Death as POSIWID 4

In the flurry of articles and blogposts following the sad but inevitable death of Steve Jobs, many journalists and bloggers have found apposite quotes from his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford. I'm about to quote something from it myself, which continues a discussion we've been having here about the purpose of death.

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."

[Stanford University, June 2005]

Steve Jobs is here following the Buddhist way of thinking.

"Death, far from being a subject to be shunned and avoided, is the key that unlocks the seeming mystery of life. It is by understanding death that we understand life; for death is part of the process of life in the larger sense. In another sense, life and death are two ends of the same process and if you understand one end of the process, you also understand the other end. Hence, by understanding the purpose of death we also understand the purpose of life." V.F. Gunaratna, Buddhist Reflections on Death

"As long as there is fear of death, life itself is not being lived at its best. So one of the very fundamental reasons for contemplating death, for making this reality fully conscious, is that of overcoming fear. The contemplation of death is not for making us depressed or morbid, it is rather for the purpose of helping to free us from fear." Ajahn Jagaro, Death and Dying

"By understanding the purpose of death we also understand the purpose of life."

Now please go and watch Steve Jobs' whole speech. [Stanford University, June 2005]

Religious Conversion 2

In October 1956, shortly before his death, the Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar converted to Buddhism. Thousands of his followers copied him.

Mass conversions have been taking place recently to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this event [BBC News Oct 2006, May 2007].

In a comment to my earlier post Religious Conversion, someone called Armchair Guy disputed the BBC's account of the conversions, and defended the laws restricting (he prefers the word "tempering") religious conversion. If indeed they are conversions at all - since Buddhism and Jainism are legally classified as branches of Hinduism anyway.

Many Indians regard these conversions as a political stunt [Seriously Sandeep]. Discussing an earlier mass conversion in 2003, a Dalit leader denied this.

Valjibhai Patel, the most vocal opponent of the anti-conversion law, intends to provoke the government to take action against them by organising the mass conversion. ... [He] said the proposed mass conversion would not be a “political stunt” but a well thought-out strategy to get rid of the “oppressive Hindu caste system”. [Telegraph, April 2003]

I am not sure where is the dividing line between a stunt and a strategy, and I haven't seen enough of the strategy to know how well-thought-out it was, but there seems to be some agreement here that the conversion has a socio-political objective as well as a religious one.

It may seem unlikely that conversion alone will produce a massive improvement in the socio-economic status of the Dalit caste, at least in the short term. B.R. Ambedkar himself always argued (against the more romanticized view of Mahatma Gandhi, who labelled them Harijan - Children of God) that Dalits should move to the city and get an education. Perhaps it is true, as ArmchairGuy suggests, that well-funded religious organizations are performing large-scale social engineering on uninformed people. Many religious movements throughout history could be open to this accusation - and there have been much worse things than social engineering. But inhibiting ("tempering") the conversions (regardless whether this is religiously or politically motivated) appears to be fighting one piece of social engineering with another piece of social engineering.

At the root of the argument seems to be a fundamental contradiction about the significance of these conversions. If it's not such a big deal, if it's not going to make any difference to their daily lives, and if Buddhism is just a branch of Hinduism anyway, why make such a fuss? On the other hand, if conversion is worth legislating about, then perhaps it is more important than the deniers would have us believe.

See also [Dalit Issues @ CounterCurrents]

Religious Conversion

The BBC reports an intriguing story from rural India: Low-caste Hindus adopt new faith.

The first part of the story indicates some of the complex motives for religious conversion. It seems that part of the motive for conversion is that it allows low-caste Hindus to escape (or at least protest) the Indian caste system.

"By converting, Dalits - once known as Untouchables - can escape the prejudice and discrimination they normally face."

In the second part of the story we learn something about the effects of these conversions, the reactions provoked in other people.

"Gujarat has reclassified Buddhism and Jainism as branches of the Hindu religion, in an attempt to prevent conversions away from Hinduism eroding the BJP's bedrock support."

I don't quite see how this is supposed to work. These people have converted away from Hinduism to escape the injustices of the caste system. They are now told that their new religions have been redefined as branches of Hinduism. So they are expected to continue to vote for the party that stands for traditional Hindu beliefs - such as the caste system. But this reframing doesn't make sense.

How is it possible to have a religion whose identity can be reconstructed for the convenience of a political party? Is the purpose of the BJP to protect Hindus and Hinduism? Or is the purpose of Hinduism to protect the BJP?

Of course, Hinduism isn't the only religion that has experienced political interference of this kind. At one time, Europe was torn apart by Kings and Queens trying to define their political position in religous terms. But I still find it odd to encounter such things in a modern democracy.