At the outset, the author admits that he was a victim of Christian persecution during the 1982 riot at Pallam in the District of Kanyakumari in India. At the time of the riot, the author was not yet a five-year-old. With his family, he escaped via the Arabian Sea from the onslaught of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) at Pallam. He, his family and neighbours survived through the generosity of the people of Kadiyapattinam. His academic and literary works are also humble expressions of his conscious attempts to reconcile with the past and the need to build social and religious harmony at the grassroots. His unhealed memories with their residues sporadically display themselves in his writings subconsciously. The author is aware of this fact. In a way, it makes the article with raw contents – symbolising the struggles of Christians to practice in their very lives the words of Jesus on forgiveness – uttered from the Holy Cross, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do" (Luke 23:43). In this article, the author dwells on an inspiring conversation that he had with a member of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) whose conversation hints at self-encountering which have the ingredients of a Lonerganian intellectual conversion and ethical conversion.

I met an international student (from Gujarat) in Canada. He has been in the RSS since the third grade. Now, he has graduated from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. He shared with me that his parents never knew that he was a member of the RSS, but his RSS colleagues used to visit his home. From the outside, it looked like the RSS members were involved in some regular prayer meetings and excruciating exercises focusing on physical fitness, including an update on the current political situation in the vicinity of their home. The RSS claims to foster activities that involve overall personality development with a dictum: Vyakti Nirman Se Rashtra Nirman. The sentence in Hindi may be translated as 'From Personality building to Nation building.' All activities in the Shakha are planned to stick to their mission statement.

Having become familiar to me, he shared some alarming news with me. The students/teenagers at the Shakha of the RSS were bombarded repeatedly with messages of hatred towards Muslims and Christians. They were reminded that they had to be ready to fight anytime when the need arose. Initially, he was enthusiastic. During his college days in Gujarat, he was actively and fully involved in protecting the cows. He even influenced the proceedings of the case in which the Muslims were put behind bars. In our initial conversations, he had only briefly mentioned that he was involved in the protection of animals. He used to create awareness about the harm caused by the killing of animals.

Later, he started reasoning about who these enemies were and why he had to fight with them. One day, he courageously raised these concerns in the Shaka, but he was bluntly and disrespectfully silenced before everyone. He was schooled on obedience and commitment to the organisation. Now, he realises that he observed that these RSS friends accompanied him from the time he was in third grade. Even today, they keep updating him about RSS activities while he is far from India. They would see that he was in the circle of their networking. I was so shocked.

Even he was deeply and evidently disturbed by the events currently happening in Manipur. At the time of the lack of response from the central and state governments, he used to initiate conversations on the attacks on religious minorities. He himself pinpointed to me that he knew how it could have happened. He clearly communicated to me that the message of hatred was repeatedly being passed on to you in a way that makes the listeners restless till they get involved in activities – even physically attacking the minorities.

While he lives in Canada, he realises that he wasted his valuable time during his growing-up years and how he was indoctrinated with hatred and ill feelings towards religious minorities in India. He honestly felt that he was wrongly exposed to the RSS earlier. His parents thought that the kids were taken for training in physical education and religious instruction. His parents never knew about all the information passed to him. In his vicinity, it was a regular thing that the students attended the Shakha weekly and daily during the summer. He made me aware that the RSS always found ways and means to spread the ideology of Hindutva (Hindu Nationalism) through cultural and religious festivals and even funding some institutions back home.

In our conversation, he realised I did not offer him any opinion on his sharing. He asked me whether it was right on his part to be an RSS member while he grew up. He asked me, "Have I done something wrong now that I make conscious steps to be away from my RSS friends? Why don't these RSS members leave me alone? Though I have communicated with them that I wished to move on from the influence of the RSS, they do not leave me to take the decision to live peacefully respecting other religions. I feel very disturbed. I am not too sure if I am doing the right thing." I continued to maintain silence.

Then he shared with me, "While I am with you, and our friends who are international students, we do not discuss religion. We do not speak ill of other religions. I also observed, you Christian guys do not have bias even against Muslims. We all are friends from India, Pakistan, China, USA, Bangladesh, Iran, Qatar, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Tunisia, Nigeria, Columbia, Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, South Africa, and Nepal. We are not discussing religion at all. While I was in Gujarat, it was a daily conversation how to fight the enemies who had no name." Then, it was privately and bluntly shared that they have been trained to fight the Muslims who do not belong to India and who are sheer infiltrators.

For coherency's sake, I do not present everything he shared. Here, I intend to illuminate how a master's student realised his wrongdoings through his self-corrective process of learning and self-appropriation. You may call it intellectual/ethical conversion, propounded by Bernard Lonergan. The student's sharing about RSS is very well complemented by the disturbing observations during the parliamentary election campaign, including the words of hatred with poisonous words from the mouth of the current Prime Minister. His words prove what the student narrated: that the instructions at the Shakhas have ingredients of hatred towards the Muslim religious minorities.

The student's sharing was his personal realisation and self-transformation – changes occurring in life because of his exposure to educative culture, conversational (inclusive) environment, and friends for whom religion is not the only conversation – religion was one of the conversations as it is a constitutive element of the society in which religion exists. In him, I saw a glimpse of Saul as narrated in the Acts of the Apostles.

His sharing about, insights into, and observations of his life was solely his personal matter. No credit can be given to the other – including me. It is his faith – self-explorative journey of reason and religious discernment. But he was receptive to the insights and opportunities through his sharing with us to move beyond the ideological colonisation, ideological alienation and group bias by Hindutva (Hindu Religious Nationalism) in his life. He realised he missed many opportunities to be exposed to and educated about other social and inter-religious etiquette connected to other religious followers.

He observed that he was from a well-to-do family from the capital of Gujarat. His parents were government employees. But for religion, they blindly believe the religious leaders who work hand in glove with the leaders belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliates. Even the RSS representatives were friendly to the students in the neighbourhood. They were solely received with much respect and trust. Parents never knew how the religious instruction and talks of religious polarisation by the RSS impacted the young minds, leaving a devastating imprint and scar.

I again reboot the need to establish RSS/Hindutva Research Institute as per the need of the locality in each state, most importantly in vernacular language and English, so that each RSS Research Institute can share with each other their findings and resources to open the eyes of the RSS-vadis to the historic-cultural-ethical-human rights damages they cause not only to the innocent religious minorities in India but also to the millions of young Hindus such as this student in this real-life story.