The year 2014 closes for the Modi government on a mixed note. Internationally Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reputation is high after successfully calibrated diplomatic forays abroad and visits to India by heads of state like Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, of China and Russia respectively. Domestically, contrariwise, while his electoral Midas’ touch is mostly intact, his plank of development and growth, on which he was elected, has been undermined by a constant revisionist “Hin-dutva” refrain from his party’s extreme right-wing as indeed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s, mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). This enabled a demoralised and divided Opposition to unite and stymie Parliament and the passage of important legislation. Freedom of faith debate in India revolves around the issue of religious conversion and proselytising. Laws against conversion had been passed in a number of princely states even before Independence.
However, the issue was framed globally by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in 1948 and further refined by two covenants, one on economic, social and cultural rights, and the other on civil and political rights. India was guided by these principles while framing its Constitution, adopted in 1950, enshrining in Article 25 the freedom of conscience. It was, however, only on April 10, 1979, that the Janata government, formed post-Emergency, accepted the declaration and the two covenants with some reservations. The external affairs minister then was Atal Behari Vajpayee, subsequently BJP’s first Prime Minister and now the recipient of the Bharat Ratna.
Prime Minister Modi assumed office carrying the stigma of 2005 visa denial by the US on ground of “severe violations of religious freedom”, based on his handling of the 2002 post-Godhra riots and more significantly, Gujarat’s anti-reservation legislation in 2003. It has been speculated that it was the latter that irked Christian groups in the US as it affected their work with Gujarat tribals. With his recent US visit Mr Modi had begun to overcome the past and building even more strategic relations with the US. The RSS and Hindutva brigade on the other hand had their own priorities. The drum roll began with “love jihad” and then assertions that all Indians were Hindus. The BJP explained it as irrational enthusiasm of odd yogis and sadhvis. Then commenced the “ghar wapsi’ or reconversion to Hinduism functions and eventually the RSS head, Mohan Bhagwat, in a Kolkata rally pronounced that those who had strayed would be brought back to the fold of Hinduism unless a law banning conversions was passed.
How does that square with a democratic India that has the right to freedom of conscience inscribed in its Constitution and whose values present a counter-point to China on the Asian stage? A new book of Prime Minister Nehru’s letters to chief ministers — Letters for a Nation — has one of June 15, 1954, which addresses proselytising by foreign missionaries. “Personally”, writes Nehru, “evangelical activities of missionaries do not appeal to me”. He adds that despite a century of British rule over India, the missionaries’ “success in India was not great”. He further notes that despite Hinduism not being a proselytising religion, “one hears of a Shuddhi movement”. Was that an early progenitor of “ghar wapsi”?
Promise to introduce an anti-defection law has bought Prime Minister Modi time. He has a choice to make. The election results of Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir raise questions about the limits of polarising as a lasting electoral strategy. Mr Modi, stuck between his bargain with the RSS and his ambition to be an inclusive, historic Prime Minister who makes India a great power, needs to introspect on the following lines from Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex: “We judge you/the first of men in what happens in this life/and in our interactions with the Gods.”
Not just India but the world is watching whether Mr Modi can balance universally acknowledged right to freedom of conscience with the state’s duty to eliminate inducement or fear as catalyst in conversions?
The writer is a former secretary in the external affairs ministry. He tweets at @ambkcsingh
