A recent news from Indore, MP about Indore Police mistakenly sending a notice and questionnaire about conversion activity to several Christian organizations, highlights the trifecta which ails our Republic.
1. Incompetence of Indian state
2. Brazen entitlement of Churches and other Abrahamic ‘minority’ groups
3. Crookedness of Indian English-language media
Let’s examine these issues one by one.
1. The Indore Police Commissioner Makarand Deoskar said that an internal notice & questionnaire was sent to all police stations in the city to probe the activities of Churches and Christian organizations in their respective area, as part of an effort to address law & order issues arising from illegal religious conversion cases.
The questionnaire comprised 16 points and sought details on objective of organizations’ activities, whether they are suspicious or agitational, and if they are involved in religious conversion. It sought details of all activities by missionaries in the last three months and asked if the missionaries are running any NGO and if they get any financial aid from foreign countries. Police stations were also asked to gather bank account details.
What did the SHOs of the police stations do? They just blindly forwarded the notice and questionnaire to 300 office-bearers of churches and Christian orgs.
‘Why not just ask those accused of breaking the law, whether they broke it or not…who needs investigations, and all that tiresome work?,’ the defenders of the law must have thought. Don’t be surprised if you soon hear news about police sending questionnaires to suspected terrorists as well!
2. How did the Church and local Bishop react? With faux outrage and by taking the moral high ground, with Indore Diocese Bishop Chacko Thottumarickal stating “This is a discriminatory order..why only Christians?”. The lack of self-awareness, or should we say the self-righteousness of Abrahamic religious groups, likes Churches and mosques-Jamaats, is breathtaking. They are ones who are on a mission to ‘save souls’, ‘cleanse this heathen country’, establish ‘God’s kingdom on Earth’…and because not a day passes by when bigoted missionaries spewing hate against Dharma are not caught in some part of the country or other, but call them out on it, and all you get is angry deflection and denial.
Bishop Thottumarickal, here are a few sample cases of hateful Christian missionary activity around Indore from recent years:
https://hindupost.in/dharma-religion/woman-alleges-forced-christian-conversion-bid/…
In recent times, NCPCR raids on Christian residential schools and so-called shelter homes in MP have thrown up some shocking revelations of child abuse & religious indoctrination. But even being answerable to the law of the land seems like an affront to this Bishop, because of his innate religious supremacism and sense of entitlement in a ‘pagan’ country.
3. Indore Police is in the ‘eye of a storm’ reported the Times of India breathlessly. But Madhya Pradesh’s Churches and Christian orgs are never in the ‘eye of a storm’ for such deracinated, West-worshipping media outlets, despite repeated revelations of predatory proselytization among poor, underprivileged Hindus, including janjatis!
Police withdraws notice, Christian leaders threaten to go to court
The notices have been withdrawn by Indore Police after opposition by Christian community leaders.
“We have not issued the notice to the community members. The letter has been written by ACPs, addressed to the TIs. It is an internal letter. The TIs may have mistakenly sent it to some Christian missionaries. It is related to our routine tasks and doesn’t target any community. There are law-and-order problems related to religious conversions that often happen, so these details are being collected and processed to timely address communal problems,” said Indore Police Commissioner Deoskar. “The community should not have any problem with this if they deny any conversion activities vehemently,” he added.
But not being satisfied (as any Hindu organization would) with the police clarification & retreat, Christian organisations are preparing to take the cops to court. “We contacted the police commissioner and told him that it is an unjust order and very discriminatory. Why only Christians? The questions in the letter are also very suspicious. This is not in good spirit,” said Indore Diocese Bishop Chacko Thottumarickal, who is also the head of United Christian Forum.
Suresh Carlton of the United Christian Forum said that there were “objectionable” questions in the notices. “There is one that asks the person to declare if he or his organisation is involved in religious conversion. This act of the police is a violation of our constitutional rights,” he said. “None of us is involved in such activities and we will go to the high court,” Carlton said, adding that there are 60,000 Christians in Indore and a large number of them are associated with ‘social welfare activities’.
Don’t be surprised if you see this ‘news’ getting covered in New York Times or BBC, or some obscure American city council of European Union flunky raising the ‘persecutions of minorities in Modi’s India’ over it.
