Union Minister of State for Railways and Food Processing Industries Ravneet Singh Bittu openly endorsed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh at a gathering in Rajpura and declared the organisation’s next mission would be to “bring back Sikhs who had converted to Christianity” in Punjab.
Addressing a gathering in Rajpura last week, Bittu said that after the RSS played a significant role in eliminating Maoists across the country, the organisation would now turn its focus to Punjab. He predicted that within five years, the RSS would ensure that Sikhs who had converted to Christianity would be brought back into the Sikh fold.
The minister endorsed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day remarks praising the RSS, saying the Sangh had been instrumental in shaping India’s national outlook.
Bittu’s comments come two months after senior RSS officials gathered in Delhi from July 4-6 for their annual Prant Pracharak meeting, where Punjab was a key focus due to rising concern over missionary activity and conversions from Sikhism to Christianity. According to media reports, the RSS planned to form a Sikh-Hindu preacher network to counter missionary influence, with efforts to reconnect with converts and promote Sikh-Hindu values among Dalits through village events and cultural programmes.
The RSS strategy allegedly involves countering miracle healing claims among Dalit and poor communities by deploying preachers to establish village-level presence through household visits, community centres, and local panchayats, alongside outreach through local deras and national gatherings of Hindu saints.
The Sikh community has consistently rebuffed the Sangh Parivar’s attempts to co-opt their religion into the Hindu fold. The RSS formed the Rashtriya Sikh Sangat in 1985, initially to focus on spreading the message of a shared Sikh and Hindu heritage, but critics argue its true aims were to propagate the inseparability of Sikhs and Hindus and to “attack and swallow the Sikh religion”.
In 2002, when the Sangat planned recitation of the Granth Sahib in Hindu temples in Punjab, the Jathedar, or Head, of Akal Takht, Sikhism’s most important temporal institution, declared, “In its outlook the RSS is like Aurangzeb (the last Mughal emperor). The latter wanted to convert everyone to Islam, either by sword or otherwise. Similarly, the RSS also wants to convert everybody to Hinduism. Its ideology is dangerous not only for the Sikhs but for all other religions.”
Academic scholars have criticised reconversion campaigns, known as ‘Ghar Wapsi’ or homecoming. One analysis argues that the Hindutva drive to “reconvert” Muslims and Christians to Hinduism is essentially about shoring up the numerical strength and political power of the “Hindu community” and has little connection to religious persuasion. Experts note that mass conversions to Hinduism are often seen as being “promoted rather than restricted”, despite several states having controversial laws placing restrictions on mass conversions from Hinduism.
The minister’s statements created what local media described as a “furore” in political circles.
*Article image extracted from here.
