In India, Churches Torched On Christmas

Hindu Extremists Attack Christians In East India; Area Has History Of Religious Tension

(AP)  Hindu extremists ransacked and burned eight village churches in eastern India, marring Christmas celebrations in a corner of the country with a history of violence against Christians, officials said Wednesday. One person was killed in the violence.

Authorities deployed 450 police and imposed a curfew to quell the violence in the remote district of Orissa state where the churches — most nothing more than mud and thatch houses — were attacked, said Bahugrahi Mahapatra, a government official.

Six village churches were torched on Christmas Day, and two more were attacked Wednesday along with 10 houses belonging to Christians, Mahapatra said.

India is overwhelmingly Hindu but officially secular, a fact India's leaders often point out. They note that religious minorities, such as Christians, who account for 2.5 percent of the country's 1.1. billion people, and Muslims, who make up 14 percent, often coexist peacefully. Some have risen to the highest levels of government and business.

But throughout India's history, both communities have faced repeated attacks from hard-line Hindus, with violence against Christians often directed at foreign missionaries and Hindu coverts to the religion.

Orissa has one of the worst histories of anti-Christian violence. In one of the most brutal incidents, an Australian missionary and his two sons, aged 8 and 10, where burned to death in their car following a Bible study class in 1999.

Orissa is also the only Indian state that has a law requiring people to obtain police permission before they change their religion. The law was intended to counter missionary work.

There were conflicting reports of what sparked the Christmas violence in the rural district of Kandhamal, with each side blaming the other.

Officials, meanwhile, were hesitant to wade into he-said, she-said — Mahapatra called the violence a "sensitive matter" and refused to discuss how it began.

The Hindu hard-liners said Christians had attempted to attack one of their leaders, 80-year-old Laxmanananda Saraswati of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad group, who leads an anti-conversion movement.

"When they were prevented from attacking him by his followers the Christians hit someone with an ax and one Hindu died," Giriraj Kishore told reporters in New Delhi.

But the New Delhi-based Catholic Bishops Conference of India said the fighting Monday began when Hindu extremists objected to a show marking Christmas Eve, believing it was designed to encourage Hindus at the bottom of the religion's rigid caste hierarchy to convert to Christianity. Low-caste Hindus are often a target of missionaries.

An argument over the Christmas show got out of hand and some of the Hindus opened fire on the Christians, wounding three of them, said John Dayal, a spokesman for the Bishops Conference.

The Hindus then went on a rampage Tuesday, Christmas Day, chasing people out of six churches and setting the mud-and-thatch buildings ablaze, he said.

Later, dozens of people from each community clashed, Dayal said. One person was killed, he added, but could not say if the dead man was a Hindu or Christian. Another 25 people were wounded, the Press Trust of India news agency said.

Much of the ill-will in the area, about 840 miles southeast of the national capital, New Delhi, stems from anti-missionary sentiment. Some hard-line Hindus are pushing for all missionaries to be expelled while Christians have challenged the conversion law in court, saying it violates India's constitution.

[alanrobisch]

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot therefore be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error." ~Robert Owen


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by jmcgilvray at 10:06 PM : Dec 26, 2007


do you believe this? I watched a debate between dinesh de souza and christopher Hitchens At one point an individual challenged desouza stating that belief in God is irrational His response was that since there is no empirical proof for either the existence or non existence He was no more irrational believing in god than someone who states their is no god. this brought a rousing round of applause from a group of students at King''s college.

This it seems is the truth in a nutshell

[alanrobisch]

We seem incapable of evolving in any sensible or rational way.....
Yea,....we need to follow the Dinosaurs.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by veteran71 at 10:35 PM : Dec 26, 2007

You could receive pessimist of the world award. My wife just went through a near death experience and since then I have received an outpouring of help. My faith in God helped me through it and the members of my church and other friends rallied around me

Its easy to see the negative in life. If I had dwelled on the negative during my wife''s illness when she was near death I don''t know where I would be now.

[closethippy1]

alanrobisch2 you are dead right.. we see in many sports where some of the men rape girls, does that make all sports men evil and should we ban all sports because of it, of course not, the rules that these men have to follow are good and just because many of them go out and rape, booze up large etc doesn''''t mean that the game is bad or that their rules are bad, they are just not following these rules. We have seen many horrors done in the name of religion but we have also seen many wonderful things being done also...just as the media prefers to print about the horrific things that some sports men have done so it is with religion.
If we followed the laws laid down by most religions, and by the sports authorities we would not have any problems in the world..
Posted by Gaye5 at 11:15pm

Goodness, why isn''t this kind of tolerant thinking shown towards Muslims?
This is the kind of understanding we should have towards everyone.

[gaye5]

alanrobisch2 you are dead right.. we see in many sports where some of the men rape girls, does that make all sports men evil and should we ban all sports because of it, of course not, the rules that these men have to follow are good and just because many of them go out and rape, booze up large etc doesn''t mean that the game is bad or that their rules are bad, they are just not following these rules. We have seen many horrors done in the name of religion but we have also seen many wonderful things being done also...just as the media prefers to print about the horrific things that some sports men have done so it is with religion.
If we followed the laws laid down by most religions, and by the sports authorities we would not have any problems in the world..

[alanrobisch]

ps humans are the problem not religious beliefs.

