CONCLUSION: Freedom of Religion as a Human Rights Issue

 

CONCLUSION

 

An analysis of some the salient characteristics of the Indian constitution explicitly unveils the commitment of the framers of the Indian constitution to instill plurality especially religious, cultural and linguistic, in all aspects of public life.

The preamble of the constitution adorns with the essential principles of Justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Its role in interpretation of the constitution keeps alive the secular character. This is adequate to strengthen religious freedom in India. The article on citizenship assures equality of citizens before the law. The fundamental rights, which are enforceable through a court of law explicitly, guarantee freedom of religion to all the citizens of this country. The connection between fundamental rights and human rights in India further validate the credibility of freedom of religion in India, because freedom of religion is also a human rights concern.

The directive principles of the constitution cannot be enforced through the court of law but it guides the states to maintain justice and equality to all in matters of welfare. It does not allow the states to discriminate people on religious grounds despite the fact that some states have legislated freedom of religion laws to prevent conversion from one religion to the other.

 The fundamental duties are for all the citizens of this country. Their emphasis on preserving communal harmony is significant form the point of freedom of religion in India.

The inclusion of the word secular in the preamble of the Indian constitution has enhanced the fundamental rights of all the citizens of India from the point of freedom of religion along the line of human rights. Freedom of religion guaranteed in the constitution is always subject to the sovereignty of the nation.

The principle of secularism was well conceived in India much before independence. Although the word ‘secular’ is not defined in the Indian constitution some of the crucial directions of the Supreme Court in the matters of secularism like, in a secular state the state shall be neutral in matters of religion, every individual has freedom of religion, religion should not be used for political ends and politics and religion cannot be mixed, are handy.

There is a contrast between real secularism and Hindutva brand. The first promises freedom of religion to all the citizens of India and the second attempts Hindu dominance over the other. In order to force the second the proponents and advocates of secularism are criticized. And also to undermine the importance of secular state, the fundamentalists try to make a false distinction between western and Indian secularism and mix up secularism and nationalism. Another attempt in this direction is the introduction of positive secularism, which cuts at the roots of religious freedom.

Secularism as understood in the Indian polity is a balanced one in terms of protecting the interests of the minorities and also in terms of maintaining the sovereignty of the nation in all matters.  What some of the communal agencies asks is the majority rule over the minority on the basis of majority religious sentiments at the cost of minority religious sentiments. Therefore politicization of religion is the major challenge a secular state has to face.

The democratic framework of Indian constitution provides concrete platform to work with like-minded people to preserve secularism in India. Preservation of secularism spontaneously paves the way for the enjoyment of religious freedom. The outstanding witness for the civilization of a nation is its approach to freedom of religion.

What is required and necessary in the time of cultural post-modernity is one must have the freedom to choose the religion of his or her choice without obstructions. It is unconstitutional and unethical to claim the right to convert a person. Burdening this provision with further legislations on faulty premises counterfeits the original provision of the constitution.

Interpreting conversions as a strategy to increase the number of votes undermines the pertinent issues that necessitate conversion. It is time that the so-called majority community carefully examines the political, social, economic, religious, cultural reasons behind conversions. Conversion need not be viewed as a ground for curtailing the state privileges one is constitutionally entitled to.

Conversion for liberation, transformation and empowerment need support and cooperation from all communities.  It is a folly that those who oppose religious conversion for whatever reasons may be, practice it under different nomenclatures.

The Sang Parivar assert unjustifiable communal merit by engrossing the term Hindu. The word Hindu was essentially used to denote a group of people living in a particular geographical locality and hence it cannot be used to the whole of India. Loading the word ‘Hindu’ with religious substance and saying that India had only Hinduism is another threat to religious freedom in India. Using a historically unclear word ‘Hindu’ to discriminate people adhering to different traditions of faith orientations is the most dangerous religious discrimination one can think about. Further, utilizing such tarnished definition to gather political gains implies undermining the wisdom of the people and intending to create disharmony and hatred among people. The obvious revelation is that earlier the people of India were divided on caste grounds. Now they are divided on religious grounds. The worrisome outcome is disharmony and religious hatred in the society.

