The Conversion Factor

It’s not just the Marwari girl who is converting to Islam but also a Punjabi munda who has embraced Buddhism. A Parsi chhokri has converted to Hinduism and a Tamil Iyer boy has accepted Jesus Christ as his new Lord and Saviour.

My wife and I hail from different religions and we legalised our union 11 years ago with a simple registered marriage. We were both blessed to have truly secular parents,who didn’t feel it necessary to ask either of us to change our respective religions in order to accept us into their fold. I am acutely aware that such cases are rare where neither side expects the other to convert either for religious or social reasons.

Obviously,faith plays a very important part in many people’s lives and one can never discount the value of someone else’s beliefs. The devout across diverse religions believe they are genuinely saving the soul of a heathen or infidel by converting them to the right path.

These days in cosmopolitan cities,it is often the enormous pressure that families feel from within their own community that compels them to ask an outsider marrying their child to convert to their religion. The stigma and betrayal of the clan by allowing your child to marry an outsider is effectively nullified by making his or her future partner a member of your own faith.

Most religions willingly accept,even encourage,converts so their tribe may thrive. It is only Zoroastrianism that forbids religious conversion and recently a few dustoors have been ostracised for officiating at weddings where Parsis have married parjaats or outsiders.

My four friends who recently converted to different faiths before getting married are all highly educated,intelligent,secular individuals. Their sole reason for converting was to appease the family members of their spouses. They feel no great affinity for the religion they have just embraced and some are already disenchanted by the tenets of their new faith.

It is highly unlikely that any of them will become religious zealots or be moved by the legendary fervour of the freshly converted.

This perhaps is the true secularism of new India. Happily relinquish the faith you were born into if it means making your soulmate’s family happy.

Simply live and let live. And may all dogma,decrees and doctrines be damned.

samarofdiscontent@gmail.com