Organised proselytism is an expression of religious intolerance. Had this point been made in the course of President K.R. Narayanan's call for religious tolerance in his address to the nation on 25th January 1999, on the eve of Republic Day, the message would have been comprehensive and credible.

It may be said by the intellectually sophisticated that disapproval of intrusive proselytism can be read between the lines of President Narayanan's address. But, coming as it did in the context of incidents of violence sparked in different parts of the country by a backlash against organised and foreign-funded Christian missionary activity, the average member of the President's audience is likely to have formed the impression that the Head of the Indian state held only the Hindus to blame. This is indeed unfortunate, since such could not have been the President's intention.

In contrast is the statement issued on the same day by Shri C. Subramaniam, elder statesman who was recently honoured as a Bharat Ratna. As a surviving member of the Constituent Assembly, he justified and explained the background to Article 25 (1) which guarantees the right not only to profess and practise but to propagate religion. It is useful to quote the relevant portion of Shri Subramaniam's statement:

"There was concern that religious missionaries from abroad were already known to be spreading their faith through incentives and allurements in the form of medical help and educational services. This was particularly the case in the remote regions like the then North-East Frontier where public services were scanty and hard to come by for the villagers.

"The Constitution-makers adopted a two-pronged approach in dealing with this question of the right to religious conversion. They called upon the state, through the Directive Principles of State Policy, to take the needed basic services everywhere as quickly as possible so that they can no longer be used as instruments for promoting religious conversion. At the same time, they had enough faith in the religious leaders and the common man that the freedom to propagate and convert will not be generally misused and thereby threaten communal harmony and social peace.

"Our actual experience with this policy during the last four or five decades has been mixed. Let us, by all means, tighten the legal provisions where necessary so that the right to propagate does not become a licence to run amok and promote 'shotgun' conversions through the offer of attractive packages by affluent religious orders.

"Let us take special steps to see that the rich native customs and beliefs of our tribal brethren do not become a prey to outside influences that are keen to notch up more conversions to their religious systems. Let the apparatus of the state ensure that basic services are made available everywhere, particularly in the remote and inaccessible areas as a matter of national priority. Let all religious orders have the freedom to supplement government efforts in this regard and make these facilities available, but with no strings attached."

Though Shri Subramaniam is of the view that the provisions of the Constitution are not defective, it is of interest to recall that amendment of Article 25 (1) so as to limit the fundamental right to profession and practice of one's faith, and to remove the protection conferred on proselytism, was proposed more than a decade ago by a distinguished jurist. The person who advocated a Constitution amendment on these lines was not a Hindu. It was Justice Baharul Islam, a former Judge of the Supreme Court.

He said in the course of the fourth Motilal Nehru Memorial Lecture delivered by him under the auspices of the Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, in New Delhi on 9th December 1987: "In my opinion, guarantee of the right to propagate religion was excessive and unnecessary, if propagation of religion includes conversion of a person from one religion to another. "There should be no objection if a person voluntarily renounces his or her religion and accepts another, but propagation of religion and conversion by persuasion or lure creates, and has created, a lot of misunderstanding between different communities, and often creates considerable tension. I believe it will be more conducive if Article 25 (1) is amended to the extent indicated above." While suggesting this, Justice Baharul Islam must have been fully aware of the ruling by a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in 1977, upholding the validity of the laws enacted in Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, in 1967 and 1968 respectively, making religious conversion through force, fraud or allurement a punishable offence. The Madhya Pradesh High Court had upheld the State law, while the similar law enacted in the neighbouring State was struck down by the Orissa High Court as violative of Article 25 (1), conversion being "a part of the Christian religion".

On the matter coming up before the apex court, both the State laws were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1977 on the ground that they dealt with preservation of public order, which is Entry 1 in the State List of subjects enumerated in the Constitution. The Supreme Court held that the laws were meant to avoid the disturbance to public order that would result from conversion from one religion to another in a manner reprehensible to the community. In addition to this ruling, the Constitution Bench made what appears to be an obiter dictum (incidental remark, without binding force) that, since the freedom of conscience guaranteed by Article 25 (1) applies to every citizen and not merely to followers of one particular religion, "there can be no such thing as a fundamental right to convert any person to one's own religion."

