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The mindless and brazen attacks against Christians are not new. The difference is in the dimension. Today, at any excuse, Hindu fundamentalist organisations let loose their goons on the community with the police acting as mute spectators. In most cases, the reaction of the church and the community is nothing more than to provide the victims with aid and prayers. When I visited Father Edward Sequeira of Orissa in the Holy Spirit Hospital, I also met Bishop Cheenath, in whose diocese the worst atrocities were committed last Christmas and were repeated this year. When I told him that the All...

Days after he fled his home, there was something that stood between Hari Chand Digal and his home, his paddy field, two cows and 15 goats. He had to give up his faith if he wanted his home. So one morning 15 days ago, Digal, 42, finally gave in and lowered his head. A barber shaved off his hair, holy water was sprinkled on him, and in a chatter of mantras, he was made a Hindu again. He could now have his life back, village leaders said. Mobs of hundreds of Hindu chauvinists have ravaged villages in Orissa’s hilly central...

"Pray for the Christians of India, pray for our people . . . so that they may understand that God is greater than anything, and can overcome evil with good": this is the message that Sr. Nirmala Joshi, superior of the Missionaries of Charity, has given to AsiaNews during her visit to Orissa, where for more than a month radical Hindu groups have unleashed a pogrom against Christians. The Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's order, have been struck by the wave of violence; orphanages and hospices for lepers where they welcomed the abandoned have been destroyed. The brutality of the...

A Maoist leader has again claimed responsibility for the death of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, whose assassination unleashed the pogrom against Christians in Orissa.He affirms that the authors of the killing left two letters at the scene of the crime, but the government kept them quiet in order to blame the Christians and allow them to be killed "for electoral purposes." ...

It was hardly a Hallmark moment. As a Valentine's Day card smoldered, more than 100 members of the Hindu extremist group Shiv Sena gathered in central New Delhi chanted "Death to Valentine's Day" and "People who celebrate Valentine's Day should be pelted with shoes!" Valentine's Day has in the past two decades made strong inroads in India as the country has slowly opened itself up to the outside world - its economic boom bringing in not just foreign investment, but also aspects of Western culture virtually unknown here a quarter-century ago. Across the country, stores stocked heart-shaped balloons and chocolates,...