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 practice 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 by Dr. Jayalalithaa, who recently upset the Congress party by demanding that naturalized 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 Dr. Jayalalithaa is one politician who speaks and acts purposively, 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 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 emphasized 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 civilized consider this a legitimate activity. Dr. 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, 20 September 2002). As evidence, the newspaper cites the conversion of nearly two thousand Dalits in Madurai by the US-funded Seventh-Day Adventists, over the past six months. In July, the Covenant and High Land Trinity converted seventy 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. B.R. Ambedkar had specifically stated that he was taking the Dalits to Buddhism to raise their social status while keeping them within the Indic fold. Dr. Ambedkar was emphatic that conversion to a monotheistic faith would de-nationalize 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 cognizance 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. Dr. Jayalalithaa has recognized 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 civilizations 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 civilized 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 Mr. 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 P.B. Gajendragadkar categorically ruled that propagation did not confer the right to convert others.
The Pioneer, 22 October 2002