WHEN THE Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa, recently claimed that religious conversions were "often funded by dubious and anti-national sources from foreign countries to destabilise our social structure", she was obviously not referring to such organisations as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America Inc. Otherwise, Ashok Singhal would not have hailed the recent Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance as bold and an eye-opener for other States.

Ms. Jayalalithaa's reference to "dubious anti-national sources from foreign countries" is, in other words, a clear insinuation against minority religious groups — in particular, the Muslims and the Christians. After all, in the definition of the VHP of America Inc., "Hindus include Jaina, Baudhha, Sikhs and people of different sects and traditions within the Hindu ethos". It is, thus, hard to disagree with the deep anxiety expressed by different Christian and Muslim organisations about the Ordinance. So much is obvious.

What is not so obvious is the fact that the Ordinance is an affront to many a self-respecting Hindu. It basically claims that Hindus are habitually prone to trading their religion if there is adequate force or allurement — allurement could be, according to Ms. Jayalalithaa, as little as Rs. 2,000. What a pity! Thus, according to her, the spirituality of the Hindus is too deficient to unite together its adherents into a stable religious community. Given such an assertion, Ms. Jayalalithaa, a zealous promoter of free market in everything else, cannot but prevent "religion from being brought to the marketplace and being converted into a purchasable commodity". Departing from her love for the market that has recently resulted in the downsizing of the once-robust Public Distribution System in Tamil Nadu, her Government is also dishing out free lunches to Hindu devotees in 150 temples. Counter-allurement of a sort, one may say.

The Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance is not alone in portraying Hinduism as a religion that cannot survive without external crutches. Take a look at the way the so-called Vedic period is presented in the latest NCERT history textbooks. The Vedic person, that is the uncorrupted `authentic' Hindu whose habit of beef-eating is currently under dispute, knew everything — the use of zero, that the earth moved on its own axis around the sun, and that the moon revolved around the sun. The NCERT historians, without the aid of recent debates on the impossibility of writing history, have with effortless ease crossed the divide between history and myth. Why at all this new `history'? Hinduism, in their reckoning, is a religion that needs a glorious `past' fortified by untamed `scholarly' imaginations, to compensate for its current frailty.

The portrayal of Hinduism as a religion that can survive only in a greenhouse with a large helping of mythical past as history performs its own insidious function. It makes it possible for the Hindu Right to make a new claim on the state. The claim is that a beleaguered Hinduism needs a saviour and the saviour can only be the state. Section 5 (1) of the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance, which seeks that every conversion be intimated to the District Magistrate, is a case in point. As Ms. Jayalalithaa has noted, "the object is to keep the state informed of such conversion". That is, institutionalised surveillance of the religious life of the people by the state is the main aim of the Ordinance. Faith in the durability of Hinduism will not make such statist intervention on its behalf possible. Only by inventing a vulnerable Hindu incapable of resisting material temptations offered by other religions can Hindurashtra be facilitated. The state can now use its legal might and structures of punishment to keep the so-called depredating Muslims and Christians at bay. What is kept at bay are not only the Muslims and the Christians, but also the need for any critical introspection by the Hindus themselves about what Hinduism does to large sections of its adherents — lower castes, in particular the Dalits, and women. One may remember that when the Dalits of Meenakshipuram — now Rahmatpuram — converted to Islam in 1981, they chose to forego free education up to the post-matric stage, scholarship for higher studies from State and Central Governments, books and special hostel facilities, quotas in educational institutions, reserved Government jobs etc. In demonising the Muslims and the Christians, the loud and clear message of Meenakshipuram to the Hindu public is sadly once again being stifled.

Similarly, caught up in their new opposition to Hinduism — an opposition produced by the state — Islam and Christianity too can now keep aside important question about whether their religious practices treat their adherents equally and honourably. The victims are the ones who always bear the cross in "our social structure" — lower castes and women — irrespective of the religion. A cursory look at the dynamics of caste politics in the Church and the personal law governing the Muslims and the Christians would bear this out.

This attempt to freeze identities by means of law is of treacherous consequences. It is through innovating new identities that politics often opens up previously non-existent possibilities of freedom and equality for large sections of the people. The torturous journey through which a Panchama became an Adi-Dravida and then a Dalit will substantiate this. Similar is the case of the category of the non-Brahmin. These identities, mocked by the caste elite at the moment of their arrival, inaugurated new political collectivities and reordered the domain of politics.

It is not to claim that all emergent identities hold radical possibilities. Some do and others do not. Then, the identity that Ms. Jayalalithaa's ordinance wants to freeze is that of the Dalits as untouchables within the Hindu social order. In attempting to block them from choosing and forming other identities, she seems to make a gift of them to the upper caste Hindus whose chief source of pleasure seems to be cruelty against fellow human beings. In short, as much as Antonia Maino Gandhi should not be allowed to become Sonia Gandhi, the untouchables should remain untouchables. The chosen victims of Hindurashtra are the Dalits as much as the religious minorities.

Thanks to Ms. Jayalalithaa and the Tamil Nadu Prohibition of Forcible Conversion of Religion Ordinance, this politics of the Hindu Right is in the open. The move meant to freeze identities is opening up new spaces for new alliances and new politics. The coming together of the Muslims, the Christians and the Dalits in Tamil Nadu to oppose the Ordinance and the all-India visibility which their agitation is drawing, are clear indications of this. Only by recognising, seizing and consolidating this opportunity rather than slipping back into a self-defeating sense of loss can the religious minorities and the Dalits confront the politics of the Hindu Right whose proponents are not always the BJP and their allies as the parliamentary Left has been `educating' us for the past several years. At the same time, if the battle against the Hindu Right is used by Islam and Christianity as a way of stalling internal reforms on issues such as gender and caste, their most important battle in post-colonial India to retain a space for religious difference and the freedom to forge new identities would lose its moral edge and become dubious.

(The writer is Visiting Professor in Human Sciences, George Washington University, Washington D.C.)