Church Vandalised in Agra, PM Assures Canada of New Atmosphere of 'Trust' in India

NEW DELHI: “There is a new atmosphere of trust in our nation,” according to Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing an adulatory crowd in Toronto. “Jinko gandagi karni thi, gandagi kar ke chaley gaye, hum safai karke jayengey (Those who had create a mess, they have done so and left. We will go after cleaning it up)," Modi said attacking the previous governments of India. “Our mission is 'skill India', not 'scam India'," he said.

But the trust that he spoke of in Canada was again broken in Agra where the St Mary’s Church in the cantonment was broken into, and statues of Mother Mary and Baby Jesus desecrated. The Christian community is traumatised by the series of attacks, with 186 being documented since the Bharatiya Janata Party led government came to power ten months ago.

The official government position now is that churches are being vandalised by dacoits and robbers. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recently told the media that all the attacks on Christian churches and institutions had been resolved, and there was not a single instance of the majority community attacking the minority. Prime Minister Modi has also attributed the violence to ‘stray acts’ by lumpens. In France while addressing a meeting of UNESCO this week he claimed that his government was committed to protecting all Indians.

The argument of these attacks being perpetrated by anti social elements, is not being accepted by the Christian community as the violence has targeted the religious statues in the churches. John Dayal, spokesperson of the United Christian Forum told The Citizen, “The United Christian Forum has documented 186 acts of targetted violence against the Christian community in India in the ten months of Mr Narendra Modi as Prime Minister. These attacks are in the wake of a series of hate statements by various leaders of Mr Modi's party, the BJP, and their associates, the RSS and Sangh parivar, calling for the compulsory sterilisation of Christians and Muslims to contain their populations and prevent them overwhelming the billion strong Hindu people in India. Christians constitute 2.3 per cnt of the population. Others in the Sangh groups have called for the disenfrachisement of Muslims and Christians to end thier political relevance in the country.”

Churches are being attacked on a regular basis, although now the government remains insistent that this is not an act of communalism. An elderly nun was recently raped in West Bengal, but the incident is being treated by the authorities as a case of simple law and order with no communal slant. Jaitley said that the crime was perpetrated by dacoits, and was not political or communal in nature.