This appears to be a clear antinational stand
The arrest in Srinagar of All India Saints Church pastor C M Khanna, accused of converting a few Muslim youth to Christianity, is ironic, located in a region supposedly struggling against an authoritarian majority. Those who claim to represent an embattled minority should offer another empathy – not threats of punishment. Interestingly, while the pastor’s arrest has excited the administration, assorted muftis and students, human rights groups in the Valley stand strangely silent. As they ostensibly support e v e r y group’s right to freedom and equality, it’s important they declare their position on this.
Contradictions over conversion extend beyond Kashmir. Laws restricting this in some states like Orissa, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh adopt archaic thought and vocabularies powered by suspicion. Some view conversion as motivated by ‘allurement’, ‘force’ or ‘inducement’, thus resorting to an anxious 19th century discourse based on numbers making up religious communities, counted thereby as coherent entities by a colonial state bestowing favours on each of them by turn. Worries about conversion pass over the individual’s right to religious freedom, guaranteed by the Constitution. Instead, they hark back to an antique era of religions living curtained-off from each other, where citizens are treated as minors rather than capable adults. Repeating such language in modern, secular India is absurd. Instead of making sanctimonious noises about ‘disturbing the peace’, it’s more important to ensure social stability is not so fragile as to get shaken each time someone takes a religious plunge. Ensuring freedom and dignity to all – to eat, pray and love as they like – is more important than making noises that are holier (should we say hollower) than thou.
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