Panaji: The re-conversion controversy may have created "communalism hotspots" elsewhere in India, but the strategy of the "divisive forces" will fall flat in Goa, state Congress chief Luizinho Faleiro told media here Monday.
Commenting on the re-conversion controversy and whether it would have any ramification in Goa, a state which has a 26 per cent Christian population Faleiro said: "Whoever says, you convert or we will convert you, Goans will not listen (to them). Goans have the capacity to think. In Goa, it cannot happen."
Goa, a former Portuguese colony, was under colonial yoke for more than 450 years before it was liberated by the Indian armed forces in 1961.
Goa's Christian population is a legacy of the Portuguese rule, during which a section of the population converted to the religion, due to efforts of the missionaries backed by the colonists.
Faleiro also said that prayers were the need of the times in order to ensure that the re-conversion controversy does not tear at the country's secular fabric.
"What is happening in our country, what we read in the papers and what is happening in Parliament, we (should) pray that such a thing does not happen in ... Goa," Faleiro said.
Faleiro, who was chief minister of Goa twice, said the Indian electorate may have been lured into voting for development "but now those who are ruling are back to their well-known agenda".
"The divisiveness of those who are ruling in Delhi is coming to the fore. The development mask has fallen," Faleiro said.
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