In Telangana, a pastor drowned during a baptism event. He was pulled under the water as he dunked the new convert. Even though his followers immediately ran to help him. he drowned to death. However, the man whose baptism was being performed was saved.
Recently the video and pictures of a pastor administering baptism in a water body went viral on social media. Pastor Balakotaiah from Kalwakurthy in the Nagarkurnool district of Telangana had gone to the Errakunta water body on May 21. He had planned to baptize a man named Citi Babu there. While conducting the ceremony he dunked the man but slipped and drowned.
His followers who were filming the ceremony immediately rushed to save the pastor and Citi Babu. Unfortunately, the pastor couldn’t be saved while Citi Babu was revived after being brought to the bank. Pastors have popularised taking new converts to water bodies for baptism in recent times. But it is endangering the lives of those who are lured into converting to Christianity.
A few weeks ago a similar video of a pastor and a girl drowning in water during a baptism event went viral on social media. The incident happened at Cumbum lake in Prakasam district, Andhra Pradesh. Later media reported that they were saved by local youth. Such videos show how little ‘soul-hungry’ pastors care for others’ lives.
Recently 5 young boys who volunteered to perform a ritual in a temple tank drowned to death in a freak accident in Tamil Nadu. At that time anti-Hindus dug out their identities and mocked Brahmins for not even teaching their kids to swim and denigrated Hindu deities. Some even went as far as to label people present in the place as selfish men who didn’t even move an inch to save the boys.
DMK leader RS Bharathi’s son Sai Lakshmikanth tweeted that Brahmins only care about their dominance even when it comes to saving their children’s lives. Another Dravidianist influencer tweeted, “Is there any rule that only Shudras should learn swimming? All your lakhs of gods will only eat mixture and watch (as you drown). Even for this they will do parihar instead of learning to swim”.
Many others posted extremely insensitive and outright vile comments like, “Why are all the pappans just staring? They could have recited mantras and brought them out na?”, and “Just washing stones and ringing the bell to cheat the public is not enough”. Such people who are usually vociferous about how South is different from the North in following religion are nowhere to be seen when a pastor drowned and could have taken the life of another as well in the name of ‘bringing a new soul’ to a so-called ‘progressive religion’.
