Nun rape and church vandalism: How are we different from Pakistan?

One neither knows if there is a direct or indirect connection between the shameful defeat of the mighty the BJP in Delhi to the halting of attacks on churches in the capital. Nor can one say whether there is a connection between the rise of the Hindutva forces in West Bengal and the attack on the Convent of Jesus and Mary at Ranaghat in Nadia district of West Bengal, including the most atrocious act of raping a 71-year-old nun. Until the investigations by the CID are over, one cannot come to know the real reason behind such an act.

Logic, however, defies common sense when one analyses the sequence of events in this reprehensible act. Three main questions remain unanswered:

One, that if the intention of the assailants was robbery, why did they ransack and desecrate the chapel (place where the nuns worshipped), and threw the sacred hosts out from the ciborium; two, why did they then take recourse to raping an old nun; and three, even in the case of the rape, why would the men spare the younger nun and go after an old one?

Even as the Christian community was struggling to come to grips with this horrible reality of the rape of a person consecrated to God in Ranaghat, it was further rocked by another dreadful news of the two bomb blasts in Lahore which killed 15 people and injured 75 others. What wrong did those innocent people who came to worship on a Sunday morning commit?

And before one could come to terms with that shocking incident in Lahore, at around the same time we come to hear of the destruction of another under construction church in Hisar, where the right-wing Hindu fundamentalists, besides bringing down the Cross mounted on the building hoisted a saffron flag with the words, "Jai Shia Ram". The sarpanch joins the hooligans in spreading the false propaganda of the oft repeated lies of conversion.

The question that pops up in my mind as a member of the minority Christian community and probably in your mind as a reader, perhaps not belonging to the same faith community as me, is as to what shall we make of these series of incidents in India and Pakistan? How are we different? While one might argue that we cannot talk about the bomb blasts in Pakistan in the same way as the incidents in India, be they in the capital city of India or Ranaghat or Hisar or many others taking place all around the country, I would tend to both agree and disagree with that argument.

To those finding the comparison between the incidents in Pakistan and India different, I find the similarity that while in Pakistan it is the Muslim fundamentalists, in India they are Hindus swearing by the same fundamentalism. And the victims in both the cases are the helpless minorities of the two countries.

The incidents also confirm what Pope Francis said that Christians right now are the most persecuted group in the world.