RIGHTS-INDIA: Christians Worried Despite Vajpayee-Pope Meet

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Jun 28 2000 (IPS) - India’s minority Christians are feeling orphaned after the death of a prominent church leader despite the prime minister’s assurance to Pope John Paul II that his government would protect them from communal violence.

Political observers noted that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s specially sought meeting with the Pope in Rome was meant to show his government was keen to dispel impressions that it was turning a blind eye to the growing spate of attacks on Christians in India.

However, the papal audience competed for space on the front pages of newspapers Tuesday with reports of the desecration of a church in a small town in western Maharashtra state and the vandalisation of a Christian graveyard near the capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state.

The latest incidents of anti-Christian violence, by suspected Hindu fanatic groups linked to Vajpayee’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have made Christians feel more insecure and critics question the sincerity of Vajpayee’s promise to the Pope.

The minority community is all the more worried having lost an influential leader. In recent years, Alan de Lastic, Archbishop of Delhi, who died in a car accident in his native Poland last week, had emerged as a key spokesperson of India’s 22 million Christians who are facing their most difficult time in the past half century.

De Lastic used to say that the church was under attack because its work of uplifting the poor was upsetting social equations. “But the work of the church with the poor must go on,” he insisted.

Before he left on his fateful trip to Poland earlier this month, de Lastic had led a team of Christian leaders that met Vajpayee to demand action to stop a growing hate-campaign against the Christian community.

Among those present at his funeral was Indian President K.R. Narayanan, Home Minister L.K. Advani and main opposition Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi.

Ever since the BJP-led government first took office in March 1998, Christian missionaries and institutions have come under verbal attacks from radical Hindu groups affiliated to Vajpayee’s party. This has been accompanied by a spate of physical violence believed to be the work of these groups, which, however, deny the charge.

In the most gruesome incident, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two small sons were torched to death in eastern coastal Orissa state early last year.

During a visit to India last year, the Pope declared the subscribing to a particular faith or changing it was a human rights issue.

“Religious freedom constitutes the very heart of human rights. Its inviolability is such that individuals must be recognised as having the right even to change their religion, if their conscience do demands,” the pontiff said.

But since the papal visit, the anti-Christian campaign orchestrated by the BJP’s affiliates has only intensified, drawing protests from, among others, the Attorney General of India, Soli Sorabjee.

“Persons who make statements that Christians are bigger enemies than Muslims should be locked up in jail or in a lunatic asylum,” Sorabjee declared last week, angered by the inflammatory anti- Christian statements of a hardline Hindu group leader.

Vajpayee has to balance hardline Hindu sympathisers within the BJP with key ruling coalition allies who have forced the BJP to dilute its Hindu nationalist agenda.

The prime minister has tried to hold state governments responsible for checking anti-Christian violence, arguing that under the constitutional division of federal-state powers, maintenance of law and order is the duty of the states.

An official statement, issued after Vajpayee’s 10-minute meeting with the Pope, said the government was deeply concerned by the attacks against Christians in recent months and years.

“The central government is in close touch with the state governments ensuring that all preventive and precautionary measures are taken for the maintenance of peace and communal harmony,” the statement added.

Radical Hindu groups have denied charges that they are behind the communal attacks. Two of the most well known among them — the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) — have written to the National Minority Commission, denying any involvement in the anti-Christian campaign.

Critics of the government’s handling of the situation say Vajpayee will have to match his words to the Pope with action.

“In the face of continuing and relentless assaults against the Christian community, the Prime Minister has struggled to demonstrate that his Government has both the capacity and the will to protect the interests — or sometimes the very lives — of those belonging to minority communities,” said the influential daily The Hindu Tuesday.

“Such statements of reassurance are welcome; but they have been heard before and are unlikely to allay fears unless they are backed by a (hitherto lacking) determination to mercilessly crack down on those responsible for conducting their dangerous and divisive campaigns to pit community against community,” the paper added in an editorial.