Orissa: Hindu temple being built atop rubble of Batticola church

(February 7, 2009) The foundations have been laid for a Hindu temple on the rubble of the church in Batticola, in the district of Kandhamal (Orissa). And the Christians returning to their villages are being pressured to convert to Hinduism. Mr Sajan George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians, who has received eyewitness testimonies from the north western state informed, Friday. The church in Batticola was rased to the ground and burned last August, at the beginning of the violence against Christians. Now, a foundation about one meter high has been laid in order to build a Hindu temple there. The Christians who returned to the village from the camp were given a dire warning: if they wanted to come back to the village, they had to convert to Hinduism." Batticola is one of the primary targets of the anti-Christian campaign. The Catholic church in Batticola was inaugurated in 1995. The Hindu radicals, under the leadership of Swami Laxamananda, tried to rase it to the ground in 2000. This news from Batticola is a sign that the situation on the ground is not calm, although the government continues to give assurances that the danger has passed, and is closing the refugee camps, sending Christians back to their ruined homes. All of this - the sources say - is very strange, because until recently "these people have lived together, celebrated festivals together, and basically a communitarian spirit prevailed, and yet there is a perverted sense of superiority and crushing the dignity of the Christians."