Hindutva brand of history aims to absorb the natives of this land and uplift the invaders. It also divides the people on religious grounds. The Hindu communalists demand that they should have a Hindu nation. They view all the social reforms that are taking place in the Hindu society as the influence of the minority religious communities to destroy Hinduism in India. The dangerous demand they place to the governments in power is the removal of structures where once assumingly a Hindu temple existed. In their perception the expression Hinduism is not correct. It is only a part of Hindutva and hence Hinduness is a more preferable expression. They also make a distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva. The Hindutva ideology is communal and fundamental and designed to serve certain parochial interests

 Hindutva implies a common nation (Rashtra), a common race (Jati) and a common civilization (Sanskriti). The reality is that the Hindutva as explicated by its followers are irrelevant to the Indian context. The critics have visualized enormous threat from the ideology of Hindutva to a nation like India. It is painful that Hindutva serves the interest of the few at the cost of the underprivileged and religious minorities in India. It also promotes communal hatred and religious disharmony. Hindutva uses violence as a means to achieve its objectives. And it is an alarming signal to people who prefer freedom, secularism and democracy.

The RSS is the main organization fully committed to the Hindutva ideology. The RSS is up against all non-Hindu religious traditions of this land. Yet it sheds crocodile tears to accommodate the minorities in its fold. It hides behind the shadow of Hindu communal nationalism.  Although the usage of nationalism is charitably pressed into service, the RSS does not respect the sentiments and principles of this nation. Obviously the RSS agenda is fundamentalist, communalist and no way relevant to the Indian context, which requires a harmonious blend of many religions, cultures, languages and practices towards liberating the underprivileged in the society. BJP is the political arm of RSS. Its strategy is to communalize every program. It is against freedom of religion and the principles of the constitution.

The Sangh Parivar portray the minorities as disloyal to nation, destroyers of Hindu culture and encouraging conversion. This is nothing but vilification. They speak against conversion but do it with other names. They oppose reservation so that the underprivileged will remain in their age-old condition forever. Their brand of history is destructive as it aims at creating communal hatred against religious communities. In all their activity the majority psyche dominates. That is, the minorities will live at the mercy of the majority. Their unachievable target of going back to the issue of partition is a castle on the air. The more dangerous threat to the nation-secularism, democracy and constitution is the proposal for positive secularism.

The Hindutva ideology is manipulating the constitutional provision of freedom of religion in India through proposing strange nationalisms. The first of that kind is Hindu nationalism, which is dangerously striving to create a Hindu nation in a country, which is the house of innumerable religious traditions. Its proposal for a religious nationalism based upon Hindu religious elements too is a sugarcoated ideology. Its main agenda is denying freedom of religion to others by spiritualizing matters. It is unbelievable that an ideology, which promotes caste system, religious intolerance and religious nationalism, can in any way promote world unity and human welfare. The religious and cultural unity to which the Hindutva alludes is Hindu culture and Hindu religion. These two unities are never possible in India where diverse religions naturally grow and various cultures enrich and educate each other.

The motherland nationalism is to instigate one religious community against the other. By spiritualizing the nation, Parivar create enmity with other religions. The aim of the motherland nationalism is to tell the people that the Aryans are the original people. And they alone are patriotic and all others are disloyal to the nation. Hence the religious minorities in India should not be given freedom rather they should be removed from India. This motherland nationalism is loaded with hatred towards other religious communities. One fact needs underlining is that the symbol of mother without religious connotations have inspired many people during the course of independence struggle. The problem confronted here is the ‘Hinduising’ of national symbols.

 A more dangerous nationalism than this is the caste nationalism, which is purely an Aryan plot to fool and deceive the natives that caste the wholly abhorred evil is the basic uniting force of our nation.   The Sang Parivar know well that if other religions are uninterrupted the caste will lose its basis and its control over the people.

Another deceptive nationalism is cultural nationalism. The Hindu cultural Nationalism is a direct propagation of anti-minorityism. The promotion of cultural nationalism is nothing but denying freedom of religion to the citizens of this nation on the pretext that they leave their ancient religion and choose an alien faith tradition.

