The National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) has issued notice to the Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh seeking an ‘action taken’ report in the matter of large scale Christian conversions targeting the Scheduled Caste (SC) community in the state.
The commission took cognizance following a complaint made by the SC ST Rights Forum, a non-profit legal activism organization working in the area of Dalit rights, a copy of which has been accessed by The Commune.
#Breaking
Following our representation based on data provide by LRPF @lawinforce, the National Scheduled Castes Commission issued notice to Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh seeking action taken report within 15 days in the matter of Christian Conversions targeting SC community https://t.co/qFchvG4INE pic.twitter.com/JPns90Lchr— SC ST RIGHTS FORUM (@SCSTForum) July 20, 2021
In its complaint, the organization had said that large scale religious conversions are leading to social strife, law and order issues and families getting torn apart. It said that the situation is such that the term ‘SC’ and ‘Christians’ have become synonymous. Citing the replies to an RTI query about the selection of beneficiaries for the Andhra government’s scheme ‘Chandranna Christmas Kanuka’, the complaint said that the government officials in Andhra had replied that they treat the entire SC population as Christians while the scheme is meant only for Christians.
The complaint also pointed to the anomaly in the demographic data of number of Christians in the state based on the report titled “What happened to the Christians of Andhra Pradesh?” brought out by the Centre for Policy Studies.
The data from the report shows a sharp decline in those who declared their religion as Christianity between 1971 and 2011.
For example, while the population of Guntur district went up from 28.44 lakhs to 48.87 lakhs between 1971 and 2011, the number of Christians came down from 4.15 lakh to just 0.89 lakh in a span of 40 years. For undivided Andhra Pradesh, the figure for SC’s had risen to 19.59 % while the figure for Christians came down to 1.84 % by 2011.
The complaint observed that those practicing Christianity are obtaining Hindu caste certificates to take advantage of the reservation benefits. It also said that Christian evangelists indulge in aggressive proselytization and sow the seeds of secessionism by making the converts swear allegiance to extra-constitutional and extra-territorial religious heads.
Speaking to The Commune, K. Nagaraja, National President, SC/ST Rights Forum said that the SC community is the largest victim group of Christian conversions in India and that the conversion rate is more in Andhra Pradesh. “It is nothing but an attack on the culture of Scheduled Caste communities. Though it is the duty of Governments to protect the culture of Schedule Caste communities from the invasion of Church, unfortunately these governments are turning blind eye.” he said.
“We feel happy that, finally, in a first of its kind notice, the National SC Commission, by using powers vested in it under Article 338 of The Constitution of India, has decided to investigate/inquire into large scale, targeted conversion of SCs to Christianity in the state of AP.” he added.
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