CONVERSION AS POLITICAL PROTEST

The “institutional murder” of a Dalit PhD scholar, Rohith Vemula in January this year, saw the launch of a fiery protest across India. Rohith was driven to commit suicide due to the institutional harassment meted out to him because he was Dalit. While the investigation into the matter has not proceeded in any meaningful direction leading to justice, the protesting students at the Hyderabad Central University – the epicenter of the protests – have witnessed repeated and brutal attacks by the State to stifle the voice of those who demand strict action against the guilty and those complicit in the violence and discrimination. While the search for justice is on, this year’s 125th Ambedkar Jayanti saw the mother and brother of the deceased Rohith converting to Buddhism. Conversion is usually in the ‘national’ news nowadays only with ‘ghar wapasi’-like incidents in which minoritized communities are targeted, often violently; while violence against such communities continues unabated everyday. The conversion of the Vemulas is, therefore, a very different report and as such should be used as an occasion to reflect on the place of conversion in the social and political landscape of India.

Radhika and Raja Vemula’s actions should be understood as a form of political protest and an assertion of the essential dignity of the human being. The conversion to Buddhism of the Vemulas came after their repeated calls for justice, to the State and civil society, fell on deaf ears. Such a mode of protest is not new to the Dalit movement in India. One can refer to the first of such protests in 1956 when Dr. B. R. Ambedkar along with half-a-million followers embraced Buddhism, in order to walk out of the oppression of the Hindu caste system. Of course this conversion took years in preparation and theological reflection.

This sentiment of protest is precisely what Raja Vemula expressed in his press note before embracing Buddhism. He said that the conversion was due to a desire to change their lives, a life of “[t]he kind…that Babasaheb Ambedkar wanted us to lead. A life without blind belief. A life based on compassion and respect for fellow human beings. A life of dignity and self respect. A life outside the Hindu caste system”.

Though conversion-as-protest has more than half-a-century of history, yet conversions are generally perceived as ‘de-stabilizing’ by the ‘secular’ or left-wing and right-wing elites in India, thus necessitating suspicion. In this imagination, conversion is an act that violates the soul of India.

That conversion movements have been markers of protest against violence and oppression of marginalized communities is something that Indian nationalism has never properly acknowledged. Thus, the violence that has marked – and continues to mark – everyday realities of marginalized groups is conveniently not discussed. Which is precisely why the recent conversion of the Vemulas should remind us of the banal and non-banal violent conditions prevailing in India and that through conversion communities attempt to better their lives.

Following this line of thought, one should also re-think about how we feel and understand the history of Christianization in Goa. That today if we find a Goan landscape dotted by whitewashed churches it is not because of a violent process of proselytization but because Christianization had provided a way out of the violence that had marred the social and political landscape of Goa. Indeed, recent historical scholarship has strongly emphasized this point.

The fact that conversion to Christianity and Islam is seen as ‘de-stabilizing’ while that to Buddhism is not seen as such, exposes the cunning logic of Indian nationalism. The logic operates on two levels. The ‘foreign’ or Abrahamic religions are assumed to be fundamentally violent. Thus, Christianity is represented as responsible for forced conversions and Islam identified as having spread through the sword. However, conversion to Buddhism is understood differently. Buddhism cast as an Indic religion – or a religious tradition emerging from India – and in many ways appropriated as a sect of Hinduism could be used to deflect the radical, anti-caste edge of that re-articulated religious tradition. Mass conversion, whether to Islam, Christianity, or Buddhism, have always been a response to pre-existing violence and oppression of the society, and often also involves a spiritual preparation. These facts are always downplayed. The case of Ambedkar’s conversion in the textbooks is quite illustrative, for it is portrayed as an aberration in an otherwise peaceful Indian society.

Finally, detractors of the conversion of the Vemulas would predictably complain about the ‘ulterior’ political motives and how such conversions lack the necessary religiosity and spirituality fundamental to any religious practice. To them we could, perhaps, point out that religions such as Buddhism and Christianity emerged as political protests: the former against the excesses of the Brahmanical religion, and the latter against the oppression of the Roman Empire. To protest oppression is not to have ‘ulterior’ political motives, but to articulate a utopian and humane vision for the society. In the words of Raja Vemula, “From today, my mother and I will be truly free. Free from shame. Free from daily humiliation. Free from the guilt of praying to the same God in whose name our people have been tortured for centuries”.

