But Augustine had painted such a glowing picture that I decided to go personally to the Christian pockets of Gujarat in Dang and Vapi to check what the church leaders there had to say about Modi.

I had expected that at least the Vapi Christians would endorse Augustine’s version and display goodwill towards Modi. But I was taken aback when I found most of them reluctant to utter even one good word about him. Since I had informed them of my visit in advance, half a dozen pastors from various Christian institutions had gathered in one place. Since they knew that Augustine had given me his firsthand account, they could not altogether deny the sequence of events nor paint Modi in the demonic light that Father Cedric Prakash, John Dayal and their associates among the human rights NGOs routinely do. But their demeanour and the hints one got from their guarded sentences and body language spoke volumes about their innate hostility towards the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and Modi, which had nothing to do with what Modi actually did or failed to do.

For instance, Father Jose Dali from Kerala, who has lived in Gujarat for 36 years, attributed their success in getting land for the graveyard to the “power of the lord”, and the fact that all Christians were “praying together”. To quote him, “we believe in a living god. We believe that he is a god who is able to do miracles, even if the government is against us. We believe in the power of the lord. It is a special faith of the Christians. People all around the world prayed together and because of that, the lord worked on the hearts of the magistrate as well as the leaders.” In other words, they presented to their congregation the success in getting the graveyard land as yet another miracle of Christ.

Their reluctance to give credit to the Modi government either for securing free land for them or for ensuring that even minor skirmishes don’t take place among Christians and non-Christians tells its own story.

They also tried to convince me that the Modi government discriminated against tribal areas with regard to development programmes and that in the interior tribal villages, road and other infrastructure was not as good as in non-tribal areas. To quote Francis Fernandes: “in tribal areas, if they are pockets of Christian faith, they will not get certain facilities”. When I asked to give him concrete examples, he couldn’t give me any.

I found that charge baseless because I had travelled to the remotest tribal areas and had seen that the quality of roads was no different. True, medical services in villages near big cities were better than in interior villages. But there was no difference between tribal and non-tribal villages in this respect. The difference is more to do with doctors and nurses not willing to work in villages far from major urban centres.

Thereafter, they complained that the sarpanch of that area had refused to sanction a power connection for the graveyard. Since burials don’t take place at night, I was a bit surprised that they needed a power connection for the open ground. Even so I decided to check whether this charge had any substance.

I met both the current as well as the previous sarpanch of Paldi taluka panchayat. Both were categorical that the pastors had never applied for a power connection so there was no question of refusal. I called the most voluble among of the pastors from the sarpanch’s house and put my mobile phone on speaker mode. Now, the pastor, who had claimed that he had personally gone and applied for the power connection, came up with a lame story that a long while ago he had gone very early morning to the house of the sarpanch (not the panchayat office) and since the sarpanch was not at home, he left the application with an unknown person who opened the door. I asked him whether he had followed up on the matter. The answer was, “no, we didn’t follow up since we knew they would not sanction the connection.”

This was a clear case of building a victimhood narrative out of a situation where the Modi government had gone out of its way to help the Christian community in more ways than one.

The Truth Behind The Victimhood Narrative

Father Francis Macwan, one of the senior pastors of a missionary school on Ahwa Road, where Shabari Dham is situated, had told me that their school and their mission had received all possible help from the Modi government. When I asked him to provide concrete examples of “help”, he described how the district administration had been instructed to provide as many free school textbooks, children’s notebooks, stationery, school bags and uniforms as demanded by missionary schools, even though as privately-run schools, the state government is not obliged to provide such support to church-run institutions, especially considering that the mission schools set up in tribal areas have the express mandate to win over converts to Christianity.

Thus, when any state government provides free books and other educational materials to mission schools, it is in a way furthering their conversion agenda since free education and related benefits are one of the primary incentives offered by the Church to tribals and other poor communities. And yet the Modi government, as perhaps several other state governments in India, provide this as a goodwill gesture towards the Christian community.

But barring a few individuals like Augustine, the hostility of church leaders, especially the aggressive evangelical variety, towards the BJP in particular, and Hinduism in general, has only exacerbated instead of abating. The reason for this came out through their own narrative. For the Christian missions in India, “freedom of religion” promised as a constitutional right means essentially one thing — unchecked right to convert people to Christianity, through fair means or foul.

In my case study of Bishrampur village in Sasaram district of Bihar published in Swarajya in February 2018, I have described the blackmail tactics, including violence on children used by Christian bigots to force children from poor families to adopt Christianity.

