| Jindal’s Conversion: While attending Brown University and later Oxford University, Bobby Jindal wrote often about the struggle of converting to Catholicism. Jindal was born and raised as a Hindu. His father, Raj, and mother, Amar, are first-generation immigrants from Punjab, India. Mr. Jindal claims that Hinduism provided “moral guidance and spiritual comfort” during his formative years. When he was a teenager, Mr. Jindal was prompted to read the Bible after a friend told him that he and his parents would be “going to hell” if they did not convert. Mr. Jindal began studying Christianity in an attempt to prove otherwise. From INDOlink’s “Living in America! The Agony and Ecstasy of Bobby Jindal”: “My journey from Hinduism to Christianity was a gradual and painful one,” Bobby Jindal acknowledged in a 1993 article that he wrote while he was a graduate student at Oxford. As Jindal readily confessed in that article, “it never occurred to me that I should consider any other religion; to be a Hindu was an aspect of my Indian identity.” Thus, when a childhood friend, intent on converting the world, first introduced him to Christianity by warning him “you and your parents are going to hell,” he recalls that he “was hardly convinced.” Jindal was also “angered by the arrogance of my Southern Baptist friend who claimed his faith was the one true path to God.” That’s because he realized that his friend sought to “deny the experience of billions of people who have never seen a copy of the Bible.” Nevertheless the event did succeed in motivating him to “examine Hinduism on its own merits and doctrines” even as he was “searching for an objectively true faith that would lead me to God.” Simultaneously he began reading the Bible “to disprove the Christian faith I was learning both to admire and despise.” That was also a time when he “was touched by the love and simplicity of a Christian girl who dreamt of becoming a Supreme Court justice so she could stop her country from “killing unborn babies.” As he delved deeper into the Bible, says Jindal, “I saw myself in many of the parables and felt as if the Bible had been written especially for me. After reading every book I could find on the historical accuracy of the Bible and Christianity, I was convinced that the Bible had remained unaltered throughout the centuries and that circumstances surrounding Christ’s death led to the conversions of thousands.” Jindal admits that up to that point his perspective remained intellectual and not spiritual. The next decisive event in Jindal’s spiritual quest came in the form of a short, black and white film depicting the crucifixion of Christ. As he recalled, “For the first time I actually imagined what it meant for the Son of God to be humiliated and even killed for my sake. Although the movie did not convince me that anything was true, it did force me to wonder if Christians were right. I realized that if the Gospel stories were true, if Christ really was the Son of God, it was arrogant of me to reject Him and question the gift of salvation.” It required many hours of discussion with a pastor before he was “ready to take that leap of faith and accept Christ into my life.” It would be another two years before he would be baptized into the Catholic faith. But in deference to his parent’s wishes Jindal reveals that he chose to have the ceremony in Providence rather than in Baton Rouge. Interestingly, Mr. Jindal explains that one of the reasons he considered conversion was due to the simple “compassion” of a young girl who dreamt of being appointed to the United States Supreme Court so that she could overturn Roe v. Wade. From an early age, Mr. Jindal was impressed by this young Christian’s political aspirations, and when reviewing the early life of Mr. Jindal, it is difficult not to recognize the same brand of political ambition. Mr. Jindal’s decision to convert to Catholicism created tension at home. For his parents, his conversion represented more than simply a rejection of Hinduism; it was also a rejection of “tradition.” Quoting again from “Living in America! The Agony and Ecstasy of Bobby Jindal”: As Jindal explains, “My parents went through different phases of anger and disappointment. They blamed themselves for being bad parents, blamed me for being a bad son and blamed evangelists for spreading dissension. There were heated discussions, many of them invoking family loyalty and national identity.” He elaborates: “My parents have never truly accepted my conversion and still see my faith as a negative that overshadows my accomplishments. They were hurt and felt I was rejecting them by accepting Christianity.” According to Jindal, his parents resorted to “ethnic loyalty” to counter his new faith. In an article published in Jesuit Magazine, Jindal states, “New converts often treasure their Catholic faith because of