Hindu extremists attacked village churches and burned down the house of a
prominent Christian politician in India Thursday, following two days of clashes
between Hindus and Christians that began on Christmas Eve.
The attacks prompted federal police to deploy hundreds of officers to the
area to enforce a curfew in New Delhi and parts of eastern India.
Throngs of Hindus and Christians defied the curfew Thursday and took to the
streets.
Radhakant Nayak, a member of the Indian parliament's upper house and a
Christian, told the CNN-IBN news channel that a mob of Hindus torched his home.
Churches and prayer houses were ransacked and set on fire in the Kandhamal
district of Orissa state, according to superintendent of police Narsingh Bhol.
The Press Trust of India news agency quoted unidentified police officials as
saying 11 small churches and prayer houses have been targeted. Bhol could not
give an exact number.
In the village of Brahmangaon, west of Orissa, a group of Christians burned
down several Hindu homes in an apparent retaliation for the attacks on churches.
Hindus then burned down the village police station, complaining of a lack of
protection, a local police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.
At least 25 people arrested, both Hindu and Christians There have been
conflicting reports of what sparked the attacks on the churches in the
Kandhamal district of Orissa, with both religious groups blaming each other.
The New Delhi-based Catholic Bishops Conference of India said the fighting
began Monday 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.
Hindu extremists said Christians tried to attack one of their leaders,
80-year-old Laxmanananda Saraswati of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad group, who
leads an anti-conversion movement.
At least 25 people from both Hindu and Christian communities have been
arrested in connection with the violence, Bhol said.
To quell the attacks, the government also announced it was sending in a
300-officer paramilitary force.
"We have to get the violence under control," the junior federal home
minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, told reporters.
Orissa state has history of anti-Christian violence India is overwhelmingly
Hindu but officially secular. Religious minorities, such as Christians, who
account for 2.5 per cent of the country's 1.1. billion people, and Muslims, who
make up 14 per cent, often coexist peacefully.
However, throughout India's history, both communities have faced repeated
attacks from hard-line Hindus, with violence against Christians often directed
at foreign missionaries and converts from Hinduism.
Orissa has one of the worst records of anti-Christian violence. In 1999, an
Australian missionary and his two sons, aged 8 and 10, were burned to death in
their car after a Bible study class.
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