Religion and violence cross paths again in small-town Andhra Pradesh
as right-wing fundamentalists target the local clergy, allegedly to
arrest conversions
On January 10, at around 8:30pm in Vikarabad, 69km from
Hyderabad, a group of men knocked on Pastor Sanjeevulu’s door. They said
they had come to offer prayers. When Pramila, the pastor’s wife, opened
the door, she was struck on the forehead with an iron rod. The
assailants then marched into the house and stabbed the pastor,
repeatedly. He was beaten with clubs and hit on the head with the iron
rod. The attack barely lasted 10 minutes but Sanjeevulu sustained severe
injuries to his liver, spleen and intestines. Three days later, he
succumbed to his wounds at the Yashoda Hospital in Hyderabad.
By
the end of January, State police had arrested seven of the eight
accused. All of them have been linked to Hindu Vahini, a right-wing
organisation described as an affiliate of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad,
with its State unit located in Hyderabad. G Sreenu, alias Rama Krishna,
was identified as the leader of the group formed by youth from the
Nalgonda district. He had been working at Hindu Vahini as a full-time
pracharak for the last few years.
In December 2013,
three other attacks on clergy members were reported in the same
district. These four incidents have revealed a chilling pattern — the
same modus operandi, the same right-wing outfit behind the attacks,
conversions as the alleged motive. In what appears to be a series of
planned attacks, churches in Andhra Pradesh are increasingly being
targeted by right-wing assailants. In 2013 alone, the State witnessed 72
incidents of anti-Christian violence, with several more unreported, say
local residents. According to a report released by Catholic Secular
Forum last year, AP had the second highest incidence of cases of
persecution against Christians after Karnataka. In total, around 4,000
Christians, were targeted, 400 clergy members among them. About 100
churches were also attacked. In Nalgonda district alone, more than 1,000
churches are now living in fear.
On December 29, at
11:45pm, four men came knocking at Pastor Nama Moses’s door in
Narketpally town, Nalgonda. Suvartha, the pastor’s wife, opened the
door, thinking it was an acquaintance. She was struck on the head with
an iron rod and Pastor Moses was hit repeatedly and stabbed nine times —
a chillingly similar sequence of events echoing the assault on Pastor
Sanjeevulu. Nearly two months later in February, when BLink contacted
Pastor Moses, he had survived the brutal attack but was in no condition
to talk. “The pastor has been here for two decades now and I’ve never
known such enmity. I don’t understand why we were attacked. He has never
forced anyone to convert,” says Suvartha. Her daughters, she says, have
been unable to go to school out of fear. And attendance at his church
has dwindled. “A few of them were local youth,” says Suvartha, “and they
had recently attacked another pastor as well.”
“People
are afraid of persecution,” says Kavitha, a resident of Nalgonda town.
“The pastor’s children were in the room when the attack happened. It was
only the morning after when they got any help.” Four weeks ago, a
meeting was held at the Church of South India — Kavitha’s church — to
discuss the violence targeting the community. “There have been many
attacks here,” Kavitha says, “but most of them don’t make news.” If
aggressively campaigned conversions are being cited as the reason for
the attacks, locals at least, dismiss the idea. “I was the first in my
family to turn to Christianity 13 years ago,” says Kavitha. “Nobody
forced me to. Nobody offered me anything in return. My mother was a
staunch Hindu, she didn’t approve of it. But today my family has
converted.”
“The attack on Pastor Moses might have
been personally motivated,” says Nalgonda’s Deputy Superintendent Ram
Mohan Rao. “G Raju, one of the group’s members, was known to have a
personal grudge. Someone in his family had a bad experience two years
ago and he had contacted Sreenu to do something about religious
conversions.”
However, Pastor Talla Christopher was
attacked on the same day as Pastor Moses in another village of the same
district. And, in yet another incident in December, Pastor Neeladri Pal
was also attacked. While the police have made some arrests, the accused
have apparently revealed a larger, systematic plan of Hindu Vahini to
eliminate members of the clergy all over AP. Pastors in other districts —
Adilabad, Nizamabad, Medak — have also received death threats.
“There
is no personal angle in these attacks,” says Father Sudhakar, pastor of
Telugu Baptist Church in Warangal, who is involved in documenting
anti-Christian atrocities in the State. “It is politically motivated and
it is right-wing terror against minorities. Hindutva elements have been
attacking in three ways — attacks on the clergy, implicating church
officials in false cases of hate speech and demolishing churches and
burning Bibles.” In 2013, he says, there was a 70 per cent increase in
the attacks. This year has already seen four attacks. “We have also
documented 22 false cases against pastors.”
In an
election year, the threat to Christian minorities has acquired a serious
political colour; various church associations have written to the CM
seeking a ban on Hindu Vahini. MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi has also
demanded immediate action against Hindutva elements in the legislative
assembly.
“You know, it’s not only SCs, other
communities have also started turning to Christianity,” says Kavitha,
“and it has not gone down well.” The base is definitely growing, says
Father Sudhakar. “We don’t call them conversions, 90 per cent of SCs in
AP are Christians spiritually, if not on paper.”
Pastor
Jayraj still doesn’t know why he was attacked. On August 9, 2011, in
Narketpally, he was attacked by a 10-member mob at his home. He was hit
on the head and left to die. “I’ve heard of Hindu Vahini but I don’t
know what they do. I couldn’t identify them, they had masks on. The
police never caught them.”
With the violence directed
towards Christian minorities only growing, older, unsolved cases like
that of Pastor Jayraj are being revisited to look for possible links to
right-wing terrorism. “After Pastor Moses, other cases that were
undetected have come to light,” says DSP Mohan Rao. “Cases from 2011,
even 2009, are being reopened too.” Even as investigations are on, the
fear of being attacked continues to haunt AP’s Christian community.
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