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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: proselytism

Riflessioni: Is Proselytism A Fundamental Right?

08 Mon Sep 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia, Theory & Philosophy

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

Christianity, dharma, Greece, Hinduism, India, Islam, Jawaharlal Nehru, proselytism, religion, secularism

To most observers, India appears a paradox – teeming with diversity of cuisine, dress, language, pigmentation, and faith under one flag yet simultaneously simmering with communal tensions. The paradox is even more glaring in light of the democratic structure of government, the constitutional protections to minorities, and the high degree of integration of various communities into the public sphere. Social theories shaped by the European experience and projected as universals flounder on India’s shores, confusing the neophyte and outsider alike.

The crux of this discombobulation lies in the weakness of normative vocabulary to describe India. While scholars have considered if modernity can exist outside its present European framework, few have been brave enough to chase down the answer. As a result, false universals of European history such as secularism, liberalism, nationalism, and even time are used to decipher the non-West; any society that fails to conform to these European ideals are less evolved or have failed.

The root of India’s communal tensions lies in its constitution. Outwardly appearing to take a neutral – secular and liberal – hand in religious affairs, the document remains a travesty imposed upon Indic culture. The reason for this lies in the Nehruvian venture – an Anglicised Kashmiri Pandit that he was, Jawaharlal Nehru made no secret of his disdain for Hindu traditions. In his own words, he approached them “almost as an alien critic, full of dislike for the present as well as for many of the relics of the past.” As a result, the Indian republic’s first prime minister transplanted the Western notion of a liberal and secular state onto Indian soil. The dissonance between East and West in this regard is made clear when comparing the dharmic systems of the former with the Abrahamic faiths of the latter.

Unlike Indic belief systems, the Abrahamic faiths believe themselves to be of divine origin. In the time of Adam and Eve, there was the perfect religion from which Man fell into idolatry, superstition, witchcraft, and false worship; humanity was led back to the True faith by G-d as He revealed Himself to Abraham. Since the Word cannot be false, Abrahamic religions came to revolve around a truth axis – either you believed in the True religion or you were wrong and therefore blind, misguided, or evil.

Dharmic faiths, however, remain closer to the true sense of the Roman religio. Wisdom, not Truth, came from the meditations and experiences of previous generations as well as one’s own. A philosophical kernel was wrapped with customs, traditions, and rituals that were meant to bind families and communities together. Hinduism, for example, has no founder, no particular doctrine or practice, no specific scripture, no central ecclesiastical organisation, and even the concept of god is not essential to it. The notion of absolute truth in such a system is not just irrelevant but impossible to imagine. Thus, these faiths can comfortably coexist without competition or animosity.

This difference is highlighted in the famous conversation between French traveler François Bernier and some brahmins in 1671 when he tried to introduce them to Christianity: “they pretended not their Law was universal; that God had only made it for them, and it was therefore they could not receive a Stranger into their Religion: that they thought not our Religion was therefore false, but that it might be it was good for us, and that God might have appointed several different ways to go to Heaven; but they will not hear that our Religion should be the general Religion for the whole earth; and theirs a fable and pure device.” The Hindu view of other beliefs, be they Indic or Abrahamic, can thus best be described as indifference rather than tolerance.

These two systems of thought are mutually exclusive: religion is about the absolute truth or it is not; there is one True faith and others are false religions or all beliefs exist in parallel; the True faith is in competition with falsehood or beliefs are indifferent to one another. This antagonism creates a flashpoint when it comes to the freedom of religious thought and its propagation. To Christians and Muslims, the freedom to proselytise is essential to their competitive and antagonistic world view whereas non-proselytising religions find such behaviour to be an importunate intrusion into their world.

