education
and intellectual development within one generation was remarkable. Now the
Maras are highly educated in both secular and theological fields. Even some of
the Maras have received their doctorate degrees with high commendations and
contributed some new knowledge to the world at large.
All these transformations are the results of
the gospel in which the Maras put their faith and works. Positively these
religious, social and intellectual transformations can be categorized as total
transformations even though some cultural elements were modified and
transformed and reinterpreted with totally new meaning and significances. However,
there were some good elements which were left or abandoned because of
Christianity and these will be discussed as follows.
1.1.Negative
impacts of transformation
Postcolonial
reading points to those rejecting, abandoning and discouraging one’s own traditions
at the expense of adopting some elements from another culture. There are some
religious traditional and cultural practices which the Maras abandoned and
rejected with the help of the missionaries after they embraced Christianity.
1.1.1.
Sahma and
Atheihna: The first step the missionaries took
was ‘doing
away
with drinking rice-beer and sacrifices to evil spirits’. As a matter of fact,
drinking rice-beer (sahma) and
sacrifices to evil spirits were a religious ritual and this was what the
missionaries primarily focused on. In those days two acts in particular marked
the sincerity of the convictions of a man who desired to be baptised. Firstly
he gave up drinking sahma, secondly he surrendered the atheihna (sacrifice). The former not only meant a pledge of total
abstinence, it meant also that a man gave up the practices of Mara religious
rites. Drinking sahma was a religious act. To desist from drinking
therefore meant a clean break with the old faith.[1]
To
give up the sacrifices to evil spirits at that time meant that the
person who made sacrifices to evil spirits has discontinued his belief
in the protection of the spirits and that he wished to be a Christian.
Before
the coming of the missionaries, drinking rice-beer was not seen as sin, rather
it was used as nutritious food. But there were some excessive drinking which
caused trouble and problems. The psychological, intellectual and spiritual
changes of attitude towards drinking rice-beer resulted in this being viewed as
sin. Abstaining from drinking became the proof of good Christian, and anyone
drinking was seen as un-Christian. Although drinking sahma is not
encouraged, the new attitudes to drinking rice-beer as sin made the Mara
Christian misunderstand the real teaching of Christianity. For example, if a
person stopped drinking, instinctively the Mara would say, ‘he has experienced
religious conversion’. Spiritual conversion and stopping drinking were actually
confused.
1.1.2.
Eating meat offered to idols: In
pre-Christian Mara society, religion had
an
integrating force and function and close relatives gathered together and
worshipped a god of the spirit who
presides over the house or household. For that religious
performance every house kept a pig for family worship and only the very near
relatives could share in the family feast that followed. The Mara traditional
religion in this sense represented blood family ties and the integration of unclean
family. But Christians were advised and forbidden to take part in this and cut
themselves off from the family ties. In one sense, it is religion which
exclusively claims that we are right, you are wrong.
However,
being new creations they felt that they should cut themselves off completely
from old religious practices. This is clear evidence of affirming the Mara
concept of proselytization to be totally a new creation in their new-found
Christian religion. There had been psychological and intellectual changes so
that they saw their past as something to be ashamed of and abandoned, but at
the same time they found themselves caught in a plight between two traditions
which put them in a cultural dilemma.
The
view is that all these identity crises within the Mara society were the result
of Mara traditional understanding of conversion to a superior religion. This
led theoretically to identification with the western missionaries but in
practice this was impossible. The Mara Christians were caught in a plight
between traditional and western culture. As stated earlier, practically, it was
difficult to be a proselyte to the European race and to be cut off from the
Mara traditions and culture and to imitate and adopt western culture. In other
words, the result is confusing western culture with Christianity.
1.1.3.
Traditional festivals:
Mara society celebrated two major traditional
festivals-
Chapchar kut, and Lyuva Khutla with singing, dancing and feasts
every year. In chapchar kut all kinds of songs and dances would be
performed. But Mara Christians cut themselves off from all these festivals
because they considered that these were pagan.
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