Karnataka: Christian community threatened by violence on the anniversary of the Sultan of Mysore
Bangalore (AsiaNews) – This morning, a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (Hindu fundamentalist group) was killed and 30 other protesters injured during clashes with security forces in the town of Madikeri, in the Indian state of Karnataka.
The radicals were protesting against the local government’s decision to celebrate the birthday of Tipu Sultan (1750-1799), one of the greatest rulers of southern Asia of all time, whom they accuse of persecuting Hindus and forcing them to convert to Islam.
One of the consequences of these clashes is “greater insecurity for the Christian community in Karnataka,” said Sajan K George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC),
To prevent acts of violence, police erected barricades and blocked access to the demonstration site. Its forces used tear gas and batons to stop rival groups from clashing.
The local, Congress-led government is behind the first celebration of the Sultan of Mysore, deemed by many Indians a national hero for standing up to the East India Company.
However, Prahlad Joshi, head of the local Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called on Hindus not to participate in activities honouring the Sultan, describing the latter as a "religious bigot" who persecuted Hindus and forced them to convert to Islam.
Other Hindu leaders have also attacked the sultan "who destroyed thousands of temples, killed the Kannada language, and promoted Persian and Urdu."
Conversely, the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political arm of the Popular Front of India (PTI), a Muslim organisation, put up posters with the Sultan’s celebratory effigy, which the pro- Hindutva ideology VHP removed.
Hindu opponents, led by VHP leaders Jagadish Shenava and Sharan Pumpwell, coordinator of the Bajrang Dal (the VHP’s youth wing militant), reacted to the celebrations by organising a protest march in which some participants waved black flags.
During his reign, the sultan carried out violent attacks against the Christian community. In one particular incident, he caused the destruction in February of 1784 of the Church of Milagres in Mangalore, built in 1680, and had some 60,000 Christians arrested. For their part, Hindu extremists with the VHP and the Bajrang Dal attacked the same church a second time in 2008.
For the GCIC president, Muslim-Hindu fighting "threatens even more the safety of Christians. On the one hand,” George said, “we have Islamic activists with the PTI, guilty of attacking TJ Joseph, a Christian professor in Kerala who had his right hand cut off for alleged blasphemy (for which he was acquitted); on the other, we have [Hindu] rightwing groups that protest Tipu Sultan’s celebration.”
“Either way, the Christian community is caught in the middle, and its members increasingly feel unsafe. When two extremist groups clash in public, Christians are at risk.”
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12/04/2022 18:34
