India is a land of diverse faiths some indigenous, others adapted. All have learned to co-exist over centuries because diversity is India’s strong point. Faith is a fundamental aspect of human existence. It guides human action or inaction but it is purely personal and has been present throughout history. Faith originates from individual experiences, personal reflections, and cultural influences. Faith is shaped by upbringing, education, and exposure to different belief systems. It evolves and develops as individuals grow and encounter new experiences. Since faith is personal, a person holding a particular faith would not consider it a duty to force someone else to accept and believe the same faith. It is when faith becomes a religion that the idea of conversion comes in. Religion uses faith to organise people of similar faiths into a structure, complete with rituals and modes of worship of a particular form.
All religions have their roots in teachings by a person who claims to have been inspired by a god or gods. That’s where the problem arises. There may be several such prophets with claims to having direct communication with god/gods and that person is given a special status in society and becomes the purveyor of messages of salvation from immoral human conduct. When several such preachers, teachers, sants and mahants each begin to preach that their religion is the only true one then religious chauvinism creeps in and conversion begins. This claim to exclusivity is what divides people, especially those without the capacity for rational thinking. Their gullible minds tend to consider such teachings as absolute truths. While religions may have had some specific historical events or figures that serve as their foundation, over time they have evolved through interpretations, adaptations, and the influence of cultural, social, and political factors. In India, for decades people have tolerated all faiths until some years ago when certain faiths were demonised and Hindus were made to believe they were an endangered community. It is not certain how those that have adopted the indigenous faith in Meghalaya were also made to feel they needed to assert themselves against those considered to have adopted a foreign religion. Such converts were considered as traitors of indigeneity. It’s true that Christians too had a condescending attitude towards those of the indigenous faith, often referring to them as pagans, meaning non-believers in the Christian God. This is how societies with the same bloodline are divided by religion.
However, it is when religion takes the form of a political project which uses peoples’ beliefs as a mode of mind control that societies are torn apart. People of the same indigenous roots are then no longer able to unite on other more important issues. Left to themselves humans are capable of co-existing and sorting things out through a process of dialogue without the need for taking defensive stances to support their faith and reject others as unbelievers. Khasi society needs to resolve this existential crisis before further damage is inflicted on the community spirit.
