Catholic Church says conversions can never be forcible

India’s Hindus have for a long time objected to the conversion of some of their community to Christianity. In recent years Hindu extremists have objected more forcefully by attacking churches and clerics.

Religious belief can never be the result of forceful conversion, but must come through education, dialogue and mutual respect, the Vatican said Monday in a message for the Hindu Diwali holiday, according to this report by the Associated Press (AP).

The message attributed to the head of the Vatican's office for inter-religious dialogue, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, evidently tries to be reconciliatory to the Hindus who are the majority in India.

But it fails to address the concern of many Hindus, including moderates. The moderates are concerned that the Church uses charity funds to gently persuade Hindus and other communities to convert to Christianity. A number of Christian, including Catholic charities, are known to openly proselytize among the poor, using food and clothing as an incentive. Converts by this method are known as “rice Christians”.

There are also a number of people who convert to Christianity to take advantage of the abundant funds from foreign donors available to Christian charities. Often these charities pay for the education abroad of children, which would be generally out of the pale of most Hindus in India.

A commitment by the Vatican and other churches not to link charity with conversions would go a long way towards building amity with the Hindus in India, and in fact non-Christian communities in all countries.

In the past a lot of the conversions to Christianity in Asia piggybacked on Christian colonial powers. Take for example the forced conversions in Goa under Portuguese colonial rule. The Catholic Church and other churches have to now convince other religions that conversions are not piggybacking on first-world wealth and charity.

A celebration of British colonialism in India !

I have no objection to descendants of Genghis Khan deciding to hold a quiet, prayerful ceremony to commemorate their ancestor.

I have no objection to some British going quietly to Lucknow and other parts of India and paying homage at graves of some of their colonialist ancestors, as a private visit from close relations.

But I object to them making an excursion of it, coming in large numbers to make a spectacle, to commemorate 150 years of a colonial war against the Indians.

Because then they will be walking rough-shod over the sentiments of the people of India, whose ancestors were the victims of these British soldiers.

The decision of some British soldiers and civilians to go to Lucknow to honor soldiers that were involved in suppressing the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny, which Indians regard as the first war of independence, has created a furor in India.

The visitors from the UK even “ hoped to install a plaque in a church in Meerut commemorating the bravery of British soldiers at the site of another key flashpoint during the 1857 rebellion”, according to a report by Reuters.

If the British visitors were moved by respect for their ancestors, over 150 years later at that, they could have gone to Lucknow in smaller numbers and paid their discreet homage. They could have done it every year, and nobody would have objected.

Instead they are planning a well-choreographed event. Would the Indians be entirely wrong if they apprehend that this visit is less about homage and more about revisionism in British thinking about its colonial role ?

The history of the West as colonizers is a part of their history that they should do their best to help others to forget. It was a period of untold brutality, and exploitation which people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are still trying to come to terms with. It is a period that the British, the French, the Portuguese and other colonialists should also come to terms with in humility and contrition.

Today the West is horrified by the cruelty and massacre of people in the Africa and Asia. They hold their kerchiefs to their noses, figuratively, when referring to people like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. They forget that less than a 100 years ago, the Western colonialists were the butchers of Asia and Africa.

A public commemoration in Lucknow, India would be a celebration of that butchery !