Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The lead story in today’s Times of India (Delhi edition) flashes the headline: RSS body seeks donations to fund Christmas ‘conversions’ in Aligargh.   ‘Rs 5 lakh to convert a Muslim, Rs 2 lakh for a Christian,’ says the subheading.   RSS is collecting funds in order to buy adherents to Hinduism.  Ghar Vapsi (returning home) is the affectionate name of the project. The Muslims and Christians in Uttar Pradesh were allegedly converted from Hinduism and they are being brought back home by purchasing their religious loyalty.  But why the disparity in the prices?  Why 5 lakhs for a Muslim and only less than half of that for a Christian?  Because the Christians were originally Valmikis, untouchables.  This is precisely where the problems lies.  Even when the people return home their caste will be retained.  The erstwhile untouchable will continue to be an untouchable.  What the RSS and its affiliates fail to understand is that the people abandoned Hinduism precisely because

Poverty has many uses.  One is that the poor can be made vote banks easily.  Many political parties have ascended the stairs of power by bribing the poor with gifts during election time.  The Congress is one party that now carries the charge of having used the entire poor of the country as vote banks through what is rather imaginatively called “appeasement”. When the Congress and other political parties stand accused of having “appeased” the poor, the new dispensation is proving that it is indeed “a party with a difference.”  It is not using the poor as a vote bank; it is wrenching their religious identity from them. Rulers with imperial ambitions have always used the strategy of stripping people of their religious identities.  The Muslim conquerors and the Christian imperialists found their own unique ways of implementing religious conversion in regions captured by them.  While the former relied on brute force, the latter made use of gentler missionaries.  The reigning