{"id":4156,"date":"2004-04-23T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-23T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/04\/23\/2004-04-23-india-s-elections-bring-out-conversion-conflicts\/"},"modified":"2004-04-23T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2004-04-23T12:00:00","slug":"2004-04-23-india-s-elections-bring-out-conversion-conflicts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2004\/04\/23\/2004-04-23-india-s-elections-bring-out-conversion-conflicts\/","title":{"rendered":"India&#8217;s Elections Bring Out Conversion Conflicts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Agence France Press<\/P><P>JHABUA, INDIA, April 18, 2004: Elections have intensified conflict between Christians and Hindus in this remote tribal area, according to the article by Agence France Press wire service. In one notable section, it says, &#8220;Some Hindu nationalists openly campaign against Christian missionaries, who they argue are altering the historic religious makeup of India through conversions. &#8216;In five years, I will have these meddlesome Catholic missionaries packing their bags and leaving Jhabua,&#8217; Kalsingh Bhabor, a local member of the state legislature from Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee&#8217;s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told an election rally. &#8216;They are here to &#8220;buy&#8221; Adivasi souls,&#8217; said Bhabor, referring to tribal people. &#8216;It is their one-point agenda to convert the tribals to Christians. The social work is a cover.&#8217; In its election platform, the BJP has promised to tighten laws &#8216;prohibiting conversion by force or allurement&#8217; across India. According to officials, there are 1.4 million Adivasis living in Madhya Pradesh&#8217;s Jhabua, Ratlam, Mandsaur and Neemach districts and in all of them Catholic missionaries have a strong presence.&#8221;<BR><br \/>\n<\/P> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Agence France PressJHABUA, INDIA, April 18, 2004: Elections have intensified conflict between Christians and Hindus in this remote tribal area,,&#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-4156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4156","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=4156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}