(First published in O Heraldo, dt: 27 April, 2016)

‘GHAR WAPSI’: OWNER OF THE HOUSE, OR SERVANT?

By

DALE LUIS MENEZES and AMITA KANEKAR

With the BJP coming to power in the last Lok Sabha elections, we have witnessed increasing violence against religious minorities and their places of worship. There has been no action to curb the violence, nor even a statement of condemnation from the Centre. Instead, in the last few months, we have a new campaign: ‘ghar wapsi’, again targeted at the religious minorities: Christians and Muslims are being asked to ‘return’ to Hinduism. How is one to understand this new movement, right in the middle of all the violence? What are its origins? And what is its agenda? To answer these questions, we think it would be useful to focus on a few events of the past.

***

The first event is that of 1 January, 1818. On this day, the armies of the Peshwa and the British confronted each other in the third and final Anglo-Maratha War, in which the Peshwa was defeated. It was a heroic victory, since the British army comprised only a small regiment of 250 cavalry and 500 infantry, both dominated by men of the Mahar community, while the Peshwa had about 20,000 cavalry and 5000 infantry. Yet, on this day, in the village of Bhima Koregaon near Pune, the Peshwa army was routed.

The important thing to note is that this British victory was also a Mahar victory; it was the Mahars who ended Peshwa rule. This critical fact is, of course, never mentioned in our history books. Our school textbooks ignore the Mahars and write of the fall of the Peshwas as a tragedy; such is the nationalist version of events. But for the Mahars, and others oppressed and enslaved as untouchables under the Peshwai, the 1818 battle was a successful war of liberation.

For the dominant castes the colonial period was all about humiliation and loss of power, but for many others it was about the beginnings of liberation and justice. For instance, Vasco da Gama’s arrival in the Malabar in 1498 is considered by many Dalits to be a milestone event in the story of their liberation (Nigam, 2006, p. 182). Our nationalist histories ignore this.

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The Movement Initiated by the Arya Samaj

The second event we would like to recall is the birth of the Arya Samaj, sometime in the 1880s.  According to its founder, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Hinduism had been corrupted and needed reform. That is, Hinduism had strayed away from its supposed Vedic origins and had to be brought back to its former purity and glory. Reform was also required, said the Arya Samaj, to exorcise casteism from the Hindu religion, though as the movement developed its anti-caste claims were seen to be limited. According to Maria Misra (2008, pp. 70-3) however, this reform was a reaction to many untouchable and lower-caste communities embracing Christianity, as well as to the demand from certain sections of Muslims for a greater representation in politics.

The real problem was that the British had introduced electoral politics in India, in which representation was provided for on the basis of religious community. As Misra points out, that the leaders of the Arya Samaj had realized that, “Christian conversion among low caste, untouchable and poor Muslim groups would weaken the power of Hindus in north India”. In other words, if the flow of conversions to Christianity and Islam had to be stopped, the blatant violence of caste-based discrimination had to be attacked. The critique of caste by caste Hindus, therefore, was a strategic act to perpetuate upper-caste dominance.

What was this reform that the Arya Samaj brought about? One of the main components of it was the programme of shuddhi, an old ritual re-invented by the Arya Samajists.  Shuddhi had been used earlier to purify caste Hindus after coming in contact with supposed agents of defilement or pollution. But the Arya Samajists gave it a new form and the shuddhi ritual became the tool of conversion, ‘purifying’ the former Christians or Muslims to make them Hindus, and thus also making a statement about the ‘pollution’ inherent in the non-Hindu religions.

Learning from Christian missionaries, the Arya Samaj also set up public health and educational facilities, and encouraged a modicum of social mobility and social respect within the four-fold varna system. As a result they were quite successful in their campaign of conversion, especially in the Punjab.

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‘Ghar wapsi’ does not mean ‘re-conversion’ but ‘conversion’

Although there does not seem to be a direct link between the Mahar victory at Bhima Koregaon and the activities of the Arya Samaj, there is an important connection which tie them also to the ‘ghar wapsi’ campaign. The connection is the mass rejection of the so-called ‘ghar’. While the Mahars of Bhima Koregaon had greater affinity for the aims and culture of the British than those of the Peshwas, the Arya Samaj campaign of yesteryears, just like the ‘ghar wapsi’ one of today, is a recognition of a mass desire to reject Hinduism.

