- Valson Thampu
Freedom is quintessentially human. To be human is to be free, and vice versa. Religious freedom is universally recognized as an inalienable aspect of freedom. No code of human rights is deemed complete, if it is destitute of religious freedom.
In the Constitution of India, freedom of religion is enshrined -primarily, but not exclusively, in Article 25. Religious freedom is envisaged as freedom of conscience, and the right to choose for oneself accordingly.
The legal outlook that prevails in India regarding the scope of Article 25 has spelt out by the Supreme Court in Rev. Stanislaus vs. The State of Madhya Pradesh & Others (January 17, 1977). In that verdict, the Apex Court prescribed that the right to propagate does not imply the right to convert. The logical anomaly in this conclusion has been glossed over. Very likely, that lacuna stemmed from the Court’s overlooking the difference between the human and the animal, even though ‘human rights’ are fundamentally rights that inhere in being human.
The exercise of religious freedom involves deliberation on the comparative claims or merits of available options. Deliberation involves imagination. Weighing the pros and cos is an imaginative exercise; for the consequences of the choice one makes are only potential, not actual, at the time of their being weighed. They lie in the future. Likely outcomes can only be reckoned imaginatively. Imagination is of two kinds: animal and human. Animal imagination is mostly perceptive. Animals can perceive the given situation, its needs, deprivations, dangers; but they cannot project their imagination beyond the present. As a result, they negotiate the present, sans any concern for the future. How the state to be obtained tomorrow could be made an improvement on what prevails today is outside of the deliberative reach of animals. But it is accessible to humans.
How does this bear on our present theme? Those who stand in need of conversion are victims of the status quo. In the present instance, the lower caste Hindus languishing in the caste system, the inhumanity of which all religious reformers and benefactors of humanity, from Lord Buddha to Ambedkar, have decried.
Conversion is licit in politics, in economics, in culture. No one has a problem when a politician shifts from one ideological camp to another, or when a whole nation is converted abruptly to globalization. A party loyalist shifting from his party to its polar opposite is considered smart. It is not unlike dying out of a party and being ‘born again’ in another. Why else would such migrants be washed clean of all criminal taints as a result? The means and strategies employed to bring about such conversions involve force, fraud, or both. But no one minds. In the religious context, though, its counterpart becomes seriously offensive.
The offence felt varies depending on the standing of the converts. If anyone converts from a minority religious community to the majority community it is hailed as natural and admirable. Also, if an elite Hindu embraces Islam or Christianity, the resentment felt, if any, is muted. The conversion of Hindu Dalits to one of the minority religions provokes extreme resentment.
What this proves -and this is what the Apex Court failed to consider- is that the offence felt about religious conversion pertains to the social and economic condition of the converts. The question that arises here is: Shouldn’t members of the Hindu lower castes have the freedom to deliberate not only perceptively but also proactively on their plight and act remedially on the conclusions they arrive at?
Here we must consider the difference between proactive deliberation and perceptive deliberation. Perceptive deliberation is common to animals and human beings. Its scope is limited to an awareness of the condition that prevails, and to working out survival strategies in the present. Perceptive deliberation excludes the possibility of exiting the given condition for a better one, except what pertains to the survival need of the animal concerned; as in seeking better pasture or climate via migration.
The scope of proactive and rational deliberation goes beyond that. It includes, besides the capacity to manage the present within the limits of the given condition, also the possibility to transcend the given plight. This is the logic of human progress as well. Denying the Dalits this freedom is a serious injustice.
So, the fundamental issue in respect of Article 25 is not the propagator’s right to convert, but the freedom of those who receive that propagation to embrace an alternate religious life. This freedom is available to all, except them. The Apex Court seems to have been more mindful of how conversion is seen and resented by Hindu upper castes. The need to give due regard to the right of Dalit Hindus to ameliorate their plight, rather than continue to languish in social degradation, has been underplayed. The need of the Hindu community to remain numerically intact took precedence over the right of low caste Hindus to exercise freedom of conscience.
I remember discussing this issue with Sheshadri Chari, who was at that time a BJP national spokesperson, when he called on me in St Stephen’s College. After a brief discussion, he agreed with me that the just and humane antidote to conversion from Hinduism to other faiths is for the majority community to acknowledge and treat the Dalits as fellow human beings and equal citizens. The more this duty is rejected, the greater the need to criminalize conversion.
The core issue here is the status of those who feel a desperate need to mitigate their plight. Shouldn’t they have the right to choose what they deem best for them? In this regard the onus is on the majority community. It can choose to recognize and empower the worth, dignity, and humanity of those who are consigned to the less than human plight they have suffered for generations. The Apex Court could have paid greater attention to this tragic reality, as the custodian of the Constitution of India.
