06-22-2006, 04:45 AM
Op-Ed Deccan Chronicle, 22 june 2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Needed: A pluralistic ethics of conversion
By Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
All right-thinking people subscribe to the doctrine of freedom of conscience: a person should be free to change, adopt, enlarge or abandon any belief according to his or her conscience, and this freedom is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). But thanks to deep differences of belief and custom between the various faiths lumped together under the English term âreligion,â the historical conflict between converting and non-converting faiths persists. In the modern world, in which the great debates about religion and ideology seem a thing of the past, if questions are raised about the subtle or not so subtle ruses whereby conversions are effected, they rouse little indignation.
<b>What if the poor are enticed not by truths but by promises of this-worldly comforts: when even the rich and powerful sell their souls for filthy lucre or power, why should the poor be barred from doing the same? </b>The core values are economic: rich or poor and not moral like right or wrong, or metaphysical, true or false, or cultural, authentic or mimetic.
<b>Even Swami Vivekananda remarked that one cannot preach religion (the higher dharma) to people with empty stomachs, i.e., first establish the human security which enables genuine free choice. Combining community religion with food, healthcare and education is another ballgame. </b>In 1977 the Supreme Court upheld the constitution of conversion-prohibiting laws enacted by Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, clarifying that âorganised conversion, whether by force or fraud, or by providing allurement to people taking advantage of their poverty and ignorance is anti-secular.â
<b>The Court further said that respect for all religions was the basis of Indian secularism, whereas conversion was grounded in religious intolerance. And the Indian Constitution quite specifically frowns on conversions which disturb the peace. </b>
Recently a contretemps arose in Rajasthan between the BJP government, the Congress governor and Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of the introduction of a Bill barring conversions (which already obtains, at least notionally, in five states).
<b>The Pope, breaking the decorum of a credentials presentation ceremony, chastised India (read Hindus) through its envoy, for lack of religious tolerance. Virtually, Hindus were commanded in the name of freedom, to submit to proselytisation. Since conversion is an integral function of the Christian clergy, it is perhaps claimed as a religious right. But for the targeted community it could be provocative.</b>
How to reconcile proselytisation and tolerance? These are problematic as group and not individual rights. Tolerance is an essentially contested concept, linked to a particular religious point of view, and the alleged universality of the UDHR at least in this area is controversial. The Latin religio suggests being bound or obligated: certainly Abrahamic religions have strong community bonding, and Islam in particular, fierce punishments for apostasy.
<b>Dharma covers, apart from religious particularisms, relationships within and between social groups, moral and customary duties: in the past there were severe punishments for breaking caste taboos (under reform Hinduism and the Indian secular state, these are to some extent in retreat). But there was acceptance of diverse ways of life and belief, and this plural co-existence is what constitutes Indiaâs (not only Hindu) tolerance. </b>
Vivekananda gave it a modern gloss through describing different faiths as rivers emptying into the same sea. It has been said that early Christianity and Islam functioned almost as varnas in the Indian social system after their initial proselytising advent: thereafter they played almost according to Indian social rules. But aggressive proselytising in the 19th and 20th centuries upset the old balances, causing concern to nationalists seeking a cultural definition of India.
A new straw in the wind apparently quivered in the aftermath of a recent interfaith meeting jointly organised by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches whose resolutions stressed, among other things, the need for all faiths to heal themselves from the obsession of converting others. <b>However this occurred in the same week as the Popeâs bombshell, undermining the credibility of the message. </b>
<b>Under attack, the non-converting faiths have partly awoken to the need for self-protection. Since the defensive techniques are foreign to their basic structure, they generate much criticism, especially from their own adherents. The Hindus evolved shuddhi in the last century, reconverting converted Hindus or tribals, and defensive (sometimes veering on the destructively offensive) organisations to rally their members across castes and sects.</b>
<b>The energy of a missionary faith may be deplored but not condemned, whereas counter measures arouse righteous indignation. </b>The Khasis in Meghalaya faced a comparable crisis when the British conquered northeastern India in the 19th century, encouraging missionary activity to help pacify the areas.