It is crucial that all the political parties, religious affiliations and all the reasoning resources in India have to be vigilant about this dreadful ideology. There is a need to deeply involve in educating people so as to see that the communal comrades do not continue their gains always.

It is fortunate that the great patriots of this nation has taught us territorial nationalism and achieved independence on this ground and have placed the wheels of the nation on territorial and secular framework. It is our unflinching duty to preserve this and prevent the erroneous and communal ideologies gaining ground. We need to have commitment for real and united and territorial nationalism. 

It is clear that our nation is for territorial nationalism based upon the principle of secularism.  All the other forms of nationalisms are divisive. The Parivar have the monolithic agenda of denying plurality to the home of plurality. Very especially the strange nationalisms of the Sangh Parivar are only to deny freedom of religion to the people. Their nationalisms are not based on real patriotism but based upon fundamental and communal understanding of Hinduism. Hence their nationalism is of no relevance to India.

The Indian constitution disallows anyone to divide or discriminate people on religious ground. Article twenty-five to twenty-eight of the Constitution guarantee the Right to Freedom of Religion. But the Sang Parivar wrongly interpret the humanitarian assistance provided to the underprivileged section of the society by the minority religions as allurement towards converting to other religion.  It is intolerable to people who have been perpetually practicing inequality in the society to see the liberation, transformation, empowerment and emancipation offered to the underprivileged in the society to live with dignity and status.

The freedom of religion bills enacted in different states to stop forced conversion indirectly encourages conversion to Hinduism and denounces conversion to any other religion. This is a well-conceived communal program

to discourage freedom of religion to the minorities.   The bills are politically motivated and communally targeted. It is only to gain political points through religious sentiments. In other words it is the unveiling of the parochial interests of the majority complexed people to control and hinder the development and freedom of the minorities. The painful truth is that in spite of the failure in curtailing the freedom of religions to the religious minorities in India through the freedom of religion bills, the inconveniences caused to the ordinary citizens are numerous and they affect the individual freedom of many people.

The constitutional provisions and safeguards to the educational privileges of the minority communities are lamented over by the Hindu communal forces. This is a willful and determined effort to conceal the main communal agenda and to subvert the interests of the socially, economically, politically and educationally disadvantaged communities. For centuries together these groups were kept under ignorance. Their right to education and knowledge were suppressed by several means including religious. Now when the opportunities are blooming for the underprivileged the erstwhile masters are alarmed.

The false claim for a superficial Hindu religious tolerance is loaded with attributed meaning and substances towards denying freedom of religion to other minority religious communities. Besides projecting the communal brand of tolerance as the best, the communal forces have embarked on Hindutva brand of freedom in the place of freedom of religion.

The plan to replace the freedom of religion with spiritual freedom is calculated to continue with the oppressive social system, which is source of all forms of discrimination in India.  Some of the Hindu intellectual scholarships are malignly used to divide the society on communal grounds.

Whether it is Hindus or Muslims or anyone who uses religion for political purposes is contravening the constitutional provisions of secularism in India. And this directly has bearing on the genuine quest for freedom of religion for the religious minorities in India, because in this risky venture the numerically powerful has the bright possibility of oppressing the numerically less powerful religious groups.

Implementing and preserving the constitutional provisions in connection with freedom of religion shall put to rest many of the contemptuous issues in India. When political interests overshadow these provisions the nation succumbs to the tactfulness of communalists and fundamentalists.

No doubt, communal politics under the guise of majority culture and religion cannot be accepted and it is unfit for the health and prosperity of the nation which is the house of many religious traditions. The amount of religious freedom prevailing in a nation is the yardstick to measure its civilization.

The word minority is not defined in the Indian constitution but the varied forms of available definitions symbolize the complexity of the minority issue. In a pluralist nation like India, listing a group as minority has its merits but that is not the final settlement of the issue. The possible answer is that the governments cannot fail in maintaining equality to all the citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation or cultural and linguistic. From the broader definitions of the term minority one thing we are clear is that the minorities have the right to adhere to religion of their own choice. Their right for freedom of religion is protected at all occasions in all places. This means freedom of religion is universal and that cannot be curtailed.

