Article32

The Betrayal Within: Hindu and Muslim Converts in India and Their Civilizational Amnesia”

India’s greatest challenge has never been the foreign invader alone, but the native who rejects his own soil in search of a foreign paradise. Two figures haunt the Indian landscape: the Hindu who converts to Christianity and the Muslim of the Deccan who imagines himself an Arab, Turk, or Persian. They are not identical, yet they share a pathology. Both despise their origins, both construct fantasies of foreign ancestry, both imitate what they do not understand, and both seek privileges from powers—Western or Islamic—that will never truly accept them. Their story is one story: the tragedy of self-hate masquerading as faith.

Take Andhra Pradesh, where Christian missions from America and Europe have long found fertile ground among Dalits and lower castes. The story is as old as the nineteenth century, when famine, poverty, and caste humiliation made villagers receptive to the missionary’s rice and rhetoric. The Lutheran pioneer John Christian Frederick Heyer arrived in Guntur in 1842; American Baptists built their strongholds in Nellore and Ongole from 1836 onward. By the early twentieth century, mass baptisms had created a permanent Christian presence, institutionalized in seminaries, colleges, and medical missions. The Medak Cathedral, consecrated in 1924 by British Wesleyan Methodists, remains the stone monument to this enterprise: Christianity implanted not as theology but as infrastructure.

What did the convert receive? Bread, schooling, perhaps medicine. But also an illusion: that in rejecting Hindu deities, he had entered the civilization of the white man. Overnight, the villager imagined that Jesus of Galilee was an Englishman, that Christianity was born in Britain, that science and modernity were gifts of the Bible. He did not know that Jesus was a Jew from Palestine, that the New Testament was written in Greek, that Western science was born not from church dogma but in rebellion against it, and that America’s founding fathers—Jefferson, Paine, Franklin—were Deists who despised ecclesiastical tyranny. The convert lived in a contradiction: he ate like a Hindu, married like a Hindu, spoke Telugu like a Hindu, yet hated Hinduism as darkness.

And what of the Hyderabadi Muslim? His tale is not of missionary inducement but of fantasy ancestry. His grandfathers were Deccani Hindus, converted under Bahmani or Qutb Shahi sultans, drawn into Urdu-speaking neighborhoods where Persianized court culture trickled down to the bazaar. Yet he believes himself descended from Arabs, Turks, Persians, or Central Asians. He despises Telugu as a language of “idol worshippers,” preferring the broken Urdu of the Old City, with its peculiar vocabulary and sing-song accent. He cannot speak Arabic, cannot read the Quran in its original, has never studied Hadith or Sira, yet he wraps himself in keffiyeh scarves and imagines himself an Arab. The taxi driver of Charminar is certain he is brother to the oil sheikh of Riyadh.

Reality, of course, is harsher. In Andhra, the Christian convert remains dark-skinned, poor, and culturally Hindu in all but theology. He carries his caste prejudices into the church, creating separate pews and cemeteries, retaining his social hierarchy while denouncing Hinduism for casteism. In Hyderabad, the Muslim convert remains poor, dark-skinned, and socially marginal, eking out a living as an auto driver, mechanic, or chai vendor. He dreams of emigrating to Saudi Arabia or Dubai, yet once there, he is bound by the kafala system that enslaves him to a single employer, confiscates his passport, and reduces him to the status of servant. The Arab whom he worships as brother despises him as ajam—foreigner, inferior, dark-skinned Indian.

Both, in different ways, become states within the state. The Christian convert, backed by foreign missions and funds, imagines himself a victimized minority entitled to privileges, even as he replicates caste within his new religion. The Hyderabadi Muslim, intoxicated by pan-Islamic fantasies, waves the flag of Pakistan, cheers for Turkey, rages against America while begging for its visas, and despises the Hindu majority as kafirs. Neither becomes what he imagines. The Christian never becomes British or American; the Muslim never becomes Arab or Turk. Both live in contradiction, despising their homeland yet unable to escape it.

