injured in Orissa Wednesday, June 8, when police suddenly opened fire to end religious tensions near a police station. 25-year old Dillip Mahonta of the Hindu group Rastriya Swayam Sevak Sangh(RSS) was killed after police forces began shooting at an angry mob in the town of Champua, about 230 kilometers from Orissa’s capital Bhubaneswar.
The incident occurred around 10 am local time when a group of about 40 activists of RSS, and other Hindu organizations came to the police station to demand the arrest of a Muslim boy, who allegedly molested and seriously injured a Hindu girl five days earlier.
When protesters were told the girl had died of her injuries at a local hospital the situation became uncontrollable, a BosNewsLife reporter said from the region.
SHOUTING PEOPLE
A truckload of people shouting pro-Hindu slogans suddenly arrived and started pelting stones at the police station where the other Hindu hardliners had already assembled. Police then opened fire killing the activist and injuring five others. In a first reaction the Chief Minister of Orissa, Shri Naveen Patnaik, said he had ordered "an enquiry" into the incident.
The violence come after the RSS also threatened to step up attacks against non Muslim groups, including Christians, the BosNewsLife Orissa Bureau learned. The RSS has accused Christian missionaries of using the rising AIDS epidemic in India to concert Hindu’s, charges churches would deny.
The RSS publication ‘Observer’ said independent groups "have sprung up like mushrooms all over India in the name of fighting AIDS" but noted that "most of these are missionary-controlled."
ATTACK HINDU VALUES
Blaming them for an "attack on the Hindu values", the RSS demanded Christian organizations should be barred from working in India "for carrying such biases against our people and religion. It is not a matter to be settled by individual NGOs or initiative groups."
It stressed that "rich countries, which control the purse strings on health spending of the United Nations and other world bodies, have over the years been drumming it down that the developing nations, especially in Asia and Africa, are in the throes of an AIDS epidemic and that it is tearing our social fabric to shreds."
Dr Richard Feachem, Executive Director of the UN-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, reportedly said recently that HIV/AIDS cases were growing faster within India’s Hindu population than among Muslims. (Satya Sundar Mishrais BosNewsLife India Reporter based in Orissa. Mishra, 26, is a Development Journalist of Orissa working on social and religious issues that are not yet on the radar screen of media and politicians. He has been working for a variety of key publications. He can be reached via e-mail satya_mishra11@rediffmail.com ).
