Pope asks India not to ban religious conversions

India has responded with diplomatic equanimity to Pope Benedict XVI's seemingly provocative remarks condemning attempts to ban religious conversion in certain states.

The pope had told India’s new ambassador to the Vatican, Amitava Tripathi, on Thursday that the country should "firmly reject" attempts "to legislate clearly discriminatory restrictions on the fundamental right to religious freedom". He had also taken note of the "disturbing signs of religious intolerance which had troubled some regions of the nation".

New Delhi responded on Friday with a statement, reiterating the constitutional "freedom of conscience" and the right to freely profess, practise and propagate religion. "It is acknowledged universally that India is a secular and democratic country where adherents of all faiths enjoy equal rights," said a foreign ministry spokesperson.

It was the pope's second declaration this week in defence of religious freedom in countries where Christians are a minority. In India, the statement comes in the backdrop of Rajasthan planning to become the sixth state to enact the anti-conversion law the pope was referring to. Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Orissa already have laws that bar conversions but allow re-conversions to Hinduism. Jharkhand has declared its intention to enact a similar law.

The BJP-ruled Rajasthan, however, has not been able to convince Governor Pratibha Patil to give her assent to the Religious Conversion Bill. She returned the bill making a point similar to the one made by the pope -- that its provisions would affect the right to freedom of religion.

The BJP has often attributed attacks on Christian missionaries, including the murder of Graham Staines in Orissa, as reactions to their proselytising. During his recent Bharat Suraksha Yatra, BJP president Rajnath Singh had described proselytising "dangerous" and asked all BJP-ruled states to enact a similar law.

Frankly, I dont know what that will achieve. It will serve only as a reactionary response and validate his statements about India being a repressive state.

Its high time India does what it needs to do, and should do so without bothering about how good (or bad) we look in eyes of the western western world and what ignorant people think about India........................ repressive state or whatever. Conversion is just another form of cultural genocide. No country in the world will tolerate such blatant invasion of thier culture and religion. Indian secularism does not need to go out of it way to convince ingorant men about India's secularism by allowing them complete freedom to destroy our culture and ethos.

The fact that the Pope has an agenda to Evangelize India is clearly a hostile intent and India must sent across a stong message. Anyway it serves us no purpose to have an embassy in a Theocratic state except to further thier agenda and to acquiesce with their openly stated design to Evangelize India. If Indian Catholics needs the papacy they can elect one of their own.

The greatest threat we face today is Maoism, Islam and also (not Christianity but) Evangelical fascism as is preached by the Pope.

Way to go, G-K.

Too bad, though, that you still can't lie straight.

Even in bed?

I'll bet.

Just as there have always been Christian Martyrs in every deadly dangerous part of the third world [Of which, least you forget, your own moral-relativistic, corruption-ridden and poverty-stricken sub-continent comprises such a huge part] so are there hundreds of thousands of Christian Missionaries throughout the islamic sub-world today. And scores more thousands, fifteen thousand of them operating into Western China [Including into Free and Sovereign Tibet and Islamic China] from just my Asian home base in Chiang Mai Thailand. That is, there are more brave Christian Missionaries in the moral-relativist, corruption-ridden and poverty-stricken communistic state that shares your squalid state's North Eastern border than there are greed-driven foreign businessmen.

And to show for their bravery?

Thus far, more than TWO HUNDRED MILLION CHINESE CHRISTIAN CONVERTS!

As for your suggestion, G-K, that anyone would ever gratuitously insult "pacifst (sic) Hindus?

Perhaps if you took time out from your own patently character-projecting vomitings of hesperophobic hatred you might note that it is you who came to these American boards and immediately tapped into your at-your-fingertips store of apparently pathological passive-aggression and began anonymously cowardly insulting everything we stand for and everyone we stand with.

You might notice, that is, it was you who began the froth and foam flecked outpourings of the anti-American, anti-Australian, anti-British, anti-European and, particularly, anti-Christian hostility that colors your every posting here?

