Religious Conversions are a form of violence
What gives someone or some organization to proselytize a person to what they consider the sole source of truth?
In India as in other parts of the world, the “forced” or “induced” conversions to other faiths is a controversial issue. The “converters” are driven by two motives:
- They believe they are “rescuing” masses from the evil clutches of other religions and showing them the one and only true path of light. Anything other than their chosen path is false and to be denigrated constantly.
- They are driven by massive funding from big powerful organizations to convert people to their faith as many as possible. Numbers bring power. The increased numbers bring power which in turn is used to gain dominance.
The “convertees” are mostly in some of kind of a financial or psychological hardship which is typically exploited by the converters to accomplish their goal. For example, a poor student in an educational institution funded by a religious organization will be promised benefits such as overseas education and enough money to take care of their family. Most just bite the bait and never look back.
Once converted to other faiths, these convertees generally exhibit hatred of people following their original faith. They either make fun of or forcefully convert others to their newfound faith. Perhaps this makes them feel less guilty in that they think they abandoned the faith practiced by their ancestors for generations. It is like a new smoker or a drug user inducing others to join the “gang” to make him or her feel less guilty or to find comfort in numbers.
There is only big and ugly problem with this: This type of forced or induced conversions is a form of violence or assault perpetrated on the freedom of an individual to just be in his or her default course of action. There is enough information in the world for anyone to migrate to other faiths if necessary. What is the necessity to force info on the masses?
It is truly a vexing problem. There is no solution to this unfortunately. No matter how many times one shouts about this, the forced and induced conversions will continue and none can stop them.