Parmanand Pandey
Cases of
religious conversions have increased across the country. Until a few years ago
‘conversion’ was thought to be switching over of the religious beliefs mostly
of Hindus to Christianity. It was a common scene in Uttar Pradesh that any
Christian missionaries would come to the remote villages and open a school in the
name of any ‘Father’ or ‘Saint’. They start imparting education to children and
glorify Christianity in the classrooms. Not much attention is paid to the boys
and girls belonging to upper castes because it is difficult to convert them,
but they focus on the children belonging to scheduled castes and tribes. Many
of them get attracted to the inducements of these ‘Christian Fathers’ and
embrace Christianity.
Similarly,
the marrying of Hindu girls to Muslim men has also been going on for quite some
time but changing the religion of Hindu men to Islam is a new phenomenon.
Although there is a law against religious conversion due to force, fraud and
inducement, yet it is an open secret that these tactics are adopted to lure
Hindu girls mainly belonging to poor families. The girls pertaining to the
lower social hierarchy are targeted by these Muslim men. This is very similar
to the ‘love jihad’. Nobody would have any objection to the conversion made on
the free will but if the conversion becomes a ‘Hobson's choice’, then it is
condemnable, without a doubt.
A pertinent
question is asked why mostly Hindus convert to other religions. Is there any
inherent drawback among Hindus? To my mind, there could be two reasons: one is
that Hinduism is not a regimented religion. It is highly eclectic in beliefs
and customs. There is no higher authority whose dictates and writs would be
large. The second region is that it is divided into multi-layered castes
and sub-castes. It does not draw its strength from one book. It provides enough
scope for differences of thought and ideas but in other important
religions, the main source is their books. Any difference with their books
would mean It is certainly very evolving and spiritually
uplifting but has an enfeebling effect also because excessive liberty
often leads to anarchy, which is capitalised by the poachers. Other
religions have also fragmentations but not as they are found in Hinduism.
Unlike Hinduism and other Indigenous religions, Islam and Christianity silently
speak about extra-territorial loyalty.
In fact, in
Uttar Pradesh, the love jihad got unprecedented impetus during the regime of
Mulayam Singh Yadav, which included five years of Akhilesh Yadav. Everybody
knew that any complaint made against these jihadists would invite the wrath of
the police rather than any sympathetic action.
Now the noxious
trend of driving a wedge among Hindus in the name caste Hindus and Scheduled
caste is going on in full scale. The Islamists groups, which are flush with
foreign funds are instigating SCs, particularly neo Ambedkarites, to wage their
verbal diatribe against high caste Hindus like Brahmins and Rajputs. This is
causing some confrontation and caste attrition. However, at the same time, many
other castes have also been getting polarised and they have got themselves
distanced from Muslims and Ambedkarites. It appears that they have become
strong supporters of the Bhartiya Janata Party, making it almost invincible in
the assembly elections.
The growing
influence of love jihad is also a cause of huge concern because many of the
girls are dispatched to some countries, where they are condemned to live as
prostitutes. To be fair to the Yogi government, this menace is being very
strictly dealt with yet there is no doubt that such activities are still going
on, although stealthily.
No comments:
Post a Comment