Though all the constitutional rights are for the entire citizens of India, the Sang Parivar  often interpreted them as the minorities are given many privileges to the extent of being threat to the security of the nation. The constitution treats every one equally and sees that the minorities enjoy their portion.  It also makes provisions for other possible safeguards in protecting the basic rights of the minorities including the religious minorities.

In spite of the limitations we need to value the efforts of the governments in power, which have taken committed efforts to protect the rights and privileges of the minorities, including religious, in line with the provisions of the constitution of India. What is bothering the religious minorities is that these good intentions are challenged at the wake of communal political parties particularly, the Hindutva forces. Their only goal is to divide the people on religious grounds and occupy power so that the religious minorities in India will be put to unconstitutional measures.

It is very clear that the Hindu communal and fundamental forces will go to any level to destabilize other religious communities on any false grounds. Their hatred to the Muslim community is so acute. The Hindutva allegations against the Muslims are utterly false and they have involved in groundless slandering in order to become the political champions of this nation.

The Sang Parivar caricature the Christian activities in India as attempts to increase their number. The RSS prescribes many behavioral norms to the Christian community in India. One major concern that affects the converts to Christianity, in spite of the freedom of religion they enjoy, is that they are not entitled to the government privileges, which their counter parts are enjoying.

The Hindutva forces are against the minority institutions receiving special protections from the government. They fail to cognize the fact that the privileges the Christians institutions are entitled along with other religious minorities are only to improve their standing in the society. It is not to be seen as one enjoying more privileges and the other less. If the majority communities also ask for same privileges there will be increased conflicts and not resolutions. Another thing to be remembered is that nothing is done in violation of the provisions of the constitution. As the Hindu communal forces are envious   of the consideration given to the religious minorities, especially Christian, they are also unhappy with the religious activities of the Christians in India. The Parivar is reluctant to accept the development of other religions. They mix religion with nationalism to tamper such developments. When the unreal propaganda of the Hindutva forces literally failed to attract attention, they directly involved in attacks on Christians, Muslims, Dalits, women etc. Along with other religious minorities Buddhism is viciously dumped as traitor. 

The majority religious community always wanted to suggest ways and means of worship to others. It is beyond doubt that the Indian constitution is committed to protect the interests of the religious minorities unlike the unhealthy determinations of the Sang Parivar. It is also crucial that all attempts to curb the minority religious rights cannot be tolerated with as it is against the human rights and Indian constitution.

Although in India community interests take precedence it is important that the religious freedom is given to every individual. Otherwise there may be the possibility of the communities trying to suppress the interests of the individuals. Denial of freedom of religion amounts to denial of basic human rights. It can also obstruct all other freedoms.

Although Human rights are called with various names, humans are entitled to human rights and the states are expected to protect the human rights of the individuals. There is connection between human rights and fundamental rights in India. Both are concerned with both individual and social welfare. From the point of this research freedom of religion is important and it is one of the fundamental human rights and which precedes all other rights. Any violation of human rights from the point of religion is inadmissible. Respecting human rights and allowing space to practice human rights are the signs of a developed society. As India is a leading partner in these ventures its contributions and compliance are carefully watched.

Since the Human rights are implicit in Indian constitution and freedom of religion is one of the main principles of Human rights, the Indian constitution has taken adequate measures to protect freedom of religion in India. This is vivid in the preamble, citizenship, fundamental rights, directive principles, fundamental duties and other provisions. It is only the communally oriented groups that try to divert the provisions of the constitution with regard to freedom of religion. In truth one of the fundamental duties of the Indian citizens is to strengthen religious harmony.

It is impressive to conclude that any violation of freedom of religion which is one of the fundamental rights and human rights and which precedes all other rights is against civilization. The freedom of religion is the basis and it paves the way for the other freedoms and rights. It is also a sign of civilizing and developing society. Since freedom of religion is a human rights issue denial of freedom of religion means human rights violation. And hence freedom of religion is a human rights issue as well.