Christians in the Punjab

Dr. John Dayal’s comments on the latent anti Christian situation in the Punjab in the last ten years leading to sporadic violence and confrontation, and the role of BJP stalwarts in it.
New Delhi, June 2006
The Indian Punjab on the face of it seems an unlikely place for anti Christian violence, unlike its Pakistani counterpart, which has seen decades of mass violence against the micro community of Christians still left in that country.
Punjab went through two decades of Hindu Sikh violence in the 1970s and 1980s — leading to military action against the Sikhs and their religious seat Akal Takht, the assassination of Prime minister Indira Gandhi, the Sikh massacre in Delhi, Bhilai and Kanpur, the murder of innocent youth by Punjab police in the bullet for bullet thesis. This has created a state highly volatile in religious sentiment and susceptible to rumours and outside provocation.
Add to it the traditional casteism amongst the Sikhs – the landed Jat Sikhs look down on the mazhbi or Dalit Sikhs – and the divisive matrix is complete
A little known fact is that Punjab has a good many Christians. Just one district, Gurdaspur has as many as four hundred thousand Christians; four Lakh as wee say, and all of them are converts from the Dalit Sikhs and Dalit Hindus. In fact Dalit Sikhs, Hindus and Christians are culturally one entity and are closer to each other than to their upper caste religious groups.
This is the reason for the anti Christian violence. Church runs the Ludhiana medical college and many good schools and colleges.
The upper caste Hindus and Sikhs are wary of the church and look down on the Dalits of all faiths, particularly Dalit Christians [the Muslim community in Punjab is very small]
The police force in Punjab, Haryana and Chandigarh, specially the non-Sikh elements, are probably pro BJP by tradition as this area has been a Hindu mahasabha and Arya Samaj stronghold for decades.
On behalf of the then national government, I investigated some anti Christian violence in the late 1990s, especially in Ludhiana where the police had beaten up Christian youth.
I know first hand how police and administration refuse permission for Christian healing meetings.
The situation was brought to a head during the BJP rule and when Tarlochan Singh, now a BJP MP of the Rajya Sabha, was chairman of the National Commission for Minorities. He did his best to divide the Sikh and Christian communities. We had to protest. I wrote to him then saying “The Council has been also intrigued by your recent statements on the issue of conversions, as reported in the Press, in letters you seem to have written to some Bishops. According to Rediff.com, you “wrote to the presidents of the Catholic Bishops Council of India and the National Council of Churches in India, citing incidents in Punjab, Bhilai and Jharkhand where Christian missionaries fully supported with medical teams have been going around in many villages alluring poor Sikh families to adopt Christianity.” The media quoted you as “Directing the Christian leaders to desist from this activity” and saying “I have been approached by a large number of Sikh organisations to take up this matter. I request you to... adopt a policy not to make further attempts of converting Sikhs through any means.” The media did not mention which Sikh organisations complained to you. If you had named them, perhaps misapprehensions may have been cleared through genuine dialogue.
INSAAF International some time ago in s statement said “In 1996 there were seven cases of anti-Christian violence, 24 in 1997, and 120 in 1998. In last six months the number of attacks on Christian institutions and individuals is alarming. There have been several acts of burning of religious literature, attacks on missionary institutions, priests and nuns. Four bomb blasts targeting churches took place in various parts of the country in a day. These are certainly not `isolated criminal incidents' as the government has tried to project, but a thought out plan against the minority community. That was in 1999.
Sporadic incidents have continued.
We were alarmed last month when the Punjab government evoked a rule, which would have taken away the Christian ownership of the Ludhiana medical college and hospital. Fortunately top-level intervention stopped this ugly step.
We are taking care to ensure that relationship between Sikhs and Christians, both minorities are maintained at the best level possible, even if the Sikhs are in a majority in Punjab and are assertive of their status. We appeal to the government to take urgent action against sporadic elements that are attacking pastors or churches and bring them to book.
John Dayal