Indian Church decries anti-national tag on tribal Christians

An official of the Indian bishops’ conference has questioned a Hindu leader’s claim that former Indian president Pranab Mukherjee supported converting tribal Christians to Hinduism to save them from becoming anti-nationals.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India called the claim “fabricated” on Jan. 17, two days after the media published the statements of Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the powerful Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

In a statement, the bishops’ conference questioned the motive behind publishing a “fabricated personal conversation being attributed to a former president of India.”

Bhagwat told a public function in central Indian Indore city on Jan. 13 that Mukherjee supported the campaign to convert Christians during a private conversation with him in 2017. Mukherjee died in 2020.

The bishops’ statement questioned the media ethics of “posthumous publication” of statements attributed to a president by “an organization with questionable credibility.”

It also questioned why Bhagwat “did not speak” about this when Mukherjee was alive.

“It is unfortunate” that RSS, which was banned thrice and often associated with violence in India “as seen over the past several decades, is allowed with impunity to call the non-violent, peace-loving and service-oriented Christian community as anti-nationals,” said the statement issued by the bishops’ public relations officer Father Robinson Rodrigues.

The RSS is seen as the umbrella organization of all Hindu groups working to make India a nation of Hindu hegemony. It supports campaigns against Christian missionary work, arguing that Hindus becoming Christians destabilizes Indian culture.

Hindu group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council) spearheads a campaign called Ghar Wapsi (homecoming) in northern India to convert Christians to Hinduism, claiming Hinduism is the “home” religion of all Indians.

The RSS claim that Mukherjee supported this campaign seems “diabolic, sinister, and not genuine,” the bishops said.

“We do not believe” Mukherjee made the statement “because we hold him in great esteem for his contribution to the nation and the respect for the pluralistic, secular ethos of our motherland,” they added.

Rodrigues said wide publicity to such “unverifiable and motivated statements are prone to divide communities by inciting violence and promoting hatred.”

He said tribal Christians were called “anti-nationals” for exercising their right to choose a religion as guaranteed in the constitution. The RSS entertains “hidden motive and malicious agenda,” the statement said.

Indian Christians, who make up 2.3 percent of some 1.3 billion Indians, “feel extremely hurt by such manipulated and motivated propaganda unleashed,” the statement said.

It called upon Indian socio-political leaders and “people of goodwill to rise above the destructive mindset and respond appropriately to this divisive politics.”

This article was originally published on https://www.ucanews.com/news/indian-church-decries-anti-national-tag-on-tribal-christians/107600