the painful and deliberate process through which they accepted Christ. If Christianity is worth risking family and friends, it is worth practicing on a daily basis.” In 1994, the national Catholic weekly magazine America published another Jindal article entitled “Choosing Between Church and Family: The Spiritual Journey of Converts.” He writes: My parents requested that I never mention my faith to my brother or try to evangelize others. I replied that I could not promise such things, but would voluntarily refrain from such activities for now to please them. I also noted that I would never lie to my brother if directly asked about my Christian faith. I reserved the right to answer questions and assist those already seeking Christianity. My parents were concerned that my zeal would lead me to force them, my brother and others to accept my newfound faith. They did not want other parents to experience their pain and were afraid of losing their other son. Though I refused to violate certain principles {I was ready to move out rather than reject my Christian faith, and I insisted on a firm deadline for my baptism}, my flexibility on certain other issues convinced my parents that I truly cared for them and was trying to compromise without sacrificing my integrity. During the early 1990s, Mr. Jindal wrote prolifically about his conversion to Catholicism. His work was published nationally and internationally. For Catholic publications, Mr. Jindal must have appeared to be a shining star—a young and ambitious Hindu who ostensibly converted to Catholicism for all of the right reasons. Jindal’s Rise: In many ways, Mr. Jindal’s sudden ascendance into political prominence is partly because of his conversion to Catholicism. This is not to insult Mr. Jindal, but it is merely to suggest that due to his numerous published essays and articles on his own conversion and his work on religious conversion as a Rhodes Scholar, Mr. Jindal made a name for himself at a young age. Consider, if you will, the political climate of the early 1990s, the time in which Mr. Jindal wrote about his conversion. In 1994, Newt Gingrich and the GOP ushered in what they called “The Republican Revolution,” and the Republicans became in control of the House for the first time in nearly forty years. Meanwhile, Bobby Jindal, after finishing Oxford, was working for McKinsey and Company, a multi-billion dollar “management consulting firm.” In 1996, here in Louisiana, Mike Foster, a Republican, was elected governor. For some odd reason, Governor Foster appointed a young and inexperienced kid from a management consulting firm as Secretary of Louisiana’s Health and Hospitals. At 24 years old, Bobby Jindal became Secretary Jindal. Only six years before, Mr. Jindal was a Hindu teenager living with his parents in Baton Rouge. Mr. Jindal’s early and sudden rise into political prominence has raised many eyebrows. His ambition is unquestionable, but the ways in which he has gained prominence are worthy of attention and suspicion. Despite the fact that Louisiana’s national healthcare ranking dropped into last place during his tenure, Secretary Jindal, at the age of 27, became President Jindal after he was appointed President of the University of Louisiana system. Two years later, he found a better gig with the Bush Administration. He became Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services. Then he ran for Governor. Then he ran for Congress. Now he is running for Governor again. Bobby Jindal has spent practically all of his professional life in politics, and his political career primarily consists of appointments. He was appointed, appointed again, appointed again, appointed again, and then appointed again. No, I am not counting his years in Congress as an “appointment,” though Jindal, who had to move into the district to qualify, was essentially coroneted by David Vitter and the Republican Party. If you are looking for Bobby Jindal before politics, the only thing you will find is a series of essays he wrote about converting from Hinduism to Catholicism. But don’t worry. The essays are actually fascinating and revealing, which is probably why Mr. Jindal does not want you to read at least one of them. “Beating a Demon”: Of the Collected Works of Bobby Jindal, one story, in particular, has been the subject of intense scrutiny. The story concerns Mr. Jindal, as an undergraduate, participating in a strange type of exorcism ceremony. This experience, claims Mr. Jindal, helped to underscore his nascent Catholic faith. This, in a truncated and paraphrased form, is the now-famous exorcism story: When Bobby Jindal was attending Brown University, he had a friend named “Susan.” Susan and Bobby were very close friends. Some people even thought the two were an item, but they never were. One day, Susan and Bobby attended a Christian concert, and