Recording violence against Christians in India

John Dayal Response to questions by Journalist Vishal Arora on the United States

Question: I m writing a story talking about how the statistics of anti-Christian attacks in India is alarming and worrisome. I have heard many people who are involved in international advocacy for the persecuted church as saying that governments in many countries feel that the incidence of persecution is not a cause for concern because the population of India is more than one billion (So what if 150 or 200 attacks take place?). I am using the US international religious freedom report as the peg for the story.

RESPONSE:
I was saddened to read your note.
I understand the western attitude, and am not surprised at all.
First of all we are dealing with NGOs in a post Christian post modern West. Does it really matter to the people at large if the Christian is wiped out in the East and South.
Perhaps secularism has turned full circle and now seen with Veda chanting in US Senate, Yoga in England and a free visa to any Hindu tantric who wants it, even if India bans all Christians preachers from its soil coming from the west or the east.
I do not mean to scoff at genuine, well meaning and honest advocacy groups to whom I remain indebted for their continuing support to the Freedom of Faith and Civil Liberties activists such as I. It is their support that sustains me -- their moral support, for I do not have an FCRA account and do not receive moneys from any source other than few personal friends and supporters.. I am, as you know, not backed by the Indian church which has to protect its institutions and its presence and cannot take an open and aggressive position of human rights issues, much as individual priests may want to, or even as the Bible may command us to do.
Now about figures.
Sudan, Burma and some other countries have persecution of a magnitude where even thousands killed in a week seem to be about average. Or Saudia where you can be jailed for bringing in a bible. I weep for every Christian killed, but figures seem to inure us to the crisis, and somehow in some evil conspiracy, make them invisible as human tragedy.
This is now how civil society and human rights issues work.
In India, it is not about gigantic data or pogroms, it is about civil rights, of which religious rights are important, above all, it is about the right to life. The most important of all.
India is a secular society by law, with a peculiar population. The bulk remains Hindu, at about 80 per cent even if we construe it to be made up of a series of macro minorities such as the Dalits, tribals and other backward castes. The ethos is Hindu and Hinduism is the `default religion’ as everyone well knows. Often, the State too seems ‘Hindu’.
Islam constitutes from 12 to 15 per cent -- smaller than the Hindus but a very large population group. They get killed by the hundreds, and sometimes by the thousands in pogroms, some of them sponsored by provincial governments. Muslims also live on conglomerations, often discernable sharply from the Hindu groups in the city-scape or the rural landscape. Muslims, even if two or three are killed in a month, remain confined to a defined are and police can record the violence and take action. This is called a riot. The violence against them follows a pattern, as has been proved in at least eight judicial enquiries in fifty years.
The government’s new law proposed against communal violence may curb anti Muslim violence but is impotent against anti Christian hate and violence we do not comer under the scrutiny of its defining and screening measures. The Christians constitute a mere 2.3 to 2.8 per cent population, going by the most generous estimates. They do not live in ghettos but are dispersed. They, unlike Muslims, also go out with a religious message inside Hindi majority areas. This is where they are targeted – the pattern of their interaction with Hindu fundamentalist segment of the society.
Christians are dispersed. The violence against them is also dispersed. It may be just one case a year in one village across the country. But there are four hundred thousand villages, and the total violence may be as much.
I record and prove between 200 to 400 cases of anti Christian violence a year in my unofficial white papers released annually since 1997. The total figure may be from one to two thousand such cases a year, perhaps even more.
How do we define this violence and persecution if governments continue to say these are isolated cases?
If one thousand isolated cases occur in one country, they fit a pattern.
As an example, in state like Lakshadweep where ninety-nine per cent of the population is Muslim, if the few Christians are killed or forced to flee, it means a hundred per cent or total elimination of Christianity in that state.
This is what the RSS groups are threatening in many villages, districts, even states.
I am happy at the routine focus the current US religious freedom report has given on India. This is one of the few authentic international commentaries on freedom of faith in India, and is therefore to be welcomed. We hope there will be more international investigations the freedom of faith situation in India and other countries. This may seem anti national, but India is a signatory to international human rights covenants and it is important that there is total transparency in assessing freedom of faith in India.
At the South Asian level, even Islamic groups, a majority elsewhere, are a minority in India. Hindus are a majority in India, Fiji, Nepal and some other countries in the Carob islands and some Pacific or Indian Ocean islands. Indians are also victims of human rights violations in Pakistan, Bangladesh and other places. Christians are a major victim in all the eight south Asian countries.
In India, no political party is really innocent in the matter. The BJP and its frontal organisations of the Sangh Parivar are guilty in the extreme as we have see in Orissa, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and other area. These are states where the police do not register cases when Christians are victim and Sangh Parivar is the aggressor. And yet the same police accompanied Sangh aggression storm troopers when they attack home churches, or conduct the so called Ghar wapsi. The Sangh privet's violence is now at its peak.
The Congress party however is no less guilty.
Dispute the confused secularism of the top leaders including cabinet ministers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singha and Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, and despite the effort of the National Commission of Minorities, it needs to be remembered that violence continues in Congress states such as Andhra Pradesh.
Other Congress states such as Himachal have also passed the same laws against Christian activity that have been put in place by BJP state government. The stable state of Andhra Pradesh ahs banned Christian and Muslim activity in seven hills around the Tirupathi temple by an executive order. Now it is bending backwards to please the Sangh Parivar in other issues, including the so called ram setu or Adam's bridge issue.
The Union government has to ensure that the state remains secular and it does not encourage the mixing of religion and politics.
The mixing of Religion and policies missing is the worst thing possible in a country such as India with so many different regions, communities and also on.
This American report also puts a pressure on the US government to ensure that it soil is not abused by NRIs to fund the Sangh Parivar in India.

John Dayal