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When their gods failed them
By Neena Vyas

"A people's relation to their culture is the same as the relation of a child to its mother's breast." — Saunders Redding at a conference of black American writers in 1959.

There is hardly any doubt that religious belief is part of the culture of a people. Often it is their religious faith which sustains their lives in many ways, deciding not only which god they worship and how, but also helping them construct an internal value system, making social living cohesive, and impacting the most important events in ordinary lives by laying down the dos and don'ts and the rituals that surround birth, death and marriage. Whenever a religious conversion takes place, indeed it must be painful, as painful as it is for a child being weaned away from its mother's breast.

But what happens when religion stops nurturing a people, and instead becomes an instrument of oppression, real or imaginary? What happens to a people who no longer feel that their religious faith can lift them up and beyond the daily humiliations and oppressions both mental and physical? What if their gods stop listening to their cries or their gods become the instruments of their oppressors?

Over the last four decades, nearly two million black Americans rejected Christianity to embrace Islam. There was no `jehad' and there was no forcible conversion at the point of a sword. Yet, the number of young blacks joining the new movement grew impressively. The movement for conversion to Islam among black Americans was successful not because of the proselytising activities of some `mullahs' but as a result of the perceived social injustice within American society.

They were convinced that they had to give up Christianity which had become too identified with their white torturers. Jesus Christ was white, blond haired with blue eyes. The embracing of Islam, for them, became synonymous with freedom, with rebellion if you like, a search for a new identity, a declaration that they no longer accepted the racial superiority of the white man who was a Christian.

Simultaneously, it became a movement that intended to help the African-Americans find their roots back in Africa and in Islam founded on that continent. Some believed Islam might have been their religion when they were brought to the American continent bound hand and foot and sold into slavery. "We don't separate our religion from our colour. The white man doesn't. The white man has never separated Christianity from white nor has he separated the white man from Christianity." That was Malcolm X.

The upper caste Hindus have never separated their religion from their caste. Why should they when the religion puts them on top of the social ladder and the "others" are heaped at the bottom? But the real tragedy is that more often than not the attempt by the "others" to escape indignity, to get social respect and equality, through religious conversions also fails, for the caste clings to them even when a new religion is adopted.

Equally, the black American who changes his religion is unable to change the social equations. But surely, in both instances, conversions mark a rebellion against social injustice.

In India, social injustice has provided the strongest impulse for religious conversion among the most oppressed, the Dalits. Even before Independence, B. R. Ambedkar rejected Hinduism to become a Buddhist. And today the movement is strong in Maharashtra where there is a politically aware community of Dalit Buddhists. It was a way of rejecting the humiliation the practice of Hindu religion had imposed on them, forcing them to virtually live on the fringes of society as "untouchables", not permitted to enter the temples to pray to the very gods who were to help them achieve salvation.

And if one were to go further back in history, it was the great Ashoka who gave up Hinduism to embrace Buddhism after the now famous battle of Kalinga that left thousands dead. After the massive destruction he chose to embrace a pacifist faith and sent out his ambassadors far and wide to spread the tenets of the new belief. Buddhism, like Islam and Christianity, is a proselytising religion, unlike Hinduism or Judaism or Zoroastrianism.

The leaders of the most successful political party of Dalits, Mayawati and Kanshi Ram of the Bahujan Samaj Party, may not have embraced Buddhism, but their political slogan is against the caste system foisted on society by Hinduism and they do find their inspiration in the Buddha and Ambedkar.

Article 25 of the Constitution, part of the fundamental rights, gives every citizen the right to freedom of religion. This is how it reads: "Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion."

State Governments were not prohibited by the Constitution from adopting legislation to restrict economic, financial, political or other secular activity associated with religious practice. They could legislate to place restrictions on religious practice to help maintain public order.

Conversion was never much of a political issue in India till recently. After all, in spite of three centuries of Mughal rule followed by the Christian British Raj, Hinduism was not seen to be in danger. The census statistics demonstrated decade after decade that much of the Sangh Parivar propaganda about a diminishing Hindu population and a minority growing by leaps and bounds was a deliberate lie.

In fact, it was only after the political ascendancy of the forces of the Sangh Parivar that the subject was brought to the centre stage of politics with cries of "Hindu dharma in danger" being raised. Since the ideological foundation of the BJP and the Sangh was Hindutva, as their very ideology was anti-minority, every convert away from Hinduism was seen as a potential voter lost, and conversions were used to whip up communal passions. Religious conversions became a political hot potato.

The Orissa Assembly adopted a legislation in 1967 to provide specific punishment for forced or fraudulent conversions. This was followed by a similar legislation in Madhya Pradesh the following year, but while the new law in Orissa was struck down by the State High Court, the Madhya Pradesh High Court upheld the validity of the new State legislation, paving the way for the Supreme Court to step in. And in 1977 the apex court held that the constitutional right to propagate one's religion did "not include" the right to convert. That is how the law stands today, and naturally it is applicable throughout the country.

What then inspired the Tamil Nadu Government to issue an ordinance on this subject earlier this month? Many see this as a reaction to the incident of mass conversions in Madurai where 250 Dalits adopted Christianity at the instance of the Seventh Day Adventist Chapter, a Protestant Baptist group working on the fringes of the mainstream Christian churches.

Tamil Nadu had witnessed a furore related to mass conversion in 1981 when the entire Dalit colony of Meenakshipuram village converted to Islam, apparently frustrated by the inability to get respect and dignity within the Hindu fold.

Some clashes were also witnessed in the State about a year later and a Commission of Inquiry was set up in 1986 which recommended an anti-conversion law as a means to secure public order. The then AIADMK Government accepted the Commission's recommendations but then the matter was shelved, till a few weeks ago when the Jayalalithaa Government thought it fit to promulgate the ordinance.

Political analysts see the Tamil Nadu legislation as one more political signal from the AIADMK chief, Jayalalithaa, that she is willing and able to "come closer" to the ruling BJP at the Centre to dislodge her rivals in the DMK as the favourites in New Delhi. Naturally, as expected, the BJP, and of course the Sangh Parivar as a whole, have applauded the ordinance.

The Tamil Nadu Ordinance prohibits conversion by force, fraud or by offering allurements, although any kind of fraudulent practice is in any case covered by the established law of the land making the ordinance redundant. And so are the protests coming from various Christian groups, for surely it is not their case that they must enjoy a right to force religious conversions or secure them through fraud and allurements?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of these conversions the harsh fact which the majority community has to face is that the indignation of the upper caste Hindus smacks of their desire to assert their right to continue to dominate and oppress the lower castes, especially the Dalits. And as for the Sangh Parivar, it has tried to hijack and allot to itself the role of the saviour of Hindu `dharma'. What `dharma' was being saved when five Dalits were lynched in Jhajhar in Haryana for skinning a dead cow? Or even if the cow was alive, can it be anyone's case that the life of a cow is more sacred than that of five human beings?

When for centuries religious practices have forced one-fourth of the total population out of the mainstream of almost all religious activities and rituals, when these people have been forced to find employment in jobs considered "impure" and "dirty" by the upper castes, when they have been robbed of their dignity as human beings, denied entry into temples, forced to live in separate habitats, denied water from common wells, why this hue and cry if they decide to embrace another faith? And this situation still exists in most of India even though "untouchability" was abolished long ago. Conversions should be a non-issue, the real issue is continued social discrimination.