ICC Note:
A radical Hindu nationalist leader in India has vowed that attacks on churches would continue as long as Hindus were being converted to Christianity. These comments come in the wake of a 75-year-old being gang raped and several church being destroyed over the past weekend. Religious intolerance has continued to escalate under the new Prime Minister and his BJP led government. Many feared that when BJP took power in May 2015 that attacks on India’s religious minorities would increase. Unfortunately, they were right.
3/18/2015 India (Aleteia) – In the wake of a brutal attack on a 75-year-old nun and several church burnings, a radical Hindu leader in India has pledged continued attacks on the Church if conversions by Christians do not stop.
“Will the Christians allow us to make a [Hindu god] Hanuman temple in the Vatican?” Surendra Jain, a senior leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, was quoted saying in the newspaper Daily News & Analysis.
In response, a spokesman for the New Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, said, “How do we even respond to this kind of language? How can one stoop so low.”
The police arrested eight men, aged between 20 and 30, accused of raping the nun on the night of March 13-14. The men stole cash, a cell phone, a laptop and a camera. The nun was discharged from the hospital after two days of hospitalization.
A day later, a church in the northern Haryana state was destroyed and the vandals planted a flag with the name of the Hindu god Rama, according to the Associated Press.
The incidents occurred a few weeks after the leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the main group of Hindu extremists in India, accused the Missionaries of Charity, founded in India by Mother Teresa, of “proselytizing.”
The RSS is the militant Hindu organization with which Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his political life. It is also the ideological parent group of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The RSS has long been accused of stoking hatred against Muslims and Christians.
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