Eng/Hindi/Nat
Hindu fundamentalist teams in India have begun a marketing campaign aimed toward changing Christians to Hinduism.
Many Hindus say their faith is below risk, though it is Christians who’ve been the current goal of a string of non secular assaults in India.
Nevertheless the plans for a mass reconversion fizzled out, as just a few hundred individuals turned up for the ceremony.
A distant village in central India performed host to a non secular ceremony that noticed the conversion of a number of hundred Christians to Hinduism.
The fundamentalist Hindu group liable for the ceremony says it is countering the actions of Christian missionaries by changing Christians to Hinduism.
A part of the ceremony was performed by Dilip Singh Judeo, a federal lawmaker, who washed individuals’s toes to welcome them to the Hindu faith.
SOUNDBITE: (Hindi)
“We inform them the significance of our faith, the significance of preserving the nation united. We inform them that if they alter their perception and faith, the nation shall be divided. We give them the instance of Pakistan. Those that comply with what we’re saying come to us.”
SUPER CAPTION: Dayanand Saraswati, Hindu Priest
After being welcomed to the faith, these desirous to be transformed gathered for the non secular ceremony carried out by Hindu clergymen.
Nevertheless the plans for a mass reconversion fizzled out considerably, as just a few hundred individuals turned up for the ceremony.
Lots of them weren’t Christians to start with, and lots of had been already Hindus.
SOUNDBITE: (Tribal dialect)
“I worship a Hindu God – Vishwakarma. (Query) So are you a Hindu already? Sure, that is proper.
(Query) Then why are you collaborating on this ceremony? I’m doing what they informed me to do, what can I say.”
SUPER CAPTION: Mohan Lal
A sequence of religiously motivated assaults have been carried out just lately on Christians residing within the east of India.
Two Christian youngsters had been killed and one other critically wounded in an assault a couple of weeks in the past and an Australian missionary and his two sons had been burned to dying in January.
The assaults have been blamed on fundamentalist teams linked to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Social gathering.
In the meantime a Catholic priest says Hindu claims that missionaries are forcibly finishing up conversions is not true.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
“Once you say Christians are forcibly changing others – at all times they use “forcibly” – and no case has been proved. Let the legislation take its personal course by all means, the legislation is there.”
SUPER CAPTION: Alan De Lastic, Archbishop of Delhi
The sudden rise in religiously motivated incidents is placing strain on India’s Hindu nationalist authorities.
Christian teams have counted some 100 incidents within the final yr, starting from the alleged rape of nuns to the burning of Bibles.
Prime Minister Vajpayee has pleaded for non secular tolerance within the nation and promised powerful motion in opposition to the perpetrators of such assaults.
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