This hostility in the state of Orissa followed two months of clashes between Hindus and Muslims over the disputed territory of Jammu-Kashmir, and mass protests over farmer’s land rights near Kolkata in West Bengal.
“Today it is Kandhomal in Orissa, tomorrow, who knows, it may be our town, our church, our convent or our own life,” said the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. “The religious fundamentalists in this country have already set their agenda to disturb the peace, integrity and sovereignty of the nation”.
India is the mirror of the world: what takes place within her confines is also happening elsewhere. It is happening in Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, The Sudan and, lately, in Egypt as well. It is a full-scale attack with grassroots support, and can strike anyone.
Christian communities in all these countries are an annoying presence to many people because these communities are living witnesses of a religion, a culture and a way of life based on the absolute value of the human person, and that means on the liberty and equality of all, on women having the same rights as men, on democracy and social justice.
This anti-Christian crusade should therefore receive greater attention from our newspapers, radio, television, the internet and by our politicians. It is not only directed against a religion, but also against a whole system of values: Christianity, which is the fountainhead of the West’s love of freedom and respect for the human person. Let us be under no deception about this, the anti-Christian violence of these days is, in actual fact, aimed against democracy and human rights.
Western public opinion is under the impression that Christians are persecuted only in Islamic countries or in Communist regimes; it is as yet oblivious of the destructive power of Hindu fundamentalism, which a democratic country like India is unable to curb. What worries the Indian Church most of all are not the single episodes of violence, but the rising tide of intolerance against Christianity, and its underlying motives.
A flyer was distributed in Bangalore last Christmas which lists the so-called ‘crimes’ of Christians: treating everyone on the same level, the education and empowerment of women, and the rejection of the caste system. The text, signed by Hindu nationalistic groups, states that Christians in the southern state of Karnataka must “immediately abandon Indian territory, or return to the mother religion which is Hinduism,” and that if they refuse to do so, they “will be killed by all good Indians, who by doing so will show their virility and their love of the country.”
In this list of ‘crimes’, the most important is left out: that the churches, Christian schools, and Christian solidarity projects are working mainly for the poorest of the poor, that is, the outcast ‘pariah’ caste, which numbers about 130 million souls in a country of almost 1,148 million people.
Thanks to Christian missionary schools the ‘pariah’ are gaining awareness of their rights – a phenomenon which is deeply disturbing to the custodians of an outdated, age-old religious tradition which considers them as impure, and therefore ‘untouchable’, individuals. This phenomenon is also causing great apprehension among the landed gentry, who have always exploited them economically as serfs. This is what they are afraid of: that Christian freedom that will take away their privileges.
Updated on October 06 2016