The Anti Conversion Bill has been tabled in Maharashtra and suddenly the air is full of panic, discussion, and the kind of serious expressions usually seen only when somebody realises the tea has no sugar.
People are worried. People are debating. People are forwarding long messages on WhatsApp written by experts who until yesterday were specialists in cricket selection and geopolitics.
But as I listen to the protests and fears, I find myself thinking of something completely different. Advertising.
Suppose tomorrow the government suddenly announced that no company in India could advertise its products anymore. No television ads. No newspaper spreads. No giant hoardings showing smiling people drinking fizzy liquids while pretending their life has suddenly become meaningful.
Imagine the horror.
Companies would panic. Marketing departments would collapse. Advertising agencies would begin selling samosas on the roadside.
But here is the interesting part. If advertising disappeared, companies would have only one option left. Their ‘product’ would have to be so good that people recommended it to others.
In other words, the product would have to advertise itself.
And that is where religion becomes very interesting.
Because when people say religion is their product, they are actually mistaken. The real product is not the religion. The real product is the life produced by that religion.
Your patience is the product. Your kindness is the product. Your honesty is the product. The kind of language you use, or jokes you crack is the product. Your compassion is the product.
You are the product, and your life becomes the showroom.
If a person claims deep spiritual belief but behaves like a badly trained bulldozer in society, nobody is going to stand outside his house asking for the secret of his faith.
But if someone quietly lives with grace, generosity, humour, forgiveness, and dignity, people become curious. They begin asking questions.
What makes you so calm? Why are you so generous? How do you stay so hopeful? Why aren’t you corrupt like the others?
And suddenly the advertising has already begun.
Not with loudspeakers. Not with drums and bands. Not with giant declarations.
But with your life.
The beauty of integrity, honesty, goodness and love is that it cannot be banned.
No law can stop kindness. No bill can prevent compassion. No regulation can silence a generous heart.
A Godly life is the most powerful publicity department in the world.
People will always notice God in you. They will always be drawn to that holiness.
So perhaps instead of reacting in fear, every believer of every religion could simply focus on becoming a very impressive product.
Because in the end, when a life shines, nobody needs an advertisement.
People will come to the showroom to buy, on their own…!
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Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
True
What a thoughtful message…. beautifully written and expressed!
Beautiful.
A very well scripted write up. There is one religion that we know of, that is just the opposite of what product the world looks for. And that product is lost sight of, by that religion. What a pity.
Worth going through, so true and beautifully taught! Thank you Bob for enlightening our thoughts daily with your columns.
Bob, simply wonderful thoughts. Knowledge can be bought but not wisdom which comes from experience gained from hardworking. The people who brought this bill are like the Pharisees who questioned the man born blind to whom Jesus said that He is the Light. But the Pharisees hearts were hardened. May Jesus open the hearts of the people who brought this bill as He opened the eyes of two apostles walking toward Emmaus.
Products mentioned for us are very difficult to acquire under present circumstances. Expression is original and motivational.
I would like to speak here as a person born in a Jain family, who accepts the Hindu way of life as his heritage and who studied in a Catholic school and who for years read the bible every morning before meditation.
The question everyone needs to be asking is WHY does an anti-conversion bill even become necessary ? The Constitution of India grants everyone the right to follow their beliefs. No questions asked. The problem starts when certain elements, funded by money from abroad, aggressively try and convert people to their beliefs through inducement or intimidation. Dalit, SC, ST, OBC and Adivasi communities that are sadly still Poor and/or Underprivileged, are being pointedly targeted and the demography of the country is changing rapidly. Punjab and Tamilnadu are classic examples.
It is also true that, sadly, along with religious conversion, these neophytes are often also fed certain ideas that reduce their loyalty to the country of their birth, and/or make them hate their own heritage and ancestry and even members of their own family who do not agree with them.
At a different leve the conversions are as much an exercise to create a vote bank as to get new adherants to a benign spiritual life. This is where the real danger lies.
It woudl also be interesting to note that those eager to convert others are the Monotheists … the Abrahamic relgions – Christianity and Islam. This desire to “win souls” is rooted entirely on the premise that ONLY “MY GOD” is the TRUE God and everyone else is wrong. History has shown us that over zealousness with that line of thinking has led to war, slaughter of entire populations, salvery and subjugation of entire civilisations. It has unleashed untold cruelty of man against man and even the mindless destruction of knowledge and wisdom gathered painstakingly over centuries, setting humanity back by several thousand years.
The Anti-conversion law is aimed at negating the mass conversions of people through iducements or threats.
There is almost no factual court conviction data to show the conversion happens with inducement. Those have always resulted in the conclusion that the case was falsely hoisted by vested interests with no basis. I agree there are many stories of genuine conversions which were never the result of inducement or allurement, but always due to conviction of sin and from repentance when faced with the truth of the gospel