The mythical "pacifst Hindus" of whom you speak have, within India, for centuries manipulated religious symbols and idioms and most-particularly their deeply-rooted sense of inferiority and of “cast” insecurity to rationalize and to justify Hinduism’s sub-human treatment of India's poorest of the poor and to promote and to fuel India’s endemically violent society's definitive hatred, intolerance and violence. And so, from day one, has your posting here been defined by the marriage of the same apparently personalized and internalized defects within your own character and by the apparently pathological projection of your own morbid self loathing.

While meanwhile your biggest bitch with me has always been not only that I respond to your bigotry, your lies and your libels but that when I call you on them I employ an, albeit somewhat exaggerated version of your own terms. Except, of course, that I remain objective and stick strictly to the Truth, I descend to your level and into your arena play by your rules.

And give you back as good as you give!

[Well, better, actually]

And continue to pray for your redemption and for your salvation.

Blessings – Brian:.

BUMPping

It is hard to believe that you are low caste Indian, the sneer condascending you show towards them in your posts when you describe them as sweepers etc makes it obvious.

You tailor yourself to every argument, when i mentioned caste marriages you said you were a product of one .. it is hard to take your claims seriously.

In one hand you say Christians are only a tiny 2% of the population, then you say many are beggars living in slums? LMAO.. since a huge number of Indians live in those squalid slums ? Aren't you contradicting yourself?

Most of the slum dwellers are Hindu you like it or not, of course Christians do exist among them not to say the least. But I am not ashamed of them, as you seem to be of your fellow hindu indians in low economic situations. The giant slum in Bombay (Dharavi) has witnessed many Hindu-Muslim riots and a hotbed of communal activity, so there goes again your lie.

'A lower caste hindu would rather remain commited to hinduism , take advantage of the affirmative action policy and get his kids admitted to an engineering or medical college , so that they get decent jobs , rise out of poverty , get out of the slums , and move on to the 'high income' bracket, enjoy equal status with the upper caste folks'

Ignoring your total lie that they will enjoy equal status , think about a moment.. inspite of all this they still do convert to Christianity and that is the beauty of it, if you are not so threatened by it then you would not supporting those silly laws isn't it.

' Just like you generalise hindus as being casteist/classist '

Try reading again.. I never did. A minority of them ( around 10%) are bigots who profit from the caste sytem, support it and are threatened by their loss of power base in society.

So maybe your government should do something about the poverty? And I find it hard to believe that no conversions are sincere. Sorry, I just find that hard to believe. And missionaries target the poor because they need the most help.

What makes you think the government isn't doing anything about the poverty? And what gives the foreign missionaries the right to intervene and decide what methods to apply to reduce poverty if indeed that is their sole objective (which you and I both know is hardly the case.) 90% of the conversions are pure scams. The Missionaries target the poor because they are the easiest to convert through material benefits. I have never seen Missionaries try their luck with the educated elites who would be in a better position to actually understand the tenets of Christianity and have no use of the material largess.

Look I live in India and know more about the conversion activities taking place in India. Here people have also seen the ugly side of Christianity in addition to the good side.

Ok. So? There are good and bad people in every religion. Hindus as well.

The difference is that the bad Hindus don't turn up or by some sort of "divine right" demand an entry into the US to insult/denigrate/demonize Christianity as satanic ritual and ask people to destroy every symbol of Christian belief and accept the Hindu Gods as their sole savior. Its time India puts a stop to this kind of shill activity put of by the hordes of soul harvesters comming to India from outside.

In that case why do they start praying to their old idols back again. They were not fully baptized I guess.

Fully baptized? Doesn't work that way. If they return to Hinduism (sp?) their baptism is still valid. They can reject their faith if they like, but they are still baptized. There are no "half-baptisms."

Its funny that people who have been Baptized for a bag of grain have absolutely no idea as to what it actually meant. More often they are under the impression that it is just another Hindu ritual (which if they perform will earn them a bag of grain). No wonder they go back to their Hindu past almost immediately. You can sprinkle water over them but not remove the Hindu out of them. And so I said they were always Hindus. Their so-called conversion wasn't valid or effective.

