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Religious Conversions: Decoding Modi’s Silence

Religious Conversions: Decoding Modi’s Silence

December 19, 2014
In late nineties, the issue of religious conversion in Dangs in Surat had invited a prompt response from the then prime minister and the founder of the BJP, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and he had personally visited the place for a first hand assessment of the situation and, thereafter, called for a nationwide debate on the issue of conversion on whether it should be banned at all.
Modi's dilemma over religious conversion

Opposition Wants Modi to break his Silence over Religious Conversions

The silence of Narendra Modi – only the second BJP PM after Vajpayee – therefore has created a ruckus in Parliament when the issue of reconversion has yet again raised its head after the return of the Lotus to power at Centre after a decade.
The Opposition wants to corner the prime minister on the issue of alleged forced conversions recently in Agra, and it did score a brownie point when the Chairman allowed a debate on the issue in the Rajya Sabha.
Ostensibly the government is facing the heat and seems bent on shielding Modi over the contentious issue. But does this augur well for Modi – who as PM does have the Constitutional obligation to ensure the secular credentials of the country?
The PM’s dilemma has its roots in the core ideology of the BJP. Vajpayee, as the prime minister, had tackled the pressure of the far-right Hindutva forces deftly and had succeeded in distancing himself from the right wing idiosyncrasies. Yet, Modi’s public image is very unlike Vajpayee, despite the fact that he eulogises Vajpayee. Just consider how the hardline Hindu leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Ashok Singhal, had hailed Modi’s assumption of charge at the Centre as the return of Hindu rule in India “after 800 years”!
Indeed, Singhal’s statement exemplifies the type of expectations that far-right wing forces have pinned on Modi. But as prime minister, Modi cannot be just a leader of any particular section. In a way, his silence reflects this dilemma.
Even LK Advani, the architect of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, had faced the same dilemma as his aspirations to be the Prime Minister and his image of a Hindu hardliner were in conflict with each other. Advani tried for an image makeover by calling Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah, ‘secular”, but it was a desperate call that proved to be a miscalculation for him.

Modi had Disapproved of Niranjan Jyoti’s Controversial Remark

Modi though, has spoken once as Prime Minister on the issue of communalism when he, after much deliberations and protests by the Opposition, expressed his disapproval of the “Ramzaada and Haramzaada” comments of his minister, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, that she had made during an election rally in the national capital recently.
Yet Modi’s statement hadn’t cut much ice with the Opposition which had then continued to disrupt the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha for next three days.
This now makes the government argue that the PM’s “image is more important than a session”, and therefore he should not make any statement (on communal issues such as reconversion or charges of instructing to keep the schools open to observe Good Governance Day on X’Mas day) as the Opposition will continue to disregard his words.

Will Modi follow Vajpayee to uphold pluralistic values?
The concept of far-right Hindutva ideology is rather a recent phenomenon that largely coincides with the emergence of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the first half of the last century. It was only in the second half of the twentieth century that aggressive Hindu forces such as the Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena, the Ram Sena, etc came into existence. Each of them has its own agenda.
Understandably the hardliners do want to share a piece of cake when a Right-wing government is on saddle in New Delhi! Vajpayee had faced the heat from them during his term as the PM and that is well documented. Yet, his stature ensured that he could overcome the pressure from such fringe groups. The baton has now been passed to Modi. He indeed will have to invoke Vajpayee more often than not, and open up more to uphold the pluralistic values of India as a nation.

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