INDIA: HATE CAMPAIGN ADDS FUEL TO PERSECUTION FIRE

Supreme Court receives petition against Hindu extremists’ anti-Christian material. April 24 (Compass Direct News) – The Supreme Court of India has admitted a petition seeking action against the distribution of compact discs (CDs) by Hindu extremists that allegedly suggested in 2006 that Christians in Gujarat state should be beheaded.

Admitting the petition filed by non-profit organization Anhad, the high court on April 5 gave four weeks to the federal government to reply concerning the circulation of the CD as preparation for the Shabri Kumbh, a “reawakening” event organized by Hindu extremists in Dangs district, Gujarat from February 11 to 13, 2006, according to The Hindu, a national daily, on April 8.

In the petition, Anhad sought an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation, as the Gujarat government has not taken any action against the makers and distributors of the CD.

The CD, made by the Shabri Kumbh Samorah Aayojan Samiti (Organizing Committee) and titled “Shri Shabri Kumbh 2006: Spirituality along with the Wave of Patriotism,” “incites Hindus against the Christian community and suggests that Christians be attacked and beheaded,” said the petitioner, alleging that the CDs were widely circulated, distributed and openly sold in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra and in the north-eastern states.

“In the CD, the narrator, while talking about Hindu tradition and culture, makes constant references to the evil forces and foreign powers that are out to destroy the Hindu religion whilst simultaneously flashing pictures of churches and Cross on the screen as if to insinuate that the Christian community is the evil force and the foreign power that the Hindu community has to reckon with,” the daily quoted the petitioner as saying.

On the CD cover, there is a caricature of a headless Christian priest wearing a cassock and holding a cross. “In place of the head is a question mark symbol,” the petitioner lamented. “The caption on the top of this picture literally translates into ‘Church: in the name of service.’”

The CDs were distributed during the rally, and several leaders of the Hindu extremist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), its political wing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and other affiliate groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council), gave inflammatory speeches against Christians. (See Compass Direct News, “Event in India Shows Extent of Fear of Christianity,” February 14, 2006.)


Hatred Incites Violence

Dr. John Dayal of the National Integration Council of the Government of India told Compass that the spewing of hate against Christians almost always leads to persecution, including murder and rape of Christian clergy and other members of the community.

Statements of leaders of the BJP and RSS against Christians have put the “microscopic community” into a “state of despair and fear, and led to burning of churches and violence against our people,” said Dayal, also president of the All India Catholic Union.

An independent inquiry report entitled, “Untold Story of Hindukaran [Proselytization into Hinduism] of Adivasi [Tribal people] in Dangs,” released on January 3, 2006 in the wake of the hate propaganda before the Shabri Kumbh, stated that escalation of anti-Christian violence in Dangs district in 1998 and 1999 was linked to a similar hate campaign.

“In 1998, 38 cases of anti-Christian violence, especially attacks on places of worship, were recorded,” the report noted. “A number of leaflets were published, and the Gujarati newspapers added fuel to the fire, supporting the propaganda against the Christians in Gujarat. ‘Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao [Arise Hindus, throw out the Christians]’ represents the overall sentiment of these pamphlets.”

Dangs district witnessed a 10-day spate of anti-Christian violence from December 25, 1998 to January 3, 1999 following the distribution of pamphlets against Christians and a massive rally where provocative speeches were made against Christian tribal peoples by the Hindu Jagran Manch (Forum for Revival of Hindus, or HJM).

Similarly, a hate campaign in Udaipur and Banswara districts of Rajasthan state resulted in tensions in the area about three years ago.

According to the February-March 2004 edition of the bimonthly Communalism Combat, ever since a camp was organized by the VHP from December 25 to January 1, 2004, the atmosphere in Banswara and Udaipur districts underwent a change; nuns began to feel unsafe.

Nuns and other workers from Christian institutions began facing frequent taunting in buses, feeling unsafe traveling with the crosses they wore openly displayed.

After the camp, several Christians were attacked in the area, and the atmosphere has remained tense for Christians. For instance, on December 24, 2005, Hindu extremists launched two attacks on Catholics in Banswara, in one case beating four people until they were unconscious.

On August 14, 2005, Hindu extremists had violently attacked a prayer meeting in Pathda village in Banswara district, seriously injuring nine Christians, including one woman.

