Fight 'reconversion' with literacy and self–awareness, exhorts Bishop of Sambalpur

Baripada – In response to the ‘reconversion’ mission undertaken by hardline Hindus, recently Rev. Lucas Kerketta, Bishop of Sambalpur, Orissa, stated, that to fight against forced reconversions in Orissa, the Christians must educate tribal people, in order to equip them to understand their rights and build individual awareness and underlined the objectives that the Church must aim for in their social welfare programmes in India, a country where religious freedom violations are rampant.

In mid–September, in the Sarat village, district of Mayurbhanj, 76 tribal Christians "re–embraced" Hinduism in a ceremony organized by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the religious wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the former party of power in India. This was the first mass reconversion in Mayurbhanj.

Mayurbhanj district is infamously referred to as the domain of Dara Singh.

Mass reconversions had earlier taken place in the neighboring Keonjhar district, which witnessed the killing of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two minor sons in January 1999, at the hands of Dara Singh and his gang.

Subsequently, the culprits were arrested for their heinous crime and tried and incidentally, Dara Singh was sentenced to death.

The tribals who recently reconverted hailed from Ramachandrapur, Gokulchandrapur and Sudang villages under Kaptipada block. BJP's Nilagiri MLA Pratap Sarangi, Krupananda Guruji Maharay of VHP's Margadarshan Mandal, state general secretary of VHP and state convenor of Bajrang Dal were present during the ceremony.

Heavy police deployment had been done in the area to prevent any untoward incident.

When confronted, VHP's State Secretary Gouri Prasad Rath had said that it would be "wrong to describe is as re–conversion".

"We call it homecoming," he said. “A return home for the tribal people.”

Mass conversions are not a phenomenon new to Orissa, one of the Indian states with the highest presence of Hindu fundamentalists and governed by the BJP.
Together with activists of the VHP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), they have been carrying out for several years serious persecution against Christian missionaries and converted people. The law facilitates the prevailing state of things.

Orissa's religious freedom law (OFRA), foresees legal sanctions for missionaries accused of "instigating conversions"; every conversion must be officially authorized by the government.

Most inhabitants of Orissa are tribal, poor, unemployed and illiterate.

The Church seeks to intervene but fundamentalists use "convincing" means: in exchange for the "return home", they first offer economic benefits, then, if necessary, they move on to threats. Often, persecution against Christians gets confused with the fight against the Naxalites, the regional network of Maoist rebels that include some tribal people among its members.

In a recent interview, Rev. Kerketta explained that reconversions occur among Pentecostal groups and not among Catholics. "The VHP and the RSS do not distinguish among the numerous Protestants and Catholics: often the Church is seen as the result of missionary activities carried out by "Protestant brothers", the bishop declared. He also recalled that several months ago various activists of the VHP and the RSS threatened Catholic Church personnel for the fact that a Protestant group was distributing information pamphlets and Bibles in their district.
These same activists had already warned that they would burn down churches and expel all Christians from the state if missionary activity did not cease. "To contain the reconversion phenomenon, we are carrying out social programmes aimed at the tribal people of the more remote and internal areas of Orissa,” he said.

"The population receives education and health assistance so that it can defend itself against any form of exploitation and become aware of individual rights," Rev. Kerketta said, adding also that the "Orissa government is led by the BJP, but local representatives of the National Congress belong to the UPA (United Progressive Alliance), the party currently in power in India."

In recent years, various episodes of violence against religious minorities have occurred in Orissa. The last took place on August 26, when a group of 300 Hindu fundamentalists attacked Our Lady of Charity Parish in Raikia, district of Kandhamal. The attackers entered the church, burned Bibles and destroyed the tabernacle and statues of saints.

Local authorities subsequently arrested 3 people held responsible for the violence in which 6 people were injured.