JOIN USArchbishop urges Karnataka Governor to reject anti-conversion ordinance
Days after the state government resorted to the ordinance route to turn the Anti-Conversion Bill into law, Bengaluru Archbishop Peter Machado on Monday urged the Governor to reject the government's proposal which will become a tool for the fringe elements to vitiate the atmosphere.
In a letter to Governor Thawar Chand Gehlot, the archbishop said the Christian Community in Karnataka opposes the bill and questions the need for such an exercise "when sufficient laws and court directives are in place" to check forced conversions.
Citing the freedom to practice and propagate religion granted by the Constitution, he said the government's laws will infringe on the minority communities.
He said the backward classes department and minorities welfare department were also trying to conduct surveys of official and non-official Christian missionaries as well as institutions and establishments. "When all the relevant data is already available through the census with the government, why do we need yet another futile exercise? Why only the Christian community is targeted and marked for this arbitrary, fallacious and illogical move," he asked.
He noted that hundreds of judges, IAS officers, ministers and politicians have studied in Christian institutions and not a single incident of forced conversion has been reported so far. "Let the government prove whether any one of them has ever been influenced, compelled or coerced to change his or her religion," he said.
He appealed that a few stray and sporadic incidents of conversion should not portray the entire community in a bad light and cited the census data to show that the Christian population has declined in the country and the state.