Christians in India’s Parliament demand an end to attacks
NEW DELHI, 14 May 2000 (Newsroom) — Christian members of India’s Parliament have formed a committee to focus attention on growing intolerance of religious minorities throughout the country and demanded that the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government take immediate steps to stop the attacks on Christians.
P.C. Thomas, a lawmaker from Kerala and chairman of the 25-member committee, said the group will visit places where recent attacks have occurred to get a firsthand report.
The committee’s formation last week comes in the wake of several incidents that continue a violent trend that many Christian leaders say began Christmas week 1998 with a series of attacks on Christians and churches in Gujarat.
While many of the incidents have occurred in states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its allies, the number of attacks on Christians and their worship centers in states ruled by the opposition Congress Party are increasing as well, much to the chagrin of leaders of the so-called secular party. In the past week, for example, police reported attacks by suspected Hindu extremists on three churches in Indore, the largest city in the Congress-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh, about 350 miles south of New Delhi. Madhya Pradesh borders India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat, both of which are governed by the BJP.
Police reported that on May 11 assailants threw stones and tried to set fire to one church by throwing burning pieces of cloth into the pulpit. At another church they broke a cross and the microphone system. A third church was vandalized as well.
The attacks took place a few hours before Sonia Gandhi, Congress Party president, was to open an orphanage run by missionaries in Indore. Christian leaders and some authorities suspect that members of the militant Hindu organization Sanskritik Jagran Manch (Coalition to Save Indian Culture) are to blame. The state’s chief minister, Digvijay Singh, ordered district administrators to repair damage to the churches immediately.
Hate groups have resurfaced in Karnataka in south India, which also is governed by the Congress Party. Selva Kumar, a Catholic seminary student at St. Joseph’s Institute, was stabbed in the neck on May 11 outside the Bala Jyothi Dalit Hostel in Anekal, a small village 30 miles from Bangalore. Kumar was returning from a nearby village, Basavanapura, where he has been teaching English to Dalits. Dalits are lower caste Indians who are shunned by upper caste Hindus.
Kumar was surrounded by a group of Hindus who accused him of trying to convert Dalits to Christianity, according to a Catholic priest and members of a delegation from the All India Christian United Voice who visited him at St. Philomena’s Hospital in Bangalore. Two passers-by prevented attackers from stabbing Kumar in the stomach and took him to the hospital, the delegation said.
In November 1999 a group of Hindu and Muslim students from St. Joseph’s Evening College in Bangalore was attacked by suspected Hindu extremists who accused them of converting villagers in Anekal. The students had been engaged in social work, police said at the time. Police made some arrests, but the suspected assailants were released later.
“In spite of the constant reminders to the authorities, precious little was done to instill confidence in the minds of the battered Christian community,” said Sajjan George, coordinator of the All India Christian United Voice. “The police say that they will do something, but ultimately nothing happens.”
In the meantime, more details have emerged about an attack May 9 on Christians attending a conference at a tribal girls’ school in Abhona village in the Nashik district of the western state of Maharasthra. Police said that four people were admitted to Kalwan Cottage Hospital.
The attack occurred during the 45th annual convention of the Evangelical Alliance Christian Church (EACC) and the Nashik District Church Council (NDCC) at the Ashramshala school. “About 120 Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) activists, brandishing sticks and pipes, forcibly entered our premises at around 11 p.m. … and went on the rampage,” said Ashok Abraham Budhha, who runs the school. “They pelted stones, broke tube lights and attacked the peaceful gathering.” The mob also damaged a projector and set fire to three motorcycles, a mini van, and a movie screen before ransacking the girls’ living quarters, Budhha said.
Although early reports suggested that police did not move quickly to stop the attack, that was not the case, said a police spokesman for the Nashik District Range. Rural police arrested 33 people, all of whom were identified as belonging to the Bajrang Dal or VHP, said the spokesman, who did not give his name. Both groups are known as militant Hindu organizations.
Bishop Thomas Bhalerao of the Nashik Diocese said the assault shocked priests, nuns, and Christians in the diocese. “The Catholic Church unequivocally condemns the unprovoked violent attack on the peace-loving community of Christians,” he said. “The pattern of attacks shows that the fundamentalist forces within the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party were responsible for this brutal attack.” The RSS is the ideological parent of the BJP, which leads the National Democratic Alliance coalition government.
Bhalerao criticized as “shady” a report by the National Minority Commission that there was “no communal angle” to earlier incidents in Mathura and Agra in Uttar Pradesh, where Christian priests, nuns, and institutions were attacked.
Christian members of Parliament have expressed concern over the distribution of hate material attacking missionaries in India’s northern states. Eduardo Falerio, a Congress Party member, sent copies of pamphlets circulating in Uttar Pradesh to national officials and demanded that such provocative literature be confiscated.
The pamphlets, published by the Hindu Jagran Manch, Kashi, and the VHP in Gujarat, attack Christian missionaries for converting tribals in the guise of helping them. “It says the Christian organizations are on a special mission to build millions churches in the country. They are just provoking people,” said the lawmaker.
“We will demand the government take immediate steps to stop these anti-minority activities,” said Suresh Kurup, a member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist. “We will fight in Parliament.”
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