What the row over mass conversion says about politics

The brutalisation of Dalits and Adivasis is on the rise in India. The federal government’s numbers reinforce that. The Karnataka horror was preceded by an analogous case of enslavement in Jharkhand, the place Sunita Devi, a tribal lady, was hit with iron rods and even made to lick urine off the ground. The perpetrator was allegedly Seema Patra, a now-suspended state Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) chief who earlier held a celebration put up within the ladies’s wing.

But, what has obsessed the media and dominated the political discourse is the resignation of Rajendra Pal Gautam, the erstwhile minister for social welfare within the Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi authorities.

The explanation? He was on stage at a mass conversion meet the place BR Ambedkar’s vows have been chanted by these current, together with Gautam, as they embraced Buddhism and “renounced” Hinduism. The 22 “vows” are a reference to a different conversion assembly held greater than 60 years in the past in Nagpur on October 15. That’s when Babasaheb — the architect of India’s Structure, the person whose portraits mark a presence on the partitions of each authorities workplace, the disruptive mental whose ubiquitous blue statue is current in virtually each small city of this nation — together with 365,000 different Dalits, took an oath to go away Hinduism. They pledged their renunciation and have become Buddhists, declaring they’d not worship Brahma, Vishnu or Mahesh.

Because the BJP’s Dalit leaders have identified, these declarations usually are not an assault on Hinduism however a protest towards casteism. Whereas there is no such thing as a derogatory phrase about any Hindu deity, there’s, after all, a rejection of a perception system primarily based on the fact of their social oppression.

Whereas conversions have all the time been a politically unstable topic, what has unfolded since Gautam’s occasion is farcical. He has been summoned by the police and interrogated as if he’s a petty felony.

In election season, the BJP rapidly pounced on the conversions as proof of the Aam Aadmi Social gathering (AAP)’s anti-Hindu slant. Hoardings with Kejriwal sporting a cranium cap — shorthand for being pro-Muslim — surfaced in Gujarat, the place the celebration is attempting to develop roots forward of the meeting elections. Consequently, Gautam has been hounded out of workplace. And much from standing by him, the AAP has successfully dumped its most distinguished Dalit face.

Gautam has since identified — and no one has a counter to this — that the “vows’ on the coronary heart of the controversy are, actually, a part of the 17-volume sequence of the collected works of Ambedkar, revealed by a government-run basis. In different phrases, Gautam is being punished for following a person supposedly revered by Indian politicians throughout celebration strains.

The try and criminalise conversions has been increase. A number of states, together with Karnataka, have legislated on this course, passing anti-conversion legal guidelines rooted within the argument that luring or coercing somebody into altering religion needs to be punishable by regulation.

Whereas Article 25 particularly provides residents the precise to profess, practise and propagate faith, states have imposed “cheap restrictions” on this proper by arguing that the alternatives usually are not all the time freely made. The Supreme Court docket additionally upheld the authorized validity of those state interventions. Within the 1977 Rev. Stainislaus vs State Of Madhya Pradesh case, then chief justice AN Ray led a five-judge bench to conclude that “the Article (25) doesn’t grant the precise to transform different individuals to 1’s personal faith however to transmit or unfold one’s faith by an exposition of its tenets.”

The rhetoric of politics can, after all, make mincemeat of those authorized nuances. And that’s what has occurred within the Gautam case. In an interview with me, he requested the inconvenient query: “If we’re Hindu, why do you hate us a lot — aap itni nafrat kyon karte hain?” — referencing caste atrocities.

The BJP’s political venture would naturally want to subsume caste hierarchies inside a bigger, consolidated Hindu id. Its ambitions to court docket the Dalit voter within the North Indian heartland have met with success, particularly amongst non-Jatav Dalits. The consecutive wins in Uttar Pradesh underline how a mix of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s reputation, Hindutva, welfare measures equivalent to free rations and the close to demise of events such because the Bahujan Samaj Social gathering, have enabled this, despite the fact that the celebration carried out higher in reserved seats in 2017 than in 2022.

With Gujarat elections across the nook, anticipate aggressive politics to dominate the noise and the information cycle. And anticipate little dialog in regards to the precise plight of marginalised communities.

Barkha Dutt is an award-winning journalist and writer The views expressed are private