The RSS on Friday claimed the Shabri Kumbh held in the Dangs district of Gujarat was a success because the pace of reconversion of Christians to Hinduism had gathered momentum in the area over the last four years.
Besides thousands of ordinary converts who came back to the Hindu fold since 2006, as many as 70 pastors embraced Hinduism and are now busy wooing back those who they had converted to Christianity, Sharad Dhole, the West-South India chief of the Dharma Jagaran wing of the RSS, said.
Dhole said Dangs had been chosen for the first Kumbh because it was the only district in the country to show “an abnormal 200 per cent growth” of the Christian community. He said the former pastors hold the reconversion ceremony every December 25.
The main focus of religious gatherings like these, he said, was to increase awareness and religiosity among people. Lack of religiosity was the main reason for conversion, and not backwardness, he claimed.
To shore up his argument, Dhole cited the examples of two engineers from Maharashtra who had allegedly converted to Christianity in the hope of getting the Green Card because the US government had become very strict after 9/11.
The Sangh is operating more than 10,000 Dharm Jagaran Samitis, Dhole said, adding every village in Mandla, where the three-day Ma Narmada Samajik Kumbh began on February 10, would have such religious committees. The Sangh claimed that about 15,000 Christians had reconverted to Hinduism in the tiny southern district of Gujarat. The Sangh has identified 55 districts in the country where the growth of Christianity and Islam had shown an ‘abnormal’ increase in the 2001 census.
