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Sangh Parivar responsible for church attacks: Christians

Our Correspondent in Hyderabad

The All-India Christian Council holds the Sangh Parivar and the Indian government directly responsible for the attacks on churches and Christians. It has rejected claims by Bharatiya Janata Party and Sangh Parivar leaders that external agencies were responsible for these incidents.

In a strongly worded statement, the Council said, "Christian leaders do not accept the theory of external agencies being involved in the attacks on churches and Christians in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa in the last two months.

"The same theory was put forward by a Union minister after the murder of Graham Staines and his two sons. The Indian Christian community is sick of such statements and is not fooled by them. The Sangh Parivar and the central government are directly responsible for the attacks," the statement said.

The council said the five bomb explosions at four churches in three states -- Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Goa -- on June 8 had vindicated the community's apprehensions.

The statement comes in the wake of those by BJP politicians and Vishwa Hindu Parishad officials, including BJP vice-president Jagdish Prasad Mathur, general secretary M Venkaiah Naidu, Union Ministers of State Ch Vidyasagar Rao and Bandaru Dattatreya and the VHP's Giriraj Kishore, blaming Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence for the blasts.

"It is the silence of the central leaders and their prolonged fudging of the issue of identifying and dealing with the culprits behind communal violence that has made the country unsafe for one of the most peaceful communities in the nation," the council said.

"It is extremely sad that in an era of globalisation, sections of the Indian community are bent upon taking the nation into the dark ages," it said.

It added, "The time has come for AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu and other National Democratic Alliance partners to keep their promise of protecting the minorities in the country."

The council has convened an emergency meeting of its leaders from across the country on June 15 and 16 at Madras to discuss the issue.

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