Introduction

A few years ago, while visiting my maternal relatives in coastal Andhra Pradesh, my deep early dawn sleep was disturbed by the evocative call of the muezzin. When I tried to fall asleep again, chants from a nearby Sri Venkateshwaran temple punctuated my tosses and turns. But the final end to the possibility of sleep was announced very firmly through a loudspeaker through the melodic tones of the devotional Christian song, “Vandana Karte Hai Hum” (we adore/ worship you). In that moment, between sleep and wakefulness, I felt a sense of inhabiting a heteroreligious soundscape, something that is fairly commonplace even characteristic of everyday Indian life.1 Something infused me with a faith neither Muslim nor Hindu nor Christian. I did not even feel that heterogeneity as an Indian secular moment of the plurality of religious belief. What I did feel was a sense of multiplicity, of intersecting and overlapping sounds, recognizable as calls to the sacred through musical conventions. Yet these sounds were profane, part of an everyday world, conveying also a sensation of what I’d like to call heteroreligiosity, a concept that I discuss in this book. It is through this sensation that I felt a sense of coexistence with other possibly

tossing and turning bodies and souls of the townsfolk – those on spiritual quests, others conventional in their belief, still others agnostic, some even adamantly atheistic. Yet in that moment there was a doubleness to the sensation. I felt a sense of competition among the loudspeaking calls to the sacred as an announcement of the boundaries between what Derrida (1998) might call monotheolingualisms of religion. It is this sense of a simultaneous heterogeneity as well as a competitive proclamation of borders that perhaps characterizes the politics of religious identity in the Indian context. But these borders become more entrenched when this heterogeneity appears continually subject in political life to the fictions of homogenizing norms, laws, and identities, subjectifying and disciplining discrete religious communities in the interests of regulating national life. One such site of regulation has been the phenomenon of conversion. In both pre-and post-independence years, conversion has been a highly

charged site for reasons that this book will explore. In pre-independence years, many princely states enacted anti-conversion laws. As Arpita Anant has noted, these Acts included the “Raigarh State Conversion Act of 1936, the Patna

Freedom of Religion Act of 1942, the Sarguja State Apostasy Act 1945 and the Udaipur State Anti-Conversion Act of 1946” (2002). Anant also mentions that “similar laws were enacted in Bikaner, Jodhpur, Kalahandi and Kota and many more were specifically against conversion to Christianity” (2002). In the post-independence years, the States of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Arunachal Pradesh passed anti-conversion laws in 1967, 1968, and 1978. More recently, linked to the rise of Hindu nationalism since the 1990s, conversion has once again become a fraught issue. Acts of Freedom of Religion, or anticonversion laws, have been passed in states such as Chattisgarh (2000), Gujarat (2003), Himachal Pradesh (2006), and Rajasthan (2008). The Acts purport to protect religious freedom by checking conversions by force or fraudulence and target conversions to Christianity. Recent reports by human rights organizations, which I discuss in Chapter 2, have cited anti-conversion campaigns as a major factor in violence against Christians in December 2007 and in August/September 2008 in the states of Orissa and Karnataka. Campaigns for anti-conversion laws have been spearheaded by Hindu

nationalist organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and the Bajrang Dal (BD) affiliated with the Sangh Parivar or the family of organizations which include its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While there may be minor variations and differences in ideologies or the means by which they operate, they can be broadly described as Hindutva in their philosophical bent. The conceptual founder of Hindutva, Vinayak Savarkar argued that “Indian national identity must, at its foundation, be based within the political philosophy of Hindutva” (Chaturvedi 2003: 169). This philosophy, Chaturvedi emphasizes, is not identical to Hinduism. Hinduism is only “a fraction, a part of Hindutva,” whereas “Hindutva is not aword but a history” (2003: 169). Loosely translated, Hindutva means Hinduness. Ashis Nandy has described Hindu nationalism as a “modernist creed which seeks to retool, on behalf of the global nation-state system, Hinduism into a national ideology and Hindus into a ‘proper’ nationality” (1998a: 283). While this ideology emerged in the context of anti-colonialism, the reference to “foreign races” and the attempt to subordinate them to Hindu nationalism, as Kamat and Matthews point out, was not “to the British against whom Indians raged a fierce anti-colonial struggle,” instead “it stood above all (and continues to stand) for Muslims in the subcontinent, followed by the entire range of religious and cultural minorities such as Indian Christians, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Sikhs” (Kamat and Matthews 2003: 9). Hindu nationalism was largely sidelined in Indian politics until the 1990s, but it emerged as a mainstream political force through the BJP’s electoral success.2

