Proselytization In India: An Indian Christian's Perspective by C. Alex Alexander

Proselytization In India: An Indian Christian's Perspective:
by C. Alex Alexander

Since colonial times to the present, the impetus for Christian proselytizing work in India has largely emanated from Western Christian Church groups and missions. The latter's continuing obsession for promoting religious conversions under the aegis of India's Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom has triggered a raging debate among religious and political leaders of that country. Many Hindus of the Indian Diaspora have also been drawn into it.

Over seventy years ago, Mahatma Gandhi stated that: �proselytizing under the cloak of humanitarian work is unhealthy, to say the least. It is most resented by people here'. The resentment that Gandhi alluded to has increased in India over the years, mostly due to the persistence of religious conversions engineered by Christian evangelists who derive their financial support from foreign sources. Fundamentalist Muslims too have entered the fray in recent years with substantive financial contributions from Muslim countries interested in furthering the spread of Islam in India. Some Hindu groups have resorted to reverse conversions. All these trends are destructive to India's time-tested culture of religious tolerance.

The muteness of liberal Indian Christians, both in India and overseas, is indeed surprising. The aim of this essay is to rectify that omission at least in part. I hope that liberal Indians of all faiths will debate this issue with their fundamentalist counterparts in a similar vein to prevent the spread of inter-religious conflicts in that subcontinent. At the end of this essay, I shall present for your consideration a plan for pre-empting the religious militancy embedded in the fundamentalist varieties of both Christianity and Islam.