Changing Gods

Title: Changing Gods – Rethinking Conversion in India

Author: Rudolf C Heredia

Publisher: Penguin, 2007 (First)

ISBN: 9780143101901

Pages: 386

India is a secular country where the government does not interfere in religious affairs of the people and freedom of religion is guaranteed by the constitution. Semitic religions are guided by notions of theological superiority and they engage in proselytizing and converting people of other faiths. The newly converted immediately thereupon scorn their earlier companions and way of life to undergo a cultural makeover. This creates strife in society, as the majority community takes this to be backstabbing under the guise of secularism. Why conversion? Strange it might seem, but the author is not able to provide a convincing response to this straightforward question in this book on rethinking religious conversion. Earlier, there was a plain plan of action. The white evangelicals treated native religions like Hinduism and Buddhism as manifestations of devil worship. Till a few decades ago, they openly preached this in the streets of India, giving a strong dose of dressing down to the gods and goddesses. As time went on and as people no longer takes such rebuke on their divine figureheads lightly, the missionaries backed down and changed track. The author claims oppression of the backward castes as the current reason for conversion. All these are clever stratagems of the preacher. This book presents the case of the evangelist on why conversion is necessary and can even be good for Indian society. Rudolf C Heredia is the founder director of the Social Science Centre with interests in religion, education and globalization. He has authored many books.

When the founding fathers of the Indian Constitution decided to include a proviso granting freedom to propagate one’s religion in the rule book, little did they realize the loophole they were providing to the proselytizing forces descending on the country like a swarm of locusts. Freedom of conscience means the liberty to enquire into the tenets of other religions on an individual basis and convert to another religion if he or she is truly convinced of its merits. It is and should be a personal decision. But what did actually happen? Some Christian sects took this as a ‘free for all’ to command the immense financial muscle of American evangelicalism and carry on proselytizing in India on an industrial scale with targets and incentives. There are now full-time professionals with monthly and annual targets in the business of religious conversion. Many states in the North East like Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram soon found themselves Christian-majority states, with their share in the population reaching as high as 90 per cent. After successfully completing the conversion drive in the North East, they diverted their attention to the tribal areas of Chhatisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand with similar success. Alarm bells started ringing at this stage. Under the guise of secularism which was granted magnanimously by the majority community (83 per cent of the members in the Constituent Assembly were Hindus), a subversive program was afoot to undermine the demographic pattern and the majority religion in India. Heredia also indirectly accepts the truth of this paradigm with his comment that ‘religious conversion is an unavoidable stumbling block for any aspiration for religious harmony, for any real hope of true religious understanding, both of which are so essential to contain a potentially divisive diversity’. Proselytizing is illegal in Israel, Nepal and all Muslim countries. Just compare the fate of Christians in Syria and Lebanon where they comprised nearly half of the population till a few decades ago. Gandhi termed conversion as ‘colonization of conscience’.

Heredia never questions the fact that India allows religious freedom to all. What he is furious about is the supposed ‘restrictions’ placed on preachers and pastors with foreign money at their backs in converting the people of this country. In a curious instance of retrospective reconciliation with Marxist thinkers, he quotes from them when it suits him to expose the Hindu fundamentalists. Leftist historians like Romila Thapar and Kosambi are mentioned aggressively. He bends over backwards to accommodate Islamic forces, comparing militant but nationalist organizations like the IRA and ULFA to the jihadis. Conquest and forced conversion in medieval India is written off with a casual remark that “obviously there was an inducement to convert and when the alternatives to refusal were extremely stark; it could easily amount to compulsion’ (p.44). Also, he assuages the victims that ‘there were great advantages for a subject people in adopting the religion of their conquerors’ (p.43). The founder of Wahhabism, which is the fountainhead of much of the violent terror in the world, is a reformer for the author. The Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim’s invasion and annexation of Sindh in 711 CE which heralded a millennium of Islamic invasion of India, is justified on the basis that the local ruler failed to protect Arab dhows from local pirates! Most of the sultans destroyed temples, but the author is ready to condone this too with an outrageous platitude as to “show dominance in newly conquered territories and when temple patrons were disloyal to the ruling power’.

