Meaning of Freedom of Religion

The Meaning of Freedom of Religion - Proselytization : A Challenge to Freedom and Peace - by Swami Nirliptananda



1. Conversion : a false concept



Freedom is an essential characteristic of Hinduism. Every Hindu has a freedom of choice and freedom to worship. This is implied by the concept of “Ishta�? (chosen deity). No one has the right to interfere, condemn, or impose his own beliefs on others. That is the general outlook of the Indogenic religions. That is why there is hardly any conflict among them.

But the proselytising religions have a history of religious wars because the followers of each try to impose their own system of beliefs on the others. The whole idea of conversion is based on a false premise. It is based on the perception that if there were only one religion there would be harmony and peace in the world. Apart from the proselytising creeds there are many freethinkers who hold a similar view, particularly in India. Such a viewpoint still persists in spite of glaring facts about interreligious violence that one witnesses every day. In fact, inter-religious and sectarian violence is one of the basic threats to harmony and peace today. In view of the circumstances that now prevail we have got to look seriously at any article of faith that can be used to incite people to hate, to denigrate or to create situations that can lead to conflict. Since the declaration of the United Nations’ bill of the freedom to convert, the world has changed immensely. Our world has become like a global village. There are large numbers of multi-faith organisations among the civilised nations which believe in the principle of mutual coexistence.

With the changed circumstances presently, new laws are enacted to control those who take advantage of the old system to commit violence. Similarly new laws are needed to regulate the conduct of those who believe that they have a fundamental right to convert and dominate over others. It is one of the last vestiges of imperialistic rifle that still remains. The idea of “global village�? is to adopt values of universal significance, values that promote unity and harmony and not values that influence divisions and conflicts.

In the view of this, we are of the opinion that the United Nations’ declaration of the freedom to convert has overlived its existence since it favours a concept that is linked with conflicts and wars. Our position is that a bill be passed to the effect that label conversion as a threat to peace and is dangerous to harmonious existence in the modern civilisation that is armed with powerful weapons of destruction. A fair proposal would be that “religious activity in any form should not be done with a motive to convert. If someone is satisfied that by adopting another religion in which he/she would find better spiritual satisfaction, then every one should respect that choice�?. Such a position would get rid of distrust and create an atmosphere of harmony and peace among religions.

The violence in most countries is connected with the proselytising religions. We can take the Middle East, Indonesia, Philippines, Bosnia, Russia, China, ‘Kashmir and Afghanistan, etc., as examples. But when we look at the Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism in India and Taoism in China there is relatively peaceful coexistence among them because they believe in certain principles that are of universal application. Both peace and violence are inherent in human nature. One is achieved through knowledge and self-control and the other because of ignorance.



2. Lifeline



It appears that conversion is the lifeline of the proselytising creeds and means such as freedom of speech, logic, dialogue and discussions to discover the truth which can lead to peace are not encouraged. Such principles are replaced by dogmas. In England for example the number of people going to church has drastically declined and there were many redundant Churches at one time that had been converted to other usages. This decline may be true also in other countries.

Hence various means are adopted to get hold of people even by tempting them which is contrary to their own doctrines. If the charity work they provide is properly scrutinised it will reval that the motive is not compassion but to recruit people to fill the vacuum which otherwise the church would not be able to function.



3. Charity without compassion



The Churches’ claim to be charitable cannot be sustained because whatever they do is done for the sake of some favour, namely to convert. A rich Charity in Jamshedpur (Bihar) used to run a 44-bed hospital. The beds were about two feet wide with a metal base on which was an inch thick mattress. To lie on such a bed must have been torturous. But beggars are not choosers and the poor had no alternative. If charitable work is not motivated by compassion, what else could be the reason?

The Bharat Sevashram Sangha started their leprosy project in the same area in a hospital made of thatched roof and mud walls. But the three feet wide beds with three inches thick mattresses which they provided were quite comfortable. Later, when they could afford, the Sangha established proper hospitals and the Charity’s hospital was handed over to the Sangha. It is an indication that conversion happens only because of material needs. To take advantage of another’s difficult situation cannot be called charitable. The objective of religion is to transform the exploitative instinct of man into the spirit of sharing and caring.



4. Temptation



To maintain their existences, some religions use conversion as a sort of commercial trade to get hold of people at any cost. It is like another kind of slave trade practised in a more subtle form. I was once targeted in the 1960s while in Britain and was offered a Parish church. I was told that I would be a good preacher. It was clearly a tempting offer but it was declined because of my understanding of both Hinduism and Christianity.

