A Question Of Belonging

TO understand the ongoing atrocities against Christians we need to situate both the acts and the victims in their wider contexts. Broadly speaking, religions in India can be divided into six categories based on the sources of their presence and perceptions about them: (1) The primal vision of the pre - A ryan peoples— Adivasis and Dalits; (2) Aryan Hinduism; (3) Dravidian Hinduism; (4) Religions which emerged as results of protest against A ryan Hinduism— Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism; (5) Migrant religions— Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Baha’i faith and (6) Religions which are stigmatised as products of conquest and colonialism— Islam and Christianity.

While there have been and are tensions between the first four categories, the basis for this was never conversion as they are all perceived as belonging to the body national. And one of the recurring causes of conflict between Aryan Hindus and those who belong to the last two categories have been actual or alleged conversion by them as they do not belong to the "nation". That is, the ongoing attacks against Christians is a manifestation of a deep-seated wedge in Indian society— those who profess religions of Indian origin and those who follow religions of "alien" origin.

Hinduism too has tried to add to its numbers— attempting to absorb lower castes through the process of sanskritisation and encouraging adi-vasis to cast aside their primal visions. But the biggest conversion in independent India occurred fro m Hinduism to Buddhism on October 4, 1956, when B.R. Ambedkar took Diksha in  Nagpur. Consequently, the increase of Buddhists during 1951-61 was 1,671 per cent! The neo-Bud-dhists, as the new converts are called, celebrated the 25th anniversary of Ambedkar’s Diksha when an estimated 1.5 to 3 lakh embraced Buddhism. These conversions, though, didn’t create any conflict of the kind being witnessed because they were seen as conversions to "national" religons.

In contrast was the violent response to the conversion of a handful of Dalits to Islam in 1981 at Meenakshipuram, a village in Tamil Nadu. Curiously enough, the V H P, which existed since 1964, initiated a programme to reconvert Muslims and Christians back to Hinduism after the Meenakshipuram conversions. And conversion to Hinduism by Muslims and Christians is legitimate in the Hindu nationalist perception as they are returning to their original religion.

The value-orientation which informs this was pronounced by ‘Guru’ Golwalker in 1939: "In this country, Hindus alone are national, and Muslims and others (read those professing religions of alien origin) if not actually anti-national, are at least outside the body of the nation." But this pronouncement is against the letter and spirit of the Indian Constitution, which guarantees to all citizens the right to freely profess, practice and propagate one’s religion subject to conditions of public ord e r, morality and health. The state can intervene in the conversion process only if fraudulent means are employed. And there have been attempts in the past.

The Freedom of Religion Acts was passed by Madhya Pradesh and Orissa during 1968-69. Similarly, the Freedom of Religion Act was passed in 1978 by Arunachal Pradesh. In contrast, two attempts at the Union level did not succeed. The Indian Converts (Regulation and Registration) Bill in 1955 was rejected and the Freedom of Religion Bill in 1978 withdrawn. In other words, Parliament so far upheld the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion.

But there are two vital aspects to the maintenance of social order. First, the belief that the state is impartial in the event of disputes between two social segments. This belief seems to have eroded of late. Among those who indulge in communal violence there seems to be a feeling that the government will not punish them for their acts as it is "our government", and a sense of despair among the victims because the government is "not ours". Both perceptions are capable of shaking a democratic polity to its very foundations. A partisan government, whether it objectively exists or is subjectively perceived, is the surest invitation to fascism.

The second is the retaliatory power of the actual or imagined adversary. Although the second largest religious minority in India, Christians constitute barely 2.5 per cent of the population. Further, 90 per cent of the them are distributed into three enclaves: south India with 65 per cent, the north-east with 13 per cent and the Chhotanagpur belt with 11 per cent. North and west India, with nearly 60 per cent of the population, has barely one per cent of India’s Christians. That is, Indian Christians are mainly drawn from the peripheral nationalities of Dravidian India and the subaltern nationalities of tribal India. All these render them not just a minority, but obscure marginals in the political context. Indeed, Christians do not have any striking power.

To rehabilitate Christians and other religions minorities, we need a combination of two forces. First, an impartial state which not only verbally asserts but actually implements its legitimate constitutional authority. Second, an enlightened and vibrant civil society which interrogates the aberrant state in favour of the hapless victims. As of now, both these forces are in disarray in India.