How The RSS Ghar Wapsi Programme Actually Hurts Hindus

How the RSS ghar wapsi programme actually hurts Hindus
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How the RSS ghar wapsi

programme actually hurts
Hindus
Since Ambedkar, the threat of Dalit conversions has driven reform
within Hinduism.
Shoaib Daniyal
Today 12:30 pm
7.3K |
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Photo Credit: Adnan Abidi/AFP
The Sangh Parivars ghar wapsi programme to convert members of

minority communities to Hinduism is driven by anxieties of Hindus
being lured away in droves from the faith of their ancestors by
Abrahamic missionaries. While the fears of an exodus from Hinduism
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Wednesday, March 18th 2015
Contrary to the Hindutva narrative, there were no missionaries

involved. Shyam Singh, a Dalit of the Valmiki caste, had converted to
Islam because he and his community members had been denied the
right to perform a puja at a local temple. Infuriated by the constant
harassment of law and order authorities, who supported the
dominant Yadav caste in denying Singhs Dalit Valmiki caste their
religious rights, Singh decided to change his faith altogether. For this
act of religious conversion, Singh was booked for disturbing peace
and communal harmony.
Terrified by the repercussions of his act, the Valmiki community of the
area is thinking of migrating to some other part of the country. Singh
is reported to be thinking of leaving the country altogether and
migrating to Nepal.
Empowering strategy for Dalits
This incident is a sharp case study of conversions in India and how
they act as an empowering strategy for Dalits. It also illustrates how
measures to stop conversion, both by the state and powerful political
forces, cause a great deal of harm to Dalits within Hinduism.
This is, of course, hardly the first instance of such a conversion. In the
60-odd years since Independence, Dalits across the country have used
conversion to protest caste atrocities several times. A prominent
example is the Meenakshipuram conversions of 1981, when more
than a 1,000 Dalits in a Tamil Nadu village converted to Islam as a
means to escape oppression from the landed Marava caste.
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repealed, five other states Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh,

Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh still have similar provisions on their
books.
In 2002, in Jhajjar, Haryana, after a mob beat five Dalits to death on
suspicion that they were hiding a dead cow, hundreds of Dalits
converted to Buddhism, Islam and Christianity as a protest. More
recently, in September 2014, four Dalits converted to Islam in
Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh as a reaction to caste discrimination.
However, they reverted to Hinduism after the police booked them
under the state's draconian anti-conversion law and Sangh Parivar
organisations, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, threatened to
punish them by destroying their crops and dispossess them of their
land.
The first and largest conversion of Dalits, though, was in 1956 in
Nagpur led by BR Ambedkar, the architect of India's Constitution.
Almost four lakh Dalits converted to Buddhism along with Ambedkar.
It was this act that started the process of Dalits employing conversion
as a tool to gain more rights within Indian society.
Ambedkarite conversion strategy
Ambedkar was very clear that conversion was vital for Dalits to
improve their lot. In 1935, he declared that he would not die a Hindu.
In a speech to the Bombay Presidency Mahar Conference in 1936, he
laid out his philosophy and strategy for religious conversion. He
declared that the caste system among the Hindus has the foundation
of religion, so long as the Dalits remain Hindus, you will have to
struggle for social intercourse, for food and water, and for inter-caste
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change your religion."
The roots of the Dalit movement to convert in order to gain better

rights go all the way back to the original Dalit reformer, Jyotirao
Phule. Sociologist Gail Omvedt writes: To Phule, the conversion
efforts of both Islam and Christianity were at least initially
emancipatory; he had written a long ballad, for example, on
Muhammad, and made statements of the sort that Muslims forcibly
converted the Shudras and Ati-Shudras and freed them from the
bonds of slavery to the Bhat-Brahmans.
The state and conservative elements of caste Hindu society have, of
course, not reacted too well to this Ambedkarite plan. Dalits who
convert are not allowed to benefit from reservation quotas. Five
states have anti-conversion laws to prevent a change of faith. Even in
states that do not have this law, the police comes down hard on Dalits
and adivasis converting, as was seen in Meerut a few days ago, with
Shyam Singh being farcically booked for disturbing peace and
communal harmony.
Ghar wapsi programme
The most recent reaction from the Sangh Parivar though is the ghar
wapsi campaign. Though this programme hit the headlines after
Narendra Modi came to power, attempts by the Sangh to convert
mainly Christian adivasis and Dalits to Hinduism are decades old.
Most of this consists of offering education and healthcare facilities,
though in places like Kandhamal in Orissa and the Dangs in Gujarat, it
has also resulted in mass violence.
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of impact is forgotten: caste emancipation. The Ambedkarite strategy

of using conversion as a stick to fight casteism has been quite
successful, even without mass conversions taking place or the fact that
caste, in varying degrees, still exists across all religions in India. The
mere threat of Dalit conversions has resulted in significant reform
within Hinduism (and the pace of reform since Ambedkar converted
has not been insignificant). In the present case, for instance, until
these Valmikis in Meerut decided to convert, the media ignored the
caste apartheid against them.
By restricting the freedom to convert, however, the ghar wapsi issue
undermines this Ambedarike strategy. In fact, for the Sangh Parivar,
the final aim of ghar wapsi is quite clear: a national anti-conversion
law. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief, Mohan Bhagwat had
suggested in December that there be a legislation in Parliament to
stop this practice [conversion]. By removing the stick of conversion,
the pace of reform within Hindu society will slow down.
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