ONE KILLED, 12 CHURCHES ATTAKED IN INDIA

One killed, 12 churches attacked in E. India
(Reuters)

26 December 2007

BHUBANESWAR - Hundreds of federal police were deployed in India’s eastern state of Orissa on Wednesday as Hindu hardliners burnt and damaged 12 churches in communal clashes, killing at least one person, police said.

The reported injury of a local Hindu leader by a Christian group on Monday sparked two days of violence over Christmas in the Kandhamal district of southern Orissa by hardliners who accuse Christian groups of converting low-caste Hindus.

“The situation is tense but under control,” said B.B. Mishra, a state inspector-general of police.

The hardliners, some linked to India’s main Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have often accused Christian priests of bribing poor tribes people and low-caste Hindus to change their faith.

Many of the churches targeted were makeshift places of worship, often built with thatched roofs and mud walls, local media reported.

Orissa, now governed by a BJP ally, has witnessed some of the worst attacks on Christians in the past, including the murders of Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two children who were burned to death inside their car by a mob in 1999.

Christian groups say lower-caste Hindus who convert do so willingly to escape the highly stratified and oppressive Hindu caste system.

But several states ruled by the BJP have passed anti-conversion laws. Christians make up around 2 percent of mainly Hindu India’s 1.1 billion people.

Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/December/subcontinent_December870.xml&section=subcontinent