90:98 vs 56:64-97

[Michael Rabe]

Editorial in today's New York Times, by "a Hindu writer who lives in New
York,"  and forwarded, FYI, on grounds of the Academic Fair Use, enshrined
in US Law:

January 11, 1999
              India Steps Up Anti-Christian Violence
              By TUNKA VARADARAJAN
[http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/11tunk.html]
                    On Christmas Day a school run by Christians was burned
down by arsonists. Another school nearby was  demolished by a mob. In a
separate incident, a church was stoned. Several women hiding inside were
injured,  as were the nuns who sought to shield them.

              This happened a month after a Roman Catholic priest was
murdered and religious fanatics vowed to turn an entire  district into a
"Christian-free zone." In keeping with this promise, a chapel was set on
fire. Elsewhere, armed men  broke into a Catholic convent and assaulted two
nuns inside, and another Catholic priest was shot dead.

              This is only a partial list of crimes that all occurred in
India, where fanatics from the far right of the Hindu nationalist spectrum
have formed shadowy "armies" intent on ridding the country of its religious
minorities and of turning it into a Hindu state.

              So consumed are they by hatred of "foreign" religions that
one of their leaders -- Ashok Singhal of the World Hindu Council -- said
recently that the award of the Nobel Prize for economics to Amartya Sen,
the renowned Indian economist, was evidence of a "Christian conspiracy to
propagate their religion and wipe out Hinduism from the country."

              What was the basis for such a preposterous statement? Simply
that Mr. Sen (who happens to be Hindu) has written that India's development
and prosperity depend on mass literacy. Mr. Sen's true purpose, the Hindu
fanatics say, is to enable Christian missionaries to establish educational
institutions across the country, using schools as Trojan Horses from which
to unleash evangelist hordes.

              What we are witnessing in India is the growth of a sort of
Hindu Taliban movement. Although it is difficult to gauge the numbers
accurately, the various extremist groups are believed to have tens of
thousands of supporters. In recent years, Muslims have been their principal
victims. Christians, who constitute 2.4 percent of the population -- 23
million people-- had, on the whole, been left alone. But that has now
changed. Emboldened by the first ever Hindu nationalist Government in New
Delhi, extremist groups now feel they have friends in high places. In
addition, the Government, which has suffered a series of defeats in recent
provincial elections, is too concerned with its own survival to rein them
in.

              According to the United Christian Forum for Human Rights, an
umbrella group that brings together leaders from the various Christian
denominations in India, 90 separate acts of violence were committed against
Christians or Christian churches in 1998. There were only 53 attacks from
1964 to 1997.

              Unlike Muslim, Christian or Jewish fundamentalists, who
generally base their radicalism in a sacred text, Hindu fundamentalists
have no central text to appeal to. As a result, they have resorted to
conflating Hinduism with "Indianness," giving their religious bigotry a
nationalist and temporal complexion.

              They have constructed a Manichaean world in which Hindus are
"true" Indians and all others are "outsiders." The formulation is curious
since Islam came to India about 1,200 years ago, and Christianity arrived
even earlier. Some historians date India's Christian roots to the first
century A.D.

              But the current battle is not over the historical record. It
is a battle for India's soul.

              The secular state is not about to crumble overnight. What is
imperiled, however, is India's tolerant, secular civilization.

              Tunku Varadarajan, a Hindu, is a writer based in New York.