Indian villagers challenge murderers with Christian faith
Christian leaders say officials and police in Jharkhand turn a blind eye to the bullying and intimidation of Christian tribals by right-wing Hindu groups who strive to make India a ‘Hindu-only’ nation. Even though these groups directly challenge the legitimacy of the Indian Constitution, they have the audacity to call themselves ‘patriotic’.
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Author: Saji Thomas, Raipur
It is two years since tribal villagers and Indian Hindu fanatics barged into Pastor Chamu Hasda Purty’s home late at night and shot him dead in front his wife and four children.
They left with a warning: give up Christianity or be killed.
But the pastor’s widow, Sonawati Dhan, continues to be a Christian and conducts weekly prayer meetings in their Sandigaon village in India’s eastern Jharkhand state.
“We are not afraid of death, we are ready to die for Christ as our father did,” asserts 21-year-old daughter Neelam Purty, a graduate student who still joins her mother’s prayer meetings.
Daughter Angel Purty, 19, said many people who had earlier attended the prayer meetings stopped doing so following the murder.
Her mother, Dhan, said the family moved 22 kilometers soon after the killing on Oct. 12, 2015.
“We were under pressure from our close relations, who feared for our lives,” she said.
The two daughters study at university while the young sons are in school.
“We will move back to the village after completion of their studies,” said Dhan who comes to the village’s primary school every workday, as she is employed as a teacher there, as well as to conduct the Sunday prayer meetings.
Dhan said she did not get any support from their tribal Munda community who dominate the village population.
“That is because most people were opposed to our new faith,” she told ucanews.com.
“They believed the new faith is against traditional customs and practices of the indigenous community.”
Even the late pastor’s parents and relations were opposed when he began the prayer service in their house in 2010.
“When more people began to join our prayer services, the villagers’ opposition also increased,” Dhan said.
“They wanted us to stop it, but we did not.”
The village committee then ordered a boycott against the family and denied them water from a common well.
It also fined anyone who spoke to the family 1,000 rupees (US$15), she recalled.
Hindu nationalists joined the villagers and killed the pastor, Dhan said, as it helped their agenda to banish Christianity from the state.
Christian leaders say officials and police support the right-wing Hindu agenda in the state, which is ruled by the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Critics see the party as a political extension of groups that strive to make India a Hindu-only nation.
Ever since BJP came to power in Jharkhand state in December 2014, pseudo-nationalist Hindu groups have stepped up action to convert Christians to Hinduism and ban pastors from entering villages under a slogan of creating a “Christian free Jharkhand.”
The state has recorded hundreds of incidents, including murders of pastors, rapes of Christian women including nuns, beating of Christians, false charges of sex abuse and forced conversion.
However, people such Dhan refuse to be intimidated.
“My husband’s blood will not go to waste,” she asserted.
Recalling the incident, she said the gunmen had cordoned off the house and opened fire when the pastor refused their demand that he give up his Christian faith.
“Even when he suffered excruciating pain he praised God and prayed, thanking the Lord for his faith,” she said.
She said the villagers feared hard-line Hindus so much that none came forward to take the pastor to hospital and he died after two hours of bleeding.
The late pastor’s neighbor, Mandan Huni Purty, regrets his helplessness.
“The pastor was loved by the poor,” he said.
“He used to carry the sick to hospital on a special trolley attached to his motorcycle.
“But when it came to his turn, we could not help him.”
He now joins Dhan’s prayer meetings in the village on Sundays and said he is ready to face any opposition.
“I am not worried about repercussions,” he said.
“It is God who matters to me and my family.”
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The poor, weak, ignorant RSS machine and its hooligans don’t know one important fact. The faith of Christians are fed by martyrdom. Since Roman times thousands of Christian believers willingly submitted themselves to torture and death rather than accept bribes, threats, and other ruses. Their faith was unshakable! This trial by fire will only give birth to many more steadfast Christians.
Christianity is waning in the developed countries because there are no serious challenges to it, so Christians have become bored, and have fallen away. Wherever this sort of violence against Christians will occur, we will see, unfortunately a rise of a more fundamentalist type of Christianity.
You have rightly pointed out that anyone who goes against the spirit of the Indian Constitution is an Anti-National. This goes equally for the fanatics of every ‘religion’:Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist who cause enmity between different communities and castes, and provoke violence.