Literacy and Conversion in the Discourse of Hindu Nationalism
Author(s)
Viswanathan, Gauri
Abstract
Viswanathan suggests that to those who patrol the barriers around religion, conversion rudely shuts down communication and is forcible by definition. Violence is at its core, and removes identity while ordering the extinction of an individual’s most innate beliefs and understandings. Even when conversion works by persuasion, it is no less coercive in that it leaves the individual vulnerable to alluring promises. This is violence of the most hateful kind, because it induces assent by planting the seeds of hope for a better life. The legacy of historical conquest has made this notion of conversion a palpable and uncontestable one, even though violence does not inhere in conversion but, rather, in the historical moment in which conversion occurs. Indeed, when examined as a form of intersubjective communication, conversion can be understood as the outcome of a process whose alternative end point is violence, especially when the differences between parties remain unresolved.
