Author: Vijay Thakur in Jaipur
Publication: The Statesman
Date: October 8, 2002
Some organisations, supported by
local Congress, BJP, Bajrang Dal and VHP leaders, have reportedly started
a vilification campaign against missionary schools that are being run in
Ajmer district. First, leaflets were distributed against these schools
and effigies of some of the priests burnt. In certain cases, parents were
forced to remove their children from the schools' rolls. And in an extreme
step, all convent schools of Ajmer district were forcibly closed for some
time last month.
A district-level Congress leader,
Mr Rajiv Sharma, has even taken the vilification campaign to the cyber
realm: He has used the internet to malign the schools. His website, www.geocities.com/
ajmerimurga, prominently displays a photograph of a priest, Father Jose
Mathias, being humiliated by a mob in, of all places, a police station.
Father Mathias was forcibly made a "murga" and had to hold his ears in
public as punishment for a crime he had not committed.
He had gone to the Bhawanikhera
police station to merely enquire about an incident wherein a missionary
school teacher had allegedly molested a student. Despite the fact that
the priest had nothing to do with the accused, those present inflicted
the humiliation and photographed him. One of these photographs landed up
in the website.
Apart from the vilification, these
sections are also encouraging re-conversion, of even persons who had converted
to Christianity over three decades ago. Only yesterday, the Rawat Mahasabha,
backed by BJP and Congress leaders, organised "reconversion" of 25 Rawat
families which had adopted Christianity over 30 years ago. While such campaigns
are not new to the VHP, what is most disturbing is the way Congressmen
are taking to the movement. This seems to have taken even the PCC leadership
by surprise.
Asked about the emerging trend,
Father Eddie Olivera, Dean of Jaipur Churches, said: "They are repeating
what they did in Gujarat two years ago. Since elections are due next year,
they want to extract political mileage out of this vilification campaign."
The germ was planted last month,
at Bhawanikhera in Ajmer. Father Melvin D'Silva, a teacher, was arrested
on charges of sodomising his students.
