<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It was perhaps not surprising that the coming to power of the BJP in Tripura by a landslide has encouraged communal organisations to target minority religious communities like Christians and that was proved when under ‘Ghar Wapsi’ by Hindu Jagaran Mancha and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), 96 Christians were converted to Hinduism at Kailashahar in Unakoti district on Janaury 20. The Hindu Jagaran Mancha is an RSS-affiliated organisation. Ghar Wapsi is a battle cry of the VHP and RSS to convert non-Hindus and tribal and scheduled caste Christians to Hinduism. The Vishva Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh organized several Ghar Wapsi events in several states which were aimed primarily against tribal and scheduled caste Christians and in some instances, Muslims. More than 8,000 people in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh converted to Hinduism from July 2014 – December 2014 under the Ghar Wapsi programme. According to a VHP official, 1,200 people converted to Hinduism in a Ghar Wapsi event in Hyderabad. In April 2017, at least 53 tribal Christian families converted to Hinduism as part of the RSS’s “Christianity-free” block campaign in Arki, Jharkhand. At least seven other Christian families underwent a Shuddhikaran (purification ceremony) in Kochasindhri village. In May 2017, RSS performed conversion of at least 22 Muslims, including women and children, into Hinduism in a secretive ceremony at an Aryasamaj Temple in Ambedkar Nagar district of Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh. The reconversion of 96 Christians in Tripura to Hinduism may be looked upon as the beginning of a campaign that will gather momentum through the backing of the communal organisations having awesome resources. Whenever some people from any other religion, especially Hinduism, convert to Christianity, there is hue and cry about coercion, allurement or fraud used. Christianity did not come with the British. Rather the British rulers were least interested about religion other than exploiting the resources of British India. Christianity spread through the influence of Welsh and American missionaries who established educational institutions and medical hospitals across rural India. However despite all these philanthropic acts, the growth of Christianity was marginal because conversion was out of conviction and not allurement nor threats. That is why today the Christian population in India is hardly 2.3 per cent and has never crossed 2.5 percent mark but has decreased. Therefore, to raise Cain against Christian minorities through the bogey of “fraudulent conversions” is frivolous. The Dalits and Harijans have embraced either Christianity of Islam because of ill treatment and atrocities by upper castes. This has rankled the extremist Hindu elements of the Sangh Parivar not because of any genuine concern but only for the fear of losing these oppressed classes to other religions. The law, instead of convicting those allegedly involved in conversion through fraud, force or deception; has only subjected Christians to all forms of harassment or torture outside and beyond the purview of the normal laws of the land. Sometimes, the interpretation of the law has also led to such that authorities have asked people who retain their caste nomenclature after conversion to“ re-convert” or else lose their jobs or their children lose any benefits entitled to them. It is not far fetched to say that this is an ominous portent of the future when Christianity would be outlawed under various pretexts. Perhaps the state BJP has much to answer for the party’s religious bigotry. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spectre of Ghar-Wapsi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[685],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-177899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}