{"id":13762,"date":"2014-09-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/09\/01\/church-turned-into-temple-after-72-valmikis-reconvert-to-hinduism\/"},"modified":"2014-09-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-01T12:00:00","slug":"church-turned-into-temple-after-72-valmikis-reconvert-to-hinduism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2014\/09\/01\/church-turned-into-temple-after-72-valmikis-reconvert-to-hinduism\/","title":{"rendered":"Church Turned into Temple after 72 Valmikis Reconvert to Hinduism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/timesofindia.indiatimes.com\/articleshow\/41029431.cms?intenttarget=no\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>ALIGARH, INDIA, August 28, 2014 (Times of India): A church with a cross in it that belonged to the 7th Day Adventists overnight turned into a temple adorned with a portrait of Shiva after what some Hindu groups in Aligarh termed the &#8220;successful ghar wapasi&#8221; (reconversion) of 72 Valmikis who had become Christians in 1995. There was an elaborate shuddhi karan (purification) ceremony on Tuesday inside the church in Asroi, 18 miles from Aligarh.<\/p>\n<p>Khem Chandra, Sangh pracharak and pramukh of Dharam Jagran Vivad in Aligarh, said, &#8220;This is called ghar wapasi, not conversion. They left by choice and today they have realized their mistake and want to come back. We welcome them. We can&#8217;t let our samaj scatter, we have to hold it tight. I have told them that honor comes from within the community and not from outside.&#8221; Chandra added that in the years that followed their adoption of Christianity, he met heads of the eight Valmiki families numerous times to convince them to reconsider their decision.<\/p>\n<p>Anil Gaur, one of those who returned to the Hindu fold, said it was because they were unhappy with the caste system that they changed their religion. &#8220;But we found ourselves in no better position among Christians,&#8221; he said. &#8220;As Hindus we had no status and were restricted to doing menial jobs, but even after remaining a Christian for 19 years, we saw that no one came to us from their community. There was no celebration of Bada Din (Christmas). The missionaries just built a church for us in the vicinity where some of the villagers got married. That was all.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source ALIGARH, INDIA, August 28, 2014 (Times of India): A church with a cross in it that belonged to the,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}