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The government is set to bring strict laws against religious conversions. Currently, Chris­tianity is rapidly spreading, raising concerns in a country which was until recently the only Hindu state in the world. Individuals, Hindu orga­nizations, fringe political parties and even government offices have been accusing INGOs and Nepali churches of proselytizing the mar­ginalized communities by offering them various incentives. In October 2017, President Bidhya Devi Bhandari signed into law a bill criminalizing religious conversions and any act that “hurts religious sentiments”. The law is set to come into effect from August.

“This is a clear violation of our human rights,” says Tanka Sub­edi, Senior Pastor/Founder at Lal­itpur-based Family of God church. Subedi was born in a Nepali Chris­tian family in Baglung. His moth­er was a Christian missionary in the 1970s and his family has always been devout Protestants. “Evangel­ical and Catholic churches existed in Nepal even before King Prithivi Narayan Shah embarked on his uni­fication campaign. He drove away dozens of Christian families from the country, and the current govern­ment is trying to do the same now,” Subedi, who is also a human rights activist, says.

“We have thousands, perhaps millions, of Christians in Nepal now, and we have been living in harmo­ny with people of other faiths for centuries. The government’s recent decision seems to be targeted at the Christians who vote and pay taxes, just like any other Nepali.”

According to the 2011 census, Christians make up less than 1.5 percent of Nepal’s population of about 29 million. The majority of Nepali Christians are evangelical Protestants. Although no recent government data is available, the number of new converts is speculated to have increased mas­sively, particularly after the April 2015 earthquake and the entry of Christian missionaries involved in reconstruction and resettlement in rural regions. Various I/NGOs have been accused of distributing Bibles along with relief materials in the affected regions and of converting women and children in return for food and clothes.

“They can’t come to our homes and lure us into accepting their religion with money and magic,” says Mohan Banjade, former law secretary and one of the main pro­ponents of the new laws against conversion. “Historically, Christi­anity is characterized by bloodshed and massive human exodus as the Roman church massacred millions of pagans. Even in modern times, Western countries where Christi­anity is the predominant religion have conquered and converted countless people in Africa and Asia.

Banjade says that the proselytiz­ers’ main assertion that “their God is the only God and everyone else is inferior” is unacceptable. He has therefore been actively lobbying against religious conversions and I/NGOs involved in spreading Chris­tianity in Nepal under the guise of humanitarian work. When asked if the government’s ban on reli­gious conversion goes against the country’s secular character, Banjade says, “We have been fed wrong information on secularism. Secularism is a British concept devised to separate the state and the church at a time in history when the church played an active part in politics and was often stronger than the mon­archs. What these dollar funded Christians are doing today is nether secular or democratic.”

There has of late been a rise in hostility between Nepali Hindus/Buddhists and the newly convert­ed Christians. The hate-filled war of words between the adherents of the two religions has escalated on social media—for instance on Facebook pages like ‘People’s Cam­paign Against Christian Conversa­tion—and is reaching a point where the discussion may easily boil over into open hostility.

Christian organizations claim that more than a million people in Nepal identify themselves as Christians, and the country has one of the fast­est growing Christian populations in the world. According to the Fed­eration of National Christian Nepal, 65 percent of Nepali Christians are Dalits. While the Christian orga­nizations claim that it is people’s faith in their god that is convert­ing born Hindus and Buddhists into Christians, other factors are clearly at play. For example the pro­portion of Christianity is high among those who have been traditionally discriminated against in the tradi­tional Hindu caste structure and those from dirt poor families. Then there is the accusation that pros­elytizers even pay peo­ple to convert.

“This is not a religion but an industry,” Banjade says. “They do door-to-door marketing to hire new recruits and they are more loyal to London and Rome than they are to Nepal.” Banjade’s reference is to the hundreds of Christian missionaries distributing pamphlets and Bibles at people’s homes and public places. Their target is usually the so-called “lower castes” and indigent people. Housewives, unemployed youths and children are being lured into the churches with promises of food, music and equality. Also, many pastors perform ‘healing mir­acles’ that convince the old and the sick to get baptized.

“Those who engage in door-to-door marketing are not Chris­tians, says Subedi of Family of God church, “They are either Jehovah’s Witnesses or followers of this Kore­an religion called Ahn Sahng-hong.” According to Subedi, converting to Christianity in protestant churches takes up to a year. A person wanting to convert needs to go to church regularly and be declared ‘qualified’ by the church to be converted. Also, before the final conversion, the per­son is asked if he/she is motivated by anything besides pure belief. Subedi may be talking about his and some other churches, but that doesn’t allay the concerns of those who have seen eyewitness accounts and vid­eos of instant conversion of people in the quake-affected communities in Barpak and Laprak.

“It’s a sad thing for us. We’re sell­ing our religion, our belief and our heritage for dollars,” says Mahendra Bhandari, a devout Hindu and a political activist. “We declared our­selves a secular state to please our neighbors and a few donors. We still have no problem living in harmony with our peers of other religions. But they have started discriminat­ing against us. They claim that their God is the only God and we’re all ‘pagans’. How can they, whose reli­gion is just 2000 years old, have the nerve to say that to us who are followers of an ancient religion?”