in the middle of the show, Susan got up and left. Bobby knew something was wrong. He followed her outside, and she was sobbing. Bobby tried to console her. A female friend showed up and gave Susan a hug. Bobby knew the problem would not go away with a hug, and he offered to walk her back to her dorm room. Once they were in the room, Susan confessed why she was upset. She said she had cancer. Skin cancer. Bobby promised to stand by her forever. He sat next to her in bed and distracted her with “fairy tales.” Susan calmed down. The next time they were supposed to meet for dinner, Susan was late. She refused to apologize, so Bobby refused to speak with her for a week. But they quickly resolved everything when Susan opened up about her nightmares and the strange, unknown odors emanating from her dorm room. Bobby attributed the odor to the devil, because it smelled like sulfur. Susan also told Bobby about speaking in tongues and visions she had. Bobby became worried and scared. Bobby had heard a priest claim that “angels, spirits, and other such apparitions” were not meant for literal interpretation. Still, he wanted to believe Susan. When Susan was telling Bobby this, he excused himself and left the room. Then, he made the sign of the cross and prayed to God for help. When he walked back into the room, Susan “angrily lashed out” at Bobby, and he thought, “Gee. Thanks God. So much for prayer.” The next day, when Susan went for another set of tests, Bobby and his friends in the University Christian Fellowship club (UCF) organized a prayer meeting for Susan later that evening. Bobby asked Susan if she wanted him to attend the meeting. At first she said no, but she quickly changed her mind. The UCF prayer meeting was held in a classroom. A group of people, including Bobby, Susan, and Susan’s sister, sat in a circle on the floor and sang songs and prayed together. Suddenly, right after a group prayer, Susan “emitted some strange guttural sounds.” Bobby thought she may be having a seizure. Susan’s sister told everyone to place their hands on Susan’s body. Bobby “refused” and “froze in horror.” Susan began to scream Bobby’s name. She yelled, “Bobby, you cannot even love Susan.” Bobby thought it was funny she referred to herself in the third person. Bobby walked to the back of the room, and Susan began insulting every person in the room, revealing private information and embarrassing secrets. Susan’s sister and a woman named “Louise,” who Bobby says was “a member of a charismatic church,” pinned Susan down and prayed loudly and desperately. They yelled things like, “Satan, I command you to leave this woman” and commanded “(all) demons to leave in the name of Christ.” Susan continued shouting. Bobby tried to remain calm, though at one point, he thought he could be having a stroke. Bobby considered calling the campus priest, but he also thought that Catholicism could actually be bogus. He was having questions about his faith. Instead, the students in the UCF meeting continued to pray for Susan. Bobby tried praying, but he became exhausted. Susan attempted to escape, and during the scuffle, “Alice,” the student leader for Campus Crusade for Christ, “entered the room for the first time, brandishing a crucifix.” They had tried calling a “rival” Christian group to help, but the preacher “denied” their request for help and told them to not to “confront the demon.” Alice made Susan even angrier. Susan tried lunging toward the door. Bobby began repeating the Hail Mary over and over again. He said, “Being new to Catholicism, I had yet to accept the Catholic doctrines concerning Mary and considered any form of Marian devotion to be idolatry.” But he could not think of anything else at the time, so he prayed to Mary. Susan eventually calmed down because of the crucifix, and her sister brought out a Bible. They all began daring Susan to read passages from the Bible. She would begin to read a passage and then blurt out obscenities. But after reading several passages, Susan changed, almost in an instant. She proclaimed, “Jesus is Lord,” and then told everyone she could not remember “any of the past few hours.” Susan even asked Bobby if he was okay. Bobby told Susan’s sister he would “commit” to a “nightlife” of prayer for Susan. Susan spent the night in the house of a missionary, because her roommate had pagan-looking decorations in their dorm room. Bobby felt a renewed appreciation for his Catholic faith. He no longer doubted, as he had only hours before. Susan and Bobby stayed friends. Susan even became a Catholic. And her cancer somehow completely disappeared. What This Story Reveals: Mr. Jindal was writing about a profound and transformational religious experience, but there is probably a good reason his campaign does not want people to read this essay. The essay raises more questions than answers, and many