Human rights group: anti-christian hate campaigns fuel persecution in India

Hindu extremist groups have actively been campaigning against Christians in India for close to a decade, yet there is little the Indian Government has done to check what continues to fuel the country's worst incidents of religious persecution, says human rights watchdog International Christian Concern (ICC).

"Often, reporting on Christian persecution in India tends to focus on the incidents, and not the causes, of persecution. Rarely do we see the big picture - that Hindu ultra-nationalists who believe that to be Indian means to be Hindu are taking advantage of the uneducated and waging a hate-filled propaganda campaign against Christians," an ICC release has said.

It added: "Most recently, Hindu extremist groups Bajrang Dal and Hindu Jagruti Samiti distributed thousands of anti-Christian leaflets in Chitradurga district in the southern state of Karnataka last month."

That campaign resulted in an incident on 5 August, when at least 50 extremists attacked more than 10 workers during the dedication of a new church in Sira area between Tumkur and Chitradurga districts.

In addition, on 16 August, the victimised Christian workers were arrested on charges of "forcible conversion".

The ICC statement added: "The trend of launching venomous propaganda campaigns that incite physical attacks against the Christian minority came to fore in 1998 when the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the political arm of the chief Hindu extremist organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), graduated from a party on the margins to a mainstream and ruling party in India."

Soon after the BJP's accession to power, there was a spate of violence against Christians from Christmas Day 1998, lasting until 3 January 1999, in the Dangs district of Gujarat state.

These attacks included the killing of priests and the raping of nuns to the physical destruction of Christian schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries.

Hundreds of Christians were also forced to "reconvert" to Hinduism, ICC has reported. The outbreak of violence in Dangs is not an isolated incident, the persecution watchdog insists, but is typical of how anti-Christian violence is organised in various parts of the country.

According to a report by ICC, 'Politics by Other Means: Attacks against Christians in India', the extremist group Hindu Jagran Manch (HJM) obtained permission to hold a rally on 25 December 1998 in Ahwa town in the Dangs district.

Over 4,000 people participated in the rally, shouting anti-Christian slogans while the police stood by and watched. After the rally, the attacks began on Christian places of worship, schools run by missionaries, and shops owned by Christians.

Christian Today has been told that in another incident, Hindu villagers, with the encouragement of a village chief, gang-raped two Christian women after their families refused to denounce Christianity on 28 May 2006 in Nadia village in Bhagwanpura block in Madhya Pradesh state's Khargone district.

ICC research has noted that hate campaigns attract several local laws, and yet the media, local and international, the state and federal governments in India as well as international organisations have a tendency to take note only of "violent incidents" while failing to address the backdrop against which such incidents take place.


For more information please visit: www.persecution.org