do not rule out attacks against religious minorities, including Christians, who are accused of supporting terrorists, BosNewsLife learned Sunday, July 10.
"Will somebody tell us who funds these [terrorist] outfits? Why these outfits don’t attack any church or mosque?", said Shri Indresh Kumar, an official of the hard-line Hindu party Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He spoke at the end of a controversial training program for RSS militants in New Delhi.
It is one of 76 camps for RSS militants which the party is known to have set up across India this year, and an estimated 16,000 party members are believed to have received training there.
Advocacy groups and churches fear many of them will use their skills to attack Christians, including pastors and missionaries. However the RSS suggested it was ready for a dialogue with Christians, including in the tense state of Orissa, where the party claims its activists saved the lives of 80 church leaders.
TRAPPED IN FORESTS
The priests and pastors were trapped after an apparent traffic accident in the dense forests of the state’s Sambalpur district, said the RSS weekly ‘Organiser’. 10 other church leaders allegedly died in the incident. The pastors were reportedly driving in at least one truck to a wedding party when the traffic accident happened.
They "were rescued [by the RSS] and admitted to a nearby hospital, 45 kilometers (about 28 miles) from the site, in that dark night," the Organiser reported. RSS activists not only provided the injured with medicines and food but "donated their own blood" to the clergy, the weekly claimed. No times and dates were provided for the incident and there was no independent confirmation of that report.
The Organiser quoted Bishop Samal as saying, "these boys of RSS have given us a new life. We are grateful to them. May God bless them".
ALL "HUMAN BEINGS"
However "we have not done anything much. What we have done has been done from the humanitarian point of view. All of us are human beings. All are children of God," the Organiser quoted RSS state secretary BB Nanda as saying.
The unprecedented report in the Organiser, seen as the RSS official mouth piece, comes amid growing national and international pressure on the party to end its militant activities against religious minorities. RSS militants and those sympathizing with the party’s hard-line Hindu school of thought have been linked to the killings of several missionaries and church leaders in recent years.
The RSS has denied active involvement in violence, and said it only acts against those involved in "forced conversions" from Hinduism to Christianity. Evangelical Christians working in India have denied these charges, saying the Bible teaches that people are free to either accept or deny Jesus Christ in their lives.
The RSS said it is active "in more than 80 per cent of countries of the world" with 37 national and international affiliates. (Satya Sundar Mishra is BosNewsLife India Reporter based in Orissa. Mishra 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 ).
