Author:
Publication: Gomantak
Times
Date: September 19,
2000
A hard-line Hindu group
with close links to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's BJP party vowed
Monday it would "not tolerate" attacks on Hindu temples by Christian guerrillas
in India's northeast. The Hindu Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP - World Hindu
Forum), said it would prevent separatist militants from the National Liberation
Front of Tripura (NLFT), targeting Hindu temples and priests in the region.
"We have decided to form
a religion protection committee to save Hinduism from the onslaught of
the pro-Christian NLFT," Sitaram Agarwal, general secretary of the VHP,
said.
"We will not tolerate
interference with our religious freedom." Agarwal said the VHP's religion
Protection committee had already enlisted local Hindu villagers to guard
temples and was mobilising public opinion against the separatist rebels.
"Despite repeated pleas,
the government has not provided security to the Hindu population against
militant attacks. The religion protection committee will be an alternative
security arrangement for the People," said Agarwal.
The VHP alleged that
in the last fortnight NLFT militants had killed a Hindu priest in Tripura
state, and warned people against celebrating the biggest Hindu festival
in the region, Durga Puja, in October. "The militants backed by Baptist
missionaries have threatened to close down several of our temples in Tripura
and we consider this a direct threat to Hinduism," Agarwal said. Christians
make up a little over 2 percent of Tripura's 2.46 million population.
The NLFT, a pro-Christian
group fighting for an independent homeland in the state has been accused
of intimidating tribal Hindus into converting to Christianity. Christians
make up roughly two percent of India's' one billion predominantly Hindu
population.
Christians say attacks
on churches, hospices, missionary run schools and facilities have increased
since Vajpayee's BJP Party took Power in late 1998.
However, radical Hindu
groups such as the VHP accuse Christian missionaries of forcibly converting
poor Hindus in rural areas - a charge Church leaders strongly deny.
