personal and
cultural identities.
-
It suggests that
indigenous populations must ‘decolonize their minds’ by reinterpreting the
biblical texts through the eyes of native traditions divorced from the
European-centric readings that sustained colonial forms of oppression.
A more particular form of this
theological discipline is postcolonial feminist theology, which examines
colonial questions from the specific perspective of the women it marginalized. In general, two voices have emerged within
this scholarly sphere: European women of colonial ancestry, and indigenous
women of colonized ancestry. The
contributions of both these groups in understanding the plight of colonial
women are significant.
The first stream of
postcolonial feminist theology can be seen as corrective; an admittance of the
injustices that females leveled at their foreign sisters during periods of
colonialism. Appalled at the treatment
of native women, Christian missionaries established all-girl schools, catechism
classes, and women’s Bible study classes to “save brown women from brown men”
(Kwok, 17). Within this context, female missionaries promulgated traditional
colonial ideologies that portrayed the West as the center of all cultural good
while simultaneously typecasting foreign cultures as substandard (Kung,
49). Moreover, the relationship between
European and indigenous women in the context of their ‘edification’ were colored
along the lines of race and culture:
Caught in the politically charged colonial space defined by race and
class, these white women were not natural allies of native women. To protect their identity and to minimize the
danger of native women’s usurping their superior position, it was advantageous
not to stress commonality of gender, but to exaggerate racial and class
distinctions. (Kwok, 18)
Whereas as the first and second
iterations of feminist theology challenged patriarchy in the both the Church
and society, postcolonial European feminism is sensitive to the ways in which
indigenous cultures were eclipsed because of colonial notions of White
supremacy. Central to this branch of theology is the concept of the
‘appropriation of culture’, which “upholds neither a nostalgic nor a romanticized
notion of one’s heritage, but argues for a critical appropriation such that the
past is constantly open to new interpretations” (Kwok, 17).
In admitting that the ideals of
Victorian womanhood were unjustly projected onto foreign women, the ‘colonialist’
version of this theology encourages victimized women to ‘do their own theology’
by favoring hermeneutics that are sensitive to postcolonial concerns such as
“hybridity, deterroritralization, and hyphenated or multiple identities” (Kwok,
79). This theology also endorses
‘imperialist-checks’ against traditional and contextual exegesis to determine
if these forms of analysis “support colonizing ideology by glossing over the
imperial context and agenda” (Kwok, 83).
In sum, ‘colonialist’
postcolonial feminism encourages exegetical approaches that highlight the
imperialist-bent of traditional scriptural readings, and extract postcolonial
teachings that speak to the women marginalized by colonization. It leaves the exegesis and application,
however, to its ‘colonized’ sister theology.
The second flavor of postcolonial
feminist theology – that performed by the colonized – begins with the process
of ‘decolonization’ in which women of the Third world reclaim and appropriate
their personal and cultural identities (Kwok, 81). This process starts with the
recognition that conquered women in the Third world were victims of double colonization, in that they were
sexually exploited by foreign men while also being stripped of their native
ways of life. As such, the feminist aims of such women differ fundamentally
from their European counterparts:
the pleasure she [Third world women] seeks lies not such in asserting
her own individualist sexuality or sexual freedom as found in white bourgeois
culture, but in the commitment to communal survival and in creating social
networks and organizations so that she and her community can be healed and
flourish. (Kwok, 37).
The objectives of women in the
Third world are accordingly elemental, focusing on basic needs of sustenance and
survival. In this context, postcolonial feminist readings of the bible
encourage interpretations that: illustrate forms of resistance and hope in
varied colonial contexts; elevate the voices of women; are sensitive to
postcolonial concerns such as loss of identity (Wong, 12). In addition,
hermeneutics within this theology pay special attention to biblical women in
the ‘contact zone’, which is defined as “the space of encounters where people
of different geographical and historical backgrounds are brought into contact
with one another” (Kwok, 82). An example of a ‘contact zone’ exegesis is
offered by Laura Donaldson in her analysis of the prostitute Rahab in Joshua 2.
In this Old Testament story,
Rahab, identified as a ‘harlot’ and a Canaanite, protects the spies sent by
Joshua and is thus granted elevated social standing in the Jewish community to
which she migrates. A literal reading of the story might fixate on the act of
self-action as cause for social advancement with ‘the people of God’, which
might then fuel a symbolic exegesis in which fortuitous circumstances are seen
as doorways to ‘The Heavenly Kingdom’.
In the spirit of the
postcolonial interpretation, Donaldson turns the exegesis on its head and reads
the story not from a Jewish viewpoint, but from that of a Canaanite. From this revised perspective she finds
parallels with Rahab’s exposition and the historical predicament of Native
women during Westernization. Embedded in the text are many of the colonial
assumptions that victimized indigenous women: the inferiority of foreign
cultures and the expectation of female subservience. Exegesis through a postcolonial lens thus
uncovers a ‘story behind the story’ – the invasion of Rahab’s home and the
cultural displacement to which she becomes subject (Kwok, 82). Such a counternarrative calls to attention
all the colonized Rahabs throughout history and the fundamental principles of
feminine equality and freedom that their memories demand.
In applying the theoretical
principles of postcolonial feminist theology to the religious experiences of
Anglo-Indian women, I performed an unscientific survey of seventeen females
within our community. I interviewed them at length regarding their Christian
upbringings, experiences, and general thoughts on religion, and shared my
research on colonialism and postcolonial theory where I felt it appropriate. My
expectation was that the women in our community would be uniquely positioned to
comment on postcolonial influences because of their combined ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’
ancestry.
