URGENT PRESS STATEMENT
22 NOVEMBER 2006
The following Press Statement was issued in
New Delhi by Dr. John Dayal, President of the
All India Catholic Union, Secretary General,
All India Christian Council, and Member, National
integration Council, Government of India on
the brutal assassination of Bashir Tantray,
a convert to Christianity, in Kashmir valley
lasgt week.
For much of the last two decades, the Kashmir
valley ahs trembled under waves of violence,
of diverse origins, but with the common result
of untold misery and injury to innocent people,
many of them women and children. The victims
have professed all faiths, Hindu Pandits and
Muslims, Sikhs and the occasional Buddhist.
Christians too have been victims in the valley,
and many converts to Christianity from the Pandit
community have shared the exile and homelessness
of their brothers and sisters.
In the context of tens of thousands of deaths
in these years, one more would not make much
of a meaning other than the pain and loss to
the immediate family of the dead and the injured.
Yet, the assassination of Bashir Ahmed Tantray,
a 50-year-old engineer working with the power
department of the state government in Srinagar
by two unidentified militants, brings home the
impact of fundamentalist terrorism so much closer
to the national church and community. Bashir
was shot dead on a busy road in Mamoosa village,
Barmullah district, while he was standing at
a busy bus stand near his parents' house. He
had come to Barmullah to visit his father, who
has been very ill. He is survived by his wife,
two daughters and two sons.
Bashir converted to Christianity about a decade
ago and had been an active Christian worker
ever since. He worked as a volunteer with various
Christian organizations and had become a prominent
Christian activist in the state. People in the
valley have no doubt he was killed because of
his religious identity. The quotient of fear
in the area is expressed in the fact that that
the people of the village arranged for a funeral
according to Muslim rites, fearing further tensions
if they buried him according to the Christian
tradition, according to a report by journalist
Vishal Arora.
Christians are really very few in the valley.
The 2001 Census put the figure of Christians
at a mere 20,299 Christians in all the three
parts of the state, Kashmir, Jammu and Laddakh,
which collectively have more than 10 million
people.
Even the Catholic Church, which like other denominations,
is basically in Jammu, feels the tension. Religious
nuns have repeatedly complained that they are
not allowed freedom to carry on even charitable
and relief work among victims of violence and
displacement. And yet, the media - including
the so called national media such as
the Indian Express newspaper chain and local
language magazines - have sought to target the
community claiming large scale conversions.
Bashir himself had been named in these reports,
which could have led to his being made a target
by religious bigots. According to the 2001 Census,
there are only 20,299 Christians in the state,
which has a total population of more than 10
million. I have had occasion to discuss the
issue with leaders of the two political parties
which run the collation government. Their assurances
of protection for the community's life, liberty
and development interests still need to be proved
by action on the ground. Bashir's killing also
calls upon the church in general to evolve a
serious response to violence in the State and
to become a participant in the peace process
however nebulous it may be at present. At present,
the church and the community survive on the
fringes, happy just to be able to survive. Mutely.
