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LUCKNOW, INDIA, February 18, 2005: Reconversion is back in focus after a VHP-affiliated outfit organized a “purification camp” for Dalit and extremely backward caste Christians in western Uttar Pradesh this week, reports Telegraph India’s special correspondent. Over 3,000 people from more than 17 villages of Etah district have been reconverted to Hinduism over a period of time, prompting Aloke Sinha, principal secretary, home department, to seek a report from the district administration. Even Christian prayer halls, 14 of them across the 17 villages, have been reportedly taken over and converted into schools for Dalits. On February 13, the Dharma Raksha Samity organized the “purification camp” in the villages where the reconverts were allowed to return to temples after being washed in the Ganga and made to sit for a special puja. Yagnas (fire worship), too, were organized for them to offer prayers. The organization has been holding camps and educating villagers about the need to return to their “mother religion.” Their return to the Hindu fold was necessary as “they had been lured by Christians into giving up the religion and adopt the foreign faith” through offers of financial security, said Mohan Joshi, state secretary of the VHP, under whose supervision the reconversion took place. But they neither achieved financial security nor social prestige and ended up alienated from the legacy of Hinduism, Joshi said. “It is wrong to campaign that we ever converted (people). These Dalits had embraced Christianity on their own, impressed by our faith,” Father Prakash said on behalf of Father Robert Pinto of the Lucknow diocese. The latter’s office issued a subdued reaction to the entire episode. “We have instructed our community men,” Father Prakash said, “to exercise restraint in the face of provocation from any other rival organization.” Over 500 heads of reconverted families were invited to a public reception in Etah town by the VHP on February 15.

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