NEW DELHI: Opposition lawmakers, charging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done little to stop hardliners in his party from forcibly converting religious minorities to Hinduism, threw Parliament into an uproar on Monday, with the upper house repeatedly adjourned after descending into shouting matches.

Right-wing Hindu groups allied with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have conducted a series of ceremonies across India over the past week to convert Christians and Muslims to Hinduism.

Some of the Muslims, though, later said they had changed religions out of fear, raising the spectre of religious communalism and a growing political divide in a country that has struggled for years with intermittent Hindu-Muslim violence.

India is mostly Hindu, but has a significant Muslim minority and a smaller Christian one. Modi, an avowed Hindu nationalist and longtime member of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Dal, one of the two main groups behind the conversions, has remained mostly silent on the issue.

On Sunday, members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, converted 30 Christians to Hinduism in the southern Indian state of Kerala. In the western state of Gujarat, the VHP said 200 Christians had participated in weekend “homecoming” ceremonies.

Hindu hardliners often call the ceremonies “homecomings,” insisting that members of minority religions are descended from Hindus who converted to Christianity or Islam. Similar conversions were performed earlier this month in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where around 100 Muslims converted to Hinduism.

Many, though, said later that they were threatened with violence if they didn’t go along, and that they were promised government ration cards and money if they did become Hindus.

Hindu hardline organisations were key political backers of Modi, who was voted into office earlier this year in a victory over the long-powerful Congress party. Since his election, the hard-line groups have become increasingly vocal, calling for the transformation of India into a Hindu nation.

“We are going to take the percentage of Hindus to 100 percent in the country,” Praveen Togadia, a VHP leader, said in a weekend speech. “We won’t tolerate Hindus becoming a minority in the country”. Indian Muslims have long been wary of Modi.

In 2002, he was accused of failing to stop anti-Muslim riots that shook Gujarat state, where he was then the top elected official.

Published in Dawn December 23th , 2014