I looked up Pillai's bio

Submitted by Devasahayam (United States), May 17, 2008 at 08:41

He was a Malayali convert to Catholicism (rather oddly, Devasahayam is actually not a common name amongst Malayali Catholics, but amongst Tamil and Telugu Protestants).

Even today, many Hindus show strong reluctance when a relative embraces Christ, manifested in:

• effective house-arrest (except for going to work), as I actually observed in Bengaluru in 2000 (in this case, the arrested always managed to have "late work" on Saturday evening so he could come to the LEF's Fasting Prayer--as he could NOT attend Sunday services)
• Ostracism from family members
• garnishment of wealth
• Non-lethal forcible attempt at inducement, as was done to a 19th Century Andhra (specifically rural West Godavari District) farmer named N. Veeraswamy (1)--who was also subjected to ostracism and denial of wealth (his family was fabulously wealthy, in what was then the district which produced the most tax revenues of British India); his response to it afterwards MAY have left something to be desired--as he never allowed immediate-family members to mention the wealth

And more recently, some states (mostly ruled by BJP, but the first one to do so was not) (2) have enacted ham-handed anti-conversion laws.

1. N. Veeraswamy (died 1935) was the father of LEF founder N. Daniel and grandfather of current LEF leader (aged 80 years as of February) Joshua "Joe" Daniel. It is not known exactly how he came to Christ.
2. First state to enact such stupid law was Tamil Nadu in 2003, ruled by tawdry termagant ex-actress Jayalalitha known to Christians (including this one) as Jayazebel who isn't even religious (as most religions DO have issues on corruption, of which Jayazebel has been one of the grossest examples). The other states (Gujarat, MP, Rajasthan) to do so all have Hindu-fanatic BJP governments.

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