of these questions are uncomfortable. The type of demonic possession described by Mr. Jindal is a rare phenomenon, and according to Canon law, the Rite of Exorcism can only be performed by an ordained priest. The intervention described by Mr. Jindal is strictly forbidden by the Catholic Church. (The Rite of Exorcism was practically abolished in 1999, and today, it can only be used in extreme circumstances and can only be performed in Latin). And there are other, important hermeneutical questions concerning Mr. Jindal’s own understanding of the Catholic faith—his misinformed notion of the hierarchy of saints, his expressed belief in the instant reward of personal prayer, his simultaneous acceptance and dismissal of people who pray to Mary as “idolaters,” his existential confusion between evangelical Christianity and Catholicism, and his failure to alert a priest to intervene in the Rite of Exorcism. Of course, it is easy to understand Mr. Jindal’s confusion and his ignorance of certain Catholic doctrines. He had only recently converted, and at the time, he was still tackling difficult and fundamental questions about the nature of faith. However, by the end of Susan’s story, Mr. Jindal claims he became more convinced. In other words, an unsanctioned and unconventional “exorcism” became a foundational religious experience on which Mr. Jindal constructed his Catholic faith. For many Catholics, this may seem bizarre—and even wrong. Canon law and the Rites of the Catholic Church are very important doctrines. Exorcisms are taken especially seriously, and they require the intervention of an ordained priest. The exorcism performed on Susan, which included the use of a crucifix and a Bible and Mr. Jindal’s repetition of the Hail Mary, is not conventional or acceptable in the Catholic Church. This is one of the main reasons Mr. Jindal does not want people to read this essay; he participated in an incredibly important religious ritual outside of Church law and protocol. But this is not the only reason Mr. Jindal and his campaign have already attempted “damage control” concerning this thirteen-year-old essay. The essay also reveals what Bobby Jindal was like three before he became swept into a wave of political appointments. He was distant, nervous, and sometimes emotionally unavailable, particularly around his friend Susan. He was having trouble reconciling his traditional beliefs with the beliefs of his new friends in college, and compounded with that, Mr. Jindal was also struggling to understand the differences between the beliefs and practices of evangelical or “charismatic” Christians and the beliefs and practices his newly-adopted Catholicism. For many college-aged people, religious and existential crises are par for the course, but for Mr. Jindal, his crisis was multifaceted and unique. It was not simply a crisis of religion; it was a crisis of identity. He was raised a Hindu but believed in Catholicism. His parents had wanted him to become a doctor, and even though he did not share their plans for his life, he still earned a degree in biology. Most people prefer for their personal crises to stay personal, but Mr. Jindal wrote openly and candidly about his struggles. And within his work, one can see traces of Mr. Jindal’s true aspirations. Although some have doubted the very validity of Mr. Jindal’s conversion, suggesting that he became a Catholic for “political purposes,” it is hard to imagine that Jindal, at the age of eighteen, would convert in anticipation of one day running for higher office. (Of course, his ascendance into prominence occurred rapidly upon finishing his studies at Oxford). Based on his extensive writings on his own conversion, Mr. Jindal does appear to be earnestly (yet sometimes naively) attempting to accept Christianity. For him, the experience was painful and, at times, traumatic, but during his bouts of self-reflection and skepticism, it is easy to recognize Mr. Jindal’s personal ambition. In the case of his friend “Susan,” Mr. Jindal took a deeply personal and unconventional story about an exorcism, wrote about it, changed some of the names around, and convinced the New Oxford Review to publish it. On its face, there is nothing wrong writing about a story you personally experienced, but in the case of Mr. Jindal’s story of the demonic possession of a young undergraduate woman attending a small Ivy League school and participating in University Christian Fellowship meetings in the early 1990s, it is easy to see why publishing such an account could be problematic. First, for those in the Brown community who knew Mr. Jindal and “Susan” (but did not know of Susan’s “exorcism), it would probably be easy to connect the dots. It is one thing when exorcisms are written about as “case studies” in which the names, dates, and locations are all changed to protect the victim, but