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Christian Official’s Death in India Called Divine Punishment
Hindu nationalists say Andhra Pradesh chief’s ‘conversion agenda’ led to copter crash.
By Vishal Arora
NEW DELHI, Hindu nationalists are calling the helicopter-crash death of Andhra Pradesh state’s chief minister, a Christian, divine punishment for his so-called conversion agenda. The same allegation of a “conversion agenda” fueled persecution in the state for more than five years.
Yeduguri Sandinti Rajasekhara Reddy, a second-generation Christian in the Church of South India, and four officials were confirmed dead when their helicopter was found on Sept. 3 in the state’s dense forest area of Nallamalla.
Since Reddy, an official with the left-of-center Congress Party, became chief minister of the southern state in 2004, right-wing Hindu groups had been accusing him of helping Western missionaries to convert economically poor Hindus in the state. Hindu nationalists have been flooding the Internet with extremist comments saying the death of the 60-year-old Reddy, popularly known as YSR, was divine retribution.
“This is divine justice by Lord Srinivasa [One of the names of Hindu god Venkateshwara, an incarnation of Lord Vishnu],” commented Jayakumar on theExpress Buzz news website. “It is good that it happened so swiftly. Obviously, [Congress Party President] Sonia Gandhi is worried that her plans of completely converting India into a Christian country have received a setback. Let all Hindu-baiters of this country perish like this. Very, very soon.”
A person who identified himself only as Prakash on the website of The Indian Expressdaily wrote, “Anti-god demons like YSR need to be punished like this.” Another writer identified as Kumar chimed in, “YSR is the ringleader for Christian conversions in Andhra Pradesh.” Enthused a writer identified only as Ravi, “It’s the best thing that happened to Andhra Pradesh in a long time, and Andhra Pradesh people must celebrate,” and Suman Malu exclaimed, “Thankfully our country has been spared of one anti-national, anti-Hindu chief minister. Thank God for that!”
Right-wing groups also have accused Sonia Gandhi, a Catholic born in Italy, of having a “conversion agenda” since she became president of the Congress Party in 1998. The rise of Christian persecution in India coincided with her appointment as party chief.
Dr. Sam Paul, national secretary for public affairs of the All India Christian Council, said two years ago that Hindu nationalists launched a massive campaign in 2004 to raise fears that Christian conversions would skyrocket in Andhra Pradesh due to the appointment of a Christian chief minister.
“Six years later, it is fully proven that those allegations were part of a political agenda to belittle the chief minister and his party,” Paul told Compass, adding that Reddy never preached his faith, “not even once.”
He pointed out, though, that the Indian Constitution permits all people to practice and propagate their faith.
Calling the extreme comments “very unfortunate,” Paul recalled that Reddy attended Muslim and Hindu functions and participated in ceremonial traditions such as offeringPattu Vastrams (silk dresses) to Lord Venkateshwara in Tirupati every year, a long-time tradition in the state.
In addition, in June 2007, the Reddy administration enacted a law prohibiting the propagation of any non-Hindu religion in the temple town of Tirupati-Tirumala, believed to be the abode of Lord Venkateshwara. At the same time, however, he had faced criticism for tightening government controls on the state’s numerous temples.

Official Condolences
Reddy had led his party to a second successive victory in Andhra Pradesh in May 2009. He was seen as a leader catering to the masses thanks to populist measures such as financial and power programs for farmers.
In stark contrast to the hostile sentiment voiced in the cyber-world, more than 60 admirers died of shock or committed suicide following news of his death. Indo-Asian News Service reported that the deaths of Reddy’s supporters occurred in 19 of the state’s 23 districts. While most of them suffered cardiac arrest after watching the news of his death on television, others committed suicide.
“Reddy dedicated his life to people, I am dedicating my life to him,” a young man wrote in his suicide note before consuming poison, reported the news service. A physically handicapped couple, pensioners under a welfare scheme, jumped into a river to try to end their lives, but fishermen saved them.
Officially, even Hindu nationalist groups offered their condolences, including theRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), India’s largest conglomerate of right-wing groups, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), seen as the political arm of the RSS.
“We all share this unbearable pain with his family members, people of Andhra Pradesh and workers of the Congress Party,” the RSS announced in its weekly mouthpiece, theOrganiser. “All the BJP-ruled state governments declared a two-day state mourning as a mark of respect to the departed soul.”
Reddy, along with his special secretary P. Subramanyam, the chief secretary ASC Wesley and Indian Air Force pilots S.K. Bhatia and M.S. Reddy, died in the crash as they flew from the state capital of Hyderabad to Chittoor district for a political function.

