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.