Conversion as a mode of protest

The politico-ideologically informed protests manifest in different forms. The conventional mode is, of course, violence. With Gandhi’s rise as a crusader against colonial exploitation, nonviolence also became an effective instrument of protest. It was experimented by those who challenged the US state during the civil rights campaign in the 1960 and also those who successfully combated an apartheid regime in South Africa in 1994 with the formation of a democratic government, led by Nelson Mandela. Besides resorting to many other forms of protest, by being converted to different religions, Malcolm X and B. R. Ambedkar, who was also known as Babasaheb, pioneered a unique device of protest. While undergoing a prison sentence for robbery from 1946 to 1952, he was drawn to Islam. When he was freed on parole, he formally joined the Nation of Islam and replaced his surname, Little, with X, a continuity of the practices followed by members who considered their family names to have originated with White slaveowners. The decision was based on his thinking that as Christianity supported slavery the Old Testament, it was the religion for Blacks. Moreover, the Islamic belief in universal brotherhood appealed to him because in term of its core tenets: Islam did not discriminate against human beings on the basis of their racial origin. The story was similar for Ambedkar, who converted to Buddhism in 1956, nearly at the end of his life. Nonetheless, his conversion along with that of his colleagues and supporters, was also a voice of protest against Hinduism, which justified caste segregation based on an accident of birth. Interestingly, neither of them were devoutly religious before conversion. The large-scale conversion in public in 1956 attracted attention from all walks of life. This was useful for Ambedkar to publicize the contention that Hinduism was divisive and subjected those born as untouchables to brutalities which were justified as integral to the maintenance of amicable interpersonal relationships.