Cases of religious conversions have increased across the country. Until a few years ago ‘conversion’ was thought to be switching over of the religious beliefs mostly of Hindus to Christianity. It was a common scene in Uttar Pradesh that any Christian missionaries would come to the remote villages and open a school in the name of any ‘Father’ or ‘Saint’. They start imparting education to children and glorify Christianity in the classrooms. Not much attention is paid to the boys and girls belonging to upper castes because it is difficult to convert them, but they focus on the children belonging to scheduled castes and tribes. Many of them get attracted to the inducements of these ‘Christian Fathers’ and embrace Christianity.
Similarly, the marrying of Hindu girls to Muslim men has also been going on for quite some time but changing the religion of Hindu men to Islam is a new phenomenon. Although there is a law against religious conversion due to force, fraud and inducement, yet it is an open secret that these tactics are adopted to lure Hindu girls mainly belonging to poor families. The girls pertaining to the lower social hierarchy are targeted by these Muslim men. This is very similar to the ‘love jihad’. Nobody would have any objection to the conversion made on the free will but if the conversion becomes a ‘Hobson’s choice’, then it is condemnable, without a doubt.
A pertinent question is asked why mostly Hindus convert to other religions. Is there any inherent drawback among Hindus? To my mind, there could be two reasons: one is that Hinduism is not a regimented religion. It is highly eclectic in beliefs and customs. There is no higher authority whose dictates and writs would be large. The second region is that it is divided into multi-layered castes and sub-castes. It does not draw its strength from one book. It provides enough scope for differences of thought and ideas but in other important religions, the main source is their books. Any difference with their books would mean It is certainly very evolving and spiritually uplifting but has an enfeebling effect also because excessive liberty often leads to anarchy, which is capitalised by the poachers. Other religions have also fragmentations but not as they are found in Hinduism. Unlike Hinduism and other Indigenous religions, Islam and Christianity silently speak about extra-territorial loyalty.
In fact, in Uttar Pradesh, the love jihad got unprecedented impetus during the regime of Mulayam Singh Yadav, which included five years of Akhilesh Yadav. Everybody knew that any complaint made against these jihadists would invite the wrath of the police rather than any sympathetic action.
Now the noxious trend of driving a wedge among Hindus in the name caste Hindus and Scheduled caste is going on in full scale. The Islamists groups, which are flush with foreign funds are instigating SCs, particularly neo Ambedkarites, to wage their verbal diatribe against high caste Hindus like Brahmins and Rajputs. This is causing some confrontation and caste attrition. However, at the same time, many other castes have also been getting polarised and they have got themselves distanced from Muslims and Ambedkarites. It appears that they have become strong supporters of the Bhartiya Janata Party, making it almost invincible in the assembly elections.
The growing influence of love jihad is also a cause of huge concern because many of the girls are dispatched to some countries, where they are condemned to live as prostitutes. To be fair to the Yogi government, this menace is being very strictly dealt with yet there is no doubt that such activities are still going on, although stealthily.