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The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) claims to have converted 1,800 Dalit Christians back to Hinduism in Etah district of Agra, Uttar Pradesh on 2 October 2005. Following the re-conversion, 40 churches have been handed over to VHP’s Dharma Raksha Samiti Department for the Protection of Religion. Ironically the day of alleged re-conversion also coincided with the celebration of Gandhi Jayanthi. Mahatma Gandhi always respected the individual freedom to practise one’s faith! And the claim of re-conversion only serves to bring disrepute to the memories of such a great leader. The VHP now plans to transform the churches into temples of Maharishi Valmiki, the writer of the Ramayana. According to a newspaper published from New Delhi, the "purification" ceremony took place before a gathering of more than 3,200 villagers from 70 villages of Etah. But when contacted, Additional District Magistrate of Etah district Vijay Singh Pal said he had no information about the re-conversion ceremony. "Many representatives of people visit my office but no one has mentioned about the re-conversion ceremony. I have learnt about the incident only from a newspaper," the officer said. Expressing surprise over the incident, he said, "The newspaper does not even mention in which Tehsil or Taluka the re-conversions took place. Moreover I wonder if there are so many Christians in the villages because even in the cities there are very few Christians." The newspaper also quoted VHP leaders saying they aimed "to bring back at least 80,000 Christian converts to Hinduism by next year". The VHP also claimed to have "re-converted" 5,000 Dalit Christians from 26 villages of Etah and Firozabad districts on 13 February 2005. According to the 2001 Census, out of the total population of 212,578 Christians in Uttar Pradesh, 91,596 live in villages, and the remaining 120,982 in cities. Of the 91,596 rural Christians, 17,196 are below the age of six. The correspondent who reported the news item on the re-conversions said, "I witnessed the re-conversion ceremony, which was held at the Saraswati Vidya Mandir, situated on the Grand Trunk Road in the headquarters of Etah district," he said. "Some of the Christians who reconverted to Hinduism had been following Christianity for the last 20 years," he claimed. Indrajit Arya, regional coordinator of the VHP, was quoted saying, "Some converts' families, which arrived for the purification ceremony, had been Christians for two-three generations and now they wanted to re-embrace Hinduism, along with their children, who were born Christians." He claimed that Christian missionaries had misled Dalit Hindus, especially Valmikis of Agra, to convert to Christianity, and that Christian converts wanted to reunite with their heritage that they had lost by embracing Christianity. The Valmiki community had always been considered untouchable and the missionaries took full advantage of this fact by promising lucrative terms like financial security and social equality. "While the VHP has taken up this task of re-conversion only a few years back, the Valmiki community of Agra was being misled by the missionaries for far too long," he added. The re-conversion ceremony was reportedly led by Yogi Adityanath, a Member of Parliament from UP's Gorakhpur district belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the VHP. He is also the head of a regional Hindu extremist group, the Hindu Yuva Vahini, founded in 2002 with an aim to reconvert Hindus, who have converted to other religions.
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