Hindu violence against christians

As Catholic believers across India gather to celebrate the birth of Jesus, many will carry physical or emotional scars as a result of attacks launched by Hindu extremists over the past year.



Many incidents of violence against both Catholics and Protestants went unreported, since the police often refused to record the victims' complaints, but by last June the number of violent attacks recorded by Christian organizations had reached over 200. This number was expected to double by year's end. Catholics, who make up about 29 percent of Christians in India according to Operation World, were often targeted in these attacks.



"This year Hindu extremists have beaten our priests, assaulted our nuns, broken crosses and urinated on sacred vessels," said Dr. John Dayal, president of the All India Catholic Union. "These acts of desecration show the true nature of the attackers."



Attacks were reported in Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and the states of tribal central India.



"We also have reports of attacks on Catholic clergy from West Bengal in the east to Andhra Pradesh in south central India," Dayal said.



Desecration of religious objects is common in such attacks. Police, however, often ignore the religious aspects of a complaint because of the legal implications.



"Indian law has specific provisions against actions that sow seeds of hatred between communities," Dayal explained. "We also have laws against violence directed at a specific religious or other minority group. Still other laws come into operation if the victims are Dalits."



In several cases of religiously-motivated violence this year, police have refused to record a "First Information Report," leaving the victims with no legal means to pursue their complaints. In other cases, desecration of religious objects is recorded only as petty crime or theft.



Rajasthan has the highest number of recorded incidents. In February, Rajasthan's state government announced plans to adopt anti-conversion legislation, echoing laws already in force in Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Arunachal Pradesh.



Gujarat state passed a similar law in March 2003, but the law has not yet been enforced.



The Rev. Dr. Babu Joseph, director of communications and spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, told Compass the total number of violent incidents reported had declined over the past year.



"This is partly due to the change of government in 2004, and its policies of inclusiveness ... which have given a better sense of security to those who suffered harassment," Joseph claimed.



Other Christian leaders rejected Joseph's claim of decreasing religious violence, but all agree that anti-Christian violence surged after the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won federal elections held in 1998. The BJP government was ousted by a Congress Party-led coalition in new elections held in April 2004.



Joseph admitted that the situation is still far from ideal.



"As the spokesperson of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, I ardently hope that the new year will see a positive change in the social scenario of India, [so that] people of all religions, cultures and castes can find an honorable place to live and develop as equal citizens of our beloved India."



For his part, Dayal has issued a call for all church groups to work together in combating violence.



"We must not accuse each other of attracting violence from extremist groups," he told Compass. "Instead we must teach our groups, both Catholics and Protestant, to be more culturally sensitive and to exercise common sense."



But once an attack has taken place, he said, it must be recognized as a crime that should be denounced and punished.



The most recent attack occurred on December 12, when Hindu extremists forced more than 40 Dalit Catholic families in Raipur district of Chattisgarh state to convert to Hinduism.



The villagers were threatened with loss of employment and Dalit social benefits if they refused.



Other examples of persecution of Catholic churches or individuals in 2005 include (alphabetically, by state):

In Assam state on September 2, armed assailants murdered Mgr. Nellickal, vicar-general of Tejpur diocese, on church premises.

In Delhi on May 23, vandals set fire to St. Mary's church complex in Sabhapur, 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) outside Delhi. They set fire to records in the director's office and destroyed 200 textbooks and 1,000 new diaries intended for students. "There was nothing left in the rooms except the tables," said one tribal sister who taught at the school.

In Jharkhand state on September 13, a tribal Catholic priest identified only as Father Agnos was murdered during a peaceful demonstration for tribal rights. A mob of some 40 Hindu extremists armed with knives, arrows and swords stormed the rally and attempted to disperse the 3,500 demonstrators. Fr. Agnos was stabbed in the back and bled to death.

In Kerala state on October 17, four unidentified men armed with wooden sticks attacked the home of Bishop Vincent Samuel in Neyyatinkara. Attackers had destroyed the windows and were about to break in when a police patrol arrived. A security guard was injured in the attack, and three vehicles were damaged.

In Maharashtra on January 23, armed extremists attacked the Teresian Carmelites Convent, which runs a home for the elderly in a suburb of Mumbai. The door and cross were smashed. Pamphlets left by the attackers encouraged the nuns to "Run away - or we will come back. This country is ours. Now it is the cross; the next time it will be your heads."

In Manipur on April 19, a mob of 200 extremists armed with sickles and torches set fire to a Catholic church in Lamding village.

In Rajasthan on June 9, mobs of extremists attacked two Catholic convents; on June 11, a mob attacked a third convent and held the nuns captive overnight; on June 12, extremists broke into the Holy Trinity Church in Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan, and threw rotten eggs and blue-colored water at a shrine dedicated to the infant Jesus.

October 16 in Rajasthan state, members of the Hindu extremist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) accused Catholics holding a procession of planning forced conversions among tribal people in Udaipur district. Bishop Joseph Pathalil's car was pelted with stones as he left the procession, but he escaped unharmed.

Also in Udaipur district, on October 25 five nuns waiting at a bus stop were beaten with sticks.

