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Indian Christians go to court after govt ‘survey’

By Parul Gupta

NEW DELHI: An Indian state has confirmed it is surveying a section of the Christian population living in the region, provoking court action from minority rights organisations alleging harassment, officials said Tuesday.

Junior Home Minister of India’s western Gujarat state, Amit Shah, told AFP that the government had asked for “some information” on Christians in the state.

But he denied a media report that the government was carrying out a discreet survey and was compiling a file listing family sizes, job profiles and sources of foreign funding. “We sought this information after a member of parliament raised the anti-conversion bill issue in the lower house,” Shah told AFP by phone from Gujarat’s Ahmedabad city. The Hindu-nationalist coalition federal government headed by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has been advocating an anti-conversion bill which seeks to ban forced religious conversions.

Right-wing Hindus accuse Christian missionaries of forcibly converting people to Christianity, alleging they lure poor people with rewards. Low caste Hindus, called Dalits, however, say they convert to escape discrimination in Hinduism.

Christians constitute 2.4 percent of India’s billion-plus population.

The issue once again came under the spotlight after the media reported that the Gujarat government had ordered a survey of all Christians, who constitute less than a quarter of the state’s 50 million people. “The police have been asking insensitive questions in an intimidimating manner, and at times inappropriate times,” said Father Cedric Prakash of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights.

He said the state’s highest court had ordered the government to stop a similar move in 1999, saying no single community should be singled out for survey. Father Prakash said he had received around 50 complaints from churches and individuals in the past week alone.

“If the government wanted information in connection with a question in parliament, it could have asked the heads of churches, who normally have all the records.”

Shah denied that objectionable questions had been asked, saying there was “nothing wrong” with the survey. The minister also declined comment on whether the government planned to garner similar information from other communities, saying, “It’s only the Christians who are creating a noise.” The All India Christian Council has filed a case against the government in the state High Court.

At the same time, the government-appointed National Commission for Minorities has demanded a report on the survey from the state’s highest ranking bureaucrat. —AFP

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