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Ram Gidoomal shares how, coming from a Hindu background, he converted to Christianity as a student and how his Christian faith ultimately led him to abandon a successful business career to become involved in charity and development work and more recently politics, as he stands, in this June's elections, as the candidate for the Christian Peoples Alliance to be mayor of London.
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Jesus
- the Sanatana Satguru|
The Shepherd's Bush Corner Shop But history repeated itself and in 1967, the family, along with thousands of other Asians was expelled from Kenya where we lived, leaving everything behind us. As we had British passports we came as refugees to England. Here 15 of us went to live in a four bedroomed flat above a newsagents in Shepherd's Bush. Although I was only 16, my uncle had early on recognised that I was good with figures and I was put in charge of the family finances. I think the bank manager was rather shocked when he realised the person who was signing all the cheques was still at school, but I took it all in my stride. Two years later, however, tragedy stuck again, when my uncle who had become very depressed because of our situation, took his own life like my father had done 20 years previously. It was very hard for us, but we kept going. My life revolved round school and the shop and I had no friends outside that world. I managed to do well at school, however, getting all 'A's at 0 Level and good grades at A level. I had thought about studying medicine, but I ended up going to Imperial College to do physics as I got a scholarship there, and it was only a 5p bus ride there from the shop. It wasn't until my 3rd year, however, when things began to improve financially that I was able to concentrate properly on my studies and become a full time student. This brought its own challenges. Enoch Powell had a strong influence on public opinion at the time and I had few friends outside my own extended family. Before I had just gone to my lectures and that was it. Now when I had more time, I found myself unable to cross the cultural barriers that existed and I felt very lonely and isolated. Then one day when I was sitting in a pub alone, a group of Christians came in, singing songs and talking about someone called Jesus of Nazareth who had changed their lives. I recognised some of the words they were saying from a booklet a hospital chaplain had given me one time, which everyone in the family had found very consoling, not having any idea at the time that the words came from the bible. I knew quite a lot about religion due to my family background and experiences and had some heated debates afterwards with those who came for chats to my room. One of them in exasperation gave me a New Testament and told me to just read that. For me Christianity had always been the white man's faith and something alien to me. But as I read the bible I found all kinds of resonances with my life, and I went to the British Museum to cross check various references and found in the writings of Josephus, a Jewish historian, that Jesus Christ, really had existed. I was looking for a guru who would help me find a way out of accumulated karmic debt As a Hindu I believed in Reincarnation. This meant I believed as a human being I carried a huge karmic debt. This was the burden of all the wrong things I had ever done as well as all the un-atoned for wrong that my ancestors had done too. All I could see was a future of endless striving to pay off this debt. I was looking for a guru who could help me to find a way out of this appalling accumulated karmic debt. As I read the New Testament I realised that in Christ was the "Sanatana Satguru" - the eternal and true guru - who had paid off this debt for me, so I could achieve nirvana without going through endless rebirths. And so as I read Revelations 3.20 I gave my life to Christ and was born again. However, once again for cultural reasons I found church more difficult to handle. I wanted to remove my shoes and sit on the floor and I found the whole English church experience very alien. I used to go to St Paul's the evangelical student church in Onslow Square in London. The sermons were fantastic but I never talked to anyone and would go straight home afterwards. In 1976 I got married. My family had put pressure on me to have an arranged marriage, but I refused, and when I met Sunita, who was a student at the French Institute, I was determined to marry her, even though she came from a different caste to me. She was a Hindu, but knew a lot more about the bible than I did because she had been educated in England at a Church school. When I finished my studies I became an Operations Research Analyst with Lloyds Banking International. I was there for about three years, but I encountered lots of glass ceilings at the time and wanting to get on, I decided to accept the offer of my wife's uncle who had a small trading business and go and work for him in Geneva. We stayed in Switzerland for eight years. Here my wife became a Christian and our three children were born. Business boomed and by the time I moved back to the UK in 1985 to become the chief executive of the UK Group of the Inlaks Corporation, we were employing 7000 people in 15 countries world wide, with interests ranging from vineyards in France, to seafood in Scotland. It was while on a trip to Bombay on a business trip in 1988 that I found myself reading Tom Sine's challenging book the "Mustard Seed Conspiracy". While I was there I was taken to see the worst slums in Asia. It was a devastating experience for me. I remember particularly seeing a couple of teenage girls behind the iron bars of a mixed prison. It didn't need too much imagination to know what their fate would be. Then I saw a little 5 year old boy who couldn't even afford a cardboard box to sleep in. What was the point of accumulating more wealth? Flying back to England in my first class seat, and experiencing the contradictions of my life and what I had seen in India I broke down. I knew had to do something. When I arrived home I told my wife what I had been through. We prayed about it and discussed our lifestyle and situation. What was the point of accumulating more and more wealth, when we wouldn't even be able to spend the interest of what we had? We decided to sell our shares in the company and the things we didn't need like our Mercedes car. We planned to sell our house in Sutton and move to somewhere smaller, but my cousin who ran the company paid off our mortgage? so we never had to do that, and in fact we are still there. New Christian political party launched for London Mayoral elections in 2000 Then began the next stage of my life. A friend introduced me to Steve
Chalke, who had visited the same slums as me, and together we launched
the Christmas Cracker project. Over the next seven years we raised
£5m and got 50,000 teenagers helping us These six principles are solidly biblical but they are also honoured whatever they are called by men and women of good faith everywhere. Interestingly this was proved in the last mayoral campaign when the New Statesmen ran an internet poll called the Fantasy Mayor poll. When people were asked to vote by their party preference, I didn't do very well, but when they were asked to vote simply by policy preference when they weren't told the names of the candidates, I came out top and beat Ken Livingstone by a substantial majority! The voters were no doubt surprised to see who they had voted for. But these are not "Christian values" in some impersonal, abstract sense. They are people values because Jesus came to live among people. As the art historian Hans Rookmaaker said, "Christ did not come to make us truly Christian but to make us truly human." I believe that the politics of Jesus have a message for everybody. It is unthinkable to just keep our religious faith private. I am proud to include the word Christian in our name. For me it is a sign not that we are against other faiths, but that it is a guarantee that we will be a respecter of other faiths, and we will work with them against the forces of secular fundamentalism which I believe are ruining our society. It's not a matter of seeking to impose on others but as Christians we have as much right to have our voice heard as anyone else in our society. But we have to earn this right to speak through the ballot box. As a Christian I believe transformation of the individual and of society is possible, because of Christ's love for us and the work of the Holy Spirit helping us whenever we work for his kingdom. I think we can make a difference, and I certainly hope to do my part. For further information on Ram's campaign visit www.ramgidoomal4London.com |