it is quite another thing when the facts are so thinly-veiled that the victim herself becomes the subject of exploitation and public spectacle—and even more insidiously, the victim is actually merely a footnote in a story primarily concerned with Mr. Jindal’s religious awakening, as it were. Faith and Bobby Jindal: Mr. Jindal’s conversion to Catholicism is a decision that has followed him throughout his political life. In a 2003 article entitled “Who is the Real Bobby Jindal,” Dr. Ramesh Rao tackles the paradoxical life of Mr. Jindal and questions whether other Indian-Americans actually understand his political agenda. Dr. Rao first notes Jindal’s social platform, which is essentially a recapitulation of the Republican agenda, and then he asks some serious questions about Mr. Jindal’s ability to represent other Indian-Americans. He writes: None of his Indian-American supporters seem to have read his plans for governing the state of Louisiana. None of the Indian-American newspapers have bothered to analyze his politics. No one seems to care as long as “one of our own” gets elected to office. That no one has asked of his affiliation to the Republican Party when in Louisiana it is mostly Democrats who have been elected governor is yet another conundrum. His conservative agenda and his conversion to Catholicism seems to indicate that the 18 year-old Jindal knew well that that was the only way, as an Indian-American Hindu he could achieve his political ambitions. But the question to ask is simply this: Is he one of our own? By what measure? Just because he was born to Indian parents? Does he reflect any of the Indian-American values? If so, how? Many first generation Indian-Americans are socially conservative when it comes to marriage and dating. But is the second generation similarly inclined? Some may even join hands with him to castigate Hollywood for exploiting sex and violence. But will they join hands to promulgate conceal and carry laws? Will they join with him to proclaim that homosexuality is unnatural? Are they willing to let only him and his fellow Catholics to go to Heaven, while they stand and wonder why they got left behind? Are they willing to force their daughters or sisters or wives to have babies they don’t want? Jindal, at 32, has higher ambitions no doubt. What if he becomes a Senator? How will he influence government policy in terms of funding family planning programs around the world? Republicans have gutted the program. What would be his foreign policy agenda? What will he have to say about Hindus and Indians challenging the “right to proselytize” in India? Jindal belongs to a party that has historically been against immigrants’ rights. His conservative colleagues in Texas, in California and elsewhere have fought to keep immigrants under a leash and the party still has little minority presence. As a minority, does he therefore believe he has to take the extreme right wing positions to belong in the party? How does his presence in the party bring about changes in the perception of ordinary conservative Republicans about the varieties of religious experience and about cultural diversity? If he is just like one of them, how can he indeed influence them or change them? Dr. Rao’s questions are legitimate and four years later, they are still relevant—not just for Indian-Americans, but for every single voter in the State of Louisiana. Jindal’s transformation and precocious rise to prominence are two sides to the same coin. Mr. Jindal’s writings reveal his confusion and ignorance about the nature of the Catholic faith. His willingness to participate in an unsanctioned and completely unorthodox exorcism ritual, after he had converted and ostensibly had been baptized in the Catholic Church, further demonstrates either ignorance or a complete disregard for Canon law and the Rite of Exorcism. This is one of the reasons people like Dr. Rao wonder aloud about Mr. Jindal’s faith; he is sandwiched between two competing and mutually exclusive identities: Bobby Jindal- the renamed, reborn, Catholic conservative, and Piyush “Bobby” Jindal- conceived in India, born and raised as a Hindu in Baton Rouge, the son of first-generation immigrants from Punjab. Dr. Rao questions this balancing act, and he questions Mr. Jindal’s “second” conversion—his allegiance to the Republican Party. As Dr. Rao notes, in recent years, the Republican Party has not been entirely supportive of religious diversity, religious tolerance, and immigration, issues that are important to Indian-Americans. This is why he believes it is necessary to question Mr. Jindal. Again, the issue is not merely about Mr. Jindal’s faith; it is about his struggle with identity, and as evidenced by his campaign’s rapid denouncement of anyone who would “question” Mr. Jindal’s own published writings, the struggle is still on-going. |