Unfortunately for the modern secular-liberal state, there is no neutral ground between these two positions; to pretend there is would be akin to accepting an agreement between the lion and the lamb not to eat each other as one among equals. For a people whose conception of religion is not just a metaphysical and ethical philosophy but also set of ancestral traditions, proselytism is felt to be an aggressive and often uncouth interference from the outside. Religious conversion disintegrates communities as the convert is torn from old moorings and subject to new rules governing inheritance, lineage, and familial life. The moral condescension towards paganism often means an abrupt and sometimes hostile unmooring of a convert from family and friends, tearing the social fabric that had done so well until then with its stance of indifference or non-interference. The problem of social disruption is so severe that Mohandas Gandhi considered religious conversion harmful to the Indian social fabric. He wrote, “If I had the power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing… In Hindu households the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink.”

The defence of proselytism and religious conversion bases itself on the notion of religious liberty. This is a befitting solution in a system wherein all religions compete against others for followers and the supremacy of their truth claims but not as appropriate in one in which some religions demand only to be left alone. As Jakob de Roover of Ghent University argues, the liberal principle of religious freedom implicitly endorses the Abrahamic view of the world that religion revolves around doctrines and truth claims and citizens should be able to not just choose in the free market of religious ideas but persuade others of one’s convictions.

Makau Mutua of the State University of New York, Buffalo, exposes the inherent bias of religious liberty by arguing that the doctrine does not level the playing field for all religions but creates an obligation on dharmic systems – for which they are not culturally geared – to compete as Abrahamic faiths do. This benefits the evangelising religions in their quest for intellectual hegemony. In essence, the preference shown towards the competition of ideas is nothing short of a cultural invasion in a skewed contest to eliminate local customs.

Perhaps the most subversive danger in this debate is secular theology. Usually understood to be a movement from the early 1960s, secular theology was Christianity’s reaction to modernity. Scientific advancement and political utilitarianism pushed some Christian theologians to treat the Bible Christian mythology, thus divesting the sacred yet retain the ideals. Taken out of context, Christian principles appear secular. For example, John Locke’s treatise on toleration can hardly be a secular creed when it excludes Catholics and atheists from its ambit. Furthermore, Locke’s tolerance appears to be based on the free will of souls to choose between good and evil without which salvation would be meaningless. Human existence is still divided into a spiritual sphere of the soul and a political one of the flesh, and the Protestant Truth was arrayed against the falseness of the world.

As SN Balagangadhara of Ghent University explains succinctly, the assumption of the cultural universality of Christianity informs the Western gaze. Christianity’s “theological truths have become the facts of western common sense and scholarly consensus.” One of the features of this universalism is that it wrongly puts Hinduism and other dharmic faiths on par with Christianity and Islam and to the detriment of the former.

To return to the Indian state, the framers of the Indian constitution implicitly endorsed the Abrahamic theological claim that religion is about Truth when establishing India as a secular republic. An important virtue in a competitive market of religious Truth like Europe or the Middle East, secularism has little meaning in a dharmic system and only serves to buttress Abrahamic binaries when applied to Semitic and dharmic religions evenly. There is nothing neutral about the Indian secular state; in fact, the constitution was informed by a negative attitude towards the local dharmic culture.

The problem of hindutva also stems from Nehru’s flawed sense of secularism. Temples were taken over and Hindu customs abolished while personal codes of the “minority” Abrahamic faiths were left untouched in the name of secularism. Faced with a political order that worked against them, Hindus were forced to respond to the doctrinaire threats to their way of life and defend their value of indifference. Attempts were made to define a core set of beliefs, customs, and scriptures as is evidenced by movements like the Arya Samaj; the earlier attitude of indifference was replaced by tolerance, and Hindus claimed that their non-proselytising nature was a demonstration of their comity towards all faiths unlike Christianity or Islam. The hindutva adoption of the notion of equality of all religions upset the Semitic faiths – divine revelation forces the Christian or Muslim to accept his faith as infallible and supreme; the Abrahamic faiths at least shared a common G-d even if there was some disagreement about subsequent prophets and messiahs but to be measured alongside idolatrous pagans was unacceptable.

By privileging the Semitic moral world order, the Indian state sowed the seeds of violent conflict. The perceived protection of the state via preferential treatment in terms of personal laws, religious institutions, educational establishments, and the outright legal bias (think Shah Bano or the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence bill) instigates communities against each other and against the Nehruvian state. As Roover eloquently states, “the seeds of religious violence are sown by the liberal state; however, it is the communities that harvest them.”

