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| RSS-sponsored conversion in progress |
The
hold of religion on people seems to be strengthening every passing day. The
newspapers run regular features relating to religious activities that, one can
sometimes foretell, might cause trouble and conflicts. Some narratives are
about the conflict situations that have already occurred and some are those
that could well end up in tragedy.
With the
installation of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) government at the Centre the
Hindu Right Wing organisations seem to have developed a lot of muscle – or that
is what they appear to think. Their recent activities and utterances of some of
their hotheads inject some amount of foreboding into the environment creating a
lot of unease among the minority communities as also among such of the Hindus
who are not of fundamentalist orientation. While the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP), a right wing Hindu nationalist non-governmental organisation with the
aim of consolidating the Hindu society, has started opening and flapping its
wings, there are other numerous fringe organisations that take inspiration from
the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu cultural organisation, are more
fundamentalist in nature and have also started flexing their muscles. The
latter seek to protect the traditional Hindu mores and, in the process, indulge
in moral policing – sometimes becoming violent in doing so.
These
fundamentalists are not much different from those of other religions,
particularly of Islamic faith. Of late, they have been running campaigns of
re-conversion of Hindus and even Sikhs who happened to have been converted earlier and taken
into the Christian and/or Islamic folds. Branding the campaign as “ghar wapasi”
or home-coming, i.e. return to the Hindu fold the various regional units fanned
out in the country looking for prospective candidates for reconversion. They
claim to have converted thousands of Christians and Muslims in various parts of
the country. The conversions and “ghar wapasi” became hot news and provoked
disorder in the Indian Parliament rendering the last few sessions in the Upper
House infructuous.
Worse, the Hindu fringe elements have been
travelling to places that are communally sensitive where communities are
already polarised and the chances of conflicts were bright with the persisting
tensions. Some converts who were formerly dalits (untouchables) were assembled
and were claimed to have been “reconverted” as Hindus at some places. There
have been charges flying around that they were conned into the claimed
conversions and were offered illegal inducements. Many Hindu religious organisations disowned
such conversions as the obligatory procedures were not observed. Besides, the
question of putting them in a caste slot was also not possible as Hinduism has
castes as an essential feature of its social set up. Besides, an institutional
weakness, or strength whatever one may call it, is that none can really be
converted as a Hindu. He or she has to be a born Hindu. The Supreme Court of
India has pronounced a judgement to this effect way back in 1977. The
ritualised (re)conversions would, therefore, seem to be of hardly any
consequence.
All this apart,
fishing for trouble the fringe elements of Hindu organisations pick on issues
that could cause communal discordance. One such was about a recent Bollywood
film “PK” which, according to them, had insulted Hindus and their gods and god men
who in India have somehow come to abound. Their shenanigans have been exposed
by some of their one-time gullible faithful. If not more, at least two of the
very popular god men are now in jail for conning their followers and for rape
of their female followers besides being charged for other criminal offences. It
is the poorer and less aware sections of the population that fall prey to the
machinations of the so-called god men who are nothing but confidence
tricksters. After having viewed the film, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh,
the most populous province of India, exempted it of all taxes in order to
enable more people to watch it and presumably get educated. The central
government has also declared that, unlike previous occasions, the film would
not be subjected to a review by India’s films Censor Board. Even the
chairperson of the Censor Board, Leela Samson, emphatically asserted that
“PK”’s certification would not be reviewed. And, now a high court has
pronounced that there is nothing in the film warranting its review or re-consideration.
Nonetheless, the unHindu-like demonstrations by Hindu groups, sometimes
violent, had already done damage to various cinema halls as they went rampaging
through them breaking furniture, kicking and spitting on the film’s posters
with photographs of its hero, Amir Khan, a highly respected film artist of the
country.
The governments earlier yielded to such
unreasonable demands and the agitating fundamentalists got away with whatever
they wanted. Salman Rushdie, An Indian Muslim litterateur settled in England, was prevented from attending the Jaipur
Literature Festival in 2012 as the Islamic fundamentalist groups asked for
banning his entry into the country because of his book The Satanic Verses
published years ago which they thought insulted their Prophet. Likewise,
Tasleema Nasreen, a Bangladeshi author of repute, was chased out of her own
country for her book “Lajja” (shame) written on the anti-Hindu riots soon after
demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in India in 1992 and settled down in
Kolkata only to be blatantly chastised and threatened and was chased out of the
city again by Islamic fundamentalists for her mere plain and forthright
utterances. Both the state and the central governments proved to be so weak
that they succumbed to the unreasonable demands of the Indian Islamic fundamentalists
and refused sanctioning extension of visa to her. Likewise, MF Hussain, an
eminent Indian artist, spent last years of his life abroad as Hindu fundamentalists
were up in arms against him for depicting Hindu goddesses in the nude - a way
of depiction they did not like. There have been umpteen instances where Hindu
and Muslim right wingers have forced the government to take steps to prohibit
art and literature on frivolous grounds.
The recent activities
of the Hindu hotheads were exploited by the Opposition in the Upper House of
the Parliament where the current government lacks majority. The last few days
of the winter session were disrupted because of the disorder created by the
fragmented Opposition which managed to unite against the government. No work
could be performed and many of the bills that were slated for introduction and
discussion could not be dealt with. The BJP government had come to power with a
mandate of development and had shelved its controversial issues that it had
been pushing for long years. Those mandate-based plans of the six-month old
Modi government were seen to be fizzling out. As was generally expected Prime
Minister Modi expressed his displeasure at ‘re-conversions’ and rabid Hindu
utterances and activities of members of his own Party and of several Hindu
organisations. Eventually, the RSS let it be known that needless and avoidable
controversial speeches or actions should be avoided by the right wing
organisations. Even the “ghar wapasi” had to be put on hold by the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad.
Looking at all
these confrontations over religious affiliations of people one wonders as to
why has the world been reduced to a battleground over them. Religion, faith or
belief is a very personal matter that evolves in an individual over a period of
time according to his/her upbringing, education and exposure to the world
around him. Each has a right to have his own faith and belief and practice in
any which way he/she likes. Each, likewise, has a right to associate with any
faith or religious group and interference in this matter by others ought to be
unwarranted, even unwelcome. In today’s fractious world where there are
numerous issues that could light the fuse what seems to be necessary is to
cultivate humanistic traits among people and not religious bigotry. Religious
leaders would do the world a great service if they converted people in their
fold as genuine ‘humans’ – with all the positive human attributes.
Photo: from the Internet
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