Conversion destroys religious harmony – By SWAMI DAYANANDA SARASWATHI

This is an article written in New Indian Express. As this is not available in any of the internet links, i am providing it as it is, as i received it through mail.

About Swami dayanand Saraswathi:

Although, no introduction is needed for him, let me share what i know. He is one of the vedantic scholars in india, and runs dedicated calsses on vedanta in his ashram at Pennsylvania and in his Indian ashram at Coimbatore (Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, anaikatty hills), and in his Uttaranchal ashram.

I visited his coimbatore ashram twice, and it was one of the peaceful and splendid place, with moderate climate through out the year. There is a shiva temple and a murugan temple, and a lot of foreigners are seen learning vedas there.

Once i saw a young lady, with her naughty small kid (around 6 years) , chanting Om Namashivaya, in the murugan temple there. And i had an opportunity, to help an old american lady, who changed her name to “Vilasa Chaitanya”, in fixing a font related to sanskrit.  She was doing some research on vedantic philosophies, and hence may require sanskrit font for citing various sanskrit slokas.

The ashram is open to all, and in every sundays they provide annadhanams. (I used to have a short trip to anaikatty, enjoying the nature, and land in the ashram for breakfast. and then have a peaceful time, and then have the lunch and return back. Food attracts a lot )

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Below is the article written by swamiji, in New Indian Express on jan-21, 2007 . As usual, i have marked key paragraphs in blue color which i would like to highlight.By SWAMI DAYANANDA SARASWATHI

Monday, January 21
The New Indian Express
Hyderabad

“THERE are Christian theologians who feel the conversion of others is
not any more the business of the Church.” This is indeed an
encouraging statement from Dr Hans Ucko, Head of the Committee on
Inter-religious Dialogue and Cooperation of the World Council of
Churches, a powerful body that has over 350 member churches. This
statement has the potential to promote harmony among religions,
particularly between Christianity on the one hand and its two main
targets: Hinduism and Buddhism, on the other. Dr Ucko, as I know him,
is an upright, outspoken gentleman. Personally he has “never been
interested in converting people”. But, on the ground, the situation
presents a total contrast. Christian missionaries, almost without
exception, work with unabated zeal to convert. The conciliatory words
of Dr Ucko ,seem to conflict with what he says next. While
underplaying the conversion agenda, Dr Ucko also makes this seemingly
innocuous, but profoundly theological, statement: “I believe it is
more important for us to bear witness to Christ by our action of
caring for people without any ulterior motive and by our exemplary
living.” Here is the clue to the potential for disharmony.

Christians, regardless of their denomination, are mandated by their
theology to ‘bear witness to Christ’ which, in simple terms, means
sharing the faith with a stranger. Why share the faith with a
stranger? The vast majority of Christian believers are firmly
convinced that unless a person ‘accepts Christ as his saviour’, he is,
at the very least, denied entry to Heaven. More extreme, but not less
common, believers are convinced that he will definitely go to Hell -
and forever. So, given the theological compulsion to share the faith
with a stranger, a serious Christian has no option except to exert and
’save’ the person, inevitably a non-Christian, from such a fate. That
is to say convert him to Christianity. See the effect. Obviously the
theological belief that no faith other than Christianity can guarantee
salvation, or that other faiths can only lead to Hell, cannot amount
to honouring non-Christian religions. Can a Christian, who believes
this, view a non-Christian religion as anything but inferior or, as is
often the case, dangerous? So in the innocuous mandate to ‘bear
witness’ to Christ inheres the denigration of the religion of the
‘other’, if not explicitly, certainly implicitly. Herein lies
concealed the propensity and the potential for disharmony, for, when
one’s religion is denigrated a great violence is done to what one
holds most dear.