Proselytism and religious conversion is a sore subject in many parts of the world. It is banned in Greece, China, and most Islamic countries, while many others such as Russia and Israel are deeply uncomfortable with it. While Hindu spirituality is not threatened by reading and learning from, say, the Tanakh, Christians, for example, can give up neither the Great Commission of Jesus nor Exodus 20:3-6. In other words, a Hindu need not convert if he wishes to incorporate any idea from another religion into his life but that is not an option for the Christian or Muslim. That is why, as one author wrote, banning conversions is not part of the hindutva agenda but not banning them is the agenda of aggressive religions.

All democratic societies realise that freedoms are not infinite; as a result, international declarations such as the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981), the UNESCO Declaration of Principles on Tolerance (1995), or the European Convention on Human Rights (1953) allow the limiting of religious freedom if it is necessary in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. Though these are not normally considered to include a restriction on proselytism or religious conversion, they have only been tested in European conditions.

A complete ban on proselytism and religious conversion in India is hardly a curb on freedom of religious thought – from the dharmic perspective, it is only a ban on religious thought of an exclusivist and binary nature; yet Abrahamic religions cannot abandon their doctrines of exclusive Truth without violating their core principles. However, a ban on religious proliferation does not create any new obligations upon Christians or Muslims that would violate their sacred tenets. It would only protect local traditions and customs. For some, this might not be an acceptable solution. One can be reminded that secularism does not truly fit the Indian ethos but more importantly, it is vital to realise that the public sphere has not be desacralised completely anywhere in the world nor is it desirable. Countries still place their weekends around the holy days of their majority faiths (Fridays in Islam, Saturday in Judaism, and Sunday in Christianity), the common calendar is marked from the birth of Jesus Christ – anno domini – oaths are sworn upon religious texts, and Christmas is still a national holiday in many countries. Furthermore, restrictions and bans on controversial issues such as abortion and stem cell research are still informed by religious beliefs. In this climate, a hat-tip to the millennia-old traditions of the overwhelming majority of the Indian people without creating blasphemous obligations on other faiths ought not be a problem.


This post appeared on FirstPost on September 08, 2014.

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Riflessioni: Modernity And Its Parochialism

14 Wed May 2014

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, South Asia, Theory & Philosophy

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Ancient Greece, Church, classical modernity, dharma, early modernity, Enlightenment, Europe, freedom of religion, Hinduism, homo socialis, India, Industrial Revolution, ISIS, Jainism, Kızıl Avlu, late modernity, materialism, nation, post-modernity, proselytism, Ptolemy I, Reformation, religion, Renaissance, Rome, secularism, Serapis, Shaivite, Shintoism, Sikhism, state, Vaishnavite

One of the fundamental questions many scholars of 19th and 20th century Europe and Empire ponder about is if the nature of modernity might have been different without the ascent of European imperialism. Not just the structure but even the vocabulary of modernity compromises the scope of inquiry by privileging and normatising forms of experiential knowledge peculiar to the European history. Measured against a European norm, other regions of the globe often appear to be lacking, incomplete, or failed, further propagating the idea of “first in the West, then the Rest.”

In Europe, modernity has meant a transition from a period of feudalism, “divine right of kings,” and the central role of religion in public life to an era of capitalism, the nation-state, and rationality. In essence, it has meant the spread of doubt made easy by improvements in communication; first came the printing press and the birth of newspapers, then the telegraph, and finally the internet. The sureties of religion were steadily eroded via the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and the Age of Physics. The authority of the Church in royal succession, law, inter-state relations, education, and of course, spirituality, was challenged by old ideas resurfacing during the Renaissance and new ideas on the administration of the faith itself during the Reformation. An investigative spirit, combined with material advancement that could advance curiosity and scepticism, moved society out of the grasp of the Church and its traditions.

