K. S. Sudershan, the leader of a Hindu nationalist organization, has called on Christians in India to throw off “foreign influences” and set up a “swadeshi,” or national church. In a speech on October 7, Sudershan, head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), said that the unity and integrity of India were threatened by foreign Christian missionaries.
The subtext of Sudershan’s statement is a call for “no more conversions to Christianity,” says Dr. Justus Devadas, public affairs and religious liberty leader for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in India. “The two Indian Christian churches Sudershan mentions favorably are both ones which you must be born into-you cannot convert and join them.”
Although styled as a “social and cultural organization,” RSS wields considerable political influence, says Devadas. It is the parent organization of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is the dominant party of the ruling coalition in India’s national parliament. The BJP also leads state governments in Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh. The current Prime Minister of India, A. B. Vajpayee, is a member of the RSS.
A senior BJP leader, J. P. Mathur, last week backed up Sudershan’s statement, saying that in many areas “foreign missionaries have created unhealthy and undesirable elements.”
“At the moment, the BJP does not hold a parliamentary majority and so cannot translate its ‘no-conversion’ sentiment into national policy,” says Devadas. “But Sudershan’s position certainly reflects the feeling among a significant group within Indian politics.”
The principles of religious freedom and secular governance are enshrined in India’s constitution, adopted in 1950. But this has not prevented tensions between different religious groups developing into violence in some regions. Sectarian hostility has been blamed for the recent killing of an Australian missionary and his two sons in Orissa and attacks on Christian schools in Agra earlier this year. In some areas, state government laws also reflect a strong anti-conversion stance. In the state of Orissa, the government told churches in November this year that religious conversions could not take place without church leaders notifying the local police and district magistrate.
Some 83 percent of the population in India is Hindu, according to recent government statistics. Muslims, the next largest religious group, constitute 12.7 percent of the population and Christians, 2.3 percent.