7/27/2019 Know Your Missionaries_ Intelligence Gathering Network

1/1

Intelligence gathering network

In fact, according to the documents in Tehelka's possession, foreign missionaries have played a stellar role inorganising the intelligence gathering missions. Vander Berg, co-director of Pray India and Mission analyst with Mission21 India, has wide "missionary experience" in India and has worked as a pastor in many places. Another notableChristian scholar, an Australian who has married an Indian, is credited with having turned around two US-basedevangelical mission agencies-Frontier Mission Center and Youth With A Mission-into formidable research

organisations. Hackworth is considered within the international and Indian Christian evangelical circles as the "onlyman who knows all the Peoples Groups of India at the district level."

After setting up such an elaborate network, church groups in India are understandably disappointed over a recentSupreme Court ruling (September 1, 2003) that there was "no fundamental right to convert" someone from onereligion to another, and that the government could impose restrictions on conversions. This was in response to thepetition by the All India Christian Council (AICC), challenging the validity of the controversial Freedom of Religion Actthat became law in Orissa in 1999.

The law now mandates that a person wanting to change faiths has to declare to the district magistrate that thisdecision was made "of his own will". The magistrate then forwards the declaration to the police to see if there is anyobjection before permission for the conversion is granted. Any religious leader intending to perform a conversion has

to indicate the time and place of the ceremony to the magistrate in advance, and violating any of the regulationscould lead to imprisonment and a fine. In fact, last year Sister Ekka was convicted for converting 96 people withoutfollowing the procedure laid down by law. Most missionaries, however, simply proceed without informing the districtauthorities.

"I think that this is curbing the liberties of an individual, the natural rights, the unalienable as they are called. Thegovernment or the state cannot control my convictions. That's a matter of personal choice, which should never betaken away. So I would also say, the freedom of religion Bills, the focus is against the scheduled castes and thescheduled tribes. In the Gujarat Bill and also in the Tamil Nadu Bill they have used the word. So the target is againthe marginalised and the poor for them to stay there," says Howell.

Conversion is a highly sensitive issue in some parts of India, including Orissa, where in recent years Christians havebeen victims of violence, including arson attacks, and two missionaries have been slain. Australian missionaryGraham Stuart Staines and his two sons were burnt alive in January 1999. Later, the Rev Arul Doss, a RomanCatholic priest in the Balasore diocese, was killed in a remote region. Howell explains that the violence againstChristians is because the "the church is empowering the poor."

The reali ty is that India's marginalised communities are indeed powerless. Independent India has failed to empowerDalits and tribals. The church has stepped in to provide them development services, which really fall within thegovernment of India's ambit. But conversions in India, as they are happening today, are not merely about empowering the poor. It is about asinister and subversive strategy, hatched in the US, backed by the Bush administration over the years.

The question is: does the Indian establishment know or is it pretending not to?

Source