POLITICAL DIARY

New Delhi, 30 August 2008

Religious Conversions

INDIA’S BATTLE OVER THE GOD

By Poonam I Kaushish

“God is very angry with India,” a mother told her daughter. “Which God,” the little girl asked her mother. “I am confused. Everyone appears to be fighting over each others -- the Hindu-Muslim Gods in Kashmir and now the Hindu-Christian Gods in Orissa. Aren’t they all scared that they will go to Hell,” she added for good measure. Either way it matters little. For the little girl had hit the bull’s eye. The tragedy of India is that our political undatas continue to churn the cauldrons of these ‘holier than thou’ clashes in their reckless pursuit of minority nirvana.

If Kashmir’s continuing Hindu-Muslim embers of hate is bad news, Orissa’s Christian-Hindu clashes is worse. Considering, that since Independence, the Christian minority, totaling about 2.34 per cent of the population, has enjoyed perfect harmony with their Hindu brethren. Even as history has stood testimony to Hindu-Muslim clashes there have been no serious Hindu-Christian quarrels.

Till the cold-blooded murder of 84-year old Hindu priest Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati singed the placid tribal district of Kandhamal in Orissa last week. All hell broke lose with the Saffron VHP and Bajrang Dal going on a killing spree and destroying property. Amidst the ensuing mayhem came a religious Benedict from the Vatican asking for peace. But all was drowned in the cacophony of accusations.

The Christians pleaded ignorance and asserted it was the handiwork of the Maoists. The Hindu fanatics would have none of this. Stepped in the netas to try and sort out the mess. The Congress called for a CBI enquiry, the BJP threatened to pull out of the Naveen Patnaik led-BLD coalition Government and Christian organizations shut down schools as a token of protest.

Arguably, should one dismiss the violence as an orchestrated political conspiracy? As religious xenophobia? Or is it the outcome of rampant bad blood by the Sangh Parivar over re-conversions across the country? Akin to the rape of the nuns in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, the burning of chapels in Dangs, Gujarat, and the murder of the Australian missionary Grahm Staines and his children in Manoharpur, Orissa.

If truth be told, the raging inferno of hatred, is because religion per se has become the most exploited and explosive social and political issue in India. Bluntly, religious vote-bank politics is the flavour of the season. Never mind, that it threatens to destroy the body politic of the nation wherein even angels fear to tread.

India’s misfortune is that Hindu, Muslim and, now Christian fundamentalism is growing thanks to political and intellectual double-speak. With the result that secularism has degenerated from its lofty ideal of equal respect for all religions to a cheap and diabolical strategy for creating minority vote-banks – first the Muslim minority and now the Christian, the second largest community in India.

How? By going in for religious conversions. The modus operandi is simple. Ignorant Dalits or tribals are lured to Christianity, with the promise that it would free them from caste bondage. (It’s another matter that it fails to deliver them from caste-oppression.) Add to this economic lollipops ---- jobs, schools, health facilities and social benefits --- dignity, self-respect --- one is face-to-face with instances of fraudulent conversion.

Turn North, South, East or West, the story is the same. Religion is turning out to be a question of money, big money. Flushed with funds from their headquarters in the United States, a number of church groups are allegedly converting hundreds of Hindus to Christianity in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra  Pradesh and Karnataka by giving them money and jobs.

In Arunachal Pradesh, which had banned religious conversions long back, about 50 per cent of the State’s population is said to have been converted to Christianity by missionaries operating from the neighbouring States of Assam and Nagaland by deception and allurements. In Kashmir, Christian missionaries were recently accused of trying to convert earthquake-affected people under the garb of providing relief by way of monetary incentives, free gas cylinders, water bottles, audio cassettes and a copy of the New Testament in Urdu.

In fact, Article 25 of our Constitution which lays down the tenets of freedom of religion has an important rider.  It specifies the limits within which religious freedom can be exercised. All persons, it states are equally entitled to freedom of conscience, and the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health.  Dispute, if any, can only be on the interpretation of the expression “propagate any religion”.  Suffice to say that the State will not allow its citizens to do whatever they please in the name and under the guise of religion.  Clearly, the political parties debunk Article 25 in quest of minority votes.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court settled this matter in 1973 wherein it distinguished between the right to proselytize and the right to convert. Upholding the Constitutional validity on anti-conversion laws enacted by Orissa and Madhya Pradesh in 1967-68, it ruled: “What the Constitution grants is not the right to convert another person to one’s own religion, but to transmit or spread one’s religion by an exposition of its tenders.” The Court also observed that organized conversion was anti-secular and that respect for all religions was the essence of India’s secularism.

On the flip side, the VHP and the Bajrang Dal too need to be reprimanded for playing on Hindu religious sentiments. Benefitting the BJP, whose vote-banks enabled it to snowball its strength from 2 to 193 MPs in the Lok Sabha on a Hindutva wave. They established groups of armed youth, called Raksha Sena, in every village of Chhattisgarh, in order to stop conversions to Christianity.  And, where conversions had taken place another movement called the Ghar Wapsi (“Return Home”) was launched in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Orissa for reconverting the tribal Christian back to Hinduism.

Many ask: why should religious conversions be treated differently from other kinds of conversions? When political parties attempt to convert voters with wild promises and the State goes all out to woo the Naxalites back into mainstream society, are these exercises not fraudulent? When rival companies wean away employees with higher salaries and better perks is this also not a fraud?

While there may be some weight in the queries, there is an inherent difference. Religious conversions have nothing to do with protecting the sanctity of a religion. Nor does religious freedom justify extension to a planned programme of conversions. Such exercises are an aggression against the religious freedom of others.

Surely, no quarter should be given to Hindu communalism. At the same time, however, secularism cannot be a one-way street, with appeasement of minority communities. Said Nehru, following the Mahatma’s assassination: “The combination of politics and religion, resulting in communal politics, is a most dangerous combination, and must be put an end to”.

The tragedy of India is that its political class wants the present show to go on. Forgetting that there is no mysticism in the secular character of the State.  The State is neither anti-God nor pro-God. It is expected to treat all religions and people alike. But so caught up are all in their frenzied pursuit of political nirvana through separatism, that they confuse themselves and the voter – and, indeed, history itself. Converting religions gush into political slush. ----- INFA

(Copyright India News and Feature Alliance)