The Angami Baptist Church Council (ABCC) in it’s Council Meeting on February 27, 2024 strongly denounced the motive behind the ‘Assam Healing (Prevention of Evil) Practices Bill 2024’ which was recently introduced in the Assam Assembly. The Bill is said to aim at ‘eliminating non-scientific healing practices’ and seeks to criminalize ‘magical healing’. Chairing the Cabinet the Honorable Chief Minister, Himanta Biswa Sarma said, “Whoever is Muslim, should remain Muslim. Whoever is Christian, should remain Christian.
And whoever is Hindu, let them remain Hindu so that a proper balance can be achieved in our state.” He further said, “We are going to pilot this bill because we believe the religious status quo is very important for a proper balance.”
So far so good, until in the same context he said that the bill would be an important milestone to curb evangelism in Assam. The Council is deeply disturbed by such blatant religious bigotry from a leading figure of the North East whose leadership and influence has far reaching effect in the region he represents and beyond. The Honorable Chief Minister’s statement is self-contradictory, misleading, discriminatory and has serious communal overtones, and it plainly reflects the motive of the bill. This bill is nothing less than an attempt to target Christians whose long historical wholistic endeavour of serving humanity and upliftment of the poor, the marginalized and the downtrodden is an indisputable fact.
It may be noted that Christian healing ministry involves both scientific as well as divine practices (through prayer), and we pray to God, the Creator and the Sustainer of life for physical, emotional, and spiritual healing, but this has nothing to do with ‘magical healing’. What is more misleading is to equate ‘magical healing’ with proselytization.
Christians pray to God for healing in response to human suffering and pain; not to proselytize.
ABCC asserts that such discriminatory statements cannot bring about ‘religious status quo’ and achieve ‘proper balance’, rather it will simply alienate us from each other and further polarize communities. The Council prays that the sister-states of the North East India exemplify what it means to live in peaceful co-existence and show the way in a nation marred by division and intolerance.
Rev. Dr. Rachülie Vihienuo
Executive Director, ABCC
Kohima, February 29, 2024