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A spate of Sikh conversions to Christianity in Punjab, particularly in the border belt adjoining Pakistan, has rocked the Sikh community provoking a furore among the religious and political outfits. The Sikh representative party, the Akali Dal, is now seeking an Anti Conversion Act in Punjab on the pattern of Tamil Naidu.
Alarmed at the reported incidents of Sikhs adopting Christianity, the Sikh missionaries from the apex sikh shrines management body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC) at Amritsar have spread out into villages in the border belt of Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts, where most of conversions have taken place, asking Sikhs to refrain from following Christianity.
Ironically, while there have been
some cases of genuine conversions , there are also a large number of Sikhs
who are going to the churches with the belief that special prayers resulted
in mitigating mental and physical ailments.
Harbeant Singh, Secretary of the
SGPC said some Sikhs were embracing Christianity out of illiteracy and
financial problems too. The SGPC has now launched an awareness campaign
among Sikhs against superstitions and practice of following Christianity
in the hope of miraculous healing and solutions of problems.
The 72 Sikh families from Machhiwara
village in Ludhiana district who converted to Christianity over the past
few years have a similar tale of miraculous healings to tell after they
embraced the new religion.
It is no coincidence however, that
most of the Sikh families adopting Christianity are dalits, perched at
the lowest rung of the social ladder.
Aware of the sensitivity of the
issue and its potential fall-out in the Sikh majority state, the Christian
organizations have gone into a denial mode. The Bishop of Diocese of Amritsar,
Church of North India, P K Samantharoy has written to the Prime Minister
seeking his immediate intervention "in the matter of flaring up of communal
feelings on the basis of false conversion reports in the media by politically
motivated communal forces”.
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