Despite the loss of central government power in 2004 and at the time of writing this book, the BJP had nine sitting chief ministers in state governments and coalitional alliances in others. Hindutva is a contemporary political force to be reckoned with. The effects of the BJP’s anti-conversion stance during its regime, supported

by anti-conversion campaigns of the Sangh Parivar organizations, have led to

enactments of anti-conversion laws in Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh. In 2002, the state of Tamil Nadu passed an anti-conversion ordinance due to the alliance between the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party with the BJP. However, the Chief Minister, K. Jayalalitha, dropped the state’s ban on “coerced conversions” in 2004, “in recognition of the ban’s unpopularity among religious minorities and low-caste Hindus” (Jenkins 2008: 121). The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Bill was passed in 2003. The Rajasthan Dharma Swatantrya Bill was passed “despite strong resistance by the Opposition Congress,” and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party stated that “the proposed law would check conversions by force and allurement and promote ‘freedom of conscience’” (The Hindu 2008). The Act was justified by BJP member Yogeshwar Garg who argued “that the population of Christians in India was increasing” (Times of India 2008). Himachal Pradesh passed an anti-conversion law in 2006 when it was “headed by the Congress Party” (committed to the ethos of secularism), thus signaling a legal mainstreaming of the BJP Hindu nationalist anti-conversion stance (Jenkins 2008: 121). Since, the United Progressive Alliance’s victory in 2009, Minister for Home Affairs P. Chidambaram was to “review and make recommendations” on the Freedom of Religion Acts (Samuel 2009). Yet, to date, there has been no action on the repeal of these state anti-conversion laws. I will be discussing the geopolitical implications of anti-conversion laws for the Indian government in Chapter 5. Freedom of Religion Acts do not ban conversion outright as such laws

would be inconsistent with India’s secular constitution which subscribes to the right of freedom of religion. Article 25 in the Indian constitution proclaims that “all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right to freely profess, practice and propagate religion” (The Constitution of India 1950).3

What they do enact is the illegality of conversions by force, fraud or allurement. As the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) has pointed out, definitions of force, fraud and allurement are often vague and imprecise; and, the “danger of ‘discriminatory abuse in their application’ is very real” (2008: 63). Instead, the “terminology used by these legislations transforms them from their purported role as protectors of constitutional rights into violators of these very guarantees” (SAHRDC 2008: 63). Furthermore, as the SAHDRC points out, what these acts do is legitimize violence against Christians and other minoritized religious identities which are deemed to be non-indigenous to India. What can a book which focuses specifically on the politics of (anti) con-

version hope to contribute to broader discussions of Indian secularism, Hindu nationalism, and religious freedom? I argue that while much has already been written on this subject in various disciplines (e.g., anthropology, sociology, history, literary and cultural studies, religious studies, and political science), the focus on (anti) conversion enables an examination of the complicities that characterize the relationship between liberal democratic institutions and rightwing religious nationalisms. More recently, Vinay Lal (2009) has advocated the use of the term “political Hinduism” to broaden the terms of the academic

debate on Hindutva, a term which in leftist critiques implies a kind of false use or a misappropriation of Hinduism (2009: 26). Lal seeks to place the right-wing nationalism of political Hinduism in the context of international trends in the USA and the Middle East. By naming Hindutva as political Hinduism, Lal suggests that we might be able to think of it as “a critique of liberalism” which would also “take us beyond those critiques of Hindutva which point to its incompatibility with received notions of democracy, human rights, civil society discourse, and the like” (2009: 27). While there may be value in thinking about Hindutva as political Hinduism for certain kinds of analyses, my concern is in this book is to probe how Hindutva’s ability to exploit the majority/minority distinctions of India’s secular liberalism, in fact, illustrates how it often works through nationalism. For this reason, I have found the phrase “Hindu nationalism” or “Hindutva” a more useful reference to the nationalism and transnationalism of the Sangh Parivar. A further note on the usage of terms: readers may be confused by my use

of both (anti) conversion and anti-conversion. I use (anti) conversion to emphasize the meaning of both terms: “anti” and “conversion”. The term “anti-conversion” implies a desire to regulate or ban conversion entirely. Hence I have used it in this form. However, it is important to note that reconversions to Hinduism are not considered a form of conversion in Hindutva anticonversion campaigns. So, while I have used the hyphen to denote the negation of conversion, it is important to note that both usages of the term (bracketed as well as hyphenated) don’t signify a negation of conversion. The hyphenated use of the term signifies that only conversions to a minoritized religion should be regulated or banned. I have also refrained from defining, in advance, terms such as “religion,” “faith,” “the sacred,” “the secular,” and “religious freedom.” As I have drawn on a deconstructive approach to these terms, their multiple uses and meanings unfold in the course of the book. I also disagree with the idea that Hindu nationalist preoccupation with

