India's Two Plagues: The killing of girls and the persecution of Christians

The first of these plagues has caused the tragedy of tens of millions of girls being killed in their mothers' wombs or as infants. Then, there is anti-Christian intolerance, the latest explosion having taken place in Orissa. Behind this are fanatics of Hinduism and of the higher castes.

ROMA (Chiesa) - As it is in China, the Catholic Church is also being harshly tested in the other Asian giant, India.

There are two issues above all that the Catholic Church of India must face.

The first concerns "the promotion of woman in the Church and in society," the title of the plenary assembly of the Indian bishops, who are meeting February 13-20 in Jamshedpur, 800 miles southeast of the capital of Delhi.

Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, president of the pontifical council for the laity, came from Rome to inaugurate the important assembly, which is held every two years.

In his inaugural address, he placed the emphasis on the plague of female feticide and infanticide.

The killing of girls both in their mothers' womb and after their birth - often by feeding them poisonous plants or drowning them, to simulate an accident - is a very widespread practice in India.

In many families, the birth of a daughter is considered an unbearable burden, partly because of the very expensive dowry that must accompany her future marriage. The possibility of knowing the sex of the unborn child in advance has increased beyond measure the selective abortion of girls.

To halt the slaughter, the Indian government has prohibited the identification of a child's sex before birth, but this ban is largely circumvented. The effect is an astonishing demographic imbalance between males and females, which in some places has reached radical extremes. In the state of Madhya Pradesh, in the districts of Bhind and Morena, there are now only 400 women for every 1,000 men.

The Catholic Church is fighting to oppose this phenomenon and reawaken consciences, in accord with other religious confessions. The latest initiative in this vein is an appeal launched at the end of January by 200 Indian religious leaders, of the Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Sikh faiths, against this "crime against God and against humanity."

A no less vigorous international campaign against the plague of the "missing women" of India and other countries was begun in Italy last September by the secular intellectual Giuliano Ferrara, director of the opinion daily "il Foglio."

The second reality that is harshly testing the Church in India is the anti-Christian violence on the part of fanatical Hindu groups.

It is a violence that has risen to a crescendo in recent years, especially in certain states. Gujarat and Orissa are among them. In Orissa, which faces the Bay of Bengal, south of Calcutta, Australian Protestant missionary Graham Staines and his two children were killed after their car was set on fire in 1999.

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Those who are hostile toward Christians accuse them of proselytizing, and therefore violating the Hindutwa, the identification between India and Hinduism asserted by intolerant Hindu nationalist currents.

In reality, out of 1.2 billion Indians, Christians of all confessions make up little more than 2 percent. And they are not expanding, but slowly declining: from 2.6 percent in 1971 to 2.3 percent in 2001.

But at the same time, Christians run one of every five elementary schools in India, one of every four houses for widows and orphans, and one out of three houses for lepers and AIDS patients. Mother Teresa of Calcutta is the nation's pride. Except among fanatical Hinduists.

In fact, the latest explosion of anti-Christian violence that took place in Orissa did not even spare the sisters and brothers of Mother Teresa. Last Christmas three of their houses in the district of Khandhamai were attacked by an enraged mob armed with swords, axes, iron rods, and clubs. The sisters and brothers had to flee into the woods. The aggressors vented themselves by devastating the houses and chapels.

This wave of aggression against Christians began on Christmas eve and continued during the following days in various locations, with attacks on churches, the burning of houses, and destruction of shops.

Cardinal Telesphore Toppo, archbishop of Ranchi, after a visit to the stricken zones, described what he had seen to the agency "Asia News" in this way:

"An expanse of ashes is what remains in the areas stricken by anti-Christian violence at Christmas in Orissa. It was diabolical; churches desecrated and houses burned. The villages upon which the extremist Hindu violence fell are today a vast cremation ground."

Raphael Cheenath, the archbishop of Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, the diocese hardest hit, in an assessment of the attacks released at the end of January numbered the victims at 6 dead and 5,000 homeless, and the destruction at 70 churches, 600 houses, 6 convents, and 3 seminaries. The Indian bishops' conference gave the same report in a memorandum delivered to the national commission for human rights.

In his report, archbishop Cheenath points the finger at those whom he maintains are the promoters of aggression against Christians: the ideologues of intolerant Hinduism, ensconced in the group Vishva Hindu Parishad, and the members of the high castes, who are unfavorable toward the social advancement of the Dalits, the poorest, the outcast and "impure," many of whom are converts to Christianity.

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Chiesa is a wonderful source on all things Catholic in Europe. It is skillfully edited by Sandro Magister. SANDRO MAGISTER was born on the feast of the Guardian Angels in 1943, in the town of Busto Arsizio in the archdiocese of Milan. The following day he was baptized into the Catholic Church. His wife’s name is Anna, and he has two daughters, Sara and Marta. He lives in Rome.