India Prime Minister Promises Protection for Christians
India's Prime Minister will urge legislators and state government officials to take action to protect Christians from Hindu extremists
India's Prime Minister will urge legislators and state government officials to take action to protect Christians from Hindu extremists, news agencies reported last week.
According to the Fides news service, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh promised a group of Christian leaders that he would make a speech before parliament, and send a letter to the governor of each state, calling attention to the repeated attacks on Christians, and demanding action.
"We will not tolerate violence against religious communities," Singh said, as reported by Catholic World News (CWN).
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CWN reported that the Christian leaders had presented the prime minister with a detailed list of 21 incidents in which religious groups had been attacked by Hindu extremists.
Singh--whose government came to power by ousting a coalition led by Hindu nationalists--has reportedly made an effort to accommodate the needs of religious minority groups, according to CWN.
"Religious tolerance and pluralism are the most important factors for the progress of the country and the stability of democracy," Singh commented.
In recent months, reports of escalating violence against Christians in a number of states throughout India have made their way outside the predominantly Hindu nation and into religious media agencies.
According to reports, the recent wave of violence against India's believers began Jan. 30, when Hindu activists forced their way into a large Christian gathering after hundreds of worshippers had come from towns and villages in India’s Uttar Pradesh state to take part in a prayer rally. The activists reportedly charged that rallies such as the prayer rally were aimed at conversions and that Christians lure the people with gifts of land, money, food and clothes.
In another reported incident of violence, the body of 25-year-old Pastor Narayan was found on Feb. 11 in a small town in Mysore district, Karnataka state. Sajan K. George, chairman of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), a Christian rights group, told Compass News that the official report of the autopsy suggested it was a case of suicide. However, the GCIC head suspected Hindu extremists were responsible for Narayan’s death and that their sympathizers are engaged in a cover-up.
Shortly afterwards, in India’s Kerala state, six theology students with Gospel for Asia (GFA) were forcibly abducted and beaten on Feb. 13 by activists of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the armed wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—the Hindu nationalist party that has been accused of being hostile to religious minorities. On Feb. 18, GFA reported that police had arrested the five RSS men involved in the attack after a raid conducted by the Deputy Superintendent of Police.
In the most recent reported incident of violence, a Christian meeting in a village in northwestern India’s state of Rajasthan was interrupted on Mar. 13 when a group of Hindu militants threatened and attacked those in attendance.
According to AsiaNews and the Union of Catholic Asian News, an unspecified number of militants attacked the eight Protestant clergymen who had gathered to pray, injuring the men seriously enough to require hospital treatment. The attackers also desecrated their copies of the Bible.
George told AsiaNews that the militants were from the Bajarang Dal, a Hindu nationalist group, and were wielding lethal weapons.
In response to the attack, George sent a letter to Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, calling his attention to the continuous violence Christians experience throughout India.
