The BJP MP Adityanath has said that the Babri Masjid demolition was a show of Hindu unity, and a similar show of unity is needed to ensure the ‘Gharwapsi’ (return home) of all Christians, Muslims and other minorities in India. This statement makes no secret of the fact that the ‘Gharwapsi’ campaign is an act of communal violence, intended to demolish the dignified existence and rights of religious minorities in India.
The ‘Gharwapsi’ campaign is putting into practice, the same principle that a Modi Government Minister Niranjan Jyoti recently declared in an election speech: that Muslims and Christians in India must declare Hindu origins and identity if they are to be counted as Indian citizens. In Agra, poor migrant Muslims were told that they would get Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards only if they converted to Hinduism. Surely, in a democracy, shelter and food should be entitlements for all citizens, not dependent on one’s willingness to belong to a particular religious group? For outfits like VHP, sister organizations of India’s ruling party, to tell desperately poor migrants that they can get BPL cards and housing only on the condition that they become Hindus, is shocking and criminal.
The RSS outfits have announced their intention to conduct ‘Gharwapsi’ of Christians on Christmas Day in Aligarh, and elsewhere in India. It may be recalled that a Church was demolished in Delhi recently in an act of arson by communal elements.
The very term ‘Gharwapsi’, like Niranjan Jyoti’s ‘Ramzada’ remark, is a denial of the identity and constitutionally guaranteed rights of the religious minorities. Niranjan Jyoti said that Muslims and Christians are all ‘sons of Ram’; i.e fundamentally Hindus. Gharwapsi implies exactly the same thing: that Muslims and Christians were all Hindus to begin with and are just ‘returning home’ to Hinduism now. The very idea that one religion is the ‘home’ and other religions are ‘foreign’ or alien is a communal denial of the constitutional principle of equal rights and dignity to followers of all faiths. Modi himself has endorsed and promoted this communal idea. During the Lok Sabha campaign, in an interview to a TV channel, said that anti-conversion law in Gujarat applies to those who seek to convert Hindus to Islam or Christianity – ‘Gharwapsi’ is not conversion, he said, since it is a ‘return’ to the ‘home’ faith!
Moreover, in Agra, a menacing threat was used to get the Muslims to participate in the ‘Gharwapsi’ programme. The poor Muslims are mostly Bengali-speaking migrants – a community that has been at the receiving end of campaigns by the VHP and even by Modi himself, branding them as ‘Bangladeshi infiltrators’. This fear was used to terrorize the Bengali-speaking Muslim migrants in Agra to participate in the ‘Gharwapsi’ ceremony. The choices before them were clear: either be branded as Bangladeshi infiltrators and hounded out, or accept Hindu identity in order to qualify for the entitlements of food rations and housing!
What is most significant is that the extent of sheer deprivation of the community – the lack of shelter, lack of food or a BPL ration card – was a major factor in enabling their participation in the ‘Gharwapsi’ ceremony. The Governments of Uttar Pradesh and the Centre bear responsibility squarely for this state of destitution, deprivation and precarious existence that rendered these migrants vulnerable to the VHP’s intimidation in the first place.
The response of the Uttar Pradesh Government and the ruling Samajwadi Party to the intimidation and communal muscle-flexing ongoing in UP has been a sorry and shameful one of vacillation, rather than a robust protection of the rights and dignity of the vulnerable minorities.
This is not the first time ‘Gharwapsi’ has spelt violence and denial of citizenship rights. In October this year, the PUCL came out with a report of from villages in Bastar in BJP-ruled Chhattisgarh, where elected panchayats had passed orders banning non-Hindu religious activities, and prohibiting non-Hindus (mostly Christian adivasis) from getting BPL food rations. All this was done to pressurize the non-Hindus to agree to the ‘Gharwapsi’ project being undertaken by the RSS outfits. After one ‘Gharwapsi’ ceremony where the RSS outfits claimed that 33 Christians had ‘reconverted’, a procession took place where anti-Christian slogans were raised and violence was unleashed against those who refused to embrace Hinduism.
The Agra episode that has revealed the double standards of the BJP’s claims of ‘forced conversions’ to Islam and Christianity. The only instances of force and intimidation to convert people have been witnessed by the Sangh Parivar – be it in Kandhamal, Bastar, or Agra.
Intimidation, coercion, threats as well as humiliation used to force people to change their religion should be prosecuted and punished under the provisions of laws against communal violence and the Prevention of Atrocities Act, as they may apply. These are the laws that must be invoked against the perpetrators of ‘Gharwapsi’ in Agra and elsewhere.
The BJP and Modi Government however, are using the outrage over the Agra episode to push their agenda of a ‘law against conversions’. This is cynical and shameful. In fact, existing laws against conversions enacted in some states, should be done away with, since they militate against the fundamental right of every person to choose or change religion for any reason of their choice.
