Religious Conversions 2-20-2015

20, February 2015                 Religious Conversions

After taking a pounding at the Delhi Municipal elections garnering a scant 3 seats to the anti-corruption party, Aam Aadmi, Prime Minister Modi needs to reboot and take stock of his election promises.  Swept with near hysteria after his election, the Indian people are impatiently waiting for meaningful change. Sadly, Modi has greeted the mounting violence and forcible conversions of India’s minorities to Hinduism with a deafening silence.  Attacks on churches have not been condemned by a nation supposedly proud of its historical secularism. Muslims and Christians have been coerced or promised money to convert by the fringe elements of the Hindu nationalist right. Christian churches have been firebombed and ransacked including St. Sebastian’s Church in East Delhi which was burned and St. Alphonsa’s Church in New Delhi which was vandalized. Mass conversions continue; 200 Muslims were converted to Hindus in Agra last December and 100 Christians were ‘persuaded’ to reconvert in West-Bengal last January. An urgent plea by Catholic Bishops’ of India has urged the government to take swift action to protect and secure Christians in their own country. Hard-line Hindu nationalist groups, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (V.H.P.) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S.), openly boast of their determination to ‘purify’ the nation to become 100% Hindu. Currently 80% of India are Hindus. Sikhs have so far been ignored possibly because of their ‘fierce militant traditions’. Buoyed by Modi’s victory, Hindu nationalists have sought to set the agenda and have even gone as far as proposing to rebrand India as ‘Hindustan’.

The V.H.P. is reportedly planning to convert 3,000 Muslims in Ayodhya this month. They hope to resurrect strong religious sentiments by ‘reawakening’ the destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992 which resulted in 2,000 deaths. Alarmed by the embers of religious intolerance, President Obama reminded “India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith.”

His advice struck a raw nerve among many Indians resentful of Obama’s admonition coming at a time when blacks and Native Americans have increasingly become the target of police brutality and violence.  Perhaps, an example of the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ – no pun intended!