Stop the Politics of Division

Last week, in responding to some of the hundreds of reactions I received to my September 28 column on the anti-Christian violence in Orissa and Karnataka, I tackled the vexed question of conversions to Christianity, which many readers argued constituted a provocation for the violence. But the conversion issue is not purely a religious one: behind it lies a profoundly political question, one which goes to the heart of the nature of the Indian state, and indeed to the very idea of India itself.

In my original piece I argued that violence is part of a contemptible political project whose closest equivalent can in fact be found in the 'Indian Mujahideen' bomb blasts. Both actions are anti-national; both aim to divide the country by polarising people along their religious identities; and both hope to profit politically from such polarisation. In this context, the issue of conversion becomes a diversion. Because to say that conversions are somehow inherently wrong would accord legitimacy to the rhetoric of the Bajrang Dal and its cohorts -- who declare openly that conversions from Hinduism to any other faith are anti-national. Implicit is the idea that to be Hindu is somehow more natural, more authentically Indian, than to be anything else, and that to lapse from Hinduism is to dilute one's identification with the motherland.

As a Hindu, I reject that notion utterly. I reject the presumption that the purveyors of hatred speak for all or even most Hindus. Hinduism, we are repeatedly told, is a tolerant faith. The central tenet of tolerance is that the tolerant society accepts that which it does not understand and even that which it does not like, so long as it is not sought to be imposed upon the unwilling. One cannot simultaneously extol the tolerance of Hinduism and attack Christian homes and places of worship.

And as an Indian, I would argue that the whole point about India is the rejection of the idea that religion should be a determinant of nationhood. Our nationalist leaders never fell into the insidious trap of agreeing that, since Partition had established a state for Muslims, what remained was a state for Hindus. To accept the idea of India you have to spurn the logic that divided the country in 1947. Your Indianness has nothing to do with which God you choose to worship, or not.

To suggest that an Indian Hindu becoming Christian is an anti-national act not only insults the millions of patriotic Indians who trace their Christianity to more distant forebears, including the Kerala Christians whose families converted to the faith of Saint Thomas centuries before the ancestors of many of today's Hindu chauvinists even learned to think of themselves as Hindu. It is an insult, too, to the national leaders, freedom fighters, educationists, scientists, military men, journalists and sportsmen of the Christian faith who have brought so much glory to the country through their actions and sacrifices. It is, indeed, an insult to the very idea of India. Nothing could be more anti-national than that.

One reader, Raju Rajagopal, writing "as a fellow Hindu", expressed himself trenchantly in describing 'terrorism' and 'communal riots' as "two sides of the same coin, which systematically feed on each other." The only difference, he added, is "that the first kind of terrorism is being unleashed by a fanatical few who swear no allegiance to the idea of India, whereas the second kind of terror is being unleashed by those who claim to love India more dearly than you and I, who are part of the electoral politics of India, and who know the exact consequences of their actions: creating deep fissures between communities, whose horrific consequences the world has witnessed once too often in recent decades."

That is the real problem here. Nehru had warned that the communalism of the majority was especially dangerous because it could present itself as nationalist. Yet, Hindu nationalism is not Indian nationalism. And it has nothing to do with genuine Hinduism either. A reader bearing a Christian name wrote to tell me that when his brother was getting married to a Hindu girl, the Hindu priest made a point of saying to him before the ceremony words to the effect of: "When I say God, I don't mean a particular God." As this reader commented: "It's at moments like that that I can't help but feel proud to be Indian and to be moved by its religiosity -- even though I'm an atheist."

As a Hindu, I relish pointing out that i belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. Hinduism asserts that all ways of belief are equally valid, and Hindus readily venerate the saints, and the sacred objects, of other faiths. Hinduism is a civilisation, not a dogma. There is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. If a Hindu decides he wishes to be a Christian, how does it matter that he has found a different way of stretching his hands out towards God? Truth is one, Vivekananda reminded all Hindus, but there are many ways of attaining it.

So, the rejection of other forms of worship, other ways of seeking the Truth, is profoundly un-Hindu, as well as being un-Indian. The really important debate is not about conversions, but between the unifiers and the dividers -- between those who think all Indians are "us", whichever God they choose to worship, and those who think that Indians can be divided into "us" and "them". The reduction of non-Hindus to second-class status in their own homeland is unthinkable. It would be a second Partition: this time a partition not just in the Indian soil, but in the Indian soul.

It is time for all of us to say: stop the politics of division. We are all Indians.

Published originally in the Times of India, October 12, 2008

Comments

[YMohite]

I think you are being willfully ignorant of the fact that Evangelical Christians are fundamentalists who are well-funded, organized and educated and have sole aim of waging cultural genocide (e.g. South Korea, Goa, South America, Mexico). History of Christianity is littered with blood of innocent "non-believers" but Indian journalists like you never highlight that. Is it any wonder that Indian journalist are never respected by Indian intellectuals? Please don't misuse your fame to report only one side of the story.

[slkanth]

When a person talks about his religion he is religious or pious. When he talks positively or discusses constructively about other religions he is secular. But when he talks negatively about other religions and asks people to convert to his religion, he does not respect other religions and he is a religious fanatic and fundamentalist. Any fundamentalists are trouble.
When we talk of fundamentalist we should talk about fundamentalists Hindus, Christians, Islamics, Sikhs, and Buddhists (in Sri Lanka) etc.
We cannot force one section of the people to be secular while others are fundamentalists.

[slkanth]

The problem is everybody talks of Hindu fanatics and fundamentalists but nobody accepts that the Christians in the troubled regions are also fanatics and fundamentalist.
All the news I read mention that the Hindu religious leader was killed by Maoists but the Hindu fundamentalists blamed the Christians and attacked them. But since when did Maoism become a religion. I suppose that the Maoists in Orissa are mostly Christians and couple of Christian Maoists have been arrested for the murder.
Now Hindus are responding in a way other religions usually respond when they are attacked is a concern. True, that some people instigate it in the hope to profit politically. But as long as Christians try to convert others in India will have such problems. Christians are supposed to have published books about Hindu gods explaining how they are evil etc. Though I have not seen such books but have seen Christians call Rama, Krishna etc devils and try to exorcise these ghosts from the souls of prospective Christian converts.

[slkanth]

Mr. Tharoor,
Christians are known to have been living in India since the 1st Century BC in your home state, Kerala. They never had any issues and they still do not face any problems. Why the converted Christians in the remote villages are being attacked? What is the difference between these Christians?
The Christians in Kerala are Orthodox Syrian Christians they like the Hindus believe in "live and let live". In others words they follow their religion but they are not concerned that others are Hindus and they do not generally go around converting non-Christians. They are secular.
The people who convert to Christianity are basically Hindus, so most of the people who know them are Hindus but once they convert, for whatever reasons they do, they start treating the other Hindus as Pagan worshipers and the Hindu gods as evil sprits etc. In fact when a Hindu converts to Christianity the baptizing priest tells him that he is a Christian now and he should not worship other gods and go to other places of worship. This annoys the people around them who are Hindus, but when these people go around trying to convert people as mandated by their priest, by telling them that their religion is evil etc, and then we have trouble. Basically they are not secular, they are extremists. Once in a while their extremism clashes with Hindu extremism and we have trouble.