The “earthquake” in Meenakshipuram has drawn the attention of the whole country, its Government, Parliament, press, public, political parties, religious leaders and other busybodies. There is an endless discussion on the mass conversion of untouchables to Islam. Hindu society is shaking in its shoes. The tiny village has suddenly become a centre of pilgrimage to all sorts of trouble-makers.
Union Minister of State for Home Yogendra Makwana’s visit to the village renamed Rehamat Nagar became a front-page news in the national press. Eve’s Weekly called it a “national crisis”. Home Minister Zail Singh was grilled by MPs Including a CPM leader and they all extracted an assurance from him that the Government of India was seized of the matter. The Shankaracharya of Kanchi Karnakoti Peetha sent a three-man team of Brahmin (religious) leaders headed by the Pejawara Swamy, president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. Scores of “fact-finding teams beelined” to the village. They met the Prime Minister, who according to AlCC general secretary Moopanar expressed grave concern over this. The Hindus suddenly overcome by compassion and love towards the “Harijans” decided to dig wells in Rehamat Nagar. Makwana, after a stormy visit to the areas gripped by bloody Hindu violence on untouchables, got locked in a verbal battle with Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran over his remark that the “Harijans are not safe under the Tamil Nadu police. The well-planned visit of Makwana had raised high hopes in the Hindu communal circles that they would discover “Arab money” and the “threat” to convert the ‘poor Harijans’. But he discovered nothing. His wait turned out to be a big disappointment to the communal Hindus. On the other hand, his off-the- record talks with the press man at Madurai and Madras and Dalit leaders revealed the truth.
Our representative present at such informal talks writes: Makwana mission was a total failure. He could do nothing with the untouchable converts to Islam. He admitted that some of them even shouted “Makwana go back” slogans. Besides the untouchables of Rehamat Nagar, Dalit representatives of neighbouring villages, particularly Dalit lawyers, teachers and other educated Dalits, told him that they ware ill-treated only because they were Hindus. Therefore, they had decided to quit Hinduism to gain social status. Makwana admitted that he had written letters to the Shankaracharyas but this was wrong on his part. The methods adopted by the Hindus would provoke even those one or two still remaining as Hindus in each family. If Hindus behaved this way, he said, nobody could stop the exodus. He feared that even if a single convert was assaulted, it might result Hindu-Muslim clash causing serious repercussions all over India. He condemned reports about Arab money. According to him ill-treated by Hindus police atrocities and the frustration of the youth were the three causes for the conversion He said very clearly that he was not against “conversion to Islam” writes our representative in Madras.
As regards the allegations made by the RSS and other Hindu communalists that Arab money was paid and that force was used for conversion, they must be specific. Which country paid the money, who brought it and who received it and how much? All these details with their names, must be published. So, also the names of those who used force for the conversion.
Untouchables and tribals all over India are desperate. Hinduism has made mincemeat out of them. They are suffocated in the air-tight, stinking dungeon of Hinduism. It is this desperation that is driving them out of the Hindu fold. Ambedkar had opened the gates and showed the way. Even to this day, untouchables are a set of people who are negatively defined by their exclusion from the Hindu community. This takes both religious and social forms. Their movement under Ambedkar to seek a more positive identity at the time of independence was thwarted by Gandhi and other communal politicians for political reasons. Now the Hindu community has failed to integrate them in the last 30 years of our “national” existence, they should refuse to be fooled again by the myth created by the high castes that they are Hindus. The truth is that the untouchables were never Hindus, nor will they ever become Hindus except in negative forms. So the question before them is how they should get rid of their negative identity socially and religiously. It is time that they should now decide for themselves and not allow anybody to exploit them. The only way and the best way is to quit Hinduism and announce it publicly. They may lose the crumbs of reservations which have reduced them to the level of permanent beggars before the closed doors of the Hindus. The untouchables of Rehmat Nagar have at an example by renouncing Hindus and thus gaining manhood.
But the way this conversion episode is tackled is something unprecedented. The whole thing looks mysterious. Why did Meenakshipuram receive so much attention; Why did the Hindu press, which always used to suppress any news about conversion, suddenly go berserk over Meenakshipuram? There appears to be a method in this madness, this breast-beating by the Brahmins, the SOS of the Shankaracharyas. It looks as if the sky is collapsing over Tamil Nadu. And this cry of “wolf, wolf” is not stopping even after impartial observers declared that there is no wolf, not even a mouse. Why this scare-mongering?
This is what makes us suspicious about the whole thing. We feel there is a deep-rooted conspiracy behind these exercises. Something big is in the offing-chief Minister M. G. R.. said that conversions to Islam are not new to Tamil Nadu. A report in the Hindu (July 7) says M.G. R. gave statistics to prove that “almost every year from 1969 to 1978 there had been cases of such conversion in two villages in Bodinaickanur taluk, Madurai District In Tirunelveli district too there had been such mass conversions, in 1944, in 3 villages involving 170, 40 and 27 Harijans families“. In six other villages also “Harijans as families or individuals has taken to Islam in the past. So it was incorrect to say that the conversion was a new phenomenon“, he said. Different Dalit organisations have arrived at the same conclusion.
Then why all this un-ending deafening noise? A sort of a war-preparation? Our information is that the RSS and other communalists are planning to repeat Moradabad’s events in the South, may be between Muslims and untouchables themselves. Tamil Nadu has been so far free from communal clashes, because, thanks to Periyar, it had always voted for his followers. To wrest Tamil Nadu from the Periyar’s followers and restore the Brahmin supremacy, the twin interest-free “vote banks”-scheduled castes and Muslims – are needed. And the communal bigots cannot get a better opportunity than the current conversion controversy in which these two persecuted minorities are locked. This appears to be the game. We call both the Dalits, Muslims and Christians to beware of this fascist game and nip it in the bud. Muslims and Christian organisations all over India and Tamil Nadu in particular must immediately jump and take positions. Dravida Khazagam, DMK, Marxists and other Left elements should realise that any chance given to the Hindu communalists to poke their nose will be a setback to their respective movement.