It can hardly be denied that temptation is one of the main approaches used to convert ignorant and poor people despite the fact that temptation is regarded as a cardinal sin. But, for the purpose of conversion everything seems to be excusable and religious ideals become perverted in the process. Families are divided, countries are divided, brothers and sisters fight with one another, and properties are looted; all these find support under the cover of conversion. Some of the countries in Africa and elsewhere still remain poor although their populations have been converted.



5. Conversion will not stop by pleading



Conversion cannot be stopped by pleading but by duplicating the services offered by the missionaries and educating the Hindus about the greatness of their culture. If the services offered by them are provided by the Hindus there will be no conversion. People only change their religion because there is no alternative service being provided.

During a recent discussion with one of those who believed in conversion I was made to understand that there were fundamentalists in Hinduism. I refuted her statement and pointed out that the people she called fundamentalists were reacting to conversion and if it was stopped the reactionaries would simply disappear. But I was told that conversion could not be stopped. My reply was that she was the fundamentalist because she thought that she had the fundamental right to convert others and they had no right to convert others and they had no right to resist.



6. proselytizers are sensitive to conversion from their own religion



I know of a lady who embraced Hinduism and those who belonged to her former faith tried to get her back into their fold but she refused. Finally, twelve of them went to argue and convince her that it was wrong for her to leave her religion. They are very sensitive to conversion from their religion but do not think that others feel the same.



7. Conclusion



Compare the above with the tolerant Hindu with a universal outlook and one gets the message. They are like pawns in the hands of the proselytising creeds whose hidden agenda and motives are concealed under the cloak of charity. The question one may ask is: how can one reconcile the multicultural spirit with conversion? The fact is that proselytizers often use the multi-cultural organisations and platforms to promote themselves. Hindus who are by nature multicultural are easily taken in by the pretensions of the proselytising religions. As I mentioned earlier, conversion is so central to the proselytising creeds that it is impossible for them to renounce it without dire consequences. Therefore, those belonging to the non-proselytising religions will have to work out their own strategies to confront them.

(A talk given at the World Congress for the preservation of Religious Diversity held In New Delhi, India, from Nov 15th to 17th 2001)



Author: Swami Nirliptananda

Source: Secularism Combat 2009 December



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Conversion and jihad are two sides of the same coin

The new Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity (which was made notorious by Mother Teresa), Sister Mary Prema, made two revelations - that religious conversion "is God's work" and that - if she received divine inspiration, she would go to Kandhamal. The first statement, of describing conversions as God's work, is the usual cliche, handy to all those involved in conversion. Conversion is to Christianity what jihad is to Islam.

Sister Prema explained, "Every human being has the right to believe. Each person is born with dignity. Religious conversion is God's work". The contradictions galore within these sentences are glaring. If every person has the right to believe, then where is the need to initiate that person to something new and strange, in which that person is not born in?

Should one God be exorcised out of the person and another God be installed to uphold the dignity with which this person was born? This is actually what conversion is all about. Why this rupturing of the person from what he/she was?

God of invasions

What Sister Prema really means is that every person has a need to be converted and hence the right of the person to believe is conditioned and restricted to only believing in the God in whom Sister Prema and her church believes. This is what Sister Prema articulated when she so naively asserted that every person has a right to believe and every person is born with dignity. That this God is only 2000 years old and somehow seems to be always in the company of those who invade the land of others, is another dimension which needs a longer treatise.

If conversion is God's work, then whose work is re-conversion? Sister Prema, the Superior General of the MoC (Missionaries of Charity), and the whole armies of Christian missionaries involved in conversion, have failed this god miserably - because their God has failed them. If conversion is God's work, he seems to be rather slow and inefficient. The Catholic Church has the biggest army of nuns and priests and the Christian evangelical churches have their own brand of evangelists; the Southern Baptists alone as a group has nearly 100,000 career missionaries in North India.

It is the simple unarmed, poverty-stricken tribals and passive Hindus that this God and his divine inspired missionaries target. Yet it is not so easy; despite the enormous funds that flow and the armies at the disposal of this God, he had to give divine inspiration to massacre an unarmed poor Swamiji whom he found a great hurdle to the spread of his kingdom.

Conversion is violence

Sister Prema has unwittingly exposed the bluff of the Congress and UPA leaders. We are told that conversion is not taking place. Conversion takes different forms - globally, it is disguised as a military coup, violence, and very often, a deception of service and development is given to this violent conversion. Yes, conversion is violence wrought on a person - to deprive the person of his/her dignity, which according to Sister Prema, every person is born with - to tear the person off his affinity, his religious heritage and make him/her an alien; a psychological bleeding to death.

