ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which formulations of religious freedom are subject to sovereign power. In fact, the discourse of the return of the religious, which has been heralded as a post-secular turn, is an invitation to examine the ways in which sovereign power operates in a contemporary era. Paying attention to the discourse of the “return of the religious,”Derrida argues that this is not a “simple return” (1998: 42). This return is “original and unprecedented” because of “its globality” and “its figures (tele-techno-media-scientific, capitalistic and politico-economic)” (Derrida 1998: 42). This is the second moment of globalatinization that Derrida identifies. For Derrida, this changed historical moment “comports, as one of its two tendencies, a radical destruction of the religious” (1998: 42). Thus, “all non-Christian ‘fundamentalisms’ or ‘integrisms’” appear to be “waging war” including “certain forms of Protestant or even Catholic orthodoxy” against a “European political or juridical order” (1998: 42). Derrida’s statement needs to be qualified in the context of Hindutva (anti) conversion politics. As I argued in the second chapter, a transnational Hindutva movement seeks to articulate its religio-cultural sovereignty within the terms of liberal multiculturalism. In this chapter, I examine how Hindutva organizations articulate their version of Hinduism through discourses of religious freedom. By articulating their agenda within the terms of a Eurocentric religio, they do not resort to a radical destruction of the religious; they stake their claim within a Eurocentric political and juridical order. But they do attempt to shift the ground on which religious freedom as a human right has been formulated, especially since the right to convert appears to have played a major role in its formulation. In this sense, the globalatinization of human rights in the context of religious freedom needs to be examined closely. Following the necessity to examine the politics of religious freedom, in this
chapter I explore the role that conversion has played in its formulation. I then explore the ways in which Hindutva movements articulate Hindu human rights within the discourse of religious freedom. The last section of the chapter examines how a focus on sovereignty may help in thinking through the potentiality of religious freedom. More specifically, the questions I explore in this chapter are: How did a preoccupation with defining genuine conversion contribute to the formulation of religious freedom in the 1948 UN Declaration
of Human Rights? How did a concern for sovereignty restrain the concept of conversion? How have Hindutva movements been able to legitimize their agenda through UN and US formulations of human rights and religious freedom? If Hindutva groups are able to articulate their “rights” through the discourse of religious freedom and human rights, are these discourses adequate to the task of addressing discrimination and violence toward religious others? How can an examination of the relationship between sovereignty and religious freedom contribute to thinking through its potentiality? Is it possible to think through this potentiality at the fraught intersection of law and religio-secular coexistence? What are the implications of the attention to sovereignty for human rights activism which calls for the removal of anti-conversion laws?
