India – Hindu extremist outfits have vowed to fight Christian missionaries and stop forcible ‘conversions’ by distributing weapons and forming armed anti-Christian squads, Christian Today has confirmed.

Speaking to the media, Suresh Rath, a Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP or World Hindu Council) activist said that over 5,000 youth would be trained to fight missionaries and stop ‘conversion’ activities.

These anti-Christian squads would be formed within the next two years, he said.

Living up to the promise, the VHP and Hindu right-wing militant outfit, the Bajrang Dal recently organised a massive "Trishul Diksha" (Trident Initiation or Trident Distribution) ceremony at Keonjhar and other districts in Orissa.

According to news reports, the outfits had distributed swords and sharp tridents to over 500 activists amid anti-Christian slogans and Hindu rituals.

"Christian missionaries will be stopped at all costs...they must leave the country or face dire consequences," Sanath Ram, a Bajrang Dal activist said. "The poor people in Orissa that were converted to Christianity will be reconverted back soon."

The "Trishul Diksha" ceremonies began taking place soon after news spread that the Orissa High Court had commuted the death sentence of Dara Singh, the prime accused in the Graham Staines murder case, and had acquitted 11 other co-accuseds.

Several Christian advocacy groups fear that the shocking verdict of the Orissa High Court will embolden Hindu extremists to unleash a fresh terror against Christian missionaries and churches in Orissa and elsewhere.

Their fears are not unfounded, however, when Govardhan, a prime suspect who had owned up to the brutal killings of Pastor Raju and Pastor Daniel last May in Andhra Pradesh, boldly proclaimed that he was motivated by the act of Dara Singh who he "respected greatly."

But Hindu extremists are not the only ones who are venting their anger against the Christians. Police and local government officials appear to sympathise with them too.

Recently, in two separate incidents, the Gujarat High Court and the Orissa High Court directed a probe into acts of police brutality upon Christian missionaries.

"I support the revolutionary attitude of Dara Singh," said Nibedita Pradhan, mayor of Cuttack, Orissa, and a local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader. "I will support him always because of his courage."

"Christian missionaries are creating law and order problems in the state and engaged in the conversion of Hindus into Christians," she said. "That should be stopped...otherwise more numbers of Dara Singh will be created and attacks on missionaries will be repeated."

Pradhan is apparently not the only influential Hindu supporting violence against missionaries in Orissa. Other local BJP officials, Baidhar Mallik and Pratap Sarangi also expressed support for attacks against active Christians and missionaries.

Besides the VHP and the Bajrang Dal, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has also vowed to put an end to ‘conversion’ activities carried out by the Christian missionaries.

Towards this end, it is busy training hundreds of Hindu militants including some foreign nationals from Sri Lanka and Malaysia, Christian Today has confirmed.

The special training camps are situated in Tamil Nadu and Orissa and "all the activists of RSS have to complete three year training courses in these training camps," The Organiser, a weekly magazine published by the Hindu fundamentalist organisation, said.

The first-year training camps of Orissa were organised at two places in which a total of 622 trainees participated while 137 activists participated at a second-year camp, it said.

Hundreds more are being trained in Tamil Nadu, according to the RSS's official publication. Twelve activists from nearby Sri Lanka are participating in the first-year camp. In the second year camp, out of seventy-two, one of them is a Malaysian, The Organiser said.

Accusing the Christian missionaries for "attacks on the Hindu values," the RSS publication has also called for a ban on NGOs that are "missionary-controlled" for carrying biases against the Hindu culture and religion.

There are unconfirmed reports that over 5,000 militants are participating in different training camps in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana.

Meanwhile, the situation in Orissa continues to remain tense. Various church agencies and independent organisations have recorded hundreds of attacks this year against Christians in the tense state and elsewhere in India. There are about 24 million Christians in India, just over 2 percent of India's total 1.1 billion population, according to Church estimates.






Surojit Chatterjee
Christian Today Correspondent