But the truth is that many of the people who underwent shuddhi in the past, or ‘ghar wapsi’ today, were never in the Hindu fold in the first place. So there is no question of ‘wapsi’. The Dalitbahujan communities of the subcontinent have always followed their own unique religious traditions, many of which, as Kancha Ilaiah (1996) has argued, do not have a link with those of caste Hindus. This difference may be eroding today, thanks to the growth in Hindutva propaganda and the widespread Hinduizing of the polity, but it is certainly erroneous to refer to Dalitbahujans of the past as ‘Hindu’. This identification of Dalitbahujans as Hindus happens not because of religious reasons, but political ones. 

Thus, ‘ghar wapsi’ is not about ‘re-conversion’ to Hinduism, but ‘conversion’. This will of course be contested by all the new ‘anti-conversion’ laws which have been in demand of late, some of which explicitly declare that conversion to Hinduism is fine because it is actually re-conversion. Along with shuddhi and ‘ghar wapsi’, these laws form part of the arsenal to maintain the demographic of caste Hindus in politics.

The RSS’ ‘ghar wapsi’ project especially targets the Dalit, Adivasi, and OBC population, says Ilaiah (Asian Age, 4 January, 2015), who today are embracing ‘evangelical Christianity’ and ‘prayer groups’ in large numbers. He makes the important point that, although many Dalitbahujans today are attracted to evangelical Christianity rather than the Buddhism embraced by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, the fact is that ever since the day when Ambedkar converted to Buddhism in Nagpur, conversion became a spiritual and democratic right for the Dalitbahujan people. And this is what all these Hindutva movements – anti-conversion, shuddhi, ‘ghar wapsi’ – recognize, that thousands are just waiting to leave the ‘ghar’.

The reason is not difficult to fathom. Conversions to Christianity and Islam create an opportunity to escape caste. Jaffrelot (2011, p. 205) makes a similar argument: before the coming of the British many artisanal castes had embraced Islam to escape caste-based discrimination. We do not by any means claim that there is no casteism to be found among Christian and Muslim communities of South Asia. But both Christianity and Islam, in principle or theologically, uphold the equality of believers, providing scope for fighting casteism within the faith.

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All Conversions are not Forced

One of the arguments made in favour of ‘ghar wapsi’, is that all conversions to Christianity and Islam were ‘forced’. In the context of Goa, this is of course a reference particularly to the Christianization of its populace during Portuguese rule. Within Goa, meanwhile, we have been fed on stories about how all of us were converted to Christianity by the Portuguese in one fell swoop, and also how ‘forced conversions’ to Christianity were effected by throwing cooked rice into the wells of Hindus, polluting them and forcing their owners to become Christian. Although claiming to be about Goa, it is clear that this latter story is only about brahmins and other brahmanized castes of Goa, given the references to private wells and pollution. Even so, does this story really speak of conversions that were forced, or rather excommunication from Hinduism enforced by the caste authorities? In such conditions, what was Christianity but a refuge to the excommunicated? It would not be the first time that brahmanical traditions of caste pollution and untouchability resulted in people leaving for more humane belief systems; they have been doing it right from the time of the Buddha, 2500 years ago.

There is now copious documentation to attest to a history of voluntary conversions that resulted from caste-based conflicts. Ângela Barreto Xavier, for example, finds in her study of sixteenth-century Chorão that voluntary conversions took place most commonly among the most depressed sections of society, for whom it was a form of political dissent. Among the middle castes, however, the privileges and facilities offered to Christians were a great attraction, while among the elites – who had the most advantages in the old order – conversions were mostly either forced, or portrayed as forced so that their old positions in the village hierarchy remained unchanged (Xavier, 2007: pp. 269–95). Fr. Anthony D’Costa had meanwhile argued as early as 1965, through archival work on Jesuit letters, for genuine spiritual conviction in converting to Christianity in sixteenth-century Goa (see D’Costa, S.J., 1965, p. 50). The millions (both Catholic as well as non-Catholic) who flock to venerate the mortal remains of St. Francis Xavier, said to have been one of the leading proselytizers of his time, might argue that, for a multitude of people across castes and religion today, the history of Christianity is not marked by a memory of violence.  But popular memory aside, historical evidence shows conversions took place in Goa for a variety of reasons – from state pressure and incentives, to caste oppression and spiritual search.

