(The Political Line newsletter is India’s political landscape explained every week by Varghese K. George, senior editor at The Hindu . You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
Three points to note about SC on conversions
If the number of Christians in the country increases, will it be a threat to India’s national security? The Supreme Court of India had some observations to make recently on the question. The Court has ordered the Centre to file an affidavit on or before November 22, detailing what actions it proposed to take to curb forced conversions. Conversions through force or allurement, the Court observed, “ultimately affect the security of the nation and freedom of religion and conscience of citizens…. Everybody has the right to choose their religion, but not by forced conversion or by giving temptation…”
Three points are noteworthy, following the Court’s observation.
First, the implied assumption is that higher the number of Christians in the country, higher the threat to India. The idea that nations are bound together by a shared religious affinity is not new or peculiar to India. That Hinduism is a foundational glue of the Indian nation is also nothing new. In fact, even during Jawaharlal Nehru’s premiership the issue of conversions was controversial and he himself disapproved of conversions, while reiterating the rights of the minorities to practise and propagate their faith. I think that any imagination of India as a nation would be difficult without accepting Hinduism as its foundation. At what point does such a position that a country has a cultural heritage degenerate into seeing minorities as a threat to the nation? This question has pummelled many countries in the past, and continues to do so in many countries today, including the United States.
The second problem in the Court’s approach is defining temptation, force etc for the purpose of determining the legitimacy of some conversions. Assuming that conversion of faith is primarily in the mind, and any outward expression of any faith is a matter of convenience and often tactical, the state getting into adjudicating it all is going to be messy. Compare it with a person changing her political affiliation — there could be allurement, a new understanding, or several other factors at play. And she can decide to not vote for the party that she campaigned for, at the end of it all! The pious objective of making politics free from allurement or freebies is not going to be easy to achieve. There are motivations for all human actions, and often they are material. What has influenced the mind of a person is only in the mind of the person and an outside agency has little access to that.
The third point is that the Court is calling upon the Centre to give itself sweeping powers to curb conversions. “But the difficulty is, who will file the complaint?… the State concerned may not file also… That is why the Union must step in,” the Court said.
In 2021, the same petitioner was warned by the Court for approaching it with the same plea, to have a law against conversions. “Why should a person above 18 years not choose his religion? What kind of a writ petition is this? We will impose heavy costs on you... Withdraw it or argue and risk the consequences,” Justice Nariman asked petitioner-advocate Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay. Justice Nariman reminded Mr. Upadhyay of the fundamental right under Article 25 of the Constitution to freely profess, practise and propagate religion, subject to public order, morality and health. “Why do you think there is the word ‘propagate’?’” Justice Nariman asked the petitioner.
As benches change, times change, Court’s views also change, it appears.
Federalism Tract
Dravidian parties of Tamil Nadu are celebrating the release from jail of six people convicted in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. This is an instance of regional pride and autonomy gone berserk. They not only walked out to freedom -- but also into stardom it seems. Still, Nalini, one of the convicts and part of the assassination conspiracy, was not happy apparently.
“I am not happy about my release because I lost most of my life serving the term in the prison. I was disheartened today (Saturday) when I saw that my husband (Murugan) [was] being taken in a vehicle that was used to take dogs while being shifted to a special camp in Tiruchi. Nevertheless, I will continue my struggle to bring him out of there soon.” Nalini was present at the scene where India’s former Prime Minister was killed in a suicide bombing, along with several others. She was sentenced to death, but it was commuted after the intervention of Sonia Gandhi, widow of the late Prime Minister.
I am opposed to the death penalty. I find the act of a state taking lives in a premeditated manner repulsive. I therefore would not have wanted to see the convicts get capital punishment. Commutation of death penalty should have meant them spending the rest of their lives in prison. Far from that, there is celebration of these convicts whose violence killed several people.
According to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, their release “is a victory for the strong legal battles we undertook soon after we came to power. This is a victory to all those working for human rights.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to release the convicts followed the precedent set by the release of Perarivalan, another accused in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case. The Court is using extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to do this. What does Article 142 say? Read this explainer.
Beyond my personal revulsion over the cheering of a former Prime Minister’s assassins, there are some philosophical questions that make discussions over nationalism, warfare and what is legitimate violence extremely complex. In fact, one of the released convicts said they should be seen as victims, and not perpetrators. I try to wrap my head around some of these issues. A fascinating thinker-soldier I follow is Benjamin Berell Ferencz, now 102 years old. He was an investigator of Nazi war crimes, after World War II, a Jew, who was once a U.S. soldier. His thoughts on warfare, and violence by state, are worth listening to.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview.
Interviewer: Did you meet a lot of people who perpetrated war crimes who would otherwise in your opinion have been just a normal, upstanding citizen?
Benjamin Ferencz: Of course, is my answer. These men would never have been murderers had it not been for the war. These were people who could quote Goethe, who loved Wagner, who were polite…
Interviewer: What turns a man into a savage beast like that?
Benjamin Ferencz: He’s not a savage. He’s an intelligent, patriotic human being.
Interviewer: He’s a savage when he does the murder though.
Benjamin Ferencz: No. He’s a patriotic human being acting in the interest of his country, in his mind.
Interviewer: You don’t think they turn into savages even for the act?
Benjamin Ferencz: Do you think the man who dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was a savage? Now I will tell you something very profound, which I have learned after many years. War makes murderers out of otherwise decent people. All wars, and all decent people.
You can read more here.
