Deadlock in Rajya Sabha continued for the fourth day today as opposition kept demanding reply by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a debate on religious conversions which the government steadfastly rejected. The ruling regime of the Bharatiya Janata Party put up an unashamed defense in the Parliament of the fraudulent and forcible conversions of around 300 poor Muslims into the Hindu fold. This was done by right-wing Hindu organisations in the name of Ghar Wapasi or ‘homecoming’, on the majoritarian assertion that all Indians have their origins in Hindu civilisation and was converted forcibly to Islam or Christianity. Their ‘reconversion’ into the Hindu fold is therefore considered a ‘nationalist’ duty aided by promises (bribes) of ration cards. The contrast, or some would say the hypocrisy, is striking. The debate on conversions is not new. The first laws against conversions starting from 1936 were adopted by the Princely States during British rule, the main objection being to what were considered proselytising activities by Christian missionaries. India’s Constitution upholds the right to “freely profess, practice and propagate religion”. Yet, in today’s India, the issue of conversions has become a potent political instrument to buttress the Hindutva agenda. The narrative is of Hindus and Hinduism being under siege by believers of ‘foreign’ religions, namely Islam and Christianity. It matters little to these fanatics that their assertions have no substance. For example, the successive censuses of the population has shown that there is only a negligible increase in the Christian population which is around two per cent, belying the propaganda of the danger of mass conversions to Christianity, making Hindus a ‘minority’. In such a context, the Prime Minister’s silence and absence in Parliament is ominous. He should have spoken out against the reconversion programmes being conducted by organisations owing allegiance to the ‘mother organisation’, the RSS, to which he, too, belongs. This was even more necessary given that a Member of Parliament of his own Party has threatened to hold more such reconversion programmes including reportedly on Christmas Day. Unfortunately even after six decades of independence the country has not been made independent from the preach and practice of the politics of hatred.
