BHUBANESWAR, India (UCAN) -- Nika Pradhan is 71 and very tired. However, the Protestant says it is not age but what he underwent at the hands of Hindu fanatics that has sapped him.

Nika Pradhan (center) and two others seek help on Sept. 16 from a Church of North India church in Cuttack, to file complaints with the police about their forcible conversion to Hinduism.

The extremists put a sword to his throat, shaved his head, bathed him in a river and declared him a Hindu. Several others in his Panasapadi village in Orissa state's Kandhamal district went through the same ordeal.

"I'm a Christian since birth, but have to fight to practice my faith," Pradhan told UCA News in Cuttack, an ancient city in Orissa, 1,725 kilometers southeast of New Delhi. He fled there seeking help from the Church.

Catholic and Protestant Church workers say hundreds of Christians were forcibly converted to Hinduism amid the anti-Christian violence that has wracked the state since Aug. 24. In some cases, mobs forced entire parishes to embrace Hinduism.

Pradhan shared his experiences in the local Oriya language only after much persuasion. "They (the Hindu fanatics) were rude. They were violent," he recalled. Two Protestant youths with shaven heads sat with Pradhan on a cot on the second floor of a church building, where leaders discussed legal options.

The elderly man said fanatics entering his village on Aug. 25, two days after gunmen killed Hindu religious leader Swami Laxmananda Saraswati and four associates. Maoists claimed responsibility but Hindu radical groups blamed Christians for the murders and have since attacked the community. The 85-year-old Hindu leader, based in Kandhamal district, worst hit by the violence, had for several decades opposed conversions to Christianity.

Pradhan recounted that the attackers also forced him and the other Christian villagers to sign a document that declared Christian missioners converted them promising money and material. The document alleged missioners had trapped them but they were now "coming back" to Hinduism voluntarily after realizing their mistake.

He also recalled the Hindu zealots chanting aloud while he and others bathed in the river to symbolize being "purified" of the "Christian dirt" that had polluted them.

In Cuttack, the Church of North India, a Protestant union, is helping Pradhan and others file complaints with the police about their forcible conversion to Hinduism. Pradhan asserts he has the right to live the faith he was born into and will battle it out in court. The youths with him nodded their consent.

In Bhubaneswar, the Orissa capital, 25 kilometers south of Cuttack, a similar scene unfolded at the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Catholic archbishop's residence.

Thomas Digal, 36, and Brahmanand Digal, 41, came there from Kandhamal's Dimiriguda village on Sept. 13 with a list of items Hindu extremists gave them to buy for a conversion ceremony set for two days later. The zealots told the Catholics to come prepared for the ritual or face death, along with a third option: move out of the area.

"What to do? What will we tell them?" asked an agitated Father Dushmanth Naik, who formerly served at their parish, as he spoke with UCA News. "We cannot provide them security. It is not easy to tell them to face death with families. We have no alternatives."

The village is among 12 mission stations under Pobingia parish. Kandhamal lies within the territory of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar archdiocese.

The current Pobingia parish priest, Father Prasanna Singh, told UCA News on Sept. 16 that he had "no idea" what happened to his people after the planned Hindu conversion ceremony. "I do not know. I have no information," he said.

He had said three days earlier that most of the 100 Catholic families in his parish had left the faith. "I have become a pastor without a flock, and they have become a flock without a pastor," the priest lamented.

The Hindu "conversion" campaign continues in all 14 Catholic parishes in Kandhamal where no Masses have been held since the violence started. Hindu militants have banned priests and other Church workers from these areas. The seven other parishes in the district have held Mass only on Sundays, amid an atmosphere of fear.

Father E.A. Thomas of the archdiocese is one of the lawyers arranging legal help for those who were forcibly converted. "People are just succumbing to pressure," he told UCA News, and "will come back when things are settled." The lawyer-priest acknowledged the violence has "badly affected" the Church.

Church sources confirmed 32 deaths, mostly Christians, as the violence entered its fourth week. They report 4,028 houses, 96 churches and 14 other Christian institutions in Orissa have been destroyed.

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