Card. Toppo: Hindu group fabricating conversion controversy

(Vatican Radio) An Indian News agency, Indo-Asian News Service(IANS) first reported on Monday that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), literally, world Hindu council, alleged that driven by poverty, over 100 families or 300 members of the primitive Asur tribe belonging to Ghaghra and Visunpur blocks in the villages of Jharkhand's Gumla district, were converted to Christianity.

Asur, one of the nine primitive tribes of Jharkhand, is facing a population decline.

The converted villagers reportedly said they took the decision to ensure education for their children. The villages lack basic facilities — roads, electricity, school and health centres.

The Gumla authorities said they would probe the issue. “Some conversions in the district have been reported last week and some cases of conversions are old. We will probe both; all the reported conversions to find out the truth,” Dinesh Chandra Mishra, deputy commissioner of Gumla district reportedly told IANS over phone. “People converted by their will or they have been allured will be ascertained only after probe,” he said.

Condemning the religious conversion of the primitive tribes people, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) sought a probe into the Christian missionaries’ role.

“The role of Christian missionaries should be probed. The primitive tribes whose population is declining in the state has been converted into Christianity under a design,” Pramod Mishra, the VHP’s Bihar and Jharkhand Dharam Prsar head, told IANS.

“Non-tribal people living in the same area. But why did they not convert on the same reason? The primitives tribes have been allured and converted. The funding of missionaries activities should also be probed,” he added.

"The media reports are not true," Cardinal Toppo told ucanews.com on Wednesday, adding that members of these tribes were Christian for decades and that there was no sudden increase of these indigenous people becoming Christian.

 

This was corroborated by Neha Arora, the subdivisional officer who has judicial and administrative powers in Gumla. "There is no official confirmation ... If any such report comes up, I will let you know," she told ucanews.com.

Cardinal Toppo, the first tribal cardinal from Asia, said the story of the conversion of indigenous people was fabricated to call for an anti-conversion law in Jharkhand, the eastern Indian state ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is considered the political arm of Hindu groups working to make India a Hindu nation.

The neighboring states of Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, also ruled by that party, have anti-conversion laws. Seven of India's 29 states have such laws that criminalize conversion if done without permission from government authorities. Fines and jail terms are stipulated for those involved in "fraudulent" and "forced" conversion and for "alluring" people to change their religion.

Christians have been opposing such laws on the grounds that they violate religious freedom as enshrined in the Indian Constitution. As well, church humanitarian services such as education and health care could easily be misinterpreted as enticing people to convert, they said.

Cardinal Toppo said the demand for an anti-conversion law "is against the constitution," adding that "the church does not compel anyone to become Christian. It also does not block anyone from going away."

Deepak Tirkey, an official from the National Christian Forum working in Gumla, told ucanews.com that district government officials and state welfare schemes almost never reach remote villages.

But Christian missioners provided villagers with facilities for education and medicine, and hundreds embraced the religion, he said.

The church's mission to indigenous people in Jharkhand began in the villages in the second half of the 19th century and was spearheaded by Jesuit missionaries.

Jharkhand, with a population of 33 million people, now has some 1.4 million Christians, most of whom are indigenous people or those belonging to the dalit or former untouchable castes.

The state's 4.5 percent Christian population is almost double that of the national average, and much higher than several neighboring states where Christians are less than 1 percent of the population.

In Gumla district, where the alleged conversion took place, some 20 percent of its 1 million people are Christians, according to government data.

(Source: IANS, UCANews.com)