***

The ‘ghar wapsi’ campaign thus exposes a longer history of caste-based and anti-minority violence that is both physical and intellectual. The launch of the present campaign is of course linked to the rise of Hindutva politics, and more recently to the coming of the BJP to power, but limiting it to these recent events negates both the history of violence and the consolidation of upper caste power in the subcontinent that has been going on for at least a century.

(A version of this essay was originally published in Gulab [February, 2015] in Romi Konkani. The authors wish to thank the editor of Gulab, Fausto V. da Costa, for allowing this translation and re-publication with some modifications, also Gaurav Somwanshi, whose Facebook status update is borrowed for the title, and finally our friends at the Al-Zulaij Collective, for reading the essay and offering important suggestions).

References

D’Costa, S.J., Anthony, The Christianisation of the Goa Islands, 1510-1567, 1965.

Ilaiah, Kancha, Why I am not a Hindu, 1996.

Jaffrelot, Christophe, “India: The Politics of (Re)Conversion to Hinduism of Christian Aboriginals”, in Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, 2011.

Misra, Maria, Vishnu’s Crowded Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion, 2008.

Nigam, Aditya, The Insurrection of Little Selves, 2006.

Xavier, Ângela Barreto, “Disquiet on the Island: Conversion, Conflicts and Conformity in Sixteenth-Century Goa.” Indian Economic & Social History Review vol. 44, no. 3 (2007): 269–95.

(Dale Luis Menezes is based at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; and Amita Kanekar is the author of A Spoke in the Wheel, a novel on the life of the Buddha)

(Published on Round Table India, here).

IN SEARCH OF DHAMMA

• If change could be brought by a king,

why did the Buddha become a beggar? (p. 382)

• The Buddha preached his Way, they went theirs (p. 334)

Before Hinduism, in Ancient South Asia, Buddhism was a major religion. What the common man as well as the student of history knows about Buddhism has come, generally,  from the old Jataka story of how the Buddha who was a prince was isolated from all the ills of the world and a chance encounter with old-age, sickness and death transforms his whole life, eventually leading to his enlightenment. Sadly for all of us this legend has been – verbatim – passed off as history. The Buddha is viewed as godhead, when charting the history of Buddhism with the actual historical processes that the Buddha as a person had experienced, given scant attention.

            How we understand and construct the history of Buddhism (or for that matter the history of any other religion of Ancient India) is on many occasions found to be lacking in a rigorous imagination coupled with erudition. While studying Buddhism, I have always felt that the thrust is on the philosophy (and sometimes only philosophy!) rather than the historical conditions that required such ideologies and philosophies – such as Buddhism – to be produced. Hence, when I read the debut novel of the Goan writer and academic Amita Kanekar, now based in Miramar, I felt that my knowledge and imagination about the Buddha in particular and the historical setting of Ancient India in general was enriched.

            A Spoke in the Wheel (2005) by Amita Kanekar, to be simply put, is a novel about the Buddha and Buddhism along with other historical personages. In attempting the portraits of such historical personages like the Buddha and the Emperor Asoka, Amita Kanekar also interrogates the history of that time as well as critically examines the conventional wisdom that has been handed down to us. (In particular, the thrust is towards rethinking the whole nationalist historiography and construction of Ancient Indian history).

            The protagonist of the novel is a monk named Upali, who has been commissioned by the great Emperor Asoka himself to produce a biography of the Buddha in prose. The novel opens in 256 BC, four years after the bloodshed in Kalinga and three centuries after the death of the Buddha. Upali, a native from Kalinga, had witnessed first-hand the destruction of Asoka’s military campaign there. He is now based in a small monastery, in the middle of a thick and treacherous jungle. Upali is portrayed as a scholastic who has to work with legends or suttas which contain several discrepancies in their content as a primary source. He is caught between providing a faithful account of the life of the Buddha as well as staying loyal to the spirit that Gautam, the Enlightened One, had embodied. He is an upstart, getting into frequent arguments with the elders on the finer theoretical points of the Buddha’s life.

