NEW DELHI // Opposition legislators stalled business in India’s upper house of parliament on Tuesday, protesting plans by right-wing Hindu groups to convert Muslims and Christians.
The protests were linked to allegations that a group called the Dharm Jagran Manch converted 50 poor Muslim families to Hinduism last week, as well as to an announcement by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that it would initiate 4,000 Christian and 1,000 Muslim families into Hinduism on December 25.
The conversions are being dubbed “Ghar Vapsi,” or “return home”, programmes, based on the claim that the ancestors of these families were once Hindus.
The controversial programme is scheduled for Christmas Day in the Uttar Pradesh town of Aligarh. “Aligarh was chosen because it’s time we wrest the Hindu city from Muslims,” Rajeshwar Singh, an RSS official, told the Economic Times newspaper. “It is a city of brave Rajputs and their temples on whose remains Muslim institutions have been established.”
Churches in the area have requested additional security on Christmas Day, said Amit Agarwal, a senior police officer in Aligarh. “We have assured them of full protection under law,” he told the Press Trust of India news agency.
In parliament, opposition parties have accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the political wing of the RSS – of encouraging such “reconversion” drives and of failing to control the RSS. “It is a very, very serious matter, and there is a threat to the unity of the country,” Mallikarjun Kharge, a Congress party leader, said last Thursday in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament.
Venkaiah Naidu, the BJP’s minister of parliamentary affairs, contended that “Hindutva” – the term applied to Hindu nationalism – was synonymous with Indianness. Mr Naidu also proposed laws to prohibit conversion. “Let us introspect. Let there be anti-conversion laws in all states as also at the [federal level],” he said.
Such laws would favour Hindus, who formed 80 per cent of India’s 1.02 billion population as of 2001, the year of the last census from which religious data is available, while Muslims formed 13 per cent of the population and Christians 2.3 per cent.
Anti-conversion laws would thus help keep India overwhelmingly Hindu, and would prevent Christian and Islamic groups from proselytism, even though the constitution gives religious groups “the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion”.
Laws against conversions do exist in some states, although they vary from state to state. Among the most stringent is the anti-conversion law in Gujarat, passed in 2003 when Narendra Modi – now prime minister – was chief minister of the state. Gujarat’s law requires an aspiring convert to first get permission from the district magistrate. Breaking this law can invite three years’ imprisonment.
Heiner Bielefeldt, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on freedom of religion, has called the process of obtaining permission “a humiliating bureaucratic procedure”.
“This is disrespect of freedom of religion or belief,” Mr Bielefeldt told the Wall Street Journal in March this year, calling the terms used in the formulation of Gujarat’s anti-conversion law vague and loosely defined.
For instance, the law – formally called the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act 2003 – prohibits any “allurements” such as “any gift or gratification, either in cash or kind”. This could conceivably include Buddhism’s offer of escape from the rigid Hindu caste system to lower-caste Hindus and Dalits.
Samuel Thomas, a Christian pastor in New Delhi and a member of a network of churches in the capital, said he was apprehensive about the repercussions of such a national law, if it were to be passed.
“We all have a constitutional right to propagate and share our faith,” Mr Thomas told The National. “But under this government, we are naturally worried that this law will be used as a tool to suppress us and spread fear about the church amongst people.”
“Such a law can curtail a lot of our freedom,” Mr Thomas said. “The church, I’m sure, will stand against it.”
The RSS’s main argument in the conversion debate has long been the fact that, while Islam and Christianity are evangelical religions, trying to bring outsiders into their folds, Hinduism has suffered and lost members because it has refrained from such evangelism.
Mr Thomas said that, in his view, the church was merely expressing its belief.
“I have the right to share what I believe in,” he said. “If I have found a medicine useful for my backache, and if I have a friend who also has backache, it is not wrong for me to suggest that medicine. But it’s up to my friend to decide whether he takes it or not.”
From the Muslim community, Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a Hyderabad-based political party, has called for Mr Modi’s government to rein in organisations such as the RSS.
“Will talk of religious conversion help in development, which the government so often talks about?” Mr Owaisi asked in parliament. “We are not scared of the RSS ... We will continue to follow our religion.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