And both are betrayed most cruelly in gender. The Christian convert, cut off from his heritage, teaches his children that the Bible is superior to Nannayya, Tikkana, or Potana, that Jerusalem is holier than Amaravati, that salvation comes not from philosophy but from foreign scripture. The Hyderabadi Muslim marries his daughters off to Gulf sheikhs in temporary contracts thinly disguised as marriage, allowing wealthy old men to cart them away for abuse in Riyadh or Dubai. In another context, this would be called human trafficking; in Hyderabad, it is often celebrated as elevation. Nothing reveals the depth of inferiority more starkly: to consider the rape of one’s daughters by foreigners as a privilege.This, then, is the story of India’s converts—not just individuals but whole communities who abandon heritage for fantasy. They are not liberated but alienated, not enlightened but estranged. They reject the rationalism of their own land—Nāgārjuna’s dialectic, Dharmakīrti’s logic, Nannayya’s poetry, Potana’s devotion—in favor of slogans they cannot explain. They know neither the depth of their own tradition nor the history of the one they adopt. The Christian believes modernity was born of the Bible, yet has never read Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom. The Muslim condemns America as enemy of Islam, yet dreams of his son studying in Chicago. Both despise Jews though they have never met one, both despise Hindus though their own grandfathers were Hindu, both despise India though it is the only land that grants them full citizenship.

If conversion were a clean break, a genuine transformation of consciousness, perhaps it could be defended as a matter of free conscience. But what actually happens is uglier. The Christian convert in Andhra rejects Hindu deities yet retains his caste pride. The Reddy Christian will not marry the Madiga Christian; the Dalit Christian is denied leadership in his own church. Separate pews, separate cemeteries, separate social worlds—what changes is not the hierarchy but the rhetoric. He rails against Hinduism for casteism, yet reproduces caste inside the body of Christ. Equality is preached in the sermon, denied in practice.

The Hyderabadi Muslim repeats the pattern differently. He shouts the slogan of Islamic brotherhood, but the moment he emigrates to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Kuwait, he discovers that the Ummah is a myth. The kafala system shackles him to an employer who owns his labor and his time. His passport is confiscated; his movement restricted; his wages withheld. He sleeps in labor camps, works twelve-hour shifts under brutal heat, and is treated not as a brother but as a servant. The Arab whom he idolizes despises him as ajam. The Turkish or Iranian whom he romanticizes sees him as a curiosity, not a compatriot. Even in Pakistan, which he sometimes cheers for against India, he is mocked as “Hindustani.” Brotherhood collapses at the border.

And yet both return home to perform superiority. The Andhra Christian convert comes back to his village speaking English phrases, quoting Bible verses, boasting of his connection to America or Europe. He forgets that his white missionary benefactor treated him as a subject, not an equal. He denounces Hindu rituals while clinging to Hindu food, festivals, and social patterns. The Hyderabadi Muslim returns from the Gulf with perfumes and phones, boasting of his Arab “links.” He forgets the nights he spent under kafala bondage, the insults he endured from his employers, the years of being treated as expendable labor. He denounces idol worshippers while bowing at local Sufi shrines, despising India while benefiting from its citizenship.

Both imagine themselves part of global powers that despise them. The Christian convert believes he is an extension of Western civilization, but the West never sees him as equal. The Muslim convert believes he is heir to Islamic empires, but Arabs, Persians, and Turks never accept him. Both mistake servitude for brotherhood, charity for equality, mimicry for modernity. They despise India for not being foreign enough, yet the foreign lands they worship will never grant them belonging.

Meanwhile, their hatred becomes political currency. The Christian convert, financed by missions, becomes a constituency that demands special privileges and plays the victim card while destabilizing Hindu society from within. He never becomes British or American, but he undermines the confidence of Hindu civilization by insisting it is backward, irrational, oppressive. The Hyderabadi Muslim, intoxicated by pan-Islamic fantasies, becomes a constituency that cheers for Pakistan, dreams of the Caliphate, curses America while begging for its visa, and despises Jews he has never met. He never becomes Arab or Turk, but he destabilizes his own nation by imagining it an enemy of Islam.

The contradiction becomes even more grotesque in matters of culture. The Andhra Christian who abandons his heritage does not know Nāgārjuna, Dharmakīrti, Nannayya, Tikkana, Potana. He believes the Bible superior to all, without understanding either the Bible’s Greek origins or his own Telugu philosophical tradition. He surrenders a rational heritage of debate and poetry for slogans of borrowed salvation. The Hyderabadi Muslim despises Telugu, yet speaks a bazaar Urdu that Arabs laugh at. He cannot read the Quran in Arabic, cannot quote Hadith, cannot narrate the Sira, yet he pretends to be the custodian of Islam. He knows neither his own history nor the faith he claims.

