Case against Kerala nuns points to need for stronger legal framework against conversion operations
The arrest of two Keralite nuns and a tribal man in Chhattisgarh’s Durg on charges of human trafficking and religious conversion has brought into the spotlight the seriousness of clandestine illegal conversions, going on unabated in tribal regions. It also brings to light the inadequacy of existing anti-conversion laws to tackle systematic clandestine conversion activities and the urgent need for new legal provisions to plug the loopholes.
Meanwhile, Kerala state, from where the two converting nuns hail, has witnessed well-organized and instigated protests, claiming that the arrest was an attack on India’s democratic values and religious freedom. These nuns were doing social service, not converting anyone, is the constant refrain of the church authorities. But the harsh reality cannot be concealed from the public glare by mere bland assertions. The modus operandi of the nuns were quite simple: recruit gullible young Adivasi Hindu girls and transport them to Kerala, where they would be sent to work in rich Christian households for domestic work, and for being converted and groomed as Christians. A survey in Central and South Kerala would bring to light the large-scale illegal transportation of young girls being brought from Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, and the Northeast, to work as domestic helps in rich Christian houses, as well as supervised and personalised conversion into an alien faith. This arrangement has been going on uninterrupted for decades, and is a variation of another kind of trafficking which rocked Kerala in the 1970s.
During the 1960s and 70s, there was a major scandal in Kerala of young Christian girls and nuns from poor families being sent to Rome to work as domestic helpers in various convents, as the European nuns detested doing domestic chores like cleaning, washing, and scrubbing. The white European nuns were deeply racist and often ill-treated these Kerala girls, and when the news flashed in Kerala, the church stood exposed. During those times, issues like human rights, human trafficking, and slave labour were not under the lens of governments and agencies of the United Nations. However, in the present era, innumerable agencies are maintaining a strict vigil on human traffickers engaged in sex-slave trade, and supplying children to paedophiles in the Middle East and Western countries, or for transporting drugs, camel races, and other perverse activities.
Clandestinely transporting young girls for religious conversions, from states that have adopted anti-conversion laws to safeguard their faith, culture, and dignity, is getting subverted cleverly by sending them to Kerala, where there is a safe environment, to indulge in conversion illegality. When Christian missionaries indulge in false rhetoric of their right to religious freedom to propagate, there is also the question of the right of Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains to defend their religion, culture, and dignity from assault by foreign faiths.
Another kind of religious conversion targeting young girls is the notorious Love Jihad, being indulged in by followers of Islam. Good-looking young girls from all non-Islamic communities, including Christians, are targeted and made scapegoats in false love affairs and sham marriages conducted after compulsory religious conversion to Islam. After repeated childbirths, most of these girls face divorce and abandonment. This kind of entrapment has assumed serious proportions all across India. Rape, sexual blackmail are also techniques adopted to convert women. For example, on July 30th, 2025, the Madhya Pradesh government presented data in the State Assembly that revealed more than 23,000 women and minors were currently missing across Madhya Pradesh. Also, 1,500 accused linked to rape and other crimes against women are yet to be apprehended. Several districts have emerged as major hotspots for missing women, with over 500 cases each. The highest is Sagar with 1,069 women reported missing, followed by Jabalpur with 946, Indore with 788, Bhopal (rural) with 688, Chhatarpur with 669, Rewa with 653, Dhar with 637, and Gwalior with 617. A staggering 43,272 females, including girls, had gone missing in Kerala from 2016 to 2021, and 40,450 (93%) of them were tracked down, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has said in its flagship report, Crime in India 2021. As many as 2,822 — 2,449 women and 373 girls — of them are yet to be tracked!
Unfortunately, many of these girls are often subjected to intense religious indoctrination by the two Abrahamic faiths, to increase their physical numbers, in order to bring about demographic changes which in turn would change the political landscape and election outcomes.
In order to control the clandestine conversion menace and safeguard indigenous faiths, many states have been compelled to introduce anti-conversion laws. Currently, there are 11 Indian states that have anti-conversion laws. These states are: Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, and Uttar Pradesh. These laws, also known as Freedom of Religion Acts, aim to regulate religious conversions and often prohibit conversions achieved through force, fraud, or inducement. But controlling fundamentalist missionaries and Islamic zealots is a formidable task.
Missionaries use their foreign-funded educational institutions, hospitals, and a formidable number of NGOs claiming to be engaged in a variety of social work, for shady conversions. Many are in reality front organizations for secret hawala transactions, clandestine human trafficking, and religious conversions. Current anti-conversion laws are totally inadequate to protect Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains from being hunted by fundamentalist conversion gangs operating with impunity across India.
Fresh conversion incidents and new modus operandi necessitate new laws to handle the fresh challenges. Girls being transported from one state to another need to be continuously tracked and monitored at both ends. Inter-religious marriages need more security features like no change of religion for a period of seven years from date of registration of the marriage, no pre-marriage conversion or post marriage conversion, no change of name, children born out of the marriage to be given religion neutral name, financial security for the girl, and in the event of divorce, adequate legal and financial protection needs to be put in place.
Similarly, it is imperative that all educational institutions and hospitals bear only religion-neutral names, and no idols or pictures of white European and American men and women, appointed as saints, be placed on the campus. At least the future progeny of India should not bow or kneel or pray to foreigners. Great vigil also needs to be maintained on the kind of names used in public thoroughfares. For example, in Kasaragod town in Kerala, there is a street named ‘Gaza Street’! Can anything be more abominable?
Desmond Tutu once said, “When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.” Tutu describes how many black Africans feel about the missionaries and their land grabbing. Recent findings, gleaned from the Government Land Information website, have brought to light a surprising revelation regarding land ownership in India. Contrary to previous assumptions, the Catholic Church of India now stands as the country’s second-largest landowner, trailing only behind the government itself. The Church’s vast land holdings, estimated at a staggering seven crore hectares (17.29 crore acres). The data, unveiled in May 2024, sheds light on the scale of the Catholic Church’s land portfolio, surpassing even the Waqf Board in terms of sheer size and value. While the government maintains its position as the largest landholder, the church’s extensive properties signify its significant surplus land acquisitions across the nation. Does a so-called ‘minority’ need such massive land?
The High Court of Kerala in Cardinal Mar George Alencherry vs State of Kerala, dated 27th October 2022, has observed “It is a fact that nobody will dare to touch on it or challenge it because of the political and religious power held by those institutions on account of the vote bank and it is quite easy for them to get pattayam over the said property”, in its order on a possible case of land grabbing by the Syro Malabar Church.
The Court has also urged the Central government to explore the possibility of uniform central legislation to regulate the functioning of religious and charitable organizations/ institutions” (CRL.MC NO. 8936 OF 2019). Perhaps it is time for the government to nationalize all land, as in the Vatican, where there is no private ownership of land, and also in China. Religious conversions should be made unprofitable.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
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