Outsiders

RUMORS OF CERTAIN PASTORS RECEIVING "foreign money" surfaced soon after my arrival in Anbu Nagar. Previously my ideas about conversion in India had been drawn from newspaper reports and the like, and I took claims that foreign money was being used to lure converts at face value. It also seemed obvious to me that conversion must stir social conflict and, in areas where most converts were women, stir trouble between husbands and wives. Thus I assumed an important contribution of my research would be in ethnographically charting conflicts, and perhaps in showing how a local community struggled to keep its moral bearings under the assault of monetized proselytism, borne on a wave of global capital. I pursued "foreign money" rumors with the same energy that I sought out signs of religious conflict between Christians and Hindus, or within individual families, over matters of religion.

When I discreetly queried pastors themselves about foreign money and who was receiving it, Pastor Senthil Kumar's and Pastor Vijay's names consistently came up. Other pastors regretted not being contacted by foreign donors willing to back their ministries, but consoled themselves with the idea that God chooses to bless each of His servants in different ways. "We cannot presume to know His plans" was a line I often heard in this context. I did not immediately question Pastors Senthil Kumar or Vijay about rumors that they had received foreign money. I assumed that direct questioning would put them on the defensive and that they would attempt to evade. So I gathered as much information as I could, indirectly at first, from lay Christians and Hindus. I planned my approach very carefully, over a period of weeks. I did not want anyone to know what I was after. I especially did not want to risk tipping off any of the other pastors to the centrality of foreign money to my evolving research plans. I knew pastors treated one another primarily as rivals, but I did not yet fully understand the relations among them, and it seemed prudent to assume that others, too, might be in on the game.

By the time I raised the issue directly with Pastor Senthil Kumar, I had already worked out the basic details of the case. He had received a one-time donation that financed a new church building. Compared to most slum churches, his was indeed impressive. Where other churches were simply larger versions of typical slum dwellings — often either palm thatch or corrugated asbestos sheeting tied to frames of wooden poles (figure 1) — Senthil Kumar's church had "pukka" (i.e., masonry) walls and was bigger than what could have been built on local donations. But I still wanted to question him directly. I needed to gauge his reaction. After weeks of cautious circling, during which time I attended the pastor's Sunday services and got to know the man himself a bit, informally, I arranged an interview. The interview was casual by design and wandered over a range of innocuous topics I had preselected to draw the pastor out and establish his trust. I saved my big question for the end.

I am glad I did my homework, but the cloak-and-dagger approach proved unnecessary. The pastor was happy to answer my questions and displayed not the slightest bit of embarrassment or defensiveness over having received money from abroad. His answers confirmed what I had already learned, to which he added several details. The foreign organization that had paid for his new church had later sent someone to take a photo of the completed building, which they published in a newsletter. He had had no contact with them since, but he helpfully dug out a copy of the newsletter carrying a photograph of his church. He was proud to have been featured in a foreign publication, which he interpreted as worldwide recognition of the good works he was doing for the people of Kashtappattinam. The newsletter's purpose, as he understood it, was to "tell the world" about his ministry and about the many miracles God was performing among the poor. The newsletter was in English, and reading it one could get the impression that Senthil Kumar's success could be credited to their own organization's support, and even that he himself was a creature of their global program. He was perplexed when I told him this. "But I built up this congregation myself, with only God's help! Those foreign evangelists had nothing to do with it. Apart from the new building, everything was paid for by the people in my flock who were with me from before, some from the very beginning of my ministry. The foreign donors heard of my good works. They came here and they saw that our church was crowded with believers. There was nowhere to sit, and the roof leaked when it rained. They wanted to help me by building this better church for us to worship in. That is all." In the name of thoroughness I double-checked his story with other pastors, especially known rivals. Everything he had told me was true.

The other pastor said to have received foreign money, Pastor Vijay, turned out to be just a particularly charismatic leader, whose superior church building was fully paid for by donations from his own congregation. Rumors of foreign money, though unfounded, comforted less popular pastors by ascribing Vijay's success in attracting followers to something other than superior abilities or greater effort. When questioned more closely, other pastors admitted that they had no positive knowledge that he had ever received foreign funds and that this was merely a matter of speculation.

What is significant here is the lack, among pastors, of any sense that foreign money was morally compromised. This is interesting because in India more generally the possibility of "foreign money" supporting churches is invoked in ominous tones, suggesting malign antinational interests. Such talk draws on an old trope in Indian politics, the interfering "foreign hand," an unspecified threat famously cited by Indira Gandhi during the Emergency to justify repressive measures and explain away policy failures. Prime Minister Gandhi's frequent resort to the "foreign hand" bugaboo has since become a matter of general ridicule in Indian public life and a way to poke fun at the flimsy grounds on which succeeding generations of national leaders have invoked the specter of foreign influence to shore up political support or attack rivals (e.g., B. Ali 1986; Arora 2012; "Deadly 'Foreign Hand'" 1990; "'Foreign Hand' Again" 1999; Kaur 2002; Singh 2004; Romesh Thapar 1983). But what such ridicule targets is the outlandishness and implausibility of leaders' claims, not the underlying assumption that foreign influence is malign and to be avoided. This assumption is shared by actors across the spectrum of elite politics in India,...