And so, both stand in the same place: dark-skinned, poor, uneducated, despising the soil that feeds them, worshiping civilizations that exploit them. The Andhra Christian believes modernity is biblical; the Hyderabadi Muslim believes dignity is Arab. Both are wrong. Western science was built against church dogma, not because of it. The Gulf’s riches come from oil and American protection, not from Islam. Yet both prefer fantasy to fact.

This is not just a matter of mistaken identity; it is a pathology of self-hate. The Christian despises Hindus though he is one by culture; the Muslim despises Hindus though his grandfather was one by birth. The Christian despises India as backward, though it is the only nation that allows him constitutional protections. The Muslim despises India as infidel, though it is the only land that grants him full citizenship. Neither will ever be accepted as Western or Arab. Both remain Indian in body while dreaming they are foreign in soul.

Nowhere is the pathology of conversion more grotesque than in its treatment of women. The Andhra Christian convert teaches his daughters to despise the poetry of Potana and the wisdom of the Upanishads, to replace a thousand years of intellectual heritage with imported scripture. He tells them salvation lies in Jerusalem, not Amaravati; truth lies in the Book, not in reason. He uproots them from the culture of their mothers and grandmothers, tethering them to a foreign text they cannot place in its proper history.

The Hyderabadi Muslim, meanwhile, sacrifices his daughters on the altar of his Arabian fantasy. For decades, Hyderabad has been notorious for the “sheikh marriages” — old Gulf Arabs arriving in Barkas or Falaknuma to purchase brides for a few thousand rupees, often teenagers, carted away to Riyadh or Dubai under the pretense of marriage. What follows is abuse, abandonment, and humiliation. In another society, this would be called human trafficking. In Hyderabad, it is tolerated, even celebrated by some, as a badge of honor: that an Arab has chosen a daughter of Hyderabad, even if only to discard her. Nothing reveals the depth of self-hate more starkly than the pride of being abused by foreigners.

And yet both converts despise the only land that grants them dignity. The Andhra Christian, funded by Western missions, sees himself as a victimized minority entitled to privileges, all while replicating caste within his own church. The Hyderabadi Muslim sees himself as part of the global Ummah, yet the Arabs, Persians, and Turks treat him as inferior, binding him in kafala servitude, confiscating his passport, and calling him ajam. Both denounce India as a land of idolaters and infidels, though India alone gives them equality before law. Both despise Jews, though they have never met one. Both despise America, though they crave its visas. Both despise their Hindu neighbors, though their own blood is Hindu.

It is a theater of contradictions. The Andhra Christian insists modernity is born of the Bible, though the Enlightenment was a rebellion against church dogma, and Jefferson and Paine mocked revelation. The Hyderabadi Muslim insists dignity lies in Islam abroad, though his life in Riyadh or Dubai is that of a bonded laborer, underpaid, abused, never granted citizenship. The Christian bows before the white missionary, the Muslim before the Arab sheikh. Both imagine themselves superior to Hindus, while in truth they are treated as inferior by the very foreigners they worship.

What unites them is betrayal: betrayal of reason, betrayal of history, betrayal of their own inheritance. India gave them Nāgārjuna, the dialectician whose works are studied across East Asia; Dharmakīrti, the logician whose epistemology rivals Aristotle; Nannayya and Tikkana, whose poetry made Telugu a vehicle of philosophy; Potana, whose Bhāgavatam sanctified devotion in local verse. They abandon all this for a fantasy — one imagining that Jesus was an Anglo-Saxon, the other that he is descended from Arabs. They despise their true heritage without understanding it, and embrace a foreign heritage they cannot comprehend.