Despite its claims to universalism, the recession of the sacred in public life is a historical particularity of medieval Europe. Unlike Europe, large parts of the Orient escaped domination by exclusivist, monotheistic cults. In Japan, Shintoism held sway and India saw the flowering of dharmic faiths like Hinduism, Jainism, and Sikhism despite invasions and aggressive missionary activity from foreign lands. Though, from a modern perspective, Asian non-exclusive belief systems did have their own grotesque social problems, they did not claim a monopoly on interpretation of the world and the battles between theology and science were largely avoided; for example, Ramanujan’s belief in astrology or CV Raman’s fear of the occult powers of a solar eclipse did not interfere in their practice of the rational sciences.

The lack of a central authority in dharmic religions gave an institutional guarantee against widespread zealotry. As a result, an official profession of faith by a state did not give rise to inter-state strife; in India, the notion of advaitins going to war against dvaitins, or Shaivites against Vaishnavites, over theological differences would seem absurd.

The parochialism of modernity is not necessarily a function of geography but of time; Asia has a few examples of societies that did not need secularisation to modernise but examples exist closer to home too; this is not a tale of East vs. West.  The Ancient Greeks and the Roman Empire exhibited a similar pluralism of faith and tolerance to doubt as Shintoism or the dharmic faiths of India did. The ruins of several Roman temples to the gods of their conquered subjects stand testimony around the Mediterranean. The Kızıl Avlu in Bergama, for example, was built by Emperor Hadrian in the early 2nd century in honour of the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis. The very creation of Serapis in the 3rd century BCE by Ptolemy I also speaks to the relative religious harmony in ancient Europe.

The link between modernity and secularism is, outside a defined bubble of time and space, tenuous at best. Yet the vehemence with which secularism is peddled in societies it is alien to leads one to wonder whether the formal process and the content have been conflated with Europe standing in as the universal. Secularism was a solution to Europe’s problem with missionary zeal and the lack of freedom of inquiry; outside these parameters, its usefulness as a feature of modernity is questionable.

One defence of secularism might be to cite the social problems in religious societies, particularly the subjugation of women and the control over sexual functions and orientation. In a theocratic state, who will lend voice to the subaltern? Strictly speaking, this is not a problem of secularism but of orthodox customs that have accreted in communities over time. Such dilemma exist even in a liberal state that allows freedom of religion; for example, would a secular, liberal state remain neutral and allow girls that have attained puberty to be married off as per religious customs or would it insist that a “modern morality” prohibits marriage before attaining adulthood?

These problems cannot be escaped by professing faith in a legal abstraction like secularism. What is necessary is an ability to reflect upon custom critically and maintain, modify, or abandon them. This is not easy in systems that are based upon revelation but more open systems of inquiry are not affronted at the mention of reform. As Adi Shankaracharya argues, if experience differs from shruti, then the shruti must be discarded. In fact, Hinduism views dharma as a function of kaala, desha and paristhiti – this is the true content of secularism and not the legalistic, contractual understanding citizens have with the modern state.

Unfortunately, the Raj seeded the idea of a consolidated Hinduism akin to the Abrahamic faiths. The rationalisation and ordering of knowledge – another modern phenomenon – could not grasp the plurality of Indic religions and customs within an Abrahamic template. Yet the projected similarity has falsified many analyses of religion and politics in society when comparing Europe with other societies.

One might argue that a principle that does not fit with India’s past may be well suited to its present reality – the country today harbours not just Indic faiths but Abrahamic ones too. However, India remains a nation-state with an undisputedly Indic identity. To acknowledge this would only be as sectarian as Christmas being a national holiday in several Western states – secular or otherwise, Europe and the western hemisphere have strong Judaeo-Christian roots that cannot be denied any more than India’s links to its past.

To argue that rejecting secularism would transform India into a Hindu theocracy again makes the mistake of grafting a concept foreign to the Indian experience onto its landscape. The decentralised nature of the religion, not to mention the diversity of the faith itself, makes it virtually impossible to develop a strong and centralised theocracy. Furthermore, the role of Hindu priests was never as overarching as that of a Pope or Caliph; even though Hinduism put the priestly class at the top of the social order, actual political and financial power rested with other groups.

