violence against Christians which killed at least one church leader and injured dozens of Bible students in recent weeks, reports said Thursday, March 17.
A Christian parliamentarian has raised the issue of what he called "growing Christian persecution in India" in the current ongoing session of Parliament reported Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).
Francis George, from India’s southern state of Kerala, urged the central government to take "urgent steps to protect the Christian community" as there had been "a spate of attacks" against believers in several parts of the country, IANS said.
"MURDEROUS ATTACKS"
George, who belongs to the Kerala Congress party, stressed that "various murderous attacks had taken place in Kerala in recent times," IANS quoted him as saying. "Nuns of Missionaries of Charity at Olavanna in Kozhikode district and students of Bible College of Believers Church at Budhannor in Allappuzha district were attacked recently," he reportedly added.
George said there has been incidents elsewhere as well, including in the tense Vidarbha region of the western state of Maharashtra where he claimed "Christians have been forced to convert into Hinduism." He also mentioned violent incidents against Christians in Mysore, a district in the southern state of Karnataka, the eastern state of Orissa, the central state of Uttar Pradesh and in the northern state of Rajasthan.
In addition "a priest, Job Chittilappilly, was killed in Thrissur district of Kerala, allegedly by religious fanatics some time ago", he said.
HINDU ACTIVISTS
George claimed activists of the Hindu militant Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) group were behind most incidents of anti-Christian violence. However members of the influential Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party strongly reacted denying the allegation made against its parent body, the RSS, reported the Press Trust of India (PTI).
George urged the government to direct the state governments to take steps against the "nefarious activities of the communal religious fundamentalist forces." His statement came just days after a delegation of Christians from different denominations met with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and submitted an " Unofficial White Paper" listing cases of violence against Christians in 2005, including a BosNewsLife report.
Various church agencies and NGOs have rerecorded up to 200 attacks against Christians in the last two months, claimed the delegation, which included the Delhi Archbishop and officials of the All India Catholic Union, the All India Christian Council, the National Council of Churches in India, and the Evangelical Fellowship of India.
"We cannot tolerate violence against minority communities," Singh assured the delegation, according to transcripts obtained by the BosNewsLife New Dehli Bureau. There are about 24 million Christians in India, just over 2 percent of India’s total 1.1 billion population, according church estimates. (Based in New Delhi, Journalist Vishal Arora, 32, has covered persecution and other hard hitting news stories for a variety of international and national publications. He has traveled around the country on invitation by NGOs for seminars and talks on human rights, communalism, and religious persecution. Vishal Arora can be contacted at e-mail address vishalarora_in@hotmail.com or visit his website http://www40.brinkster.com/vishalarora/ )
