Four truths are basic to understanding the conversion debate. First, conversion exemplifies the power of compassion. Compassion is not an exclusive Christian expertise. It is common to all religions, whether or not it is practised. There is a sure and sufficient way to prevent all conversions: extend a hand of compassion to those who languish in poverty and misery.

Second, conversion is a trauma. Abandoning one’s familiar spiritual home and migrating to another is difficult to the point of being unthinkable. We resent even the slightest disturbance of our routine – the morning cup of coffee or the newspaper at the appointed time, being familiar examples. It is easy to see then that no one will consent to be converted if it can be helped.

But many feel forced to, either provoked by anger or fired by hope. But conversion is only as abnormal as pumped water going uphill. What is the use in blaming the water for its strange conduct, so long as you keep pumping?

Third, the issue of conversion is very emotive; but reliable data in this regard are simply non-existent. The conversion debate amounts to little more than rumour-mongering and propagandist allegations. Those who are most aggrieved tend to be the least informed on the subject, which is rather strange, to say the least.

Fourth, the poor are the battleground! Ironically the poor matter only because of conversion! But for this periodically whipped up conversion phobia, we would have forgotten the poor in our midst. I am inclined to believe that poverty, rather than deep-rooted or well-informed religious convictions, is what drives conversions for the most part. Whether this should be so or not is debatable. What is not debatable is the fact that poverty is the ideal matrix for compassion. Or, the power of compassion is felt most keenly in the context of poverty. This field is open equally to Hindus and Christians. Let us get going!

It is only too obvious, therefore, that the challenge of conversion can be met only by addressing the plague of poverty. Poverty is not only material. Social and religious poverty institutionalised through the caste system is as unbearable as material poverty. Caste perpetuates poverty and various forms of socio-economic disability. It is when there is no will to address the basic issues in conversion – poverty and caste degradation – that suppressing conversion through brute force becomes a tempting and legitimate prospect, even if it mocks the rule of law.

There is a nexus between the systemic denial of the poor and the electoral compulsions of democracy. It is widely perceived – and in certain quarters dogmatically believed – that Christians and Muslims are the committed vote banks of a certain party. So every Hindu low caste person converted to these religions is a vote lost to one party and gained by another.

The flip-side of this is the unstated strategy at work in respect of Dalits, tribals and Adivasis. Since next-to-nothing is done for them, the only way to corner their votes is by herding them together in the name of
religion and protecting them from contrary influences. Hence we have the irony that while conversion is a religious phenomenon, the conflict about conversion is, in truth, a political one. It was so in Gujarat. It is surely so in Orissa.

Charity, service and social work predicated on conversion are un-Christian. They are an insult to Jesus Christ who taught his followers, “let your left hand not know what the right hand does’. Works of compassion have to be totally free from ulterior motives, both at the individual and the community levels. If the poor are decoyed into Christianity under the allurement of the ‘compassion,’ what is at work is neither compassion nor Christianity. But how are we to know what motive is at work?

 I suppose the best way to do this is to ask the alleged ‘victims’. It is a reliable aphorism that “the victim knows the truth best”. Funnily, no one listens to the ‘victims’ of conversion. The invisibility and inaudibility of the converts is the most intriguing aspect of the current anti-conversion campaign. Let the victims of conversion ‘by force, fraud or inducement’ come forward and have the violators of their human dignity punished according to the law of the land. Can’t think of a better remedy for this plague, if you like, called conversion!