“Existence of religious minorities is threatened by India’s pattern of terror,” warn NRI activists

SACRAMENTO: Dec. 30, 2014 – Many consider changing one’s religious beliefs to be a fundamental human right, yet the ruling party of India is weighing a national ban on religious conversion even as its adherents stage controversial “reconversion ceremonies” in which minorities claim they are being forced to identify as Hindus.

The latest event occurred in a small village in the Indian state of Karnataka, where 42 Christian families say they were targeted repeatedly by local politicians and political activists who attempted to intimidate the religious minorities into “reconverting” to Hinduism. On Dec. 27, they say armed assailants attacked their village in the middle of the night; on Dec. 28, the earliest Christian convert in the village, Shiv Shankar Masih, said he was visited by Member of Parliament Hari Manjhi and offered a government job if he returned to Hinduism; on Dec. 29, activists from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other Hindu supremacist organizations threatened to drive Christians from the village and deny them government benefits. The Times of India reports the Christians, who were considered “low-caste” within Hinduism, are seeking police protection.

Activists from Bajrang Dal, an RSS subsidiary, brandish tridents.

Tension between religious minorities (who are about 20 percent of India’s population compared to 80 percent Hindus) has always been a defining feature of the country, but it recently flared higher than ever after affiliates of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) conducted a highly-publicized conversion ceremony in which they converted over 200 Muslims to Hinduism. The December 8 ceremony in Agra, a city in Uttar Pradesh (the most populous state in India), was organized by a subsidiary of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu supremacist sociopolitical organization in which India’s current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, started his public life. Now the BJP is demanding a national law banning religious conversion, while insisting the Agra event was not a conversion ceremony.

RSS chief spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya, for instance, insisted: “This is not a conversion. It is homecoming of those who wish to return to the original fold.” Supposedly, ancestors of the converted Muslims were Hindus as recently as 30 years ago, leading the RSS to insist the Agra program participants are, always have been, and always must be Hindus. Yet the program soon prompted international controversy after many of the “homecoming” Muslims revealed to media they were tricked, bribed, and threatened into participating in the event.

Bhajan Singh, a US-based activist for the rights of Indian minorities, warned, “The Agra program is gaining attention all around the globe because it illustrates how the existence of religious minorities is threatened by India’s pattern of terror. Hindu supremacism endangers religious liberty as it is swiftly becoming the dominant ideology of the Indian government. It is for exactly this reason that hundreds of thousands of Indian minorities have fled the country.”

Many of the Agra converts, drawn from a community of “rag-pickers” who make their living by scavenging waste, claim they were enticed to participate in the conversion ceremony by offers of government benefits. The Daily Mail quoted one participant, Abdul Rehman Gazi, as saying: “We were told that we will be given BPL [Below Poverty Line] cards and other subsidies along with a plot of land. We were told that there will be a ceremony where some prominent people and media would be invited. We didn’t know what we were getting into.”

Rajeshwar Singh, who organized the Agra program, commented after the event: “India’s inner voice has spoken. Just wait and watch. 31 December 2021 is the last for Christianity and Islam in this country. We will finish Christianity and Islam in this country by 31 December 2021. This is our aim.”

Indian Member of Parliament Yogi Adityanath praised the Agra program, pledging to lead more “conversion ceremonies” in the near future. Adityanath, who represents Gorakhpur (a city neighboring Agra), has a history of personally leading mass conversions. According to Tehelka magazine, “In October 2005, he led a ‘purification drive’ in the district of Etah, converting 1,800 Christians to Hinduism. Earlier that year, he had converted 5,000 Dalit Christians in the same district.” In 2009, speaking about his constituency, Adityanath declared: “When I ask them to rise and protect our Hindu culture, they obey. If I ask for blood, they will give me blood…. I will not stop till I turn UP and India into a Hindu [nation].”

In the past few weeks, the Agra program has gained vocal support from the highest officials in the Indian State, who are using it to propose a national law banning religious conversion. Amit Shah, president of the ruling BJP and PM Modi’s closest advisor, on Dec. 21 described conversion of Hindus as “forced,” saying, “The government is ready to bring in a law against forced conversions…. If you feel the state government’s laws are not effective, there is need for an all-India law.” Home Minister Rajnath Singh remarked on Dec. 27: “To check conversion, I think an anti-conversion law needs to be framed.”

Meanwhile, as quoted by The Los Angeles Times on Dec. 25, the national head of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, advanced the claim that mass conversion of non-Hindus to Hinduism is not actually “conversion,” but only a “homecoming,” saying, “We will bring back our brothers who have lost their way. They did not go on their own. They were robbed, tempted into leaving.”

