The Brahmin Challenge

Here’s a challenge for you. Try to find a group of people who are more unreached with the gospel than the Brahmins. Think about it. Western missionaries are, for the most part, a thing of the past in South Asia. As for Indian Christians, most of them come from a low caste background. Once in a while you will hear about a lone Brahmin accepting Christ. Later this month you will pray for one of them. But for a Brahmin to come to Christ, they have to overcome tremendous obstacles. Except for those in the state of Kerala, Brahmins have always stayed away from Christianity. Even in the Muslim world, you will rarely find peoples so distanced from the gospel.

To explain why this is so, it would be helpful to understand who are the Brahmins. Brahmins are the privileged caste of priests, philosophers, thinkers, and teachers who reside at the top of the social pyramid in the Hindu world. The Puranas, part of Hindu sacred literature, say Brahmins were created from the mouth of Brahma, the Supreme God, so they might instruct mankind. The Kshatriya, the warrior class, came from his arms. The Vaishna, or merchant class, came from his legs. And the Shudras, or servant caste, came from his feet.

The Contributions and Origins of the Brahmins
Brahmanism innovated and preserved the richest features of India’s cultural heritage, according to Indian Christian intellectual, Vishal Mangalwadi in India: the Grand Experiment. The Vedic Scriptures testify that the Aryans were already a highly literate people when they arrived in India thousands of years ago. Students of the ancient world can point to no other people who made similar advances in the science of language. Indian minds provided the world with astronomy and the concepts of zero and base-ten, along with the 10 arithmatic figures. While the inhabitants of northern Europe were still learning to hunt and grow food, Brahmin leaders were studying anatomy, surgery, and medicine as sacred arts. Mangalwadi adds that the only system of logic that compares favorably with the ancient Indian system is the ancient Greek system.

In ancient times, the Brahmins served as priests of the Atharva Veda; their place was at the northern side of the altar during sacrificial ceremonies. The Brahmins conducted the daily rites, the purification ceremonies (sanskara), sacrifices, and taught the Vedas. They maintained a strict code of conduct. They were to be kind and gentle and exemplify ideal behavior. They earned certain privileges, and they were treated almost as gods by commoners and kings alike. This privilege included physical protection: It was considered a grave sin to kill a Brahmin.

Initially, a person became a Brahmin on the basis of his knowledge of the Vedas. In time, the Brahmins began interpreting laws to their own advantage to maintain their privileges. They also established the idea that one was born into a caste. This could not be changed except in extreme circumstances when one became an outcaste. This general pattern became common practice, and still survives today.

Pride is probably the root and evil that stifled Hindu India’s growth. “The Brahmins tended to ascribe God’s glory to themselves,” Mangalwadi writes. They locked their study of literature, science, medicine, law, and religion behind the doors of Sanskrit. For the lower (non-twice-born) castes to study Sanskrit became sin. Eventually the absence of intellectual cross-fertilization across all peoples stymied India’s growth. This is how Brahminism locked out other castes from its place in the sun. In doing so, it weakened its own civilization and left it vulnerable to hostile colonial forces. But things have changed in post–colonial India.

Brahmins in the 21ST Century
Today’s Brahmin priests come in many forms. Thirty-year-old Ashok Joshi is a Hindu priest that motors around Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) on his Yamaha RX100. A pandit in pants? A Brahmin with a briefcase? A priest making his professional rounds on a scooter? What happened to the round-bellied, bare-chested, shaven-headed, muslin-wrapped prototype? They are still around. Only a qualified Brahmin can conduct religious ceremonies. But the priestly Brahmins have less status than Brahmins who engage in “thinking” roles like engineering. After all, it doesn’t take a lot of skill to perform rituals. Most Brahmins today engage in secular activities, most of which require a great deal of education. They comprise about six percent of the estimated 800 million Hindus.

Lessons from a Brahmin Convert
Narayan Vaman Tilak was an ardent nationalist and gifted poet. He remains one of the most highly placed Brahmin leaders ever to turn to faith in Jesus Christ. This holy man from Maharashtra spoke of the power he saw in his father. Wamanrao, Tilak’s favorite goddess, would possess him every Friday. Wamanrao would insist that the whole family be present for the coming of the goddess. When she came, the whole family would worship her. People would ask questions and the goddess would gliby answer.

Tilak also spoke of the powers maintaining social order, holding untouchables at bay, and keeping groups divided. At 19, Tilak married Lakshmibai. She was 11. At 33 years of age, in the 1890s, Tilak became a Christian, and his wife remained a Brahmin Hindu. Because her husband had become a Christian, the couple could not live in the same house.

Caste prejudice was the insuperable obstacle in Lakshmibai’s life. She rigidly maintained personal purity from contamination. She was cured of this in her words by, “a sip of poison—nay nectar.” The proverbial “poison” was water drawn from a well by a Muslim. During a summer vacation, no Brahmin was at hand to draw water for Lakshmibai. Tilak felt it beneath his dignity to have his wife go to the well to draw her own water. Under constraint she drank a mouthful of “unclean” water, only to convulse into vomiting and rising fever! Tilak relented and admitted to the error of his ways. Broken as much by tears as sickness, his wife moaned to God, “Today what are my ancestors saying about me in heaven? What can I do to make amends for such a sin?”

Soon bright lights engulfed her, and she began to ask new questions. “Did God create different castes, or did man? And if amongst men God made higher and lower castes, then why did that same God not also arrange an order of caste in the animal world?” Lakshmibai proved the reality of her change by adopting two untouchable children who came to her begging on the train. She chose her husband’s faith and was baptized in 1900.

The extended family played a crucial role during this time of trial and tribulation. H.L. Richards comments in Following Jesus in the Hindu Context, “The deep bonds of sacrificial love which bind together the extended families of Hindus are obviously seen in the care and concern shown for Lakshmibai. In her five years away from Tilak she stayed with three different families. Not everything was smooth, but she was always generously cared for.”

Today, one of the strengths of the Hindu system is loyalty to family. Unlike Western “Christian” families where marriages are often dissolved through divorce, a Hindu husband and wife are united for life. There are important lessons that we can learn from the Hindus about family loyalty.

Mindful of the strength and weakness of his people, Tilak reminded missionaries of weakness in their camp. Though it’s true, as he says, Christian nations have thrown other nations into oppression, it’s even more true that, “Even if Christian nations were not to let go of one span’s width of land on the face of the earth, so long as in every home Christians are not found who return love for hatred, peace for anger, and generosity for meanness, it is as good as daydreaming for us to hope that Christ’s flag of victory should be planted everywhere.”