Christianity and conversion are two sides of the same coin. Wherever Christianity went, it was bloodshed-destruction, and a hidden agenda of political power, economic aggrandizement, and pauperization of the victims. In the words of Jomo Kenyatta (of Kenya), "when the missionaries came they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, 'Let us pray,' We closed our eyes, when we opened them, they had our lands and we had the Bible."

This is true not only in Africa, but all over the globe. Those countries which broke away from the stranglehold of the Vatican became progressive - like Canada, Australia, England. But those colonized by Catholic powers like Spain, Portugal Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, Italy are mired in military rule and church tyranny. Christianity today likes to be seen as a peace-loving, compassionate religion of brotherhood. But far from it - the religion was born in blood and grew in bloodshed. Economic and political powers are its hidden agenda, covered with service organizations, educational institutions etc.

Perhaps Sister Prema is too naïve to understand and she and all nuns and priests are ignorant of church history. These nuns and priests are brainwashed into this service and love of the poor mission. Many soon realize, but then it is too late, especially in India, to be courageous and pull out. They become voices in the wilderness and the church is too powerful for ordinary innocent and truthful persons to fight against.

Kandhamal – wither justice?

This brings me to Sister Prema's pious wish - that she would visit Kandhamal if she receives 'divine inspiration' and would definitely intervene. One wonder what intervention is she talking about - intervene for whom and with whom? Sister Prema would do a greater service if she visited the ex-nun Jesme in Kerala and listened to her tale of sexual harassment within the convent - how she was betrayed by her own and even had to submit physically to priests.

This is nothing new and not a singular case, but happenings that have been on for ages. These sexual escapades, including rape and murder, have been happening within the confines of the convents and the church compounds. Only when a nun is raped outside these confines, then all hell breaks loose. Sister Prema could direct her divine inspired mission to empathize with Sister Jesmy and many like her, and intervene with the church authorities. The Superior General of the MoC (Missionaries of Charity) should be aware that nuns are on contraceptives, nuns have begotten children of bishops and priests, whole dioceses have been sold in the USA to pay the compensation for the sexual violation of altar boys by priests.

A Jesuit province in the USA has declared itself insolvent because it cannot garner the huge funds to pay the compensation to the sexual victims of priests. Be it in India or in other parts of the world, all this pales into nothing - only Kandhamal occupies and covers the whole vision of the pious Christians, and Sister Prema is no exception. I suggest she first visit the ashram of Swami Laxmanananda and soothe the terror-stricken children in whose presence the 84-year old Swamiji was brutally butchered. Three sanyasis present were also killed. Will Sister Prema intervene with those murderers and see that justice is done?

Why Income Tax exemption?

One last request, Sister Prema and her MoC (Missionaries of Charity) work for the poor, she claims. Then why should the money meant for the poor of this country find its way to the coffers of Rome? It is very difficult to divest conversion and money. Are the accounts of the MoC (Missionaries of Charity) being audited? If not, why?

Why should the lands and church properties be exempted from tax and auditing? This is something anti-national. Money cannot change its value simply because it is held in the hands of a particular community - all monies must be accounted for. Is it not strange that those working in Minority education institutions and drawing UGC pay scales are Income tax assesses, but priests and the nuns working in the same institutions are exempted from paying Income Tax? They too draw the same salaries, if not more for less work, and hold individual bank accounts and draw pensions till death, all from tax-payer monies. Why should they be exempted from paying Income Tax? This is just one area to show that the workings of Sister Prema and all missionaries are a big money-spinning business.

Power to hurt

A special vocabulary must be coded to understand the language of the Christians. Power is sugar-coated and called service. Forgiveness is easily extended to those who hurt them - to show how compassionate they are. But they refuse to stop hurting others - they refuse to stop dehumanizing the tribals and the poor. Why don't they leave the poor alone?

If despite the enormous funds which have flowed and are flowing from abroad, combined with the government's Five Year Plans and a globally powerful God by their side, missionaries are not able to diminish poverty, to reduce hunger and assetlessness, then is it not time to pause and take stock of what is fundamentally wrong? Who is swindling whom? Why are the poor kept in poverty? Why should the poor continue to be poor, why should backwardness be ever growing?

Account for the work that has been so far carried on and stop the pauperization and plunder of this country and its poor. Should we wait for Sister Prema and the likes of her for divine inspiration to be just logical and sensible?

Tailpiece

Even the Pope has lost his ability to pray and has now assigned the Archbishop of Guwahati to script prayers for him! The Catholic Church needs prayer scripters - for it is unable to turn the hearts and souls of its followers to that spirit within themselves and seek redemption and justice.

The author, Prof. Mrs. Hilda Raja, is a retired Professor from Stella Maris College, Chennai, and lives in Vadodara.

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