Conversions and anti-conversion movements are tricky issues all over the world including India. Jakob De Roover and Sarah Claerhout, scholars at University of Ghent, Belgium have deeply tackled the problem of religious conversion in their books and articles. At a fundamental level, the clash is on the meaning of ‘freedom of religion.’ For the proselytizing religions, it means a freedom to convert people into their faith; for the non-proselytizing ones, it implies a freedom from interference by outside religions. The root problem is in trying to understand the various indigenous phenomena (Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism) as ‘religions’ in the same mould as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.
Sanatana Dharma lacks all the characteristics that allow us to recognize and differentiates Christianity, Islam, and Judaism as religions: a fixed body of doctrine, an ecclesiastical organization or central authority, a holy book, etc. Hindu, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist traditions and the religions of Christianity and Islam are phenomena of different kinds. When religion is a matter of doctrinal truth and different religions are rivals, the freedom to convert becomes of the greatest importance. Since false religion always implies immoral and unjust practices according to the Christian and Islamic viewpoints, conversion entails the escape from immorality and injustice. The secularization of Christian theology translates into the importance of the absolute right to profess, propagate, and change one’s 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 ripping the social fabric. The dominant liberal principle of religious freedom, even enshrined in the Constitution but which the Courts disagree with, privileges Christianity and Islam, because it involves the freedom to propagate one’s religion and to proselytize. It implicitly endorses the assumption that religion revolves around doctrines and truth claims, something unknown in traditional cultures. 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.
Historically, Hindu traditions and Indian Islam and Christianity succeeded at living together in a relatively stable manner. India has a far better record of pluralism and multiculturalism in mostly peace than Europe and the western world anytime in their histories. We need urgent research to rediscover and reinvent some of the inherent mechanisms in Indian traditions responsible for this vibrant pluralism of India. 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. The first and most important step would be to revise the understanding of our traditions as religions. The solution then would be in the direction of ‘traditionalising our religions’ rather than ‘religionising our traditions’. Religions say ‘I am true and you are false’; traditions say, ‘I am true, but you are not false.’ And therein is the difference.
RANDOM MUSINGS 