“Even if a case is filed against me, accusing me of indulging in conversion, for providing education and healthcare to the Dalits and the marginalised, I would continue with those good works,” Bangalore Archbishop Peter Machado has said.

Without mincing words, he said, “no government can stop us from doing good works; no one can challenge us.”

In a hard-hitting speech, the Archbishop challenged the government to come out with the data on the number of children converted in Christian educational institutions.

He was speaking at a function to felicitate Baselios Marthoma Mathews III, the Catholicos of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, in Bengaluru.

With a few months left for the Assembly elections in Karnataka, the Archbishop’s speech is seen as a sign of the community’s approach to the ruling party and the government’s policies against Christians. 

Archbishop Machado slammed the fundamentalists for playing petty politics and spreading fake news that teaching Bible has been made compulsory at Clarence school in Bengaluru.

Earlier, the Archbishop, who is also the head of the All Karnataka United Christian Forum for Human Rights, had called the anti-conversion law “dangerous” and termed it a “sad chapter for the Christian community.”

He had also written to Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai appealing not to promote the “undesirable and discriminatory” Bill.