Anti-conversion laws seems to be generating controversy in Karnataka presently. Conversion, and its variants, seems to be the core problem of all plural societies across the world and especially India. Conversion is a radical, sudden change of belief, where one discards old associations because of a new theological outlook. How can such models encompass non-Christian religions and cultures where the concepts of belief, practice and membership are profoundly different? Sarah Claerhout and Jakob De Roover, in a brilliant article (Conversion of the World: Proselytization in India and the Universalisation of Christianity) trace the roots of why conversions lead to such heartburn and strife. By consensus, the structure of religious conversion and proselytization is competition regarding the gain and loss of adherents generating inter-religious tension, conflict, and violence. The common solution offered is that all societies should respect the principle of freedom of religion. This states that each citizen has the right to choose freely between religions and a liberal neutral state ought to safeguard this freedom.
In the entire debate and understanding of conversion three basic assumptions play a most important role: the variety of Indian cultural traditions are religions; these religions are rivals and each wants to increase their respective numbers; and they are rivals because truth predicates apply to them. These assumptions, though appearing as common-sense facts, are problematic. These ‘facts’ are a set of theological claims of Christianity shaping today’s received view of the cultural diversity of humanity, says De Roover and Claerhout. In Indian society, two groups of cultural traditions coexist that seem to be of a very different nature: the Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain traditions on the one hand, and Christianity and Islam on the other. Christians, Muslims, and secularists claim the right to propagate and changing one’s religion as a part of the freedom of religion. In contrast, most Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain groups claim conversion violates the Indian social fabric at its heart.
Theological assumptions spoke about traditions as false religions in India; the secularized versions drop the word ‘false’ but place traditions as ‘religious rivals’ even as the theology fades in the background. This is the process of secularizing of theological ideas. Hinduism lacks all the characteristics that allow us to recognize Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as religions: a fixed body of doctrine, an ecclesiastical organization or central authority, a holy book, etc. The diversity in India from the perspective of Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist traditions shows that the assumption of rivalry is alien to them. Hence the Christian and Indian traditional views are mutually exclusive: one looks at the diversity of the Indian society as a rivalry of religions and the other sees it as a co-existence of traditions. The conclusion is inevitable: conversion becomes a vital problem of religious diversity, if and only if one looks at the world the way Christianity and Islam do.
When religion is a matter of rival doctrinal truths, the freedom to convert becomes of the greatest importance to humanity. The secularization of Christian theology translates into the importance of the absolute right to profess, propagate, and change one’s religion. Thus, the dominant principle of religious freedom reproduces theological assumptions about the nature of religion. Where religion means the ancestral tradition of a community, like in India and other pagan traditions of the past and contemporary times, the significance shifts to the freedom to continue one’s tradition without aggressive interference from the outside. Thus, religious conversions disintegrate communities and families by drawing individuals away from ancestral traditions. The dominant principle of religious freedom, then, must necessarily favour one of the two sides of the Indian equation. The liberal principle of religious freedom, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the Indian Constitution, privileges Christianity and Islam, because it involves the freedom to propagate or manifest one’s religion and to proselytize. It implicitly endorses the assumption that religion revolves around doctrines and truth claims.
The link between conversion and freedom of religion, then, is a theological legacy from the Christian West. The secular intelligentsia of the subcontinent defending a theological perspective as though it were a neutral scientific truth fail to develop solutions for India. Unfortunately, the Hindutva movement is part of the same development of the narrative when it transforms certain attitudes and practices of these traditions into ‘proper’ doctrines. The supposed Hindu doctrine, ‘all religions are equal’, would become equivalent to religious suicide for Christianity and Islam. The deadlock is that secularists, Christians, and Muslims insist that religious freedom entails freedom of conversion; the advocates of Hindu protection maintain that it grants the freedom from conversion.
Neither anti-conversion laws nor the principle of religious freedom will do the job, since both privilege one of the two sides of the controversy. De Roover says that, without the risk of romanticizing the past, looking into the history of the subcontinent, it is striking that, in several regions, the Hindu traditions and Indian Islam and Christianity succeeded at living together in a relatively stable manner. There are also some fine examples of cultural syncretism in various domains like art, music, and traditional practices which appears unique to the Indian sub-continent. There must exist some mechanisms in Indian traditions responsible for this. For one, many scholars have pointed out that local Islamic and Christian traditions lost their aggressive proselytizing drive in India. Hindu attempts to impose anti-conversion legislation aggressively also seemed to be absent. We need to re-examine the nature of Indian culture and its traditions, including Indian Islam and Indian Christianity. We require alternative frameworks that will reflect upon India’s experiences of the last five centuries.
The Balagangadhara school maintains that the problem of religion in India arises when we insist on converting our traditions more into religions. As a corollary, the solution lies in making religions more into traditions. Religions can maximally tolerate and accept the other but traditions transcend these with their characteristic indifference to differences. This was the solution of a multicultural and plural India historically and we must apply more study to rediscover these inherent mechanisms in Indian society. Religions say, ‘I am true and you are false’; traditions say, ‘I am true but you are not false’. And therein lies the difference.
RANDOM MUSINGS 