Rajnathji lodges protest
with the Pope

Dated May 20,2006

Your Holiness,

I write to you with the hope and belief that this letter will find you in the best of your spirits and health. It has pained us all in India that you have talked of religious intolerance in some regions of India and have told our Ambassador that banning conversion are unconstitutional and should be rejected.

As Head of Vatican, you will agree that my interference in your religious domain within the sphere of Vatican influence will be un-welcome, un-called for, and will be treated as an interference in your religious management and administration.

As far as the issue of conversion is concerned, the apex legal body, India's Supreme Court in a 1977 Judgement in the Rev S Stanislaus versus state of Madhya Pradesh has upheld the constitutional validity of conversion-prohibiting laws enacted by Madhya Pradesh and Orissa Governments. The two states which, were then controlled by Congress, had passed anti-conversion law in 1967 and 1968 respectably.

India's Supreme Court in its Judgment had delivered- "What constitution grants is not the right to convert another person to one's own religion but to transmit or spread one's religion by an exposition of its tenets" the court had said.

According to country's top court, organised conversion, whether by force or fraud or by providing help or allurement to persons, taking undue advantage of their poverty and ignorance, its anti secular. The Court had said---Respect of all religions was the essence of our secularism, whereas religious intolerance constituted the basis of planned conversion. Given this, conversion cannot be a secular activity.

I would like to inform your august self that besides Orissa and MP three other states of India have anti-conversion laws in the statute. These include Chattishgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Gujrat.

I would like to bring to your kind notice that Christians of India are patriotic and India was the first to welcome the Christian missionary on the shores of Kerala in the early years of Christianity. Not only this, a prominent Christian Father in Kerala readily gave church land and area for a missile project when he learnt that his particular church area was strategically important for the missile and rocket project and he happily agreed in the interest of national security. I have my doubts that certain interested groups raise the bogey of intolerance in order to attract more donations from international Christian bodies. We have to guard against it in order to have cordial relations at home and abroad.

Last but not the least' we have to exercise restraint in our reactions to any given situation lest our harsh reactions might generate militant mood between the society to the detriment of harmony.

You are a sovereign in both temporal and worldly domain in the Vatican and in the Catholic world. So is India a sovereign nation and is free to enact laws for its citizens in its geographical bounds. You will appreciate that when we look at things in this perspective there shall be abundant love amongst the children of God.

Lord Jesus preached kindness and pardoned even those who put him on the CROSS and Commanded his followers to abjure hatred and harshness.

We in India believe in this ethos since ancient times, hence our aim is common, goal is one to prevent hatred and militant approach in human polity, to allow each civilization to grow, survive and blossom without confronting each other.

With Respectful regards

Your Sincerely,

(Rajnath Singh)

To,

H.H. Pope Benedict XVI
Vatican City
Rome