Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Sahara Time
Date: June 12, 2004
"The need of the moment is not one
religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different
religions." - Mahatma Gandhi
The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's
sudden decision to revoke the State's anti-conversion law has brought the
spotlight on the morality, if not legality, of religious conversions. Amidst
a general consensus that Ms. Jayalalitha has backtracked due to loss of
political nerve, there are growing fears in the Hindu community that missionaries
will pursue their conversion agenda with renewed vigour. Unfortunately,
the public discourse on this sensitive issue has mostly been ill-informed
and one-sided. Thus one often encounters intellectuals who argue that there
is nothing special about India's indigenous religious tradition, and that
religion, like any other commodity, can be purchased by free choice in
the marketplace.
This argument is, of course, both
vulgar and simplistic. Conversions are objectionable because they invariably
involve loss of identity. This is unavoidable because the religions that
proselytize are those that have aggressively destroyed the heritage and
roots of the societies whose adherence they won, usually by violence. A
cursory glance at the European, African, North and South American and Australian
continents will testify to the veracity of this statement.
Those who do not subscribe to the
view that in India, it is one's Hindu roots that provide the basis of one's
culture and values, would do well to ponder over what one of the most famous
Western missionaries, Clifford Manshardt, said about conversions soon after
independence. Noting that the outstanding Christians in India were all
first generation converts, Manshardt observed that this was because ".they
brought over their Hindu culture, and they were at home in their own categories.
They had their roots in the cultural past; therefore they were natural.
The second generation was taken out, and became neither good Europeans
nor good Indians. The second and third generation Christians are neither
this nor that. In that period, the Indian Christian had lost his soul.
A nationalist said to me, "Your Indian Christian is a man out of gear;
he isn't in gear with your people, and he is out of gear with us."
Over five decades after independence,
the situation remains much the same, if not worse. In Tamil Nadu's Periamalai
area, local residents are increasingly stressed over frenzied religious
activity from a group of missionaries. "They don't allow us to live in
peace," they complained (News Today 18 May 2004). The missionaries, who
have concentrated their expansion activities here, are brazen and aggressive.
Not satisfied with the burgeoning number of churches in the area, they
have been regularly collecting the faithful at the Periamali hillock and
shouting taunts to the Hindu community and deriding Hindu gods, notwithstanding
warnings and admonitions from the administration.
What residents find particularly
galling is the practice of bringing women to the meetings and asking them
to publicly throw their mettis and thalis (symbols of a sumangali, married
woman) into the fire as a confirmation of their conversion. This is naturally
offensive to the local population, which protested that such activity escalated
whenever they went to worship at a Murugan temple nearby.
Till some time ago, the missionaries
organized provocative all-night meetings in the vicinity of the temple,
but after locals complained to the police, a check-post was put up on the
entry road to the hillock to prevent night-time meetings. But soon after,
the check-post was damaged by miscreants and night-time evangelism resumed.
The residents again protested to the authorities and had another check-post
erected. They also managed to get a court order restraining the evangelists
from 'encroaching' the land of the Murugan temple. Despite such a strong
show of community resentment at conversion activities, the missionaries
have simply brushed aside concerns for inter-community harmony and persisted
with the action plan for conversions at any cost.
Clearly missionaries do not accept
the basic tenet of civilization - that one's rights end where the rights
of another begin. On the contrary, under the garb of minority rights, they
have been indulging in behaviour that would be regarded as brazen and intolerant
in any civilized society. This is because they are unwilling to respect
and tolerate India's indigenous civilization and culture, and remain committed
to annihilating it.
There are some who argue that 'genuine'
religious conversions are permissible, as they rest on an individual's
informed choice and are based on a knowledge of the religion in which one
is born and the religion to which one is crossing over. This is a valid
argument, and such conversion, when it happens, is usually of an individual
alone.
The experience, however, is that
most conversions are mass conversions, brought about by a mixture of force,
fraud, and specifically by inducements in the form of social and economic
benefits such as jobs, schools, health facilities, and social dignity.
In such cases, the converted are usually poor Dalits or tribals, who know
nothing about the new religion except some simple prayers that are taught
to them by rote. While there can be little doubt that some economic benefits
have percolated to some of them, the social benefits are dubious, as even
the church acknowledges that hierarchies of caste continue to operate in
the new faith, often with renewed vigour. Social dignity and self-respect,
then, became a mirage.
The famous English journalist and
writer, Sir Mark Tully, wrote in 1991 that a friend of his "still refers
to Harijan converts as 'powder-milk Christians,' and there is no doubt
that these people - the poorest of the poor - were attracted by the missionaries'
promises to feed their bodies, rather than the prospect of spiritual nourishment.".
Nevertheless, says Tully, the "Harijans
also expected Christianity to give them the dignity that they were denied
by Hinduism, but here they were to be bitterly disappointed - especially
by the Roman Catholic Church." In Hinduism, in contrast, spiritual preceptors
like the Kanchi Shankaracharya are actively engaged in eradicating caste
inequities.
