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Washington Report
Hindu Extremists Now Focusing
Violence Against India's Christians
By M.M. Ali
March 1999, page 52
The recent physical attacks on members of the Christian minority
and the burning down of scores of churches in the state of
Gujarat and other parts of India reflect the gospel of hatred on
which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its religious
coalition partners are based. The otherwise staid and
respected English language daily Times of India observed that
after having targeted the Muslims and the Sikhs for a long time,
Hindus have now turned toward the small, unprotected minority of
Indian Christians.
BJP's extensions, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya
Sewak Sangh (RSS) and Bajrang Dal, have openly incited their
rank-and-file to demolish all vestiges of Christianity from
India. The atmosphere of fear and hatred against Muslims
whipped up at the time of the destruction of the Babri mosque in
1992, and against Sikhs in Delhi following the assassination of
Indira Gandhi in 1984, now is focused on Indian Christians.
The establishment throughout India of Hindutva-land of the Hindus
alone-is the objective of all of the right-wing Hindu religious
parties that exist under the BJP umbrella. It is their declared
policy to use all means, including violence, to reach that end.
Support for secularism comes only from a modest, educated, urban
fringe. Recent events have shown that such voices of sanity are
muted and drowned in a rising wave of Hindu fundamentalism that
is sweeping India today.
Christians are a mere 26 million in a population of almost a
billion, and they are scattered all over the country,
particularly in remote villages and tribal areas. They do not
constitute a force of any kind, and are traditionally peaceful
and friendly people.
India's dominant Hindu society is laden with class and
caste distinctions. A small segment, the Brahmins, remain at the
top. A vast majority, the Sudras, form the bottom that
traditionally was considered "untouchable." Through the
centuries they have been treated as less than human.
In the past 200 years, some from this bottom tier have converted
to Christianity. Hindus today accuse Christian missionaries of
forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity. Such charges obscure
the truth. It is the level of humanity and tolerance that draws
people toward a dogma or a doctrine, just as discrimination and
hatred turn them away.
It is being argued that Hindu extremists, after encountering
effective resistance from the Sikhs and the Muslims, have turned
on a softer target-the Christians. In fact, this is only
partially true. No minority is safe in the BJP's India.
Political analysts attribute the upsurge in anti-Christian ire to
the fact that Congress leader Sonia Gandhi, who has recently
become politically active in her role as highly respected widow
of assassinated Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi, happens to be a
Roman Catholic from Italy. The anti-Christian argument is that if
the Congress Party returns to power, Christians will receive
undue patronage from the government. This charge may instill fear
among the uneducated masses, but it does not make any political
sense.
By the same token, misgivings are being expressed by some Indians
about the motives for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the late
Mother Teresa and this year's Nobel Prize for Economics to
Amritya Sen, both of whom are Christians. For that matter, one
might wonder why current Indian Defense Minister George
Fernandez, a Christian, is unable to hold back the BJP goons?
The real issue, however, is that now that a Hindu party
has come to power, some Hindu extremists have ambitions of
re-converting the Muslims, the Sikhs and the Christians of India
to Hinduism. Minorities in India should be braced for more to
come under BJP governments, which have little sympathy for the
secularism of India.
Prof. M.M. Ali is a consultant and a fellow with The Center
for Planning & Policy Studies in the Washington, DC area.
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