Their Niam Khasi religion had no recorded beliefs, no centrally administered social organisation, but there was a coherent fabric of interwoven socio-cultural practices and beliefs. By 1899, certain Khasi leaders made an effort to both organise themselves and encode their values in writing to resist the onslaught of the well-funded, well-organised government patronised missions.
The result was the Seng Khasi movement, protective, revivalist and reversionist. It has won recognition as a distinct religion from the International Association for Religious Freedom. As structured today the Niam Khasi has an Indic character with belief in one God, U Blei, common to and in communication with, all of humanity. It retains its particular cosmic and nature deities, and magical elements perdure as in Tibetan Buddhism. The Oneness and universal accessibility of God obviate the need for conversions, but reverting Khasis are welcome.
Post-Independence conversions continued, with the plethora of Protestant churches finally upstaged by the Roman Catholic, today even more gung-ho under the new Pope. The traditional Khasis feel culturally threatened, lacking the means to match the excellent Christian educational and healthcare institutions with their employment potential. If earlier a convert had to abandon traditional customs, nowadays Christians more pragmatically seek to blend into local cultures.
<b>Gandhi had remarked that the advent of a missionary means the disruption of a family, and even when outward conditions of dress, manners, language and drink are unaffected, âvilification of the Hindu religion, though subdued, remains.â Hindu families may squabble like any other, but religio-cultural fissures cut at the heart of the Indian group society engendering great anguish. </b>
It is anybodyâs guess as to who will be the ultimate winner, the foreign religion or local culture, or whether India will pull another syncretic rabbit out of its proverbial hat. <b>Today with Central government ineptitude over northeastern problems combined with regional near-sightedness, there is much local talk of being âdifferent from India.â </b>The Chinese have always encouraged this sense of difference along the Himalayan border.
Freedom of conscience and freedom to propagate do not exhaust all the nuances of religious rights and tolerance. <b>We need an ethics of diversity and pluralism. Human rights discourse could consider new formulations for accommodating the needs, expectations and practices of a wide spectrum of faiths to move towards the more truly âuniversal.â </b>Human rights form the essential foundations of our own society and Constitution, but we might like to modify certain clauses so that all groups, big and small, can be confidently assured of their religious freedoms.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Needed: A pluralistic ethics of conversion
By Madhuri Santanam Sondhi
All right-thinking people subscribe to the doctrine of freedom of conscience: a person should be free to change, adopt, enlarge or abandon any belief according to his or her conscience, and this freedom is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). But thanks to deep differences of belief and custom between the various faiths lumped together under the English term âreligion,â the historical conflict between converting and non-converting faiths persists. In the modern world, in which the great debates about religion and ideology seem a thing of the past, if questions are raised about the subtle or not so subtle ruses whereby conversions are effected, they rouse little indignation.
<b>What if the poor are enticed not by truths but by promises of this-worldly comforts: when even the rich and powerful sell their souls for filthy lucre or power, why should the poor be barred from doing the same? </b>The core values are economic: rich or poor and not moral like right or wrong, or metaphysical, true or false, or cultural, authentic or mimetic.
<b>Even Swami Vivekananda remarked that one cannot preach religion (the higher dharma) to people with empty stomachs, i.e., first establish the human security which enables genuine free choice. Combining community religion with food, healthcare and education is another ballgame. </b>In 1977 the Supreme Court upheld the constitution of conversion-prohibiting laws enacted by Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, clarifying that âorganised conversion, whether by force or fraud, or by providing allurement to people taking advantage of their poverty and ignorance is anti-secular.â
<b>The Court further said that respect for all religions was the basis of Indian secularism, whereas conversion was grounded in religious intolerance. And the Indian Constitution quite specifically frowns on conversions which disturb the peace. </b>
Recently a contretemps arose in Rajasthan between the BJP government, the Congress governor and Pope Benedict XVI on the occasion of the introduction of a Bill barring conversions (which already obtains, at least notionally, in five states).
<b>The Pope, breaking the decorum of a credentials presentation ceremony, chastised India (read Hindus) through its envoy, for lack of religious tolerance. Virtually, Hindus were commanded in the name of freedom, to submit to proselytisation. Since conversion is an integral function of the Christian clergy, it is perhaps claimed as a religious right. But for the targeted community it could be provocative.</b>
How to reconcile proselytisation and tolerance? These are problematic as group and not individual rights. Tolerance is an essentially contested concept, linked to a particular religious point of view, and the alleged universality of the UDHR at least in this area is controversial. The Latin religio suggests being bound or obligated: certainly Abrahamic religions have strong community bonding, and Islam in particular, fierce punishments for apostasy.
