Mitali Saran: Turning the conversion tables

Our virulently status-obsessed, god-bothering culture has a hard time with taking a shot at someone who is internationally recognised as not just a good egg, but a good egg in the service of god (cue fake-pious emoticon). A lot of television studio energy has, therefore, gone into yelling about Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat saying that Kolkata's famous Catholic missionary, Mother Teresa, was not selfless in nursing lepers and taking in the homeless; her ulterior motive in caring for the destitute was to try to convert them to Christianity.

This remark set off a storm of indignation. How dare you, she won a Nobel prize; have you ever washed a leper's feet; you're insulting all Padma award recipients; speaking ill of the semi-sainted dead. Mr Bhagwat is, without contest, free to despise Mother Teresa and say so. Everyone is, without contest, free to despise him for saying so, and to say so. But the noisy response to his non-issue of a statement has been remarkable for the following central weirdness: left-liberal, heart-in-the-right-place people have defended Mother Teresa against the charge of conversion, as if there's something wrong with conversion.

We can talk, until the cows come home, about whether action should be selfless or not (if selfless action is even a thing, rather than, at heart, an irreducible ego trip). But that is both impossible to determine and irrelevant. Regardless of motive, Mother Teresa alleviated plenty of immediate physical and physic suffering, and that is a wonderful thing, for which India has been properly grateful and appreciative.

If Mr Bhagwat is peeved that she was trying to get people to find Jesus, it's only because he's trying so hard to get people to find Hinduism instead. All the raised hackles are entirely unnecessary; the fact is that missionaries who don't try to convert people aren't doing their jobs. The constitutional response to Mr Bhagwat is: nothing. It's a non-issue. So what if Mother Teresa was trying to convert people? So what if the RSS tries to make Hinduism look good via "social work"? Conversion is not a crime in India, as long as it is free of coercion or inducement.

Coercion is easy to spot. Convert, or your water supply will mysteriously keep getting cut off; convert, or nobody in the village will talk to you; convert, or we'll kill you. But what constitutes inducement? Is it even possible to proscribe it? Isn't the promise of release from the cycle of rebirth, or of virgins in heaven, or of good marks on Judgement Day, as much of an inducement as Rs 20,000 and a flat-screen television? (For myself, I see why preachers have more success when they underline those promises with Rs 20,000 and a flat-screen television, but then I'm not so religion-y.)

Is proselytisation by any religion undesirable because it's a kind of spiritual colonialism, holding itself superior to the world view of the natives it is trying to civilise? If so, then we should also stop trying to persuade each other of the relative merits of a certain kind of parenting, or a certain kind of family structure, or a certain kind of economics, or a certain kind of diet. All of these attitudes valorise and privilege one kind of idea over another.

It's absurd to treat religion differently from any other idea. It is an idea, and a deeply capitalist one at that, fully aware that it is competing in the marketplace of ideas. Like any idea or product, it seeks consumers, leaning heavily on the direct marketing model by which every consumer is a potential retailer. Why, if you can try to get your friends to try your brand of pimple cream, can't you try to get them to try Jesus or Allah or Ram? If your friends are better disposed to listen because you also happen to be mopping their fevered brows or cleaning their infected wounds, then you just happen to be a better salesperson of your idea. Bully for you.

Whether you're peddling religion or ball bearings, you make your business as attractive as possible to the greatest possible number. The best face of religion is that it can move a believer to acts of compassion and humanity, either by commission like Mother Teresa, or by omission, as the silent majority of all religions do when they reject violent fundamentalism. Congregations, like consumers, have choices, and they will critique, compare and choose.

The vital difference between ideas and products is that you cannot ban ideas. A law against conversion is not just insanely unconstitutional, but completely impossible to enforce meaningfully. Pointless debates such as that born out of Mr Bhagwat's remark only increase the radioactivity of the notion of personal choice and individual rights. That only helps majoritarian politicians and religionists.