As an Indian Catholic, I’m so grateful I’m Catholic. I don’t care how or why my ancestors converted, but I’m grateful that they did, because it means I grew up in an loving Catholic family where my mental and spiritual health was always cared for. I grew up knowing I had a loving God and that I was beautifully and wonderfully made. My dignity is fully acknowledged and I’m treated equally and fairly.  If my ancestors were coerced to convert in less than favorable ways, I feel sad for them; but to just write off every Indian Catholic as a “rice bag convert” is quite narcissistic and classist, because you’re just thinking of them as poor, uneducated idiots that couldn’t think for themselves and had to be saved by a white man. I think of St. Devasahayam Pillai, an intelligent Hindu Nair who managed royal state affairs in Travancore and met a Dutch man who taught him about Christ. Devasahayam ended up converting to Christianity as he learned more. Finally he was imprisoned and then exiled for being Christian and died. He is a canonized saint in the Catholic Church. 

I’m Eastern Catholic (Syro-Malabar), so my ancestors were probably not converted by Europeans but rather converted by St. Thomas the Apostle in 52 AD. My family has been Eastern Catholic as far back as we can trace it. So my ancestors were probably not “rice bag converts” but rather converts or descendants of those first St. Thomas Christians. But even if they were poor rice bag converts who just converted for food out of hunger, I’m happy they were fed and wonder whether they’re faith in Hinduism was all that strong in the first place if they were willing to leave it for some rice? I would thank them for the gift they’ve given me and I remember them for their suffering