In West Bengal on February 12, police arrested 81-year-old Father. Luciano Colussi, vicar-general of Krishnagar, giving no reason or explanation for his arrest.

Nirmala Carvalho
Compass Direct

Women raped in Madhya Pradesh for converting to Christianity

Indira Iyengar, a member of the Madhya Pradesh State Minority Commission, explains that the May 28 attack was the act by Hindu fanatics who wanted to punish Tribals from Nadia village, guilty in their eyes of leaving Hinduism for Christianity.

Bhopal (AsiaNews/ICNS) – Women from the village of Nadia “were raped as punishment for changing religion and converting to Christianity”. The authorities, “whether civil, police or the courts failed to listen to the women and give them justice,” said Indira Iyengar, a member of the Madhya Pradesh State Minority Commission.

In an interview she said that the “horrendous crime perpetrated against Christians in Nadia” started last May 28, around 10 pm, when a group of Hindu nationalist fanatics attacked five Christians—two women and three men—and held them for a whole day. The two women were raped and the three men suffered serious gunshot wounds.

The women, Baishi Pokharia and Rekha Gyarsiya, were able to identify their aggressors, Lulla, Nandla, Kalu, Rewal Singh and Sakaram, all of whom, like their victims, are from the same village.

Next morning local leaders from India’s largest party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, a party that espouses a Hindu nationalist-fundamentalist ideology, reported alleged “mass conversions to Christianity” to the local police due to Christian missionaries coming from neighbouring Maharashtra state.

Even though no clergyman was named in the report, in the charges filed they claimed as proof of their allegations the names of the five who had been attacked the previous day. When the latter eventually made it to the Bhagwanpura police station to press charges against their aggressors they were arrested by Inspector Thakur.

“All this happened because they converted from Hinduism to Christianity,” said Ms Iyengar. “The attack should be punished because, in addition to the violence it entailed, it destroys a fundamental human right. But no one wants to listen to us”.

“We want Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister to know what is going on here. We want this inequality to end. We want to live in safety,” she said.

“We got justice no where,” lamented the five victims, who are from a local tribal community. For her part, one of the two women said that the “police told us that our charges were false. They refused to listen. Now, we have no where to go”.


Orissa, India: Hindu fundamentalists foment violence among the people

Over many years a large number of Dalits (“untouchables”) in the eastern Indian state of Orissa converted to Christianity to escape the Hindu caste system in which they are considered subhuman. In the last decade, and especially the last year and a half, life has become hell for them. In December 2007, Hindu supremacist forces lead a riot in which many of the Dalit Christians were killed and their homes and churches were burned by tribal people at least as poor as the Dalits. The Hindu monk Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a leader of the Vishnu Hindu Parisad (VHP) party, was said to have been behind the attacks. The VHP is part of a broader movement of organisations identified with the word “Hindutva” (“Hindu-ness”), that fights, in parliament and often in the streets and villages, in the name of opposition to communism, Islam and Christianity.

After Saraswati was killed in August of last year, in an attack attributed to guerrillas under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the Hindutva parties launched even more ferocious attacks on the Dalit Christians. In the district of Kandhamal, deep in the forested interior of Orissa, many of them are now living in makeshift camps after their homes were destroyed. Hindus have been forbidden to hire them as day labourers anymore, or even to talk to them, and their children cannot go to school. This level of violence against Christians has not been seen since India’s independence, and it has been encouraged and organised.


A local leader of the allegedly more mainstream Hindu party, the BJP, recently bragged to a reporter: “A maximum number of Christians were killed, yes, it is a matter of fact, but why? The Hindu sense of dignity has come to the surface in a spontaneous manner and they want to protect that sense of dignity.” (BBC, 13 April 2009) Note that the affront to “Hindu dignity” justifying the massacre is turning one’s back on the Hindu religion. The BJP is one of India’s two main parties. The other, the rival and currently ruling Congress party, has done little to oppose these attacks and the reactionary ideology they are driven by, and little or nothing to help the Kandhamal refugees living in tents and shacks.

The following article, titled “Beat Back the Fascist Onslaught in Orissa“, by Ujjwala, has been slightly edited. It originally appeared in the January-March 2009 issue of the Indian publication People’ s Truth.

The recent and ongoing violence on Dalit Christians in Kandhamal once again highlights the need to fight the fascist Hindutva forces and thoroughly expose the governments, both central and state. The state and central governments’ refusal to restrain fanatic Hindu militias evidences their linkage with the Hindutva BJP and the soft Hindutva Congress party, and the capitulation of a section of civil society to Hindu majoritarianism. The current violence started immediately after the killing of the notorious goon in saffron, Swami Laxmanananda, a VHP leader who was working in this area for more than 30 years solely for the consolidation of the Hindutva forces. He along with his four associates was shot dead by the people’s guerrillas on 23 August 2008.

