The Right To
Conversion
By Nivedita Menon
07 May, 2004
The Telegraph
Consider
this - religious conversions are permissible if they are genuine, and
not brought about by fraud or coercion.
That many reasonable
people would agree with this statement demonstrates the extent to which
the Hindu right has transformed the terms of public debate in India.
What, after all, do "fraud" and "coercion" mean?
Of course, no decision taken on the basis of actual physical force,
or the threat
of it, can be legitimate. But nobody believes that conversion "by
the sword" is an issue today. (It is another matter that if it
had ever been seriously practised in India, Muslims would not be a mere
12 per cent of the population, and Christians less than 3 per cent,
after centuries of rule.)
Going by the last
election manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party, fraud and coercion
refer to "promises of social or economic benefits" but many
opponents of the BJP, too, would endorse this interpretation. Genuine
religious conversion, on the other hand, is understood to involve the
spiritual transformation of an individual on the basis of "knowledge",
both of the person's "own" religion as well as of the one
to which he converts. Informed choice, in other words. Interesting notion,
considering one's original religion is hardly the best illustration
of "choice" - you're born into it, right?
So ignorant Dalits
or tribals, who convert to Christianity, Buddhism or Islam in the hope
of, and lured by, economic benefits - jobs, schools, health facilities
- and social benefits - dignity, self-respect - are instances of fraudulent
conversion. Pandita Ramabai and Babasaheb Ambedkar may be conceded as
genuine, not by the Hindu right, for whom they are traitors, but by
liberals, who will, nevertheless, not refrain from pointing out that
hierarchies of caste and gender continue to operate in all these religions
as well, so the move is at best, misguided.
The unquestioned
foundation of the entire discussion is the assumption that converting
from one religion to another is essentially wrong, an act requiring
justification. The recent self-defined exposé by a weekly on
George W. Bush's conversion agenda in India, is a typical example of
this kind of thinking. The research simply showed that conversions to
Christianity are indeed taking place, that people who have converted
claim they no longer have troubles - a
claim triumphantly disproved by the reporter with the fact that one
of the interviewees lost a family member in an accident recently. A
film on
Christ has been successfully used to draw villagers to Christianity
- this is written about in a way as if the very showing of such films
is a breach of trust or legality, or both. There is also evidence of
a lot of funding from the United States of America for conversion activities,
but then foreign funding comes in for a range of other activities, from
business investments to
development work, to political agendas, especially those of the Hindu
right.
My question is -
why is religious conversion essentially different in a democracy from
other kinds of conversion? When rival companies bid for
candidates offering higher salaries and better perks, inducing them
to convert from one employer to another, why is that not fraudulent?
When political parties attempt to convert voters with wild promises,
when Naxalites are wooed back into mainstream society by the state,
when political ideologies - of the market or of Marxists or of feminists
or of the Hindu right - attempt to convert with promises of redemption
and threats of various kinds, both material and spiritual, why are all
these not fraudulent? If by conversion we mean a total change of identity,
I might point out that this is what a perfectly
ordinary marriage involves for most women - change of name (in many
communities even the first name), place of residence, way of life, and
in general a complete restructuring of their sense of self.
I don't understand
why religion should occupy a special place from all of the above in
a modern democracy. Not that I don't know what the answer will be -
religion is a matter of the spirit and not of crass materiality, it
should be governed by different standards. In that case, why expect
the state to intervene at all in this sacred realm? After all, even
from the gods of their
ancestors, people expect material benefits. What is the worship of Lakshmi
all about, and students' earnest prayers during examinations? Why not
ask the state to enact laws against the performance of pujas and religious
ceremonies in general for material benefit? A puja hoping for better
profits in business is "religion", but converting to another
religion hoping your children can go to school is "economics"?
For the democratically-minded
who buy the argument against "fraudulent" conversions from
what I consider to be mistaken premises, here's another thought. It
is fundamentally anti-democratic to force people to retain any
identity against their will, especially one assumed by the very act
of being born - nationality, caste, religion or even sex. The possibility
of change is central to democracy. We have no option but to respect
a decision to change any identity for a perceived better future, whatever
our opinion about whether that change will bring about the desired result.
That's the problem with democracy.
Of course, the real
reason behind the Hindu right's obsession with religious conversion
has nothing to do with protecting the sanctity of religion. The creation
of a birth-based political majority is crucial for the project of Hindutva
and for its definition of Indian-ness. If "others" turn into
the majority, the easy
coinciding of Hindutva and the Nation falls apart. When Ambedkar decided
to leave the Hindu fold along with large numbers of Dalits, who felt
the most threatened? Not the orthodox Hindus, who thought it was good
riddance. It was Savarkar and the modernist Hindutvavadis who reacted
most sharply, understanding fully the importance of numbers for a modern
politics of Hindutva. Hence their ever-increasing horror stories about
galloping Muslim and Christian populations, the most recent example
being the Indian Council for Social and Scientific Research-sponsored
study on the decline in population of "Indian religionists".
Recognizing this,
it worries me that most democratic and secular arguments contesting
this picture have restricted themselves to factual corrections and reinterpretation
of data. Essentially, they have been trapped into offering reassurances
that there is no way Muslims and Christians will outnumber Hindus, ever.
Surely we need to ask another, more aggressive question of
our own instead - so what if Hindus become a minority one hundred years
from now, or a decade from now, or a year from now? Surely the point
is to ensure democratic institutions such that it will make no difference
how large your community of birth is?
Many of my generation
studied in Christian institutions, we participated in Bible quizzes,
at some point some of us may even have thought of converting (our modern
young minds drawn to the clean quiet of the chapel, so different from
the messy humanity of temples), we often wore crosses. Our parents were
usually indulgent, and confident about themselves. Hindutva has managed
to make an 85 per cent-strong majority community feel insecure about
the strength of its durable traditions, unsure of the ability of these
traditions to survive. Congratulations. Even a thousand years of "Muslim
rule" couldn't achieve this.
(The author
is reader in political science, Delhi University)
Courtesy/ Harsh
Kapoor, SACW