Dehradun, India—Went to mass this Easter morning. St Francis was so full of people, there was a large crowd outside that couldn’t fit within. The mass was in Hindi and truth be told was as boring as the mass held in English I attended for Christmas eve. I managed to last until communion then quickly left for coffee and the Sunday Express newspaper at a local cafe. I am never sure whether I am actually allowed to take communion because I was kicked out of Catholic school before I was confirmed. Not sure why I still go to Catholic mass at all.

There are probably more Christians in India then people realize. Religion is mutable in this country and I think, privately at least, people hold true to more than one. As at Christmas, half of the congregation stood for communion because they were Catholic. Who were the rest? Whatever they’re religion, there seems to be a profound respect for Christ among so many non-Christians. Still, I’m sure there were not a few old Hindu ladies waiting in line for communion this morning, then making puja at the Sai Baba temple up Rajpur road later this afternoon. Whatever awaits us in the afterlife, they’ll be ready and God help anyone that gets in their way.

Of course there are popular puritanical Hindu movements across the country. Bal Thackeray is head of the Siv Sena based in Mumbai. They may be the most powerful political party in Maharashtra though they aren’t contesting a single seat in parliament in national elections only a few days away. Last year there was terrible persecution of Christians by Hindus in the state of Orrissa. Some Indian journalists have dubbed many of the Hindu purists, or Hindutva parties, the “Indian Taliban,” especially after an attack on young women at a popular pub in the college town of Mangalor by members of the Sri Rama Sene, another Hindu purist group based in the southern state of Karnataka.

In fairness to these groups, its important to note that many arose in the aftermath of Indira Ghandi’s declaration of “Emergency” rule in the mid 1970’s, one that saw the persecution of political opposition to Ghandi’s secular Congress party, especially among Sikhs, the progenitors of the BJP the Janata party and the RSS, the first and oldest Hindu nationalist party in India.

Speaking of the Taliban, there was an excellent article in The Hindu, a national Indian newspaper, a few days back on the growing appeal of the Taliban in Pakistan and the harshness of Taliban order. Though the writing gets a bit academic, the ideas were good.

Rafia Zakaria argues in The Hindu that Taliban puritanism is an extension of post-colonialism—ironically a popular field among liberal academics—where Islamic purity is anything thats antithetical to western social concepts or values or as they see it, a type of western colonialism (maybe its impossible to talk about this without getting a little academic). If women’s rights are important in Europe and America then they must be un-Islamic. Anything more anti-western must be more authentically Islamic, a purer Islam.

The author explains that traditional Islamic jurisprudence, especially in regard to Sharia, is old and incredibly complex, something the Taliban have conveniently disregarded for the spectacle of expedient justice as was the case with the young girl recently beaten in the Swat valley for simply walking with a man who wasn’t her relative.

The combination of indigenous Puritanism, post-colonial rebellion, and for some reason the perverted spectacle of cruel punishments have made the Taliban appealing to people throughout South Asia, the Middle East and even Europe and America, especially those looking for absolutes in an uncertain world and those who think that the ideal lies somewhere in an imagined and undiluted past.

Remember John Walker Lindh? A good friend once asked me why he felt he needed to go all the way to Afghanistan to be a good Muslim? Why wasn’t California good enough?

In retrospect there something enlightening about those old Hindu ladies taking communion at Easter mass this morning.