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7. What are the objections to conversions?
Conversions create social tensions. The targeted community feels that
it will lose out on its culture and civilisational values. Mahatma Gandhi
said, "In India one finds that conversions brings about deep disdain for
one's old religion and its followers, i.e., one's old friends and one's
relatives. The next change that takes place is that of dress and manners
and behaviours. All that does great harm to the country." Similarly, Babasaheb
Ambedkar said that by joining Islam or Christianity, the Depressed Classes
would 'not only go out of the Hindu religion, but also go out of the Hindu
culture....Conversion to Islam or Christianity will denationalise the
Depressed Classes.'
Swami Vivekanand has expressed himself in even
stronger terms. He said that a convert from Hinduism is not only one Hindu
less, but an enemy more.
A non-Islamic student of Islamic theology
wrote: "Islam's aversion to the past should be viewed from the perspective
of conversion. Islam aims at destroying the past completely lest it should
hark the converts back to the pre-Islam days. There is always a fear of
the past which threatens to jeopardise the very existence of Islam. The
"fear of recantation" is more often than not dealt with violent measures.
Since conversion is not without its past, Islam tries tooth and nail to
expunge all the traces and remnants of the past." This would apply equally
to Christianity.
All
societies try and protect the collective consciousness of the past. The
destruction of a culture is not only in terms of physical structures like
places of worship, but also a destruction of amassed wisdom. The great
library of Alexandria in pre-Christian and pre-Islam Egypt were destroyed
by the followers of these two systems. In South America, we see only mute
monuments of what were obviously great civilisations.
The
Hindu civilisation is today the oldest surviving civilisation. This has
been achieved at a great cost in terms of resisting those who came to
destroy. It is easy to destroy, but difficult to preserve.
See also (Q. 8)
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