<b>Dharma covers, apart from religious particularisms, relationships within and between social groups, moral and customary duties: in the past there were severe punishments for breaking caste taboos (under reform Hinduism and the Indian secular state, these are to some extent in retreat). But there was acceptance of diverse ways of life and belief, and this plural co-existence is what constitutes Indiaâs (not only Hindu) tolerance. </b>
Vivekananda gave it a modern gloss through describing different faiths as rivers emptying into the same sea. It has been said that early Christianity and Islam functioned almost as varnas in the Indian social system after their initial proselytising advent: thereafter they played almost according to Indian social rules. But aggressive proselytising in the 19th and 20th centuries upset the old balances, causing concern to nationalists seeking a cultural definition of India.
A new straw in the wind apparently quivered in the aftermath of a recent interfaith meeting jointly organised by the Vatican and the World Council of Churches whose resolutions stressed, among other things, the need for all faiths to heal themselves from the obsession of converting others. <b>However this occurred in the same week as the Popeâs bombshell, undermining the credibility of the message. </b>
<b>Under attack, the non-converting faiths have partly awoken to the need for self-protection. Since the defensive techniques are foreign to their basic structure, they generate much criticism, especially from their own adherents. The Hindus evolved shuddhi in the last century, reconverting converted Hindus or tribals, and defensive (sometimes veering on the destructively offensive) organisations to rally their members across castes and sects.</b>
<b>The energy of a missionary faith may be deplored but not condemned, whereas counter measures arouse righteous indignation. </b>The Khasis in Meghalaya faced a comparable crisis when the British conquered northeastern India in the 19th century, encouraging missionary activity to help pacify the areas.
Their Niam Khasi religion had no recorded beliefs, no centrally administered social organisation, but there was a coherent fabric of interwoven socio-cultural practices and beliefs. By 1899, certain Khasi leaders made an effort to both organise themselves and encode their values in writing to resist the onslaught of the well-funded, well-organised government patronised missions.
The result was the Seng Khasi movement, protective, revivalist and reversionist. It has won recognition as a distinct religion from the International Association for Religious Freedom. As structured today the Niam Khasi has an Indic character with belief in one God, U Blei, common to and in communication with, all of humanity. It retains its particular cosmic and nature deities, and magical elements perdure as in Tibetan Buddhism. The Oneness and universal accessibility of God obviate the need for conversions, but reverting Khasis are welcome.
Post-Independence conversions continued, with the plethora of Protestant churches finally upstaged by the Roman Catholic, today even more gung-ho under the new Pope. The traditional Khasis feel culturally threatened, lacking the means to match the excellent Christian educational and healthcare institutions with their employment potential. If earlier a convert had to abandon traditional customs, nowadays Christians more pragmatically seek to blend into local cultures.
<b>Gandhi had remarked that the advent of a missionary means the disruption of a family, and even when outward conditions of dress, manners, language and drink are unaffected, âvilification of the Hindu religion, though subdued, remains.â Hindu families may squabble like any other, but religio-cultural fissures cut at the heart of the Indian group society engendering great anguish. </b>
It is anybodyâs guess as to who will be the ultimate winner, the foreign religion or local culture, or whether India will pull another syncretic rabbit out of its proverbial hat. <b>Today with Central government ineptitude over northeastern problems combined with regional near-sightedness, there is much local talk of being âdifferent from India.â </b>The Chinese have always encouraged this sense of difference along the Himalayan border.
Freedom of conscience and freedom to propagate do not exhaust all the nuances of religious rights and tolerance. <b>We need an ethics of diversity and pluralism. Human rights discourse could consider new formulations for accommodating the needs, expectations and practices of a wide spectrum of faiths to move towards the more truly âuniversal.â </b>Human rights form the essential foundations of our own society and Constitution, but we might like to modify certain clauses so that all groups, big and small, can be confidently assured of their religious freedoms.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->