The evangelists visit the colonies of Dalit communities and residences of poor Hindu community members and threaten them with dire consequences if they do not convert to Christianity

The Love Cross is part of an aggressive evangelisation exercise underway in this part of the country.

Despite the fact that the country is ruled by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance Government, evangelists and proselytisers are having a free run all over India. The evangelists in their bid to convert India into the Christian Republic is employing all kinds of tricks to “reach the unreached” and to bring the gullible villagers and town dwellers to the path of the Cross.

A trip across Kanyakumari district and in the southern part of Thiruvananthapuram district was a revelation. Kanyakumari, once a Hindu domain, now wears the look of a county full of churches, crosses and conversion factories. The entire Dalit community has gone the Jesus way!

The new modus operandi of the evangelists, who are allegedly assisted in their mission by the Dravidians, Communists and the Congress leaders is mindboggling. The Dalits need not change their names. The old system of gazette notification and publication of one’s conversion to another religion has been done away with, Previously, the Sunday editions of The New Indian Express had devoted two pages of classified advertisements for publicising notices like the change of names and change of religions. These classified advertisement pages were full of notices by individuals about their conversion from Hinduism to Christianity.

The number of Churches dotting the coastline as well as the Thiruvananthapuram-Kanyakumari highway is an indication of the ever-growing Christian empire in this part of the country

When the quantum of these advertisements saw a massive jump during the 2004 to 2014 UPA rule remote-controlled by Sonia Gandhi, some of the Hindu organisations in the region smelled a rat and started questioning the sudden increase in religious conversions. The Churches in Kanyakumari which operate like big Mafias in Italy as well as in Mumbai came out with a new strategy. Those who want to convert to Christianity need not change names and inform the authorities. All they have to do is to undergo the “Baptism Ceremony” in the Church, read the Bible and attend Sunday Masses.

This was a multi-pronged strategy “The Dalits could avail the benefits of reservation which they would have lost if they advertise about the conversion in newspapers and government offices. For all practical purposes, the neo-converts would continue as Hindu Dalits, enjoying all facilities. But their loyalty would be towards the Church and Vatican,” said a senior Dalit leader in Kanyakumari who is keeping track of the number of families joining “en masse” “to the way of the cross”.

A new ploy being followed by the Church is to press into service Christian boys with 100 cc bikes to woo the Hindu girls. This is the method which they have adopted from the Islamic youth in Kerala and elsewhere in Tamil Nadu to charm the gullible Hindu girls into wedlock. The Love Jihad featuring Christian Romeos have a new name in Kanyakumari and Southern Thiruvananthapuram. It is known as “Love Cross”. The last two years have seen more than 300 girls from Hindu families falling into the traps laid by the Christian youth and getting converted to Christianity. But what is alarming and causing concern is the next stage of the Love Cross. The girls who fall for the youth and change their religion are forced by them to bring in more girls from the Hindu community to the Christian sect. The newly converted girls act as the go-between in this operation. “If we refuse to obey the instructions, we will be thrown out of the houses and we will be left in the streets. Since I did not listen to the pleas of my parents, it is not possible for me to go back to them,” said a victim from Kattakkada in Thiruvananthapuram.

Most of the victims of the Love Cross are from economically weak sections. “There are instances of many girls being threatened by the youth. The Romeos have the full support of the Church authorities who offer financial bonanza to them to somehow trap the girls,” said a police official in Parassala, a border town in Kerala.

Kanyakumari district had a Hindu population of 80 per cent in 1956. Now the Hindus are a minority in the district as the population has come down to 48 per cent. The Love Cross is part of an aggressive evangelisation exercise underway in this part of the country, according to K N Venkatesh, leader of Viswa Hindu Parishat. Threats and coercion are the main means to bring the people who worship “snakes, monkeys, tigers and lions” into the path of God. “Most of the evangelists and pastors roaming around Parassala, Kattakada Vedivechankoil are goons who would not hesitate to break one or two bones of the potential targets,” said Devadas, a Hindu activist (Name changed to protect identity).

Jayanandanan, an investigative journalist working with Janam TV, said that the aggressiveness seen in Love Cross and conversion by coercion are shocking. “Though religious conversion is nothing new in the region, the new-found aggression is a reason for concern,” said Jayanandan. The pastors and evangelists are getting all kind of support from the fishermen community along Coastal Thiruvananthapuram and Kanyakumari for religious conversion.

“There are Pentecostal Mission evangelists and pastors getting a lot of money from India itself to evangelise the region. We have information that they are supported by Maoists as well as former LTTE activists,” said a VHP activist in Kanyakumari. He said that the defeat of Pon Radhakrishnan, the BJP candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha election was because of the consolidation of the minority community. The Catholic, CSI, Pentecost, CSI, and Latin Catholic all worked together all over Tamil Nadu and Kanyakumari was no exception,” said the VHP leader.

The evangelists visit the colonies of Dalit communities and residences of poor Hindu community members and threaten them with dire consequences if they do not convert to Christianity. “These Dalits and other people belonging to the lower strata of the society do not understand the real intentions of these evangelists and are carried away by threats like if they do not convert they would get afflicted with terminal diseases like cancer,” said Rajendran a former CPI-M activist who joined the BJP recently.

The number of Churches dotting the coastline, as well as the Thiruvananthapuram-Kanyakumari highway, is an indication of the ever-growing Christian empire in this part of the country. “The Church wants to keep the people, especially the fishermen in perpetual illiteracy so that its writ would run in the region. The priests are a law unto themselves here in the southern tip of the country,” said a member of the Kumari Maha Sabha, an NGO working for the integrated development of Kanyakumari.

Why are the Centre and Tamil Nadu Governments shying away from taking stringent action against these anti-nationals? Stay tuned.