Non-believers were purified by making them wear Sachin masks for many hours (Image via firstpost.com)
The RSS affiliated Dharma Jagran Manch may be facing the heat over alleged conversions of people to Hinduism by offering inducements but its sister body, the Sachin Sanathan Sabha, a sect propagating devotion to the God of cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, has won all-round praise for reconverting people back to being Sachin fans.
The convener of the outfit, Shashank Barve, said they had recently converted a Chris Gayle fan back to being a Sachin bhakt in a ‘ghar wapasi’ campaign. “This guy Vijay Mazumdar had stopped following the religion of his dad and grandfather, and was aping Chris Gayle instead. His mind had been thoroughly contaminated with false ideas like “sweet azz” and impure rituals like grooving in a weird way to Gangnam Style had crept into his life. So we had an uphill task with this guy. It didn’t help matters either that he started following cricket only after the 2011 World Cup, coinciding with the last leg of God’s career and His seemingly comical quest for that 100th 100.”
“However, we go about our job with dogged determination,” the Sachin Sanathan Sabha convener continued. “Unlike other outfits, we don’t offer inducements like BPL cards and land. We bombarded the guy with footage of God’s 1998 Sharjah innings to make him see the true path.”
Sometimes, the Sachin Sanathan Sabha runs into highly intelligent and annoyingly stubborn Sachin detractors who raise awkward points like “Sachin never batted well under pressure”, “his second innings average was poor”, “Sachin pales before Viv Richards”, “Sachin was selfish, playing for records”, “Sachin sucked as skipper”.
“Initially, we were stumped and didn’t know how to counter these infidels,” Barve recalled of those early forays. “Then one our members built this beautiful site, sachinandcritics.com, to counter fire with fire, statistics with counter-statistics, spin with counter spin. Thanks to such tools, we have a better re-conversion rate. We even managed to convert a Dravid fan in Bangalore.”
The “ghar wapasi” campaign has won all-round appreciation, from even the CPIM’s Sitaram Yechury and AIMIM’s Assaduddin Owaisi. “My atheism is only limited to conventional religion. I have no issues with people being reconverted to following the God of cricket. The Left cadre can also assist in these “Sachin ghar wapasi” campaigns,” Mr Yechury said.
(With inputs from Anand Walunjkar)