For many of us, Hinduism evokes images of peace, passivity, and even of the Beatles. But today radical Hindu extremists are waging violent attacks on India’s vulnerable Christians.
For the last month, anti-Christian violence by radical Hindu nationalists has spread across India bringing death and destruction. A rampage of torture, rape, burning people alive, and destroying everything in sight that belongs to Christians began on August 23, 2008, in the eastern coastal state of Orissa. Orissa, touted on India’s tourism web sites for its beautiful beaches and fun-filled festivals, has become hell on earth for India’s Christians. And that hell is spreading to other states, as well. This monstrous brutality against poor, marginalized people brings shame to one of the world’s largest democracies.
Indian Christians are facing an ever-growing threat from Hindu extremism. They have always been in the minority (some three percent of the population). But in the not-too-distant past, Christians in India fared better than their brothers and sisters in the Islamic world and under Communism. Now anti-Christian violence is growing to epidemic proportions. At last count, on September 25, 2008, the death count from the current violence against Christians was over one hundred and the displaced numbered in the tens of thousands.
Why this targeting of Christians?
Christians disturb the status quo of India’s religious and caste system, and that is intolerable to one section of the population, the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist extremists). Christians have the radical idea that all people, from all classes of society, are equal in the eyes of God. God’s love for people of all races and classes is welcome and liberating news to the Dalits and others of lower caste who have been oppressed and looked down on all their lives. But Hindu extremists are enraged by the empowering of marginalized Dalits and tribal people who become Christians. Those who believe in their own worth can no longer be exploited as they are in the caste system. For this reason, in 1999, Hindu extremists killed a gentle Australian missionary, Graham Staines, whose work with Indian tribal people had brought many to Christ. Staines and his two little boys were burned to death in their jeep in which they had been sleeping after meeting with Indian Christian converts in Orissa.
In addition, the Hindu nationalists attempt to portray Christianity as a modern Western imposition on India. They have used their “India is Hindu only” ideology to gain political power. In reality, the followers of Jesus Christ in India can trace their lineage back two thousand years, to the time when the Church in India was founded by St. Thomas the Apostle. This poses a threat to Hindu nationalism, and their propaganda is filled with alarmist warnings that Christians are trying to “destroy Hinduism.”
The rise of Hindutva has been strategic. Hindu extremists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), and Sangh Parivar have worked for years to “Hinduize” the common people and to infiltrate politics and society. They have acted as historical revisionists, and attempted, with some success, to institutionalize discrimination against religious and ethnic minorities. According to Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk in Operation World, “Their model is more European fascism than ancient Hinduism.” And, as other fascist movements have done, they have turned some of India’s citizens against their fellow citizens – sometimes in isolated attacks, and, more recently in weeks’-long rampages.
The murder of Fr. Thomas Pandipally, a 38 year-old priest from the Carmelite of Mary Immaculate, was an isolated event. But it was also the latest in a pattern of “brutal and mysterious murders of Christian workers” over the past eight years in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. On August 17, 2008, the body of Fr. Pandipally was found on a roadside. The priest had been brutally beaten to death – stabbed over 30 times, and his skull split open, according to Compass Direct News Service. The local superintendent of police told Compass Direct that there was no religious motive for the murder. “There is communal harmony, and there has been no communal incident in the district at all,” he said. But the Rev. Father Alex Thannippara, a Carmelite provincial superior, disagreed. He told the news service that the Hindu extremist groups RSS, VHP, and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyathri Parishad (All India Students’ Council) were “violently active” in Andhra Pradesh.
DEATH AND DESTRUCTION IN ORISSA AFTER HINDU EXTREMISTS BLAME SWAMI’S DEATH ON CHRISTIANS
The frenzied attack by Hindu extremists that began in August 2008 and was still continuing in late September, took place after the murder by Maoist terrorists of Hindu leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and four of his disciples. Saraswati, a leader of Bajrang Dal (a radical youth movement of RSS), was the alleged inciter of a ten-day long attack against Christians which began on Christmas Eve 2007 in Orissa. The extremists burned and destroyed 730 Christian homes and 102 churches in 83 villages, killing at least 4 people and causing thousands to flee. Saraswati also tried forcibly to convert Dalit and tribal Christians back to Hinduism. So although there was no doubt that Maoists had killed Saraswati, extremists stirred up the Hindu population against Christians by accusing Orissa State’s tiny Christian community of the murders. According to Compass Direct, they paraded Saraswati’s body through the villages shouting, “Kill Christians and destroy their institutions.” Angry, violent mobs responded by destroying churches, orphanages, hostels of children, convents of religious women, and the houses of Christian families. They looted and burned Christian properties, raped women and young girls, and killed pastors, priests, nuns, and Christian lay people.
