Indian Christians Hiding in Forests

…to escape further attacks

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2833

The Evangelical Fellowship of India has been informed by locals in the eastern state of Orissa that Christian families are still hiding out in forests and hills for fear of further attacks by Hindu extremists that started over the Christmas period.

Around ten people are thought to have died in the string of attacks in the Kandhamal district that started on Christmas Eve. On the first day of violence alone, at least five shops were gutted and more than 10 houses torched in one of the worst affected areas, the Christian-majority village of Gadapur near Brahmanigaon.

The violence escalated over the course of Christmas and Boxing Day, with at least 400 houses and six churches set on fire in the village, local sources reported to EFI.

According to EFI, the Christian families fled to the surrounding forests and hills after their homes were destroyed, or their property in some way vandalised. They continue to face hardship with no access to food or water, and cold temperatures, the group added.More than 700 Christians have sought shelter in government-run relief camps, where they are being provided with food, medicine and security by Orissa state authorities.

The EFI was part of a delegation of Christian agencies that met Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh to discuss a solution to the communal tensions. The Christian groups demanded that the Central Bureau of Investigation launch an independent inquiry into the violence and that compensation be paid to families who have lost their homes and property as a result of the attacks.

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/indian.christians.hiding.in.forest.to.escape.further.attacks/15985.htm

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2460

Western Voices reader:

Yet again, the Third World shows that “intolerance” is not unique to white people; indeed “tolerance” as it is understood is a white invention. But what makes this news especially important for Westerners is the fact that it indicates the rising temperature of communal feeling that is engulfing all of South Asia, and which may spark a regional war. The death of Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto has been a catalyst for long simmering hatreds and fears in the region, from Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The West seemed to rely on the fiction that the election of Bhutto would bring Pakistan “democracy,” and “democracy” would magically end the huge problem Pakistan has with ethnic and Islamist insurgency. With Bhutto gone, the West has no “plan B,” and top UK diplomat Lord Owen has admitted that not only is Afghanistan a lost cause, despite Western intervention, but Pakistan, whose jihadis have been emboldened and radicalized by the Afghan war, will fall to Islamists.

India’s teeming Hindu population has been whipped into a frenzy out of their fear of Pakistan and its nuclear arsenal. India has a massive internal “Fifth Column” of Muslims: 151 million according to government census figures, which are probably low. The Christians in Orissa are handy “outsider” victims for local Hindu outrage and are also seen as “sellouts,” as are the Muslims of India, who accepted the faith of Islamic invaders. Christian Indians outside of areas like Malabar, evangelized by the ancient Apostle Thomas, are seen as “collaborators” of the British Raj and its missionaries. A similar explosion of Hindu nationalist violence went off on Wednesday when an Indian mob stormed across the Nepal border on news that the “divine king” of Nepal had resigned in the face of a pro-Chinese insurgency. Thus the anti-Christian violence is an expression of increased chauvinistic feeling among Hindus in response to fears of Pakistani radicalization.

Communal violence is ingrained in the political culture of India and present at the very foundation of modern India and Pakistan. The Partition in 1947 led to the ethnic cleansing of a mind boggling 20 million people, as Sikhs and Hindus fled from Pakistan, replaced by Muslims from India, who became the “Mohajir” underclass of Pakistan. An unknown multitude, estimated at between 500,000 and one million were slaughtered in communal violence from all sides, a legacy of Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi that is forgotten by politically correct Western historians. In 1984, Sikh separatists murdered Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, igniting pogroms that left numerous Sikhs dead. The Bombay Riots of 1992 were the worst communal violence seen until then since 1947. A 150,000 strong mob of Hindu nationalists connected with the BJP, India’s nationalists, stormed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya and dismantled the building, literally brick by brick. (BJP activists carried out Wednesday’s Nepal incursion, and groups connected with the BJP have been blamed for the Christian persecutions in Orissa). The Ayodhya mosque was named for Babur, the Muslim emperor who founded the Mughal dynasty and who crushed the Hindus in the Middle Ages. The mosque was built as a mark of conquest to replace the Ramkot temple, believed by Hindus to be the Ram Janmasthan (“Birthplace of Ram”) of Lord Rama, the seventh Avatar of the god Vishnu. (Similar practices are common tactics of Muslim aggression: the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=759. These Hindu Kashmiri Pandits have been savagely attacked by Muslims and many have been ethnically cleansed. Internally displaced Pandits live in tents in refugee camps where they fled after such communal violence as 1998’s Wandhama massacre and the Amarnath pilgrimage massacre of 2000.

While it might seem unusual for US readers, (taught by the mass media to attach importance to Hillary Clinton’s wrinkles or the Super Bowl) to find that ancient grievances have so much impact on today’s events, history, race and religion are driving forces on the world stage. As one example, one of the rockets in Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is called, like the Ayodhya mosque, the Babri, in hopes of launching a new Mughal empire against the hated idol worshipping Hindus. George Bush (who reportedly didn’t even know that Shia lived in Iraq before his decision to invade) has unsettled the delicate political balance of power in West and South Asia with his actions.

The deep religious and ethnic divisions in South Asia have global resonance. Hindu nationalism is better known as “Hindutva,” “Hinduness,” with extreme anti-Muslim and anti-Christian sentiments. Many Hindutva partisans express admiration for Israel, on the logic of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend,” and even with crazy Zionist groups like the “Kahanist” Jewish supremacist followers of the late Michael “Meir” Kahane. Israel has a military pact with India and may well be pleased to see the Indians unleash an attack on Pakistan. But Israeli loyalty is, of course, hardly something the Indians will be able to depend on, especially given Israel’s relations with China, India’s serious rival.

All told, South Asia may be on the brink of a serious transnational war, a conflict which may go nuclear and endanger us all.

2008-01-04