Other States were free after this to enact laws on the lines of the Orissa and Madhya Pradesh Acts. But only Arunachal Pradesh enacted a Freedom of Religion Act, which came into force in 1978. Justice Baharul Islam's proposal amounted in effect to a return to the position adopted by the Indian National Congress at its Karachi session in 1931. The resolution on fundamental rights, and on the socio-economic objectives which should be included in any future constitution, envisaged that every citizen would enjoy "this right freely to profess and practise his religion". The Karachi resolution on fundamental rights did not include the right to propagate religion.

It is possible that Justice Baharul Islam's suggestion was prompted by a desire to avoid repetition of social tensions of the kind generated in 1981 by mass conversions to Islam in and around Meenakshipuram in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu, as well as in North Arcot district. Whereas Christian churches in India have received substantial funds from abroad for two centuries, during British rule and even after Independence, Islam too became a well-endowed multinational religious corporation following the oil boom in Muslim countries of West Asia since the early 1970s.

The impulse to evangelise springs from faith in a single and only true God. The God need not be supernatural. Marxism has history as god and dialectical materialism as its theology. Godless communism has been as cruelly fanatical as the three god-based Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The term zealot, to denote a fanatic, is derived from the name of a Jewish sect which aimed at world domination, and resisted the Romans till AD 70. Christian zealotry emerged when the Roman emperor Constantine embraced Christianity and made it the official religion of his empire. The Stalinists of Russia and Maoists of China stamped out other religions and imposed the Marxist faith on their own people as well as on the people of the East European countries and of Tibet subjugated by them. This imposition was as thorough and ruthless as the displacement of native religions by Islamic and Christian conquerors in the colonies established by them in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

In contrast, proselytism has not been a part, historically, of the practice of polytheistic Hinduism. Its adherents worship various gods and goddesses, and are divided into sects each with its favourite deity and even distinctive philosophy. But they see themselves as branches of one tree, stemming from the same trunk. Just as there are conversions from time to time within Christianity from one denomination to another, there have been conversions within Hinduism from and to Vaishnavism, Saivism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sikhism. There have been many instances in Punjab of some members of a family following the Sikh mode of worship while others of the same family adhered to the creed and practices of other streams of Hinduism.

The unity of the major denominations of the ancient and syncretist religion of India, to which outsiders gave the name Hinduism, is explicitly affirmed in an Explanation to Article 25 of the Constitution: "The reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference to persons professing the Sikh, Jain or Buddhist religion". It is noteworthy that when Dr B.R. Ambedkar embraced Buddhism shortly before his death in 1956, there was no anger felt by mainstream Hindus. On the contrary they felt relieved that he had not opted for either of the foreign religions, Christianity and Islam, some of whose leaders had made strenuous efforts to induce Ambedkar to accept their faith.

Conversion within Hinduism from one creed to another did not entail loss of caste, which has been the primal identity of Hindus down the ages. Only conversion to foreign religions did.

Re-acceptance of such converts into their caste, and thereby into the Hindu fold, was advocated for the first time in the 19th century by some Hindu leaders. It was a means of psychic rehabilitation, at the individual level, of those who felt uncomfortable and disoriented in the new way of life into which they themselves or their forefathers had been inducted through coercion or inducement. Such reconversion, which may be described as proselytism in reverse, was also a means of social self-defence of a people, predominantly Hindu, who had been subjected to the convulsions, physical and psychological, of foreign invasions for centuries. The first prominent Indian to raise his voice against the unsavoury methods adopted by Christian proselytisers was Raja Rammohun Roy (1772-1833). Hailed as the initiator of India's intellectual and social resurgence in the modern period and as the father of the Indian Press, Rammohun Roy was deeply attracted by the teaching of the New Testament in the same way that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was later to be Monier Williams has described him as "perhaps the first earnest-minded investigator of the science of comparative religion that the world has produced". Rammohun Roy's criticism of the organised and intrusive activity of Christian missionaries did not proceed from Hindu zealotry. On the contrary, he was condemned by some orthodox Hindus for his denunciation of sati and other evil social practices of the time.

