Author: Kunal Ghosh
Publication: freeindiamedia.com
Date:
URL: http://www.freeindiamedia.com/current_affairs/21_july_current_affairs.htm
The recent terrorist strikes in
the USA on September 11, 2001, in which the World Trade Centre and Pentagon
were "crash-bombed" by large airplanes, have brought a new resolve in the
global community to root out terrorism from all parts of the world. The
Americans are playing a leading role in building a world coalition against
terrorism. This is the best time to remind the Americans that Baptist Christian
terrorists are active in India's North-East and they derive their financial
support from the southern parts of the USA where the Baptist Church has
a strong following. Funds are collected in the form of donations in various
church establishments in the name of evangelical work. Some of this money
is spent in true philanthropic work of spreading education and healthcare.
However, it has been suspected for a long time that a part of this fund
gets diverted for buying arms for the Baptist terrorists of the North-East.
Our ex-Chief Election Commissioner, T.N. Seshan, gave voice to this suspicion
in a television panel discussion on Doordarshan as early as in 1993. Our
Army is baffled by the seemingly unending supply of sophisticated and expensive
supply of arms and equipment flooding into our North-East. All terrorists
of various hues, the so-called Darjeeling Gorkha, the so-called Kamtapuri,
Bodo, Ulfa, Naga, Manipuri, Tripuri etc, are flush with automatic rifles,
land mines, remote control devices and so on. Money generated by the local
extortion of businessmen and citizens account for only a small fraction.
Therefore the greater part must be coming from abroad. It is suspected
that the funds come from Islamic sources such as the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI) of Pakistan, the Gulf states etc. and Christian sources such as the
Baptist Church in southern USA and the Presbyterian Church of the UK.
The most prominent among the terrorist
outfits of Tripura is the NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura).
It employs terror tactics to effect mass conversion to Christianity (The
Statesman 1999, 2000; Ghosh 1999) and is a predominantly Baptist (Protestant)
organisation. Whatever token non-Christian representation it had, it has
lost recently. Nayanbashi Jamatiya, a Hindu leader, led a revolt against
the policy of forcible conversion of the NLFT and left a rebel camp in
neighbouring Bangladesh with his followers. On April 8, 2001, while his
party was moving towards the Indian border, it was attacked by the main
group; seven activists were killed and he himself was seriously injured
and taken to a government hospital in Bangladesh. (The Statesman 2001a,
2001b).
¨
The sectarian nature of the Baptist
terrorists has come to the fore. They killed a Catholic priest called Father
Victor Crasta on July 25, 2000. In protest the Catholic Church of Tripura
called a bandh (closure) in all Catholic run institutions on August 10,
2000. (The Telegraph 2000)
On August 6, 1999, four RSS (Rashtriya
Swayam-sevak Sangh) workers of Tripura, named Shyamal Kanti Sen Gupta,
Sudhamoy Dutta, Dinendranath Dey, Shubhankar Chakraborti, were kidnapped
by the NLFT, taken to a camp in the jungles of Bangladesh and a ransom
of Rs 2 crores was demanded from their parent organisation. The RSS refused
to pay and they were done to death sometime in the month of December 2000
or January 2001. The news of their killing was confirmed by the Central
Government in July 2001 and carried by all prominent national dailies.
Their "guilt" was that they were preaching among the tribals to preserve
Hinduism. Our Consti-tution permits propagation of a faith by legitimate
means. If that is so then work for the preservation of a faith too is surely
permissible. However, the kidnap and murder of these Hindu pracharaks of
the RSS by Christian terrorists did not create a media sensation. This
is not the first time that a Hindu preacher has been attacked in North-East
India. I found reference to such an event in a most unlikely place albeit
most authentic. Swami Gokulananda (1999), the present head of the Ramakrishna
Mission Ashrama of New Delhi, has written that he had been the Secretary
of the Khasi Hills Ashrama in Meghalaya in the 1980s. He futher writes:
The hostile forces were against
our movement as it was trying to bring back the lost tradition of faith
among the people of the Khasi hills. Since it was like a speed breaker
in their path they wanted to remove me. One day a time bomb was planted
in my room but they did not succeed in killing me.
It should be noted that the most
dominant church in the Khasi hills is Presbyterian (Protestant) which is
based in the UK. Christian terrorists have been active in various States
of North-East India for a long time. Recently they have spread to North
Bengal also. Reverend John Thwaites, a Protestant priest who had been in
North Bengal for over three decades, was asked to leave the country in
January 2001. No reason was given and he defied the order. The West Bengal
Government quietly arrested and prosecuted him. There were demonstrations
by his sympathisers during the trial which ended in August 2001. The judge
sentenced him to three months simple imprisonment following which he was
to be deported to his native land of the United Kingdom. Is there a link
between the Protestant priest and the terrorist activities of the Kamtapuri
separatists? The question is pertinent because just prior to the "quit
India" order served on Reverend Thwaites (January 2001), the Kamtapuri
terrorists had killed eight CPI-M activists including a District Committee
member in the four-month span from August to November 2000. The West Bengal
State Government has the answer to this question. They have not made public
way the Reverend was asked to leave the country in the first place and
the BJP-led government at the Centre has played ball the way the State
Government wanted.
In the aftermath of the airplane
crash-bombing of the World Trade Centre, President George W. Bush has said
that America would do what it takes to rid the world of the scourge of
terrorism. America would target not only the terrorists but also the those
who shelter and finance them. If he is true to his word, he should have
to look into his own backyard first. It is inconceivable that those in
southern United States who collect funds for the Baptist Church's evangelical
work in India have no inkling of the end use of that fund. One among several
end uses is buying weapons for organised terrorism.
(By permission from www.mainstreamweekly.com)
