(UCA News) -- Walk up to any tea stall in a small town in northern or western India and mention Christian missionaries, and you are likely to hear tales of mass conversions, foreign money, and vulnerable tribals being lured away from their ancestral faith.
Politicians amplify these stories, promising to protect Hindu dharma from this supposed invasion. Anti-conversion laws multiply across states like wildfire, each more restrictive than the last.
Yet here is what nobody wants to acknowledge: the great Christian conversion wave is largely a mirage. The numbers do not lie, even when the rhetoric does. Christians comprised 2.3 percent of India's population in 2011 -- when the last national census was held -- virtually unchanged from 2.6 percent in 1971.
If missionaries were truly running conversion factories across rural India, would we not see dramatic demographic shifts after decades of alleged activity? Instead, Christianity's share has remained essentially flat for seventy years -- a statistical reality that punctures the balloon of conversion hysteria.
This stability is not accidental. It reflects deeper demographic truths that political opportunists conveniently ignore. Christian families in India average fewer children than Hindu or Muslim families -- just two children per woman compared to 2.1 for Hindus and 2.6 for Muslims.
Christian communities also skew older, which naturally limits population growth. Any conversions that do occur are mathematically offset by lower birth rates and aging demographics.
But let us be honest about what conversion actually looks like on the ground. When it happens -- and Pew Research suggests only 0.4 percent of Indians are Hindu-to-Christian converts -- it is rarely the dramatic village-wide transformation of political imagination. More often, it is a Dalit family seeking dignity in a church that treats them as equals, or tribal communities accessing education through mission schools when government facilities remain absent or inadequate.
The cruel irony is that conversion often comes with devastating social costs. Dalits who embrace Christianity lose access to reservation benefits, creating a perverse incentive to remain officially Hindu regardless of personal belief. Many converts face ostracism, employment discrimination, and social isolation. Some maintain dual identities, worshipping as Christians while identifying as Hindus on official documents to preserve their livelihoods and safety.
This reality exposes the true nature of India's conversion anxiety. It is not really about demographics or religious freedom -- it is about power and the fear of losing it. Christian institutions have long filled gaps in India's social infrastructure, running schools and hospitals that serve everyone regardless of faith.
When these institutions empower marginalized communities through education and healthcare, they threaten entrenched hierarchies that depend on keeping certain groups dependent and voiceless.
Consider this uncomfortable truth: if government schools and hospitals adequately served Dalit and tribal communities, would the appeal of conversion for practical benefits exist? The obsession with criminalizing conversion conveniently deflects attention from systemic failures that make religious change attractive in the first place.
Anti-conversion laws, now enacted in 11 states, reveal their true purpose through their implementation. Vaguely worded and broadly interpreted, they have become weapons against interfaith marriages, prayer meetings, and social work by Christian organizations.
The elderly Jesuit priest, Stan Swamy, died in custody facing terrorism charges simply for advocating tribal rights -- a chilling example of how conversion allegations can criminalize legitimate social activism.
These laws do not protect the vulnerable; they endanger the innocent. Church gatherings are disrupted by vigilante groups emboldened by legal cover. Pastors face arrest for baptizing willing converts. Interfaith couples are harassed and separated. The very communities these laws claim to protect -- Dalits and tribal people -- lose access to education and healthcare when Christian institutions are forced to curtail their activities.
The political calculation is cynical but effective. Manufacturing fear about conversion mobilizes voters without addressing real issues like poverty, unemployment, or social inequality. It is easier to blame foreign missionaries for India's problems than to fix inadequate governance or confront uncomfortable truths about caste discrimination.
Meanwhile, the demographic reality remains unchanged. Christianity continues its centuries-old presence as a small, stable minority navigating increasingly hostile political terrain. The supposed conversion crisis exists primarily in political rhetoric and WhatsApp forwards, not in census data or ground realities.
India's founders understood something that today's politicians seem to forget: religious freedom requires protecting everyone's right to practice their faith without coercion -- including the right to change faiths if they choose.
Coercive conversion is already illegal under existing criminal laws. Additional restrictions serve no purpose except to intimidate minorities and score political points.
The great conversion myth reveals more about India's anxieties than its realities. Until we are willing to confront the social inequalities that make religious change attractive and the political incentives that make conversion fears useful, we will remain trapped in manufactured controversies while real problems fester unaddressed.