Even when implemented with textbook perfection, secularism remains an unwise idea for several Asian societies. In a secular state, the relationship between faiths that practice proselytism and those that do not would be the same as that of a fox on the jury at a goose’s trial. Both sides assert the same right of religious freedom albeit expressed in a manner antithetical to the other and any position the state takes will advantage one over the other.

The question is if a non-secular – in the formal sense – modernity can give us meaning and a humane existence without losing freedom or truth. Can modernity escape becoming, as David Kolb describes it in The Critique of Pure Modernity, a dilemma of rootless freedom versus oppressive tradition? Is there place for tradition and rational inquiry in the same pantheon? Ramanujan and Raman certainly thought so.


This post appeared on FirstPost on May 27, 2014.

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An Economy of Souls

15 Sun Jul 2012

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response, Theory & Philosophy

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

conversion, proselytism, religion, secularism

Tweeter Swaraj India (SI)* owes me a Sunday afternoon. I was about to take a quick nap before getting back to work when a chirp of his popped up on my twitter timeline. Basically, it said that if a person in Tamil Nadu wanted to become a Christian for $500, then that was sad, but also his right. At first, I thought that he was being flippant, particularly when I suggested a sales tax on the “purchase” of a soul by the Church and he just reminded me to allow states to vary the rate of a general sales tax (GST)! Intrigued, I looked up SI’s timeline, and lo and behold, I was in the middle of a culture war…okay, maybe a culture morcha.

The discussion is storified here for those interested.

SI raises a few very good points, and I confess he has won me over to his side, if only because neither I nor the other discussants were able to provide a satisfactory counter to his assertions. Without summarising the debate, since the link is provided above), let us get to the salient issue (though universal healthcare as a right was raised, the debate did not centre on it. Therefore, I focus on the causa causans).

Simply put, the question before us was whether conversion should be allowed by way of material inducement. The context for this question is the missionary activities of Christianity and Islam in India, in a setting where the other existing religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, and Judaism – forbid proselytism. While it is indeed true that many convert out of Hinduism to escape their lower caste status, there is a strong case to be made that the Church has not been above fraudulent (spiritually) means in seeking converts and material inducement has been given in the name of development. Nonetheless, there is a difference between inducement and coercion. Inducement is not illegal, whereas coercion (on any issue) is. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which India has ratified, makes this distinction.

Pia Skov’s documentary on Christian conversions in India

  • Part I
  • Part II
  • Part III

SI makes the case that if the Indian Right dropped their carping about beef-eating and religious conversions, they’d emerge a genuinely secular force. Hindutva, then, would merely be the preference of many of the cadre. Prohibiting conversion or proselytism would, furthermore, be a violation of Article 25 of the Indian constitution. SI makes the same distinction the ICCPR does between coercion and inducement, or lure. Amit Malviya, however, argues that it is difficult to distinguish between the two and recommends the banning of foreign funds to Christian organisations in India. I am not sure how this would bring any more light to bear on separating coercion from inducement, but it would certainly restrict the finances and therefore the activities of the Church.

SI was quite comfortable with the notion of foreign funding for religious activity provided that it was on a reciprocity basis. This meant that organisations in countries that allow proselytism, such as the United States or Britain, funded partially through foreign sources will be allowed to remit funds to their counterparts in India. Other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Greece, will not be accorded the same privileges. This however, is unsatisfactory for Malviya and other discussants, who make the oft-stated argument that such reciprocity militates against the very nature of Hinduism, as it does not seek to proselytise. SI’s point, however, is that funds from private Indian entities can be remitted to Hindu cultural centres or temples worldwide as charitable donations. Clearly, the (secular) state cannot dispense funds for religious promotion. The issue that has been overlooked here, I think, is that because of decades of evangelism, Christian coffers are far more abundant than anything a poorer nation like India (assuming per capita wealth since we are talking about individual giving) can hope to accumulate. This gives a natural (and unfair) strategic advantage to Christianity and Islam over then extant belief systems in India.

