Christians arrested in India’s largest state, accused of ‘illegal conversion’

MUMBAI, India – Four people in the India village of Moradabad, including a pastor from Uttarakhand, were arrested on Saturday for allegedly converting people by luring them on pretext of giving benefits.

The village is in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, with nearly 200 million people. However, only about 350,000 Christians live in the state, a miniscule 0.18 percent of the population. By comparison, Christians make up nearly 2.5 percent of the whole of India’s population.

Uttar Pradesh, like the national government, is run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), with strong links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a militant Hindu nationalist organization.

Police officer Rajesh Kumar informed the media the incident happened in Rammanawala village when some people were holding a Christianity religious congregation.

He said the activists of two Hindu organizations intervened and informed the police alleging forced religious conversion through allurement.

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) – meaning Universal Hindu Council – was one of the groups making the allegations.

Moradabad VHP district unit general secretary Pankaj Singh Pal said a pastor of Uddhamsinghnagar, Uttarakhand, and three local villagers had converted as many as 60 people of 15 Hindu families to Christianity and trying to do the same with other villagers.

He alleged they give people money as well as fridges, televisions, bicycles, motorcycles and sewing machines for converting to Christianity.

Father Anand Mathew, a Human Rights and Environmental Activists working for over 30 years in Varanasi, told Crux there have been too many arrests of pastors, evangelists and lay faithful who have been “genuinely carrying out evangelism.”

“Allegations of forced conversion and even any sort of conversion – change of religion –  is totally false and fictitious,” he said.

“A new law – The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance 2020 – enacted by the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly on Sept. 29 2021, i.e. during the peak of second wave of COVID-19 is being misused regularly by the UP police,” the priest explained.

“It is true that the activists of free evangelical churches gather people to pray. Most of them are not converted. A few of them may be from traditional Christian families. Those who gather they worship the Lord with songs and spontaneous prayers, they listen to the Word of God, preached by the pastor, who themselves are mostly locals or missionaries from other states,” Mathew continued.

The priest said the pastors pray over the people for healing and added, “miracles do occur.”

“These prayer meetings are alleged to be conversion meetings. The truth is that the pastors do not baptize people after the enactment of the new ordinance,” he added.

Mathew said the legislation only allows a relative to file the claim that someone was “falsely converted” and said this is being violated by the police.

“They accept the false complaints given by members of fringe groups such as Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini and Hindu Yuva Vahini. The allegations of giving allurement, in the form of huge sums of money for converting people are all just fantasies arising out of the minds of these fringe elements. It is they who take the role of journalists, report such fictitious stories in the newspapers, they play the role of jury and also get the support of the local police,” the priest told Crux.

“Those who accuse of allurement given in the form of refrigerator, Televisions, motorcycles, cash et cetera will not be able to provide evidence. Sewing machines provided to teenage girls as part of a humanitarian and philanthropic act of training them in income generation is interpreted as allurement for conversion,” he continued.

On Sunday 14 July, three Christians were arrested in Maharajganj district on the border of Nepal for allegedly converting.

In June 2024, immediately after India’s national election results were announced, 14 Christians were arrested n UP.

Mathew said this was an expression of revenge by the party in power which did not do as well as expected in UP.

“The Christians of UP and Uttarakhand who are not part of the main line churches are lying in extreme fear of persecution. Some social work and voluntary organizations of the main line churches too are targeted by the central government,” the priest said.