Khalistan Times 

©1998, All rights reserved,Khalistan.Net

The Washington Times
November 21, 1998

Religious, ethnic tensions explode anew in India

Militant Hindus growing bolder with BJP's rise to political power

BARODA, India - The mob came in the dead of night, wielding pipes, bicycle chains and bamboo poles. They shouted obscenities at the hundreds of people sleeping in a boys' school. And then they struck. Some of the victims fled across a field and hid in the dark behind a grove of banyan trees. Others tried to ward off the assailants. Two men picked up Raman Chiman Kristi, a small-town pastor, and threw him off a second floor balcony. "I tried to get up but could not, so I crawled to the door," Mr. Raman recalled, sitting on a metal framed cot, his right leg in a plaster cast and his hands marked with cuts and bruises. "And then everything went dark." When he regained consciousness several minutes later, Mr. Raman realized that he had been caught up in the latest attack in an intensifying campaign against the spread of Christianity in India. The people sleeping in the school had come to Baroda for a 11 national leadership conference" featuring nightly prayer meetings, with music and speakers from Europe and North America. Christians and potential Christians had been provided with free food and lodging, as well as subsidized transportation from all over the country. Attacks in many placesAs Mr. Raman lay quietly in pain, the mob divided the crowd along religious lines. Christians were taken away by police, who arrived soon after the attack. Hindus were taken away by the assailants, who later claimed to have "rescued" 47 persons from a foreign financed drive to convert them.The clash in Abroad on Oct. 29 has sparked renewed terror among India's 23 million Christians. Since the rise to power of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Party in April, they have faced an unrelenting challenge to their faith from the government in New Delhi. The part's militant religious wing has targeted both the Protestant and Catholic Churches openly,  claiming they're out to turn India into a Christian nation. It has demanded foreign missionaries be deported, limits on foreign funding and an end to the conversion of Hindus. Of course, the militants have resorted to action as well as words: *In April, in the western state of Gujarat, a BJP stronghold, a Roman Catholic church under construction was demolished, along with a shed being used for services and statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary and St. Anthony, the church's patron saint. *In July, in the Gujarati city of Rajkot, a mob entered a missionary school and burned hundreds of Bibles after forcing students to spit on them. In another town, a Christian body was exhumed from a grave and thrown on the roadside. * The final straw for many Christians came in September when four nuns were raped in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, reportedly by local men they had come to serve, Church leaders accused organizations close to the BJP of complicity. 'Converting day and night'While condemning the violence, Hindu nationalist leaders have made one thing clear: Christians, who account for 2.6 per cent of the population, should understand their place in a nation that is 80 percent Hindu. "It is not a question of Christianity; it is a question of the church," said Dr. Pravin Togadiya, a physician and head of the World Hindu Congress in Gujarat. "With the big finances they're getting from Western countries, with such a huge machine, they are converting day and night." While the attacks have affected only a small number of Indians, they have come to symbolize what many in the country see as the greatest threat posed by the BJP and its sister organizations, such as the Hindu Congress.