I have a simple request for Church leaders – Catholic and Protestant and I speak as a friend: Kindly don’t try to internationalise whatever quarrel you have with your non- Christian fellow citizens. In the end it will prove counter- productive. You may reap the satisfaction of having embarrassed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government but it may have severe consequences. Getting Indian Christians in the US to agitate before the United Nations was m extremely poor taste. That is no way of winning sympathy for your cause back home. I strongly suspect a foreign hand. Kindly keep foreigners out of your quarrels here. Truth has many faces. And the full truth about conversion in Dangs has is yet to be told. I am disturbed by an article in The Observer (January 20) written by S Gurumurthy. I know Gurumurthy. He’s a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue, but he’s quoting from a report submitted by two well-known Gandhians and Sarvodaya workers Gelubhai Naik and Chunilal Vaidya, both 82 years old – to the Minorities Commission. Naik and Vaidya are extraordinary people for the simple reason they have been working in Dangs for the last 50 years. And they are not fascists, communalists or whatever. They are staunchly against the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM). And only on January 1, Naik was awarded the Gram Sewa Puraskar by the premier Gandhian institution, the Gujarat Vidya Peeth. That should establish their credentials. Now what is it they told the Minorities Commission in their memorandum?
Here I quote Gurumurthy. “This is what they have testified – that the Dangs issue is not to be perceived as an attack on Christians; that it is a long simmering reaction to conversions by Christian missionaries; that missionaries have used, and even now use, unethical means to convert; that this is not the beginning, but the culmination; that missionaries have been inciting converted tribals into vandalism; that missionary schools have even punished students for wearing Gandhi caps; that during the last five years, nearly two dozen idols of Shiva and Hanuman – revered by tribals -have been desecrated or broken and, in one instance, converts have even urinated on a Hanuman idol; that tribals’ ancient beliefs are openly mocked at; that just two months ago, at the instance of missionaries, converts twice beat up the nephew of the Bhil raja who refused to marry a Christian girl and get evangelised; that converts threw stones at an HJM rally… “Naik and Vaidya apparently had perceived the danger of reaction from unconverted tribals waiting to explode. Unconverted tribals had reportedly asked Congress governments to take measures against the missionaries but had failed to get any response. Their families were being blown to pieces by missionaries who told converts to break their links with their unconverted brethren… ” Naik and Vaidya are alive and can be interrogated. Their memorandum is available for the asking. Why are reports of the memorandum suppressed by the English language press? That is one aspect of the matter. The other aspect is the unnatural interest taken by the German, Belgian and US ambassadors in the matter. They are obviously out to politicise the issue. They should be warned. Any such activity will be resented both by the government and the people. There are no tribals in Belgium or Germany for Hindu missionaries to seek to convert to Hinduism; were Hindu missionaries to go to the US and try to convert Red Indians to Hinduism there would be a hue and cry from Christian missions. The US could not even adjust itself to the presence of Rajneesh whose city, Rajneeshpuram, set in the obscure north-west was forcibly abandoned. Rajneesh himself was arrested, jailed and driven out after a confession was forced out of him. The Belgian record in the Congo is even more despicable. As for Germany, does its ambassador think people in India have forgotten what his countrymen did to over five million Jews who were sent to gas chambers? Where were German Christian missions then? And where were they when Benito Mussolini’s thugs were strafing unarmed Abyssinians? The Pope should have excommunicated all the scoundrels m one sweep. For the US ambassador to lecture Indians on how they should treat missionaries is an impertinence that shouldn’t be tolerated. Christian leaders in India would do well to tell their benefactors in Europe and the US to mind their own business. India is not their business. Certainly, for them to be seen as interfering in India’s domestic affairs would lead to a whiplash that cannot be to the liking of Christian leaders in India
. The point is made, by my friend H Y Sharada Prasad, a former information advisor to Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, that if we can rejoice when the Ramakrishna Mission opens branches m the West there is no reason to object to Christian missionaries functioning in India. The analogy does not hold good. Ramakrishna Mission monks are not engaged in converting Red Indians; there are no poor tribals in the US. It is regrettable that a former information advisor is so ill-informed. To say there should be a debate on conversion is not ‘childish’, as the Congress wants it to be known. And to argue that the matter had long been debated in the Constituent Assembly is not to face reality. The debate in the Assembly took place in the context of Partition. The situation has changed totally. This must be recognised. We must see how the picture would look if the situation was reversed. Can one fancy a US with India’s 5,000-year history tolerating a rich, developed and powerful Hindu India seeking to Hinduise American tribals on the grounds that propagation of religion is a fundamental part of Hindu religion? The Americans would have thrown out Hindus bag and baggage, as they threw out Rajneesh. No religion can demand tolerance of its activities on the grounds that propagation and conversion are fundamental parts of its tenet. Strangling innocent pilgrims was a fundamental part of the thuggee tenet. The British showed them what they thought of such a tenet. Conversion is a form of assault that should not be acceptable. Even the Church has proclaimed that salvation is possible in each religion, so what is the ground for converting people to Christianity, in particular by means which we are being told are used even to this day in many areas? Secularism means respect for all religions. Conversion is its very negation. It is an insult, besides, to our intelligence. (M. V. Kamath, veteran journalist, feels that conversion is not acceptable)