The Hindu : Conversion politics

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 07, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Conversion politics - II

By P. Radhakrishnan

When the state has hardly any concern for the Dalits, and they are still victims of untouchability and social ostracism, why should it be a stumbling block to their regeneration with the help of other religions?

"The history of fundamental rights in this country is very interesting. In olden times under the Hindu kings there were fundamental rights only for two — the Brahmin and the cow — and the Puranas described the king as "Go Brahmana Pratipalaka". That was the duty of a king; whether the other sections of his subjects received any consideration at his hands or not, or whether animals other than the `Go' had any consideration was a matter of no moment at all. So long as the Brahmin and the cow were protected, the king was destined to go to heaven." — B. R. Ambedkar.

EIGHT, IN the absence of hard data, the reference in the Ordinance to anti-social and vested interest groups exploiting the innocent people, and religious fundamentalists and subversive forces creating communal tension under the garb of religious conversions, is inane, tendentious and insulting to the sensibilities of all religious minded persons.

Nine, as the Ordinance is clear in its objective to prevent Dalit conversions, it raises a serious question. When the state has hardly any concern for them, and they are still victims of untouchability and social ostracism, why should it be a stumbling block to their regeneration with the help of other religions?

There are three answers to this: (a) What B. R. Ambedkar wrote of the "untouchable" legislators elected after the Poona Pact: "They were completely under the control of the Congress Party Executive. They could not ask a question which it did not like. They could not move a resolution which it did not permit. They could not bring in legislation to which it objected. They could not vote as they chose and could not speak what they felt. They were there as dumb, driven cattle." Though most Dalits are still like dumb, driven cattle that is the way Hindu society wants them — for carrying its dirt and drudge. (b) Dr. Ambedkar's related observations on conversion: "Fortunately for the Muslims there is a large mass of non-descript population numbering about seven crores which is classed as Hindus but which has no particular affinity to the Hindu faith and the position of which is made so intolerable by that faith that it can be easily induced to embrace Islam... This is sufficient to cause alarm among the elite of the Hindus... What would be their fate if their following was depleted by their conversions to Islam? Herein lies the origin of the Shudhi Movement or the movement to reclaim people to the Hindu faith."

(c) Seen against the above two, and given their numerical strength, a united front of the Dalits, a majority of the Hindus (who are not yet on the lunatic fringe), Muslims and Christians can halt the march of Hindutva.

The Advanis and the Malkanis are conscious of this danger of nemesis catching up with them.

Ten, if the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, did not repeal the Ordinance despite vociferous criticism and condemnation of it by the entire media, with the exception of the Sangh Parivar's, despite widespread protests by Christians and Muslims who found common cause in fighting against the Ordinance which brought them together on common platforms, despite the protest-closure of minority educational institutions, and despite a writ petition against the Ordinance admitted in the Madras High Court, it does not show her in good light.

On the contrary, her total lack of sensitivity to the shrill and strong negative response of civil society raises at least two issues: One is, as the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Bill, 2002, was passed by the Tamil Nadu Assembly on October 31, despite strong protests and by out-voting the combined opposition of the DMK, the Congress, the PMK and the Left parties, which lost the battle by 140 to 73, it raises a larger constitution question of the future of democracy in Indian States when a particular party having brute majority in the Assembly is bent upon destroying the very same democratic fabric.

The other is, while debating the Bill, Ms. Jayalalithaa claimed that the AIADMK would not move away from its Dravidian moorings. In this context, it is important to note that the anti-Brahmin, anti-Aryan, anti-North, anti-Hindi, anti-Sanskrit and anti-Congress acrimony and agitations, and the concomitant glorification and deification of Tamil and Dravidian culture by the Dravidian movement, especially during the 1930s and 1940s, were necessitated by certain socio-political and cultural contexts.

As though responding to another historical necessity, successive Dravidian parties have undone the legacy of this movement by diluting, distorting and discarding it. In his exasperation with the failure of Hindu society to draw the Dalits into its honourable fold and its persistence with and perpetration of age-old injustices of untouchability, and exclusionary and discriminatory practices, despite his decades-long Self-Respect Movement, Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Naicker repeatedly exhorted the Dalits to leave Hinduism and embrace Islam. Eleven, even if it remains a dead law, it is not without its precipitant and pernicious consequences. Instances are (a) the claim by the BJP president, Venkaiah Naidu, who showered praise on Ms. Jayalalithaa for the Bill, which has the support of both the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, that banning conversions will be endorsed in BJP-ruled States; (b) along with Mr. Naidu, the BJP's L.K. Advani and Arun Jaitley voicing the need for an anti-conversion Bill similar to the Tamil Nadu one; and (c) the VHP's Praveen Togadia declaring that Ms. Jayalalithaa has done the nation proud; and so on.

Twelve, irrespective of how the Ordinance and the Bill are seen by the outside world, they make sense only when Ms. Jayalalithaa is placed in the larger political context of Hindutva.

On this, the observations from an editorial in The Hindu are relevant to note: "The Jayalalithaa Government... has taken a leaf straight out of the Sangh Parivar's viciously sectarian agenda and has, in a sense, `outranked' even the BJP's own regimes that have stopped short of enacting such a regressive and patently anti-minority legislation with serious Constitutional implications for a citizen's fundamental right to personal freedoms affecting profession, practice and propagation of religion (Article 25)."

To conclude, Ms. Jayalalithaa's anti-conversion agenda is an attempt to play to the Hindutva gallery.

(Concluded)

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

Stories in this Section

Towards simplification

Relegating substantive issues

Conversion politics - II

Reviving Indo-Pak. talks