New anti-conversion law planned in India

Tuesday, 3rd March 2009
By Judy West

The Compass Direct News agency is reporting that the Hindu nationalist government in the southern state of Karnataka, which recorded the second highest number of attacks on Christians last year, is planning to introduce the kind of “anti-conversion” law that has provided the pretext for anti-Christian violence in other states.

Such laws are designed to thwart forcible or fraudulent conversion, but they are popularly misunderstood as criminalizing conversion in general. India’s majority Hindu population has shown hostility to other religions in recent years, in particular to Christians, who they see as proselytizing Hindus. the rest