traces

IINDIA

It was ten in the morning of August 25th. Suddenly we saw getting into the courtyard of our orphanage hundreds of people armed with sticks and axes. They began to destroy and set fire to everything they could find. We ran away to hide with the children, then we fled into the forest. We stayed there for a week. Some guys got away with us, others alone, in the confusion. Our orphanage had 130 children. They burned the library, our church, dormitories, they destroyed everything, our vans, cars, and also the sixty bicycles of our children. Now we're here again, we're trying to rebuild what has been destroyed.

Shepherd Prabin Sipka Ku, director of the orphanage Christian Protestant "Bethel Children's Home" of Muniguda, Orissa, in April 2009.

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The violence and destruction perpetrated by Hindu fundamentalists against the Christian communities in India, have left traces that will take a long time to disappear.

On 25 August 2008 in Orissa broke anger against Christians, at first accused of killing the Hindu leader Swami Lakshmanananda (instead murdered by Communist extremists, as revealed later) and destruction continued for a few weeks, it is extended to the states of Madya Pradesh and Karnataka. They were days of murder and violence against religious and faithful, with hundreds of churches, schools and villages razed to the ground and burned. About fifty thousand people had to flee, and most are not yet able to return home, a home that almost always there even more.

After almost a year, the situation is precarious balance. In some districts, such as Rayagada, it returned to normal, in others it is still tense and Christians who do not want to convert to Hinduism is prevented from returning to their villages to rebuild.

In India, the Christian minority has about 2.3% of the population and the faithful belong mainly to the poorest social classes, especially the caste

of Dalits, the untouchables of the Hindu culture.