It was reported in the media that on Sunday, 24 December 2023, the tribal communities in Jharkhand's Ranchi staged a protest demanding the "delisting" of converted tribals from the Scheduled Tribes (ST) list. As per the reports, about 5000 tribal people participated in the event. It was also reported that a large-scale protest in Delhi in February to press for the demand is in the works.

The protest in Ranchi was organised under the banner of Janjantiya Suraksha Manch (JSM), an affiliate of RSS-backed Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra, which has been leading the movement. This strange demand is because tribals who converted to Christianity get educational and financial help from the Church and missionary institutions, giving them social and financial benefits as opposed to the non-tribals.

It is evident that the ultimate and ulterior objective of this move is to divide the tribal communities so that their resistance to taking over their land and giving it to private corporations in the name of development can be weakened.

Another objective is weakening the Christian tribals by depriving them of reservation benefits and converting them to the Hindu faith. The Sangh-affiliated organisations have been promoting the reconversion of tribals under the banner of Ghar Vapasi for many years. The present move will hasten the completion of the Ghar Vapasi strategy.

The third and most significant objective is the polarisation of the tribals to vote in favour of the BJP by presenting Christians as their enemies. Tribals constitute about 8% of India's population, and 47 Lok Sabha constituencies are reserved for them. By presenting Christian tribals, who constitute about 5% of the total tribal population, as enemies of non-Christian tribals, the Hindutva groups plan to create a stable majority vote bank among tribals in their favour.

Creating enmity between Christian tribals and non-Christian tribals is only one of the many strategies of the BJP. The main objective of the ruling party and its ideological mentor is to malign Christians and all their services, especially to the underprivileged and depict them as anti-nationals who are involved in religious conversion. The stringent anti-conversion laws put in place by the BJP state governments have become an easy tool to harass Christians, especially those who are involved in welfare and developmental activities for the empowerment of the marginalised sections of Indian society.

One of the significant services that the Church provides to empower underprivileged groups in India has been hostels or boarding houses for school-going boys and girls. Since 2014, these hostels have been a target of the BJP in the states where the party is in power. National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) often raids the hostels, orphanages and childcare homes run by the Church organisations and files false cases against the Church personnel who are in charge of the hostels, magnifying some minor lapses. Often, they are also booked under the draconian anti-conversion law. Finding a copy of the Bible or some prayer books in an institution is enough to presume that the religious conversion of the inmates is taking place and to file cases against them.

As reported in the media, on 4 January 2024, the NCPCR Chairman, Mr Priyank Kanoongo, along with the CWC State and the district teams, raided Aanchal, a hostel for girls in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, forcefully confiscating all documents. They made various false allegations against the hostel, which were deliberately made available to the media to malign the organisation. They forcefully shifted the children who were in the hostel to a care home run by the government on 4 January 2024. Based on false allegations made by the search team, the Director of Aanchal, Fr. Anil Mathew, was sent to judicial remand on 7 January 2024.

What is the truth behind these allegations? The first allegation is that the hostel is illegal, as it doesn't have registration. The application for the renewal of registration has been pending before the Government of Madhya Pradesh for the last two years. After repeated reminders to the concerned departments to enquire about the delay in granting the renewal of registration, the organisation hasn't received any reply. All the current student-inmates of Anchal are registered in the educational portal of Madhya Pradesh (लोकशिक्षणसंचालनालय- DPI).

Aanchal is not a children's home. It is a hostel that has been in existence since 2021. All girls were admitted to the hostel with the written consent of their parents. Students' names and other details are given to the concerned departments like CWC and the police station from time to time.

The most consequential and sensational allegation was that 26 girls were missing from the hostel at the time of the search. It is an excellent distortion of facts. According to the hostel staff, the inspection team did not look into the current year's register but looked at the register of all the students who have come to Anchal since its inception. Police have already traced the so-called "missing students" living with their parents. They could do it based on the documents maintained in the hostel.

Another serious allegation is that the management and the staff of Aanchal were indulging in the religious conversion of the girls. As per the staff members of the hostel, they have never compelled the girls who are the inmates to say any Christian prayer or imposed on them any form of Christian worship.

Aanchal is only one of the hostels raided by the NCPCR in Madhya Pradesh. Raiding the hostels, filing false cases against the management and publicising various allegations in the media as sensational news are the methods adopted by the BJP governments to discredit Christians in India and present them as anti-nationals. It is also a method to demoralise and frighten them so that they may withdraw from all activities meant to empower the underdelivered sections of society. Allegations of religious conversion are a convenient tool used by the Hindutva forces to defame Christians in India. If religious conversions to Christianity are taking place on a large scale, as alleged by the Hindutva organisations, why did the population of Christians decrease during the last three decades?

