The Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) has described the move by Assam cabinet to criminalise the practice of “magical healing”, termed “important legislation” by chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, as “misdirected” and one of the “most insensitive acts of religious bigotry”.
In a statement, NBCC general secretary Rev Dr Zelhou Keyho said if maintaining the status quo was the order of the day, targeting a certain religious group was most unfortunate. He lamented that over and over again, the Christians in the country were accused of using their activities for the purpose of inducing unwilling converts into their fold. He said it was unfortunate that such a statement was uttered by a respectable personality who was looked up to for pulling the region together on all fronts.
Pointing out that the use of highly professional terminology without proper definition had caused suspicions in the minds of Christians in the region, he said to accuse the Christians of healing ministry as a means of converting the tribals was discriminatory in nature.
If what was done to serve humanity was considered a threat to others, he asked “how do we coexist peacefully in our diversity?”
According to Keyho, the healing ministry of the church from a professional standpoint had come a long way, adding that it had been the calling of the Christians to provide care and compassion to every section of society.
Keyho claimed that this attestation could be seen in Christian hospitals in the country and beyond, which provided affordable healthcare to every section of the population regardless of caste and religion. Therefore, to come up with such legislation in any state was not only discriminatory but also vindictive, he maintained.
He asserted that any discriminatory statement referring to any community of faith or ethnic group in the region could not be considered “important.” He stressed that any legislation must be logical and sensitive to the diverse socio-ethnic and religious-cultural spectrum of the region.