Mumbai (AsiaNews) – Uddhav Thackeray, leader of the Hindu fundamentalist party Shiv Sena (SS or Army of Shiva), presided over a ceremony in Melghat (Amravati district in central Maharashtra state) in which four Adivasi or Tribals 'were re-converted' to Hinduism.

In his speech, the SS's president mocked attempts by Christian missioners to proselytise and said that "if they do not stop exploiting poor and illiterate Adivasi, we shall show them what the SS is all about".

Unfortunately, this, as many other re-conversion ceremonies before, was a staged event designed to foment hatred against the Christian community.

According to Mgr Edwin Colaco, Catholic Bishop of Amravati, both 'conversion' and 're-conversion' in Melghat were fabrications.

Speaking to AsiaNews, the Bishop said that a local newspaper reported the story of "four Adivasi being baptised in a river in the Melghat area" with a big photo spread of the event. However, the whole thing was staged.

As he wrote in the letter he sent to the paper's editor to protest against 'false reporting', the Bishop said that "the Adivasi in question did not convert to Roman Catholicism and the local Catholic Church had nothing to do with the baptism".

According to Church officials in Amravati, the SS (an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party, India's former ruling party) is desperately trying to regain lost political ground.

Some analysts see in the SS's campaign a 'political expedient' to woo Adivasi in the interior regions of Maharashtra into the fundamentalist fold.

Part of the problem might be that the Diocese of Amravati is deeply involved in health and food assistance programmes for the Adivasi, so much so that Thackerey said that the SS was keen on holding talks with Christian missioners on issues such as malnutrition, deprivation and illiteracy in Melghat.

"Missioners have a network of agents," he said, "who fan out among Adivasi settlements where they distribute food and medicines. Then comes the preaching part", he claimed. (NC)