RIGHTS-INDIA: Church Called for Talks on Easter Attacks

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Dev Raj

NEW DELHI, Apr 27 2000 (IPS) - Under fire for a spate of recent attacks on the Christian community around Easter, the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has called for talks on Friday with Church leaders.

Officals said invitees to the talks, to be held in camera, include lay members of the community which forms barely two percent of India’s one billion people but is influential through its educational and charitable institutions.

Three Catholic nuns on their way to attend Easter Vigil Mass at Rewari, an industrial town in northern Haryana state and bordering Delhi, were attacked and inured on Apr 22 by suspected Hindu fanatics.

In a similar incident on the same day a Christian priest and some nuns who were leading a 14-member group were surrounded and attacked by members of the Bajrang Dal,a particularly militant Hindu fundamentalist group the same day in Mathura town in northern Uttar Pradesh state.

Bajrang Dal members who set aflame bibilical material in the posession of the group then lodged a compalint with police that attempts were being made to convert the local people to Christianity.

The Easter attacks drew sharp reactions this week from opposition parties in Parliament as well as from important allies in the BJP-led coalition government.

In fact, the issue was raised in the Lok Sabha (law making lower house) by Sudip Bandopadhyay, leader of the Trinamool Congress, a key ally of the Vajpayee government on Monday.

Somnath Chatterjee, leader of the Marxist Communist Party of India (CPI-M), said there was a pattern in the attacks and he suspected a jehad (religious war) had been launched against minorities in this country.

After BJP spokesman Venkiah Naidu stated that the attacks in Uttar Pradesh around Easter and earlier this month were not communally motivated but were cases of robbery, Church leaders charged him with making attempting to whitewash the incidents.

Naidu said the attacks in Mathura and nearby Agra town were born of “resentment at fee hikes and the failing of students” in schools run by Christian missionaires.

He also dismissed a murderous attack on Father Thomas at Kosi Kalan in Uttar Pradesh earlier in the month as a case of robbery drawing protests from the Archbishop of Agra Vincent Concessao.

The Archbishop has demanded to know in a letter released to the press Thursday why only Catholic schools were being targeted for fee hikes and why an attempt was made to kill Father Thomas even after he offered his assailants all the money he carried.

Spokesman for the All-India Catholic Union, Johan Dayal said officials have been busy trying to get statements from the victims that there was no communal angle to the attacks at Rewari and Mathura on Easter and earlier at Agra in Uttar Pradesh.

Dayal linked the attacks to an announcement made by the BJP provincial government in Uttar Pradesh in February that it was keeping a watch on the activities of Christian institutions thereby “creating an environment for violence.”

In Haryana the Easter violence followed a string of attacks on Christian institutions in the towns of Panipat,Sonepat and Karnal all of which were being passed off as robberies, Dayal said adding that Church lands were being grabbed in the state.

On Wednesday, the international human right group, Amnesty International released a document “Persecuted for Challenging Injustice,” documenting the experiences of “Human Rights Defenders in India,” including those battling communalism.

In the document, Amnesty acused the BJP of failing to clearly denounce acts of violence against members of religious minorities including non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and instead making public statements which may have incited violence.

“In recent years many social action groups and NGOs have been subjected to harassment and attacks on the basis of their Christian and Muslim association,” the document said.

Amensty named the BJP-affiliated, right-wing, Hindu political groups as the Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (Association of National Volunteers), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and Bajrang Dal (trained militant wing of the VHP).

It noted that many involved in activities such as working with women victims of domestic violence have been accused of converting those they aim to help, by extremist Hindu groups

wielding influence over police and the administration.

“The rhetoric of national security of the present government which has been overtly linked to loyalty to the Hindu religion by such groups has led to the increased labelling of non-Hindu human rights activity as anti-national,” Amnesty said.

Amnesty said it believed that the Indian government had an obligation to guarantee all its citizens the right to physical security and protection against violence whether inclucted by state officials or by other individuals or groups.

It has called on “all state and central authorites to take all necessary steps to prevent further acts of violence against members of religious minorities.”