'Conversions, part of foreign conspiracy'
By Amrit Dhillon
NEW DELHI: Not until a naked, beaten, tortured missionary was paraded along the main street of a town in the eastern state of Bihar did Indians finally wake up to the truth about the persecution of Christians in their country.
That was in Sep. 1997. By the end of 1998, nine nuns had been killed and five more raped.
Attacks on Christian establishments have escalated further since Christmas, with most violence occurring in Gujarat, where churches are torched almost daily, convents looted, missionaries attacked and copies of the Bible burned. A Christian voluntary group has recorded more than 100 human rights violations throughout India in the past year.
The central issue is conversions. Most of the people in the Gujurat district are tribal (aboriginal) or low-caste Hindus who live in remote regions, away from the mainstream of Indian society. Some converted to Christianity generations ago, some more recently.
Often they are persuaded by the work of Christian missionaries who set up schools and medical clinics in their communities, in contrast to the neglect or even contempt many of them experience from Hindus.
The Indian constitution allows anyone to propagate their faith, so Christian missionaries are doing nothing illegal. But Hindu right-wing extremists responsible for Gujurat's anti- Christian terror campaign say the conversions are part of a foreign conspiracy.
In retaliation, they have launched a campaign to reconvert them to Hinduism.
The Church's response has been simple. Declaring that no force on earth could prevent the Church from working with the poor and needy, the Archbishop of Delhi challenged Hindus to go and work among lepers and the destitute.
"Forcible conversion is a contradiction in terms," said Archbishop Alan de Lastic. "It is neither accepted nor recognized by the Church."
The violence against Christians has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with politics. The people carrying out the attacks are not ordinary Hindus. They are members of radical fringe organizations closely affiliated with the Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) government in Delhi. The main splinter group is the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) or The World Hindu Council).
These organizations were responsible for whipping up the anti- Muslim hysteria that led to the demolition of a mosque in Ayodhya in 1996. The campaign won the BJP many Hindu votes but public support for anti-Muslim sentiments since the demolition has declined and the BJP's electoral base has stagnated.
In recent state elections, the BJP was trounced by the opposition Congress party. This is why the VHP is targeting the Christian minority. By stirring anti-Christian feeling through emotive talk about forced conversions and international conspiracies to destroy Hinduism, it hopes to achieve two objectives: garner more Hindu votes for the BJP and embarrass the leader of the Congress party, the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who is a Christian.
"The conversions have grown manifold since Sonia Gandhi became leader of the Congress," said VHP vice-president Acharya Giriraj Kishore.
These extremists are hoping that if enough hysteria can be generated against Christians, Hindus will think twice about voting for her (and therefore the Congress) in the next elections. It is a simple strategy but unlikely to work. Hostility between Hindus and Muslims is ancient and deep.
There is no long tradition of Hindu versus Christian who, in any case, form only three percent of the population.
On the contrary, the work of Christians in education is much respected throughout India and they have always felt safe. Until now, that is. Their present feelings of insecurity stem not only from the spate of attacks but from the fact that the Gujarat state government, ruled by the BJP, has not so far arrested or punished a single person.
-- Observer News Service