Playing politics through religion is a dirty game, and the results are usually a dirtier ? often an unbearably tragic-mess. Indian politicians have developed quite a taste for it, and the continuing spate of anti-conversion bills and laws in different states is proof of that. One of the results of this, perhaps more comic than tragic, has been the reaction of Pope Benedict XVI. In his strongly worded remarks, made to India?s ambassador to the Vatican, Mr Amitava Tripathi, the pope criticized the anti-conversion laws in certain states of India, saying that such legislation went against the religious freedom propagated by the Indian Constitution. The pope?s criticism gains rather a comic dimension in the context of the recent hullabaloo over the film, The Da Vinci Code, in India, during which laymen and priests of the pope?s faith adopted an intolerant and disruptive, sometimes violent, stand.

But that is only the immediate context. There is a larger context, which makes the pope?s remarks about religious intolerance sound quite absurd. Every faith has its moments of extreme intolerance, and the Spanish Inquisition, which the Vatican has not condemned so far, is as deeply branded into the history of civilization as similar events in other religions. Apart from this, there is also a question of propriety. Surely it is not for a religious head, located in another country, to comment upon what is happening in states within India, and to suggest to the ambassador that efforts to ban conversions should be rejected. Such remarks are not only undiplomatic and improper, but they are also short-sighted. They put his own followers in a false position in the secular country they inhabit. Especially now, when their response to the release of The Da Vinci Code has not been looked on kindly, apart from the fact that there have been incidents of vandalism in bookshops where the book was being sold. By intervening, the pope also queers the pitch for any proper debate on the issue of anti-conversion laws. Politicians, experts at distraction, are only too happy to point to the impropriety of the pope?s commenting on internal matters, without going into the impropriety of installing hurdles for the free practice of religion. The argument that poor people are allured or bribed into conversion is no reason to ban conversion. But that is for India?s citizens to debate over, not for popes to comment on.