As Muslims, Christians in India have also been facing a severe crisis ever since the BJP came to power in 2014. Now, the question is how can Christians respond to the challenges. In every crisis, there could be a hidden opportunity. Two statements of Jesus can help the followers of Jesus to respond creatively to the challenges they face today and discern the opportunities hidden in the challenges: "I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves" (Mathew 10:16) and "no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved" (Luke 5:37-38).

Jesus had foreseen that his followers would face opposition, harassment and even persecution. When one is determined to follow the way of Jesus, there may be elements in society whose vested interests will be adversely affected by the presence and the mission of the disciples of Jesus. Hence, they must use their intelligence to observe, analyse, understand the implications and find suitable solutions. That is the meaning of being "shrewd". The followers of Jesus should never entertain enmity or take revenge against anyone, including their opponents. At the same time, being innocent doesn't mean being gullible. Christians should not fall into the traps laid by their adversaries.

The Sangh Parivar is often compared to a hydra-headed creature with different heads and faces. It has many organisations, and they speak and act in different ways. However, their ultimate goal is the same- to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra in which Muslims and Christians will be treated as second-class citizens. If one analyses the strategies of the Sangh Parivar, one can easily understand the undercurrents. For example, on Christmas 2023, one of the organisations of the Sangh Parivar organised a meeting of Christian leaders. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the Christian leaders, highly praised the contributions of the Christian community to the freedom movement and highlighted the various intellectual thinkers and leaders. "The nation proudly acknowledges the contribution of the Christian Community", he said. He also noted Christian contributions in essential areas of education and healthcare.

While the Prime Minister was praising Christians and their contributions for consumption by the international media and to woo Christians of Southern states, especially Kerala, the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh closed down a hostel meant for the children of slum dwellers and daily wage workers and put in prison a priest who has been working for the empowerment of poor children for more than a decade. The Christian leaders should be intelligent enough to understand the dynamics of the functioning of the Sangh Parivar.

The time has come for Christians in India, especially the Catholic Church, to assess their activities objectively. Hostels for underprivileged children were started in an era when educational facilities in India, especially in villages, were minimal. Today, children have access to schools in almost all villages, and the government has also started hostels and residential schools even in interior villages. In many cases, the quality of education through government schools is indeed poor. Against this backdrop, there is no need to continue hostels. The social-work wings of the dioceses and religious congregations should focus on improving the quality of the government schools by different means, including arranging extra classes for the students.

If some hostels are to be continued, they should comply with the rules and regulations of the government, and the focus should be on developing leaders with character, competence and commitment to the values of the Indian Constitution. Only when authentic leaders emerge from the underprivileged groups will their situation change. The mainline political parties are buying the present leaders of the disadvantaged groups. Hence, there is an urgent need for building leaders committed to protecting the interests and rights of the underprivileged.

The Christian communities, especially the Catholic Church, did not pay enough attention to inculcating in the students of its educational institutions the core Indian Constitutional values. The Constitution of India is the greatest bulwark to protect the rights of citizens. Unless the citizens imbibe the core constitutional values, the government can violate the spirit of the constitution while making its actions legal. It can weaponise the existing laws by using them to silence and imprison its adversaries while it can connive at the violation of the same rules by its supporters. For example, the bulldozing of houses of persons accused of certain crimes is done selectively by some state governments. Hence, imparting Indian Constitutional values should be one of the top priorities of Christian educational institutions. The core Indian Constitutional values are nothing but the core values taught by Jesus: Justice, Equality, Liberty, Fraternity and Dignity of Individuals.

One of the core Indian Constitutional values is pluralism (secularism). The importance of this value is to be imparted to young people not only through theory classes but also by practice. Some suggestions in this regard include conducting inter-faith prayer in institutions meant for people of all faiths, exhibiting quotes from different religious scriptures related to core ethical and moral values, displaying the symbols of all religions and celebrating the festivals of all faiths in India by highlighting the spiritual message of the festivals.

Being shrewd also includes ending the growth of religious fundamentalism among the followers of Jesus. Religious fundamentalism is a stumbling block to spirituality and an enemy of humanity. Respecting all religions and promoting harmony among religions and cultures is the antidote to religious fundamentalism.