            Upali, through his keen, interrogative mind and fearless questioning of the handed-down-wisdom manages to produce an account that shocks and revolts a lot of elder monks. But the Emperor Asoka likes it. A Spoke in the Wheel gives a picture of the time when the first largest empire in history was consolidated in South Asia; the author describes the cities, the people and the social atmosphere in which the daily business was carried out with much élan. The Mauryan Empire under Asoka was vast containing equally varied identities: tribal, caste and class. Amita Kanekar is not just writing a novel, but is also arguing, informing and providing an alternate view of the history of Buddhism and Ancient India. For instance, consider the very popular myth about the 84,000 stupas that were constructed by Asoka. She says, “…since he ruled some thirty-seven years, averages 2,270 each year, or more than six a day, a feat clearly impossible for anyone not Beloved of the Gods.”

            Did the Buddha really lead a sheltered life totally buffered from the harsh realities of the world? Amita Kanekar argues otherwise, “He probably led the most luxurious life possible, but it was not that of a lotus-eater. Otherwise Shudodhan [Buddha’s father] could never have hoped to make his son Chief after him. It was a time of confusion, even chaos, and a Chief had to at least understand both the old and the new divides, to defend his own interests and also swing popular feeling behind him. It was a tall order, as Shudodhan knew only too well.”

            It is also interesting to note how perfectly Amita Kanekar weaves the importance of iron in the whole narrative. Yes, although this ubiquitous dark metal transformed our society and history, sadly this is not taken into much consideration by most established scholarship when discussing the history of Buddhism. Amita Kanekar’s concern and commitment to the cause of the subaltern is seen through the protagonist Upali (who is revealed to be a Chandala, a low born) as well as how she tries to represent the Nagas who were perceived to be racially inferior by the Arya society. Describing the first long-distance trek that the Buddha undertook, Amita Kanekar says, “It was a difficult trip, the first of many cross-country treks, and unforgettable. It was really the beginning of a new education, not in any lofty or esoteric philosophy, but in ordinary, even familiar things. Like the heat of the sun. He had never  noticed how it built up from a mild lighter of the path at dawn to a ferocious torch by midday, pulling out all the water from his body, burning his uncovered head, burning the top and the bottom of his feet, drying the skin of his eyes, tearing the skin of his nose and throat. The Shakyas worshipped the sun in every form, from Ushas, gentle goddess of dawn, to burning Aditya of the noon sky, and not surprisingly, for they too were rulers – arrogant, uncaring, robbing the earth and all who walked on it for their juices. Nobody dared to look the sun in the eye. How sharply different was the moon. Yes, now he could understand why so many of the low-caste worshipped that gentle lantern of cool white light. Anybody who had to expend sweat and energy through the day unprotected by the flimsiest of shades would. The moon was a reinvigorating friend, so that even the tiredest could think of poetry and love in the night, or sleep well and find the strength to rise and face the sun again.”

            The Enlightenment of the Buddha is spoken in a much nuanced way, situating it in the social and historical setting. The portrayal of the Buddha’s Enlightenment is minus the mystical glamour. It is more prosaic, “He thought and thought, till he was satisfied that he had some answers. Such was his enlightenment.”

            Amita Kanekar dwells on how the Emperor Asoka had appropriated the ideology of the Buddha and the Buddha himself and she also tries to show how such an ideology like Buddhism could be, thereby, helpful to the State. The religious ideas may have (unwittingly) helped the State to control its subjects. “Look at the issues of tolerance, peace and renunciation. They [rulers] liked them, they said. Enough to encourage them among their subjects. Tolerance in the poor and dispossessed made for a more peaceful kingdom. And renunciation was a brilliant idea – if people scorned wealth, they would not notice the inequities in its availability. The matter was different for themselves. Their own tolerance, of their neighbours for example, remained low. Their avarice for greater land and revenues remained largely unabated. Nor did they forswear violence towards anybody – their neighbours, their subjects, even their own kinsmen who chanced to cast a covetous eye on their throne,” Amita writes.

            History and polemics aside, there is murder and intrigue woven in the novel. Amita Kanekar also discusses how using subtle suppressive measures, the Asokan empire was kept intact, particularly when the established historiography can rarely see anything beyond the greatness of the tyrant and mass-murderer that Emperor Asoka was.

            The novel provides fresh insights into the life of the Buddha as well as the history of Ancient India. For a person interested in history and Buddhism, this book will be a smart and discerning read.

A Spoke in the Wheel by Amita Kanekar (New Delhi:HarperCollins Publishers), 2005; pp. 447, Rs. 395/- [ISBN: 81-7223-574-7]

(A version of this article appeared on Gomantak Times, dt: August 4, 2012).