But finally they let it out that the real issue bothering them was with regard to government policy over conversions. To quote Jose Dali: “actually, what the government feels about conversion and what we believe are different. Conversion will take place within the heart. We are not converting anybody. Those who are truly believing and personally accepting Christ as their saviour and after confessing by themselves publicly, we will accept them. Baptism is not a sign of the conversion. Baptism is a part of the faith. Those who are converted will be baptised as per the Bible, Gospel of Mathew.”

Father Francis Fernandes added: “conversion and baptism are not the same. What the pastor is explaining is that there is a change of heart in a person. The change of heart is when the person is ready and the person says, I want to join this way of life. Then only we initiate him in the field. He is saying ‘yes’ and we are acknowledging that ‘yes’, that is baptism. By seeing the way of life, by seeing the faith of the people around, by seeing that Jesus is there, god is there, then this person comes and says, I want to receive baptism. It is not that we are going and forcing people.” He justified Father Cedric Prakash’s virulent opposition to the Modi government on the ground that “we are not free in our own country, in our own state. Why are our constitutional rights being curtailed? I have the freedom to believe in any god as per the Constitution and after my confession, any time I can follow the principles of the faith.” In other words, the government not allowing support to conversions made them feel India is not a free country.

Another charge made by these pastors was that there are restrictions on building churches. To quote Father Francis Fernandes: “this is our freedom curtailment. As an active member of the Christian faith, we are not free in our own country to call our own place of worship which is called internationally a church.” At the same meeting, Father Mathew told me, “in South Gujarat alone, there are hundreds of Christian institutions.”

Several IAS officers, including those working as district collectors, confirmed that there is no blanket ban on building churches. But the problem arises when evangelicals want to plant a church in the middle of a Hindu settlement where there are no Christians, or position it right next to an important Hindu temple. That invariably gets resisted by local communities. But evangelicals have got used to the administration riding roughshod over local sentiments under pressure from Christian missions to give them endless special concessions they claim as a “minority”. They succeed often because they have both the monetary clout as well as political backing to get the government to do their bidding. The fact that under the Modi government, they could not bulldoze the administration with unreasonable demands was provocation enough to join not only with the conversion-friendly Congress party but even rank Islamists in running an international campaign to present him as devil incarnate.

Jose Dali belongs to a Protestant group called Brethren Assemblies, which is spread all over the world. In response to his litany of complaints, I asked him if he had presented the complaints to the district collector. His response was a giveaway: “we don’t want to make allegations. If there is some problem, we won’t go to the police station or outside. We believe that maybe God’s plan will work things out.” But that didn’t prevent them from taking their imaginary complaints against Narendra Modi to the US Senate, the European Union and various UN platforms.

How do they justify the virulent campaign to get the US and European governments to deny Modi visa for a whole decade? To quote Father Francis Fernandes: “maybe when our Indian Penal Code or Indian court is not giving you proper justice, you appeal to the international level. That is how Cedric Prakash must have gone to that extent. When my children are not fed in my own house, they will go out to beg, borrow and eat. So that is what is happening. If they have taken this step, that means something is wrong with my own house.”

Father Francis Macwan, the most reasonable and straightforward of all the pastors I met, from the Jesuit order, summed up the nature of the conflict candidly: “Father Cedric Prakash is a social scientist and an activist. His view is different from ours because we are staying in the midst of people. So my experience is different. Cedric is also in touch with Protestant groups, who go for conversion and faith formation. I have a very positive experience in working in Gujarat under Modi. We Catholics are not directly aggressive in conversions. But for Protestants, the main activity is conversion. So their experience is different.” It is noteworthy that he could speak his mind, though very diffidently, mainly because I chanced to meet him alone while all others met me as a group.

Meanwhile, the Church has tried to adopt Hindu nomenclature, rituals and vocabulary for Christian myths and church rituals, to make Christianity appear less alien. As elsewhere, so also in the Vapi church, the statue of Mother Mary was dressed in a Gujarati-style saree. Father Francis Fernandes explained they have named her “Our Lady of Velankanni” after a place in Tamil Nadu where Mother Mary allegedly “appeared” to several persons in her bodily form. That place has become a Christian “pilgrimage centre”. Such miracle mongering is a standard technique of evangelicals to attract converts. Adopting local Hindu names, rituals, aarti, bhajans are also part of the strategy to make Christianity appear rooted in the soil of India instead of being an alien imported religion.