Ramification | Nepal: The sinister geopolitical agenda behind religious conversions and zealous missionary action

On April 7 of this year, the Ministry of Home Affairs, Nepal, instructed 77 district administration offices to rein in religious conversion. According to them, there were several organisations as well as foreign nationals that were holding religious conferences and conversion programmes across the country.

Even though Article 26 of the Constitution of Nepal (2015) states, “Every person who has faith in religion shall have the freedom to profess, practice, and protect his or her religion according to his or her conviction," this freedom has limitations. Clause 3 of Article 26 states, “No person shall, in the exercise of the right conferred by this Article, do, or cause to be done, any act which may be contrary to public health, decency, and morality, or breach public peace, or convert another person from one religion to another, or any act or conduct that may jeopardise the other’s religion, and such act shall be punishable by law.”

Furthermore, Articles 158(1) and 158(2) of Nepal’s National Penal (Code) Act, 2017, criminalise converting and attempting to convert, irrespective of inducement. The fine for violation of these articles is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years and a fine of up to 50,000 Nepalese rupees.

According to a report released by the National Christian Community Survey (NCCS) in 2022, there are over 683,261 Christians and 7,758 churches in the country. They claimed that this was data that included the churches that followed the Apostles’ faith and the Catholic community. Though many other Christian organisations in response suggested that the number of Christians in the country was much higher, the National Christian Federation of Nepal stated that the number was closer to 3 million.

The number is staggering, not in regard to the total population of Nepal, which is approximately 30.5 million, but because of how quickly the conversion process has taken place. In the 1950s, the number of Christians in Nepal was less than 30. Even though Christian missions in Nepal had been set up as early as 1715 by Capuchin friars from Italy, the mission did not achieve any real success, with missionaries finding a real chance again only in the 1990s. By 2001, the number of 30 had jumped to 102,000, and a decade later, it had tripled to 375,000.

With the fall of the monarchy (which had expelled Christians to India under the rule of King Prithvi Narayan Shah in 1765–1799) and the victory of the Maoists came the establishment of a new secular multiparty state. Religion became a political debate as secularism formed a central point of demand for the Maoists. Religious freedom and missionary activity found space in the new system adopted by Nepal. This change resulted in a surge in Christian conversions. A 2013 report by Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary found that Nepal’s church was the fastest-growing in the world, with 10.9 per cent annual growth and constituting 10 per cent of the country’s population. Many analysts observing Nepal’s demography argue that these numbers are perhaps more reliable, as the census in Nepal reports demographic change.

While it can be argued that the economic status or orthodox sociocultural positions of Hindu society propelled the rate of conversion, it is equally true that there seems to be a growing interest in Nepal by Western countries. Dalit and tribal communities account for nearly 65 per cent of Christians in Nepal. What demands attention is that this target population is being earmarked for conversion. In India too, during the British colonisation of the country, it was the same communities that were seen to be easier to convert. An interesting correspondence between David Scott, a British officer in India, and W B Bayley, secretary to the British government in 1825, gives a revealing insight on why these communities were targeted. Scott wrote, “The great error of the missionaries appears to me to be that of directing their attention to polished natives instead of rude tribes who are still in that state of national childhood." The Machiavellian ways of the colonisers in India seem to be repeating themselves in Nepal—a different era but the same context.

After the massacre of the royal family of Nepal in 2001, Pope Benedict XVI elevated the Church of Nepal to a vicariate on February 10, 2007. In 2014, the then-British ambassador to Nepal, Andrew Sparkes, in an article in the English daily Republica advised Nepal’s constituent assembly members to ensure that “the right to change one’s religion is protected” under the new constitution.

Not only was Sparkes called out for his breach of diplomatic conduct and blatant interference in Nepal’s internal affairs, but also for wanting a clear path for proselytising by Christian missionaries in the country. In 2018, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), headed by American Professor Robert Goldman, published a report funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Panel of Parliamentarians for Freedom of Religion and Belief, and the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. The report titled Challenges to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Nepal quoted a Pew report stating that “Hindu politicians made speeches attacking the ’epidemic’ of conversions and Christians who sought to ‘convert’ Hindus, and local communities in the Kathmandu Valley opposed burials by perceived ‘outsiders’, making it difficult for Protestant churches to access land they had bought years earlier.”

Reportedly, unlawful restrictions by the government on the freedom of religion were also on the rise. Some of these unlawful restrictions include laws relating to “proselytism” and “blasphemy”. The Constitution of Nepal, as well as the new Penal Code, 2017, which comes into force in August 2018, retain a range of provisions prohibiting and criminalising “proselytism” in a manner that is incompatible with international standards. Similarly, the new Penal Code contains a number of vague and overly broad “anti blasphemy” provisions that criminalise “hurting religious sentiment and feelings”.

These laws are similar to “blasphemy laws” that exist elsewhere in the region, including in India, Pakistan, and Myanmar, where their enforcement has resulted in widespread abuse, particularly because these so-called religious offences have been instrumental in the persecution of people belonging to minority religions.

The 2023 United States Commission for Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report also slammed Nepal by giving an overview of religious freedom conditions in the country and examining how Nepal’s criminalisation of proselytism, blasphemy, and cow slaughter violates protections for the right to freedom of religion or belief under international human rights law. It also examines how legal impediments outside of the constitution and the National Penal (Code) Act, 2017, violate the right to freedom of religion or belief under international human rights law.

Furthermore, this year, an ‘atheism’ agenda by the US was revealed by Congressman Brian Mast, who questioned spending by the US State Department of half a million dollars to promote atheism in Nepal. The funds were allegedly given to organisations to promote atheism.

The undue interest of Western Christian countries in Nepal’s internal matters and their apparent panic against provisions in Nepal’s Constitution and Nepal’s National Penal Code against proselytisation are concerning but not perplexing. The truth behind the panic is that Western countries continue to virtue signal and pressure Nepal in order to gain dominance over the unique geo-strategic position of the Himalayan nation. With China’s growing influence on the country, the stakes are high for countries like the US. Perhaps the promotion of proselytisation could be seen as a crucial arm of Western foreign policy. While Nepal feels that the advantage taken by missionaries in a country that struggles with poverty and remote populations creates social conflict, the agenda behind proselytisation may be far more sinister.

Rami Niranjan Desai is an anthropologist and a scholar of the northeast region of India. She is a columnist and author and presently Distinguished Fellow at India Foundation, New Delhi. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.