The book treats India’s constitution as a sacred document wherever it allows religious freedom and propagation of religion, but assumes a don’t-care stance as far as national interests are concerned, as in comparing the troubles in Bangladesh in 1971 with the ‘unresolved plight of the Kashmiris’ (p.52). Does the author really feel that the Christians get a better treatment in Pakistan? Heredia then goes into a tirade against the Sangh Parivar and its opposition to religious conversion. The oppression faced by Dalits is his major area of concern, but grudgingly accept that their situation is not bettered by conversion. The author vilifies the Sangh’s catchphrase ‘justice for all, appeasement of none’, but can’t find anything faulty with it. The book persistently equates the Hinduism of the Parivar with nationalism and surmises that ‘religious fundamentalism is a quest for uncertainty and security in an unpredictable and changing world’.

Undue concern with party politics is evident in many pages of the book. The May 2004 election result in which the ruling BJP was swept out of power, is termed as a victory of secularism. He even hopes that this parliamentary election ‘might presage a return to reason but it was still a very precariously balanced multi-party coalition of varying and warring interests’. Such a shortsighted political view is laughable now, in view of the saffron party’s grand victory in 2014. Evoking suspicions of smear campaign, the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi is projected as a Hindu-Sikh conflict. This is pure humbug, as the hands of prominent Congress-men and their accomplices in fomenting the riot are already widely known. In some instances, even Muslims also took up arms against the Sikhs at the instigation of Congress leaders. Poetic exaggerations in ancient Tamil texts which says that 8000 Jain monks were impaled at Madurai by Shaivite kings is taken literally by the author as another instance of the perceived intolerance of Hinduism.

The author finds Sangh Parivar’s call to ‘cultural nationalism’ unsettling and he assails it incessantly by claiming that it is basically an upper caste-class instrument for dominance. Heredia’s logic for conversion is self-defeating when he asks whether if a person finds that changing his religion promotes his economic opportunities and democratic rights, or his upward social mobility in some way, should he be prevented by the state from converting. If a minority religion can guarantee all these to its neophytes with foreign money flowing in like water, wouldn’t it be a mockery of the secularism to which the author pays lip service whenever it suits his purpose? Heredia’s contradictory logic is striking when he argues that religion can’t be banished to the private life of an individual, ‘because it is never just an individual or family affair, but has necessary community and social dimensions’ (p.143). However, he denies this faculty to the majority community.

Four case studies of prominent individuals on the issue of religious conversion are given, which includes Ambedkar, Gandhi, Pandita Ramabai and Sister Nivedita. Here too, a conversion out of the Hindu fold is eulogized, while that in the reverse direction is shunned upon. Pandita Ramabai converted to Christianity, so her ’critique of patriarchy can be looked upon and appreciated’. Nivedita was an Irishwoman who converted to Hinduism; hence she represents ‘a revivalism that serves the religious fundamentalists and extremists’ (p.224). Heredia invents excuses to justify and propagate conversions; the conversion of tribals is said to be ‘a search for a group identity and an expression of their quest for autonomy’, while attempts to assimilate them to the national mainstream is excoriated for its attempt to destroy the native ethnic sensibilities of tribal people!

Self-interest and narrow group loyalty can be read between the lines. Heredia is not at all concerned with disallowing reservations in jobs for those scheduled castes who had converted to Christianity or Islam. He mentions this, but is not prompted to raise this issue as a case of discrimination. What is the motive here? Conversion from scheduled castes has tapered off as a result of denying the benefits of reservation and so there is no point in making a hue and cry about it. On the other hand, the tribals continue to enjoy reservation even after conversion. Most of the conversions to Christianity take place among tribals and this explains the author’s silence on this point. Hindu organizations are now in the process of conversions themselves. Ghar Vapasi (homecoming) as they call it irritates the author so much that he feels it ‘intimidating’. However, if you allow conversions in this country, all organizations are free to employ it, which is only natural justice. When open conversions began to attract ire, the missionaries are now using covert tricks like ‘Krista-bhakta movement’ of 1992. This society convenes bhajans and prayer meetings like Hindus, but with Christ as the ishtadevata. Conversions are not immediately sought either.

The book is really difficult to read as most of the ideas are recycled and churned with clever wordplay which makes a lot of noise, but without any real substance. A good index and a commendable list of references are included.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 2 Star