Older traditions, in contrast, do not believe in conversion. A Jewish
person is born of a Jewish mother. A Zoroastrian is born of
Zoroastrian parents. A Hindu is born of Hindu parents. And so are the
followers of Shintoism, Taoism and other ancient religious groups all
over the world. They acquire their religions by birth. They do not
convert anybody to their faith. Hindus stand as an example of how this
approach protects ‘other faiths’, not denigrate them. When the
persecuted Zoroastrians, the Parsis, came here as refugees driven from
Persia, they were received here as “Athithis” and were helped to
settle in India. Identical was the case with the Jews. This is what a
booklet “Indian Jews in Israel” [edited and published by Reuven Dafai,
Consul, on behalf of the Consulate of Israel, 50 Pedder Road, Cumballa
Hill, Bombay 26] says: “While most of the others came to Israel driven
by persecution, discrimination, murder and other attempts at total
genocide, the Jews of India came because of their desire to
participate in the building of the Third Jewish Common Wealth their
long sojourn in India, nowhere and at no time were they subjected to
intolerance, discrimination and persecution” . The Parsis and the Jews,
protected thus, saved their religion and lived by it. The Hindus
protected the early Christians and Muslims too. Our vision of God
compels us to do that. We accept various forms of worship, prayers and
Gods; one more really does not matter to us.

In contrast, in the other category of religions, mandated by their
theology to convert, their followers practise conversion with
conviction. Undoubtedly, they have a right to believe that unless one
is a Christian, one will not go to Heaven. But to claim the right to
go further and exert influence to turn all non-Christians into
Christians to make them eligible to enter Heaven cannot but promote
conflict. Dr Ucko identifies the “key issue that haunts people opposed
to conversion” as what he calls “aid-evangelism” – a euphemism for
conversion by “allurement” or “fraudulent means.”

The key issue is not this, but the very assumption underlying the
impulse to convert. Today we stand at a precarious juncture in world
history, where a wide range of factors including monoculture, nuclear
warfare, and ecological disasters threaten our survival as a human
race. As never before, we stand in need of the rich knowledge base of
various indigenous traditions. We stand in need of diversity,
ecological diversity, bin-diversity, and religious-diversity . We stand
in need of understanding hoiv to live peacefully with one another,
without destroying one another, and our environment. While our need is
diversity, conversion endangers all diversities, not just religious.
Conversion comes at the cost of extermination of native people’s
cultural diversity and way of living. Without preserving as they are,
the existing religious traditions and the people that practised them,
we cannot access these knowledge-bases that contain the lessons of
harmonious co-existence.

I would unhesitatingly call the Jewish, the Zoroastrian and the Hindu
traditions as non-aggressive traditions for just this reason: they do
not convert. Conversion uproots individuals, devastates families,
creates discord in communities and destroys ancient cultures. This is
what we have been arguing for several years. We need all cultures, and
therefore all religions. With the destruction of religion comes the
destruction of culture. Our religion and culture are intertwined. The
religion has gone into the fabric of the culture. When I say ‘Namaste’
to you, it is culture. It is religion. When you are doing rangoli, it
is religion; it is culture. There is a vision behind all that. Every
form of culture is connected to religion and religion itself is rooted
in spiritual wisdom. As spiritual tradition informs all aspects of
life, there is no cultural form or expression unconnected to religion.
Destruction of culture is destruction of religion. Destruction of
religion is destruction of culture. If this destruction is not
violence, what else is violence? Aggression need not be physical. It
need not be the Kargil type. There are a varieties of aggression. You
can either be emotionally, economically or verbally aggressive. But,
the worst aggression, more than physical aggression, is cultural
aggression or religious aggression. That is why we say ‘Conversion is
Violence’. It is the deepest and most profound violence.

To overcome this violence we need to think of conflict avoidance and
conflict resolution. Conflict avoidance implies the abstention from
propaganda for conversion as that is the major cause of violence.
Conflict resolution demands that the conflict-prone faiths and
civilisations understand the need to internalise the acceptance of
others’ view of God. Here is where the world, as two of the greatest
historians Will Durant and Arnold Toynhee had said, has to look to the
Hindu civilisation for relief from conflicts. Durant told the West
that “in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will
teach us tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet
content of the un-acquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding
spirit and unifying, pacifying love for all living things”. Toynbee
prophesied that “a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to
have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the
human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history, the
only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here, we have the
attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to
grow together into a single family”. The two historians have exposed
the source of disharmony and pointed to where to look for solution.

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Note:

We may have opposite views on this issue. So, Instead of discussing about the author, let’s focus on the issues he raised.

Conversion is violence. Conversion is predatory.

Please share your comments on this.