SHASHI ON SUNDAY: Stop the politics of division

Last week, in responding to some ofthe hundreds of reactions i received to my September 28 column on theanti-Christian violence in Orissa and Karnataka, i tackled the vexed question ofconversions to Christianity, which many readers argued constituted a provocationfor the violence. But the conversion issue is not purely a religious one: behindit lies a profoundly political question, one which goes to the heart of thenature of the Indian state, and indeed to the very idea of Indiaitself.In my original piece i argued that violence is part of acontemptible political project whose closest equivalent can in fact be found inthe 'Indian Mujahideen' bomb blasts. Both actions are anti-national; both aim todivide the country by polarising people along their religious identities; andboth hope to profit politically from such polarisation. In this context, theissue of conversion becomes a diversion. Because to say that conversions aresomehow inherently wrong would accord legitimacy to the rhetoric of the BajrangDal and its cohorts - who declare openly that conversions from Hinduism to anyother faith are anti-national. Implicit is the idea that to be Hindu is somehowmore natural, more authentically Indian, than to be anything else, and that tolapse from Hinduism is to dilute one's identification with themotherland.As a Hindu, I reject that notion utterly. I reject thepresumption that the purveyors of hatred speak for all or even most Hindus.Hinduism, we are repeatedly told, is a tolerant faith. The central tenet oftolerance is that the tolerant society accepts that which it does not understandand even that which it does not like, so long as it is not sought to be imposedupon the unwilling. One cannot simultaneously extol the tolerance of Hinduismand 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 thatreligion should be a determinant of nationhood. Our nationalist leaders neverfell into the insidious trap of agreeing that, since Partition had established astate for Muslims, what remained was a state for Hindus. To accept the idea ofIndia you have to spurn the logic that divided the country in 1947. YourIndianness has nothing to do with which God you choose to worship, ornot.To suggest that an Indian Hindubecoming Christian is an anti-national act not only insults the millions ofpatriotic Indians who trace their Christianity to more distant forebears,including the Kerala Christians whose families converted to the faith of SaintThomas centuries before the ancestors of many of today's Hindu chauvinists evenlearned to think of themselves as Hindu. It is an insult, too, to the nationalleaders, freedom fighters, educationists, scientists, military men, journalistsand sportsmen of the Christian faith who have brought so much glory to thecountry through their actions and sacrifices. It is, indeed, an insult to thevery idea of India. Nothing could be more anti-national thanthat.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 onlydifference, he added, is "that the first kind of terrorism is being unleashed bya fanatical few who swear no allegiance to the idea of India, whereas the secondkind of terror is being unleashed by those who claim to love India more dearlythan you and i, who are part of the electoral politics of India, and who knowthe exact consequences of their actions: creating deep fissures betweencommunities, whose horrific consequences the world has witnessed once too oftenin recent decades." That is the real problem here. Nehru had warnedthat the communalism of the majority was especially dangerous because it couldpresent itself as nationalist. Yet, Hindu nationalism is not Indian nationalism.And it has nothing to do with genuine Hinduism either. A reader bearing aChristian name wrote to tell me that when his brother was getting married to aHindu girl, the Hindu priest made a point of saying to him before the ceremonywords to the effect of: "When i say God, i don't mean a particular God." As thisreader commented: "It's at moments like that that i can't help but feel proud tobe 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 majorreligion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. Hinduismasserts that all ways of belief are equally valid, and Hindus readily veneratethe 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 hewishes to be a Christian, how does it matter that he has found a different wayof stretching his hands out towards God? Truth is one, Vivekananda reminded allHindus, but there are many ways of attaining it.So, the rejection ofother 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 aboutconversions, but between the unifiers and the dividers - between those who thinkall Indians are "us", whichever God they choose to worship, and those who thinkthat Indians can be divided into "us" and "them". The reduction of non-Hindus tosecond-class status in their own homeland is unthinkable. It would be a secondPartition: this time a partition not just in the Indian soil, but in the Indiansoul. It is time for all of us to say: stop the politics ofdivision. We are all Indians.