Miracle' in Baroda: VHP dispurts Christian meet

The VHP boasts of having taught Christian missionaries a lesson

(Reproduced below is the English translation of the news item that originally appeared in Vishwa Hindu Parishad News, April 1998 in Gujarati published from Baroda).

Heading: �BARODA : Strong protests and agitation by Hindu youth against �Christianisation� and Blind Faith�

Christian missionaries are actively working to convert Hindus in thousands in Gujarat. Between March 4
and 7, 1998, a prayer meeting in the name of �Jesus Mahotsav� was arranged in the Polo ground at Baroda where a large stage had been erected and a band of native and foreign missionaries and priests had landed. Under the pretext of the four-day�long �Jesus Mahotsav�, they embarked on a plan of large�scale conversion of poor and gullible people.

For this, they spent lakhs of rupees. All over Baroda city and suburbs they distributed more than five lakh pamphlets and 5,000 banners were put up in Baroda city. Besides, about 100 large size hoardings were also set up in different parts of the city. They also issued a big advertisement in the newspapers spending a large sum of money. In the last five days prior to the �Mahotsav�, a major publicity campaign was carried on. The advertisements and pamphlets carried the following message: "The blind sees, the lame walks, the deaf hears."

While all these campaigns were going on claiming that all these miracles will happen on stage in full public view by means of prayer, the vigilant Hindu youth of Baroda asked: "If all these things can happen by means of prayer alone, why do Christian missionaries run hospitals and dispensaries? If the blind can see, why don�t they go to the blind schools and heal them? Why did Mother Theresa remain hospitalised for months together? Why was she not healed through prayer? What is the necessity of running schools for the deaf and dumb?"

But the claim to heal people through prayers is simply a hoax meant to mislead poor and simple people in order to convert them to Christianity. Arrangements had been made for bringing the poor, vanvasi, backward and down-trodden people from various distant villages by engaging buses. Such efforts at large�scale conversion to Christianity have been going on in Baroda city for a long time. In other parts of Gujarat, like Kheda and other vanvasi areas, similar large-scale conversion activity has been continuing. In Baroda, too, this was the intention of the Christian missionaries.

Vigilant and enlightened Hindus of Baroda were outraged by such efforts of these Christian missionaries to convert people to Christianity by spreading blind beliefs. They were determined to see that this would not be allowed to succeed.

The anger of Baroda�s Hindus was kindled. Hindu youth from the VHP, Bajrang Dal, Durga Vahini, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and various other organisations were also very angry. Because of this raging anger of vigilant and alert Hindi youth, the stage of the missionaries erected on the polo ground was set on fire. In response to a call, about 200�300 youth climbed on the stage and demanded that the blind faith being spread by these missionaries be stopped immediately. The police indulged in a lathi�charge and rounded up 50 young men. The �Mahotsav� banners displayed throughout the city were brought down and burnt. The hoardings erected at different places, too, were broken down. The angry Hindu youth also smashed the windowpanes of the buses which were used for transporting the vanvasis.

The Hindu community, instead showed these missionaries who were preaching about miracles, a miracle! A special element of the campaign of the missionaries was that there banners and posters were concentrated near temples in the city which were visited by large numbers of Hindus for darshan.

As a result of the call of the Hindu community the stage was burnt down. But the missionaries repaired and re-arranged the stage and commenced their programme. Just then, around 200 young men forcibly climbed on the stage and shouted slogans demanding stoppage of the programme.

Taking into consideration the strong protest of the Hindu community, the organiser of this programme, George Parmar, was arrested by the police and the permission for holding the programme was cancelled.

The Hindu people of Baroda who have become extra alert and active since the abduction of young Hindu women, are no longer prepared to tolerate religious conversions.

After the programme of the Christian missionaries had been aborted, a programme on which they had spent lakhs of rupees, the president of Baroda Mahanagar, Ajaybhai Joshi, Rameshbhai Bhatt, Shirishbhai Kulkarni, Niraj Jain, Ramanbhai Padhiar, Vijay Patel of Bajrang Dal, Kanubhai Ganotri, Ashokbhai etc., presented a memorandum to the police commissioner. The memorandum made a strong representation against such elements, against the complacent police officers for allowing such programmes, and demanded that all cases against the VHP/Bajrang Dal/Durga Vahini/ABVP workers be withdrawn and strict steps be taken to refuse permission for such sammelans in future.


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