VHP launches fresh anti-conversions drive in rural areas

Vijay Upadhyay
Agra. The battle of conversion and reconversion between Christian missionaries and Hindu organisations has taken a major twist beginning this year with Hindu outfits launching a campaign to exterminate "non-Church Christianity" from rural India.

The Dharma Jagran Vibhag of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, over the weekend, held a reconversion of almost 480 dalits in the Aligarh and Etah districts of Agra division, asking them to set aside the cross and wear the yagyopaveet to formalise their re-entry into Hinduism.
What sets these dalits apart from other convertees who have recently re-joined the Hindu fold is that they were not followers of a particular church. In fact, the six villages of Etah where these dalits lived did not even have a church. The only way these people participated in religious meetings was through Christian assemblies held from time to time in nearby towns.
Talking to The Pioneer, Rajeshwar Singh, provincial head, Dharma Jagran Vibhag, who is leading this operation in Uttar Pradesh said there are several lakhs Hindu dalits across the country who have been misled by missionaries into adopting Christianity. A majority of these dalits reside in villages where missionaries wield considerable influence owing to the prevalence of social vices like untouchability.
Mr Singh said in the past one year, the VHP has brought almost 20,000 converted dalits back into the Hindu fold with the last purification drive conducted in Bareilly where 1,100 dalits from 40 villages reassumed their Hindu identity, some of them after almost 20 years.
This year, he said, the target is much higher. By the end of the Samvat 2063, the organisation plans purification of at least 80,000 dalits in western UP although the main stress will be on extermination of the newly-launched concept of "non-Church Christianity" by missionaries. The VHP charges that this way, missionaries were only baptizing dalits to rapidly increase the number of Christians without even caring to build churches for them in the villages.
Mr Singh said the VHP had conducted four conversion drives in Agra's Etah district, re-converting about 20,000 dalits. More than 40 churches were taken up by the VHP and transformed into temples which forced the missionaries to adapt this new strategy of not building churches. Now the VHP has decided to counter this strategy.

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