Attack On Chritians Spreads To Kerala

Cochin : Even before the RSS-sponsored Vishal Hindu Sammelan concluded here on April 5, attack on Christians began in right earnest in Kerala. That means the RSS-Christian clashes so far confined to Tamil Nadu have spread to Kerala which has the highest Christian population (23%) in the country. The burden of all the speeches at the Cochin conference, was that the Hindu population was going down and Christians and Muslims would soon become the majority. Hindus were openly asked not to practice family planning, stop buying from Christian & Muslim shop and establishments and also stop sending children to educational institutions run by them. Posters to this effect were put up all over Kerala and reliabel reports said RSS had spent lakhs of rupees to make the Cochin conference the “biggest Hindu show of strength to date. Though Marxists have been the worst victims of RSS violence so far, it is feared the next round of attack will be on Christians and Muslims. A PTI report from Kottayam said : “The residence cum nursing home of a doctor at Nattasery, on the outskirts of the town, was completely destroyed by fire late last night”. The report was dated April 4. “The police said the people of the area had been objecting to the dirt being thrown from the hospital to an adjacent temple and this had led to some tension in the area for quite some time,” the report from Quilon dated April 3 said “one person was injured when a motor workshop was set on fire and an electrical goods shop ransacked yesterday in the wake of clashes between persons said to be RSS followers & another group of people near a place of worship in the town,” The clash occurred when some people wrote slogans on walls in connection with the Vishal Hindu Sammelan, it said. SNDP leaders participated in the Hindu meet. Meanwhile, Kanyakumari dt. in TN has again plunged into violence. The Indian Express (April 12) carried a frontpage report of fresh RSS attack on Christian fishermen on April 9 (Good Friday). The attack was so serious that the police had to open fire. A church and temple were damaged, according to the report. One person was injured in the clash. K. K. dt. will never be the same again.