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NEW DELHI (APP)-India's ruling BJP may insist that Hindu zealots have no anti-Christian agenda, but their foot soldiers in Uttar Pradesh state make no bones about their intention to drive away Christians, "The Times of India" (TTI) reported Friday.
Bajrang Dal, a Hindu zealot group, said,"Christians were now bigger enemies than Muslims."
Dharmendra Sharma, the Bajrang Dal's leader,"declared that his organisation was ready to fight wherever church institutions were active," according to the report. "We are prepared to use violence. There is no limit," the paper quoted him as saying.
When TTI reporter suggested such talk lent credence to the theory of a possible Bajrang Dal link to the murder of Christian priest Brother George, he replied. "So what? We feel that every time there is a crime like this, the Bajarang Dal's name should be taken. Hindus will respect us more and Christians will fear us." "When people blame us, "said Rajesh Chaudhary, district convener of the Bajrang Dal in Mathura, "it helps spread the word that we have extreme views and that we use violence. This strengthens our movement."
He claimed Christians were involved in the murder of Brother George. "The padre was a bad man and he must have had enemies. Chaudhary said,"the Christians want to take over the country. What is the point of us targeting one or two? Our aim is to drive them all away."
"The day we start chasing them away, they won't be able to save themselves. Even the administration won't be able to help them." Sharma, on his part, freely recounted incidents where he and his associates have attacked Christian preachers around Agra for trying to convert Dalits. Both leaders lamented the fact that the Sangh Parivar had not reacted earlier to the "dangers" posed by Christians. But at a national convention of the Bajrang Dal in Brindavan in March this year, the matter was discussed and a decision taken to launch a campaign against church institutions, Sharma revealed.
Another Dal activist narrated how Hindus in Orissa worship Staines' killer, Dara Singh, as a hero. Asked whether that was a good or bad thing, the activist laughed, "Very good, "he replied
NEW DELHI, India, June 9, 2000 (VOA): Roman Catholic leaders in India say they have asked for an urgent meeting with the country's Prime Minister following the murder of a Catholic priest on Wednesday -- and a series of explosions at four churches on Thursday. VOA's Jim Teeple reports from New Delhi that church leaders in India say the government should do more to protect the rights of the minority Christian community.
Archbishop Alan de Lastic, who heads the Roman Catholic Church in India, says the recent attacks are just the latest in a series of escalating violence against Christians in India over the past six months. Bishop de Lastic says there is a campaign underway in India to intimidate his church and other Christian denominations.
DE LASTIC: "Well my conclusion is that there is a definite strategy and a plan on a national basis. That is proved by these incidents all over. How is it that they happened all at the same time? Why, for example, did they not happen after one or two months in a sporadic fashion? They are all planned. And I think these forces at work want to intimidate the Christians and stop their work of trying to uplift the masses."
On Wednesday, Franciscan Brother George Kuzhikandan was beaten to death by unidentified assailants in the northern Indian City of Mathura, about 150 kilometers southeast of New Delhi. On Thursday, a series of explosions took place at four churches in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa, causing minor damage and slightly injuring several people.
Wednesday's killing of Brother Kuzhikandan was the first of a Christian missionary in India since early 1999, when Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burned alive by a mob led by a Hindu extremist known as Dara Singh in India's eastern Orissa state.
Christians make up just over two percent of India's population, which is overwhelmingly Hindu. In recent years, tensions have escalated between the two communities as some Hindu nationalists have charged that some Christian missionaries are trying to convert illiterate tribal or Hindu villagers by offering them promises of free medical care and free education -- a charge denied by the missionaries.
Christian groups charge that many of the attacks are carried out by members of Hindu extremist groups with ties to the governing Bharatiya Janata Party. Party officials deny they have any links to the attacks and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has condemned the violence.
At his news conference on Friday, Archbishop De Lastic says a recent government commission that looked into the matter in the state of Gujarat found no evidence that Catholic priests were carrying out what he describes as "forced conversions."
