The only incident in Kerala comparable to noted writer Madha-vikutty nee Kamala Das's conversion to Islam is that of Rama Va- rma, heir to the Kochi throne, who embraced Christianity in 1835 and became the first indigenous missionary.To-day Rev Yakob Rama Varma, who he-lped Hermann Gundert in compiling the first Malayalam dictionary, is rememb-ered for his autobiography, the first in Malayalam, which he read out at his ordination in 1856. It is a mere coincidence that Kamala Sorayya, as she has re-christened herself, also earned fame for her autobiographical work Ente Katha (My St-ory) published in 1976.Her conversion, which is to be solemnised on December 23, has evoked reactions ranging from a congratulatory tele-gram sent by the Muslim fundamentalist leader Abdul Madani from his prison cell to threats to liquidate her and burn the cinema theatre at Punnayoorkulam, her native village where a documentary on her, Malayalathinte Madhavikutty (Madhavik-utty of Malayalam), was to be shown. Wh-ile a fewwriters like O.V. Vijayan and Paul Zachariah have praised her courage of conviction, most others have called her decision crazy. But then crazy people do not convert when they are three score and seven and that too in such a brazen manner!Craziness is, perhaps, the easiest explanation for her conduct. In any case, Kamala Das is not one who can be strait-jacketed.A fiercely independent person, whose writings bear proof that she can delineate even the subtlest shades of feeling in the human heart, her My Story was a path-br-eaking literary event in that she bared her heart like no other writer of her eminence had ever done in Malayalam. It shocked the cultural sensibilities of the Malayali like her grandfather Nalappad Narayana Menon's Ratisamrajyam, a treatise on the science of sex, did because it was from the same pen that Chakravalam (Horizon) that established the height of his philosophical vision had emerged.The kind of reaction that My Story evoked was such that it forced her husband, the lateMad-hava Das, to issue a disclaimer that the sexual liaisons that she narrated in it were purely fictional. Those who call Kamala Das crazy now did not do so when in May last year she celebrated the explosion at Pokharan by preparing payasam (sweetened rice) and distributing it. It was the time when she like Bhagat Singh, who was an atheist and a Com-munist to boot was being appropriated by the Hindutvadis.There are some who see her decision as a slap in the face of all those who have raked up the issue of conversion to pit communities against co-mmunities and thereby reap political dividends. What is unfortunately overlooked in all this is Kamala Das' spiritual yearning over a period of 27 years, which is at the root of her conversion. It is the Indian citizen's right to convert that she has exercised. And it is a right that is increasingly being questioned in the country.Come to think of it, if the Freedom of Religion Bill, now under consideration in the Gujarat Assembly, is passed and extended toKerala, all her Muslim friends who influenced her directly or indirectly, could be arraigned in a court of law. She would have had a tough time convincing the court that her conversion was absolutely vo-luntary. Endowed as she is with talent, material and intellectual, she may succeed but not a poor man, who too may want spiritual salvation like her in a religion other than in which he was born and share the joy with others. He may end up in jail, instead.Writers like Arun Shourie have argued that what the Constitution proclaims is the right to preach and not any right to convert (Harvesting Our Souls, ASA, 1999) and often refer to the restrictions imposed on such rights by the special laws that exist in Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Arunachal Pradesh. They also refer to the fact that such laws were upheld by the Supreme Court. But this is what Law Minister Ram Jethmalani had sa-id in Bombay on March 18, 1979: ``It is the Supre-me Court of the Emer-gency period which sustained the constitutional validity ofthose measu-res. As a student of law, without committing contempt of court, I am free to say that the Supreme Court is wrong. I have no doubt that some day the Supreme Court, more properly and adequately informed about the legal provisions, will reverse that decision.''While this legal infirmity is yet to be set right, the bogey of conversions undermining society is raised with ulterior motives. How does it matter if all of a sudden Ka-mala Das finds spiritual fulfillment in Is-lam and protection in the burka? When Hinduism allows even atheism a place under its umbrella and no less a person than Guruji Golwalkar of the RSS had condescended to include Jesus Christ and Pro-phet Mohammed among the Hindu Pa-ntheon of 330 million gods, why should her conversion bother even the die-hard Sa-ngh Parivar adherents? Are they all not different paths to the same destination?In the debate on conversion, it is Ma-hatma Gandhi who is often quoted by those who want to curtail the freedom to convert. It is true that hehad strong views on conversions but it should be seen against the backdrop of the distress and shock he had when his second son Manilal fell in love with a married Hindu woman in 1926 and his eldest son Harilal became a Muslim and wrote articles berating him using a pseudonym "Abdulla".He called Harilal a ``ne'er-do-well who had sold himself to the highest bidder''. Gandhiji is undoubtedly the man of the millennium but some of his views were indeed retrograde as when he disapproved of inoculation against smallpox and described the devastating Bihar earthquake in 1934 as a divine punishment for the "untouchability" practised in the state just as many a Christian evangelist sees the Orissa supercyclone as a divine punishment for the killing of Graham Staines and his children.Yet, the very same Gandhi wrote to Sa-muel Evans Stokes, an American missionary, when he converted himself to Hind-uism, ``What a joy it would be when people realise that religion consists not in outward ceremonial but an ever-growinginward response to the highest impulses that man is capable of.'' His Christian friends who felt traumatised at that time did not know that Stokes was at least fifty years ahead of his time for the Indian church later found merit in all the reform measures he had suggested and implemented them one by one. While every conversion is a lesson, to impute motive and to characterise it as violence is to foment trouble. Eminent journalist P. Sa-inath who visited Meenakshipuram has fo-und that not one of the Scheduled Castes who converted to Islam in 1981 did it for considerations of money as propagated. They are all happy in their new religion. One can only wish the same to Kamala Sorayya.
