VARANASI, India — When a group of men approached Abdul Rahman Gazi in early December and offered him help in securing government benefits, including state-subsidized housing, to attend a Hindu religious ceremony in Agra, the Muslim ragpicker was happy to oblige.
At the ceremony, Mr. Gazi and around 270 other Muslim Indians sat around a fire and recited prayers to the Hindu goddess Kali. Two days later, while reading a newspaper, Mr. Gazi discovered he had unwittingly converted to Hinduism during the ceremony as part of an aggressive campaign among evangelical Hindus that’s stirring political controversy in this diverse country of 1.2 billion people and raising questions about new Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
