Fed up with the ill attempts of the Christian missionaries, villagers of Kondre village in Daduras panchayat of Sukma district have burnt materials and expressed their anguish against Christian missionaries for promoting conversion in the tribal-dominated Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh.
The incident came to light after a video pertaining to the incident went viral on the social media platform Twitter, in which villagers from insurgency-hit Sukma can be seen burning propaganda-related material of the missionaries.
In the viral video, several villagers can also express their anguish in their local dialect (Gondi) over missionaries’ ill attempts to promote conversion in the region. The villagers in the video can be heard saying in Gondi, “You arrived in our village and lured innocent villagers to embrace Christianity by offering them money. Now if you want to go back, you must pay that amount to us.”
Posting the video from his account on the social media site Twitter, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader from the state, Prabal Pratap Singh Judev, asked senior congress leader Kawasi Lakhma, the local MLA and minister in the Bhupesh Baghel-led government that ” you used to say that if evidence pertaining to conversion be found in Bastar then I will tender my resignation, then when you are going to resign.”
https://twitter.com/prabaljudevBJP/status/1672923151750270977?s=19
However, the tweet from the BJP stalwart received no response from the Baghel’s minister, who earlier had said that the BJP only propagates fake propaganda and that even if a single case of conversion proved to be true in Bastar, then I would tender my resignation.
It is pertinent to mention here that the mineral-rich state has witnessed a number of communal fissures between the local Hindu Vanvasi community and the church-backed converted Christians in Bastar lately over growing cases of illegal conversion in the remote areas of the tribal heartland.
The altercation between the two communities had also led to a violent confrontation on a couple of occasions, such as in Narayanpur of Bastar in January this year when a violent mob backed by the local church had attacked the members of the local Hindu Vanvasi community gathered for a village meet over the growing menace of illegal conversion in the Gorra village.
The attack resulted in a widespread protest from the Vanvasi community in the Bastar region of the state, where the Hindu community also took out shutdowns and protest marches.
In another similar incident, violent clashes were reported from Bhejripadar village under Parpa police station limits of Bastar over the cremation of a 58-year-old converted Christian lady in March this year.
It was then reported that an altercation broke between the two communities after family members of the deceased attempted to cremate the body in the village surroundings, to which the local Hindus objected and asked the family to either cremate the body outside of the village or to revert to Santana fold.
It was learnt that the altercation between both sides soon became violent, in which a couple of villagers and a few policemen also sustained injuries. Additional forces were deployed from the neighbouring police stations to restore law and order
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