As the antagonism between Chris­tians and non-Christians grows, the government’s decision to imme­diately ban religious conversion is unlikely to resolve the issue. Yes, if some NGOs are involved in forced conversions by offering people various incentives, they should be stopped. But if the goal is to lessen the growing resentment between different religions, cultures and castes in a country which has recently come out of a decade-long war and a huge natural disaster, then perhaps more needs to be done than merely passing new laws.

Kathmandu: India, for the first time, is said to be pos­itive about allowing trucks with Nepali number plates to carry cooking gas into Nepal. The Indian side reportedly showed this readiness during the Nepal-India Intergovern­mental Committee (IGC) meet­ing in Kathmandu this week.

The Indian side has accepted that it may not be possible for Nepali trucks to meet its rigorous anti-explosion test requirements. Nepal Oil Corporation had last year given permission to 775 such trucks to import fuel from India. But since none of them could get India’s anti-explosion certificates, they have been unable to operate. APEX BUREAU  

A village at a distance of 14 km from the headquarters of Baglung, a district in the western hills, has been practicing an extreme form of exclusion where dalits and non-dalits do not attend each other’s social functions, including weddings and funerals. Dhamja of Kathekhola-3 rural municipality, a community long reputed for its religious diver­sity, is now completely divided. Local resident Bhabilal BK says that in the past two months, the dalits and non-dalits of the village of Asauje have even stopped talking to each other. The locals trace the origin of the problem to a wedding ceremony of a non-dalit family. Some members of this family apparently objected to the presence of an inter-caste couple in the ceremony, following which all attending dalit members boycotted the event.

Before that villagers used to attend wedding ceremonies and funerals together. But they have stopped inviting each other now. And even if they receive an invitation from another community, they don’t accept it.

“My daughter got married last week. I’d invited the whole village, but no one from the so-called upper caste Bistas attended the wed­ding,” says BK. “In fact they made a collective decision not to accept a dalit’s invitation. I had made a special request to the elders of that community and had told them that I would make a separate dining arrangement for the non-dalit community. Still no one came,” rued BK. Despite claims that caste-based discrim­ination here is on the wane, separate dining arrangements for dalits and non-dalits at feasts and festivals are now common.

Not only during celebrations, but the two communities have begun shunning each other even on sensitive occasions like funerals. When the wife of Rana Bahadur BK passed away, no one from the non-dalit community attended the funeral. Another local Amar Bahadur Sri­sha says that caste-based discrimination has wrecked social harmony and unity in the vil­lage. “Our ancestors lived amicably with each other, but now there has been a decisive rift in social harmony,” argues Srisha.

Buddhi Bahadur BK, another local resident, asks heatedly who’s going to speak up against such injustice. “The dalit community has been oppressed for years. We won’t stay silent any­more,” says a visibly angry BK.

“At a time when there is widespread talk of the decline in caste-based discrimination, such cases shock us,” says ward chairman Yam Bahadur Srisha. “Discrimination is firmly entrenched, and taking on a more insidious form,” says Srisha. “Discrimination won’t be stamped out by laws only. A change in attitude is necessary.”  

There aren’t many places that offer a good view of the sunrise. But there also are a few sites from where it looks as if the sun is rising not from the distant horizon but right in front of one’s eyes. Sandakpur, which lies at the border point between Nepal’s far-eastern districts of Ilam and Panchthar, and the Indian state of West Bengal, and which is situated at an altitude of 3,636m, is one such location from where the glowing sun appears to rise right in front of the observer. Between October and April, huge numbers of tourists flock to Sandakpur. They need to use Nepal’s territory to get a good sunrise view. There is a hilltop on the Nepali side that offers spectacular views of the sunrise and the sunset. But the Nepali territory doesn’t have adequate infrastructure and hotels to accommodate the legions of tourists in Sanda­kpur. As a result, it’s the Indian side, which has many more hotels than the Nepali side, that makes most of the money from the region’s tourism.

Whereas the Nepali side has just two hotels, the Indian side has 14—three privately run and 11 operated under the West Bengal state gov­ernment. Both hotels on the Nepali side—Sherpa Shaile and Sunrise—are private. Pema Dandu Sherpa, manager of Sherpa Shaile, says Nepal has failed to tap the tourism potential of Sandakpur.

“Tourists view the sunrise from the Nepali side. But because we don’t have enough hotels, most of them have no choice but to stay in the hotels on the other side. Nepal government hasn’t shown interest and taken the initiative to develop adequate tourism infrastructure,” says Sherpa. Other Nepalis in the region also say that India has earned billions by milking Nepali territory.

Domestic tourist Tyson Kerung said he felt bad at the current state of affairs. “It’s sad that we cannot feel the pres­ence of the Nepali state in such a profitable area that attracts hordes of tourists,” says Kerung.

Pasang Dawa, a hotel entrepreneur, informed that tourists wanting to stay in Sandakpur pay anywhere in the range of 500 to 3,500 Indian rupees per night.

BY BHIM KUMAR BASKOTA | SANDAKPUR, ILAM