The people’s guerrillas had left a note on the spot explaining the reasons behind the elimination of Laxmanananda Saraswati and stated, “We have decided to punish anti-people, fanatical leaders like Saraswati because of endless persecution of religious minorities in the country. There will be more such punishments if violence is continued against religious minorities in the country.” In spite of this clear statement, Hindutva forces used this incident to carry out massacres on Dalit Christians, holding them responsible. Whenever the anti-displacement [a movement to resist land grabs by India's biggest corporations] leaders and activists are branded as Maoists, the Sangh Parivar people [a grouping of Hindu nationalist organisations, including the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP parties] are the first ones to join the chorus. They also demand firm action against such leaders and activists. But in this case even after the Maoists took the responsibility, these cowardly gangsters were afraid to confront the Naxalites [Maoists], and preferred to hit soft targets, like Christian priests, women and children.

The violence started immediately after that incident. Attacks on innocent Adivasis [tribals], Dalits, women and children belonging to minority community were planned, led and carried out by the Sangh Parivar without any limit. They began by raping nuns, lynching innocent women and men, disabled persons and others. Hooligans under the direct command of the BJP and RSS leaders went on to burn Christian houses, shops, schools, orphanages and churches [many of them for a second time, after the December 2007 attacks] and some NGO offices. They lynched a girl student of a Kany ashram and a priest at Baragarh, and killed three persons in Kandhamal in the presence of police forces. As of today more than 20 persons have been killed for no fault of their own. Thousands and thousands of people who are no way connected to the killing of Saraswati, including pregnant women, toddlers and old ones, were forced to leave their homes and are languishing inside the forests amidst rains without food, water or clothes.

There is enough ground to believe that there was a deliberate move by a section within the government that crippled the administration and police, leading to the complete breakdown of governance systems. The violence is not confined to Kandhamal district alone and started spreading to other districts. In several districts of Orissa there is tension and fear of further violence. Already the situation in Koraput district, particularly in Jeypore, is very serious. Many people have fled from their homes and villages and have been in the jungles for many days without any food, medical care and shelter.

The rise of Hindutva forces in Orissa


What has happened in Kandhamal is not an isolated event. It’s an outcome of a sustained effort of the Sangh Parivar to spread the poison of communal hatred in Orissa. A series of anti-Christian crusades, such as the gruesome murder of Graham Staines and his two sons in 1999 [burned alive in that missionary's car], marked the onset of aggressive Hindutva in Orissa.

The Sangh’s history in post-colonial Orissa is long and violent. Virulent Hindutva campaigns against minority groups reverberated in Rourkela in 1964, Cuttack in 1968 and 1992, Bhadrak in 1986 and 1991, Soro in 1991. The Hindutva forces had witnessed a phenomenal rise after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s coalition government with the Biju Janata Dal came to power in 2000.

However, we can’t put the entire blame on the BJP alone for the consolidation of communal forces. The role of all mainstream political parties is equally condemnable. The local leaders of the main opposition [in Orissa] Congress party are mostly with the Sangh Parivar, which is the reason why violence against minorities could not be prevented even in pockets where the Congress party has good influence. The local leaders of the Congress always extended good help to Swami Laxmanananda whenever the Swami organized yajnas or other communal rituals. If one recalls the kind of role that the Congress played during the Gujarat riots [a huge Hindutva massacre of Moslems in 2002], and in the days following [when the Congress-led central government did nothing to help the refugees], one would find a similar role played by the Congress in Orissa in the Kandhamal situation.

At present the VHP has claimed 125,000 primary [the current nation-wide parliamentary elections] workers in Orissa. The RSS is said to operate 6,000 shakhas with a 150,000 plus cadre. The Bajrang Dal [youth wing of the VHP] has 50,000 members working in 200 akharas. BJP workers number above 450,000. The BJP Mohila Morcha, Durga Vahini (7,000 outfits in 117 sites) and Rashtriya Sevika Samiti (80 centres) are three major Sangh women’s organisations. BJP Yuva Morcha, Youth Wing, Adivasi Morcha and Mohila Morcha have a prominent base. Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh manages 171 trade unions with a membership of 1,82,000. The 30,000-strong Bharatiya Kisan Sangh functions in 100 blocks. The Sangh also operates various trusts and branches of national and international institutions to aid fundraising, including Friends of Tribal Society, Samarpan Charitable Trust, Sookruti, Yasodha Sadan, and Odisha International Centre. Sectarian development and education are carried out by Ekal Vidyalayas, Vanavasi Kalyan Ashrams/Parishads (VKAs), Vivekananda Kendras, Shiksha Vikas Samitis and Sewa Bharatis – cementing the brickwork for hate and civil polarisation.


What a violent religion!!!! India is a terrorist state! A state that sponsors terrorirsm within its own boundaries, causing genocide of sikhs on one hand and massacaring christians, muslims and low-caste hindus on the other, is nothing but a hypocrite democracy, a pseudo-secular country where rights of none of its citizen are respected.

India should focus on handling the hindu fanatics on rampage within its state, occupying key positions in its governing body instead of exporting terrorism to its neighbours. Otherwise, it will break itself without any external help by harbouring hatred within the communities which will lead to sprouting of more movements for struggle of independence and freedom from an oppressive government.