PopeWatch: India's Hindu hardline group drops anti-Pope protests
Agence France Presse
(Si)
November 01, 1999 17:39 GMT
A radical Hindu group which planned to protest against Pope John Paul II this week abandoned the idea Monday as Christian leaders voiced hopes his visit would help focus attention on violence against their tiny community.
The hardline Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Forum) announced it was dropping a protest plan and said a controversial cross-country march would end peacefully in New Delhi.
"A cross-country march would culminate in New Delhi on November 4 with a public meeting. After that there will be no more anti-Pope meetings or protests," VHP spokesman Acharya Giriraj Kishore told the United News of India.
The march from the western coastal state of Goa was due to end in New Delhi at the start of the Pope's November 5-8 visit.
The VHP has been spearheading demands for a papal apology for alleged atrocities committed by Christian settlers in India 400 years ago.
"The VHP is not against the visit of the Pope as a state guest, but he should tender an apology," Singhal said after Hindu nationalist leaders distanced themselves from the hardliners.
Christian groups say the violence against their community increased after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP party came to power at the head of a coalition in March 1998.
Vajpayee was sworn in for a second term two weeks ago following the September-October general elections.
There have been about 150 incidents of violence against Christians in the past two years, including the gruesome murder of an Australian missionary and his two young sons.
"It is inevitable that the Pope's visit will help bring the violence to the attention of the international community, although that is not the purpose of his trip," said John Dayal of the United Christians Forum.
"The hate campaign has been fomented by the Hindu fundementalists," Dayal said.
Christians account for just 2.4 percent of this overwhelmingly Hindu nation of nearly one billion people.
India's weekly Outlook magazine quoting Vatican press director Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Vatican was "sad and preoccupied" with anti-Christian attacks in India.
It was the first direct comment on the issue from the Holy See.
"The Vatican's sad and preoccupied with the continuing atrocities on Christians in India and the rest of the world," he said.
"Today, there is a need to collaborate in the cause of humanity."
New Delhi Archbishop Alan de Lastic said the violence, which included a series of arson attacks on rudimentary churches in the western state of Gujarat last Christmas, was planned and deliberate.
"We have an explosive situation in our hands, which can erupt into a mammoth communal problem," he said.
However, de Lastic said it was unlikely the Pope would directly refer to the attacks.
A recent report by the Washington-based organisation, Human Rights Watch, accused the Indian government of failing to curb violence against Christians and of exploiting sectarian tensions for political ends.
Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist BJP party rejected the report's findings as "baseless" and an attempt to "prejudice" the international community against India and its government.
Among the most recent anti-Christian attacks was the murder of a Roman Catholic priest by an unidentified group armed with spears and arrows in September.
Days later, a nun in the eastern state of Bihar was abducted, stripped and forced to drink urine by two unidentified men.
But the attack that attracted most attention was the murder on January 22 of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons. All three died when a mob set the car in which they were sleeping on fire in the eastern state of Orissa.
A judicial inquiry into the killings, which sent a wave of revulsion around the country, blamed the attack on a Hindu extremist, Dara Singh, but cleared any Hindu fundamentalist groups of involvement.
jay/nj |
