By Kumar Chellappan

Having failed in all their attempts to dethrone the Narendra Modi-led Government, the Congress-led INDI Alliance has resorted to a new strategy. The Congress and the Communists have succeeded in making the Church leaders fall in line and raise the bogey of religious persecution of minorities, especially that of the Christians.

The present controversy is the fallout of the arrest of Preethi Mary and Vandana Francis, two nuns hailing from Kerala, at Chhattisgarh on Saturday under the charges of forced religious conversion. The nuns and two adolescent girls were held by the police from Durg Railway Station in Chhattisgarh and they could not furnish a proper answer to the queries by the Railway Police.

Travelling without tickets: The nuns, the young girls and the middleman accompanying they were found to be travelling without any railway tickets. Workers belonging to the Bajrang Dal who came across the team suspected something fishy when the suspects were struggling to give coherent answers to the questions put forward by the Railway cops.

Massive religious conversion rackets led by evangelists and priests of the Churches are fully into proselytisation on a war footing. The nuns were found to be violating the anti-conversion law operating in Chhattisgarh and this is being seen as an act to sabotage the demographic balance of the country.

Veterans in the art of religious conversions: Representatives of the Catholic Bishops Conference of India and the Kerala Catholic Bishops Council rushed to the residences of the two nuns at Ernakulam and Kannur respectively. Both the nuns are veterans in the art of religious conversion, and many villages in Chhattisgarh have already been evangelized by the duo.

The Church cannot exist without proselytisation and conversion. The nuns are targeting the rest of the tribals in the forest regions of Chhattisgarh with the active help provided by Maoists, Congress and the Communists.

The situation is akin to the days of 1978 when O P Tyagi, a member of Lok Sabha, introduced the Freedom of Religion Bill as a private member's bill. The Bill stated that nobody could be made to convert from one religion to another by coercion, pressure, threats, blackmail and by offering pecuniary benefits. The Church, especially the Catholic and Evangelist ones, saw red in the bill and took to the streets across India. They displayed black flags and shut down all the Churches and Christian-run educational institutions, hospitals and business premises all over the country.

Mother Theresa, the “selfless goddess” of the Church, sat in fast in front of the Parliament demanding the withdrawal of the Bill introduced by O P Tyagi. Elsewhere in the country, spiritual leaders of the Christians (the Bishops, the Arch Bishops and the Cardinals) followed suit and the Marxist comrades, not to be left behind, declared fast unto death.

The then Prime Minister Morarji Desai, who was not amused by the public display of dramatics staged by Theresa and company, stood adamant and the Bill was not withdrawn. But it led to the mass resignation of the secular brigade from the ruling Janata Party. A leader like George Fernandes (who was the then minister for industries) addressed the Parliament, extolling the virtues of the Morarji Desai Government and ran away from the House to declare to the outside world that he was resigning from the council of ministers and the Janata Party because of the “controversial” bill.

The Opposition wanted a “Mukhotha” to challenge the Desai Government, and they zeroed in on Chaudhuri Charan Singh, who was the deputy prime minister and was in a hurry to usurp the Prime Minister’s post. The Congress and the Communists and other secular parties extended support to the Jat leader, and he was sworn in as Prime Minister on 28th July 1979. He was in power for five months and 14 days. He is remembered as the one and only Prime Minister of India who has not faced the parliament even once during his tenure.

Those who stood by the government since its inception, post-General Election 1977 ran for cover for reasons best known to them only, while the bishops, cardinals, and evangelists had the last laugh.

But here also, the nation was given a wrong narration with the claim that the Morarji Desai Government collapsed because of the “Dual Member” issue. The Janata Party members should not have any association with the RSS, demanded the Congress and the Secularists.

This was a false narrative because qe in Kerala have seen the then external affairs minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the Minister for information and broadcasting Lal Kishan Advani participating in an RSS meeting held at Thiruvananthapuram in 1978.

There was no confusion or chaos regarding that event but the Freedom of Religion Bill upset the designs of the Church. Why did a Bill in which no religions were named scared the Church? This was not discussed either in parliament or in the media, which speaks volumes about the influence wielded by the Church. The Church has only one mission, and that is to evangelise Bharath.

Hindusthan Samachar / Manohar Yadavatti