The proposed restrictions would require NGOs to use an Aadhaar card, a biometric electronic document, in order to conduction financial transactions with foreign sources. The government would also be given sweeping power to stop NGOs from using foreign funds by ordering a summary enquiry of the NGO’s finances.

As the proposed restrictions were debated in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha, members of the BJP used an anti-Christian conspiracy theory to justify the government’s actions. These BJP members claimed that foreign funds were being used by Christians to fraudulently convert Hindus to Christianity.

“We know what happened in the Northeast, how things have changed in the last fifty years, and how a particular religion has become prominent,” BJP leader SP Singh said. Singh went on to claim that foreign donations could also be correlated with civil unrest in India’s Northeast.

Hindu nationalists frequently use the spectre of fraudulent religious conversions to pass laws and regulations that limit religious freedom. According to these nationalists, Indian Christians are accused of converting poor Hindus to Christianity in mass by fraudulent means. Due to growing religious intolerance, many radical Hindu nationalists view almost all religious conversions to non-Hindu faiths as forced or fraudulent.

Nevertheless, official data show that the percentage of Christians in the Indian population remained stable since 1951. Christians have comprised of two or three per cent of the population since then. What’s more, no Christian has been convicted of forced conversions in India despite the fact that anti-conversion laws have existed since 1967.

Source: persecution.org