[alanrobisch]

All religions must be banned,they cultivate,killings, war,proverty,hate,mistrust and evil.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by beehive21 at 07:13 PM : Dec 26, 2007

I can see you believe in the freedom of religion. BTW what would you do with Stalin who did try to ban all religion and killed at almost ramdom 20,000,000 russians or what would you do with the Khmer rouge who forced marched the entire population of 2,000,000 people from a city young and old well and sick. They also tried to ban all religious beliefs. commumist china ditto and killed millions in their attempt to create a communist state and force women to have abortions if they have more than one child.

[beehive21-2009]

All religions must be banned,they cultivate,killings, war,proverty,hate,mistrust and evil.

[ndjam]

Look at this filth. Everyone constantly blaming Islam, but look at how rotten and hateful and murderous the Hindus are in the world. Look at their history so far, they have slaughtered tens of thousands of muslims, tens of thousands of Christians. They have burned down hundreds of Mosques and hundreds of Churches in their murderous country of India. The U.S media says very little about the hindu massacres. The U.S allows India more and more nuclear power and nuclear know how, but NOT Pakistan. This is wrong, VERY WRONG. Christians and Muslims must unite against this filth.

[gaye5]

wawhite74, well said, but people whether they claim to be Christians or not who molest children should be shot, they cant be rehabilitated..a bullet is far cheaper than keeping them in jail.. but I do like what you said about feeding them their ??? to them...
As one psychologist said, IF Christians and non Christians followed everything that is in the bible we would not have any wars, fights, hatred, etc, we would all except each other regardless of beliefs.. But because some want trouble, and because others manipulate the Bible to say what they want leaving out certain verses, we will never have peace while man is around. It is simple, man likes problems and will create them if there is non, a good news pape would go out of business..
We are inclined to blame religion especially the Bible for what people do in the name of God, but if people followed the religious books (The Quran excluded) there would always be peace and harmony amongst humans..
wawhite74 is right, every religion has its nuts, in fact every club has its extremists, whether it be sport, boating, cat clubs etc,, there are fools everywhere..some sports rape girls but do we say that that sport is bad, of course not...it is not the sports fault that some give it a bad name.

[walt1944-2009]

It was those sacred cows and monkees who did it!!!!!

SIG HEIL, BUSH!!!

[denn034]

Christian attacks get little or no press and, more importantly, the US puts no sanctions those who do it or allow it. Bush made one statement on such but, no attempt to sanction those who do it or allow it. The Democrats never mention it and promote such with their incendiary rhetoric as well. Disgraceful is putting it mildly.

[gunownerdan]

November 11, 1938, The New York Times Headline:
"NAZIS SMASH, LOOT AND BURN JEWISH SHOPS AND TEMPLES..."

November 11, 1938, Nazi Regulations Against Jews'' Possession of Weapons:
"Jews are prohibited from acquiring, possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well as truncheons or stabbing weapons."

Gun control is not about guns, it''s about control.
a-human-right.com

[closethippy1]

Never mind the LRA, how about Rwanda where 800 thousand people were butchered to death in three months?
Rwanda, you see, is a Christian country. That goes to show that knowing Geezus does nothing for you.

As far as the Hindus burning churches is concerned, I always thought that Hinduism should be more of a target of religious criticism than Islam is in the West.
Hindus have this caste system which condemns the lowest ones in the caste system to be slaves for life, and that''s not something that happened once upon a time in history. It is going on right now under our noses.
Hindus also have the habit of burning women alive if they get the husband upset.
Don''t get me wrong, Hinduism in its classic form is full of wisdom and enlightening. But it seems to me the West has done enough Muslim bashing and they need to set their eyes on India.
We need to be critical of religious practices that let people get awy with murder.

[gangesdak]

In India the missionaries act like vultures. They go to the poor sections of the society, not for the love for the poor, but for the reason that they, armed with money from developed countries (US, UK, Australia, EU), can buy their way into those who have nothing. After the missionaries do their thing, it has been found that these poorer sections always learn how to drink to the excess, have illicit ***, get into drugs and start violence. In short, these missionaries create an US "inner city syndrome". Perhaps this is so because these missionaries do not know any better. Back home they would have been a used car saleman or a shoe salesman otherwise. Shame on the church that they select such garbage masquerading as holy peeople. Hindus have reverance for the teachings of Christ. But the garbage has to flushed out.

[rushman71]

allUNknowing: I see that you are true to your name--allUNknowing!!! Please, if you don''t know what you are talking about, be quiet!!!

[rushman71]

singinrick: I agree with you completely. This is just another sign of what is to come. As writen in the bible,"There shall be wars, and rumors of wars..."

[allunknowing]

Religion kills more humans than all diseases and epidemics in history combined. Some epidemics were actually blamed on religion! ha!

[scarletphd]

Singinrick the tunnel visioned one thought zealot only sees Christianity and has no clue or education about all of the thousands of religions around the world, and the innocent followers, which are being attacked every day. By the way singindick, "christians" are some of the most intolerant and ungiving people around, they would attack and protest an innocent family at the funeral of a fallen soldier to make some sick point.

[scarletphd]

"What religion will be next to attack followers of..."

Is that a rhetorical question? Who knows, and it will never, ever, end.