On August 25, Vatican Radio reported that a nun was burned alive when extremists stormed the orphanage she ran. She sacrificed herself to save the lives of the children, who were able to flee as she delayed the attackers. In another part of the state, a nun was gang-raped and the Archdiocese Social Center was set on fire.
By the fourth day of the ongoing violence in Orissa, the number of people confirmed dead had risen to 21 and 114 anti-Christian attacks had taken place. The president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, Dr. Sajan K. George, told Compass Direct that one of the worst areas of attack was Kandhamal district where more than 400 churches, 500 houses, and many Christian institutions were destroyed.
One Indian Christian receiving daily reports from the Christian community under siege said his words were “insufficient to describe the situations and agony of Christians and churches in Orissa.”
“I can feel their pain in my body, soul, and spirit,” he said. “In fact we cannot eat or sleep comfortably while our fellow Christian brethren are in hunger and great distress.”
A report sent to the Institute on Religion and Democracy from those on the ground said that many of the Christians were forced to flee to the nearby mountains and forests for safety – most without food or water. Extremists were “openly moving in thousands with swords, axes, guns, grenades, sticks, spears, etc.,” and the only way to help the people was to drop food packages and other relief aid by helicopter into the dense jungle. The state government of Kandhamal set up 14 relief camps for 20,000 other victims. The report added that thousands of extremists were coming to Orissa State from Gujarat and Chhattisgarh whose agenda is to wipe out Christianity in India, beginning in Orissa.
One eyewitness to the violence told Christian human rights organization International Christian Concern that he personally knew of 18 Christians who had been killed, including pastors, priests, and nuns. On August 29, 2008, word came from another eyewitness, in Phulbani district, that the members of the Bajrang Dal, VHP, and RSS parties had compiled a hit-list of key Christian leaders and pastors to kill. This eyewitness reported that the extremists had already slain five pastors by sword, and killed more than twenty-seven other Christians and thrown their bodies into the jungle. He said that the Hindu extremists had taken an oath to convert Christians to Hinduism by force or to kill all who would not renounce their faith in Christ.
An Indian pastor revealed that the extremists who falsely were accusing Christians of forcing Hindus to convert to Christianity, were themselves, in the most violent and egregious manner, forcibly re-converting people to Hinduism. After visiting Orissa, he told his church that Christians, mostly the poor and illiterate, were “being beaten to near-death, and then forced, at gunpoint, to sign a declaration” that they were, of their own ‘free will,’ returning to their ‘mother religion.’ To prove their sincerity they were told to beat another ‘such’ Christian, and get a ‘letter of return’ signed by them.
THE VIOLENCE SPREADS TO FIVE MORE STATES
Even as Christians in Orissa remained hidden in the mountains, languishing in relief camps, or being forced to return to Hinduism, extremist groups mounted more attacks. On September 7, 2008, says Compass Direct, Hindu extremists in the southern state of Karnataka vandalized church buildings and falsely accused Christian workers of “forced conversions.” Their political counterparts who run the state government prepared to close down the churches. The Global Council of Indian Christians told Compass Direct that a mob of more than 200 people attacked the Mission Action Prayer Fellowship church in Bada village, accusing the Christians of forcible conversions. They assaulted the pastor and church members; burned the Bibles, musical instruments, and furniture; and vandalized the church building. Stunningly, the attackers were accompanied by local TV channels who televised the attack, along with other media.
Compass Direct was told that the commissioner of Davangere City had issued notices to demolish the area’s churches because they did not have a “license to hold worship services.” But a representative of the Christian Legal Association told Compass Direct that this was “a violation of the religious freedom enshrined in the Indian Constitution.” There is no legal requirement in India for churches to have a license.
After a September 14 attack on Roman Catholic, Protestant, and evangelical churches and prayer halls in Karnataka during the Sunday services, hundreds of Christians demonstrated in front of churches in Mangalore. They demanded the arrest of the attackers and measures from the government to protect minorities. Police responded by using batons and teargas to disperse the Christian protesters and by banning the assembly of five or more people in Mangalore city for three days, says Ecumenical News International.
The news service quoted John S. Sandananda, the principal of Karnataka Theological College in Mangalore, as saying that “the government had done little to investigate properly or arrest the culprits” in cases of anti-Christian violence. “Now, they feel emboldened,” he declared.
