The
Riddles of Religious Conversion in India
The Article 25
of the Constitution of India guarantees the ‘freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and
propagation of religion’, ‘subject to public order, morality and health and all
persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to
profess, practice and propagate religion’. While freedom of conscience and free
profession and practice’ of one’s religion has remained non-controversial; it
is the ‘freedom to propagate’ one’s religion, that has been a subject of
controversy, because the line separating conversion through conscience and
conversion through ‘force, allurement or fraud’ gets easily blurred. The
question is why the issue of conversion has suddenly become tricky whereas not only
domestic but even a foreign dignitary (the US President) was forced to speak
out about it.
I try to understand the complexities inherent in this
phenomena and why it won’t be easy to resolve it.
The conversion
from Hindus/ tribes/ scheduled castes (while Hindu groups say that these groups
are Hindus; others say that tribes and scheduled castes cannot be categorised
as Hindus) to non-Hindus is going on, as Christianity and Islam allows people
from other faith to become part of their religion. However in post-Independence
India there is difference between conversion to Islam and Christianity. While conversion
to Islam has been local phenomena whereas certain low caste Hindus convert to
Islam due to ‘bad’ treatment, marriage or just due to sheer belief; the Christianity
has a well-organised institutional structure to convert people into their fold.
In the process the economic aid, service to humanity and conversion to
Christianity get mixed up.
The Hinduism has
a different story altogether, since one can become Hindu only by birth. Though
‘the Hindu method of absorption’, whereas indigenous and tribal groups have
become part of the Hindu fold, has been going on from centuries; it is not
organized one and the process is so slow that
it takes three to four generation to be accepted into the Hindu fold.
What is the
implications of this dichotomy between a legal (constitutional) order that
allows people to propagate their religion, and a social order, whereas while the
Hindus cannot convert others to their religion, but Christian and Muslims can
do the same?
While there are
many reasons why the Hindu groups find themselves in disadvantageous position
due to this dichotomous relation between the legal and social order; one of the
immediate reasons seems to be the place of population in democracy. The
minority community still does not support the BJP which is the preferred party
of a section of fundamentalist Hindus. These Hindu groups believe that the
rising population of Christian and Muslim will be detrimental to their idea of
India. So in order to increase their number, now certain Hindu organizations have
started advocating that one can also become Hindu, like one becomes Christian
or Muslim, through conversion. Though this is against the long tradition of
Hinduism, it has found takers among the Hindus religious heads and other
organizations. The dilemma has been resolved by stating that Hindu groups are not bringing anyone to
Hindu fold, but just facilitating these people (Muslims and Christians) once
again revert back to Hinduism. Their claim is that these people were Hindu and
converted to other religion either due to fear (Islam) or favour
(Christianity). The process of bringing these people into Hindu fold has become
easier due to detachment of occupation from caste and floating urban
population. Just imagine that if someone takes up a Hindu name after conversion
he will get married among Hindus somewhere and no one is going to question him.
The economic benefits that the Hindu SCs gets from the protective
discrimination of the state policy has acted like an incentive to non-Hindus to
adopt Hindu religion.
And here lies
the predicament of the Christian missionaries and secular parties. The Muslims
are not much affected by this process since they don’t have an organized
institution to convert people (even if it exist it is not as strong as the
Christianity) into their fold, and most of the conversion to Islam has taken
place in distant past so Islamic ideology has become part of their conscience. Thus
there is little chance for Muslims to convert to Hinduism. However the
conversion to Christianity has been very recent one and there is very high
level of probability that these groups would revert back to the Hindu fold. These
newly converted Christians still have not been able to totally detach
themselves from the previous faith.
The irony is
that it is the Hindus groups that demand enactment of an anti-conversion law,
and it is the Christians, who are at the receiving end, are vehemently opposed
to any anti-conversion law. The reason is that the Christian organisations know
that any anti-conversion law would stop the conversion of Hindus and other
indigenous groups to Christianity. But the irony is that they don’t want the
Hindu groups to indulge in the process of ‘re-conversion’ or ‘Ghar Wapsi.
Earlier the dichotomy of legal and social order worked in the favour of
Christians, but as the dichotomy is getting erased the Christians find
themselves in disadvantageous position.
And that’s why
the issue would remain very tricky for some time.
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