Hindutva groups increase attacks on India’s Christian school

Christian schools in Indian states governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have faced increased attacks since the party’s general election victory in June.

Officials from the federal and state child rights panels raided several Christian schools and orphanages in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. They registered cases against Church figures, including a bishop, priests, and nuns under the state’s stringent anti-conversion law.

Last month, officials registered a case was registered against Vandana Convent School at the state’s Guna district for its insistence on recitation of prayers in English, which they claimed was “hurting the religious sentiments” of pupils.

“Ours is an English medium school. But a case has been registered against us for following the medium of instruction that is English in our 50-year-old school,” said the vice principal, Sr Rashmi Kuzhyil.

The school management and its principal Sr Catherine Vattoly were named in a complaint filed by the students wing of the BJP, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

On July 22, nearly 50 ABVP activists broke into the school and began to shout slogans against the principal and management, calling for Vattoly’s dismissal for “hurting” religious sentiments.

A week later, the ABVP activists in Madhya Pradesh led a raid on St Peter Higher Secondary School in Indore, part of the Diocese of Jhabua. Activists entered the school on 27 July with portraits of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning, demanding that they replace the school’s statues of St Peter and the Virgin Mary. They installed the portraits on the walls and warned the management against removing them.

These attacks followed a series of official and vigilante measures against Christian schools earlier this year.

The Madhya Pradesh government has charged three Christian schools with levying excessive fees, as part of what officials said was a state-wide action that also charged eight other non-Christian schools.

In the BJP-governed state of Assam in north-eastern India, nationalist Hindutva groups have demanded the removal of religious symbols from Christian schools and restrictions on religious expression on the grounds that this breaches anti-conversion legislation.

A message in February from a self-styled Hindu family protection council threatened Christian schools with dire consequences if they failed to remove photographs, portraits, or statues of Jesus and Mary from school premises within 15 days.

A 60-year-old old Carmel school in Jorhat in Assam sought police protection after a threatening poster was found pasted on its wall. The principal Sr Rose Fatima said in her complaint that the poster has created panic.

Hindutva groups ordered Catholic priests, nuns and religious brothers stop wearing cassocks and habits in schools. In response, Archbishop John Moolachira of Guwahati, Assam’s capital, asked all educational institutes in his diocese to lodge complaints with the state government.

In Tripura state, also in north-east India, activists from the Hindutva group Bajrang Dal accused a Christian school of discriminating against Hindu practices. As in many states, the activists claimed they were protecting members of tribal and other vulnerable groups from forced conversion. 

In a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, India’s Catholic bishops emphasised that “the Church firmly opposes forced conversions”.

Ahead of the celebration of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples Day on 9 August, BJP-affiliated groups claimed plans to mark the occasion in India were a “missionary conspiracy”.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, a Hindutva welfare organisation for tribal people based in central Chhattisgarh state, alleged that “external forces and Christian missionaries in India are hatching up a large-scale conspiracy to divide society in the name of the celebration”.

Its president Satyendra Singh said on 8 August that the day had no relevance for India. “All people of our country are indigenous to this land, and we are now free from the clutches of colonial forces,” he said.

Catholic leaders criticised the “false campaign” against missionaries.

Fr Vincent Ekka SJ, who heads the tribal studies department in the Church-run Indian Social Institute in New Delhi, said Hindu group feared that tribal people may become aware of their rights “and may revolt”. He said the day’s theme – “Protecting the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation and Initial Contact” – had no religious bearing.

“Blaming Christian missionaries for a conspiracy is misleading,” said Fr Ekka, a member of the Oraon tribal community in Chhattisgarh.

Archbishop Vincent Aind of Ranchi said the accusations against missionaries were “purely a political agenda”, insisting that “the time has come that we understand tribal rights, educate our people, and raise our voices”.  

He said that India’s tribal people – who make up around 8.5 per cent of its 1.4 billion people – were too often “pushed out from their own lands and are being forced to migrate”.

Southern states have seen similar attacks. In Telangana activists vandalised a school and attacked a priest after he questioned why pupils were wearing Hindu religious dress rather than uniforms. 

A group dressed in saffron shirts and shawls chanting “Jai Shri Ram” (“Hail Lord Ram”) broke into the St Mother Teresa English Medium School in the Mancherial district on 16 April, breaking windows and flower pots and vandalising the statue of St Teresa of Calcutta at the school gate.

They attacked the school’s manager Fr Jaimon Joseph, who had called the parents of pupils who had come to the school not wearing uniform. Pupils had claimed their dress was part of a 21-day ritual and accused him of hurting religious sentiments.

Fr Joseph said a large crowd had gathered after the initial attack to damage the school. He said the police made no arrests but filed charges against him and the school’s principal, Fr Joby Dominic, for “hurting religious sentiments”.

According to the United Christian Forum, an ecumenical persecution watchdog, there were 361 registered incidents of attacks on Christians in India up to June this year, with fears these have escalated since the BJP’s election victory.

In an effort to promote inclusion, India’s Catholic bishops have asked their schools to recite the preamble of the constitution, describing India as a “secular socialist democratic nation”, during the morning assembly in place of prayers.

The Church runs more than 50,000 educational institutions, including schools and 400 colleges, six universities and six medical schools in the country.

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