Sandananda’s words proved true many times over. The day after the aborted demonstration in Mangalore, violence spread both in Karnataka and to four more Indian states. Compass Direct reported that on September 16, 2008, Christians and churches were attacked in Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, “as fallout from violence in Orissa.”
EFFORTS TO STOP THE PERSECUTION
No one in authority in the state or central government, the Army or police forces, seems able or willing to protect the Christians. Samuel Wallace, International Christian Concern’s regional manager for South Asia said, “It looks like the only defense these Christians have is God himself, because the Indian government has proved itself unable to stop the violence.”
Finally, after three weeks of brutal attacks, Compass Direct reported on September 19, 2008 that the federal government had warned Orissa and Karnataka that their “failure to prevent violence could lead to the imposition of ‘President’s Rule.’” Under Article 355 of the Indian Constitution, if state governments do not function with due respect to constitutional provisions (such as the provision of freedom of religion), they are vulnerable to the imposition of emergency rule by the federal government.
The Hindu extremists in Orissa and Karnataka responded defiantly to the warning. Compass Direct quotes the BJP spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, as threatening, “We dare the Centre to go a step ahead and implement Article 356 [empowering the federal government to impose emergency rule]. They will have to bear the consequences and the people of the country would give them a fitting reply.”
In spite of this step by the federal government, new attacks are still occurring throughout India. The Catholic archbishop of Orissa State’s Cuttack-Bhubaneswar district, Raphael Cheenath, received a death threat according to a Compass Direct news story on September 19, 2008. The archbishop, who has been in Bhubaneswar for three decades, told Compass Direct that extremists sent a letter to the Catholic Bishops Conference of India office in Delhi saying that he would be killed if he returned to Orissa. “Is this how civilized society behaves?” he demanded.
Archbishop Cheenath, along with Delhi’s archbishop, Vincent Concessao, and Father Babu Joseph, the spokesman for the Catholic Church of India, met with India’s Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on September 18 about the situation.
In a memorandum to Prime Minister Singh they said, “Despite your consoling words and assurances, the violence still continues in some parts of Kandhamal. Looting, arson, and vandalism continue. Security forces are mainly in the towns, main roads, and are not moving to the interior parts of Kandhamal. Crimes are being freely committed by the culprits with impunity.”
The memorandum also informed the Prime Minister that forced conversions from Christianity to Hinduism are continuing in the villages of Orissa. “Christians are forced under threat of death, burning of their houses, or death of their relatives. After conversion they have to burn their Bibles, religious articles, and their own house, to prove that they are genuine Hindus.”
Much of India’s Hindu population is deeply troubled by the savage attacks on Christians, as some readers of the Times of India indicate, asking for the banning of VHP and Bajrang Dal, and condemning the uncivilized behavior. But so far these radical, violent groups have not been curtailed. Some have even taken their aggression to Delhi, the area which includes the national capital, New Delhi. On September 17, Compass Direct reports that a mob of “unidentified people believed to be Hindu extremists“ broke into the churchyard of the God’s Light Catholic Church in East Delhi, threatening to build a Hindu temple on the lawn. The Evangelical Fellowship of India commented that it was “a well planned move to create a confrontation with the church in Delhi too after the incidents in the states of Orissa, Karnataka, and Kerala.” They said that the extremists were “gauging the reaction of the church before doing anything further.”
The extremists will also be gauging the reaction of the Indian government and of the world to their brutal and inhuman treatment of Christians. If the Indian government does not work quickly to both stop the targeting of Christians and catch and punish the perpetrators of this violence, the situation for Christians in India will deteriorate even more and spread further throughout the country.
In view of Indian Prime Minister Manmahan Singh ‘s meeting on September 25, 2008 with President George W. Bush at the White House, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) sent a letter to President Bush saying, “If India is to exercise global leadership as the largest and perhaps most pluralistic democracy in the world, Prime Minister Singh should demonstrate his government’s commitment to uphold the basic human rights obligations to which it has agreed, including the protection of religious minorities.”
The Commission says in their letter that they do not believe that “widespread, violent rioting is an unavoidable by-product of a pluralistic society.” But this will only be true if people of courage and conviction speak out to insure the rights of all people within those pluralistic societies. The U.S. government must urge its ally and fellow democracy, the government of India, to do the right thing and stand by its constitutional guarantee of religious freedom for all Indians. Western Christians must speak out for and do what they can to relieve the suffering of their brothers and sisters in India. And India must work quickly to end this shameful persecution of its Christian citizens.
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