No one seemed to be happy with foreign monies coming into the Church’s war chest. Malviya suggested that the Indian state has a duty towards protecting the social fabric of the country. This is a very contradictory statement, given that it had just been argued that the Indian state, as a secular entity, should not involve itself in religious issues. SI though does not seem to believe in a social fabric – instead, he makes a free-marketeer argument that if the price of someone’s souls was $500, then no law should restrict such a transaction. Clearly, the situation is packed with issues – extreme poverty, moral decay (not for converting but for selling), failure of religion to mean much in daily life – but none of these should restrict a person’s right to do a mutually consensual deal. In my view, if the Church is allowed to violate its own principles (all conversions must be based on belief) and a prospective convert is allowed to sell his soul, so to speak, it is only fair that this financial transaction be taxed! It would be akin to a sin tax or a sumptuariae leges, an idea supported by Adam Smith and the Church.

Oldtimer challenged the proposed trade in souls: “Is the right to run a business without restriction or regulation absolute?” he asked. If there are to be restrictions and regulations, who decides on them? he wanted to know. Oldtimer’s reference was to the idea of social approval behind the illegality of certain businesses, such as heroin sales. Furthermore, drugs were legislated or banned because they were, in principle, harmful to society. Since there was nothing intrinsically sacrosanct to the business of religious conversion, there was no reason it should not be banned, he argued. What Oldtimer disputed was, he said, that the right to convert had been granted under the guise of ‘freedom of religion’ but the sale of souls was argued as a tenet of laissez-faire capitalism! This was a shifting of goalposts, he said.

Oldtimer’s riposte to the proposition is an excellent one that had me almost run to my Hayek bible! Yet the issue, ultimately, was that religious conversion is a religious right by Article 25 (except in some states such as Madhya Pradesh – see Stanislaus vs. the Govt. of MP), and if the Church wished to make a business of it (what else does one call exchange of goods or services?), it ought to be regulated and taxed like any other. Societal approval is reductio ad populum and cannot be taken as a serious argument. Even if it were, it cannot surpass the weight of personal liberty to convert. Additionally, societal approval is a two-edged sword, because it can obstruct key social goals such as caste elimination, or as occurred in the US a few years ago, the refusal by pharmacies in the Bible Belt to sell contraceptives as it was against “God’s law.” It is not out of sacral piety that conversion by inducement should be allowed, but out of personal and economic liberty.

Malviya fears that the monetisation of souls would lead to the wiping out of non-proselytising cultures in poor countries. Drawn by financial inducements, hordes could abandon the ways of their ancestors for temporary relief. Without employment, education, and the elimination of caste bias, India’s poor are doomed to be victims to “predatory foreign missionaries.” Another discussant, Silver, makes a poor point that withholding monetary help to achieve conversion is blackmail – poor because the dictionary definition of blackmail is, as SI responds, a threat to do harm, whereas luring is merely the holding back of an enrichment opportunity. But a good observation Silver makes is that in cases of inducement, the issue is not enrichment but staving off starvation. This is true, but since the Church is not responsible for the pending starvation, withholding relief may be morally questionable but not legally actionable. This is, Silver returns, the argument for the legalisation of prostitution as well – since the customer did not cause prostitution, there should be no problem if s/he offers to alleviate financial need for services rendered. Clearly, Silver’s real point, and a good one, is the varying degrees of coercion in any exchange. Consistent in his logic though, SI agrees to the legalisation of prostitution (as do I, if for other reasons).

TRISH00L, however, remained unconvinced. Prostitution had social costs too, as does conversion; the issue is not simply about personal liberty. As Malviya observed, the debate had acquired the flavour of one between a libertarian (SI, and myself in the second round at midnight!) and a conservative (himself, TRISH00l, and Oldtimer perhaps). It must be remembered, however, that prostitution also serves a biological need, and no amount of punishment – the Medieval Christian Church or the repressive theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia – has been able to eradicate it. Chanakya, author of the Arthashastra, recognised this and advocated training (!), educating, licensing, protecting, and taxing prostitutes. Similarly, religion is a psychological need, and the urge to spread is strong in some faiths. Fighting it is not worth the social cost or public relations nightmare; it was more expedient to allow the commercialisation of souls (this would not apply to just Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, but also Christian -> Muslim and Muslim -> Christian conversions).

