ASIA	MAY 11, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 18
	Modern-Day Martyrs As India's poor get bolder, their Christian defenders face persecution--and the victims are mounting By MASEEH RAHMAN /NEW DELHI hen A.T. Thomas joined the Jesuits in the late 1960s, he quickly came under the spell of "liberation theology," which holds that the church's role is not just to save souls but to fight injustice and oppression. So what better place to devote himself than in the backward, lawless Indian state of Bihar? Father Thomas set up a network of village schools for the children of "untouchable" Dalits and helped nearly 200 families win back rights to land grabbed by the upper castes. Thanks to his efforts, a local court even sent a group of land-grabbers to jail--a huge loss of face for the high-caste grandees. But Father Thomas' luck ran out last October, when he was abducted from a village after trying to prevent armed intruders from beating up a peasant. The headless body of the 46-year-old Keralite priest, limbs broken and covered with burn marks, was discovered several days later. India's missionaries are under threat. Often, the source of their peril lies in the countryside, in the rising conflict between dispossessed social groups and the well-entrenched elite. But there are threats also from militant Hindu organizations that have tried to reconvert Christians to Hinduism and have attacked at least two evangelical gatherings in recent months. A campaign by Dalit Christians for preferential job-placements, a right accorded to non-Christian Dalits, has also invited a backlash from Hindu groups. Concerned about the attacks on the clergy, church leaders have petitioned the President of India to "assure security for priests and nuns working for the poor." Among the recent targets was Father Jeevendra Jadhav, 51, who heads a project for rehabilitating earthquake victims in Maharashtra state. On Feb. 14, a mob ransacked Jadhav's center, shouting: "You want to make us Christians!" His life was spared, though he was badly bruised. Co-worker Sister Annie says the assailants were from a militant Hindu group. She denies that the mission was trying to persuade locals to change their faith: "Forget about converting anyone, we don't even wear our habit while working in the village." The militants, she says, may have been motivated primarily by political reasons: to oppose the center's efforts to get back land seized by local bigwigs from defenseless families that had lost all adult male members in the 1993 quake. All across India, the assaults have heightened fears among missionaries. No official figures are kept on crimes committed against the clergy, but Christian leaders insist they are on the rise. The Indian Social Institute's tentative listing of atrocities against only Catholic priests and nuns reveals more than two dozen incidents in the past decade, compared with just two in the 1970s and four in the '80s. Since 1990, there have been at least 14 murders, two rapes and the sensational public humiliation last September of Father S. Christudas, who was assaulted, stripped and paraded naked in the presence of police after a student verbally accused him of sodomy. Even priests involved in traditional charity have fallen victim: Brother Luke Puttaniyil of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta was shot and killed in March while transporting a truckload of food and medicine to lepers in Bihar. Christianity has a long history in India. It was introduced in the 4th century by Syrian merchants plying the maritime spice route to Kerala. In the 16th century, with the arrival of Europeans--first the Portuguese and later the British--the religion began to spread. Today, India has nearly 23 million Christians, the third-largest religious group after Hindus and Muslims. The majority of Christians are poor Dalits and tribals. Over the years, foreign missionaries not only converted the poor en masse and built grand churches and cathedrals, but also established some of the country's best schools, colleges and hospitals. These days, many of those institutions are in decline, overshadowed by better-endowed rivals promoted by Indian corporations. Most of India's priests and nuns continue to administer to the religious needs of the Christian population, though many now work among the poor and dispossessed of other faiths--inviting a strong reaction from entrenched social groups. Despite protests from church leaders, the attacks continue. In recent weeks, the militant Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Service Organization) has accused missionaries of abetting both the rape of Hindu tribal women and the destruction of temples in Mizoram, a predominantly Christian state in northeast India. State Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla described the charge as "a blatant lie," though that provoked the RSS to denounce him for "misleading the nation." With Hindu militancy on the rise and the lower castes increasingly trying to assert their rights, Christian missionaries are caught in a political maelstrom. "For priests and nuns striving to bring about change in the lives of India's poor," says Delhi's Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Concessao, "the journey ahead may involve more than the usual quota of sacrifices."
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