The first point about the new “ghar wapsi” programme is that it isn’t new. Or, at least that conversions aren’t new: If you want, you can go back centuries to Aurangzeb and his forced conversions, to the Portuguese in Goa and their forced conversions.
It’s probable, in fact, that a majority of Muslims and Christians (and for that matter, Sikhs and Jains and Buddhists) were once Hindus. So what is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad planning to do? Bring them all back to Hinduism?
There are quite a few obvious problems here. First of all, there’s the simple problem of numbers we are talking of millions and millions of people, roughly 20 per cent of India’s population of 1.2 billion.
There’s also the question of faith: even those whose ancestors were converted by force have been born in that religion for generations.
Presumably, they count themselves Muslims, Christians, etc. Why on earth would they want to change that? Just because a militant organisation wants to rewrite our country’s history?
Then there is the obvious fact that very many of the more recent conversions have been of a voluntary nature.
The VHP and its brother organisations (their aggression suggests a male, rather than the female gender), may quibble that most of these voluntary conversions carried inducements, and inducements which were more material than spiritual.
They may well be right. But therein lies the core question that the Hindutva forces are unwilling to face. That question is “Why did these inducements work?”
For a simple answer to that question, you only have to look at the geographical regions where most of these conversions have taken place.
There’s the Northeast Nagaland, Mizoram and Meghalaya are almost 90 per cent Christian. A recent study has also shown that in the first decade of this millennium, there has been a 10-fold rise in the Christian population of Arunachal Pradesh.
The state of Orissa, and the Dang region in Gujarat are the other areas where large-scale conversions have taken place.
What is common to these regions? Neglect by the Indian state, resulting in pockets of deep poverty. (If you think things are changing, note this: being governor of Northeast states is considered a punishment posting even today: Mizoram has had six governors in a few months).
Christian missionaries reached out to these areas, offering a combination of education, medical help and food rations as allurements for conversions.
If the abjectly poor chose them, who can sit in judgment and say this was wrong? There is not the slightest doubt that Christian missionaries were out to proselytise, but it’s also true that they reached out to people who were neglected by Hinduism, who the Hindu caste system called untouchables and brutally threw outside the pale of society.
Is it a surprise that they were willing to embrace alternatives which gave them a semblance of acceptance? That is why “inducement” is the wrong word and “acceptance” is so much better.
This is why more than a century ago (in 1901 in fact), Lala Lajpat Rai urged our upper castes to seriously work on reforming Hinduism: he saw that as the only way to keep lower-caste Hindus from deserting their religion.
And guess who was one of the principal opponents of accepting dalits into Hinduism? The man just recently awarded a posthumous Bharat Ratna, Madan Mohan Malaviya!
In fact, if the VHP and its associates are so worried about the relative numbers of Hindus minorities in India, all they have to do is fully accept all dalits and tribals as Hindus and even the paranoid will not worry about Hindus being “outnumbered”.
In any case, the numbers argument is false beyond belief. Christians form two per cent of our population and they are a threat to Hindu numbers? Muslims, the biggest majority, are no more than 14 per cent.
And even if the rate of Muslim population growth is greater than the rate of Hindu population growth, a recent survey has shown that this growth rate has considerably showed down: in fact, any large increase in Muslim numbers has been confined to states like Bengal, and that’s due to the influx of refugees from Bangladesh.
There are some strange anomalies related to conversion. Christophe Jaffrelot, professor of Indian politics and sociology at King’s India Institute, London, points this out in a recent essay: “Since one is ‘born’ a Hindu, Hinduism ignores conversion.
Swami Dayanand (founder of the Arya Samaj), therefore, had to resort to a procedure of ‘purification’ of the upper castes, known as shuddhi, in order to endow Hinduism with a ritual permitting what is known as ‘conversion’… Paradoxically, Hinduism started imitating the religion that some of its leaders rejected most vociferously, Christianity, in order to resist it more effectively”.
Since caste is such a dominant feature of Hinduism, some commentators have wondered what the caste of converts will be.
That is easy: caste is so ingrained in our national psyche that even those converted to another religion centuries ago, will be aware of what Hindu caste they originally belonged to.
And since caste is not changeable, after re-conversion (or “ghar wapsi”) they will just revert to their original caste which it is safe to assume will be a low one. If it’s the lowest of the low i.e., dalits, will the “ghar wapsi” lot accept them as Hindus?
If you clear the air of all the obfuscation that goes under the name of religion, there’s just one reality that will remain: only when people are economically self-sufficient will they change their religion to another because they actually believe in the principles and practices of that faith.
Until then, the poor and the outcastes will be susceptible to allurements of whatever kind (education, ration cards, below poverty line cards, etc.). Economic self-sufficiency of the poor is a long, long way ahead, but some kind of poverty alleviation will certainly help.
Here’s a suggestion to our Hindutva friends: our large temple trusts have huge funds lying unutilised and huge here means hundreds and hundreds of crores.
Why don’t they persuade these trusts to release a small portion to fight the battle for Hinduism and use the money to provide basic amenities in health and education to all the hitherto neglected areas of the country? It’s the only way which will work; it’s also the only right way.
The writer is a senior journalist
