Yogi Adityanath proposes anti-conversion law, without ban on 're-conversion'

BJP MP Yogi Adityanath shares his views on conversions, re-conversions and the proposed anti-conversion law with Rediff.com's Sharat Pradhan.

The Bharatiya Janata Party MP Yogi Adityanath, who is among the most vocal votaries of  the proposed anti-conversion law, is playing with words to seek exemption of what he feels is re-conversion -- the type that his organisation had undertaken in Agra earlier this week.

The vociferous MP from Gorakhpur, where he heads an old monastery together with his self-raised Hindu Yuva Vahini, believes that the exercise being carried out by him could not be treated as conversion.

“What I am doing is simply taking such people back to their old home from where they were weaned away through inducement or coercion,” he says. 

“So what if someone’s ancestors were converted to Islam or Christianity several hundred years ago? Time is of no consequence. Therefore all those Hindus who were compelled to switch over to Islam during Mughal emperor Aurangzeb’s rule -- when the maximum mass conversions took place -- should get exemption under the new law that the BJP wants to legislate,” he adds.

Adityanath emphasises that one cannot treat conversion at par with re-conversion.

Asked if the large scale conversions proposed to be undertaken by him between December 16 and 25 were part of a BJP design, which was why Prime Minister Narendra Modi was maintaining total silence on the issue, Yogi Adityanath shot back, “Well, what we’re doing is nothing new. The Hindu Yuva Vahini has been engaged in holding such ‘re-conversion’ camps in both Eastern and Western UP for nearly a decade,”

“We have reconverted several lakh Muslims and Christians over the past ten years. It was only now that the opposition parties had raised such a hue and cry on the issue. Perhaps they cannot find anything else to attack the BJP,” he claims.

When we sought to know how he could track down the centuries old history of families whom he had identified for such re-conversions, Adityanath said, “Well that is very simple as most of them are themselves aware of their origins; some Muslims will tell you the names of their Hindu forefathers.”  

Referring to the vast spread of Christianity in the North Eastern states Adityanath said, “Aren’t you aware of the mass conversions that took place in the North East by way of inducement and coercion.” 

Insistent on going ahead with his mass conversion plans, he proposes to take up 15 Muslim families on December 16, about 2,000 Christian families in Ghazipur on December 18 and  as many as 4,000 Christian and 10,000 Muslim families for his re-conversion in Aligarh on December 25.