Set Yearly Targets to Bring Back Converted Hindus Into Fold, Says Tejasvi Surya

Clips of the live stream of the BJP MP delivering the over an hour-long speech, chiefly against Islam and Christianity, have been shared multiple times on social media.

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party MP Tejasvi Surya has given a call to “bring back within Hindu fold” everyone who has gone out of it, like Christians and Muslims.

In a one hour 20 minute-long video in which he speaks primarily in Kannada, Surya gives out calls for preventing religious conversion. Clips of the video have been shared multiple times on social media. Some YouTube channels also have the video of the full speech, which was streamed live and which Surya delivered at a programme of the Sri Krishna Mutt in Udupi on December 25.

“Either by threat or allurement, the Hindu has been taken out from his mother religion. There is only one possible solution…to address this anomaly…those people who have left their mother religion and have for various socio-political, economic reasons over the course of India’s history…those who have gone out of the Hindu fold must be brought back in whole, brought back into the Hindu faith, brought back to the mother faith,” says Surya, noting that this is the only solution to the “demograph” problem.

Surya also says that religious houses should have “yearly targets” for the number of people they have to return to the Hindu fold. Such an effort must be taken up on war footing, he said.

The News Minute has quoted from the Kannada part of his speech to note that Surya went on to say that the “re-conversion to Hinduism” must happen on Tipu Jayanti, and that ‘this ghar wapsi’ is the “responsibility of Hindus.”

Through the speech, Surya also criticises various aspects of Muslim and Christian faith.

“We have built Ram Mandir in this country. Article 370 of Jammu and Kashmir is done away with. We should convert the Muslims of Pakistan to Hinduism. We have to prioritise ghar wapsi. Pakistan is included in the idea of Akhanda Bharath,” he said, according to The Quint.

“Have those, who are urging to celebrate Tipu Jayanti, urged to celebrate Kalam Jayanti or Shishunala Sharifa Jayanti? This is the difference,” he additionally asked.

Surya’s exhortations come in the direct aftermath of a very contested anti-conversion law having been pushed through Karnataka assembly by the BJP government of the state. The bill had seen pitched opposition from Christians. In the recent past, rightwing Hindutva outfits have been disrupting prayers and Christmas celebrations across Karnataka.

This is not the first time that Tejasvi Surya has been blatantly communal. Among several instances of anti-Muslim dog-whistling, Surya recently was among those who targeted Fabindia’s Diwali “Jashn-e-Riwaaz” ad in a post on Twitter. At the height of the second wave of COVID-19, 17 Muslim employees were fired from the COVID war room in Bengaluru after Surya blamed them for corruption in bed allotment after a viral WhatsApp message with their names was circulated. The Wire had reported that it soon became clear that these employees had nothing to do with the allotment.

Last year, as The Wire had reported, his pre-parliamentary bigotry appeared to have caused the establishment so much diplomatic grief that the Indian government asked Twitter to effectively take down one of his tweets from 2015 that linked Islam with terrorists.