India's Christians and Muslims cry foul over Hindu crusade for converts

By his count, Vyankatesh Abdeo has helped to convert 700,000 Indian Christians and Muslims to Hinduism in the past two decades. Yet he would describe it slightly differently.

"It is not conversion; it is reconversion," Abdeo, national secretary of the pro-Hindu organisation, Vishva Hindu Parishad, said. "A 1,000 years ago, all Muslims and Christians in India were Hindu. They were converted by the sword. We are just bringing them back."

Hindu fundamentalists, claiming that Christian missionaries and Muslim conquerors centuries ago converted Indians by force, have for years quietly sought to win them back. This year, seemingly invigorated by the rise of a right-wing Hindu government in New Delhi, they have held mass reconversion "camps", including some where people claim they were duped or threatened into changing faiths.

The effort has grabbed headlines and put pressure on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who once worked for the main Hindu nationalist organisation backing the conversion drive. Opposition lawmakers disrupted Parliament for two weeks demanding that Modi speak out on the issue, but so far he has remained quiet.

Modi's allies said his governing Bharatiya Janata Party did not condone conversions obtained by force or fraud, which are illegal in India. But his refusal to distance himself from the hardliners has led to critics accusing the party of pro-Hindu bias and added to a series of controversies that have overshadowed his efforts to jump-start India's economy since taking office in May.