India’s Christians Face Difficult Christmas (Feature)
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By Santosh Digal, Worthy News Asia Correspondent
NEW DELHI, INDIA (Worthy News)– Christians in India’s troubled state of Orissa cautiously celebrated Christmas Friday, December 25, amid fears of more anti-Christian violence that since 2007 killed over 100 people here.
The memories of clashes that occurred in December 2007 and continued through August 2008 “may not be that easy erased,” a Catholic priest told Worthy News and its partner agency BosNewsLife.
“We have lost people, houses and property due to the man-made violence proving how humans can be so cruel. Even after a year and half situation has not improved much,” said priest Augustine Singh of the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Archdiocesan Center for Psychosocial Care.
“People are still in temporary shelters. They can not return to their own villages and are badly hit by a bitter cold of winter or the scorching heat of summer and the sickening weather of rainy days,” he added.
MAJOR STRUGGLE
“It is hard to imagine how our Christian people have been growing through the struggles that forcibly imposed upon them.”
Last year’s violence, in which at least 90 people died, began on August 24, 2008, after the killing of a Hindu religious leader.
Although Maoist rebels claimed responsibility Hindu militants blamed Christians for killing the man, prompting massive attacks on Christian homes, churches and other Christian institutions.
The tensions in Orissa have underscored tensions across overwhelmingly Hindu India, where church leaders, missionaries and other Christians face attacks in several states nearly every day, according to several rights groups and church organizations.
In one of the two latest violent attacks and alleged “reconversion” of over 1,700 Christians in the week leading up to Christmas, a sense of fear is growing among India’s minority Christian community, Christians said.
SERVICE ATTACKED
On Sunday, December 20, Hindu extremists attacked a church during worship in western Maharashtra state’s Sindhudurg district and a Christmas exhibition in Gwalior city in Madhya Pradesh state, according to Christian righs investigators said.
The next day Hindu militants reportedly claimed having converted over 1,700 tribal (aboriginal) Christians “back” to Hinduism in western Gujarat state.
“Christmas is a favorite time for violence against Christians in India, as it intimidates the Christian community at large,” explained John Dayal, member of the government’s National Integration Council.
However a prominent rights activist has also urged churches to reach out to end “the world’s worst apartheid under [India’s ancient Hindu] caste system,” that has encouraged extremists to attack.
CHRIST’S COMMISSION
“When Christians think about Christ’s given commission [to evangelize] we often dwell around preaching the message of Jesus half…Medical and educational services have been provided as optional role for churches to get involved in society,” said Madhu Chandra, a social activist and research scholar based in New Delhi. Chandra also works as Regional Secretary of All India Christian Council, a major advocacy group.
He said religious tensions are also fueled by poverty. The gap between “India’s haves and India’s have-nots spreads like wild fire, he said. “India’s dream of becoming a world super power will only produce super global rich Indians while 250 million live on less than a dollar a day.”
Dalits, the ‘lowest’ caste in India’s Hinduism, are especially vulnerable, with reports of widespread discrimination and killings near temples and wells.
Many of those living in poverty are Christians. In a published report ‘Rural Christians of North West India’, Reverend Vidhya Sagar Dogar’s claims 11 percent of Dalit Christians in Punjab state still have live in unhygienic circumstances, working between human feces and struggling to survive.
HAPPY NEW YEAR?
With New Year approaching, Christians said they hope their situation will somewhat improve, after a government-appointed commission recommended last week to give Christian converts of a Hindu ‘Dalit’ caste background similar state benefits as underprivileged groups professing Hinduism, Buddhism or Sikhism as their religion.
The report of the ‘National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities’, headed by India’s former chief justice Ranganath Misra, may end nearly 60 years of discrimination, said John Dayal, a leading Indian Christian activist and campaigner for Dalit rights.
India’s Constitution already granted political, economic and development privileges to all Dalits, the ‘lowest caste’ in India’s ancient system of Hinduism, but since 1950 Dalit Christians were excluded from the arrangement. Dalits are believed to comprise at least 16 percent of India’s billion-plus population.
But in the meantime, Augustine Singh said he remains busy helping traumatized Christians in Orissa where the popular Christmas message “peace on earth” remains apparently a distant dream.
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