Societal Attitudes
Christian missionaries have been operating schools and medical clinics for many years in tribal areas. Tribals (who have no caste status) and Dalits (who are at the lowest end of the caste system) occupy the very lowest position in the social hierarchy. However, they have made socioeconomic gains as a result of the missionary schools and other institutions, which, among other things, have increased literacy among low-caste and non-caste persons. Some
higher-caste Hindus resent these gains.
They blame missionaries for the resulting disturbance in the traditional Hindu social order as better educated Dalits, tribals, and members of the lower castes no longer accept their disadvantaged status as readily as they once did.
Some Hindu groups fear that Christians may try to convert large numbers of lower-caste Hindus, using economic or social welfare incentives.
Upper-caste Hindus, the membership base of the BJP and RSS, are afraid that this may destroy the rigid caste hierarchy. Many acts of violence against Christians stem from these fears.
Citizens often refer to schools, hospitals, and other institutions as "missionary" even when they are owned and run entirely by indigenous Christian citizens. By using the adjective "missionary," the
RSS taps into a longstanding fear of foreign religious domination.
Anti
Christian violence has included killings. In December 2001,
a 22-year-old nun, Sarita Toppo, was killed in a remote tribal village in Sarguja district of Chattisgarh. In early December 2000,
a Catholic priest was killed in Manipur. Earlier in Kurpania, Bihar,
a nun was raped and a convent was looted.
Many persons also have been injured in attacks on Christians. In November 2001,
four Christian missionaries were seriously injured when they were attacked in Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh. In February 2001,
four persons were injured after purported members of the Sangh Parivar attacked the Holy Family Church in Mysore, Karnataka. A group of
70 men, allegedly Bajrang Dal activists attacked the church during the celebration of Mass. The VHP termed the incident as "unfortunate," and asserted that the attackers did not belong to the Sangh Parivar. In August activists from the
VHP and Bajrang Dal attacked three Christian nuns from an orphanage in Jhabua district and some Muslim drivers in Madhya Pradesh. The victims alleged that
police later harassed them when they arrived at the police station to lodge a complaint. In March 2001, alleged
BJP and RSS activists attacked a Christian congregation at Chevalla in Andhra Pradesh. The alleged
reason behind the attacks was the pervasive perception that Christians were encouraging conversions of Hindus.
In August 2000, in Gandhinagar, Gujarat,
a mob beat up a priest for distributing Christian literature. In September 2000, a
Catholic Church in Karnataka was vandalized. In late November 2000, in Surat district, Gujarat, a
Hindu mob vandalized a small church (converted house) in Chindhia village of Vyara Tehsil. The owner of the church land, which is in a tribal area, was a tribal convert to Christianity who reportedly willingly reconverted to Hinduism and supported the vandals in reconsecrating the building for Hindu worship. The
Bishop of the Evangelical Church of India, a small Protestant denomination,
was refused an audience with the Chief Minister of Gujarat to discuss this case. The Chief Minister and Gujarat authorities considered the case a conflict over conversion and land, and not a religiously motivated attack on Christians. The lower (tehsil level) court ruled in favor of the Christian group, but the district court ruled in favor of the Hindu groupââ¬â¢s possession of the premises. The Christian group has appealed the decision to the Gujarat high court (the next higher court).
In January 2001, in a village near Udaipur, Rajasthan,
Bajrang Dal activists allegedly beat two Christian missionaries and their followers because they were watching a film on the life of Christ. Both missionaries were attempting to convert local tribals.
On May 7, 2001, Father Jaideep,
a Christian priest, was attacked in Jatni town, Orissa.
Local citizens reportedly were enraged by the priest's distribution of pamphlets to propagate Christianity in a Hindu-dominated area, allegedly participated in the attack. In June 2001, a report in The Hindu, a leading national newspaper, stated that
more than 5,000 tribals were reconverted back to Hinduism in Orissa over a period of 2 years.
In March 2002, following the outbreak of communal riots in Gujarat,
Christian organizations reported that Christian institutions and functionaries in the state also were attacked. These
Christian organizations blame the RSS and the VHP for ransacking and burning Christian missions in Sanjeli and Dhudhia, although these charges have not otherwise been confirmed. In April 2002,
a church in Managalore, Karnataka was attacked by approximately 60 persons protesting alleged attempts to convert local Hindus to Christianity. In August 2001 in Anakapalli, Andhra Pradesh,
43 Christian tombs in the local burial ground were destroyed. Throughout June and July 2000, there were
several bomb explosions in or near Christian institutions in the southern states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. No one was killed in the explosions, which caused relatively minor damage. The blasts later were blamed on Deendar Anjuman activists. Members of the group were taken into custody, and the Government later banned the group (see Section II). These incidents, as well as the
killing of a principal at a Christian school near Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, in 2000 led to heated debates in Parliament during which opposition members accused the
Government of failing to rein in the radical elements of the Sangh Parivar (see Section II).
In May 2001, at the Banavali village of Salcete Tehsil in South Goa, a Christian priest named Satirino Antao tried to sell a disputed school property to a splinter Christian group calling themselves the "Believers." The majority of the schoolââ¬â¢s parents were Catholics who opposed the move. Reportedly on May 20, 2001, after a heated meeting, the parents
vandalized school property and on May 28, 2001, allegedly assaulted Father Antao. The Archbishopââ¬â¢s office claimed that Antao had been removed as priest of Banavali church in 1973 and had no right to sell the school because it belongs to the Catholic Church. At the end of the period covered by this report, the case against Antao remained in the Goa High Court. On May 28, 2001, in Kapadwanj in Kheda district in Gujarat,
members of the VHP stopped a funeral procession to prevent the burial of a Christian in a disputed burial ground. The police used tear gas to dispel the VHP members, but the body had to be moved to Ahmedabad for burial.
On March 8, 2001,
K.S. Sudarshan made a speech advocating the "Indianization" of Islam and Christianity. He stated that [
Muslims and Christians] "should sever their links with the Mecca and the Pope and instead become swadeshi." He also had stated that
Christians should "reinterpret their scriptures" in a manner more in keeping with Hindu cultural norms. Catholics took special exception to this; the Archbishop of Delhi pointed out that the Indian Christian church is 2,000 years old (traditionally dating from the Apostle Thomas), and that although the spiritual head was the Pope, the day-to-day administration of the church was entirely in Indian hands. The RSS published an article entitled "
Foreign Missionaries, Quit India:RSS" in their journal The Organiser, in which they
attacked missionary-backed Christian institutions in the country. In March 2001, in Orissa, Christian Archbishop Cheenath gave a speech objecting to an amendment to the Orissa Religious Freedom Act which he believed would make conversion more difficult. He said that fears of forced conversion were not credible. He noted that, although Christian schools have for generations educated a far larger percentage of citizens than there are Christians in the general population, Christians make up slightly less of the population today than they did in the 1991 census.
In September 2001, some Christian leaders, believing that violence against Christians had declined significantly since the summer of 2000, agreed to meet with leaders of Hindu organizations. RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan stated there was a need for more such meetings between the RSS and Christians to create an atmosphere of peace and to remove misgivings and fears within the minority community. However, in 2001 the
RSS angered minority communities by publicly challenging the "Indian-ness" of religious minorities. On December 31, 2001, RSS chief K.S. Sudarshan addressed a meeting of volunteers of the Hindu Swayamsewak Sangh (a global organization of expatriate Hindus) in a suburb of Mumbai. He said that only the
RSS can serve as the bulwark against what he claimed was the Catholic Churchââ¬â¢s agenda of converting large Asian populations to Christianity.