Rammohun Roy notes that Muslim—but not Hindu—social leaders were willing to welcome back to their mother religion such converts as wished to return: "Several years ago there was a pretty prevalent report in this part of India that a native embracing Christianity should be remunerated for his loss of caste by the gift of five hundred rupees, with a country-born Christian woman as his wife; and while this report had any pretension to credit, several natives offered from time to time to become Christians. The hope of any such recompense being taken away, the old converts find now very few inclined to follow their example. The disappointment not only discourages further conversion, but has also induced several Moosulman converts to return to their former faith; and had Hindus with equal facility admitted the return of outcasts to their society, a great number of them also would, I suspect, have imitated the conduct of their brother Moosalman converts."

Dr Karan Singh has narrated in his autobiography how his father, Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir, was once approached by representatives of a large body of converted Kashmiri Hindus for readmission to the parental fold. But the rigidly orthodox leaders of the Pandit community (as Kashmiri Brahmins are known) would not agree to the proposed reconversion. The history of that unhappy State might have been different if the Pandit leaders had not been so obstinate.

In contrast, leaders of Hindu social reform in Punjab were receptive to the idea of recoversions. Swami Dayanand (1824-83) gave practical shape to Rammohun Roy's suggestion by promoting shuddhi (literally, cleansing) or re-acceptance into the Hindu fold. A Gujarati by birth who settled in the Punjab, Dayanand anticipated Gandhiji's crusade against untouchability and against the relegation of women to inferior status.

Gandhiji articulated his opposition to Christian proselytising activity in India in the course of a remarkably candid address at a gathering of Christian missionaries in Madras on 14th February 1916. He stressed the importance of each person remaining true to and acting in accordance with the best teaching of his own religion: a Hindu should be a good Hindu, a Muslim a good Muslim and a Christian a good Christian. Swadeshi, he said, is "that spirit in us which restricts us to the use and service of our own immediate surroundings to the exclusion of the more remote. Thus, as for religion, in order to satisfy the requirements of the definition, I must restrict myself to my ancestral religion, that is, the use of my immediate religious surroundings. If I find it defective, I should serve it by purging it of its defects."

Ten years later, writing in Young India of 2nd July 1926, the Mahatma reiterated that religious conversion is unnecessary: "I do believe that in the other world there are neither Hindus, nor Christians nor Mussalmans. There, all are judged not according to their labels, or professions, but according to their actions, irrespective of their professions. During our earthly existence there will always be these labels. I therefore prefer to retain the label of my forefathers."

In the ten-year interval between these two statements, Gandhiji mobilised Congress support for the Khilafat movement which, instead of promoting Hindu-Muslim unity as he had hoped, inspired extraterritorial loyalty to the ruler of Turkey on the part of Indian Muslims and aggravated their feeling of separate identity. In Turkey itself the people discarded their Sultan and established a republic. In India, there were communal riots and forced conversions to Islam from Malabar in the south to Kohat in the north-west. Maulana Mohammad Ali, whom Gandhiji chose as his chief comrade-in-arms during the ill-fated Khilafat movement, knew that in the matter of securing conversions it would be an unequal competition between the votaries of Islam devoted to their one and only god, and of Hinduism with its innumerable gods and goddesses. Islam, like Christianity, has concentrated on and secured the largest number of converts from two soft target groups: the former untouchables known successively as the Depressed Classes, Harijans, Scheduled Castes, and now Dalits; and the Scheduled Tribes.

In the course of his presidential address at the Kakinada session of the Congress in December 1923, Mohammad Ali, encouraged by the fabulously rich Aga Khan to whom he referred without naming him, said: "It has been suggested to me by an influential and wealthy gentleman who is able to organise a missionary society on a large scale for the conversion of the Suppressed Classes, that it should be possible to reach a settlement with leading Hindu gentlemen and divide the country into separate areas where Hindus and Muslim missionaries could respectively work. In this way each community would be free to do the work of absorption." Mohammad Ali chose to assume, as the British rulers did, that the Scheduled Castes were not Hindus.

Reports on the decennial Indian Census bring out both the connection between foreign conquest and the spread of foreign religions, and the existence of soft target groups for proselytising missionaries. Thus, the report on the 1911 Census by E.A. Gait, member of the Indian Civil Service and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, says with reference to the north-west of the subcontinent extending to and including Afghanistan where surviving Buddhist monuments attest former Hindu rule, that Hindus were reduced to a minority "along the rout of invading Muslim hordes". By 1911, Hindus were few in the North-West Frontier; they formed one-eighth of the population in West Punjab; 22 per cent in Kashmir; less than a quarter of the population in Sind; and 45 per cent in Bengal. E.A. Gait goes on to say: "Though there is at present no organised proselytism by the mullahs, here and there individuals are turning to Mohammedanism, some few from real conviction but more for material reasons such as the desire to escape from an impossible position when outcasted, or, in the case of widows, the allurement of an offer of marriage. At the present time, however, the defections from Hinduism are chiefly the result of conversions to Christianity."