This is not faith; it is self-hate baptized and circumcised. It is not liberation; it is servitude disguised as salvation. The Andhra Christian is trapped between Hindu culture and Western mimicry; the Hyderabadi Muslim is trapped between Indian soil and Arabian fantasy. Neither belongs fully anywhere. Both live as dark-skinned Indians despising their Indianness, dreaming of paradises that do not exist. Both destabilize their nation from within, not because they are strong, but because they are alienated.The solution is not collective hate but individual honesty. Let the Christian learn the history of Christianity: that it was Semitic in birth, Greek in text, European by empire, and modern only by Enlightenment rebellion. Let the Muslim learn the history of Islam: that in Hyderabad it was born through conquest and conversion, that his grandfathers were Hindus, that the Arabs he worships will never see him as equal. Let both learn their own heritage: the rationalism of India, the poetry of Telugu, the tolerance of their land. Let them reclaim pride in what is theirs, not in what others disdain to share. 
 Until that happens, the Christian will remain neither British nor American, and the Muslim will remain neither Arab nor Turk. They will remain what they are: Indians despising their own reflection, seeking identity in borrowed costumes, betraying the civilization that alone sustains them. That is the betrayal within — more corrosive than any foreign invasion, because it is an invasion of the soul.
Citations and references

1. Demographics & Law

1. Census of India 2011, “C-1 Population by Religious Community,” Andhra Pradesh & Telangana.
2. Rev. Stanislaus v. State of Madhya Pradesh, AIR 1977 SC 908.
3. Constitution of India, Article 25 (Freedom of Conscience).
4. Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950 (as amended).
5. Ranganath Misra Commission Report (National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities), 2007.

2. Christian Missions in Andhra Pradesh

6. Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC), founded in Guntur, 1842.
7. Samavesam of Telugu Baptist Churches (STBC), from American Baptist Mission, Nellore & Ongole, 1836 onward.
8. Medak Cathedral (1924), Wesleyan Methodist Mission — see church archives and architectural histories.

3. Western Philosophy, Deism & Enlightenment

9. Jefferson, Thomas. Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1786).
10. Paine, Thomas. The Age of Reason (1794–1807).
11. Franklin, Benjamin. Autobiography.
12. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Deism” (rev. 2020).

4. Indian & Buddhist Philosophy

13. Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (2nd–3rd c. CE).
14. Westerhoff, Jan. Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford, 2009).
15. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Nāgārjuna.”
16. Dharmakīrti, Pramāṇavārttika (7th c. CE).
17. Tillemans, Tom J. F., “Dharmakīrti,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
18. Steinkellner, Ernst (ed.), Dharmakīrti’s Thought and Its Impact on Indian and Tibetan Philosophy (Vienna, 1997).

5. Telugu Literary Heritage

19. Nannayya, Andhra Mahābhārata (11th century).
20. Tikkana Somayaji, Andhra Mahābhārata (13th century).
21. Potana (Bammera Potana), Andhra Maha Bhagavatamu (15th century).
22. Kandukuri Veeresalingam, Andhra Kavula Charitramu (biographical chronicle).
23. Sahitya Akademi, A History of Telugu Literature (New Delhi, 1975).
24. Nagaraju, J. S. “Of Vernacular Literature: A Case Study of Telugu.” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (1995), pp. 395–422.

6. Islam in Hyderabad & the Deccan

25. Eaton, Richard. A Social History of the Deccan, 1300–1761: Eight Indian Lives (Cambridge, 2005).
26. Omar Khalidi, Muslims in the Deccan: A Historical Survey (Global Media Publications, 2006).
27. Lucien Benichou, From Autocracy to Integration: Political Developments in Hyderabad State, 1938–1948 (Orient Longman, 2000).
28. Kavita Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (Columbia University Press, 2013).

7. Gulf Migration & Exploitation

29. International Labour Organization (ILO), Reforming the Kafala: Challenges and Opportunities in the Gulf Migrant Labour System (2019).
30. Human Rights Watch, “‘I Already Bought You’: Abuse and Exploitation of Female Migrant Domestic Workers in the United Arab Emirates” (2014).
31. Ray Jureidini, Migrant Workers and Xenophobia in the Middle East (UNRISD, 2003).

8. Arab Sheikh Marriages in Hyderabad

32. “Hyderabad’s Arab ‘Sheikh marriages’ scandal,” BBC News, 2012.
33. Mohammed Wajihuddin, “Gulf sheikhs marry, dump Hyderabadi girls,” Times of India, Sept 2017.

9. Global Islamic Identity & Contradictions

34. Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (Columbia University Press, 2004).
35. Faisal Devji, Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Harvard University Press, 2013).

 what they are: Indians despising their own reflection, seeking identity in borrowed costumes, betraying the civilization that alone sustains them. That is the betrayal within — more corrosive than any foreign invasion, because it is an invasion of the soul.