Six Indian states already have active laws banning religious conversion. Called “Freedom of Religion Acts” and commonly referred to as “anti-conversion laws,” they criminalize religious conversion without first receiving government permission and undergoing a waiting period. Prospective converts in the states of Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and Rajasthan are required to inform the local magistrate of their decision and wait anywhere from 15 to 30 days for permission to change their religious affiliation. Penalties for failure to do so varies state-by-state but are typically several years in prison and/or several tens of thousands of rupee fines.

Although the laws are called “Freedom of Religion” laws, United Nations officials consider them the chief impediment to religious liberty in India. For instance, in a Mar. 2014 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN’s special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, said: “Secularism has come under threat in India. Apart from communal violence, the main point that ranks the highest is anti-conversion laws.” Furthermore, though the laws purport to prevent “forced conversions” in which converts are “coerced” to change religions, Bielefeldt notes: “The prohibition of coercion is mixed with very vague concepts like inducement or allurement. Any invitation [to another religion] has an element of inducement or allurement.”

According to a 2014 report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), “These laws have resulted in few arrests and no convictions, but have created a hostile atmosphere for religious minorities, particularly Christians.” South Asian expert Pieter Friedrich believes anti-conversion laws are a manifestation of Hindutva ideology, pointing to the USCIRF’s 2011 report, which identifies the RSS as adhering to “an ideology of Hindutva, which holds non-Hindus as foreign to India.”

“The Hindu supremacist ideology of Indian political leaders like Adityanath, Bhagwat, and Rajnath Singh has been gaining ground in India for decades,” remarked Friedrich, a director of US-based Organization for Minorities of India. “It was most violently expressed in the 1984 Sikh Genocide, which was actually conducted not by the BJP but by the Congress Party and yet furthered the Hindutva goal of exterminating everyone who stands against the intolerance of Hinduism. We’ve seen that intolerance repeatedly politicized, as in 1992 during the BJP-led destruction of the Babri Mosque, as in 2002 during the Gujarat Genocide, and as in 2008 during the pogrom against Christians in Odisha. Independent India has seen mass movements of people fleeing the Hindu fold, dating all the way back to Dr. Ambedkar leading thousands in converting to Buddhism. The motivation is typically the same — escape from the constriction of Hinduism’s dehumanizing caste system — and the response from Hindu politicians is to pass laws compelling people to identify as Hindus. If India passes a national law banning religious conversion? Well, before such a law, there have already been many genocides of minorities which were met with impunity, so I only see dark days in the future should it happen.”

The RSS and its subsidiary organizations have been directly linked to several high-profile massacres of minorities, including in 2002 and 2008.

In 2002, RSS members joined forces with BJP officials to conduct a genocide against Muslims in the western state of Gujarat. Approximately 2,000 Muslims were killed, though some human rights groups believe the true body-count may be significantly higher. Police joined in the violence, telling victims: “We have no orders to save you.” Smita Narula, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, reported: “The attacks were planned in advance and organized with extensive participation of the police and state government.” In years since, senior state officials who participated in the violence have testified that then Chief Minister Modi (now Indian Prime Minister) ordered police to “allow the Hindus to vent their anger” and told BJP leaders: “I’ll give you three days. Do whatever you want.”

In 2008, BJP and RSS activists again took to the streets to perpetrate a pogrom against Christians in the eastern state of Odisha. Witnesses reported BJP activists chanted “kill Christians and destroy their institutions” as they gang-raped nuns, burned people alive, and torched churches and Christian-owned homes in full view of the police. Amnesty International reported in 2010: “Judicial inquiries into the violence remained incomplete and the authorities failed to press charges against the majority of attackers.” Yet in April 2014, when asked at a campaign event what he will do to stop violence against Christians as Prime Minister, Modi replied: “I have never heard of such incidents taking place.”

In mid-December, US-based risk management company Terrorism Watch & Warning listed the RSS as a “hate group,” stating: “The RSS is a shadowy, discriminatory group that seeks to establish a Hindu Rashtra, a Hindu Nation…. Hindutva has been clear about the need for violence, particularly communal riots. The Sangh has incited rioting to cause further chasms between religions, and thus a further separation of religions, and to rally the Hindu community around the philosophy of Hindutva.”

Mohan Ram Paul, a co-founder of the Bhim Rao Ambedkar Sikh Foundation, noted: “There is a vast difference between private individuals peacefully peacefully proselytizing to invite others to join their religion and political officials who organize pogroms staging conversion ceremonies in which they force people to identify with a particular religion in order to receive government benefits. It is total hypocrisy for anyone who engages in acts of mass violence against minorities to pretend they are against ‘coercion’ of potential religious converts. If Mr. Modi and his party oppose coercion, they ought to first prosecute themselves for massacring so many minorities.”