The report notes that the number of Indian Christians had increased, by 1911, three-fold since 1872, and by 32.6 per cent over 1901. It says: "Missionaries find it easier to convert depressed castes of Madras and Punjab, and hill tribes of Chhota Nagpur and Assam than to convert high caste Hindus or Mohammadans." It was not difficult to recruit the simple and gullible tribal folk for Christianity since they were free of caste and therefore conversion entailed no cutting off from relations and friends. Other groups vulnerable to conversion, the report added, were the low caste Mahars of Central Provinces and Berar, Chuhras of Punjab and Shamans of Madras in the southern districts. That most of the conversions were skin-deep is brought out by the statement in the report that "in Kaira, many converted during famine returned to ancestral beliefs". This helps to explain the term 'rice Christians'.

Also noteworthy is E.A. Gait's acknowledgment of the Hindus tolerant and catholic outlook: "Hindus have no fanatical opposition. Many send children to missionary schools and colleges. In this way Christian thought influences large numbers who remain Hindus. The European reader of Indian newspapers is often astonished at the writers' familiarity with the Bible."

This very virtue of Hindus made them unequal players on the ostensibly level field on which Maulana Mohammad Ali proposed competitive proselytism. His dream was translated into reality by the framers of India's 1950 Constitution. The right to propagate religion, guaranteed by Article 25, is available equally to Christian and Muslim proselytisers and to Hindus who are non-proselytising by belief and inclination. By treating as equals those who were unequals, in terms of fanatical zeal supported by foreign funding, Article 25 left the field free for the propagators of foreign religions.

The figures of the post-Independence Censuses tell the consequential tale. The proportion of Hindus in the population of India declined from nearly 85 per cent in 1951 to 82.72 per cent in 1981 and declined further by 1991. While the spectacular increase in the percentage of the Muslim population is due to a substantial extent to influx of indigent Bangladeshis seeking employment in somewhat less indigent India, the increase in the percentage of Christians owes in some measure to conversions. For example, in the tribal Dangs district of Gujarat, which has lately been in the news for clashes between Christian and non-Christian groups, the population of converted tribal people is reported to have gone up from about 500 in 1948 to between 35,000 and 40,000. Shri Ghelubhai Nayak, a Gandhian and Servodaya worker who was recently awarded the Gram Seva Puraskar by the Gujarat Vidyapeeth founded by Gandhiji, has attributed the social tension in the Dangs district to the tactics employed by Christian missionaries who came from outside. The provocations cited by him include desecration of the idols of Shiva and Hanuman, revered by the tribals; punishment of school children for wearing the Gandhi cap; and pressure brought to bear on a young relation of an ex-Raja of the Bhils for marrying a Christian girl in a bid to evengelise him. Shri Chunibhai Vaidya, another Gandhian worker who is described in a United News of India report as "a staunch opponent of the RSS, VHP and BJP", has joined Shri Nayak in describing the recent incidents of violence as a reaction to missionary activity, and in demanding a ban on conversions.

Unethical methods to secure conversion to Christianity have been reported from time to time from various parts of the country. The Hindu of 8th January 1999 carried a report from Guwahati that Vaishnavites in Upper Assam were angered by the publication of two booklets of devotional verses, by the Sibsagar Catholic church, in which the names of Rama and Krishna were changed to Jesus Christ. Father Joy Palliakunnel of the Sibsagar church admitted that this could have led to communal tension in the area, expressed regret and made over copies of the booklets to the district administration.

It is unfortunate that the Christian churches have not got over the itch for securing conversions, though Christianity has gone through reformatory and civilising influences since the days of the Inquisition, support to European colonialism, and acquiescence in Negro slavery. A Pope of the mid-15th century gave religious sanction for colonial conquest by issuing a bull in 1454 granting Portugal control over the East: "Our joy is immense to know that our dear son Henry, Prince of Portugal, inspired with a zeal for souls like an intrepid soldier of Christ, has carried into the most distant and unknown countries the name of God and has brought into the Catholic fold the perfidious enemies of God and Christ."