This is one major reason why many of the churches (in the business of gathering the neo-converts) have a hard time rooting out the Hindu symbolism and rituals that are still in practice for the fear that they may go back to their Hindu past or create a sort of synthesis of their own which is not entirely Christian. The Churches would deem the Hindu rituals as satanic and go to great lengths to make a public show of contempt for Hindu idols in order to indoctrinate the converts about the sins of Heresy and the consequences as a result.

Any ways conversion is always about intolerance and denying ones past.

Intolerance? How so? Not believing something does not mean you do not tolerate it. Denying ones past? No. If a Hindu convert to Catholicism said, "I was never a Hindu" then that would be denial. But if he says, "I was Hindu but now I am Catholic" then all that means is he changed his beliefs. There is no denial of his past there. Just a change of what he believes now.

Hindus dont object to worship of Jesus, Hindus also worship Jesus, just that they dont start breaking their idols, insult Hindus as pagan demon worshipers, deny their own past, change their names to western ones, wipe out every sign of their ancient culture, heritage and ethos.

Wipe out their ancient culture, heritage and ethos? Do you know anything of the Eastern Catholic Churches? They are fully in union with Rome yet they retain their cultures, and even their own methods of worship. Certainly they believe in one God, but that is what Christianity is.

As I said, their first target is the Hindu culture and every trace of Hindu symbols or artifacts is to be banished from their homes and surroundings. Even their names are required to be changed into Latin-Portuguese ones. Everything that is Hindu (regardless of whether good or bad) becomes Satanic. This is nothing but cultural invasion very much on the lines of Communism and Islam.

It most certainly is not. It is a person saying, "I no longer find truth in this religion. I now find it in that one, so I am now a member of that religion." Why is this so horrible to you?

There is truth in almost every religion. You may find the tenets of one religion more appealing then the other but to say that there is no truth in Hinduism and that only Christianity is the truth, thats is not religion but indoctrination.

-----"As I have said before and repeat it for the umpteenth time. And expostion of the tenets of ones faith is no crime and voluntary acceptance of another religion is no crime either but proselytization as a systematic and organised activity is unacceptable."

I'm curious as to why it is unacceptable. That seems to be something that has not been explained very well.

In secular India the Indian government is not allowed to promote or favour any particular religion then how can a foreign government (the government of Vatican) be allowed to actively promote and further the cause of "one" religion on Indian soil?

-----"It is the judiciary's business to ascertain if the conversion is indeed genuine and not simply a scam as is the case with most of the Christian conversions in India."

How can the judiciary tell someone why they converted? The judiciary cannot see into that persons heart. As for your assertion that "most" are caused by some sort of scam, I'd like to see hard facts on that.

The judiciary can certainly ascertain if a person is genuinely converting of his own conscience and fully understands and is able to explain the tenets of his faith he/she is converting into and also the reason why he/she feels the need to convert. That would be enough to ascertain if he/she is genuinely influenced by Christianity and not just falsely indoctrinated or simply a party to some spurious arrangement in return for some material/monetary benefits.

'Indeed there are many cases of high caste hindus fraudulantly classifying themselves as lower caste hindus so that they can take advantage of the affirmative action policy. My upper caste classmates used to envy me for being
officially a lower caste hindu.'

Maybe they do, but they probably detest you if you marry one of their girls. Thats the main point.. its not the $$ it is the community respect, low caste people mistreatment stems from the lack of respect.

'majority of christians in India are the poorest of the poor. Christians are only 2% of India's population - and most of the 2% live below the '

Any proof of this? Any statistics, studies etc? Since you have a tendency to exagerate and pull statistics out of the backside, you claims are probably not true. The highly developed states in India - Kerala,North eastern India have high literacy rates and income levels and also have a big Christian community. Infact some of the North eastern states are majority Christians. Poor Christians are generally supported by their Church, community.. get priority admission in prestigious schools and colleges in India which are mostly Christian. Generally poor Christians are well supported and taken care than poor hindus because of the support network offered by Churches etc, so dont know what you are trying to claim here? The poorer and backward states like Bihar, MP,UP etc have a huge number of poor hindus and are not known for having a big Christian community. Again your claims are rubbish and have no factual basis.

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