DE LASTIC: "On that very delicate issue of conversion - if some people think conversion is wrong and it is forced -- that is false. The last minority which went to Gujarat found and put into writing that there was no evidence at all of any instance of "forced conversion."
Archbishop De Lastic says attacks against India's Christians have increased since Pope John Paul's historic trip to India last year. He says this year alone there have 35 such attacks and he describes the violence as the most serious threat to freedom in India since the country's independence more than 50-years ago.
Monday, 22 May, 2000
By Omer Farooq in Hyderabad
At least 30 people have been injured in a bomb explosion during a Christian religious meeting in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The incident comes amid reports of renewed attacks on Christians in different parts of the country. The explosion took place at a religious meeting in Machlipatnam town, 330km east of Hyderabad. Nearly 15,000 Christians had gathered as part of a four-day festival.
Police officials who rushed to the scene of the blast said that despite being a crude device, the explosion was so powerful that it had left a large crater. The district superintendent of police, CV Anand, said several people were injured in a stampede that followed the blast. Police sources said that five suspects had been detained for questioning.
Under attack
This is the first time that a religious congregation has come under attack in Andhra Pradesh. The President of the Baptist Churches Association of India, Vijay Kumar, said the incident was similar to other attacks on Christians in different parts of the country. Various Christian groups have alleged that the community has been targeted by Hindu hardliners, who have been encouraged by the presence of the Hindu nationalist BJP-led government in Delhi. Such attacks began when the party took power in its previous term and continue unabated, they say. In one of the worst attacks, an Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were burnt to death by a mob in Orissa more than a year ago.
BBC News Online
Monday, 1 May, 2000
Church leaders in India have accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of undermining Christianity by proposing changes to marriage laws to discourage inter-faith weddings. The head of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of India, Alan de Lastic, also criticised the BJP-led government for fanning anti-Christian sentiment by raising fears of forced conversions by missionaries. "We have been in the limelight for the past two years for these supposed mass conversions," Mr de Lastic said. "I find it strange - when the percentage of Christians in India has gone down to 2.4% from 2.8% - how that can happen." Mr de Lastic also complained that the government had given church leaders only 10 days to examine the bill. Under the proposed bill, church weddings would no longer be allowed unless both parties were Christians. He said the bill's "punitive provisions" should be revised.
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Mr. Speaker, James Madison, the primary author of the U.S. Constitution, warned about `the tyranny of the majority.' The modern state of India is an example of what Madison warned us about. Between Christmas and New Year, several Christian churches, prayer halls, and missionary schools were attacked by extremist Hindu mobs affiliated with the parent organization of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Washington Post reported on January 1 that ten such attacks occurred the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. Six people were injured in one of these attacks. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or World Hindu Council, appears to be responsible for the attacks. The BJP is the political wing of the VHP.
The Hindu militants are apparently upset that Christians are converting low-caste Hindus. Their frustration does not justify acts of violence. Christian activists report that there were more than 60 recorded cases of church and Bible-burning, rape, and other attacks in 1998 alone, including the recent rape of four nuns. The VHP called the rapists `patriotic youth.'
In 1997 and 1998, four priests were murdered. In the fall of 1997, a Christian festival was stopped when the police opened fire. Clearly, there is a pattern here. However, Christians are not the only victims of India's tyrannical `democracy.'
Muslims have seen their most revered mosques destroyed; Sikhs have seen their most sacred shrine, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, attacked and remain under occupation by plainclothes police. Their spiritual leader, the Jathedar of the Akal Takht, Gurdev Singh Kaunke, was tortured and killed in police custody. Although there is a witness to this murder, no action has been taken against those responsible. Is this the secular democracy that India is so proud of?
The United States is the beacon of freedom to the world. As such, we cannot sit idly by and watch India trample on the religious freedom of its minorities. We should put this Congress on record in support of peaceful, democratic freedom movements in South Asia and throughout the world.
