Karnataka Hindu groups face conversion charges

(August 20, 2010) The Meghalaya state government has sent an official team to Karnataka to study allegations of Hindu groups luring Christian students to Karnataka and converting them to Hinduism. The fact-finding team, comprising senior government officials and representatives of various NGOs, has been visiting various Hindu maths and residential schools in Karnataka, reported Deccan Chronicle. The team visited Hindu institutions located in Bangalore, Mangalore, Shimoga, Mysore, Tumkur and Uttara Kannada districts to collect information on the issue. The students were reportedly brought to Karnataka by organizations linked to RSS, promising to provide them education, said sources. A senior officer of the women and child welfare department told the newspaper that Meghalaya-based NGOs and Christian organizations from the North eastern states had alleged that children were taken away forcibly in the name of education and were now being converted to Hinduism. Recently “a minister from Manipur visited schools in Karnataka to get first hand information on the problem,” he said. Karnataka’s BJP government had earlier faced charges of being soft on Hindu radical outfits like the Sri Rama Sene, which had allegedly engaged in moral policing. The officer said the team’s visit has been “kept confidential as it might trigger communal tension with several Christian NGOs pressurizing the Meghalaya government to initiate criminal action” against Hindu groups under “the Juvenile Justice Act.