“A plan to convert 5,000 Indian Christians and Muslims to Hinduism on Christmas Day has been canceled by local officials. But organizers insist the conversions are merely postponed, and plan to protest Christmas baptisms at churches instead.”

Update (Dec. 24): Members of India’s opposition party protested a Hindu nationalist leader’s remarks declaring the country a “Hindu nation” by suspending parliament on Monday.

On Sunday, Mohan Bhagwat suggested that the country’s non-Hindus had been forcibly converted to Islam and Christianity. “We will bring back those who have lost their way. They did not go on their own. They were lured into leaving,” he said.

Bhagwat leads the radical Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), a group closely linked with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Reuters elaborates on the growing tension around their Hindu reconversion efforts and the political price Modi is arguably paying for not publicly calling for their end.

The New York Times also reports on the “Jesus trap,” where Hindu nationalists have allegedly attempted to trick foreign religious leaders into baptizing Hindus as Christians in an effort to complicate their immigration status.

Hindu nationalists here claim that Muslims and Christians have been forcing Hindus to convert to their religions for centuries. So there is deep sensitivity to proselytizing by non-Hindus, particularly foreigners. Visas for religious professionals are strictly limited, some missionaries are instructed not to proselytize openly and, now that a Hindu nationalist has become India’s prime minister, hard-line Hindu groups have begun a long-dreamed campaign to claw back some of those conversion losses.

World Watch Monitor also notes that laws banning forced religious conversions are “ostensibly meant to protect individuals from unwelcome proselytizing,” but instead, Open Doors International tells them, they are “frequently used as a pretext to disturb and disrupt church services as well as to harass, beat up and accuse Christian believers and leaders.”

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A plan to convert 5,000 Indian Christians and Muslims to Hinduism on Christmas Day has been canceled by local officials. But organizers insist the conversions are merely postponed, and plan to protest Christmas baptisms at churches instead.

The ultimate aim of the Hindu nationalist group, affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is to make sure that Christianity and Islam “cease to exist” in India, reports the Washington Post. Debates over coerced religious conversions stymied India’s parliament this month, reports World Watch Monitor (WWM).

“Religious conversion is a matter of personal choice and the law permits it,” said Abhishek Prakash, the district magistrate of Aligarh where the conversions were to take place, according to the Times of India. “However, if certain groups deliberately try to provoke communal sentiments by misusing this provision, then we will certainly not allow this to take place.”

Shortly after Aligarh officials intervened, news broke that Prime Minister Narendra Modi (winner of Time magazine’s reader poll for Person of the Year) had ordered lawmakers from his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of which the RSS is an ideological wing, to rein in their pro-Hindu agenda, reports Reuters. The directive comes several weeks after Christian leaders in Nagaland, one of India’s most-Christian states, used Modi’s visit to their state to petition his government to better protect them, reports Morning Star News (MSN).

Asia News reports the fundraising for the mass re-conversion advertised that Christian converts “cost” 200,000 rupees (US $3,200) per person, while Muslim converts were more expensive: 500,000 rupees (US $8,000). One possible reason: Christians selected for conversion, which often involves food and financial incentives, were identified from 40 slums, while the Muslims were descendants of higher castes, reports the Economic Times.

Aligarh’s 200-million person state, Uttar Pradesh, has recently been home to a string of alleged “re-conversion” incidents. In August, Hindu radicals claimed that they had turned a Seventh-day Adventist church in Asroi village in Aligarh district into a temple after they allegedly “re-converted” its 72 Christians to Hinduism. WWM cautioned such events are often propaganda, and Adventist News Network disputed the claim, reporting that a visiting delegation “found no evidence that the church had been disturbed.” However, an internal commission organized by the church later found that the Christians had indeed “reconverted of their own will because of little support from leadership.”

Later that month, police illegally detained a dozen pastors on false charges that they were “converting Hindus to Christians.” WWM reported the details.

The RSS has made calls for a single-faith country and is behind many of recent attacks against Christians, claim religious freedom watchdogs.

Of India’s top 10 states with the worst record for Christian persecution, five of them have been recently ruled by the BJP, according to a 2013 report from Mumbai’s Catholic Secular Forum (CSF) based on 4,000 Christians attacked in 200 major incidents. Today, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan remain under BJP leadership. Uttar Pradesh does not appear on this list. (The Samajwadi Party, a socialist group, leads the state’s government.)

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