Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: October 22, 2002
The Tamil Nadu Government's unexpected
Ordinance banning religious conversions through force, fraud or inducement,
has brought a prickly issue into the open. While the move has upset communities
that are not content with the constitutional freedom to practise their
faith freely, it has been received with a sense of relief by groups that
are not driven with the desire to eradicate other creeds.
So far, criticism of the measure
has been informed by superficiality rather than substance. It has been
branded as a "pro-Hindutva" move on the part of Ms J Jayalalithaa, who
recently upset the Congress by demanding that naturalised citizens be denied
access to high public office. The Chief Minister's initiative of offering
annadhanam (free lunch) and Sunday spiritual classes at major temples in
the State has been cited as proof of her overtures to the BJP in return
for help in court cases against her, though it has not been explained how
the Centre can assist her in this regard.
Since Ms Jayalalithaa is one politician
who speaks and acts purposefully, it would only be fair to look for deeper
causes for her action. Indeed, this would also be an appropriate occasion
to understand why conversions remain such an emotive issue in India, and
their role in creating social disharmony. There is also an urgent imperative
to square the claims of the so-called "right" to convert against the right
of the intended victim(s) to resist being converted.
This point needs to be emphasised
as conversions not only denounce the validity of the original religion
of the intended convert, but declare that this religion has no right to
exist, and that all its adherents must cross over to the so-called "true"
religion. This kind of totalitarian mind-control is the sole rationale
behind conversions, and it is usually accompanied by questionable activities
by its practitioners. What is surprising, however, is that nations and
groups claiming to be civilised consider this a legitimate activity. Ms
Jayalalithaa has done well to call their bluff.
The actual background against which
the ordinance was promulgated was the excessive zeal of missionaries in
the southern states (George Iype, India Abroad, September 20, 2002). As
evidence, the newspaper cites the conversion of nearly 2,000 Dalits in
Madurai by the US-funded Seventh-Day Adventists, over the past six months.
In July, the Covenant and High Land Trinity converted 70 villagers to Christianity
in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, after paying them money and giving them jobs.
Last fortnight in Kerala, the Master Ministry of Jesus converted two dozen
Hindus in a poor colony outside Pathanamthitta town, after offering similar
inducements. Similarly, the outlawed Islamic sect, Deendar Anjuman, has
been converting poor villagers in Hubli and Gulbarga (Karnataka) and Vijaywada
(Andhra Pradesh).
In India, conversions are an issue
mainly with Hindus and Sikhs, as the small Jain community has been fairly
immune to external inducements, while Buddhists have received a regular
influx of devotees. The reason why there is no Hindu hostility to Buddhism
is because acceptance of the latter does not involve denial of the Hindu
past; upper caste Hindus attracted by the teachings of the Sakya Muni happily
combine it with existing family traditions. What is more, Dr BR Ambedkar
had specifically stated that he was taking the Dalits to Buddhism to raise
their social status while keeping them within the Indic fold. He was emphatic
that conversion to a monotheistic faith would de-nationalise the Dalits,
and would be a terrible injustice to them.
There is today a growing perception
that conversions by monotheistic religions that deny the spiritual merit
and rich cultures of other lands are an extreme form of intolerance and
violence. There is also increasing cognisance at the popular level that
all religions do not have the same goals for their adherents, and that
the political privileging of some faiths has had a deleterious impact on
social stability. Ms Jayalalithaa has recognised that the state cannot
evade its responsibility in this regard, and it will now be difficult for
other States and political parties to ride roughshod over people's feelings
about conversions.
Far from being a benign activity,
conversion involves an open and sustained assault on the living traditions
and cultures of other peoples, and it is shocking that the international
community has been so negligent about this. Indeed, it is my view that
the failure to perceive living civilisations like India's as part of the
living heritage of mankind as a whole is what led to the failure to protect
the Bamiyan Buddhas from the Taliban last year. For the United Nations
and the Western world, the Bamiyan Buddhas were merely statues of great
antiquity with value in the eyes of art lovers, conservationists and tourists.
But for India they were living gods, and the Pakistan- abetted Taliban
destroyed them as a public humiliation of India. New Delhi's Shahi Imam
also justified their demolition from this point of view.
If the civilised world admits that
the destruction of the idols was an act of barbarism, it must also concede
that the annihilation of currently-in-worship idols of long-revered village
or tribal deities is an equally reprehensible act of violence. In the Hindu
tradition, religion and culture cannot be distinguished, and Jawaharlal
Nehru's attempt to split them artificially has been firmly rejected by
the masses. When the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were telecast for the
first time a decade ago, there were reports of middle class Hindu families
performing arti in front of their television sets. This is not because
they were fools but because for the Hindus, the epics are simultaneously
scriptures, literary classics, theatre and folklore. The secular-religious
continuum merges effortlessly; there are no watertight compartments.
That is why the transition from
Hindu dharma to a monotheistic faith inevitably involves a loss of common
culture, which is resented by the whole society. For instance, in the South,
converted families refrain from drawing rangoli patterns at the entrance
of their homes, thereby distancing themselves from centuries-old cultural
practices. Conversions often divide families painfully as some members
adopt a new religion, and when they abandon shared cultural practices the
others experience a profound sense of loss. There is a feeling that one's
values and way of life have been demeaned.
In this context, several middle
class Indians are questioning the involvement of the clergy of one religion
in teaching in secular educational institutions, on the grounds that they
use the opportunity to denigrate other religions. They feel that only professionally
qualified non-religious persons should be allowed to teach children, particularly
in schools that receive grants from the state. There is also a demand that
the foreign funds received by minority institutions should be made public
by the state, and their usage monitored. I have been startled to learn
that in South India, several Central and State Government employees openly
double-up as preachers and indulge in house-to-house conversion activities.
At present, several missionary groups
are claiming that the constitutional right to propagate one's religion
includes the right to convert. This is simply not true, and the issue was
thrashed out in the Constituent Assembly itself. Subsequently, the Supreme
Court under Chief Justice PB Gajendragadkar categorically ruled that propagation
did not confer the right to convert others.
