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US Missionary Recovering After Attack In India
T.C. Malhotra
Correspondent
The State Department has condemned the attack on Joseph Cooper, a 67-year-old Protestant evangelist who was set upon by about 10 men in the state of Kerala earlier this week.
Several others with him were also injured in the assault, which occurred shortly after Cooper left a major Protestant convention he had addressed.
All are receiving medical treatment at Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital, where a pastor and friend of Cooper's, Sam Benson, said by phone Thursday that the attackers had been armed with "swords, rods and short sticks."
Cooper, who was unable to come to the phone, sustained a deep wound to the palm of one hand, he said. Benson, his wife and two children were also among those hurt before other church members arrived, causing the attackers to flee.
Police blamed the attack on Cooper - who has been working in India for many years and has addressed evangelical gatherings in many states - on a Hindu nationalist group known as the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Corps).
The RSS has long been opposed to Christian missionaries, whom they accuse of luring Hindus to Christianity with inducements including money, education and health care.
Police officers have made three arrests so far. One of the three is an RSS worker, although the group has denied any involvement.
An official at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi said staff members from the consulate in Chennai were being sent to the area where the attack occurred to "find out details."
The All India Christian Council (AICC) demanded that the RSS be outlawed.
AICC Secretary General John Dayal told a news conference here that the Council had repeatedly warned about an increase in the "violent activities" of the RSS and its sister organizations.
The RSS and affiliated organizations like the Bajrang Dal are social and religious groups, but they are also electoral allies of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Christians, who make up just 2.5 percent of India's nearly one billion, mostly Hindu population, say attacks against their community and churches have increased since the BJP came to power in March 1998.
In January 1999, a mob burned to death Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons while they were asleep in their car in eastern India. Fourteen men are on trial for the murders.
That attack was followed by a spate of anti-Christian violence elsewhere, which saw a number of priests killed and Christian institutions damaged or destroyed.
Mahesh Jha, a researcher at Nehru University in New Delhi, said extremist Hindu organizations trying to increase their support base by stirring up communal tensions could not be divorced from the ruling BJP.
"There is no difference between the BJP and RSS," Jha said. "The BJP is the body, RSS is the soul, and the Bajrang Dal is the hands for beating."
The chief minister of Kerala state has vowed stern action against those responsible.
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