Raipur, Chhattisgarh:
Clarifying his stance, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said he is not against people following Christianity as a religious faith, adding that his concerns revolve around specific actions such as “the cow slaughter and religious conversion.
Highlighting the presence of the second largest church in Asia located in Kunkuri, his elected constituency, he clarified: “We are not against the Christian people; on the contrary, we oppose certain acts like the slaughter of cows and religious conversion.
“Keep serving, but don’t kill cows. We Hindus consider cows as our mothers and believe that gods as well as goddesses reside in them and worship them. So please stop killing cows as there are several other things to consume,” Mr. Sai said.
Responding to the incidents of religious conversion in the Bastar region, the chief minister perceived them as a conspiracy to weaken the BJP.
He suggested that people in the tribal-dominated Bastar and Surguja regions were being misled, creating a misconception that they are not Hindus. According to him, this is an attempt to disconnect them from the BJP and the service rendered to the nation.
Urging people not to engage in the act of religious conversion, he said the situation is different when someone voluntarily changes his religious faith, but it is not right to convert by offering to poor people access to education or through healing prayer.
He attributed these incidents to some organizations aiming to harm the BJP and nationalism.
He, however, expressed confidence that this strategy would not succeed in the long run, as people have understood, as evidenced by the recent landslide victory of the BJP in the elections.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)