Due to the recent rise of anti-minority
politics and violence, several of my columns over the last few months dwelt
with, or at least tangentially mentioned, the issue of conversion and its
faulty understanding within Indian nationalism. As things stand today in India,
and also in Goa, this will, unfortunately, not be the last time I will write
about conversions and its tortured relationship with Indian nationalism.
The reflection in this column is occasioned
not only by the protests that followed the vandalization of the fifth church in
Delhi, but also by some recent articles in the press that tried to tackle the
issue of increasing communalization of the Indian public sphere. Let me make a
particular reference to an article that appeared in The Guardian written by Aman Sethi, “‘Love Jihad’ in India and one
man’s quest to prevent it” (29
January, 2015). Sethi talks about a Hindutva activist in Uttar Pradesh,
Vijaykant Chauhan, and the increasing communal polarization following the Muzaffarnagar
riots and the electoral victory of the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) in the last
Lok Sabha elections. One of the issues that were highlighted in this article
was that of ‘love jihad’ and how Vijaykant Chauhan understood Hindu-Muslim
couples eloping and/or getting married as “deception and forcible conversion”.
While Sethi’s article, written in the
voice of the secular-liberal Indian and with a touch of sarcasm, tried to show
the obvious error in the ways of Vijaykant Chauhan, the larger issue of how
conversion to Islam and Christianity is seen as a problem within Indian
nationalism was not explored. In other words, while the much sensationalized
issue of ‘love jihad’ got center-stage, what was missing was an explanation of
the source of the problem. Though there is a very serious problem with the
activism of persons like Vijaykant Chauhan, one wonders if such naming and
shaming in the international press would ever address the fact that there are
thousands of communities that have been systematically kept away from positions
of power and privilege and the cause of increasing communalization may be
traced to this systemic discrimination in social, economic, and political
spheres. What needs to be understood is that within the framework of Indian
nationalism, conversion is understood as an essentially violative act that
destroys the soul of the nation. Thus, the loyalty of Christians and Muslims to
the nation is held suspect. Within this understanding Christians and Muslims
are required to continuously prove their Indianness and patriotism, as I had
noted in
a previous column.
Christophe
Jaffrelot, focusing on the politics of the so-called re-conversion of Adivasi
Christians to Hinduism, refers to the debates in the Constituent Assembly
on Article 19 of the Constitution that guarantees the right to practice and
profess any religion of one’s choice. Jaffrelot particularly refers to the
comments of Loknath Misra, the then Congress MP from Orissa, who among other
things stated that India would have been perfectly “secular” and “homogenous”
if Islam had not imposed itself and if Christianity had not entered India
peacefully by the back door. Such an understanding of Misra that was and is in
no way confined to a small number reflects, as Jaffrelot points out, “a view of
religious affiliation as a political act. It calls up an ethno-nationalist
conception of religious membership: for an Indian to be Christian means that
the person attaches himself to the Western world and is therefore a potential
traitor to the Indian nation. This reasoning also applies to Muslims, who till
Partition were readily accused of paying allegiance to Middle East-based
religious authorities…[and since 1947], Muslims are also suspected to be
Pakistan’s fifth columnists by the most militant Hindus”.
Seen from this perspective one can see
how the issue of ‘love jihad’ and the vandalism and desecration of the churches
in Delhi (as well as other churches in India) are connected. One particularly
revealing instance was the protest that followed by some Christians in Delhi at
the Sacred Heart Cathedral. This time around there was some ‘national’ media
coverage of the protests. The Delhi police came in large numbers to this
protest to disperse the crowd, bundling them in droves in buses. One of the
protestors had a placard that said the following: “I am proud to be an Indian
Christian”, and another one said, “Thank You Jesus I am an Indian”. These
placards aptly describe what can be called as the
‘double bind’ of minority identity in India, wherein one is damned if one
does, and also damned if one doesn’t, when it comes to adhering to dominant
norms of Indian nationalism.
The question that needs to be asked is why
does a community which is obviously the victim here, need to prove their
Indianness, indeed profess it like it is a confessional faith? The reason is
that both Christianity and Islam are even today seen as foreign religions. If
one needs any convincing then he/she only needs to be directed to the incident
wherein two bishops from the Vatican who were to travel to India to address a
conference organized by the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI),
were denied a visa. Under such circumstances, Christians in India – even if a
wrong has been done against them – need to first prove their loyalty and
patriotism to the nation. At a time when ‘ghar wapasi’ is demanded to purge
India of all ‘foreign’ influences and culture, is it surprising that churches
are being regularly vandalized?
In the final analysis, I would suggest,
the solution of increasing communalization in India might not lie in pointing
to the obvious errors of activists like Vijaykant Chauhan, but in re-defining
the secular understanding of conversion in India. One needs to see the problems
that Indian nationalism has with conversions and one also needs to realize that
the concentration of power and privilege in the hands of a few might itself also
contribute to the growing communalization. As
I have argued previously, and emphasize now, a truly secular public sphere
in India should ideally be one where there is always an emphasis on a greater
sharing of power and privilege amongst the marginalized and oppressed sections
of the society.
(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 18 February, 2015)
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