Advantage Modi-2/2015

Advantage Modi- 2/2015                                                                                                                               08 Jan 2015

Converting Hinduism

The ‘ghar wapsi’ campaign needs to rebuild the ‘ghar’ they want people to return to

The RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha and other elements of the Sangh Parivar who want to turn India into a hindu rashtra through mass conversion called’ ghar wapsi’ have their work cut out for them, because they face a couple of serious obstacles in achieving their objective. And these obstacles are not their ideological opponents like Congress and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party. Nor is it the trifling matter of the Constitution, which clearly defines India as a secular republic.

No, the real problem with the so-called ‘ghar wapsi’ compaign is that many of those whom the Parivar is urging to come wapsi-ing back to their ‘ghar’ didn’t belong to the ghar in the first place, which makes it difficult, semantically at least, for them to come back to it. For a lot of people being targeted for ‘reconversion’ by the Parivar belong to tribal communities, which by and large were animists and did not belong to the Hindu fold. Indeed, as the story of Eklavya in the Mahabharata shows, tribals were given short shrift by mainstream Hindusim with its caste hierarchy: Eklavya, a tribal, is made to cut off his thumb and give it to Dronacharya as guru-dakshina because Dronacharya fears that his ‘low-born’ pupil will outdo the ‘high-born’ Arjun is archery.

Tribals apart, many of those being’ reconverted’ are dalits who, if anything, have been even more badly treated than tribals by casteist Hinduism, which looked down on them as being ‘ untouchables’, literally and metaphorically. It was this enforced ‘untouchability’ which impelled many dalits to embrace religions like Buddhism. How can those who were considered ourcasts-or ‘ourcastes’ –be brought back to a Hinduism which excluded them to begin with?

But perhaps the biggest problem faced by the ‘reconversionists’ is that, unlike Islam and Christainity, Hinduism has never been a proselytizing religion ¼ij/keZ vuq;k;h½. Before the Arya Samaj leader Swami Sharddhanand launched a program of mass conversions in the 1920s, Hinduism never had a tradition of conversions, much less ‘reconversions’.

So before the Hindu brotherhood of the Sangh Parivar goes about converting, or ‘ reconverting’ , people to Hinduism it might have to do a bit of converting of Hunduism itself so as to being proselytizing within its purview. In order to bring in recruits to swell its ranks, Hinduism might have to convert, or reinvent, itself.

But should it do so, it might run a risk. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, recruits to Hinduism could well say they did not want to join a religion which would have them as converted members.

As narrated by Jug Suraiya TOI 31 Dec 2014

Note: NAMO has conveniently decided to maintain absolute silence on such issues.