The full dimensions of the ominous conspiracy against Christians in India is at last being unfolded before the eyes of the world.

It is a conspiracy layered like the skin in a wild onion, each seemingly thin and transparent, but seen together, poisonous weed that has brought tears to the eyes of the nation.

The outer skin has been visible for a long time, made up of the hundreds of incidents of violence that have pricked this country since 1997 when the Bharatiya Janata party made its final and eventually successful dash for power. In the over three hundred cases of violence in these three years, the Sangh Parivar first gave indication that it had switched targets from the Muslims to the Christians. The pogrom that began with Lal Krishna Advani's rath yatra, and ended in the demolition of the Babari mosque and the massacre of Muslims in Mumbai and other cities in 1993, had peaked, and would no longer pay the dividends that the Parivar needed to keep its blood-thirst quenched, and its political mobilisation at fever pitch. With Sikhs and Buddhists on the list for absorption and  Vedic evangelisation, the Christians were the natural target, followers of a Semitic religion not too different from the Muslims, spread out in vulnerable thinness in the north, and in poverty and innocence in the tribal areas. If the Muslims could be demonised as violent relics of a violent invading past, the Christian were tail enders of a western colonialism, buying souls through money, medicine and force. The inevitable violence flared in the  demolition of nearly three dozen churches in Dangs, rape of nuns in Jhabua, the burning alive of Graham Stuart Staines, his sons Timothy and Phillip, and Catholic priest Fr Arul Doss in Orissa in 1999. The Sangh Parivar could prove that it could strike wherever it wanted to, and that forest, village, field or town were no barriers. Its propaganda machine could also prove that with official backing, it could isolate each incident's media fallout, counter each incident with local counter-propaganda The world, after an initial sense of outrage, relapsed into silence. Looking with greedy eyes at the Indian market ... western governments eventually closed their eyes to the incidents.

This violence however continues to grow, as must layers of this poison weed. Underneath it has grown a more sinister layer. If the first was to terrorise and incapacitate individuals, institutions and congregations, the second one targets larger masses of people ... Briefly. the strategy is for a group of about seven to twenty persons to come at night, armed with iron rods, sometimes wearing the barest minimum of clothes, mimicking local nomadic tribes. They use huge stones to batter down church and convent doors, and then assault the men in the house, in this case priest, with the rods and staves. When they believe the victim is dead, or close to death, they ransack the rooms, sometimes desecrating the chapel or church. Once in a while they pick up whatever valuables they can, sometimes they don't. The police would have the community believe that each case is isolated, each unconnected with the other. The police would have the human rights movement believe that the cases are not part of a pattern ... As the United Christian Forum for Human Rights has pointed out, how is that these gangs do not target Hindu temples? How is it that all victims in this time period have been Christians. Is it that the so-called criminal tribes have been communalised? Is it that these groups have been hired by others to do the dirty work?

Or more likely, is it that communal gangs, mimicking these groups, are attacking the Christian communities and making the crimes look as if they are ordinary dacoities?

There is no doubt that these attacks have added to the suspicion of the community and has spread terror ... The larger community was still not in a state of panic. This explains the upgrading of the violence in the use of bombs at churches in the southern states ..

Could this be the world of the Inter Services Intelligence Agency of Pakistan? ... But what would the ISI hope to achieve? Would it want a 'Christian backlash'? The very concept of a Christian backlash is a joke ... There cannot be a backlash. There is nothing that the ISI can fish in Christian waters in India ...

That brings us to the most dangerous layer of this Sangh onion.

While the violence takes place, a parallel track activity is also taking place. Involved in it are not just the old trouble makers of the RSS and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Singhals ... and Giriraj Kishores. A new escalation has taken place with the involvement of some who call themselves Sankaracharyas or Dharma gurus, among them the one of Puri. The so-called reconversions camps are going apace. Puri does not promise salvation. Even as he heaps abuse on Christians, he tells the Tribals they are third grade, deserving of no better than small separate temples, not good enough for their impure blood to mix in marriage with any of the traditional Hindus. And he wants us to believe that the tribals are willingly coming to him to live in this hell he promises them. Puri is backed up by one of the most sophisticated campaign machines seen since ... Hitler. RSS chief Sudershan talks of epochal wars between Hindus and non Hindus, Puri calls to throw out missionaries, Dara Singh is unrepentant for having burned two innocent children and their father. Others are raising Dara Senas. India's towns and villages are inundated with hate material that violates every law on the books.

Literature is being pushed into homes, paraded in marketplaces and beamed from loudspeakers. An entire people are being poisoned, with impunity, while policemen watch and officers smile ... This hate is the heart of the onion. (Source: The Indian Currents, 18 June, 2000)