Reports says Hindu extremists under the Hindutva banner have challenged Christians to convert to Hinduism if they want to return to their villages. Most of the churches, Christian homes and Christian villages in Kandhamal and 14 other district of Orissa are vandalized.
Terming the torching of churches, raping of nuns and killings of innocent christians as a ‘cultural terrorism” unleashed by Hindu extremists, the Dal Khalsa held the Indian government responsible for miserably failing to protect the lives and properties of the minority community.
In a hard hitting statement, the party vice-president Manmohan Singh Khalsa, general secretary Dr Manjinder Singh and political secretary Kanwarpal Singh urged the United Nations to intervene as despite the public outcry and recoomendations of National Commission for Minorities to ban Bajrang Dal, the approach of the Indian government has been totally biased.
“Though the prime minister and the UPA chairperson belong to minority community, the response of the state machinery is being driven by prejudice”. As elections are drawing nearer, there were fears that violence against minorities would escalate, they observed. The connivance of the RSS and VHP was visible as their militant wing Bajrang Dal leader Mahendra Kumar supported and justified the attacks on churches.
The worst anti-Christian violence in India since independence has reminded the horrors and agonies of Sikhs and Muslims who suffered the worst kind of genocides in 1984 and 2002 in the hands of Congress and the BJP respectively. The leaders condemned the attempts made by certain so-called Hindutva elements directing christian refugees not to return to their homes unless they converted to Hinduism.
Urging the Amnesty International and the Asia Human Rights Watch to seek explanation from the Indian government for failing to curb the violations of the human rights, they said the silence of the international community especially the West was unfortunate and ridiculous.
In India, an umbrella organization called the Sangh Parivar champions the concept of Hindutva. The sangh comprises organizations such as the RSS, Bharatiya Janata Party, Bajrang Dal, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
This ideology has existed since the early 20th century, forged by Veer Savarkar, but came to prominence in Indian politics in the late 1980s, when two events attracted a large number of mainstream Hindus to the movement. The first of these events was the Rajiv Gandhi government’s use of its large Parliamentary Majority to overturn a Supreme Court verdict granting alimony to an old woman that had angered many Muslims (see the Shah Bano case).
The second was the dispute over the 16th century Mughal Babri Mosque in Ayodhya — built by Babur after his first major victory in India. The Supreme Court of India refused to take up the case in the early 1990s, leading to a huge outcry. Tempers soon flared, and a huge number of nationalist Hindus from all parts of India razed the mosque in late 1992, causing nationwide communal riots. The razing of the mosque and subsequent conflict arguably lifted the BJP and Hindutva to international prominence.
“The expertise to read the signpost of the attack on secularism and democracy in India and monitor accordingly is the need of the hour,” said, Ms. Asma Jahangir, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief at her concluding press conference after a three-week mission trip to find the religious intolerance in India early this year.
The attack on Christians in India is crystal clear of attack on Indian secularism and democracy, wrote some editors in India. The concerns are rising that extremism is undermining Indian’s peace and it could descend in hell.
Tribal Christians of the Dang district of Gujarat, Jhabua of Madhya Pradesh, and Kandhamal of Orissa are major victims of the organized attack by Hindutva forces.
The episode of black Christmas in the Kandhamal district of Orissa in 2007 and the ongoing attack in different parts of the country are the latest signposts of the attack on Indian secularism and democracy. In black Christmas, the media reported nine Christians killed, over 90 churches and Christian institutions and over 700 Christian homes burnt and over 7000 lives affected. The economic system of tribal Christians was destroyed to ashes.
The ongoing and uncontrolled communal violence on Christians has left over 30 deaths, over 100 churches, 300 Christian villages, 4000 Christian homes burnt down and 50000 Dalit Christians made refugees in forest.
http://pakistanpal.wordpress.com/2008/12/04/india-hindu-extremism-causing-concerns/