According to the government census the proportion of Christian population is going down but the Christian organisations from public platforms and through press statements have been asserting that their population is abut 10 per cent and therefore every political party must have 10 per cent of its candidates from Christians. This is a great fraud and large-scale resort to the suppression of truth and promotion of falsehood and immorality.
Almost all Christian nurses in hospitals, especially in government hospitals use their position to brainwash the stricken and the ill. They tell the patients that if they embrace Christianity, Jesus Christ would heal them. The distress of the people is thus exploited for gaining converts. A Kamma Hindu Chief Executive of a multi-million dollar IT company was admitted to a hospital with a serious illness affecting his brain. For weeks, he had been told by nurse after nurse that if he believed in Christ and converted to Christianity, he would be cured. When he came out, his wife and friends including myself were astounded that he would become a Christian. Months afterwards when he fully recovered and when this matter was discussed with him he admitted that he was deluded by insistent persuasion of nurses when he was in utter distress to believe that Christ healed him. Eventually, he gave up the idea of becoming a Christian. This incident should let us know with what intensity and persistence the distress of patients is being exploited to gain converts by organised MNC enterprises through nurses.
Conversion activity is organised as any other commercial profit-seeking investment. Pastors paid Rs. 10,000 per month are in charge of a group of propagandists. Some of them are full timers. They get Rs. 3,000 to 5,000 per month. In villages some converts are engaged on a retainer basis, paid Rs. 500 per month. These are all required to collect flocks of villagers when swastya kutamis (health and healing assemblies) are organized and miracle cures in the name of Jesus and Mary are staged.
When these gangs of propagandist and seekers of harvest of converts are encountered and if Hindus confront them and the prospects assembled that what these MNC enterprises are telling them and doing is wrong, false and fraudulent, then such people who are engaged in the defence of their own religion are called communalist, anti-secular, anti-Christian and what is worse, that they are calling and abusing the Dalits by their caste name. FIRs are filed against them under the Prevention of Atrocities on Dalits Act. Converted Dalits who do not disclose to government the fact of their conversion are propagandists for Christ and conversion and strong arm attackers of the defenders of Hindus.
On an intellectual level also there is fraud. Promising that there is no caste distinctions in Christianity, Christian are canvassing for extension of reservations for Dalit Christians and BC-Christians. The upper-caste converts still continue to discriminate against the Dalit converts. This fact is very well known. Thus Reddy and Kamma Christians don'tmarry with Dalit Christians. That most positions in the Christian organisations clergy, hospitals, schools, colleges are filled up only with upper castes is one of the grievances within the lower-caste Christians. Indeed there was an association, formed of lower caste Christians which said that out of the 155 Catholic Bishops among Christians, only eight (five per cent) are Dalit Christians, see the injustice and the fraud. In their institutions like hospitals and colleges and schools Christians do not provide for reservations for Dalit Christians and also BC Christians in proportion to their population but they demand that Hindus must provide reservations for Dalit Christians also. Dalit Christians are about 65 per cent in the Catholic Church in Tamil Nadu but only 3.8 per cent among priests and nuns are Dalits.
That Christian philanthropic institutions like hospitals and schools and colleges are means of getting prospects for conversion was clearly asserted by Mahatma Gandhi. When asked whether the philanthropic work like caring for the aged and lepers and TB patients etc., should not be appreciated, Gandhiji asked whether there were no poor and destitute and sick people among the white Christians in the US and in Europe. He particularly mentioned about the Negros (now-a-days called Afro-Americans) Christians. Why could not the foreign funds be used to care of the poor in their won countries? Without adequately doing so, coming to India is only with the intention of converting the poor and illiterate and uninformed Hindus through instruments like hospitals and schools and other welfare methods, said Mahatma Gandhi.
In view of all these nefarious activities and the total commercial nature of the MNC enterprises, just as we ban spurious drugs and fraudulent operations, all conversions by organised Christian institutions must be banned. The propagation of Christianity is done through multi-national enterprises with FDI. It is clear that conversion is not out of an individual'sintelligent, knowledgeable and considered conviction but induced only by false propaganda and fraudulent means. How these frauds are perpetuated had been brought out so clearly by the Niyogi Commission appointed by a Congress government of Madhya Pradesh in the 1950s. The consequences of that report was the legislation in Madhya Pradesh and Orissa in 1950s itself against conversion by fraud and inducement and violence. That this is continuing is recognised by the governments of Himachal Pradesh (Congress-ruled) and Gujarat (BJP-ruled) so they enacted a law. Similar law was passed by Tamil Nadu but was withdrawn under very suspicious circumstances for political and other considerations.
Thus, evangelization, propagation and conversion activity of Christians is a business venture, with involvement of foreign enterprises. What is sold is commercial ventures and spurious with false promises and fraudulent means. Therefore organised conversion must be banned. The resistance to such organised conversions must be held to be in defense of one'sright to profess, practise, propagate and preserve one'sown religion.
(The writer is Director: Center for Telecom Management & Studies; Chairman: Pragna Bharati, Andhra Pradesh; Fellow: Tata Consultancy Services & Satyam Computer Services; Former Information Technology Advisor: Government of Andhra Pradesh; Former Chairman & Managing Director, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd. and can be contacted at Plot No. 8, P&T Colony, Karkhana (Secunderabad), Hyderabad-500 009, e-Mail: [email protected] & [email protected])