Hot-bed
Anti-Christian sentiment has fueled persecution in Andhra Pradesh for the last five years.
Most recently, suspected Hindu extremists burned down a newly built church building of the Best Friends Church in Mahasamudram area in Chittoor district on Aug. 20. On Aug. 1, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP) attacked Christians in Mahabubnagar district, accusing them of forceful conversion; they forced the Christians to wear tilak, a Hindu symbol on the forehead, and threatened to kill them if they went ahead with church construction.
Andhra Pradesh has witnessed three brutal murders of Christian workers since 2005. The body of a 29-year old pastor, Goda Israel, was found with stab wounds on Feb. 20, 2007 in a canal near his house in Pedapallparru village in Krishna district. In May 2005, two pastors, K. Daniel and K. Isaac Raju, were killed near Hyderabad, the state capital. Daniel went missing on May 21 and Raju on May 24. Their bodies were found on June 2 of that year.
The New Indian Express on June 27, 2005 quoted a man identified only as Goverdhan claiming that he and two friends had murdered the two preachers.
“I am not against Christianity, but Raju and Daniel converted hundreds of Hindu families,” Goverdhan said. “They enticed them with money. We have done this to prevent further conversions. This act should be a lesson for others.”
According to the Census of India 2001, Andhra Pradesh has a population of more than 76.2 million, of which only 1.18 million are Christian
http://www.christia nnewstoday. com/Christian_ News_Report_ 375.html

Vijay Prashad - Professor of South Asian History Trinity College Hartford , Conn.
A fundraiser in New Jersey on Aug. 16 raised $50,000 for a “Hindu Holocaust” museum to be built in Pune. The museum is the brainchild of a Frenchman, Francois Gautier, and is under the auspices of the Viraat Hindu Sabha (VHS). They claim that over the past thousand years, millions of Hindus were killed, with the intention to wipe Hindus off the map.
The numbers are vague, as one might expect, but the culprit is precisely defined: Islam. The VHS uses the phrase “Islamic genocide of Hindus” to make its case. To me this is remarkable stuff. It reduces the complexity of the subcontinent’s rich history into a simple morality play that has only two characters: the Hindu and the Muslim. The latter is the invader who has come and killed the former. Nothing else matters.
The idea of the Hindu Holocaust casts the Hindu as history’s victim, who should now become history’s aggressor to avenge the past. But the Hindu was not always the victim. If you read the historical records carefully, you will find that many Hindus participated in the slaughter of other Hindus, and that the HinduBuddhist battles of the ancient world were perhaps more bloody than anything that comes afterward. Or indeed, that the systematic violence against dalits and other subordinate castes should hold our attention far more than it does.
Between Hindus and Muslims there has not been an endless rivalry for social power. When Islam enters the subcontinent, it does not come in the saddlebags of the Ghaznis or the Ghouris, but amongst the rumble of goods brought by traders. Early conversions are not by the sword but by the merchants . There was killing, but that was as much for reasons of warfare and plunder as for reasons of God and tradition. An interested reader might want to look at the distinguished historian Romila Thapar’s superb book “Somnatha: The Many Voices of a History” (Penguin, 2005). There, Professor Thapar shows us that Mahmud Ghazni’s destruction of the Shiva temple in 1026 was driven not so much by a fanatical religious belief but because his father, Subuktigin, needed money to sustain his faltering kingdom in Central Asia. Now it is certainly true, as historian Mohammed Habib put it, that there was “wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army.”
When one looks at the sources contemporaneous with the Ghaznavid attacks, one finds that they mention these but only as a series among many. There was nothing about them that merits the term “Holocaust,” even as they were certainly destructive of the temples and of the people who worshipped there. What Thapar points to is that this was not all done by the Central Asia marauders.
Many Hindu rulers led attacks on Hindu and Jain temples at this same time, and for similar reasons, as can be seen in the destruction of the Jain temples of Karnataka (which were converted into shrines of Shiva).
Indeed, there is little evidence of animus between Hindus and Muslims in the few hundred years after the entry of Ghazni. In the 13th century, a local raja, Sri Chada, granted a merchant from Hormuz the right to build a mosque on temple land. He also provided the mosque with a disbursement for teachers and preachers, for the daily reading of the Quran and for the celebration of festivals.
The Veraval-Somanatha inscription of 1264 shows us that even orthodox Shaivite priests cooperated in the building of the mosques. In the centuries that followed, common people of Gujarat followed the kind of tradition that runs from the padas of Narasimha Mehta to the padmavat of Malik Mohammed Jayasi, the ethos of mutual cultural development that was the hallmark of India for hundreds of years. Things developed to such a pass in Gujarat that in 1911, more than 200,000 people returned themselves as “Hindu-Musalman.” In Kathaiwar and Kutch , wedding services were, until very recently, solemnized by both a Saraswat Brahmin and a Qazi. Such is the history that is thrown to the wolves by the creation of a “Hindu Holocaust” museum.
Gautier came to India from France about 30 years ago, and settled in Pondicherry . He has written a few tracts and writes occasionally for the newspapers. His work reads like another European apologist for extreme Hindutva, Koenraad Elst. Both went to strict Catholic schools and now hold a deep animus against Christian missionaries, but seem to take their venom out mainly against Islam. Gautier and Elst want to make plain the “Muslim genocide against Hindus.” But neither is a serious student of history, with little idea of how to read historical texts. They draw more from a misplaced passion than from a real, sober scientific exploration of the facts. That they are taken seriously is a sign of the degradation of reason in the world of Hindutva.
Vijay Prashad Professor of South Asian History Trinity College Hartford , Conn.

