Why is a Hindu group targeting Indian Catholics?

Two recent incidents that sparked fear and outrage among India’s Catholics have something in common, despite surface differences.

In the first, two nuns were arrested July 25 on highly questionable charges of human trafficking and religious conversion after they were surrounded by a hostile mob at a railway station in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

In the second, two priests, two nuns, and a catechist were attacked Aug. 6 by a mob in the eastern state of Odisha amid spurious claims that they were seeking converts.

The common element? The mob in both cases reportedly comprised members of a Hindu group known as the Bajrang Dal.

What is this organization? And why is it targeting Catholics?

The Pillar takes a look.

What is the Bajrang Dal?

Around 80% of India’s roughly 1.4 billion population are adherents of Hinduism, which is regarded as the world’s oldest major religion.

In the centuries before India gained independence in 1947, the country was dominated by foreign powers. The Mughals, a Muslim dynasty from Central Asia, ruled much of India from the 1500s to the early 1800s. They were followed by the British, who held sway via direct colonial rule for almost a century.

In the early 20th century, an Indian activist called Vinayak Damodar Savarkar argued that his countrymen should rise up in revolution against their colonial overlords. While in jail, he formulated a political ideology he called Hindutva, or “Hindu-ness.”

In his 1923 book “Essentials of Hindutva,” Savarkar argued that India rightfully belonged to those who saw it as their holy land, principally Hindus, but also Buddhists, Jains, and Sikhs, whose faiths also originated in the country.

He suggested that Muslims and Christians — respectively India’s largest and second-largest religious minorities — could not be integrated into the Hindu nation unless they embraced India as their holy land, ahead of Mecca and Jerusalem.

Savarkar’s Hindutva ideology was embraced by the organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, founded in 1925. After India gained independence, the RSS became an influential umbrella body for Hindu nationalists.

Among the groups operating under the RSS umbrella is the Vishva Hindu Parishad, founded in 1964 with the aim of uniting Hindus globally. In 1984, the VHP established an activist youth wing known as Bajrang Dal.

The group’s name means “Brigade of Bajrangbali,” a reference to the Hindu deity Hanuman, a bold, heroic figure honored by Hindus for his steadfast devotion to the major deity Rama.

The Bajrang Dal, whose motto is “service, security, and values,” presents itself as a defender of Hindu culture in the spirit of Hanuman. Its activities include protecting cows (a sacred animal to Hindus), opposing conversions to Christianity, and resisting what it calls “love jihad,” an alleged plot by Muslims to convert Hindu women through marriage.

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Bajrang Dal branches are found throughout India, but its presence is strongest in northern and central parts of the country.

The cluster of Hindutva organizations around the RSS — known collectively as the Sangh Parivar (“RSS Family”) — also includes the Bharatiya Janata Party, one of India’s two major political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. The BJP, founded in 1980, is the main partner in India’s current ruling coalition, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The relationships between the Sangh Parivar’s elements are somewhat loose, often being more ideological than institutional. This enables the BJP, for example, to attempt to distance itself from the Bajrang Dal’s more controversial activities.

Why is it targeting Catholics?

The Bajrang Dal targets Catholics because of its broader hostility to religions that do not originate in India.

Around 14% of Indians are Muslim, while just 2% are Christian, so much of the group’s activities focus on Islam, which it presents as an alien force seeking to undermine Hindu identity.

But the Bajrang Dal is also suspicious of Christians, believing that missionaries are intent on destroying the fabric of Hindu society, luring converts through offers of money, education, and healthcare.

Although Christians have lived in India since the 1st century AD, the Bajrang Dal links the minority to British rule, portraying Christianity as a Western cultural imposition.

Bajrang Dal members seek to disrupt missionary activity, which is likely what they believed they were doing when they confronted the two nuns at the railway station in Chhattisgarh state July 25.

The nuns had traveled to meet with young women they had reportedly offered jobs. The young women had parental consent letters and are said to be members of the Protestant Church of South India, rather than Hindus.

Nevertheless, Bajrang Dal representatives claimed the nuns were engaging in human trafficking and religious conversion, offenses that could lead to up to 10 years in prison.

Such offenses are typically non-bailable, meaning the nuns could remain in jail until their trial. But following a national outcry, the nuns were released on bail Aug. 2 by a special National Investigation Agency court that usually deals with terrorism offenses.

Bajrang Dal members also seem to have targeted the priests, nuns and a catechist in Odisha state Aug. 6 believing they were interrupting missionary activity.

In fact, the purpose of the Catholic group’s visit to the town of Jaleswar was to celebrate a Mass in suffrage for two local Catholic men who had died two years earlier.

The Catholics said they were ambushed by around 70 men they identified as members of the Bajrang Dal, who beat them, confiscated their cell phones, and “kept shouting that we were trying to make them Americans.”

What can Church leaders do to protect Catholics from militants who conflate

Christianity with Western imperialism?

One idea being debated by Indian Catholics is that nuns should receive broad permission to travel through hotspots without wearing their habits. Some argue this would spare nuns from violence. Others fear this would be a concession to intolerance and argue that nuns have every right to wear the clothing that expresses their calling.

Ultimately, though, the problem is not what nuns wear, but that, in parts of India, Bajrang Dal members appear to believe they can act with impunity.

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