The Bishop of London, in 1727, wrote a letter assuring the slave-owners in the southern colonies of America; "Christianity and the embracing of the gospel does not make the least alteration in civil property or in any of the duties which belong to civil relations... whether bond or free, their being baptised and becoming Christians makes no manner of change in them."

Christianity has moved a long way from such positions, even as Hindu society has undergone transformation through the abolition of untouchability, the protective discrimination in favour of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the Hindu family law reforms enacted in the 1950s, and the loosening of caste inequality.

Since it was at the instance of Christian members of the Constituent Assembly that the right to "propagate" religion was written into the Constitution, enlightened leaders of that community will do well to consider whether in the light of the experience of the last fifty years, they can accept Justice Baharul Islam's suggestion for amendment of Article 25.

Besides possible deletion of the right to 'propagate' religion, there is a second and related matter to be considered in the interest of the cooperative co-existence of different religious communities in India. This is the question of religious instruction in schools, dealt with in Articles 28 and 30.

At the very time that the Constituent Assembly was drafting the Constitution, a University Education Commission headed by Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan was at work. Religious instruction was one of the terms of reference of the Commission, which included distinguished humanist scholars as well as scientists, Indian and foreign: Dr Tara Chand, historian; Sir James, F. Duff, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Durham in the UK; Dr Zakir Hussain of the Jamia Millia Islamia; Dr Arthur E. Morgan, first chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the the USA; Dr A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, Vice-Chancellor of Madras University; Dr Meghanad Saha, F.R.S.; Dr Karan Narayan Bahl, zoologist; Dr John J. Tigert, formerly Commissioner of Education in the USA; and Prof Nirmal Kumar Siddhanta of Lucknow University.

The Commission referred to the Constitution of free India that was then being drawn up, and said: "the fundamental principles of our Constitution call for spiritual training. There is no state religion. The state must not be partial to any one religion. Each one is at liberty to approach the Unseen as it suits his capacity and inclination. If this is the basis of our secular state, to be secular is not to be religiously illiterate. It is to be deeply spiritual, and not narrowly religious."

Accordingly, the Commission recommended that the degree course should include the teaching of the lives of the great religious leaders like the Buddha, Confucious, Zoroaster, Socrates, Jesus, Sankara, Mohammad, Kabir, Nanak and Gandhi. The study of selections of a universalist character from the scriptures of the world was also recommended: "A reverent study of all religions would be uniquely rewarding as a step towards harmony between religions long divided. This is in consonance with the spirit of our country." In flat disregard of this recommendation, our constitution-makers decided in their questionable wisdom to prohibit, through Article 28 (1), religious instruction "in any educational institution wholly maintained out of state funds". Since the great majority of students, cutting across religions, enrol in state-run schools where fees are nil or nominal, this has meant that two generations of students have been denied the opportunity of exposure, as part of their formal education, to the ethical values and humanist insights of the great religions. No wonder that they have been vulnerable to the messages of hedonist consumerism and sexism disseminated by the mass media, as well as to the divisive propaganda engaged in by many politicians on the basis of religion and caste, region and language.

While Clause 1 of Article 28 prohibits religious instruction in state-run schools, such instruction is allowed in other schools, in terms of Clause 3 of the same Article which reads: "No person attending any educational institution recognised by the state or receiving aid out of state funds shall be required to take part in any religious instruction that may be imparted in such institution, or to attend any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution or in any premises attached there- to unless such person or, if such person is a minor, his guardian has given his consent thereto."

Maulana Azad, free India's first Minister of Education, must have felt mortified. He had warned in a speech on 13th January 1948: "What will be the consequence if the Government undertakes to impart purely secular education? Naturally, people will try to provide religious education to their children through private sources. How these private sources are working today or are likely to work in future is known to you. I know something about it and can say that not only in villages but even in cities, the imparting of religious education is entrusted to teachers who, though literate, are not educated. To them religion is nothing but bigotry."

This leads on to a consideration of Article 30. It reads: "All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice." It further lays down: "The State shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language."

