Letter to BS: Proselytisation is real threat to secular fabric of India

This is with reference to ‘Meet Anil Couto, Delhi Archbishop who ran into controversy with a prayer’ (Manavi Kapur, May 25). The mask has fallen off the face of Archbishop of Delhi, Anil Couto, in urging all Christians to vote against the BJP because the party is posing a threat to our secular fabric. Facts speak otherwise. In 2015, a nun in a church in Nadia (northern Bengal) was allegedly gang-raped and immediately the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) and of course the Left-liberal media raised a mighty hue and cry that the BJP was behind this heinous incident and that Christians are in danger. The actual culprit turned out to be one Nazrul Islam, a Bangladeshi national, whom the Kolkata court convicted last year (along with accomplices). Even after the verdict, neither the CBCI nor the media had the courtesy to apologise to the BJP for their false accusations. Now, who is under threat from whom? Is it the church from BJP/RSS or the vice-versa?

Proselytisation is the real threat to the secular fabric of India because it is leading to communal clashes and demographic aggression. Converting tribals and poors in the garb of ending caste discrimination is no service. How great it would be if the church could heed the golden words of late Samineni Arulappa, the distinguished former Catholic Archbishop of Hyderabad: “I totally disagree with proselytisation. Real conversion is conversion to God, not from one religion to another religion.” 

C V Krishna Manoj   Telangana

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