Forced conversion: The latest Hindu fundamentalist hysteria

Post from Campus Progress Blog:
Forced conversion: The latest Hindu fundamentalist hysteria
By ashwini - Mar 12th, 2007 at 5:18 pm EDT


The Hindu fundamentalists are at it again—this time, the Times Online reports that Sikh and Hindu girls are being forced to convert on college campuses in the U.K. through “groomed conversations” and friendships with Muslim boys.

"The men aggressively target vulnerable university students by using the fear of being dishonoured to force them to convert, community leaders have told The Times. Many befriend their victims, then threaten to tell their families that they are in a sexual relationship with a Muslim. Some teenagers are said to have been drugged and photographed in compromising positions.

Many comply because they are so afraid of shaming their parents or being rejected by their communities."

Wait a second…Sikh and Hindu girls are converting to Islam, abandoning the faith in which they were raised, in order to avoid being rejected by their community?? This makes absolutely no fucking sense.

Upon further investigation, I found that there were some sane voices out there that challenged the hysteria that has accompanied “forced conversion” of Hindus. Over at Pickled Politics, Savita read my thoughts when she wrote that the story had a “whiff of urban myth around it,” and that the entire concept was condescending to young women:

“Having researched around this area I understand there is some nail-biting among some Hindus and Sikh in ‘the communities’ that there are genuine cases where women have converted out of their faiths…How patronising is this to Hindu and Sikh girls who have obviously been successful in their education to be in University to be told that they need to be protected because they obviously can’t think for themselves and make choices about their relationships and identities?”

The excellent Awaaz-South Asia Watch issued a press release on the frenzy, stating there was no evidence to support these claims, and making the connection (a vital one, I believe) between Hindu fundamentalism and Zionism:

“At the [Hindu Security at the London School of Economics] conference, a representative of the Union of Jewish Students described what he regarded as a special relationship between Hindus and Jews, explaining that what Israel faces in Palestine is the same as what India faces in Kashmir.

Islamic societies on campuses were being singled out as the sole guilty parties on conversions. When one attendee at the workshop pointed out that many evangelical religious organisations, including Christian ones, attempt to convert students, the police officer chairing the workshop said they were only interested in Muslim attempts at converting people.”

The South Asian subcontinent has a long and bloody religious history, and tensions run incredibly deep—and are imported to other continents through the diaspora. The rise of Hindu fundamentalism has given contemporary Hinduism 2 significant and pernicious strains: The posturing of victimhood, and the notion that fundamentalism is resistance against the forces that would destroy Hindus. These strains have fueled and justified the pogroms against religious minorities in India, and has also led to severe social conservatism that affects women, children and sexual minorities overwhelmingly.

Today, Hindu fundamentalists are well-financed and powerful in countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. Having the political clout and the purse strings, fundamentalists constantly set back the efforts of South Asians in the diaspora working to improve unity among people of South Asian descent amid our common struggles against hate crimes, racial discrimination, and oppressive immigration and anti-terrorism policies.