SI’s counter to Malviya, however, is quite interesting: since it has already been accepted that voluntary conversion – out of genuine belief –  should be allowed, and that coercion is illegal, the scope of the inquiry is those who are converting for purely pecuniary or social gains. If these people can leave their religions once, they can do so again – after all, it is not out of conviction and if the reasons for their conversion are removed, they would in all probability lapse back. SI’s strategy, therefore, is a secular proselytism offering not salvation but civil services; by providing social equality, employment, education, sanitation, drinking water, etc., there is a strong chance that less people will be tempted to convert and those who have revert. Furthermore, it is not as if India does not need to provide such services to its people anyway, and since there is no religious undertone to such work, funding can be applied sought from the state too.

There is a practical element to Malviya’s worries – with a predatory administration, low literacy, and high poverty, SI’s policy would whittle down India’s non-Islamic/Christian culture. Nonetheless, SI’s point cannot be denied in principle, that while liberty in India is de facto subject to all sorts of violation, de jure, at least, liberty should remain sacrosanct. Laws are the self0image of a nation’s values, not a tool of convenience, and as such, should uphold only the highest principles. Remedy for de facto problems must be sought elsewhere.

Malviya also makes the case that while SI dismissed social fabric unfairly, it was indeed the government’s responsibility to maintain such an idea because the failure to do so could result in social conflict in the future. This is a very complex issue: a similar argument could be made – was made – about the Roman Empire, that the acceptance of Christianity weakened the Empire and Theodosius I dealt the coup de grace. However, in India, like the Roman Empire, there are many reasons for social unrest – unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, overpopulation, an unresponsive government, endemic corruption, lack of infrastructure, pollution – all these factors contribute to making life unpleasant in the political union, and to put the blame squarely on religion is unfair. To be fair to Malviya, sociological studies (such as Joseph Troisi’s study of the Santals) have indeed shown that the introduction of Christianity or Islam into an animist tribe has created conflict within the tribe, whereas, Buddhism did not have the same violent reaction. One wonders, however, if proper law and order combined with educational and economic opportunities would not have mitigated the conflict.

While life intruded on the debate at this juncture, it certainly raised some excellent points. I have to admit that my aversion to conversion was based on my intellectual distaste for the concept of conversion, but SI has made me think otherwise. While I still find conversion theoretically and spiritually shallow, a constant need for the reaffirmation of one’s own faith, to prohibit it would be a greater wrong because it denies others to make that choice. On the key question of inducement, SI makes an often-overlooked point that inducement is not real conversion from the heart. In fact, such events hold a mirror to our society and highlight the social problems. This is a useful measure of social development and should be used in the right spirit, not opposed. What SI proposes in affairs of religion finds a parallel in the world of nationalism: unlike German or Israeli nationalism, French nationalism emphasises jus soli, the primacy of land and laws over blood and heritage (jus sanguinis). It is a civic nationalism as opposed to the ethnic nationalism shown by Germany and Israel. Similarly, SI defangs the conversion question by making it about a reflection of social equity and not faith.

This does not mean that there are no problems with it. For example, given the experience of social fractures between new converts and their old fellows in faith, what happens if only part of a family converts? How does one ensure an honest collection of taxes (I wan’t joking!)? What happens if social development is (as it probably will be) very slow and a generation passes? The next generation may not even remember their ancestry (or care about it). What message does it send to future generations that their parents’ core beliefs can be bought and sold? In short, Malviya and Oldtimer score some excellent points, but ultimately fail (in my view) to adapt to new strategies of fighting back. This does not mean that the debate is closed – I, for one, shall be spending many a waking hour poring over philosophical works and tinkering with the arguments of both sides.

