By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 3, 2000; Page A12
NEW DELHI –– A sleeping priest was beaten to death with pump handles in Uttar Pradesh state. A Christian graveyard was dug up in Andhra Pradesh and the tombstones smashed. A missionary distributing Bibles in Gujarat was seized and the books burned. On one day, bombs exploded in four churches across different states.
From petty harassment to premeditated murder, Christian clergy and activists, institutions and symbols are under new assault by militant Hindus across India. With more than 30 incidents reported in the past several months, church leaders say the pattern has gained unprecedented breadth and momentum.
The attackers are rarely caught but often are suspected of belonging to a network of grass-roots Hindu groups known as the sangh parivar, or “united family.” The groups, which have gained followers and stature since a Hindu-based party came to national power in 1996, promote Hinduism as a way of life and act as watchdogs against its perceived enemies.
Most sangh parivar leaders deny involvement in religious violence, but some openly espouse ousting Christians from India. The groups are also believed to sponsor alarmist literature, often unsigned, that warns of a Christian conspiracy to take over India through “forced conversions” of rural and tribal people.
Indian newspapers recently reported that one Hindu group was running arms training camps. Another group promotes the hero worship–and possible political candidacy–of Dara Singh, a Hindu activist who is in prison awaiting trial in the fatal burning of Graham Staines, an Australian Baptist missionary, and his two sons in January 1999.
“Dara Singh is the protector of the Hindus, a reformer who is fighting the conspiracy,” said Dhirendra Nath Pande, 27, a software developer who is secretary of the Save Dara Singh Committee here. “The biggest danger to our religion is from Christianity. . . . It is slowly planned, like sweet poison,” he asserted. “Now because of our work, the Christian reality has been exposed. What will you do by arresting one Dara Singh? Thousands of Dara Singhs will be born.”
The Indian government, while embarrassed at the tarnishing of its secular image abroad, seems paralyzed by the attacks. Top officials of the ruling alliance, which is dominated by the Hindu-based Bharatiya Janata Party and beholden to the sangh parivar, have played down the crimes and made bland appeals for religious harmony.
In Rome last week, Pope John Paul II told Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee he was disturbed by the violence and said it had “seriously wounded” India’s tradition of religious tolerance. Vajpayee said he, too, was concerned but dismissed the attacks as “isolated incidents” and suggested that the problem be viewed “in its proper perspective.”
Church officials and human rights groups say the government’s weak response is encouraging a climate of hatred and allowing fears of a “Christian takeover” to fester, even though India is more than 85 percent Hindu and less than 3 percent Christian.
The sense of vulnerability among Indian Christians deepened last month when their leading defender, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New Delhi, died in a car crash in Poland. Before his trip, Archbishop Alan de Lastic told journalists here that India’s Christian community was facing its worst crisis since the state was founded in 1947.
“I blame the government for this,” de Lastic said, noting that he had spoken to Vajpayee about the attacks, “yet nothing seems to be getting done.”
At de Lastic’s funeral in New Delhi’s cathedral Tuesday, thousands of people filed past the garlanded coffin, and hundreds filled a condolence book with messages that spoke of more than spiritual bereavement.
Church officials say the Hindu militants’ real motive is not to defend their religion, but their economic privileges. They say upper-caste Hindus feel threatened by the work of Christian missions to uplift India’s rural and tribal poor, many of whom are trapped at the bottom of society by the rigid Hindu caste system. Hindu activists say Christian churches convert illiterate Indians in the guise of service to the poor.
When violent crimes do occur against Christians, police usually attribute them to theft or personal grudges rather than religious motives. On the night of June 6, the Rev. George Kuzhikandam, an Indian-born teacher at a convent school, was bludgeoned to death by a group of unidentified men near the city of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, becoming the fourth Christian clergyman killed in India in the past 18 months.
The unsolved slaying became instant grist for competing rumor mills. Some Hindu groups suggested the priest was involved in sexual misconduct or killed by Pakistani intelligence agents. The police blamed robbers, questioned a school cook who was then found strangled in his cell and admitted they did not even consider questioning local Hindu extremists. Fellow priests believe the slaying was another organized attempt to intimidate Catholic activities.
“In the context of what’s happening around the country, we can only conclude that this, too, was a planned attack,” said the Rev. Emmanuel Ulahannan, the headmaster. He said that some parents might withdraw their children from school and that church workers posted in schools and chapels across India feel even more vulnerable since de Lastic’s death.
“He had a lot of influence and was able to put some pressure,” Ulahannan said. “We feel lost now.”
As criticism has mounted in India and abroad, some conservative Hindu organizations have strongly denied any links to the religious violence, but they described it as a natural reaction by Hindus who feel their faith is under siege. They also have stepped up “reconversion” campaigns to bring new Christians back to the Hindu fold. On June 2, a Hindu priest triumphantly “reconverted” 72 tribal Indians in the same village where Staines, the Australian missionary, was killed.
Critics say continuing mixed signals from Delhi and state governments may bolster, rather than chasten, the fanatic Hindu fringe. Some top officials, such as Home Minister L.K. Advani, are Hindu hard-liners who see no reason for alarm; others, including Vajpayee, seem more eager to avoid alienating Hindu constituents than to salvage India’s reputation as a tolerant, secular democracy.
“If the sangh parivar groups have been bold enough to announce their plans, it is evidently because the [government’s] response to the threat . . . has left much to be desired,” said the Hindustan Times in an editorial. “It is time that the Government unambiguously clarified that it will not allow such openly provocative remarks and actions.”
Special correspondent Rama Lakshmi contributed to this report.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company