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Fathima Rifqa Bary is playing a familiar role in Florida’s latest cultural clash, a symbol who personalizes a much broader conflict.
Claiming her Muslim father is going to kill her for converting to Christianity, Rifqa fled her Ohio home and was taken in initially by Blake and Beverly Lorenz, who head the Global Revolution Church. Blake has been quoted as saying Christians are at war with Islam and that Islam is evil. And those who share that view have embraced this case.
It brings back memories of Elián González, the Cuban boy whose arrival in Miami caused a furor as the exile community tried to block his father from bringing Elián back to the island. And then there was the right-to-life battle over Terri Schiavo, waged between her parents, who wanted to maintain her mindless body on a feeding tube, and her husband, who wanted the tube removed.
Rifqa, 17, is a symbol for those who believe we are fighting Round 2 of the Crusades. For them, the stereotype falls perfectly into place: Conniving Muslim extremist plans to murder his innocent daughter for turning to Jesus.
The case went to court last week. And in a rather surprising twist, rather than send Rifqa back to Ohio, Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson decided to investigate Ohio. And so the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is off to determine her survival chances there.
One assumes this had something to do with the intervention of Gov. Charlie Crist, who faces a conservative challenge from Marco Rubio in the Republican U.S. Senate primary. Not to be left out, Rubio promptly issued a statement in support of Rifqa and spammed it to the media.
Left unanswered is what business Florida has involving itself in this matter. The people best suited to determine the threat level to Rifqa are the cops and social workers in Ohio familiar with the Bary family and the Muslim community. It appeared they had worked out a good compromise plan, allowing Rifqa to go into foster care while they ensured her safety.
If there is evidence that the folks in Ohio are incompetent and need Florida’s assistance, I would like to hear it.
I do not know the Bary family’s dynamics.
From what I have read, Rifqa’s father, Mohamed Bary, brought his family to America from Sri Lanka in 2000, at least in part to seek medical treatment for Rifqa after she lost the sight in one eye.
He sends her to a top high school, where she has excelled and where she is a cheerleader.
Somehow I can’t imagine a Muslim extremist allowing his daughter to wear short skirts and shake pompoms in front of a crowd of infidels.
Bary is a middle-class jeweler with no documented history of abuse and no record of radical actions or beliefs. Whatever his disagreements with Rifqa — and what parent of a teen hasn’t had his or her share? — he obviously had invested a lot in her care and upbringing.
Yet last month — long after learning she had become a Christian — he suddenly decided to kill her over it.
And Rifqa had to flee for her life to the Lorenz family, whom she first met on Facebook. By coincidence, her flight apparently followed a confrontation with her mother over her coming home late.

Not content to just be rid of their apostate daughter, the parents immediately contacted police to bring her back so Mohamed could carry through with killing her. Mom and dad put on a good act, fooling the investigators, who reported they were like any typical, concerned parents worried about their daughter.
Obviously, this murder wouldn’t be a whodunit. So Bary would wind up on death row, leaving behind a wife, sons and life he worked hard to build for his family in America.
Nobody would possibly believe such a scenario if not for the fact Bary is a Muslim.
The anti-Muslim groups that have embraced Rifqa say his faith requires that he kill her, as if he has no say in the matter. As proof, they point to a passage in the Quran mandating death to Muslims who reject Islam. They back this up citing “honor killings” in Muslim countries.
Rifqa’s father is not judged as an individual. He is judged by the actions of others and quotes in a religious text.
I could go through the Old Testament and cherry-pick any number of quotes demanding death for nonbelievers, nonvirgin brides and blasphemers. No Christian I know endorses that, yet it seems every Muslim abides by the darker writings in the faith.
Imagine if Rifqa fled a Christian family and wound up in the home of an anti-Christian imam in Florida. And like Blake Lorenz, he delayed notifying authorities about her arrival. She would be on the next flight back to Ohio.
Fortunately, we have a rule of law to protect individuals from the political passions and religious doctrine of others. It is what separates us from Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The rule of law blocked Gov. Jeb Bush from imposing his personal beliefs in the Terri Schiavo case.
The rule of law sent Elián González back to his father.
And ultimately, the rule of law will send Rifqa back to Ohio.