Time to do away with right to propagate religion

Indigenous civilisations and cultures are under threat from the assaults of alien ways of life and alien ideas of converting others to one’s own faith by hook or by crook.

And the right to propagate religion provided for in Article 25(i) of the Constitution has been one of the most misused rights that has played havoc with the Indian civilisation.

It has been misused in such outrageous manner that it is time to seriously consider amending the constitution and withdrawing this right.

The right to propagate religion in India, as enunciated by Article 25 (i) of the Indian constitution, is a handy tool to freely convert people from indigenous faiths to Abrahmic faiths.

If ever the constitution is amended, this word – ‘to propagate’ – should be urgently removed from Article 25 (i).

Why?

Our Constitution has a 10th Schedule Anti-Defection Law that actually disqualifies an MP or an MLA on the grounds of defection.

It goes: “If an elected member gives up his membership of a political party voluntarily; or If he votes or abstains from voting in the House, contrary to any direction issued by his political party; or If any member who is independently elected joins any party -“

An MP or MLA is not allowed to vote a bill in defiance of his party line. Because the constitution recognizes the possibility of foul play – the risk of allurement and thereby subversion of democratic process.

It is really ironical that a poverty-stricken Indian villager, or a sick man on the bed, or a family that has an ailing person needing medical emergency, is assumed to be free and logical enough to decide whether he should choose the logic of The Pope or that of Richard Dawkins.

An MP can’t decide, and is not supposed to be free enough to decide, which way he should vote on a bill to build a highway or to fell a few trees, but a poor Adivasi living in a Bastar or Jharkhand village, situated deep in a forest, is assumed to be wise enough to decide whether he should save himself from imagined hell-fire after death or remain in his present roots.

Or whether his child’s malaria would be cured by the oil given by a priest with a bag of rice or not.

A lawyer is not allowed to publicise his services. A doctor is not allowed to claim he is the best doctor. A medicine manufacturer cannot go public claiming his medicine is the best medicine.

But a cleric can claim that his is the best religion that has all the answers about creation and end of the world and therefore others must join his faith.

And hundreds of millions have actually been killed over centuries over this false claim.

What a destructive right!

This right to propagate religion is a one-way conversion tool. Because it has resulted in conversion of indigenous natives to other faiths on a massive scale. The data show it.

It has never served as a right that encourages free and logical thinking and conscience-based decisions.

A tribal or a villager who can live in perfect sync with nature needs no alien civilising intervention.

It is in fact criminal to allow anyone to blabber nonsense to an indigenous person.

That is grooming, not propagating.

No freedom is absolute. And a few freedoms should never be allowed.

Freedom to indulge in pornography, freedom to use drugs, freedom to do surgery without a degree, freedom to keep slaves, freedom to kill a friend on his request to deliver him from an excruciating pain due to cancer are not allowed even in this country.

Not even today.

The right to propagate religion is one such freedom that has no place in a civilised society.

For now, it is time India debated the need to do away with the right to propagate religion for good.

Only idiocy, arrogance and evil intentions bestow such super confidence in a man that he would want to convert others to his own faith.

This tendency and design needs to be thwarted and punished instead of being strengthened and backed by a legal right to indulge in idiocy and devilry.

The constitution makers had erred in accepting an Abrahmic view of life where right to propagate one’s own religion is considered important. This view has resulted in wiping out several indigenous civilisations throughout Europe, America and Asia.

It is stupid to have such a law in a country which has achieved independence after centuries of subjugation, slavery and torture in the hands of foreign invaders and religious bigots who all arrived here to serve their religion and culture and perpetrated indescribable mayhem and destruction. From Goa inquisition to Aurangjeb’s barbarism to Tipu’s massacres. All in the name of religion.

A duck should not give the right to a fox to smell and lick any creature in duck’s house. If it does, it is stupidity and not democracy.

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