It has been my desire for a long time that there should be an attempt -- an effort -- to preserve the various religious traditions in the world and to see that they are not destroyed. For, you never get these days what you deserve; you always get what you negotiate for.

We have been witnessing in the world attempts to preserve and to save the endangered species in the flora and fauna. Endangered animals are being saved by a program of helping them grow in number. We have in India a Project Tiger in order to save the Indian tigers. Like this, there are many animals that are now multiplying in number because of programs of helping them to grow. There was a bird in Mauritius and it became extinct. The Dodo bird became extinct not by any natural disaster. The human beings ate them up. Now they are 'dead like Dodo'! They are extinct.

We have live cultures, which are highly rooted in their religious traditions and they are endangered. In fact, this is a conference of endangered species. The Dodos could not confer like we do. They are dead like Dodos. We can confer, and therefore, we have come together to find out ways and means to see that the diverse cultures and religious traditions are saved and that those which are almost dead or dying are not allowed to die.

And perhaps, like some attempts being made in Europe, we can bring back the old cultures alive. The Romans in Europe and the various groups that are there in Lithuania want to go back to their original traditions. They were just dubbed as Pagans and totally destroyed. They were called ethnic traditions.

Here in India, we have Vedika Dharma. This dharma has to be preserved. And its preservation implies actual living of the dharma by the people. Nobody can protect dharma in bottles. It has to be protected only by protecting the dharmi, the person who lives that dharma.

This is a momentous conference. It is not taking place a day earlier. People have been thinking along these lines and wondering about what they can do. The religious leaders should look into the theologies and find out ways and means to see that there is no religious sanction for any type of violence.

There are different violence. Physical violence is one thing. The Violence caused to the religious person is something very deep and real. If a person is converted to another religion by a program of proselytization, that person is uprooted from his tradition. The whole family is hurt and the people who witness the whole thing are also hurt. This hurt, according to me, is himsa; it is violence.
Therefore, the religious leaders, who are inspired by their theology that all the people should be brought to the same flock and that nobody should be outside the flock, need to really look into their own scriptures and see whether all of us can live a life in harmony, mutually respecting each other. We generally say 'mutually respecting'. Our Chairman (Sri R. Venkataraman), in his talk said, "equally respecting", which I like better. We should be equally respecting each other.

As a religious person, I do not want to be completely rubbed off by you, and I also do not want to rub you off. I want you to live in harmony with me. I want you to have the freedom to think the way you think, to believe what you believe and to practise according to your belief. But that freedom to believe and practice should not destroy me.

In India, anybody who talks about Hindu religion and the danger that it is facing is dubbed as a fundamentalist. That means that if I do not give you the freedom to destroy me, I am 'a fundamentalist'.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by U.N. General Assembly resolution 217 A (III) in December 1948 holds in Article 18 that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief…" While the article endorses each person's right to change his or her religion, it does not in any way allow for another person to change a given person's religion. On the contrary, a systematic coercive effort to impose one's religion on another "by use of force or by allurements or by any fraudulent means "is a clear violation of this basic human right.

Further, Article 5 of the Bill of Rights states that no one shall be subjected to degrading treatment. No conversion is possible without denigrating the religion and the religious practices of the target person. This denigration hurts the family members and the community of the converted person. He or she has to disown his or her parents and all of their family, denouncing them as wrong, while he or she alone is right. If this does not hurt a person, I wonder what else can cause hurt.

The denigration of one's religion and the humiliation that accompanies the conversion experience are violations of the dignity ensured to every human being. Article 19 grants every person the freedom to hold opinions and matters of belief, no matter how fervently held are only matters of opinion. Article 22 ensures that everyone is entitled to the cultural rights indispensable for his or her dignity. Everyone who is a convert from a non-Christian tradition suffers an irreparable alienation from one's culture and, tragically, from one's own family. The family, in turn, is alienated from the community.

With the conversion experience, come shame, isolation, deep personal conflict and ultimately, the seeds for discord. History testifies to the devastating loss of rich and diverse cultures, gone forever in the aftermath of religious conversion. Article 26 (2) of the Declaration of Human Rights requires that education " shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups." Religious conversion is anathema to this. It promotes discord, intolerance and enmity, and as such, is an act of violence. I again say that conversion is an act of violence because it hurts deeply, not only the members of the family of the converted, but his or her entire community.

The religious person in every individual is the deepest, in as much as he or she is connected to a force beyond the empirical. One is connected to various persons in one's world. The religious in a given person is connected to a force beyond. That is the reason why the hurt of a religious person is deep and when it becomes acute, it explodes into violence. Conversion is not only violence; it does generate violence. The hue and cry made by some of the Christian leadership protesting this ordinance against conversion only show that they want to continue their conversion activities. I appeal to them to think about how conversion affects the converted person. This is the time for the Christian leadership to come forward to point out that the ordinance does not violate, but on the contrary, ensures the right of any person to practice his or her religion.

Further, it does not single out any particular religious group. In fact, it is the responsibility of the leadership of all religions to alloy the fears of the people within their individual fold who have such misgivings. It is not, on the other hand, either responsible or moral for any religious leader to use a distorted interpretation of this ordinance to establish a right to convert. The more such leaders protest, the more they are alienating themselves from the mainstream population who support a religiously plural and just society, committed to the respect and well-being of every one of its members.

India has a long tradition of living in harmony with people of numerous religious beliefs. Hindus did not have any problem whatsoever with the Parsis living in India for centuries. Why? Because they do not cause any hurt by a planned program of conversion. A planned program of evangelization and conversion is a war waged against the native tradition of a country whose people have an openness of heart that is very well known. Their very concept of Iswara allows that kind of accommodation. In fact, the concessions the minorities enjoy in India cannot be seen anywhere in the world. On the other hand, India is the only country where the majority feels oppressed.

The integrity and security of any society, whether as small as a family unit or as large as the global community, is deeply threatened by double standards. They offend our innate sense of fairness; they undermine our natural parity of identity wit out fellow human beings, setting individual against individual, community against community, nation against nation. Double standards are the main building blocks of every racist ideology and system. One has to number the human heart to entertain the idea that double standards are acceptable in the human community. This innate understanding of every human being is, however, challenged by the frailties of the human heart. The fact is, there are double standards, in every sector of our life -- and all the strife that they engender.

The question is: Are we going to legislate to indulge our frailties, or are we going to legislate to help us live according to our finer, more noble, and, I would argue, more human tendencies? Our Constitution has clearly chosen the latter. It is heartening to note that the founding fathers of our fledgling democracy have not failed to understand (Article 44) that this includes a common civil code, which we have so far not had the moral courage to implement. Such a code, which implicitly means the abolition of double standards, is a basic and long-overdue element of a society, which aspires to be secular and democratic. There is good reason for the wide appeal -- and success -- of secular, democratic societies.