Tuesday, December 15, 2009

How others convert to Hinduism?

We all know how institutionalized the process of conversion to other religions like Christianity and Islam is. But many of us are not aware of the exact process to convert to Hinduism.

Most of the time even if someone from other faith expresses his/her willingness to know about conversion to Hinduism, we ourselves are not able to tell and explain the process to them. It is time we keep ourselves aware enough.

I think though Hinduism didn’t have this concept of in and out as conversion, now situation demanded us to make a systematic attempt in this regard. I came to know that Arya Samaj has been hugely successful in this area.

I read that Government has authorized Arya Samaj to convert (or reconvert) people into Hinduism and the organization even issues certificates to the converts. They do suddhi (purification) ceremony along with Vedic rites and welcome the person to our dharma.

Such converts are not given any caste as such and this is a good thing because castes were more of a social system and our original texts didn’t prescribe birth-based castes.

The converts who went out of Hinduism should seriously think about returning back. If they had heart to do the sin (in a way) by converting to other religions after being misled and persuaded, they should also have the courage to repent and correct themselves.

If we come to know of anyone willing to convert to Hinduism, we should try to make him/her get in touch with local branch of Arya Samaj.

(Please correct me if I am wrong. I got to know about Arya Samaj being authorized for conversion by reading articles on the net. We would also like to know if there are other organisations too who can convert/recovert others into Hinduism.)

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