[Jemian]

I am very familiar with missionaries. Not a single one in my acquaintance would stop either free speech or a person following their conscience. I apologise for the ones that you have met who are less than they should be.

[Gengis Khan]

" I apologise for the ones that you have met who are less than they should be."

They are far less then they should be. There have been cases where people have accepted Jesus as their God but only in a manner as they would accept any other God in their multitudinous pantheon. This ecumenical behaviour is absolutely abhorred by the radicalized preachers. There have been instances when the preachers have broken into homes of neo-converts and destroyed their "blasphemous" Hindu idols which those people worshiped alongside Jesus (since old habits die hard).

Tell me would you call that an excercise in freedom of speech or conscience? Do only Christians Missionaries have (or should have) the divine mandate to arbitrate over an individual's conscience? And who, if not the state, would protect such people whose religious/spiritual conscience is being dictated to them by some hate-filled foreign preacher.

"Hate-filled", because the very act of breaking the idols, which are held in reverence by a large population is itself an act of deliberate provocation. Tell me do you condone or condemn such behaviour?

If in the name of religion, this is what you intend to sell (through threat/intimidation) then India isn't the right place for you.

If religion is about an individual's own conscience and his/her personal/private interaction with God then one needs only a teacher and not a preacher. A preacher is one who intends to drag you like an overbearing nanny, over the path he "thinks" is the true path of sprituality. An individual needs to discover his/her own path by himself........ as said by Swami Vivekanananda.