While Ram Lalla was being consecrated in Ayodhya, a Muslim family returned to the Hindu fold in Alirajpur, Madhya Pradesh. Ayub alias Piru Bhai, along with his wife and two children, re-embraced Hinduism. Ayub-turned-Rajkumar said after his reconversion: “Our ancestors were Hindus and now we are returning home because we love Hinduism and its worship system.”
The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) had organised an event for Ayub’s homecoming, where they washed his feet as he appeared dressed in a bodysuit. Ayub is now Rajkumar while his wife will henceforth be called Karishma.
This was not the first ‘homecoming’ program organised by the VHP. In May last year, the VHP had started a campaign of bringing back forcibly converted Hindus to the native fold. The reconversion campaign started as a social movement in which saints reached out to homes of former Scheduled Castes and Tribes for counselling.
While reconversion has been a slow but old programme of the VHP and several other Hindu organisations, in the year 2015, it acquired a new name: ghar wapsi, meaning “homecoming”.
Recently during a three-day ‘Ramkatha’ function in Ayodhya, Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, the head of Bageshwar Dham Peeth of Madhya Pradesh, made an announcement from the stage that after listening from him the story of Rama, 10 Muslims became Hindus again.
Jamil Nizam Sheikh, a resident of Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, claimed that no one forced him to join the Hindu fold, rather he had been worshipping Rama and Krishna since childhood and his family also celebrated Ganesh Utsav. Here in Ayodhya, after listening to ‘Ram Katha’ or the sermon on the life of Lord Ram, he could not stop himself from “returning home”. He clarified that he had nothing to do with the BJP.
Dhirendra Shastri says that he has no objection to any religion, but the nation must preserve its primary identity, which is sanatani (a recent coinage for Hindu, literally meaning “eternal”). Shastri says he is not officiating over “ghar wapsi” events for his own fame; rather he is doing this work as a service to Hinduism. “Whoever comes here and wishes to ‘return home’ is first of all asked publicly whether he or she is under duress. The person must also declare he has no affiliation with any party or political organisation,” Shastri says.
The preacher says he is a Shastri of Bageshwar Dham and nobody should approach him with the expectation of anything from him except blessings. Shastri has so far helped more than 300 Muslims join back the Hindu fold.
Muslim turning Hindu technically not conversion
Shastri, the VHP, certain pracharaks and swayamsevaks of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other Hindus at the forefront of the “ghar wapsi” campaign insist it’s not conversion. “The re-entry of a person of Hindu descent back into Hinduism is not conversion at all,” a VHP activist said, adding that Hinduism has had a history of adding new followers to its various sects.
“Under the Constitution of India, a person has the right to practise or propagate any religion. Exploiting this legal provision, Christian and Muslim organisations have converted lakhs of people while the VHP merely shares contact numbers on public platforms and waits for calls,” the activist said.
An RSS Swayamsevak said, “Those who wish to return home undergo a well laid down procedure to return home at a public ceremony. Most of the people who return home realise that their ancestors were forced to convert to another religion by force or money. These people feel an urge to return to their roots. Therefore returning home cannot be called conversion.”
Speaking to Swadharma, activists of different Hindu organisations shared a common figure of “about 50,000” as the number of Hindus who are converted every year while, they said, the proportion of Muslims, Christians and neo-Buddhists — the third group being Scheduled Castes and Tribes waylaid by political rhetoric of leftist activists rather than religious sermons of monks — returning home is only 0.013%.
Christian missionaries have been running campaigns of “harvesting souls” since the late mediaeval era, which did not stop even in independent India, said an activist of Hindu Sena. “Only last year, some missionaries from Dehradun area of Uttarakhand were arrested for luring and converting Hindus. Before that, similar incidents had come to light in the states of Karnataka and Jharkhand,” she said.
“Christian missionaries and Muslim organisations chiefly target the poor and tribals with coercion and inducements,” a VHP activist said, adding that Hindu organisations do not have the requisite financial heft to negate the lure even if they can counter the threats.