MUMBAI, India – Catholic leaders in India say claims by Hindu nationalists that Christians are conducting “forced conversions” is a “myth” after the publication of an article attacking the Church in a Hindu nationalist newspaper.

According to The Hindu – one of India’s leading newspapers – an editorial in Deepika published on September 15 was “part of a calculated conspiracy to undermine the Constitution by targeting Christians.”

Deepika is the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the leading Hindu nationalist organization of India, which is also connected to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has been the ruling party in the country since 2014.

The Hindu goes on to note that “the very communal movement which distanced itself from the freedom struggle and instead aided the British policy of division is continuing the same tactics even today.”

“Having stayed away from the Indian Independence movement and oiled the divisive machinery of the British, they still persist with the same agenda even after the nationalists drove away imperialism. The provocation for this can be the responses that the laws prohibiting religious conversion, which have been sharpened by BJP-ruled States recently, are indeed unconstitutional and should be challenged in court,” it said.

The editorial in The Hindu further remarks that while the BJP extends one hand towards Christians in Kerala, the other is busy advancing an entirely different agenda, something obvious even to those who fail to see it or pretend otherwise.

The article in Deepika was written against the backdrop of the arrest of two Kerala nuns in the state of Chhattisgarh earlier this year. The writer targets the Christian community over alleged religious conversions that have happened in the country over these years.

The article levels serious allegations against the Church and its leadership, claiming that attempts are under way in several States to alter the country’s legal framework to facilitate conversions.

The Congress party in Kerala too, has condemned the RSS for “anti-Christian stance” in the article, alleging hatred and targeting of minorities.

Father Paul Thelakat, the former spokesperson of the Church in Kerala, said the RSS is an organization which is communal and divisive.

“It is the myth of religious conversion that the Hindutva forces use to attack the Christians of India,” he told Crux.

“The accusation against the two sisters arrested in Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh was the unfounded allegation of human trafficking and forced religious conversion. This will happen anywhere in India for anyone whom a crowd Hindutva organization targets as malicious by their ideology,” the priest explained.

“Allegations of the political crowds are becoming laws for they govern the police stations. Here in India the communal antipathy of the ruling party governs the country, facts are created by the party,” Thelakat continued.

“There are no objective facts, as Orwell said if the Party says 2+2=5 it is no more 4. Thousands of nuns and priests have taught millions of students in Kerala and the rest of India in schools there was no conversion accusation,” he said.

“The important question: Do the Hindutva party of its umbrella organizations believe in the Constitution? Do they believe in equality and fraternity? Do they take the minority communities as having equal rights with the majority? Right wing religious hegemony has watered down Constitutional rights; intolerance is ruling Indian democracy,” the priest said.

Thelakat said Hindutva parties live and flourish on divisive policies of communal hatred.

“Some leaders in the church have compromised their Christian conscience for personal and institutional gains. Many bishops are silent and afraid of being politically targeted and unethically victimized by law-enforcing agencies of the Hindutva Government machinery,” he claimed.