The right given to linguistic minorities to run educational institutions of their choice is unexceptionable. But why should religious minorities be given the right to establish and run educational institutions? The two principal religious minorities in India are adherents of monotheistic creeds which lay exclusive claim to truth and which encourage conversions. Fanatical indoctrination in Islam in hundreds of schools run for several decades by the Jamaat-e-Islami in Kashmir has been a potent factor in stoking the fires of secessionism and insurgency.

Articles 28 and 30, between them, hinder instead of promoting inter-religious understanding and cooperative co-existence. Both need review so as to provide for compulsory instruction in the best values of all major religions at every stage of education, in all educational institutions by whomsoever run, as recommended by the Radhakrishnan Commission.

Will Muslim and Christian leaders agree?
There is no doubt that at least some of them will. Those who belong to the Congress, at any rate, should agree unless they want to repudiate Gandhiji and Maulana Azad. Writing in Harijan a decade before Independence, the Mahatma said: "I regard it as fatal to the growth of a friendly spirit among children belonging to the different faiths if they are taught that their religion is superior to every other, or that it is the only true religion. Fundamental principles of ethics are common to all religions. These should be taught to the children." Maulana Azad said on 13th January 1948: "At first it was considered that religious instruction would stand in the way of the free intellectual development of a child, but now it has been admitted that religious education cannot be dispensed with. If national education was devoid of this element, there would be no appreciation of moral values or moulding of character on human lines." As for the Communist parties, they may ponder the following words of G. Parthasarathi, distinguished diplomat and educationist of Leftist persuasion. He said in the course of his convocation address at the University of Hyderabad in 1987: "Now that the concept of a core national curriculum has been accepted, it seems to me that consideration might be given to the inclusion in it of a course covering the development of human values the world over and with special reference to India. Such a course would cover the contributions made to the development of a humanistic outlook by the various religions, by outstanding thinkers, by Marxism and the different schools of socialist thought, as well as by modern science many of whose findings are supportive of the concepts of humankind's oneness and of the ecological relatedness of all life on earth."

Only purely opportunist parties seeking political power at any cost will reject the objective of a fellowship of faiths envisaged by Gandhiji, Maulana Azad and Dr Radhakrishnan. They may prefer to rely on the fanatics among leaders of different religious communities, in the expectation that they will mobilise support for them from the respective vote-banks. The truly religious among Christians, belonging to any party or none, may draw inspiration from the declaration of Prince Charles, heir as Defender of Faiths rather than Defender of the Faith. Britain is a theocratic state in theory, with its monarch bearing the title of defender of the official religion (the Anglican Church), though in practice Britain is a secular state. In contrast, the Preamble to our Constitution declares India to be a secular state but the claim is belied by Article 30 which treats citizens differently on the ground of religion, by laws such as the enforcement of monogamy which apply only to Hindus, and by executive policies such as the grant of development finance on preferential terms to members of religious minorities.

Among Muslims, the truly religious may ponder what Maulana Azad said about Dara Shikoh: "The humility with which he met the Muslim divines was matched by the devotion with which he bowed his head before the Hindu saints and sadhus. Who can deny the purity of this principle? Because, in this exalted state of mind, if one can still distinguish between kufr and Islam, then what is the difference between blindness and vision? The moth should seek the flame. If it is desirous of the lamp which is lit only in the mosque, its desire for self-immolation is not complete."

It is not enough to discourage organised and intrusive proselytism. There is need for a positive effort to promote inter-religious understanding and amity. Aruna Asaf Ali concluded the Azad Memorial Lecture she delivered on 3rd October 1989 by pleading that "we take up the thread of the proposal urged by him for imparting the common ethical values of all the great religions as an essential part of education. This will help to immunize the minds of the young against fanatical breechings."

The promotion of a fellowship of faiths is the only cure for conflicts based on religion. It is open to any MP to introduce a private member's Bill or resolution for implementing the Radhakrishnan Commission's recommendation in this regard. It will put every political party professing secularism—including the BJP and its allies—to the test. The very notice of such a motion will help to focus public attention on the desirability of a second look at Articles 28 and 30 besides Article 25.

Any major changes cannot be expected to be effected immediately. But if the experience of the fifty years of free India as a multi-religious democracy is reflected on and appropriate corrective action is taken in the coming years, the next millennium may prove a happier one than the last which brought Independence at the cost of the vivisection, on religious lines, of a five thousand year old civilisational entity.