India is one of the oldest outposts of Christianity in Asia; the first believers arrived there at least 1,700 years ago. Christians have always been a peaceable and respected minority, educating millions of Indians, caring for lepers, operating schools and hospitals and, like the late Mother Teresa, tending to the poor. But now the church is under assault by Hindu fanatics. Since early 1998, when the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was elected, there have been more than 100 serious attacks on Christians and their institutions across India. Priests have been beaten up–one was murdered in Bihar early last year–nuns have been raped, churches and schools burned and graveyards desecrated. The number of attacks is startling; only 39 similar incidents were recorded in the previous 50 years.
There are about 17 million Catholics and 10 million Protestants in a country of nearly 1 billion people, 85 percent of whom are Hindus. But Christians run 16,000 schools and have educated many of India’s Hindu leaders, including the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, a graduate of a Catholic convent. Like most other Hindus educated by Christians, Gandhi kept her religion. ““If we converted all the people we educate, there’d be 500 million Catholics in the country by now,’’ jokes de Lastic. But there is one conspicuous Christian in politics, though not a convert: the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law and leader of the BJP’s main rival, the Congress party. Ashok Singhal, a fire-breathing Hindu revivalist closely allied to the BJP, recently took a swipe at Sonia Gandhi, warning about ““the increasing dominance of top leadership of the country by Christians.''
In fact, there are few Christians among the top leaders, but that doesn’t stop Singhal. He claims there is a vast international conspiracy (involving, of course, the CIA) to lure Hindus away from their religion and forcibly convert them to Christianity. He even insists that the Nobel Prize recently awarded to Indian economist Amartya Sen, a member of a Hindu family who works mostly in the West, was actually ““part of the Christian conspiracy to wipe out Hinduism in this country.’’ Singhal charges that the economics prize was ““politically motivated, like the peace prize given to Mother Teresa.''
Last week there was a lull in the violence, though a Jesuit priest in the Dangs region, Father Varghese George, said: ““Nobody thinks it’s over yet.’’ The attacks, he said, were organized outside the area and carried out by young men who were trucked into the region. ““These are very small villages; everyone knows everyone else,’’ said the priest. ““And they’ve never seen these people before.’’ Archbishop de Lastic blamed the BJP. ““The BJP state government in Gujarat especially is not even trying to keep peace and harmony, or enforce law and order,’’ he charged.
The government’s failure to stop the violence so far came under ferocious attack from opposition politicians and secular Hindus, including communists, who marched with Christians in protest demonstrations. ““It was politics which put Christ on the cross the first time,’’ thundered The Times of India, the country’s leading newspaper. ““Must we crucify him again, along with our self-regard as a tolerant and humane society . . .?’’ At a meeting in Bangalore, BJP Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, a gentlemanly personage who is said to be appalled by the violence, declared: ““Never in the past have Christians been attacked in this country, and never will it happen again. It is the duty of my government and the duty of the police to ensure this.’’ Most Christians still were not persuaded that their deliverance was at hand. But for such a tiny minority in a vast country, the most reliable protection was a national sense of shame.
