JABALPUR : Church leaders have expressed concern over the increasing number of Christians being detained in Madhya Pradesh on suspicion of engaging in religious conversion.

 The latest incident occurred on Sept. 27 when police detained a group of 45 Catholic pilgrims in Jabalpur, a major town in the central Indian state.

The group comprising men, women, children, nuns and a priest were traveling on pilgrimage to Ghoreghat in Mandla district.

Carmelite of Mary Immaculate (CMI) Father Anto Mundamany, who led the group, said they had stopped for dinner at a CMI seminary in Jabalpur. When they returned to their bus parked outside the seminary, they found the police waiting for them. After interrogating them, the police released the group.

Police have said that such actions are to ensure that a state law regulating religious conversion is not violated.

However, Church leaders such as Bishop Gerald Almeida of Jabalpur see such incidents as part of radial Hindu groups' "continuous campaign to insult the Christian community."

They say the police have tacit support of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, Indian people's party), which has ruled the state from 2003. Since then, the state has witnessed scores of attacks on Christians and other minority groups.

The extremist groups, who want India to be a Hindu theocratic state, oppose Christian missionary work. The BJP is considered their political arm.

The latest detention is a "warning signal" for Christians "to initiate a sustained legal battle to protect our dignity and constitutional rights," Bishop Almeida told UCA News.

He said the detention was "not an isolated incident" and that several other Christians had been picked up for questioning at Jabalpur's rail and bus stations in September.

He added that police, collaborating with right-wing Hindu groups, have registered over 65 cases against Christians in his diocese in the past six years on the trumped up charges of religious conversion.

Although "none of the cases have been brought to their logical conclusion," nevertheless the "stigma of allegation continues to haut Christians through no fault of theirs," the prelate said. The Church will take "all legal measures to maintain its dignity in all spheres of life," he asserted.

On the recent incident, Father Mundamany said that the police did not enter the seminary but asked pilgrims if they were Christians or Hindus whom the priest and the nuns want to convert to Christianity. The police left only after all had asserted their Christian identity.

The priest said he suspected some groups closely monitor Christians' movements and inform police. "They also alerted the media because police came accompanied by media people." He charged that the Hindu radicals' "only aim" was to harass Christians and tarnish their image by showing them as law breakers.

Christians are a tiny minority in the state, forming less then 1 percent of the state's 60 million people, 91 percent of whom are Hindus.

(Source: Indian Catholic, September 30, 2009, http://www.indiancatholic.in/news/storydetails.php/13472-1-11-Increasing-detention-of-Christians-worries-Church-leaders )