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| Wednesday, 8 October 2003 |
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Indian Buddhists vow conversion drive after controversial ceremony AHMEDABAD, India, Tuesday (AFP) An Indian Buddhist group vowed Monday to try to convert all low-caste Hindus in communally sensitive Gujarat state after 30,000 people embraced Buddhism in a ceremony opposed by Hindu hardliners. The All India Buddhists Association's chief in the western province, Bhante Sangh Priye, said the group had expected 100,000 members of Hinduism's lowest caste, the Dalits, at the mass conversion in Baroda, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of here. "We faced stiff opposition from the government and police but we still managed to convert 30,000 Dalits," Priye said. "We are going to go ahead with our conversion programme despite all the restraints. By 2005, we will convert all the Dalits and tribals to Buddhism in Gujarat," Priye said. He said Baroda's district magistrate, who is the top local administrator, had refused to give permission to the public event. "We were expecting over a lakh (100,000) of Dalits to turn up but many did not come because they feared they would be attacked," Priye said. He said the threats came from members of far-right Hindu groups, which share ideological ties with Gujarat's government. Gujarat's state assembly, led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, earlier this year passed a bill to require official approval for all conversions. Provincial Law Minister Ashok Bhatt said it was unclear whether the Buddhist ceremony was illegal as the bill on conversions was still being processed by the home ministry and not yet put on the books. Gujarat was the scene last year of India's worst communal riots in a decade, in which around 2,000 people died, mostly Muslims. Millions of Dalits abandoned Hinduism for Buddhism, which does not recognise caste, after Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit active in India's independence movement, converted in 1956. |
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