MOHAN GURUSWAMY
Putting aside more urgent issues such as the economic slowdown, jobless growth, falling savings rate, tax revenue shortfall and the expansion of the current account deficit, Parliament is now going to debate conversions. But isn’t this a long settled issue when we wrote our Constitution?
The Indian Constitution guarantees justice, liberty and equality. Article 19 guarantees the people of India seven fundamental freedoms. These are the freedoms of speech and expression; freedom of assembly; freedom of association; freedom of movement; freedoms of residence and settlement; freedom of property; and freedoms of profession, occupation, trade or business. More germane to the present discussion, Article 25 guarantees “freedom of conscience and free profession, practice and propagation of religion.”
These fundamental rights are inviolable no law, ordinance, custom, usage or administrative order can ever abridge or take away any of them. The preamble elaborates liberty to be that of “thought, expression, belief, faith and worship” leaving little room for ambiguity. Without these rights we will be no different from a Saudi Arabia or North Korea! Very clearly the liberty of thought and conscience and the right to profess and practice one's religion is not the issue. What can be the issue is our reticence to criticize religions, and subject their basic premises to scrutiny?
Perhaps our bloodied history and particularly the conflicts of the recent past have made us want to seek accommodation by mutual tolerance. This is understandable and perhaps even commendable. Nonetheless, given the propensity of militant religionists to apply their doctrines to the political process and their constant endeavor to impose their views on others, not to challenge orthodox religiosity and fundamentalism would be a gross dereliction of our responsibilities.
What we are in need of is not a debate on conversion but a debate on the stuff our beliefs are made of. But this is not on our agenda and will not appear on it as long as we have the present dubious consensus on what has come to be called secularism. To be truly secular is to be a skeptic and therefore rational and reasonable. Merely to be silent on the unreason wrapped in ritual and ceremony that passes off as religion, or even to be fearful of criticizing these lest we provoke irrational rage and violence, is not secularism. It is the silence of the truly secular and rational that has allowed the religious fanatics of all hues to seize the high ground from which the battle for our minds is being directed. To be secular is to consider organized religion little more than humbug. But now is not the time to discuss humbug but the hullabaloo about conversion.
It still leaves us with the rights and wrongs of converting by false inducements. Is the promise or threat of life after life not a false inducement? The criticism against proselytizers is that they dupe poor people into converting by giving them money. It is being reported that the RSS is now offering every Muslim Rs.5 lakhs and Christian Rs.2 lakhs to “return” to the Hindu fold. One must wonder why these differential rates? Is one more of a leap in faith than the other? The exchange of one set of primitive ideas with another set of not very different yet similarly primitive ideas is no big deal. The common people can be very practical when it comes to matters pertaining to their well-being.
Both, the state and our predominantly Hindu society have failed to provide to the majority of this country the elementary essentials of living and quite often even the elementary decencies due to all human beings. Added to this, our society has systematically discriminated against and oppressed the lower castes. Why do they exist mostly below the poverty line? Why do more of them die younger? These are subjects worthy of a debate. The call for a debate on conversion lends itself to expansion to include these. Just as it lends itself to a discussion as to why people are so easily willing to give up their traditional faith.
Clearly, the systematic exclusion of a majority from their rightful role in the community and the continuing discrimination against them is a great subject for a debate. If the Hindu upper castes were to be civilized in their treatment of the lower castes would they now seek to escape from the social tyranny of Hindu society?
Mohan Guruswamy
Email: mohanguru@gmail.com
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