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Mohan Guruswamy
The acceptance of democracy as a way of life implies that we have accepted that we hold certain rights to be inalienable. The Indian Constitution therefore guarantees justice, liberty and equality. The rights emanating from these are considered fundamental to our being a free and democratic society. These fundamental rights, therefore, are inviolable in the sense that 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.
Consequently, Article 19 guarantees the people of India seven fundamental freedoms. These are (a) freedom of speech and expression; (b) freedom of assembly; (c) freedom of association; (d) freedom of movement; (e) freedom of residence and settlement; (f) freedom of property; and (g) freedom of profession, occupation, trade or business. Article 25 guarantees ``freedom of conscience and free profession, practice andpropagation of religion.''
This very simply means that people are free to believe whatever they may want to, convert others to this belief and perform whatever rituals or ceremonies that are required by one's faith. In even more simple words, people are free to be Christians, free to preach Christianity and convert to Christianity. So what is there to debate about conversion?
It is another matter that religions as we know them to be practised are usually premised on irrational and primitive ideas. The psychologist James E. Alcock writes: ``We are magical beings in a scientific age.
Notwithstanding all the remarkable achievements of our species in terms of understanding and harnessing nature, we are born to magical thoughts and not to reason''. Now this relative absence of reason in religion very clearly gives us cause for a debate. Very clearly the liberty of thought and conscience and the right to profess and practise one's religion is not the issue. What can be the issue is our reticence to criticisereligions, 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 endeavour 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 secular is to be a sceptic 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 criticising these lest we provoke irrationalrage 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.
Quite clearly the call for a debate on conversion does not envisage a debate of this nature. It does not seek truth and the light of enlightenment and liberation from superstition, fanaticism and ambitious intrigue. The muse is quite obviously not inspired by Milton's lines from Areopagitica: "Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth to put to the worse in a free and open encounter?" It is merely a call for a debate on the right of one section to propagate and convert the gullible to its set of beliefs, miracles and afterlife possibilities. This right is guaranteed by the Constitution and so there is nothing to debate.
Yet a debate has been called for giving some cause for a debate on the reasons behind the call for such a debate. For few days after the call some madmen inOrissa responded by burning to death Dr Staines and his two young sons.
It still leaves the question of converting by inducements. Indu-cement here is to be taken in a very narrow sense. Since all of us are inevitably sinners and since no religion promises a more comfortable hell, the inducements have to necessarily relate to the immediate, and more often than not, material well-being. The criticism against Christian missionaries is that they dupe poor people into becoming Christians by giving them money.
There is more untruth to this than truth. More often it is housing, clothes, education and the care that comes with acceptance that are the inducements. 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 elementaryessentials of living and quite often even the elementary decencies due to all human beings. Added to this, our society has systematically discriminated against the weak and the oppressed.
The President has a point when he wants to know if no dalits or adivasis can be elevated to the Supreme Court. Now here is a subject worthy of a debate. The call for a debate on conversion lends itself to expansion to include this. 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.
Such an expanded debate could possibly shed light on why for most of the about to conclude millennium we were a conquered nation. It is now exactly a thousand years since Mohammed bin Kassim conquered the Sindh. Thus paving the way for a succession of Arabs, Persians, Turks, Uzbeks, Mongols, Portuguese, French andEnglish to invade and rule parts, if not all, of this country. Our thousand years of shame call for a debate we never really had.
Such a debate will almost certainly focus on the failures of the Hindu elites to defend the nation, to unite the country and harness its great resources. It is not very different even now. The lessons of history are yet to be learnt. And so we will continue to debate trivia.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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