Muslims Sufferers

Dayal, also secretary general of the All India Christian Council, said Indian Muslims too were victims of hate campaigns. “It often leads to mass murder and pogroms as we saw against the Muslim minority community in Gujarat in 2002,” he said.

At least 2,000 people, mainly Muslims, were killed in Gujarat in early 2002 when Hindu extremists went on a rampage after numerous anti-Muslim newspaper reports, hate speeches and inflammatory pamphlets appeared in response to the alleged burning of a train compartment in Godhra district; members of a Hindu extremist group died in the fire.

“Indian Christians can feel for the Muslims,” Dayal said, “as we have almost continuously been targets of hate speeches and campaigns, often officially sponsored by the Sangh Parivar [family of organizations linked to the RSS] and the highest in the political leadership of the BJP.”

Dayal said he has tried to file criminal cases against former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, his deputy Lal Krishna Advani, present party chief Rajnath Singh and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at various times in the last 10 years, but without success.

At the same time, the BJP has allegedly been distributing an anti-Muslim CD in Uttar Pradesh state during an Assembly election that will conclude on May 8.

The Press Trust of India on April 13 reported that the Election Commission had directed that police complaints be registered against BJP chief Rajnath Singh and all other responsible for the making and distribution of the election CD.

Demonization of Christians

Hate material produced and distributed by Hindu extremists most typically brands Christianity, as it does Islam, as an alien religion and a threat to Hindus and Buddhists in India as well as other Asian countries.

It suggests that if conversions are allowed to take place, Hindus will become a minority community in a few decades. It also alleges that Indian Christians use foreign funds to convert Hindus by force and fraudulent means.

The hate material casts doubts on the patriotism and loyalty of Christians to the country, questions the roots of Christianity, attacks the tenets of the faith and targets priests, nuns and Christian institutions and social work.

Hindu extremists use many means to spread hate against Christians on a regular basis. Media used include hate speeches at rallies, distribution of pamphlets and CDs, publication of reports in local newspapers in vernacular languages, publication of books, e-mail campaigns using e-groups, uploading of videos on the Web, and websites.

The RSS is said to spew hatred through its wide network of shakhas or daily gatherings. According to the RSS, there were about 50,000 shakhas in 34,732 locations across the country as of March 2005.

Additionally, the RSS has more than 17,500 “one-teacher schools” known as Ekal Vidyalayas, in 20 states. These schools allegedly teach hate against Christians in the guise of providing education and preventing “conversion” of tribal people to Christianity. The children of these schools are exposed to Hindu symbols and deities, saints and patriots apart from the regular syllabus.

The Hindu extremist Dharma Raksha Samiti (Association for Protection of Religion) has posted an anti-conversion documentary in English on the Web, which can be seen online at

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=3c13e5d869a1ccff0620b77daf703c92.703761.

Another extremist group, the Kashmiri Hindu Liberation Army, says on its website www.hindurashtra.org, that Hindus should “militarize” and “industrialize” themselves to “survive.”

“Hinduize the politics and militarize the Hindus… Change of religion means change of nation,” the website states, advocating establishment of a single-party, militarized government based on the divine laws of Hindu Dharma (Religion), and Hindutva nationalist ideology.

Illegal

The Supreme Court of India on March 31, 2004 affirmed that no person, not even the most popular leader, should be allowed to give speeches that destroy the country’s secular fabric or stoke communal violence.

Judges Doraiswamy Raju and Arijit Pasayat noted that “vested interests” were fanning fundamentalism of all kinds. They said the state should have no religion of its own, and that no one could make the state have one or try to create a theocracy.

According to the Model Code of Conduct (Sub-section 1 of Section 1) of the Election Commission of India, no party or candidate can indulge in “any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic.”

Section 295-A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) provides for three years’ imprisonment and/or fine for deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, “by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class.”

Similarly, Section 298 of the IPC outlaws the deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of any person with the use of any word, sound, gesture or object, and is punishable with imprisonment of up to one year and/or a fine.

According to Section 39 of the Norms of Journalistic Conduct prescribed by the Press Council of India, “Newspaper should not publish any fictional literature distorting and portraying the religious characters in an adverse light.”