Dr. John Dayal
Member: National Integration Council
Government of India
National President: All India Catholic Union
(Founded 1919)
Secretary General: All India Christian Council
(Founded 1999)
President: United Christian Action, Delhi (Founded
1992)
505 Link, 18 IP Extension, Delhi 110092 India
Email: johndayal@vsnl.com
Phone: 91-11-22722262 Mobile 09811021072
Sangh bares its fangs on Founder's Centenary
Interfaith dialogue meeting attacked in Kanpur,
Muslims, Christians victim s elsewhere
Statement by Dr John Dayal, Member, national
Integration Council, Government of India, New
Delhi, 22 January 2007:
The bloodthirsty manner in which the Hindutva
brigade in India celebrated the Birth Centenary
of its founder and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh
chief Guru Golwalkar last Sunday is evidence
that the hyper nationalist and religious fundamentalist
group has sharpened its attack on Christians
and Muslims as enemy aliens in India. Not only
did the Hindutva Parivar violently attack residential
Muslim areas in the Silicon city of Bangalore
in Karnataka taking out a provocative procession,
which defied the police, it attacked institutions
in Kangra of Himachal Pradesh, its spokesmen
made repeated announcements on friendly Indian
language television news channels that they
would wage war on [Muslim] terrorism and [Christian]
Conversions which they identified as the twin
threats to India. Their cadres among the `Sadhus'
[saints or mendicants], now congregating along
the Ganges-Yamuna Rivers' confluence at Allahabad,
they said, would ensure their the dream Hindu
Homeland Nation [Rashtra] was realized as soon
as possible. The vitriolic diatribe against
religious minorities has reached its peak on
the eve of elections to several State Legislative
Assemblies in the country. For the most, Indian
police forces have been mute witnesses to the
Hindutva violence. In Bangalore, capital of
Karnataka which is now ruled by the Bharatiya
Janata Party, the political face of the RSS,
the police made an ineffectual attempt to control
the ravaging mobs, killing one person. In Kangra,
they watched helplessly and in Kanpur, the industrial
capital of India's largest province of Uttar
Pradesh, they came much too late although television
cameras were on duty recording the mass violence.
The Kanpur violence, in fact, was the one that
gave away the Sangh Parivar intolerance. What
they presumed was a Christian conversion rally
because two White United States citizens were
in attendance, turned out to be an interfaith
prayer and dialogue meeting where a Sikh cult
leader from New Delhi had taken two of his foreign
guests as key speakers.
Curiously, only one news channel showed violence
and identified the attackers as Hindutva Parivar
members. Only one Hindi language newspaper,
the mass circulated Amar Ujala, reported the
incident in detail. Another channel took the
Hindutva side and said the meeting was of Christian
missionaries even though nether police chief
of the city denied it was so. The police chief,
Sinha, promised action against the ringleaders
who masterminded the well planned attack. The
silence of other mass media was not explained.
Newspapers in Uttar Pradesh routinely target
the Christian minority in publishing statements
of the Sangh Parivar against Church groups and
institutions. The Americans, who were not identified,
were said to be in a state of panic and had
cut short their stay in the hotel in Kanpur.
The Sikh cult leader was identified as Sant
Sangat Singh Bains, who ahs a large ashram in
New Delhi, and is known for his work in ecumenism
and inter faith dialogue. The organizers of
the meeting in Kanpur are well-known Hindu intellectuals
Kailashpati Tripathi and his associates who
have an inter religious meeting every week.
The police said later they had arrested two
persons who they did not name I saw the Sangh
aggression on the Hindi Television news Channel
`Seven'. The camera recorded how the peaceful
meeting was abruptly disrupted by a mob of about
twenty persons who slammed open the door of
the hall, tore down the curtains, climbed up
a table and smashed the sound system. Then they
assaulted some of the persons attending the
meeting even as their spokesman told the television
reporter that they would not allowed conversions
in Hindu Rashtra of India. Mr. Tripathi later
told a fact finding team of the All India Christian
Council that there was no Christian activity
in their meeting, which was part of a series
of prayer dialogues they have been organizing
for a long time. In the past, there had been
no objections, much less attacks, on their inter
faith meetings, he said.
In Kangra, a small town in the Himalayan state
of Himachal Pradesh whose Congress government
recently passed a law banning religious conversions
- defying the Congress president's directive
- a fanatical crowd surrounded a Christian run
orphanage and wanted the pastor to close pack
up and leave the state. The police watched and
then curiously advised the crowd to file a formal
complaint with the police against the pastor
and his group. Pastor Behal's has had a church,
and children's home with about 15 inmates for
several years in this district town. Of late,
the local Hindutva groups have been railing
against him, and want him out of the state where
outsiders are not permitted to own property
but can run institutions. The Sangh violence
against Christians has not surprised me. Neither
am I surprised that violence takes place in
states that are ruled by the
BJP as much as in other states ruled by the
Congress. The one difference is that in Congress
ruled states, the police make an effort to act
against the attackers, while in BJP governed
states such as Madhya Pradesh, even preliminary
reports are not registered by the police.
I have also in many letters on behalf of the
All India Catholic Union and the All India Christian
Council, addressed to Congress President Mrs.
Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh
and Union Home Minister Mr. Shivraj Patil, spelled
out the Sangh conspiracy against the Christian
community.
The national leadership has been told time and
again that the writ of the Indian Constitution
seems not to run in states such as Madhya Pradesh,
Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. They have also been
told that the mushrooming number of anti-conversion
bills actually convinces the Sangh cadres that
they are right in attacking Christians. The
most shocking has been the anti conversion bill
passed in the Himachal Pradesh assembly, controlled
by the Congress, in utter defiance of the assurances
of the Congress president.
Unless the national government and the Supreme
Court of India direct state governments to take
preemptive action, we fear that anti Christian
violence will only escalate in coming months.
