The recent wave of anti-Christian attacks continues across India, with the police recovering the partially burnt body of a young preacher murdered in northern Punjab state at the weekend.
While the police have for the moment ruled out any communal undertones in the murder of the Rev Ashish Prabash Masih, the Punjab Christian Association has expressed fears that the killing of the 23-year-old preacher was the outcome of a concerted campaign against its community by Hindu nationalists.
Indian Christian leaders blame the ruling Hindu nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and other extremist Hindu organisations aligned with it for the recent bombing of four churches in southern India. They also hold them responsible for two years of anti-Christian violence after the BJP-led federal coalition was formed.
The All-India Christian Council has dismissed government claims that neighbouring Pakistan was behind the serial bombing of four churches in the adjoining states of Andhra Pradesh, Goa and Karnataka in which three people were injured. A few days earlier a Christian missionary was murdered 50 miles from New Delhi.
The council said Christians were sick of these statements because they knew the attacks were engineered by right-wing Hindu organisations with the federal government remaining a silent spectator.
Ms Indira Iyengar, head of the Madhya Pradesh Christian Association in central India, said fundamentalist Hindu organisations had launched a hate campaign against Christians by doubting their loyalty and asking some of them to leave the country. India has more than 17 million Christians who form 2.43 per cent of the population.
Ms Iyengar said the anti-Christian crusade, which was being carried out through pamphlets, posters and newspapers, would lead to more violence since the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Minister for the Interior, Mr L.K. Advani, belonged to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the National Volunteer Corps, India's most powerful Hindu revivalist organisation.
The RSS provides the spiritual guidance to the BJP. Its mission is to defend Hinduism by keeping it "pure" from outside influences such as Islam - and to some extent Christianity.
The assassins of Mahatma Gandhi were educated in such a school and murdered him because of his secular outlook and policy of appeasement to India's minority Muslim community.
Reuters adds: At least 10 people were shot dead and three wounded in caste-related violence in the eastern state of Bihar early yesterday, police said.