The United States recently allowed Puerto Rico to vote on its status; our Canadian neighbors held a similar referendum in Quebec. When do the Sikhs of Khalistan , the Muslims of Kashmir, and the other peoples living under Indian rule get their chance to exercise this basic democratic right? Will we support democratic freedom for the people of South Asia, or will we look away while the tyranny of the majority continues to suppress fundamental rights like freedom of religion?
Thursday, September 30, 1999
By Religious Affairs correspondent Jane Little
The US-based Human Rights Watch has accused the Indian Government of failing to prevent violence against Christians, and of exploiting sectarian tensions for political ends. In a 37-page report, the organisation says that attacks against Christians have increased "significantly" since the Hindu Nationalist BPJ party came to power in 1998. It accuses right-wing Hindu extremist groups close to the BJP of being responsible for most of the attacks. The uncompromising report will be welcomed by Christians in India who have consistently accused hardline Hindus of creating a climate of religious hatred in which attacks against minorities go unpunished.
Killings and rapes
Christians are the new scapegoats in India's political battles according to the report's author, Smita Narula, with over a 100 cases of anti-Christian violence according to India's parliament. They include the killing of priests, the raping of nuns, and the destruction of churches, schools and cemeteries.
While much of the tension has been generated by accusations of forceful conversions to Christianity, the report notes that thousands of Christians have been forced to convert to Hinduism. It concludes by stating that - as with attacks against Muslims in the early 90s - attacks against Christians are part of a campaign by right-wing Hindu groups to exploit communal clashes for political ends.
Religious hatred
It points the finger at several groups close to the governing BJP, which it says has not only failed to protect minorities but offered tacit justification for the attacks. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, who has called for a national debate on conversions, recently said that reducing communal violence was one of the main achievements of his government. But Christian leaders believe religious hatred lies behind many cases, including the murder in January of an Australian missionary and his sons, and the recent murder of a priest and abduction of a nun. They are angry that the perpetrators remain at large and some strongly hinted to their congregations that they shoudn't vote for the Hindu nationalists in the current elections.
Friday, September 24, 1999
An inquiry has been launched into allegations that a Catholic nun in India was abducted by two men and then stripped and humiliated. The home secretary in the eastern state of Bihar said the incident was potentially the latest in a spate of anti-Christian activity in parts of India over the past year.
Abducted
The young nun, from the southern state of Tamil Nadu, told police she hired a three-wheeler auto rickshaw taxi in the Bihar town of Chapra to travel to the post office. She said two men who were in the vehicle abducted her, took her to an orchard, tied her hands to a tree and stripped her. They then allegedly threatened to rape her, urinated in a bottle and forced her to drink it. The nun said they asked her how many people she had converted to Christianity and why she did not go back home.
Protests
The incident has angered India's Christian community and the president of the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, Archbishop Alan de Lastic, has written a letter of protest to the prime minister. "While you are busy during the parliamentary elections, the attacks on the Christian community are still continuing," the letter said. The Archbishop of Patna, the Bihar state capital, called it an ugly and inhuman act. The state police chief is heading the investigations into the complaint, lodged by the church. The nun belonged to the congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart and had recently travelled to Bihar from Pondicherry, in south India.
Election issue
The police say it is not known yet whether the incident could be linked to the Hindu extremism the church maintains has been the motivation for anti-Christian attacks elsewhere in India during the past year, or whether this was a more local law and order issue. In the most notorious of the attacks in Orissa, an Australian missionary and his two young sons were burnt to death. The man accused of being behind the January attack remains at large, an issue which has been taken up in the campaigning for the general election currently taking place in India. Earlier this month a Catholic priest was killed by unidentified assailants in the same area of Orissa.
Christmas in the Indian state of Gujarat has been marked by violent clashes between Hindu extremists and Christians. Tensions remain high, despite police the western state making a number of arrests following a weekend of violence. Buildings, including schools, hospitals, and churches were attacked on Christmas Day. In the village of Varki, a Pentecostal church was burned down by what the United Christian Forum for Human Rights (UCFHR) said was a mob of around 70 people from a Hindu extremist organisation. The Christian community says the attacks are part of a concerted campaign against them which has worsened since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party came to power in Delhi in March.
