Faith accompli

Why, then, a new and special ordinance, rushed through, with barely three weeks to go before the assembly meets? Or is this manoeuvre only a part of Jayalalithaa’s political agenda, thinly concealed of late, of cosying up to the BJP?

Is the raising of the conversion bogey, a follow-up to her recent attempt to reopen the debate on that party’s other pet theme of Sonia Gandhi’s ‘foreign origins’?

Jayalalithaa’s new ordinance reeks of bad faith. It is a crude attempt to play to the Hindutva gallery, a nod to the aggressive campaign that has long been waged by the VHP-Bajrang Dal combine against the minorities by stoking fears of forcible conversions.

In the environment of distrust and fear that they seek to create, it becomes increasingly difficult to rescue the individual’s fundamental right to ‘profess, practice and propagate’ the religion of his or her own choice from cases where unlawful means are indeed deployed to convert those following other religions.

In such a climate, ‘force’ and ‘fraud’ suddenly become grey areas mined with ambiguity, unresistingly hijacked by the bigoted and the powerful. Jayalalithaa’s ordinance cannot but stir insecurities in the minority communities in her state of persecution and victimisation.

Sections of the BJP and its sister organisations have been loud in their demand for a public debate on conversions. By all means, there must be one.

But it is necessary first to set the stage for an open and inclusive dialogue. Be it Vajpayee’s call for such a debate while VHP-Bajrang Dal goons stoked fears in the Dangs in Gujarat a few years ago, or Jayalalithaa’s patently political move now, there is no reason to be confident that such a debate can happen in the near future.