Nonetheless, the new battlefront for religious wars has to be the archives, libraries, and conference halls rather than the pulpit. Ideas of Hindu philosophy, or any philosophy, are far better served by stringent scrutiny and dissemination through philosophy syllabi worldwide than by dogmatic priests; they will certainly reach a wider audience. This will weaken the hold of the dogmatists, the superstitious, and the ritualists, basing Hinduism on logic and rationality than blind faith. Hindus claim that this is the default position of their beliefs, and Hindusim has shown the remarkable ability to reform itself in the past. So what is stopping the chanters and circumambulators now?

Continuum (July 15, 2012):

Needless to say, SI’s proposition makes for a very restless night. This morning, thankfully, I have an observation to make that may have significant impact on the notion of conversion through inducement.

Yesterday’s discussions were centred on materialist attempts to discredit the principle of free choice. However, religion is, in no sense of the term, material. Religion must be seen in the same way as liberty – inviolable and an intrinsic good. It is held that a person’s liberty is of paramount importance that cannot be bartered away. Therefore, it is illegal to sell oneself into slavery, even at the risk of starvation; liberty is a good unto itself, the exercise of which allows one to lead a content life. Similarly, it can be argued that a man lives not by bread alone but also by hope; religion is that hope, of justice in this life or the next, of salvation, and the reassurance that the world will not descend into anarchy. Society is neither a business enterprise to maximise wealth nor an association to promote liberty and equality. Instead, as Aristotle argues, “the good life is the end of the city-state,” ie, a life consisting of noble actions (1280b39–1281a4). From this perspective, conversion without faith is an impediment to the good life.

Yet people who are induced to convert may not be religious, and therefore, the question of hope does not arise. This is only partly true – an atheist, if categorised as a Muslim or a Christian, will militate against the label. Atheism gives that person a certain sense of liberty, of humanism. By even ascribing a religious label, that sense is reduced. Those open to inducement may not have such strong convictions, for or against religion. Their sole belief  might be in two square meals a day. Swami Vivekananda is often credited for arguing that a hungry man has no religion but bread. There is merit in that idea, but as discussed above, society feels that liberty trumps bread. A hungry man is not capable of thinking properly about liberty (or religion) and should, therefore, not be allowed to make a rash decision. This is a principle upheld by law courts everywhere, that all deals must be entered into by person of sound mental faculties; in fact, reduced capability is even a mitigating factor in crime. Can one truly argue that poverty does not reduce capability? If not, should conversion by inducement be allowed?

Conclusion (July 17, 2012)

SI responds to the slavery argument (Mill paradox) that selling oneself into slavery is irreversible, whereas conversion to a religion can experience relapse or yet another conversion. This is a fair point, but since SI’s tone has been libertarian throughout the debate, I thought it only fair to remind him of the libertarian defence of slavery. Because of the bad connotations (because the Americans mucked up the word), it is usually referred to as warranteeism. In essence, it argues that the individual is inviolable and not subject to contract, but the labour that can be done by the individual is a commodity like any other. Rather than wage labour, which is like renting labour, it is possible to conceive of a contract that purchases labour outright in units of lifetimes. In some senses, this resembles slavery during the Roman Empire, wherein a slave had rights and could even drag his master to court for excessive punishment. This might seem anachronistic to some, but in feudalesque systems in the interiors of India (and many other places worldwide), mai-baap raj is still prevalent. SI accepts the logic of the argument but reserves his approval.

In closing (at least for me, for now…finally!), I suppose I shall take a page out of SI’s book after all – I find the concept of proselytism intellectually bankrupt (that’s almost the worst thing I can say about something) and yet I do not oppose it for the greater principle of free speech; my personal views on religion cause me to only be confused and bemused by conversion, but I do not oppose it for the greater principle of freedom of religion. Conversion by inducement is something that I find morally repugnant – for the intellectual dishonesty more than the spiritual dimension – and since I reject the notion of ethnic nationalism, I would prefer to find solutions to the very valid points Oldtimer, Malviya, and TRISH00L raise under different ambits of existing laws. In sum, SI has convinced me that there is enough ground to not make conversion by inducement illegal. Immoral and illegal are distinct concepts, and we should not conflate the two, however much we are tempted.

*: Swaraj India has, since this discussion, changed his twitter handle to @harshguptapolicy

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