Muthu Govendar, a missionary from South Africa, affirms that thousands of grass roots level leaders are being trained at Bible schools across the North Indian states. “I have been here from 1999 and I really went to every corner of Punjab. I met the people, I met all the pastors, I met the churches and I saw the Believers.  I ministered in every corner of Punjab.” Govendar must consider himself lucky because foreign missionaries are not given visas by the Indian government. In response to an unstarred question (Number 969) in the Lok Sabha on February 27, 2001, the minister of state (Home) Vidyasagar Rao, responded that according to the data available as on December 31, 1999, the “total number of foreign missionaries registered in India are 1,375. He said “no new missionaries are allowed after 1984. However, short term visas are being issued to foreigners who are coming only in administrative capacity, to review working of their organisations etcetera.” Nityanandan, a Sri Lankan missionary who has been active in India since 1998, admitted to Tehelka that foreign missionaries do come to India on tourist visas. He even volunteered information about the arrest of a US missionary, Joseph W Cooper, in Kerala for evangelical activities. Not too worried about meeting the same fate, he was candid, saying: “We need to usher Jesus into the scene. We know this country … it is oppressed by Satanic powers and spirits. Demonincally… people are being bound. Many are demonically possessed. It is so hard to penetrate to the Gospel. Our plan is to teach and build every believer to be an intercessor.”

Like Nityananda, many foreign missionaries have criss-crossed Indian states in the last three years. Tehelka’s investigation has revealed that visiting US missionaries have personally ministered conversion rituals in various parts of the country. In the course of its undercover operation, Tehelka came across conversions being carried out by the North Indian Christian Mission (NICM) in rural Punjab. Pastor Deepak Dhingra, a Punjabi pastor, has 20 evangelists in the field and runs the NICM through them. He admits that every year foreign missionaries meet him and visit the places where NICM is active. Clad in a blue T-shirt, track pants and a baseball cap on his head, Dhingra was sprawled in the expansive living room of his bungalow in Panchkula near Chandigarh. Five servants hovered around him as he recounted his story to Tehelka. Twenty-six years ago, Dhingra converted to Christianity. He claims that his father, an IAS officer, asked him to leave home and died without seeing his son’s first child, a daughter. Dhingra, of course, had other plans: “I moved to Australia, Canada, US, New Zealand… thinking that now I am a Christian, I should go and live in Christian countries. When I lived in USA, my wife and I decided that those countries are not for us. We returned to India six years ago from America. Then we started preaching amongst all kinds of people.” Dhingra, has three kids and his wife, Simmi, is from a Sikh family. Dhingra’s journey back to India, however, was not the result of an innocuous decision. He and his family returned in 1997 along with a juicy partnership with a benevolent patron, the US (Indiana) based Eastview Christian Church. He runs the North Indian Christian Mission (NICM), which has an aggressive church planting strategy to build its church in every district over the next few years. But he knows it’s a tough ask. NICM is active in Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. Conversion is risky business, and Dhingra has survived murderous assaults. The last one was eight months ago in Rajpura, Punjab, during a conversion convention. But the faithful are not deterred. It is not easy business, and while some states are slow in yielding results, there are others that are far more responsive. Abraham told Tehelka categorically and it’s on tape: “In Andhra Pradesh, hundreds of Muslims are coming to the Lord. Islam does not appeal to their mind, especially after September 11.” Operation Agape’s estimate is that across India, “150 million Dalits and around 150 million from the other backward castes (OBC) are coming to the Lord.” http://archive.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=ts013004qaeda.asp&id=4