The folly of disallowing reconversions to Hinduism is a self-destructive one. How easily Hindus converting to Islam or Christianity merge in their new milieu. Yet the same facility is not available to a non-Hindu who might earnestly wish to return to his or her fold or adopt Hinduism as a matter of faith. This shackle seriously depletes our numbers and makes the Hindu community a ready preying ground for the conversion factories that are always looking at swelling their numbers, many times by stealth or inducements. I have nothing against those who convert to another faith by sheer conviction. But such examples are rare. Why should we not allow the enhancement of our numbers due to some antiquated idea that does not even have any scriptural sanction that we cannot convert to Hinduism?

I have studied Hindu nationalism for 24 years, reading its less-known literature and interviewing hundreds of activists including 3 presidents of its core organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and 3 presidents of the Bharatiya Janata Party (which no scholar on which Gielen bases himself, has ever done), and inevitably also getting to talk to its many enemies; and I have never encountered a single case of a “forced conversion to Hinduism”. Among Christians, this notion of their victimhood at the hands of the ugly overbearing Hindus is very popular, but if you look more closely, little remains. Anyway, if there were a case of forced conversion, it would not prove the strength but the weakness and clumsiness of Hinduism. Forced conversions are not much practised anymore. Today Islam and Christianity, which in the past had millions of forced conversions to their credit, operate more subtly. When a Hindu falls in love with a Muslim, he or she is almost invariably pressured by the Muslim family to convert. Christians use untold billions of dollars to make it materially and socially profitable to convert, and use every trick in the book to lure the tribals and other poor Hindus. Strictly speaking, however, their conversions are not forced – but nonetheless ethically questionable.

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress toward peace ... Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?

The Hindutva forces, in their bid to aggravate religious conflicts in the country, argue that Hindus were forcibly converted to Islam and Christianity in the past and therefore they have to be reconverted so as to take them back into the Hindu fold. But such an assertion has no basis in our history.

This [Christian] proselytization will mean no peace in the world. Conversions are harmful to India. If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing. For Hindu households, the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family, coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink.

Hindus do not believe in conversion. If anyone fears that Hindus are resorting to conversion, let there be a legislation in Parliament to stop this practice. Hindus do not want to change anybody. If you do not want anybody to convert, then do not convert Hindus too.

Conversion itself, not just the embracing of a new tradition (which any Hindu is free to do, all while staying a Hindu) but the renouncing of one’s previous religion, as the Hindu-born politician Ambedkar did, is a typically Christian concept.

If the depressed classes join Islam or Christianity, they not only go out of the Hindu religion, but they also go out of the Hindu culture…What the consequences of conversion will do to the country as a whole is well worth bearing in mind. Conversion to Islam or Christianity will denationalize the depressed classes.

Popular Hindu and Sikh tradition ascribes mass conversions by force to Aurangzeb’s reign. Of course it has heightened the colours in the picture. But the examples quoted above prove that the emperor made it a part of his imperial duty to encourage conversions, personally admit converts to Islam and grant favours to the initiated. Of the converts it must be said that very few, if any, seem to have changed their faith for religious reasons. Desire to escape civic disabilities or worse, and to acquire material benefits formed the motive force in most cases. It may be argued that the religion which these converts shook off so easily must have been sitting very lightly on them. But the history of the world contains a few martyrs and a host of trimmers. Hindu India of Aurangzeb’s reign was no exception. The wonder is not that so many were converted but that the vast majority of the Hindus kept their faith amidst so many temptations and such persecution.

I do convert. I convert you to be a better Hindu. I convert you to be a better Catholic, a better Muslim or Jain or Buddhist. I would like to help you find God. She you find Him, it is up to you to do what you want with him.

In my opinion, they are not examples of real conversion. If a person through fear, compulsion, starvation or for material gain or consideration goes over to another faith, it is a misnomer to call it conversion. Most cases of mass conversion, of which we have heard so much during the past two years, have been to my mind false coin... I would, therefore, unhesitatingly re-admit to the Hindu fold all such repentants without much ado, certainly without any shuddhi... And as I believe in the equality of all the great religions of the earth, I regard no man as polluted because he has forsaken the branch on which he was sitting and gone over to another of the same tree. If he comes to the original branch, he deserves to be welcomed and not told that he had committed sin by reason of his having forsaken the family to which he belonged. In so far as he may be deemed to have erred, he has sufficiently purged himself of it when he repents of the error and retraces his step.

Finally, the truth has come and we welcome the verdict because we knew that they are innocent. The Church does not promote or propagate religious conversion. It is very unfortunate that from time to time some fanatic groups harass poor people, especially Dalits and tribals, in the name of religious conversion, but it is unacceptable in a democratic country like India.

In short, if powerful and super rich foreign missionaries enter into the interior heartland of India, and mass-convert large sections of tribals to their foreign religion by telling them that the religions, gods, beliefs and practices of their ancestors are “satanic” and will take them to hell, and that the only way to escape hell and attain heaven is to accept Christ and convert to their alien religion, this does not amount to “baiting” or provoking anyone, such as the tribals in particular or Hindus in general, or violating their civil rights. In fact, it amounts to turning the tribals “into proud men and women”! But if Hindu organisations (automatically “diehard communal”, since Hindu, in opposition to the presumably “tolerant and secular”, since Christian, missionaries!) enter these areas within their own country, and appeal to the local people in the name of their ancestral religions, and actually have the gall to “organize Hindu festivals”, it naturally amounts to gross “baiting” and provocation of the foreign missionaries and violation of their civil rights. And if there is any “retaliation” by the missionaries to this “baiting”, it is of course excusable as a perfectly natural and justifiable “reaction” to these gross provocations by the communalists. And of course civil rights organisations have to rush to the protection and defence of these poor, helpless and oppressed missionaries, and the hapless plight to which they have been reduced by “minority baiters” from the RSS has to be propagated in our secular press! ... Another example from a second leading national newspaper: (...) Doesn’t this sound like a description of Christian missionaries, who claim to have a “monopoly over spiritual knowledge” since their religion and God are the only true ones (all others being false religions and Gods who can only lead to hell), who “move into” different areas of the world to spread this message, who compel people to leave their “age-old ways” of worship and religion because these are “‘corrupt’, ‘evil’, or simply ‘wrong’”, and seek to obliterate everywhere “the uniqueness of the local culture” by trying to paint the whole world in one international imperialistic “fundamentalist” colour? Wrong! This is a description (in an Indian Express article, 11/10/98, “Converting History”, by Rajesh Sinha, describing the situation in certain parts of Rajasthan) condemning the VHP and other Hindu organisations for having “started competing with Christian missionaries in establishing schools [etc.]”, thereby leading to “most Christian converts now returning to the Hindu fold”. The writer, with a straight face, tells us: “In the process, the saffron hawks are changing the face of Rajasthan, where once communal identity was a matter of little importance”. Is this some kind of incurably perverted mental sickness, or is it the power of the dollar?

To allow the “freedom to convert” as part of the freedom of religion (as the Indian Constitution does) betrays a Christian bias. And of course, any account of the religious situation is not complete without identifying the utterly anti-Hindu design of India’s state religion, viz. secularism. In Europe, this was an arrangement created in defence against the influence of Christianity against the state, but in India, it was introduced as a weapon to belittle Hinduism, and is therefore strongly supported by the (disproportionately powerful) Churches.