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The State And Religion: let the poor convert at the cost of a bread
All the arguments given below are based on following basic statements applicable to the sovereign, socialist, secular republic of India.
1) The state defines religion as a set of physical rules followed by groups of people with a belief that practice of these rules will give the followers certain metaphysical benefits.
2) The state shall not discriminate citizens by their religion.
3) The state shall allow religion to define all metaphysical assumptions and control metaphysical behaviour of its followers as the state itself does not believe in existence of metaphysical entities: This is the reason why the state has decided not to control it. (Although even performing a religious hunger fast or presenting flowers to an idol or performing an animal sacrifice are partly physical acts and are subject to scrutiny if the state finds it necessary.)
4) The state shall not restrict any activity of its citizens that improves their standard of living provided such act does not interfere with any physical laws.
5) The state shall exercise supreme authority over all matters that deal with the physical, worldly things. Any religion shall not be able to govern any physical, worldly activity of its followers if it contradicts any state laws.
Based on these statements, I deduce following:
The state treats religion as a harmless entity that has no control over the matters that the state has control over. Thus any religious activity by definition (that is if defined properly) is a harmless, benign act.
The state should have no objection to any harmless act, religious or otherwise.
Change of religion, being an act of religion the person wants to accept, is a harmless act.
The state should not have objection to such conversion if they were motivated by certain metaphysical benefit, as metaphysics is not a state subject. This is the motive announced by all people who perform an act of conversion.
The state should not have objection to a conversion even if it is motivated by certain physical benefit as the state treats religion as an useless and harmless entity and the state can not prohibit citizens from improving their standard of living by selling something that the state believes to be useless and harmless.
Thus the state should allow "conversions at free will" as well as "conversions motivated by some physical benefit"; be it money, free higher education by minority educational institutes or even a day's food. Afterall, the people proud of their religion are supposed to care for the poor in their own religion if they wish to retain the poor in the religion. They should not be allowed to resort to physical power or anti conversion laws to prevent the poor from getting converted to other religions. The state should not care if certain religion reduces by number.
The state should provide the poor with their basic needs on the basis of minimal, equitable requirements. If the state fails to do so due to lack of resources or otherwise, the state should atleast not prevent the poor from extending their life span even by one day if they receive one day's food as a cost for getting converted. The poor can make this as a temporary way of living: Just get converted every six months to a new religion by taking six months of food as the cost!
People who love their own religion should welcome this policy because after a while the people on conversion mission will realize that their conversions are temporary and very soon all those people who joined their religion will be leaving it. This will discourage the converters.
The fear that such converted people can form a vote bank loyal to fanatic leaders is unfounded as it is already illegal to campaign an election on the basis of religion. Also it is equally bad to have preformed religious vote banks loyal to established religion (the religion that is in danger of losing followers) leaders. It does not matter if they change sides. The secularism shall just have a new enemy instead of an old, equally strong enemy.
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