The educational background of
those surveyed was wide-ranging, from those with partial high school experience
to those with postgraduate degrees. None of the ladies, however, received
formal training in theology of any kind, which made for some interesting
observations (“Sheldon, you are intellectually sentimentalizing this…”).
In some respects, the feedback
of Anglo-Indian women reflects the findings of contextual theologies: the
‘elder’ generation clearly identified with the traditional forms of patriarchy
that the first and second waves of feminism sought (and still seek) to
eradicate. Many of these women described, with telling detail, the
patriarchal-bent of their respective homelands: how women were excluded from
decision making positions and relegated to subservient ‘womanly’ jobs such as
teaching and nursing. Interestingly,
these injustices were often qualified as ‘minor’ when compared to the graver
forms of discrimination experienced by indigenous Hindu and Muslim woman (“Sheldon,
they were treated like slaves”).
The survey also uncovered a
notable paradox: the kyriarchical modes of oppression experienced by our
community in Asia spawned a religious and communal solidarity that petered out when
these forms of oppression were eliminated during Western migration.
Interestingly, the repressive motherlands of Anglo-Indians spawned a communal
identity defined in negative terms: the community coalesced precisely because
its members did not speak Bengali,
Hindi, or Urdu, and were not Jain,
Hindi, or Muslim. In being displaced
into Christian and English-speaking societies thereafter, the community lost
its distinctive strands of ‘counterculture’ and dispersed accordingly. In sum, the Anglo-Indian community was
birthed and shaped by the respective acts of colonization and oppression, and
self-extinguished when it was no longer subjected to the morally unsavory
circumstances of the Third world.
The women I interviewed did not
know what to make of these facts. As most were not academics, the theological
irony of our community’s history struck them as uselessly abstract as opposed
to interesting or thorny. However, one issue these women did grapple with was
the degree to which they had unknowingly oppressed native Indian and Bengali
females. For example, while one
individual stipulated that she was victimized by traditional forms of
patriarchy, only after some reflection did she acknowledged the kyriarchy she
had exercised over her female servants.
The realization that
Anglo-Indian women were themselves culprits in Western exploitation gave rise
to an interesting question: were Anglo-Indian women ‘better off’ because of the
transgressions of colonization?
Furthermore, could such considerations offer any insight into the more
global pursuit of women’s rights?
The women I interviewed
struggled with this question, but most acceded that the introduction of Western
ideas into the Eastern world improved the lives of indigenous women
tremendously. They sited the virtual
eradication of practices such as sati, polygamy and the caste system, as proof
that colonization could not be painted in purely negative terms. Instead, most echoed the sentiments of Musa
W. Dube: that women in the Third world needed to favor imperial forms of
oppression over indigenous, patriarchical ones, because cemented Third world
conceptions required “Western lubrication” (Dube, 122). A penetrating question is when such
‘lubrication’ impinges on indigenous cultures and when it enlightens it.
On the question of how to draw
this line, most women pointed to a central theme of John Paul II’s pontificate,
the Church’s responsibility in defending the immeasurable dignity afforded to
all humans by means of Christ’s sacrifice:
Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is
incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to
him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it
his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been
said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself". If
we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of the
Redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his
humanity. (Redemptor Hominis, 10)
A critical component of postcolonial feminist theology is that women
in the Third world ‘appropriate’ colonial realities into their personal and
cultural identities. Likewise, the voices of these women must appropriate the
goals and designs of postcolonial feminist theology itself. The experiences of
Anglo-Indian women suggest that colonial sensitivities must be balanced by
Christian appeals for the dignity and decency for women throughout the globe in
the sincere struggle towards an emphatically different yet plausible future of
gender mutuality.
References
Blunt, Alison. Domicile And
Diaspora: Anglo-indian Women And The Spatial Politics Of Home. Chicago:
Blackwell Publishers, 2005
Dube, Musa W. Postcolonial Feminist Interpretations of the Bible. St.
Louis: Chalice Press, 2000.
Gaikwad, V.R. Anglo-Indians.
India: Priced Publications, 2003.
Kung, Chung Huun. Struggle to be
Son Again. Introduction, Asian Women’s Theology. New York: Orbis Books,
1990.
Kwok, Pui-lan. Postcolonial
Imagination and Feminist Theology. Minneapolis, 2005.
Wong, Wai-Ching Angela. The Poor
Woman: A Critical Analysis of Asian Theology and Contemporary Chinese Fiction
by Women. London: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002.
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Sheldon Fernandez graduated from the University of Waterloo in 2001
with a degree in Computer Engineering. As a student he won provincial and
national awards for his design of the 'Dynamic Infrared Photoretinoscopy
system', a product for ascertaining the eyesight of children incapable of communicating
with an Optometrist. After graduation, Sheldon joined a team of Waterloo
graduates and co-founded Infusion Development, which provides software and
consulting services to the investment banking industry and state and local
governments in the Unite States and Canada.
Today, Shelson is a Director at Infusion Development, and Chief
Technical Officer of 'Infusion Angels' an angel fund and incubator that assists
Canadian students in converting their ideas into full-fledged, self-sustaining
companies. In adition, he continues to be closely involved with the University
of Waterloo in an academic capacity as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Waterloo
School of Optometry. Finally, Sheldon graduated Alpha Sigma Nu with a masters
of Theological Studies degree from the University of Toronto, including thesis
work connecting the disparate realms of neuroscience and ethics. He has also
studied creative writing at Uof T and Oxford. He can be reached at
sfrenandez@infusion.com
sfrenandez@infusion.com