JAIPUR, India (Reuters):
A WESTERN Indian state passed a controversial bill yesterday, prohibiting religious conversions, bringing renewed focus on an issue that has triggered communal violence and been used as a political tool.
For decades, India's Hindu revivalists have accused Christian missionaries of bribing poor tribespeople to change their faith, but Christians deny mass conversions and say those who do convert do so to escape the rigid Hindu caste hierarchy.
Authorities in Rajasthan state, ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said it was banning religious conversions because they were weakening communal harmony.
"Some religious institutions, bodies and individuals are involved in unlawful conversion by allurement or by fraudulent means or forcibly," Gulab Chand Kataria, Rajasthan's interior minister, said.
"In order to curb such illegal activites and to maintain harmony, we have enacted a special law."
PRISON SENTENCE FOR BREACH
Any breach of the new proposal could be punished with up to five years in prison and a hefty fine, he said.
The act was passed by the state lawmakers, but still needs to be ratified by the governor to take effect.
The move has attracted stinging criticism from other political parties and religious groups, who accuse the Hindu right wing of whipping up fear for political ends.
"Such an act defies logic, since conversion activities had rarely been reported in the state," said Salim Engineer, state general secretary of Jamait-e-Islami Hind, describing the move as an "act of fascism."
Tension between Christians and Hindus flared up in 1998 when prayer halls were torched in the western state of Gujarat, and in 1999 when an Australian missionary and his two young sons were burnt to death in a remote tribal area in the eastern state of Orissa.
Hindus account for about 80 per cent of India's 1.1 billion people, and Christians under three per cent. Muslims make up around 14 per cent but conversions between Hindus and Muslims are extremely rare.
Hindu groups say they are worried by the growing Christian influence in remote tribal-dominated pockets in the country's east, west and centre.
This, they say, can only be checked by 'reconverting' the tribal Christians to Hinduism and they often organise reconversion ceremonies.