conversion is a strategic distraction, an attempt to legitimate its indigeneity, in order to expand its political popularity. In an earlier essay, Sumit Sarkar has suggested that Hindu nationalism’s postcolonial preoccupation with conversion can be explained, in part, by the BJP’s role in the “concessions to multinationals” during its regime (1999: 98). As Sarkar states, “many aspects of globalization remain uncomfortable for a political tradition reared on crudely nationalist, indigenist values” (1999: 99). It must be noted this valuable essay chronicles the rise of violence against Christian communities in the context of BJP’s political power in the late 1990s. So, it is a useful text for this book. But Sarkar’s statement implies that the BJP’s anti-conversion stance was a ploy to divert attention from the BJP’s neoliberalization agenda. Yet, as Sarkar himself states, “the question of Christian conversions” is perceived as a problem “even among well-intentioned and progressive people” (1999: 78). This perception may be associated with a kind of anti-colonial feeling that the specter of Christian conversions seems to arouse amongst even amongst liberal-minded Hindu Indians in a postcolonial moment. This revulsion seems associated

with the norm of India as a Hindu nation. It also suggests a protectionist stance toward dalits and tribal communities as I argue in Chapter 1. So far from a strategic diversion, conversion underpins a normative understanding of India’s religious identity. Therefore, a theoretical exploration of conversion becomes necessary in

thinking through how this normative understanding of India’s religious identity is easily translatable by Hindu nationalists into discrimination and violence against minoritized religious identities through the secular instruments of state as well as international laws on religious freedom. Drawing on the theoretical trajectory of studies of sovereignty at the intersection of political philosophy and cultural studies, I hope to offer fresh insights into the manner which secular and religious nationalisms can often operate in discursive and legal complicity in the regulation of religious identity and freedom. Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben’s readings of sovereignty enable a theorization of the historical link between pre-and post-independence and contemporary anti-conversion campaigns and laws. The concept of sovereignty underpins biopolitical and necropolitical engagements. Biopower and necropower refer to the immunization and regularization of religious communities and the accompanying exercise of violence against religious others. An emphasis on the relationship between sovereignty, biopolitics and necropolitics also allows for a discussion of the ways in which Hindu nationalist organizations operate through transnational connectivities. Transnational Hindutva, as I argue in Chapter 2, is able to function through liberal institutions and discourses such as multiculturalism and inter-faith dialogue. In the third chapter, I examine how sovereignty, through its theological-

political constitution, depends on an otherizing mechanism of majoritarian/ minoritarian distinctions. I emphasize how sovereign power constitutes and regulates the religious and the secular, and how these distinctions inform normative majoritarian and minoritarian categorizations of the liberaldemocratic nation-state. For the fourth chapter, I discuss two of Bombay cinema’s films that address an Indian secular through depictions of conversion. Through a reading of these films, I explore the different iterations of sovereignty which are possible in relation to conversion through the quest for love. The fifth chapter examines (anti) conversion in the broader discourses of human rights and religious freedom. In this chapter, I read Spinoza’s discussion of sovereignty alongside Agamben’s theorization of the profane in order to discuss the relationship between conversion, sovereignty, human rights, and religious freedom. In this sense, it appears that an exploration of (anti) conversion has a lot to offer regarding studies of Hindu nationalism, Indian secularism, and religious freedom. Theoretical readings and discussions of the multiple meanings of sovereignty

and sovereign power, therefore, are threads that weave together the various strands of discussion in the book. Academic, historical, and legal genealogies of conversion in Chapter 1 are linked to biopolitical and necropolitical state and Hindutva sovereign power in Orissa in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 is an

exploration of the relationship between sovereignty and the constitution of religious difference that informs the structure of the secular state. This relationship, in turn, pervades popular cinematic iterations of sovereignty in Chapter 4. And finally, in a discussion of the relationship between sovereignty and religious freedom, I argue for a profanation of conversion, a removal of anti-conversion laws, the return of conversion to its free usage amongst peoples. In the epilogue, I offer a fragment of a profanation of conversion, a way of thinking about a different iteration of sovereignty and distinctions of the sacred and the profane. I hope this use of the concept of sovereignty will enable those theoretical and political strategies that we need in dealing with politico-religious nationalisms in our time.