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Advani in a dilemma as Christians, Sangh Parivar harden stand on conversions

George Iype in New Delhi

The recent attacks against Christians in Gujarat has put Union Home Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani in a dilemma, as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has demanded a ban on conversions in the country and Church groups are putting pressure to ban fundamentalist Hindu outfits like the VHP.

Ministry officials said the VHP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh have requested Advani to prepare a comprehensive report on conversions, especially in the north and north-eastern states of India.

According to the Sangh Parivar's demand, their campaign against conversion and proselytising activities in India are meaningless if the Bharatiya Janata Party government does not help by preparing a detailed report on conversions in India.

Such a report, the Sangh leaders claim, can rein in the Christian missionaries who, they allege, are spreading their tentacles by running schools, converting poor people through enticements, deceit and lies and through terrorist tactics in the north-eastern states.

The Sangh Parivar leadership has also told Advani that their religious programme to re-convert all tribal Christians across the country to Hinduism would be much easier if the home ministry tables a report in Parliament on forcible conversions.

An official in the home ministry said that the government does not have any official report on conversions and the missionary activities of the Church in India. "Given the communally surcharged relations between the Hindu organisations and Christians in the country now, the ministry has no plans to prepare any report on conversions," he clarified.

On Friday, VHP president Vishnu Hari Dalmia met Advani with this set of demands and reminded him that way back in 1947 some members of the Constituent Assembly had called for a ban on conversion and proselytising.

Dalmia also submitted to the home ministry details of the Christian missionary activities in the country. According to a VHP paper presented to the ministry, more than 200,000 of the nearly 22.5 million Christians in India are missionaries.

According to the paper, the Christian groups' biggest programme in India is to set up nearly one million churches, thousands of Christian institutes, schools and missions across the country. It accuses that many Western countries are actively helping the Church with political support and by pumping in millions of dollars into India.

VHP also claims that Gujarat's socio-economic review for 1997-98 states that between 1981 and 1991, there has been a 416.78 per cent growth in the Christian population in Dangs district alone whereas in the same period, the Hindu population has grown by just 21 per cent.

VHP vice-president Acharya Giriraj Kishore said that his organisation and other Hindu groups will step up their campaign for a ban on conversion of tribals to Christianity. "Tribals are part of Hinduism and we want all the tribal Christians to be back in Hinduism. Therefore we want the government to immediately ban Christian conversion in the country," he told Rediff On The NeT.

Kishore said the VHP will press for a legislation in the forthcoming Budget session of Parliament to ban foreign Christian missionaries in India and their conversion activities among rural and tribal areas.

But in the past two months, a number of church organisations led by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India and the National Council of Churches in India have submitted to the ministry details on the planned attacks against Christians since the BJP-led government came to power at the Centre.

According to the CBCI-NCCI representations to Advani, the hostility against Christians is not limited to Gujarat. The Christian forums have submitted 108 cases of anti-Christian violence in 1998 alone to the government, with Gujarat topping the list with 58 incidents in which 28 churches and schools were destroyed.

The Church has also refuted the allegations of forced conversions by stating that the Christian population in the country declined from 2.6 per cent in 1981 to 2.4 per cent in 1991. In the same period, the Hindu population has grown by 28 per cent.

The Church has told the home minister that if there are isolated cases of forced conversion, they are done by the breakaway Christian groups who do not believe in Jesus Christ as god. "Church in India has nothing to do with some Christian groups who sometimes talk about forcible conversion," NCCI president R Rajaratnam told Rediff On The NeT.

"If the VHP is basing its arguments on these illegal groups to accuse the Church of forcible conversions, then its campaign against Christians is on wrong grounds," he said.

He said the Church would oppose tooth and nail any government plan to bring in Parliament legislation to ban conversion in India. "Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all citizens in the Constitution of India. Therefore, the VHP's claim that everyone in India should be a Hindu is a ridiculous proposition," the NCCI president added.

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