NEW DELHI —
Church leaders are calling for official action to protect the
Christian community in the Jhabua region of the central Indian
state of Madhya Pradesh following recent violence directed against
Christians there.
“The situation is serious,” said Cardinal Telesphore
Toppo, president of the Roman Catholic Bishops’ Conference
of India.
“The violence in Jhabua would not seem to be accidental,”
the Zenit news service reported Toppo as saying at a recent press
conference in New Delhi. “It would appear to have been purposely
planned by fundamentalists to keep tension high.”
The anti-Christian violence broke out after Hindu extremists
had accused Roman Catholic nuns and the headmaster of a Catholic
school in Jhabua of being responsible for the death of a young
tribal girl raped and murdered in the school grounds on Jan. 11.
Police arrested a Hindu suspect within days, but not before
Hindu extremists had launched an anti-Christian campaign, burning
effigies of priests in public and holding demonstrations in front
of Jhabua’s Catholic cathedral.
Meanwhile, the Church of North India (CNI) — a partner
church of the Presbyterian Church (USA) — is flying a top
lawyer from Delhi to Madhya Pradesh to seek the release on bail
of 17 members of the denomination arrested after one of the bouts
of violence between Hindus and Christians.
Police arrested the 17 people after a crowd of Hindus armed
with weapons and led by a local Hindu legislator broke into a
CNI church and school complex near Alirajpur, not far from Jhabua.
One Hindu died and four others were injured in subsequent scuffles
between church members and the Hindu extremists.
The 17 Christians, including a local pastor, have been charged
with murder but the church insists they are innocent and says
that the pastor was not even present at the church complex when
the violence broke out.
In subsequent violence, all 20 Christian houses in the Alirajpur
area were looted and burned down by Hindu mobs.
“But the police never acted against them [Hindus] even
as they burned three Christian homes right in front of the [Alirajpur]
police station,” said Suresh Carleton, treasurer of the
CNI’s local Bhopal diocese.
Said CNI Bishop Lawrence Maida of Bhopal: “It seems the
government machinery is only aiming at the members of the Christian
community.” |
