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‘No minority can be safe in any country…’ RSS
“Enough is enough”, Rev Sr Anupa Karur, Mother General of the St Anna’s Girls’ High School, Kurpania in Bokaro told a national daily, explaining her decision to close down her school in the newly-created Jharkhand state last month. “Selfless service for the downtrodden does not merit such brutal and inhuman treatment.” 
On December 1, the cook at the missionary school was gang-raped by three goons for over an hour. Six other women teachers were assaulted, rape attempted and school property destroyed. This, said the nun, was the fourth assault of its kind. Three days earlier a church was targeted in the same Bokaro district. 
All Christian institutions were closed for a day to protest against the ugly incidents. What agitated the Sisters of St Anna’s Congregation even more was the attempt of the administration to whitewash the entire incident. “Look at the doctored medical report. Will any girl, that too an Adivasi, dare to stand up and say she was raped unless such a thing actually happened?” Sr Kujur queried. Asked if the decision to close down the school might be reviewed later, she added, “We have done what we had to do, now it is up to the government to act”. 
Christians were also targeted elsewhere in the country during December. 
Ø December 2: Fr Shajan Jacob from Thoubal district in Manipur was gunned down by two suspected insurgents as his school refused to pay the militants Rs.50,000 that was demanded. On December 10, thousands of Christians from all walks of life and almost all students of missionary schools in Manipur took out a silent procession in Imphal in protest against the killing.
Ø December 15: A Roman Catholic priest, Fr John Peter was, had to be hospitalised after he was attacked by two “unidentified assailants” at a church in the Andamans. 
Ø December 25: Christmas, thankfully, passed off peacefully though Christians in the tribal belt of south Gujarat had feared for good reason that this might be a third successive year when Christmas might mean curfew time for them. Among other things, the police was apprehensive of the “reconversion mela” the VHP had planned (according to intelligence sources) as their response to the baptising of 150 tribals proposed by a section of the Christian community for December 25. 
If not violence, it was barbs and threats. The RSS chief, KS Sudarshan, who had advocated in November that Muslims and Christians must Indianise themselves and talked of “Swadeshi Church”, found a new stick to beat Christians with in early December. At an awards function for women in New Delhi, he derided Christianity for treating women as inferior beings. “Christians did not even consider women as human beings…”
By the end of the month, the RSS had reverted to its “Swadeshi Church” theme. “Foreign Missionaries, Quit India”, screamed a headline in the Organiser, echoing the demand raised by the Akhil Bhartiya Sahasampark Pramukh of the RSS, Dr Shripati Shastri, at a public gathering where the sarsanghchalak Sudarshan and the VHP chief Ashok Singhal were also present. “No minority can be safe in any country by constantly irritating the majority community,” Shastri warned. He said the domination of foreign-born missionaries over churches in India was “a threat to Indian security”.
Meanwhile, true to its tradition of double-speak, the BJP-led government adopted a PR posture outside India holding that Christian missionaries were doing “good work” in India. An official paper titled, “Quality Education in a Global Era, Country Paper: India” distributed at the recent 14th conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, held in Halifax, Canada, was all praise for missionary schools in India: “Along with the normal prescribed curriculum and textbooks of the boards and universities concerned, the missionary schools provide a strong value orientation to students; values of life, joy, peace, kindness, and respect to others’ faiths”. However, the paper was not so exuberant about Muslim-run schools. 

‘Muslims are a threat to the nation’: Thackeray
If the RSS trained its guns on Christians in December (but don’t forget the Ram Mandir), the Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray reverted to a theme closer to his heart: hate India’s Muslims. In an interview published in two-parts in his own mouthpiece, Saamna, Thackeray described Muslims as “anti-religious” and thundered, “If you have the guts, then deprive the Muslims of their voting rights. That should serve them right. Once stripped of their voting rights, all these “communalists” (read Muslims) will become Hinduvaadis in no time”. Claiming to be quoting Dr Ambedkar, Thackeray said that Babasaheb had rightly warned at the time of independence: “Even if four-five Muslims were allowed to stay back in India (post-Partition), they would go on to become a cause of worry for India. And the truth is for all to see today”. In the second part of his interview, he was more explicit in his distaste for things Islamic and declared that “Muslims are a threat to the nation.”
A week later, the VHP president, Ashok Singhal endorsed Thackeray’s call to disenfranchise India’s Muslims. “Hindus do not have voting rights in Pakistan. In the Indian sub-continent, we have given full rights to Muslims. They should fight for the voting rights of Hindus in Pakistan. But till Hindus do not get voting rights in Pakistan, Muslims here should be similarly deprived of voting rights”, he said. 
(Religious minorities in Pakistan have a highly discriminatory separate electorate system which was imposed on them during the regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. Despite repeated protests from Pakistan’s minorities and other human rights groups, the separate electorate system continues – Ed.).
A few days before Singhal went public in support of the idea of disenfranchising Muslims, BJP president Bangaru Laxman refused to condemn Thackeray for his remarks that clearly incite hatred against Muslims. “Those are his personal views and it is not the first time that he has said such things,” Laxman said in response to questions from journalists at an iftaar party hosted by the BJP president’s at the party’s central office in Delhi. But surely Thackeray is not a private man? Does he not head a party with which the BJP shares power at the Centre and had earlier run a coalition government with in Maharashtra? Laxman dodged an answer to this one.

‘Shahi Imam’ threatens Islamic backlash
Democracy speaks the language of citizens, not Hindus and Muslims. But if the Thackerays and the Singhals of Hindutva insist in taking India back to the pre-modern, pre-democratic era, among Muslims the likes of Maulana Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the Imam of the Shahi Jama Masjid in New Delhi are no different. In response to the steam that is being built up by the sangh parivar for the second assault on Ayodhya, the imam has threatened he will rally the entire Muslim world (OIC) to impose economic sanctions against India. “I will be forced to tell them that the foreign exchange which they are handing over to the government is being used against the Muslims residing in the country,” the imam declared from the pulpit of the Jama Masjid on the last Friday of Ramzan. 
No Hindus please! We are namaazis
The principal of the Maulana Azad College in Calcutta was constrained to transfer a newly appointed Hindu bhistiwala (water-carrier) from the all-Muslim Elliot Hostel to the college following an objection raised by the hostelites. (Traditionally, only Muslims were employed as bhistiwala and sweeper in the hostel). The Indian Express reported that on December 3, the hostelites prevented the newly appointed non-Muslim bhistiwala from entering the hostel and warned him not to return. The next day, they submitted a memorandum to the college principal, Madhusudan Saha, arguing that as most hostelites were regular namaazis, they would face “difficulties” with a non-Muslim bhistiwala and sweeper who also doubles up as an errand boy. The memorandum added that the hostelites would also not like a non-Muslim to enter their hostel rooms where students keep copies of the Quran. Following the memorandum, the principal has referred the matter to the director of public instruction, government of West Bengal. Meanwhile, the bhistiwala has been temporarily shifted to the college. Incidentally, about six months ago, a hostel attached to the government-run Presidency College, which was earlier meant for Hindu residents alone, was opened up to students of all communities after a prolonged agitation by students. A demand was raised at the time that the Baker and Elliot hostels in Calcutta, meant for Muslims students only, should also be opened up to all communities. The state unit of the ABVP, the students’ wing of the sangh parivar, has rightly taken a serious objection to such religious discrimination in the appointment of a government employee. For once, we agree with the ABVP.